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Vol. 18 No. 5 Boulder, Colorado September/October 2003
SPIRITUAL MONOPOLIESIt should not surprise us,- in this age of business
monopolies, that the commercial world, the world of affairs,the only world of which many people have any consciousness,that the general habit,of mind should be extended to the worldof religion, so that the Christian Church members act as thoughthey had patent rights on Jesus, the Buddhists of some stripeswish to claim the world for Buddha, the Mahometans hold theirterritory as sole agents for The Prophet, and‘ the Brahmins alsoclaim exclusive privileges.
Of course it is little men who assert these rights, which,after all, only become tangible in the collection of royalties.One of the unfortunate aspects of the delusion is that it hascrept into the ranks of the Theosophical Movement which wasoriginally intended to .abolish all such arbitrary andunreasonable assumptions and unite all reasonable people inSt. Paul’s broad conception that though there be Lords manyand Gods many, to sensible people there could be only oneLord and one God. Yes, at once agree the sectarians, that is OurLord and Our God.
But no, dear friends, you may call him by any name in anylanguage you please but still there are not many but OneReality. Some of: our Theosophical friends appear to thinkthey have a monopoly of the Masters, and one enthusiasticsacerdotalist asserts that Adyar is their home. He should re-member that the only home of a Master is a True man’s heart.
Contents
Spiritual Monopolies..........…1
Isis Unveiled:A Perspective..........................2
Letters Received:Geoffery Farthing Writes
From Surrey, England..16
Marty’s Corner: The Tour De Smile Bike
Tour ...............................18
Why This Issue Is Late....…25
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This might possibly exclude somepresumptuous localities. The Master Jesus,who was wise enough to tell his disciples tocall no man Master, took world-wide views ofhis functions. St. John affirms that God, theTheos, so loved the World that he gave his Sonto save it.
Christians limit this and say it onlymeans the Church that was to be saved. EarlyChristians knew, that saving the world was aprolonged process, achieved slowly throughindividual progress by earnest men andwomen, very few, in any generation, forthough many are called, few choose torespond, and the effort to reform goes on lifeafter life, incarnation after incarnation; till notto the Church, the Temple, the Pagoda or theMosque, but to the Love and Wisdom of theEternal-all the lost. sheep are brought home.
What else did the Master mean when hesaid, “Other sheep I have, not of this flock;them must I bring, and they shall all be onefold, one shepherd:”
That means Brahmins, Buddhists, Chris-tians, Moslems, Jews, Turks and heathen, allrecognizing each other as brothers.
That is the Universal Brotherhood ideaof the Theosophists of 1875. Go and see sucha picture as “With Which We Serve” andreason it out for yourself if any: other solutionis possible, for the profound problems of Life:
From The Canadian Theosophist Vol.24,No.1, March, 1943
Isis Unveiled: A Perspective
by David Reigle
Isis Unveiled was never intended tounveil Isis, the Egyptian goddess who hererepresents the mysteries of nature. Blavatskyhad given this book to the printer with the title,The Veil of Isis. But after printing hadcommenced, it was found that this title hadalready been used elsewhere. So a new titlehad to be found quickly. The publishersuggested Isis Unveiled, and Blavatsky hadlittle choice but to agree.1
The book which came out as IsisUnveiled was intended not to unveil themysteries of nature, but to make known to theworld the existence of a once universalWisdom-Religion, now hidden from view.The symbolical Isis, the Wisdom-Religion, isindeed veiled since it had been lost to theworld for long ages, but it exists! This startlingnews caused so much excitement that the firstprinting of 1000 copies sold out in 10 days.2
What is the Wisdom-Religion? It isdescribed by Blavatsky in her later book, TheSecret Doctrine, as the universally diffusedreligion of the ancient and prehistoric world.3Further, all the presently existing religionsand philosophies originate from it. When thisis recognized, the divisive walls that separateone group of people from another crumble. Itwas brought out to help achieve this, inkeeping with the first object of Blavatsky’sTheosophical Society, to promote universalbrotherhood.
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In making known to the modern worldfor the first time the existence of the onceuniversal Wisdom-Religion, Blavatsky had atwofold task. She had first to show that sciencedid not have all the answers; that the ancientshad knowledge of things not yet discovered byscience. This she did in volume I of IsisUnveiled. She had also to show that religion inits separativism had ceased to meet humanity’sneeds, but that these separate pieces cometogether in the one archaic Wisdom-Religion.This she did in volume II.
Throughout both volumes of IsisUnveiled she cited book after book written byancient authors from all over the world,showing on their part a knowledge of theteachings of the now lost Wisdom-Religion. Inthis way she showed that although thisknowledge had become lost, partly throughthe religious fervor of followers of separativereligions, and partly through being withdrawnby its custodians to safeguard it from suchsectarians, it was once common knowledge.But it had for many centuries been carefullyhidden away.
So how did Blavatsky learn of theexistence of the once universal Wisdom-Religion, hidden so well for so long? She hadgone to the East in search of wisdom, andfound there certain individuals who were itscustodians. But Blavatsky was not the onlyperson to travel to the East in search ofwisdom. Why did she find the Wisdom-Religion, when others did not? It would seem,rather, that its custodians found her.
The custodians of the Wisdom-Religionmake up a secret Brotherhood centered in
Tibet and India. Two members of the TibetanBrotherhood were Blavatsky’s primary teach-ers, called in Theosophical writings theMahatmas K.H. (Koot Hoomi) and M.(Morya). The great fourteenth-century Ti-betan teacher Tsong-kha-pa, who reformedTibetan Buddhism and founded the Gelugpaorder, is said to have also reformed the secretTibetan Brotherhood who are the custodiansof the Wisdom-Religion. Among his reformsof the latter is an injunction to make an attemptto enlighten the Western barbarians during thelast quarter of each century.4 Hitherto, we aretold, each such attempt had failed. Then camethe attempt in 1875. The Mahatma K.H. writesabout the choice of Blavatsky as the agent forthis in a letter now preserved in the BritishLibrary:
After nearly a century offruitless search, our chiefs had to availthemselves of the only opportunity tosend out a European body uponEuropean soil to serve as a connectinglink between that country and ourown.5
Thus it was the custodians of theWisdom-Religion who found her, and thenallowed her to find them.
After receiving instruction fromthem, Blavatsky founded the TheosophicalSociety in 1875. She then wrote Isis Unveiled,which was published in 1877. In this way shemade known to the modern Western world forthe first time the existence of the Wisdom-Religion, still preserved in the East. She wasentrusted with the task of bringing out aportion of its teachings, for which she used the
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term “Theosophy.” The first installment ofthese teachings is found in Isis Unveiled. It isthus a pioneering work, a work which pavedthe way for the much fuller installment givenin her later work, The Secret Doctrine.
In bringing out something altogethernew, Isis Unveiled had to devote much spaceto tearing down and clearing away existingbeliefs that stood in the way of the acceptanceof the new teachings. The existing beliefs, assaid before, were firstly that modern sciencehad all the answers, when in fact it was limitedto physical reality alone; and secondly thatreligion had the whole truth, when in fact ithad only pieces. Thus, much of Isis Unveiledwas devoted to showing the inadequacies ofscience and religion, and comparatively littleof it was devoted to giving out new teachings,other than the very fact of their existence. Anexposition of the new teachings as such was tocome later. Those who have studied TheSecret Doctrine should therefore not expect tofind in Isis Unveiled the same kinds of thingsthey found in The Secret Doctrine. IsisUnveiled is quite different.
In order to get a perspective on whatone will find in Isis Unveiled, it may be usefulto review some of the comments on it made bythe author and her teachers. Blavatsky writes:
. . . it was the first cautiousattempt to let into the West a faintstreak of Eastern esoteric light . . . .6
While writing Isis, we were notpermitted to enter into details;hence—the vague generalities.7
The Mahatma K.H. writes in his letters:
The author was made to hint andpoint out in the true direction, to saywhat things are not, not what theyare.8
Many are the subjects treatedupon in Isis that even H.P.B. was notallowed to become thoroughly ac-quainted with . . . .9
Don’t you see that everythingyou find in Isis is delineated, hardlysketched—nothing completed or fullyrevealed.10
“Isis” was not unveiled but rentssufficiently large were made to affordflitting glances to be completed by thestudent’s own intuition.11
Not only was Blavatsky not permittedto give clear details, she had to express whatshe could give out in a language that wasforeign to her. She informs us:
When I came to America in1873, I had not spoken English—which I had learned in my childhoodcolloquially—for over thirty years. Icould understand when I read it, butcould hardly speak the language. . . .Until 1874 I had never written oneword in English. . . .12
Therefore she submitted the manuscriptof Isis Unveiled to her co-worker ColonelOlcott to correct her English. They workedtogether on this, rewriting all but the passages
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which had been dictated to her by her teachers.Thus she says:
It is to him [Olcott] that I amindebted for the English in Isis.. . . .
The language in Isis is not mine;but (with the exception of that portionof the work which, as I claim, wasdictated), may be called only a sort oftranslation of my facts and ideas intoEnglish.13
However, Olcott was not then in aposition to correct errors of doctrine thatBlavatsky was oblivious to because of her lackof fluency with English.
It was my first book; it waswritten in a language foreign to me—in which I had not been accustomed towrite; the language was even moreunfamiliar to certain Asiatic philoso-phers who rendered assistance; and,finally, Colonel Olcott, who revisedthe manuscript and worked with methroughout, was then—in the years1875 and 1876—almost entirelyignorant of Aryan Philosophy, andhence unable to detect and correctsuch errors as I might so readily fallinto when putting my thoughts intoEnglish.14
Indeed, Olcott could not correct what hedid not understand, and Blavatsky could notexpress what she understood.
I am [at] 47th St. New Yorkwriting Isis and His voice dictating to
me. In that dream or retrospectivevision I once more rewrote all Isis andcould now point out all the pages andsentences Mah. K.H. dictated—asthose that Master did—in my badEnglish, when Olcott tore his hair outby handfuls in despair to ever makeout the meaning of what wasintended.15
This situation necessarily led tomistakes in Isis Unveiled. One that was soonto catch up with her was her usage of the term“God.” Blavatsky writes in the Preface to IsisUnveiled:
“When, years ago, we firsttravelled over the East, exploring thepenetralia of its deserted sanctuaries,two saddening and ever-recurringquestions oppressed our thoughts:Where, who, what is GOD? Who eversaw the immortal SPIRIT of man, soas to be able to assure himself ofman’s immortality?
“It was while most anxious tosolve these perplexing problems thatwe came into contact with certainmen, endowed with such mysteriouspowers and such profound knowledgethat we may truly designate them assages of the Orient. To theirinstructions we lent a ready ear. Theyshowed us that by combining sciencewith religion, the existence of Godand immortality of man’s spirit maybe demonstrated like a problem ofEuclid. For the first time we receivedthe assurance that the Oriental
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philosophy has room for no other faiththan an absolute and immovable faithin the omnipotence of man’s ownimmortal self. We were taught thatthis omnipotence comes from thekinship of man’s spirit with theUniversal Soul—God! The latter,they said, can never be demonstratedbut by the former. Man-spirit provesGod-spirit, as the one drop of waterproves a source from which it musthave come. . . . prove the soul of manby its wondrous powers—you haveproved God!”16
When writing Isis Unveiled, Blavatskywas unaware of the connotations of the word“God,” and therefore used it when she actuallymeant the impersonal and universal principleknown in Hinduism among Adwaiti Vedantinsas Parabrahman.
A sceptic in my early life, I hadsought and obtained through theMasters the full assurance of theexistence of a principle (not PersonalGod)—”a boundless and fathomlessocean” of which my “soul” was adrop. Like the Adwaitis, I made nodifference between my Seventh Prin-ciple and the Universal Spirit, orParabrahm; . . . My mistake was thatthroughout the whole work [IsisUnveiled] I indifferently employedthe words Parabrahm and God toexpress the same idea . . . .17
A few years later the problem with theuse of the term “God” emerged. TwoEnglishmen living in India, A. P. Sinnett and
A. O. Hume, had in 1880 begun acorrespondence with Blavatsky’s two teach-ers, the Mahatmas M. and K.H. The twoEnglishmen then wrote about the heretoforehidden or occult teachings of the Mahatmasbased on these letters. Hume had in 1882written a “Preliminary Chapter” headed“God” intended to preface an exposition ofOccult Philosophy. The Mahatma K.H.responded clearly and unmistakably:
Neither our philosophy norourselves believe in a God, least of allin one whose pronoun necessitates acapital H. . . . Our doctrine knows nocompromises. It either affirms or itdenies, for it never teaches but thatwhich it knows to be the truth.Therefore, we deny God both asphilosophers and as Buddhists. Weknow there are planetary and otherspiritual lives, and we know there is inour system no such thing as God,either personal or impersonal.Parabrahm is not a God, but absoluteimmutable law. . . .18
Hume’s chapter had added “God” totheir philosophy, which the Mahatma re-garded as a very serious problem, saying:
. . . if he publishes what I read, Iwill have H.P.B. or Djual Khool denythe whole thing; as I cannot permit oursacred philosophy to be so disfig-ured.19
A different kind of problem arose dueto the fact, noted above, that Blavatsky couldnot give out Theosophical doctrines in their
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completeness in 1877 when Isis Unveiled waspublished.
In this book she taught the threefoldconstitution of a human being: body, soul, andspirit. When the Theosophical teaching on thesevenfold constitution of a human being wasbrought out four years later, she was accusedof contradiction. But as the Mahatma K.H.explained in a letter to Sinnett:
In reality, there is no contradic-tion between that passage in Isis andour later teaching; to anyone whonever heard of the seven principles—constantly referred to in Isis as atrinity, without any more explana-tion—there certainly appeared to beas good a contradiction as could be.
“You will write so and so, giveso far, and no more”—she wasconstantly told by us, when writingher book. It was at the very beginningof a new cycle, in days when neitherChristians nor Spiritualists everthought of, let alone mentioned, morethan two principles in man—body andSoul, which they called Spirit. If youhad time to refer to the spiritualisticliterature of that day, you would findthat with the phenomenalists as withthe Christians, Soul and Spirit weresynonymous.
It was H.P.B., who, acting underthe orders of Atrya (one whom you donot know) was the first to explain inthe Spiritualist the difference therewas between psyche and nous, nefesh
and ruach—Soul and Spirit. She hadto bring the whole arsenal of proofswith her, quotations from Paul andPlato, from Plutarch and James, etc.,before the Spiritualists admitted thatthe theosophists were right.
It was then that she was orderedto write Isis—just a year after theSociety had been founded. And, asthere happened such a war over it,endless polemics and objections tothe effect that there could not be inman two souls—we thought it waspremature to give the public morethan they could possibly assimilate,and before they had digested the “twosouls”;—and thus, the further sub-division of the trinity into 7 principleswas left unmentioned in Isis.20
For reasons such as this the Mahatma M.told Sinnett to beware trusting Isis Unveiledtoo implicitly,21
and the Mahatma K.H. told him the samething:
By-the-bye you must not trustIsis literally. The book is but atentative effort to divert the attentionof the Spiritualists from their precon-ceptions to the true state of things.22
The Mahatma K.H. is here not referringto the two versus three human principlesquestion, but to the teaching of Spiritualismthat the spirits of the dead can return andcommunicate with the living through medi-ums. Theosophy opposed this strongly,
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teaching that such activity causes seriousharm to the departed, and usually to themedium as well.
What can return is not the spirit of thedeparted, but only a “shell,” made up of his orher disintegrating lower principles. This shellmay retain memories of the recentlydeparted’s life, but it is devoid of the actualspirit or higher principles of that person. Socommunication with it is of little value to theliving; but this positively harms the departedand seriously hinders his or her passage to thenext world.
This teaching, however, was not quiteclear in Isis Unveiled. An 1882 article called“Fragments of Occult Truth,” published inThe Theosophist, included the clear state-ment: “in short, that no departed Spirit canvisit us.”23
A letter to the editor asked if thiscontradicted what was taught in Isis Unveiled,where it said: “many . . . among those whocontrol the medium subjectively . . . arehuman, disembodied spirits.”24
Blavatsky replied that it did not; thathere the term “disembodied spirit” refers tothe “reliquiae of the personal Ego,” not to thespiritual Ego. She explained that:
the term “spirit” had to be oftenused in the sense given to it by theSpiritualists, as well as other similarconventional terms, as, otherwise, astill greater confusion would havebeen caused.25
She concluded her article:
We may well by taxed with tooloose and careless a mode ofexpression, with a misuse of theforeign language in which we write,with leaving too much unsaid anddepending unwarrantably upon theimperfectly developed intuition of thereader. But there never was, nor canthere be, any radical discrepancybetween the teachings in Isis andthose of the later period, as bothproceed from one and the samesource—the Adept Brothers.26
The next month another writer inanother journal quoted this concludingsentence, and then brought up what appearedto be, indeed, a “radical discrepancy” betweenthe teachings given in Isis Unveiled and thosegiven out later.27
Reincarnation seems to be denied in IsisUnveiled, which says:
Reincarnation, i.e., the appear-ance of the same individual, or ratherof his astral monad, twice on the sameplanet, is not a rule in nature; it is anexception, like the teratological phe-nomenon of a two-headed infant.28
Blavatsky responded in The Theosophistthe following month that “the ‘astral’ monad isnot the ‘Spiritual’ monad and vice versa.”29
In other words, the same individualpersonality, a Mr. Smith, does not reincarnate;only the immortal spiritual monad that gave
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rise to Mr. Smith will again give rise toanother personality, perhaps a Mrs. Jones.Therefore, there is no discrepancy. Sheremarks here, in the same vein she had earlier:
The most that can be said of thepassage quoted from Isis is, that it isincomplete, chaotic, vague perhaps—clumsy, as many more passages inthat work, the first literary productionof a foreigner, who even now canhardly boast of her knowledge of theEnglish language.30
On this reincarnation question, theMahatma K.H. says about “the confused andtortured explanations” in Isis Unveiled:
. . . for its incompleteness no onebut we, her inspirers are responsible. .. .31
This same reincarnation question onthis same passage in Isis Unveiled was to ariseagain and again. Four years after her first briefreply, Blavatsky gave a detailed response,providing a description of the reincarnationprocess. She again showed that “there is no‘discrepancy,’ but only incompleteness”32 inwhat was given out earlier.
She adds, however, that there areimportant mistakes in Isis Unveiled, resultingfrom being edited by others, that should becorrected.
The sentence saying that the Hindudreads transmigration and reincarnation “onlyon other and inferior planets, never on thisone,”33 should be corrected to:
“The Hindu dreads transmigra-tion in other inferior forms, on thisplanet.”34
Similarly, in the sentence saying that“this former life believed in by the Buddhists,is not a life on this planet,” 35
the phrase “life on this planet” should becorrected to “life in the same cycle.”36
Just over two years later, these sametwo sentences were again corrected in asimilar manner.37
But here she also added a correction tothe sentence cited above,
“Reincarnation, i.e., the appear-ance of the same individual, or ratherof his astral monad, twice on the sameplanet, is not a rule in nature.”
She here said that the word “planet” wasa mistake and that “cycle” was meant, i.e., the“cycle of Devachanic rest.”38
She had already explained, more thanonce, that the “astral monad” is only thepersonality; therefore the doctrine of thereincarnation of the immortal spiritual monadis not being denied. In this article sheexplained further:
The paragraph quoted meant toupset the theory of the FrenchReincarnationists who maintain thatthe same personality is reincarnated,often a few days after death, so that a
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grandfather can be reborn as his owngrand-daughter.39
Errors such as “planet” for “cycle” werepermitted to remain in Isis Unveiled, sherepeats, because its stereotyped plates wereowned by the publisher and not by her. Shethen says:
The work was written underexceptional circumstances, and nodoubt more than one great error maybe discovered in Isis Unveiled.40
The “great error” discovered in IsisUnveiled pertaining to reincarnation was due,then, to two causes.
First, as with the problem of wrong usageof the term “God,” Blavatsky had to write in alanguage that was foreign to her.
Second, as with the problem of threehuman principles versus seven given later, theteachings found in Isis Unveiled areincomplete.
The teaching that the personality doesnot reincarnate, without stating that theimmortal spiritual monad does, led to themisconception that reincarnation is denied inthe Wisdom-Religion. Blavatsky could main-tain that there is no radical discrepancybetween the earlier and later teachingsbecause they come from the same source, herteachers. Thus, this would be true irrespectiveof whether or not she herself knew the wholeteaching from the beginning.
Colonel Olcott, who worked with her
throughout on correcting the English in IsisUnveiled, writes in his Old Diary Leavesabout the reincarnation teaching:
When we worked on Isis it wasneither taught us by the Mahatmas orsupported by her in literary controver-sies or private discussions of thoseearlier days. She held to, anddefended, the theory that humansouls, after death, passed on by acourse of purificatory evolution toother and more spiritualised plan-ets.41
Besides errors due to faulty expres-sion and those arising from incompleteness,others were added by proofreaders when IsisUnveiled went to press. As Blavatskydescribes:
. . . the proofs and pages of Isispassed through a number of willingbut not very careful hands, and werefinally left to the tender mercies of thepublisher’s proof-reader.42
This resulted in other serious mistakes,such as on its opening page. About this theMahatma K.H. writes:
Proof reader helping, a few realmistakes have crept in as on page 1,chapter 1, volume 1, where divineEssence is made emanating fromAdam instead of the reverse.43
There is yet another kind of error inIsis Unveiled, that for obvious reasons was notnoted during Blavatsky’s lifetime. This kind
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arises from the fact that Blavatsky used thethen current knowledge and books to supportthe teachings given to her by her teachers. Forexample, while writing about the Jainas, sheadds that Gautama Buddha was the pupil ofthe Tirthamkara, the great Jaina teacher, whois called Mahavira:
It is clear that Gautama Buddha,the son of the King of Kapilavastu,and the descendant of the first Sakya,. . . did not invent his philosophy.Philanthropist by nature, his ideaswere developed and matured whileunder the tuition of Tirthamkara, thefamous guru of the Jaina sect.44
Professor C. P. Tiele wrote in his book,Outlines of the History of Religion, at thatsame time:
According to the Jainas,Gautama (Buddha) was a disciple oftheir great saint, Mahavira.45
This was the current view in 1877, whenalmost nothing was known about the Jainas,and very little about Buddhism. It is based onthe fact that Mahavira’s closest disciple wasnamed Gautama. But it has long since beenknown that this Gautama was not GautamaBuddha, and that the latter was not a discipleof the Jaina Tirthamkara Mahavira.
Errors of this kind in regard to Buddhismare frequent in Isis Unveiled, attributing toBuddhism both the teaching of God and of animmortal soul, or atma. These teachings, ofcourse, are not found in Buddhism. Some ofthese errors, such as the ones regarding God,
may have been due to Blavatsky’s lack offluency with English, while others wereapparently due to the fact that she drew fromthen available sources to back up the materialgiven to her by her teachers.
Despite Blavatsky’s repeated statementsthat Isis Unveiled was far from perfect, someof her followers regarded the whole book asinfallible truth. Because some of it wasdictated to her by her Mahatma teachers, theythought every word of it was.
These “friends, as unwise as they werekind,” writes Blavatsky, spread this idea, “andthis was seized upon by the enemy andexaggerated out of all limits of truth.” Shecontinues:
It was said that the whole of Isishad been dictated to me from cover tocover and verbatim by these invisibleAdepts. And, as the imperfections ofmy work were only too glaring, theconsequence of all this idle andmalicious talk was, that my enemiesand critics inferred—as they wellmight—that either these invisibleinspirers had no existence, and werepart of my “fraud,” or that they lackedthe cleverness of even an averagegood writer.46
The idea of writing by dictation fromunseen teachers was so supernatural-soundingthat such rumors about Isis Unveiled easilyarose. Blavatsky points out, however, thatthere is nothing supernatural about it. Sheaffirms that the teachings come from herEastern Masters, and “that many a passage in
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these works has been written by me under theirdictation.” She explains:
In saying this no supernaturalclaim is urged, for no miracle isperformed by such a dictation. Anymoderately intelligent person, con-vinced by this time of the manypossibilities of hypnotism (nowaccepted by science and under fullscientific investigation), and of thephenomena of thought-transference,will easily concede that if even ahypnotized subject, a mere irrespon-sible medium, hears the unexpressedthought of his hypnotizer, who canthus transfer his thought to him—even to repeating the words read bythe hypnotizer mentally from abook—then my claim has nothingimpossible in it. Space and distancedo not exist for thought; and if twopersons are in perfect mutual psycho-magnetic rapport, and of these two,one is a great Adept in OccultSciences, then thought-transferenceand dictation of whole pages, becomeas easy and as comprehensible at thedistance of ten thousand miles as thetransference of two words across aroom.47
Blavatsky stresses repeatedly that herteachers are living men, not disembodiedspirits. She, while living in New York, couldeasily receive dictation from them, living inTibet, since distance is no barrier to this. Shealso received dictation from other teachers,living in other places, for use in Isis Unveiled.
As described by her co-worker, ColonelOlcott, their ability with English variedgreatly, so that sometimes he had to makeseveral corrections per line, and other timeshardly any. The unique work of one of theseteachers is described by Olcott as follows:
Most perfect of all were themanuscripts which were written forher while she was sleeping. Thebeginning of the chapter on thecivilisation of Ancient Egypt (vol. i,chap. xiv) is an illustration. We hadstopped work the evening before atabout 2 a.m. as usual, both too tired tostop for our usual smoke and chatbefore parting; she almost fell asleepin her chair while I was bidding hergood-night, so I hurried off to mybedroom. The next morning, when Icame down after my breakfast, sheshowed me a pile of at least thirty orforty pages of beautifully writtenH.P.B. manuscript, which, she said,she had had written for her by—well,a Master, whose name has never yetbeen degraded like some others. Itwas perfect in every respect, and wentto the printers without revision.48
The material for Isis Unveiled wasthus given to Blavatsky piece by piece,without system. When it began, she had noidea that it would eventually become a book.The material was later arranged and re-arranged. She often commented on its lack ofsystem, saying about the resulting book:
. . . it looks in truth, as remarkedby a friend, as if a mass of
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independent paragraphs having noconnection with each other, had beenwell shaken up in a waste-basket, andthen taken out at random and—published.49
According to the Mahatma K.H., herown contributions to Isis Unveiled weresimilarly unsystematic, and her explanationswere unclear.
She . . . is unable to write withanything like system and calmness, orto remember that the general publicneeds all the lucid explanations that toher may seem superfluous.50
For these reasons, and the severalreasons given above that errors entered IsisUnveiled, the Mahatma K.H. remarked:
It really ought to be re-writtenfor the sake of the family honour.51
Blavatsky in fact did start to rewrite itin the mid-1880s, and announced it as such.But this was soon transformed into analtogether new book, The Secret Doctrine,because she was able to give out so many moretruths in clear terms. Already in 1882, thesituation had changed significantly. She thensays:
When Isis was written, it wasconceived by those from whom theimpulse, which directed its prepara-tion, came, that the time was not ripefor the explicit declaration of a greatmany truths which they are nowwilling to impart in plain language. So
the readers of that book, weresupplied rather with hints, sketches,and adumbrations of the philosophyto which it related, than withmethodical expositions.52
By 1886, the situation had changedgreatly. She writes:
And I tell you that the SecretDoctrine will be 20 times as learned,philosophical and better than Isiswhich will be killed by it. Now thereare hundreds of things I am permittedto say and explain.53
So Isis Unveiled was never rewritten;instead it was replaced by The SecretDoctrine. But these two books cover verydifferent ground, and much of the materialgiven in Isis Unveiled is still to this day foundnowhere else.
We are therefore fortunate that a newedition of Isis Unveiled was prepared by Borisde Zirkoff, who spent countless hourscorrecting references, quotations, spellings,etc.
We are also fortunate that an abridge-ment of Isis Unveiled was prepared byMichael Gomes, which eliminated most of thedated or erroneous explanatory material. Foras Blavatsky said about this book of hers justeleven days before she died:
I maintain that Isis Unveiledcontains a mass of original and neverhitherto divulged information onoccult subjects. That this is so, is
14
proved by the fact that the work hasbeen fully appreciated by all thosewho have been intelligent enough todiscern the kernel, and pay littleattention to the shell, to give thepreference to the idea and not to theform, regardless of its minor short-comings.
Prepared to take upon myself—vicariously as I will show—the sins ofall the external, purely literary defectsof the work, I defend the ideas andteachings in it, with no fear of beingcharged with conceit, since neitherideas nor teachings are mine, as I havealways declared; and I maintain thatboth are of the greatest value tomystics and students of Theoso-phy.54
As summed up by Olcott, her co-workeron this book:
The truest thing ever said aboutIsis was the expression of anAmerican author that it is “a bookwith a revolution in it.”55
NOTES
ODL: Old Diary Leaves, by Henry Steel Olcott, 2nd ed., Adyar, Madras:
Theosophical Publishing House
BCW: H P. Blavatsky Collected Writings
ML: The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, 3rd ed
1. “Introductory,” by Boris de Zirkoff,
p.43, in Isis Unveiled, by H. P. Blavatsky,rev. ed., Wheaton, Ill: TheosophicalPublishing House, 1972 (1st ed., 1877);and BCW, vol. 1, p. 302.
2. ODL, vol. 1, p. 294.
3. The Secret Doctrine, by H. P. Blavatsky,1st ed., 1888; rev. ed. [by Boris de Zirkoff](pagination unchanged), Adyar, Madras: Theo-sophical Publishing House, 1978, vol. 1, p. xxxiv.
4. BCW, vol. 14, p. 431.
5. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, ed.A. T. Barker, 3rd rev. ed., Adyar, Madras:Theosophical Publishing House, 1962, p. 201.
6. BCW, vol. 5, p. 221.+
7. BCW, vol. 4, p. 184.
8. ML, p. 45.
9. ML, p. 179.
10. ML, p. 127.
11. ML, p. 118.
12. BCW, vol. 13, p. 197; see also ML, p. 472.
13. BCW, vol. 13, pp. 198, 201.
14. BCW, vol. 7, p. 50.
15. ML, p. 472.
16. Isis Unveiled, “Preface,” vol. 1, p. vi.
17. BCW, vol. 7, p. 51.
18. ML, p. 52.
15
Editor’s Note: David Reigle wrote the abovcarticle in English for a German language studyedition of Isis Unveiled. It was translated intoGerman by Hank Troemel.
It contains an excellent analysis of thecontent of Isis which can serve as a valuable guideto its study.
19. ML, p. 300; see also p. 152.
20. ML, p. 285; see also BCW, vol. 7, p. 288.
21. ML, p. 179.
22. ML, p. 45.
23. BCW, vol. 4, pp. 119, 120.
24. BCW, vol. 4, p. 120; also Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, p. 67.
25. BCW, vol. 4, p. 120.
26. BCW, vol. 4, p. 122.
27. BCW, vol. 4, p. 182.
28. Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, p. 351.
29. BCW, vol. 4, p. 184.
30. BCW, vol. 4, p. 184.
31. ML, p. 169.
32. BCW, vol. 7, p. 181.
33. Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, p. 346.
34. BCW, vol. 7, p. 183; see note 37 below.
35. Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, p. 347.
36. BCW, vol. 7, p. 184; see note 37 below.
37. BCW, vol. 10, pp. 215-216. These twosentences were here corrected as: “Hindus dreadreincarnation in other and inferior bodies, of brutesand animals or transmigration”; and the “formerlife believed in by Buddhists is not a life in the samecycle and personality.”
38. BCW, vol. 10, p. 215.
39. BCW, vol. 10, p. 215.
40. BCW, vol. 10, pp. 215-216.
41. ODL, vol. 1, p. 278.
42. BCW, vol. 13, p. 199.
43. ML, p. 45.
44. Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, p. 322.
45. Outlines of the History of Religion, by C.P. Tiele, London and Boston, 1877, pp. 141-142.
46. BCW, vol. 13, pp. 195-196.
47. BCW, vol. 13, p. 196.
48. ODL, vol. 1, p. 211.
49. BCW, vol. 13, p. 192.
50. ML, p. 126; see also pp. 103, 111, 127.
51. ML, p. 127.
52. BCW, vol. 4, p. 253.
53. ML, pp. 473-474.
54. BCW, vol. 13, p. 193.
55. ODL, vol. 1, p. 297. This American wasDr. Alexander Wilder; see “Introductory” by Borisde Zirkoff, Isis Unveiled, p. [51].
16
Letters receivedGeoffery Farthing writes from Surrey,
England:
I recently received your May/June2003 issue of The High Country Theoso-phist and hasten to send you mysubscription for next year ($15 for :surfacemail).
I wonder if I might make somecomments on the articles by the DalaiLama and the Friends of Plenty.
I was about 4 1/2 when the FirstWorld War began and have occasion toremember the very day when it started (notpart of this story).
In the succeeding years I learned toread and still have memories of reading thenews sheets, in those days properbroadsheets, not the tabloids that are socommon now. After some of the majorbattles there would be many pages listingthe names of thousands of casualties, eachentry a life or a wounded man.
My mother lost five brothers killedand two gassed. Everyone now has seenover the years extracts from films andnewspaper photographs of the horrors ofthat war. We do not need reminding thatwar brings nothing but devastation toproperty and to masses of human lives, notto mention those of the soldiers involved.
I was myself a soldier in the SecondWorld War, as a volunteer and servedthroughout it. I got to know the viewpointof a soldier. During training I learned whatit meant to be one. In the article from Plentythere is the story of the marine Lt. Colonelreferring to men in training as being builtup to a point where they are emotionallyready to kill. This is only half the story. Theother half is that one has to be built upemotionally to be ready to be killed.
Everything that the Dalai Lama andPeter Schweitzer have to say about war isof course true. If it were possible to avoid itno sane person would enter into it. Butwars unfortunately are not born out ofsanity, they are born out of insanity. Suchinsanity is the cause of human suffering onan unimaginably large scale through thedestruction of social structures and thereducing of a nation’s resources tostarvation level even without war.
An example is what occurred inGermany before and during the SecondWorld War with, as everyone knows, theanti-Semitic frenzy of hatred and killing.Later we had Idi Amin in Ugandaperpetrating the most terrible atrocities andreducing his nation to penury. This ishappening at the moment under PresidentMugabe in Zimbabwe.
We have recently all heard of thecruelties perpetrated by Saddam Hussein.His depriving the Marsh Arabs of their
17
livelihood, the gassing of the Kurdishpeople in the north of his country and themultiple executions of his people onpolitical grounds.
Do the peace lovers really feel thatthey can tolerate these things in our day?These leaders are not susceptible todialogue and reason; they are insane in theworst possible way, i.e., with inflatedselfishness seeking wealth and power onlyfor themselves, never mind what happensto the population in their own country.
Do the peace lovers really accept thatnothing should be done? Is it not really thecase that, in order to save humanity fromsuch depravation and misery, someonemust try to stop it? This is the job of thesoldier. Would it not be cowardice if noone were to take up this challenge? Ifreasonable argument and persuasion can-not be effective, surely the only way is touse force.
Using force necessarily means all theconsequences that arise from it, i.e., deathand destruction. Military commanders donot go about their business with theintention of killing civilians or bombingchildren. They have all had experience ofcivil life and many of them are marriedmen with their own children.
Being a theosophist is not necessarilybeing a pacifist, however much one mayappreciate the horrors of war. Surely there
is a limit to some horrors of ‘peace’, suchas the tribal genocide in Africa. Does it nothave to be stopped somehow?
In the Bhagavad Gita, the discoursebetween Arjuna and the Lord Sri Krishnaactually takes place on a battle field. It isthere that Krishna points out to Arjuna thatthe “Spirits” of men were not vulnerable, itwas their bodies only that could bedestroyed, and that there was such a thingas an honourable calling as a soldier.
In fact, according to Krishna, itbecame a duty to uphold the cause of rightand justice and fair dealing even if itinvolves the risk of losing one’s own lifeand of taking the lives of others.
We are told that even H.P.B. took partin Garibaldi’s war at Mentana and waswounded by a sabre stroke and severalgunshot wounds. [H.P.B. CollectedWritings, Vol.. 6, page 278 fn. (ed.HCT)]
Yes, surely we are all agreed that theworld without war would be a verydesirable place but first we have to get ridof the causes of war and that is about asdifficult as curing a violent patient ofsevere mental disorder.
Yours sincerely, Geoffery Farthing
18
Marty’s Corner PRASAD’S Tour de
Smile Trans America Bike TourColorado
Early in the spring, the Denver SiddhaYoga Center had invited Dyan Campbell togive a talk about the PRASAD project fordental health care. They were sponsoring abike tour across America to raise moneyand awareness for children’s dental careand they needed riders to get sponsors.Although it had been many years since Ihad done a long distance road bike trip, thisseemed like an opportunity that shouldn’tbe turned down.
Dick and I started on Sunday, July 27,2003 from Boulder, CO., to Salida, CO.We were in search of a new bicycle forDick. Bikes have changed dramaticallyover the years. My very first bike belongedto my mother. It was a ladies single speedcoaster brake bike. I was slow to learn howto ride and as an encouragement Dadbought for me the “New English Racer,”which are now commonly known as threespeeds. It had hand brakes and three gears.I didn’t really much care for it though, ashand brakes were hard to get used to.
The ten-speed derailleur was in-vented about the time that I was at WesternState College in Gunnison (1960’s), but itwasn’t until I moved to Colorado in 1973that I bought my first ten-speed. Traveling
across the country with all the necessitieswas just starting to be in vogue and BikeCentennial 76 (now Adventure Cycling)sponsored my very first cross-country trip.
However, Dick’s and my real love layin wanting to travel into the backcountry.We yearned to explore some dirt or jeeproads and the early ten-speed bicycles atthe time didn’t have the gear technology ordurability to meet the challenges ofmountain riding.
In the late seventies and earlyeighties, pioneering bikers in CrestedButte, CO and Marin County, CA decidedto pull out their old coaster bike frames andmodify them for riding in the high country- thus was born the mountain bike era.
The bike manufacturers were not surethis new crazy phrase would really takehold. In the early 1980’s commerciallymade mountain bikes were simply notavailable so we went to a custom framebuilder and my bike “Panzer” was bornalong with Dick’s Rock Creek. Dick builtboth bikes using the then available roadbike componentry. These two bikes weretruly unique “clones” unduplicatedanywhere else. By today’s standardsPanzer would be considered a modified orperhaps even a hybrid mountain bike.They did not have shocks back then. No,Panzer is a truly authentic vintagemountain bike but only a person familiarwith that era would know this.
19
Sunday, July 27, 2003:
Due to his 20 year battle withParkinson’s disease, Dick has been havingmore and more difficulty mounting anddismounting his bikes. He felt that if thetop bar were lowered, as with a ladiesframe, then his main difficulty would besolved. Marty trusted the bike shop inSalida; it was where Panzer was serviced.Dick found that he could straddle one oftheir new bikes with no difficulty. Wedecided to take the new bike on the Tour deSmile trip but we would take one of theother bikes as well just in case there wastrouble or as an extra bike in case some oneneeded it.
Monday, July 28, 2003:
Monarch Pass was under construc-tion and we had decided to scout outMarshal Pass as an alternative. MarshalPass was built by the Denver Rio GrandeRailroad to haul ore from the Gunnisonarea to Salida. Marshal Pass is now a dirtroad that winds its way through the SanIsabel and Gunnison National Foreststhrough sagebrush to Sargents. The dirtroad was rough and in trying to dodge arock, we tore the muffler loose. Nope, thispass won’t do for the Tour.
Tuesday, July 29, 2003:
Driving Dallas Divide, we searched
for a nice Aspen Grove in a grassy meadowwhere we could relax, but it seemed thateverywhere we drove we saw huge ranchhouses enclosed by fences. We scoutedout the Last Dollar Road. Dick had alwaysbeen curious and wanted to explore it.Well, explore it we did. We took a wrongturn that went down and down. There wasno way we could turn back on the single-track road, a 20% grade with tight 180degree switchbacks, and down 2000 feet toSan Miguel Canyon into Telluride. Dickwas terrified. The muffler fell off so webungeed it to the roof of the car and droveto Cortez to have it fixed. While the newmuffler was being installed, we rode intotown in search of ice cream. How timeshave changed! Our ice cream shop hadrows of supplements: Siberian Ginseng,various protein powders and vitaminsupplements to add to the high fat calories.
Wednesday, July 30, Dolores, Colo-rado:
We met our ‘Tour de Smile’ party ateight Wednesday morning. I rememberwatching an elderly gentleman on amodern day road bike pass by. Oh! Iwanted to yell out to him. Somehow I felthe was part of our group.
To my delight and surprise, the partyhad acquired an extra driver. He had justarrived from Durango, CO, the previousday. This would give us an extra driver andfree me to ride more. I knew there was a
20
reason for bringing along an extra bike. Ofcourse, it fit him perfectly. We haddecided to let him stretch his legs outbefore we tackled the mountain grades.What a splendid spin it was as it was agentle ride up through ponderosa pines andspruce trees. Fond memories of ridingfrom Calgary, Canada to Banff in the’80s,came flooding back to me.
We met the elderly gentlemen atRico. His name was Marty but since theGuru authorized his spiritual name wedecided to call him Hari Dass and myselfMarty.
Oh! How I wanted to ride from Ricoto the top of Lizard Head Pass, butdiscretion held me back. Instead Dick andI drove to within five miles of the summit.We, together, rode to the top and thenturned around. We met Hari Dass at ourparked car, so I just turned around and rodeagain to the summit with him.
I had discovered that this was hissixth day on the road and he was intendingto ride five more days through Colorado.He was from Connecticut and was mostcommitted to his pledgers who weresupporting him on this ride. He had onlybeen training since June and just boughtthe bike, whereas my old friend Panzerdates back to 1981.
As we neared the summit, Hari Dassshowed me the blue toothbrush. “This is
what is being carried from California toNew York,” he said. He unstrapped thetoothbrush and together we held it upbetween our bikes. Oh! A most proudmoment that was.
At the summit, it was my turn to drive.Dick took off on his new bike with Tom,the extra sag wagon driver, for thescreaming downhill. I chose to be the lastsag wagon driver sending the others aheadto make camp reservations. It wasn’t longbefore I came upon Dick. His new bikegears had jammed. He tried to fix it, but thetechnology has changed so much that Ifinally convinced him we should take thebike into Telluride in search of a bike shop.
How different Telluride is from ourrecollections of 20 years ago. Oh, themountains are still the same but the houseshave grown into million dollar ranches.What an interesting sight, all the streetswere lined with mountain bikes and manywere vintage bikes. Fortunately for Dickwe did find a shop that understood andcould replace the frayed cable. He didwhat he could sending on our way refusingto accept more than three dollars for hisefforts. Could he have been an agent of theGuru?
The evening became more and moreconfused. Due to its lateness we haddecided to eat out. It took three differentrestaurants before we finally settled on onewhere they had a jazz band. Here, I
21
discovered that Tom was a professionaljazz player. How exciting.
Thursday, July 31:
Hari Dass left camp at six am for thescheduled cold and fast downhill ride outof Telluride down San Miguel canyon.Dick and I had wisely chosen to skip thatportion of the ride and met the crew at eightin Placerville at the beginning of the climbover Dallas Divide. The timing wasperfect as we met the group just as theywere ready for the steep ascent.
I always loved Dallas Divide. It is amixture of grassy slopes, Aspen grovesand pines and certainly an ideal spot. Onthe summit one has a long and clear view ofthe San Juan Mountains, which aredominated by Mt. Sneffels. Dick hadclimbed that peak long before I met him. I,myself, have only ridden the jeep roadsleading to Sneffels’ famous mines.
Ridgway is the town where the roaddivides three ways, our road leading backover Dallas Divide to Telluride and theother road leading south to Ouray andnorth to Montrose. The traffic picks uphere becoming quite heavy. Again, Idecided to drive this section to the nearesttown, Colona, about ten miles fromMontrose. Oh, I really wanted to ridethrough a town. I had a vision of holdingup the toothbrush with all of us riding intoOuray but Montrose would have to do.
Pillars of very black clouds were buildingover the San Juan Mountains behind us. IfI was to ride, now was the time. So, I leftColona figuring that Hari Dass would haveto catch up which he did. What a gloriousride it was too. It felt so good to reallystretch out and bike hard.
Now as we turned east out ofMontrose our tailwind became a crosswindand we realized why we could cruise atsuch a fast pace. We both decideddiscretion was the better part of valor withthe storm overtaking us. As we waited outthe storm I realized that the old ‘touringbug’ had definitely bitten. I vowed to ridethe next two days completely.
Cell Phones:
They may be a modern conveniencebut they don’t always work in these hills.Tom missed a turn in Montrose but haddriven ahead to the campground while wewere patiently waiting in Montrose for himto catch up. His cell phone wasn’tworking. So, I had to call Denver from apay phone and have a friend in Denver callthose waiting in Montrose.
Friday, August 1, 2003
I knew this stretch of canyon. Therewould be a horrendously steep hillfollowed by a screaming downhill throughthe narrows (a portion of the canyon wherethe walls descend upon the road).
22
Climbing out of the narrows would bedangerous so it would be best to get anearly start.
I figured for sure Hari Dass wouldcatch me on his skinny tired bicycle but Ifelt strong. I had found that combiningGlaceau Vitamin Water with WheyProtein Powder and Flaxseed Oil gave mean extra boost of energy. Nope! Hari Dasswill have to catch me on the downhill.
Boy! Am I glad for the fat tires. Icould hit the barrow pit (edge of the roadthat is often gravel) whenever the trucksand R.V.’s passed too closely in thenarrows.
Just before Gunnison there is a longstretch of desert country. It is very openwhere the winds blow across the BlueMesa Reservoir. Here, Hari Dass didfinally catch me and he gave me a greatboast into town via drafting.
Gunnison:
Gunnison is the hometown of myalma mater, Western State College. I hadalways wanted to ride to and from mycollege ever since the 1960’s. Tomorrowwill be my golden opportunity.
At the KOA Kampground we pickedup our 7th member of the team, Austin.Austin is a young man in his thirties whohad been traveling about the country. Like
myself, he rides daily and is accustomed tothe altitude. But he has not ridden in thesaddle for any length of time. He will ridethe bicycle that is carried in the RV as aspare. It is a mountain bike with shocks butmounted upon street tires.
Saturday, August 2, 2003:
Today would be the hardest day of allbut because of construction on MonarchPass, we would have to be shuttled to thetop. It would simply be too dangerous.Since the most strenuous portion of theride was removed we gave ourselves extrasleep time.
Pictures at the Campground:
We asked our camp neighbor if hewould be so kind as to take our pictureholding the banner ‘PRASAD’S Tour deSmile.’
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“New York,” replied the tour direc-tor.
“New York?” he questioned.
It is always so much fun telling peoplethe final destination. They don’t seem torealize that this is an adventure of thewhole summer.
“No, we are going to Salida today,” I
23
said.
“Oh! You are going over the Big Hillthen,” he responded.
How funny, we Coloradoans, includ-ing myself, will never refer to driving overthe mountain or even a mountain range.We climb a mountain in Colorado; youhike over a mountain range but you driveover the hill and the ‘Big Hill’ means theContinental Divide where the water flowsto the Pacific Ocean on one side and to theGulf of Mexico on the other.
Today would be the big day. So, HariDass and myself opened our special kit forbikers and brought out Elliott the toyelephant. I seat belted Elliott to the frontrack with a bungee cord and Hari Dasstucked his Elliott safely in his fronthandlebar bag.
The trip from Gunnison to Sargents(town at the base of Monarch Pass) wouldbe rolling terrain in semi arid country.Sagebrush was on one side of the road anda lush green valley was on the other. Off inthe distance is the Gunnison NationalForest, which we were riding through.
Hari Dass and Austin had riddenahead. I must have looked pretty tired as Iwas slumped over my handlebars stretch-ing my upper body while drinking somewater.
“Want a ride?” said the sag wagondriver as the sag wagon pulled up alongside of me.
“Huh?” I choked out a reply.
“What?” I asked as I raised my waterbottle to strike.
“Just checking,” came the response.
It wasn’t long before I caught themall. Austin had found a goat head thornpuncturing his front tire. Oh the ubiquitousgoat heads, the terror of all road bikers.Goat heads are a small seed with one thorn.They grow on a small low lying plant thatloves the cracks and edges of roads andtheir thorns can puncture right througheven a fat tire knob.
Athletes:
It always amuses me how we athletesview each other. We look at the others’strengths but ignore our own. Thus, HariDass will catch us, he is riding a road bikewith skinny tires, he is strong; Austin willcatch us he is so young and strong; orMarty will catch us as she is experiencedand strong. Therefore, each and every oneof us felt that we had to hurry, as the‘others’ will soon catch us.
Hari Dass and I took off thinking thatAustin will surely catch us after he fixedhis tire. Wrong!
24
“Want to draft me to Sargents?”asked Hari Dass.
Oh! The joy of sailing down or evenup the road. It is easy for a mountain bikerto draft a road biker - that is if the road bikeris willing to hold his speed down. The fattires are more stable and the uprighthandlebar makes it easier to see around forany potential danger. One does have towork harder though, but it is worth ithearing the hum of the tires on the road. Iwish I could have given Hari Dass the sameexperience but it just doesn’t work. Amountain biker can’t go fast enough tokeep the road biker from constantlybraking which disrupts the flow of riding.
The Big Hill:
AS we approached the Big Hill, thequestion was where do we turn off and letthe sag wagon carry us through theconstruction zone? But where was theconstruction? On and on we rode untilfinally one of the sag wagon driversdecided to check it out.
“No construction!” he yelled as hepassed us.
It was the weekend and no one wasworking. Thus we did get to ride over thewhole pass after all.
Grand Finale:
“It is all downhill to the Gulf ofMexico,” I said jokingly as our picture wasbeing taken.
The trip down to Salida was a twenty-mile downhill run with most of it prettyfast. I was glad I had the fat tires as theyheld my speed back. No one caught meuntil near town.
In Gunnison, we had sent Dick on toSalida to fix his new bicycle. The gearswere broken again and this town is wherewe bought the bike. Our plan was to meetDick at the Circle Eight Motel. Our partyhad decided to take a full rest fromcamping. Since it was the weekend theyexpected the campgrounds to be full. WhatDick did not know was that the motel roomwas not reserved in the Tour de Smilename nor even the tour director’s. Whenwe had not arrived by four, he becameconcerned and asked them to call thesheriff to look for our party. However, hehad a bleeding cut finger and so theparamedics were called too. As we arrivedwe were greeted by the paramedic team,fire truck, and ambulance.
What a grand finale!
Special moments to be thankful for:
Finding we had an extra support crewmember to help with the driving and givingme a chance to really bike.
25
Riding over Lizard Head Pass whileholding the toothbrush between a roadbiker and mountain biker.
Driving through the town of Tellurideand seeing both sides of the street linedwith mountain bikes and many of themvintage mountain bikes.
Stretching out and really riding hardand fast (for a vintage mountain bike)between Colona into Montrose with a goodstiff tail wind.
Finding out the power of mixingprotein power and flaxseed oil withGlaceau Vitamin Water.
Feeling the strength, power, andenergy in my body as I rode up the hills orwhen drafting.
For the first time “ever” on a longdistance trip (mountain and road) havingenough water to drink. In the past, I havealways had to conserve my water to thenext stop or drink out of streams. This timethere was always a sag wagon ready tohand me “cold” water.
Being able to truly draft a skinny tiredroad bike while listening to the hum of myfat tires on the pavement.
Finding out that there was noconstruction on the BIG HILL (Monarch
Pass).
LAST BUT MOST IMPORTANT
Calling to Shiva “OM NAMAHSHIVAYA” when I started, stopped, orpassing the sag wagon and finally, finally,on the last day, near the crest of the BIGHILL (Monarch Pass) I heard him echoback.
Why this issue is late.
A combination of events expectedand unexpected have resulted in this issueof the HCT to be over 2 weeks late:
1. Participation in the Coloradoportion of the Tour de Smile bike trip. -- 8days
2. Attending a family wedding inSheridan, Wyoming. -- 5 days
3. A computer crash resultiing in thereplacement of the motherboard andprocessor chip. 10 days
4. A general worsening in the state ofmy Parkinson’s disease which makesevery task more personally difficult andtime consuming. It would be impossible tocontinue without the loving support of co-editor Marty Lyman.
26
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THE HIGH COUNTRY THEOSOPHIST isan independent Journal and has thefollowing editorial objectives:
(1) To serve the greater TheosophicalMovement as a forum for the free interchangeof ideas and commentary in the pursuit ofTruth and to facilitate various projects infurtherance of Theosophical principles.
(2) To present articles and essaysconsistent with source theosophy, otherwiseknown as the Ancient Wisdom as given by TheMasters and H.P. Blavatsky, and othertheosophical writers consistent with thistradition.
(3) To examine contemporary ethical,religious, metaphysical, scientific and philo-sophical issues from the viewpoint of thesource theosophical teachings.
(4) To impartially examine significantevents and issues in the history of thetheosophical movement which have affectedand shaped its present-day realities.
EDITORIAL OBJECTIVES
High Country Theosophist is Free on Internet
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