The Authentic Letters of
H.P.B., As Edited by One
Of the Main Founders of the
Theosophical Movement
William Q. Judge
H.P.
Blavatsky and W.Q. Judge
Introduction to the Present
Online Edition:
In
one’s attempts to understand facts, one must try to look at them from correct
points of view. As one reads the private letters written by Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky to her family, it is useful to take at least two facts into
consideration.
The first one is that although
H.P.B. was most noble and altruistic in intention, and in spite of the fact
that she had a heart as pure as few hearts can be, she never had the intention to be adored as a
perfect being, and she never tried to
hide her personal limitations. This was a very positive aspect of her mission,
as we can see from these words from a Mahatma, in a letter addressed to Henry
S. Olcott:
“One of the most valuable effects of Upasika’s [HPB’s] mission is that it drives men to self-study and
destroys in them blind servility for persons. Observe your own case, for
example. But your revolt, good friend, against her infallibility - as you once
thought it - has gone too far and you have been unjust to her, for which I am
sorry to say, you will have to suffer hereafter along with others.”[1]
In these sentences the Master draws a line.
On one hand, HPB is human. She is not perfect. On the other hand, she
deserves due respect, and it is far from being good karma for anyone to
have or to spread disrespectful and untrue thoughts and words with regards to
her.
The second fact to be
remembered while reading the HPB private letters to her family is clearly
mentioned by Mr. Judge in his brief introduction. In these letters H.P.B. is, so
to say, speaking as an adult speaks to a child. This is an intimate child, no
doubt. Therefore important revelations are made. But still the language must be
as for children. Such a lovingly adapted language is something we often see
between parents and their children. In this case, the language is addressed to
loved adults who are like children in spiritual matters. In
addition to it, in more than one moment HPB writes while deeply identified with
the point of view of her own emotional lower self. It is therefore natural that
she gets almost astonished at some phenomena of which she herself was
part.
Chapter I in the HPB Letters as edited by William Judge mentions
Onkelos. This was a Roman nobleman, converted to Judaism. Author of a famous
interpretation of the Torah, Onkelos lived circa 35-120, Christian era.
Mr. Judge published HPB Letters to her family - and to Dr. Franz
Hartmann - in monthly installments in volumes IX and X of his magazine “The
Path”. Publication went on from December 1894 through March 1896. Mr. Judge
died in March 1896.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
NOTE:
[1] “Letters From the
Masters of the Wisdom”, edited by C.J., TPH, Adyar, 1973, Sixth Printing, Letter 19, First Series, pp. 44-45.
Letters of H.P. Blavatsky [1]
Chapter I
[THE PATH, Volume IX, New
York, December 1894, pp. 265-270.]
These
letters will be continued each month in the PATH. They constitute a correspondence carried on
by H.P.B. with her Russian relatives, and are being translated into English by
H.P.B.’s niece, Mrs. C. Johnston, whose maiden name was Vera Jelihovsky, and
whose mother is Mme. Jelihovsky, the sister of
H.P.B. who contributed under her own name to Mr. Sinnett’s Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky.
As most of the letters were not dated, it will not always be possible to say
whether H.P.B. was writing from America, Tibet, Egypt, or the North Pole. A
great many letters are in this correspondence, and the series will be continued
until all are published. They are all of wonderful interest. It must be borne in mind for a clearer
understanding of her words that she was writing to relatives who did not
understand her strange inner life, and many of whom held religion opinions very
different from hers. Permission has been
given me to add some notes, but for those I alone will be responsible.
W.Q.J.
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About the year 1875 Madame Jelihovsky, who is well known both on account
of her contributions to literature and also as the sister of Madame Blavatsky,
heard that H.P.B. had commenced to write in a way that would have been impossible to her a few years
before. How she had acquired the knowledge that won the unanimous praise
of both the English and American press was beyond all explanation. There were
rumours afloat as to “sorcery”’ being at the root of it, and filled with
forebodings and terrors Madame Jelihovsky wrote to her sister, imploring an explanation.[2] She received the
following reply:
“Do not be afraid that I am off my head. All that I can say is that someone positively inspires me - . . . . . more than
this: someone enters me. It is not I who talk and write: it is something within
me, my higher and luminous Self, that thinks and writes for me. Do not ask me,
my friend, what I experience, because I could
not explain it to you clearly. I do not know myself! The one thing I know is that now, when I am
about to reach old age, I have become a sort of storehouse of somebody else’s
knowledge . . . . Someone comes
and envelops me as a misty cloud and all
at once pushes me out of myself, and
then I am not “I” any more - Helena Petrovna Blavatsky - but someone
else. Someone strong and powerful, born in a totally different region of the world; and as to
myself it is almost as if I were asleep, or lying by not quite conscious, - not
in my own body but close by, held only by a thread which ties me to it. However, at times I see and hear everything
quite clearly: I am perfectly conscious of what my body is saying and doing -
or at least its new possessor. I even understand and remember it all so well
that afterwards I can repeat it and even write down his words. . . . . . At such a time I see awe and fear on the
faces of Olcott and others, and follow with interest the way in which he half-pityingly regards them out of my
own eyes and teaches them with my physical tongue. Yet not with my mind but his
own, which enwraps my brain like a cloud. . . . Ah, but really I cannot explain
everything.”
H.P.B.’s astonishment at this marvellous development of her own powers
would appear to have been great, if one may judge by a letter she wrote (about 1875 to 1876) to her aunt, Madame
Fadeef, with whom she had been brought up and educated:
“Tell me, dear one, do you take any interest in
physiologico-psychological mysteries?
Here is one for you which is well qualified to astonish any
physiologist: in our Society there are a few exceedingly learned members - for
instance, Professor Wilder, one of the first archeologists and Orientalists in
the United States, and all these people come to me to be taught, and swear that
I know all kinds of Eastern languages and sciences, positive as well as
abstract, much better than themselves.
That’s a fact! And it’s as bad to
run up against a fact as against a pitchfork. So then tell me: how could it
have happened that I, whose learning was
so awfully lame to the age of forty, have suddenly become a phenomenon of
learning in the eyes of people who are
really learned? This fact is an impenetrable mystery of Nature. I - a psychological problem, an enigma for
future generations, a Sphynx! [3] Just fancy
that I, who have never in my life studied anything,
and possess nothing but the most
superficial smattering of general
information; I, who never had the slightest idea about physics or chemistry or
zoology, or anything else - have now suddenly become able to write whole
dissertations about them. I enter into
discussions with men of science, into disputes out of which I often emerge
triumphant. . . . . It’s not a joke; I
am perfectly serious; I am really frightened because I do not understand how it
all happens. It is true that for nearly three years past I have been studying
night and day, reading and thinking. But
whatever I happen to read, it all seems familiar to me. . . . . I find mistakes in the most learned
articles, and in lectures by Tyndall,
Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and others.
If some archeologist happens to call on me, on taking leave he is
certain to assure me that I have made clear to him the meaning of various
monuments, and pointed out things to him of which he had never dreamed. All the symbols of antiquity, and their
secret meaning, come into my head and stand there before my eyes as soon as the
conversation touches on them.
“A pupil of Faraday’s, a certain Professor H., who has been christened
by the voice of a thousand mouths ‘the Father of experimental Physics’, having
spent yesterday evening with me, now assures me that I am well qualified to ‘put
Faraday in my pocket’. Can it be that they all are simply fools? But it is impossible to suppose that friends
and enemies alike have leagued together to make of me a savant if all that I do is to prove
superficially certain wild theories of my own. And if it was only my own
devoted Olcott and other Theosophists who had such a high opinion of me, it
could be said: ‘Dans le pays des
aveugles, les borgnes son rois’ (‘In a country of blind men the one-eyed
are kings’). But I continually have a whole crowd from morning to night of all kinds of Professors,
Doctors of Science, and Doctors of
Divinity; [4] . . . . . for instance, there are two Hebrew Rabbis
here, Adler and Goldstein, who are both of them thought to be the greatest Talmudists. They know by
heart both the Quabalah of Simeon Ben
Jokai and the Codex Nazareus of
Bardesanes. They were brought to me by A., a protestant clergyman and
commentator on the Bible, who hoped
they would prove that I am mistaken on the subject of a certain statement
in the Chaldean Bible of Onkelos. And
with what result? I have beaten them. I quoted to them whole sentences in
ancient Hebrew and proved to them that Onkelos is an authority of the
Babylonian school.”
In the earlier letters of H.P.B. to Madame Jelihovsky the intelligence
which has been referred to as “enveloping her body” and using her brain is
spoken of as “the Voice” or “Sahib”. Only later did she name this, or another
“Voice”, as “Master”. For instance, she
writes to Madame Jelihovsky:
“I never tell anyone here about my experience with the Voice. When I try to assure them that I
have never been in Mongolia, that I do not know either Sanskrit or Hebrew or
ancient European languages, they do not believe me . ‘How is this’, they say,
‘you have never been there, and yet you
describe it all so accurately? You do
not know the languages and yet you translate straight from the originals!’ and
so they refuse to believe me. [5] They think that I have some mysterious reasons
for secrecy; and besides, it is an awkward thing for me to deny when everyone
has heard me discussing various Indian dialects with a lecturer who has spent
twenty years in India. Well, all that I
can say is, either they are mad or I am a changeling!”
About this time H.P.B. appears to have been greatly troubled, for though some members of the nascent
Theosophical Society were able to get “visions of pure Planetary Spirits”, she
could see only “earthly exhalations, elementary spirits”, of the same category,
which she said played the chief part in materializing séances. She writes:
“In our Society everyone must be a vegetarian, eating no flesh and drinking no wine. This is one of our
first rules.[6] It is well known
what an evil influence the evaporations of blood and alcohol have on the spiritual
side of human nature, blowing the animal
passions into a raging fire; and
so one of these days I have resolved to fast
more severely than hitherto. I
ate only salad and did not even smoke for whole nine days, and slept on the
floor, and this is what happened: I have
suddenly caught a glimpse of one of the
most disgusting scenes of my own life, and I felt as if I was out of my body,
looking at it with repulsion whilst it was walking, talking, getting puffed up
with fat and sinning. Pheugh, how I hated myself! Next night when I again lay down on the hard
floor, I was so tired out that I soon fell asleep and then got surrounded with
a heavy, impenetrable darkness. Then I
saw a star appearing; it lit up high, high above me, and then fell, dropping
straight upon me. It fell straight on my forehead and got transformed into a
hand. Whilst this hand was resting on my forehead I was all ablaze to know
whose hand it was. . . . I was
concentrated into a single prayer, into
an impulse of the will, to learn who it
was, to whom did this luminous hand
belong. . . . And I have learned it: there stood over it I myself. Suddenly this second me spoke to my body,
‘Look at me!’ My body looked at it and
saw that the half of this second me was
as black as jet, the other half whitish-grey, and only the top of the head
perfectly white, brilliant, and luminous. And again I myself spoke to my body:
‘When you become as bright as this small part of your head, you will be able to
see what is seen by others, by the purified who have washed themselves clean. .
. . And meanwhile, make yourself clean,
make yourself clean, make yourself clean.’
And here I awoke.”
At one time H.P.B. was exceedingly ill with advanced rheumatism in her
leg. Doctors told her that it was gangrened, and considered her case hopeless.
But she was successfully treated by a negro who was sent to her by the “Sahib”.
She writes to Madame Jelihovsky:
“He has cured me entirely. And just about this time I have begun to feel
a very strange duality. Several times
a day I feel that besides me there is
someone else, quite separable from me, present in my body. I never lose the consciousness of my own
personality; what I feel is as if I were keeping silent and the other one - the
lodger who is in me - were speaking with
my tongue. For instance, I know that I
have never been in the places which are described by my ‘other me’, but
this other one - the second one - does not lie when he tells about places and
things unknown to me, because he has actually seen them and knows them
well. I have given it up; let my fate conduct me at its own sweet will;
and besides, what am I to do? It would be perfectly ridiculous if I were to deny the possession of knowledge
avowed to my No. 2, giving occasion to the people around me to imagine that I
keep them in the dark for modesty’s sake. In the night, when I am alone in my bed, the whole life of my No.
2 passes
before my eyes, and I do not see
myself at all, but quite a different person - different in race and different
in feelings. But what’s the use of talking about it? It’s enough to drive one
mad. I try to throw myself into the part and to forget the strangeness of my
situation. This is no mediumship, and by no means an impure power; for that, it
has too strong an ascendancy over us all, leading us into better ways. No devil
would act like that. ‘Spirits’,
maybe? But if it comes to that, my ancient ‘spooks’ dare not approach me any
more. It’s enough for me to enter the room where a séance is being held to stop
all kinds of phenomena at once, especially materializations. Ah, no, this is
altogether of a higher order! But
phenomena of another sort take place more and more frequently under the
direction of my No. 2. [7] One of
these days I will send you an article about them. It’s
interesting.”
NOTES:
[1] Copyright, 1894.
[2] It must be
recollected that the “rumours of sorcery” were afloat in Russia and not in
America. (W.Q.J.)
[3] This name was
prophetic, for thus she has been often called.
(W.Q.J.)
[4] Col. Olcott and
myself can testify to the continual stream of people of all sorts which entered
her rooms every day. In 1875 she told me that when she had to write about
evolution a large picture of scenes of the past would unroll before her eyes,
together with another picture of present time.
(W.Q.J.)
[5] In London, in
1888, a Hindu who had met her at Meerut said to her in my presence through an
interpreter that he was surprised she did not use his language then, as she had
used it at Meerut. She replied: “Ah, yes, but
that was at Meerut.” (W.Q.J.)
[6] This was a
proposed rule. H.P.B. accepted a thing proposed
as a thing done, and so spoke of it here. But she did not carry out that
rule then proposed, and never then suggested its enforcement to me. (W.Q.J.)
[7] These phenomena
were those amazing feats of magic,
hundreds of which I witnessed in broad daylight or blazing gas-light, from 1875
to 1878. (W.Q.J.)
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On the role of the esoteric movement in the
ethical awakening of mankind during the 21st century, see the book “The Fire
and Light of Theosophical Literature”, by Carlos Cardoso Aveline.
Published in 2013 by The Aquarian Theosophist, the volume has 255 pages and can be
obtained through Amazon Books.
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