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 Chapter 2
of the Present Online Edition:
William
Judge mentions in this chapter the “S.P.R.” - the London “Society for Psychical
Research”. In the 1880s, the leaders of the S.P.R. made a false investigation
against Helena Blavatsky and called her a fraud. One century later, other members of the same
S.P.R finally re-examined the “case” against H.P.B. and admitted in 1986 that it
was her “trial” that was a fraud, and that she was innocent.
That did not prevent a couple of pseudo-theosophical editors from
spreading since 2001 the same old slanders against H.P.B. by boldly including
them in compilations of books presented as “theosophical” and published by the
“Theosophical Publishing House” in the United States. This time the slanderers did not take the
trouble to present any false proofs. They aim at sowing doubts on H.P.B.’s
character. They defend themselves saying that “there are also authentic
documents” in their compilations. Such a re-emergence of old slanders is an
additional evidence of the law of cycles: even lies tend to re-emerge from time
to time - to test one’s vigilance. The renewed (and half-disguised) attacks
against H.P.B. also show that Theosophy is very much alive, and that it represents a mortal threat to a
number of powerful vested interests which entirely depend on the continuance of
the present level of ethical blindness and spiritual ignorance on the part of
our mankind. Attention and discernment are therefore necessary at all times and
all circumstances to theosophists - and to every person of good-will.
By the middle of the penultimate paragraph, in the printed magazine “The
Path”, H.P.B. seems to mention “Uncle Roster”. As we work on the present
edition, we have the copies of “The Path” which belonged to Boris de Zirkoff
and which he donated to the United Lodge of Theosophists in Los Angeles in July
1978. These copies have a few handwritten annotations by Zirkoff, in pencil. Where the printed magazine says “Uncle
Roster”, Zirkoff made a correction
and wrote: “Rostya”. In fact, H.P.B. had an uncle called Rostislav,
as transliterated in the Chapter 7 of the letters as edited by W.Q. Judge, or Rostislov, as transliterated by Sylvia Cranston.[1]
We are therefore eliminating the word “Roster”, and adopting “Rostya”.
In one of the letters in this chapter, H.P.B. quotes Paul’s statement in
the New Testament according to which he was “caught up to the third heaven”. The passage is at 2 Corinthians
2:12-14.
Chapter II opens with a reference to the phenomena mentioned in Chapter
I.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
NOTE:
[1] “HPB - The
Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky, Founder of the Modern
Theosophical Movement”, by Sylvia Cranston, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1994,
648 pp., see the opening of chapter 11, Part 01, p. 33.
Letters of H.P. Blavatsky [1]
Chapter II
[THE PATH, Volume IX, New
York, January 1895, pp. 297-302.]
The newspapers gave accounts of certain of these
phenomena and described the appearance of astral visitors, amongst others a
Hindu. In sending the extracts H. P. B. comments:
“I see this Hindu every day, just as I might
see any other living person, with the only difference that he looks to me more
ethereal and more transparent. Formerly I kept silent about these appearances,
thinking that they were hallucinations. But now they have become visible to
other people as well. He (the Hindu) appears and advises us as to our conduct
and our writing. He evidently knows everything that is going
on, even to the thoughts of other people, and makes me express his knowledge.
Sometimes it seems to me that he overshadows the whole of me, simply entering
me like a kind of volatile essence penetrating all my pores and dissolving in
me. Then we two are able to speak to other people, and then I begin to
understand and remember sciences and languages - everything he instructs me in,
even when he is not with me any more.”
Directly “Isis Unveiled” was published, H. P. B. wrote to
Madame Jelihovsky:
“It seems strange to you that some Hindu Sahib
is so free and easy in his dealings with me. I can quite understand you: a
person not used to that kind of phenomenon - which, though not quite
unprecedented, is yet perfectly ignored - is sure to be incredulous. For the
very simple reason that such a person is not in the habit of going deeply into
such matters. For instance, you ask whether he is likely to indulge in
wanderings inside other people as well as me. I am sure I don’t know; but here
is something about which I am perfectly certain: Admit that man’s soul - his
real living soul - is a thing perfectly separate from the rest of the organism;
that this perisprit is not stuck with paste to the physical ‘innerds’; and that
this soul which exists in everything living, beginning with an infusoria and
ending with an elephant, is different from its physical double only inasmuch as
being more or less overshadowed by the immortal spirit it is capable of acting
freely and independently. In the case of the uninitiated profane, it acts
during their sleep: in the case of an initiated adept, it acts at any moment he
chooses according to his will. Just try and assimilate this, and then many
things will become clear to you. This fact was believed in and known in far
distant epochs. St. Paul, who alone among all the apostles was an initiated
Adept in the Greek Mysteries, clearly alludes to it when narrating how he was
‘caught up to the third heaven, whether in the body or out of the body I cannot
tell: God knoweth’. Also Rhoda says about Peter, ‘It is not Peter but his
angel’ - that is to say, his double or his soul. And in the Acts of the
Apostles, ch. viii, v. 39, when the spirit of God lifted up Philip and
transported him, it was not his body that was transported, not his coarse
flesh, but his Ego, his spirit and his soul. Read Apuleius, Plutarch, Iamblichus,
and other learned men - they all allude to this kind of phenomenon, though the
oaths they had to take at the time of their initiation did not allow them to
speak openly. What mediums accomplish unconsciously, under the influence of
outside powers which take possession of them, can be accomplished by Adepts
consciously at their own volition. That’s all. . . . As to the Sahib, I have
known him a long time. Twenty-five years ago he came to London with the Prince
of Nepaul; three years ago he sent me a letter by an Indian who came here to
lecture about Buddhism. In this letter he reminded me of many things, foretold
by him at the time, and asked me whether I believed him now and whether I would
consent to obey him, to avoid complete destruction. After this he appeared
repeatedly, not only to me but also to other people, and to Olcott whom he
ordered to be President of the Society, teaching him how to start it. I always
recognize and know the Master, and often talk to him without seeing him. How is
it that he hears me from everywhere, and that I also hear his voice across seas
and oceans twenty times a day? I do not know, but it is so. Whether it is he
personally that enters me I really cannot say with confidence: if it is not he,
it is his power, his influence. Through him alone I am strong; without him I am
a mere nothing.”
There was naturally considerable fear in the
minds of H. P. B’s nearest relatives as to the character of this mysterious
Hindu teacher. They could not help regarding him as more of a “heathen sorcerer”
than anything else. And this view H. P. B. took pains to combat. She told them
that her Master had a deep respect for the spirit of Christ’s teachings. She
had once spent seven weeks in a forest not far from the Karakoram mountains,
where she had been isolated from the world, and where her teacher alone had
visited her daily, whether astrally or otherwise she did not state. But whilst
there she had been shown in a cave-temple a series of statues representing the
great teachers of the world, amongst others:
“A huge statue of Jesus Christ, represented at
the moment of pardoning Mary Magdalene; Gautama Buddha offers water in the palm
of his hand to a beggar, and Ananda is shown drinking out of the hands of a
Pariah prostitute.”
H. P. B. wrote to Madame Jelihovsky (date
unknown) that she was learning to get out of her body, and offering to pay her
a visit in Tiflis “in the flash of an eye”. This both frightened and amused
Madame Jelihovsky, who replied that she would not trouble her so unnecessarily.
H. P. B. answered:
“What is there to be afraid of? As if you had
never heard about apparitions of doubles. I, that is to say, my body, will be
quietly asleep in my bed, and it would not even matter if it were to await my
return in a waking condition - it would be in the state of a harmless idiot.
And no wonder: God’s light would be absent from it, flying to you; and then it
would fly back and once more the temple would get illuminated by the presence
of the Deity. But this, needless to say, only in case the thread between the
two were not broken. If you shriek like mad it may get torn; then Amen to my
existence: I should die instantly. . . . . .
I have written to you that one day we had a visit from the double of
Professor Moses. Seven people saw him. As to the Master, he is quite commonly
seen by perfect strangers. Sometimes he looks just as if he were a living man,
as merry as possible. He is continually chaffing me, and I am perfectly used to
him now. He will soon take us all to India, and there we shall see him in his
body just like an ordinary person.”
From New York:
“Well, Vera, whether you believe me or not,
something miraculous is happening to me. You cannot imagine in what a charmed
world of pictures and visions I live. I am writing ‘Isis’; not writing, rather copying
out and drawing that which She personally shows to me. Upon my word, sometimes
it seems to me that the ancient Goddess of Beauty in person leads me through
all the countries of past centuries which I have to describe. I sit with my eyes
open and to all appearances see and hear everything real and actual around me,
and yet at the same time I see and hear that which I write. I feel short of
breath; I am afraid to make the slightest movement for fear the spell might be
broken. Slowly century after century, image after image, float out of the
distance and pass before me as if in a magic panorama; and meanwhile I put them
together in my mind, fitting in epochs and dates, and know for
sure that there can be no mistake. Races and nations,
countries and cities, which have for long disappeared in the darkness of the
prehistoric past, emerge and then vanish, giving place to others; and then I am
told the consecutive dates. Hoary antiquity makes way for historical periods;
myths are explained to me with events and people who have really existed, and
every event which is at all remarkable, every newly-turned page of this
many-colored book of life, impresses itself on my brain with photographic
exactitude. My own reckonings and calculations appear to me later on as
separate colored pieces of different shapes in the game which is called casse-tete (puzzles).
I gather them together and try to match them one after the other, and at the
end there always comes out a geometrical whole
. . . . . . Most assuredly it is
not I who do it all, but my Ego, the highest principle which lives in me. And
even this with the help of my Guru and teacher who helps me in everything. If I
happen to forget something I have just to address him, or another of the same
kind, in my thought, and what I have forgotten rises once more before my eyes -
sometimes whole tables of numbers passing before me, long inventories of
events. They remember everything. They know everything. Without them, from
whence could I gather my knowledge?”
Soon after the appearance of “Isis Unveiled” H. P. B. received
invitations to write in all sorts of newspapers. This greatly amused her, and
she wrote to Madame Jelihovsky:
“It’s lucky for me that I am not vain, and
besides as a matter of fact I have hardly any time to write much in other
people’s publications for money . . . . . . Our work is growing. I must work,
must write and write, provided that I can find publishers for my writings.
Would you believe that so long as I write I am all the time under the
impression that I write rubbish and nonsense which no one will ever be able to
understand? Then it is printed and then the acclamations begin. People reprint
it, are in ecstasies. I often wonder: can it be that they are all asses to be
in such ecstasies? Well, if I could write in Russian and be praised by my own
people, then perhaps I should believe that I am a credit to my ancestors,
Counts Hahn Hahn von der Rothenhahn of blissful memory.”
H. P. B. often told her relatives that she took
no author’s pride in the writing of “Isis Unveiled”; that she did not know in the least what she was
writing about; that she was ordered to sit down and write, and that her only
merit lay in obeying the order. Her only fear was that she would be unable to
describe properly what was shown to her in beautiful pictures. She wrote to her
sister:
“You do not believe that I tell you God’s truth
about my Masters. You consider them to be mythical; but is it possible that it
is not clear to you that I, without their help, could not have written about
‘Byron and grave matters’, as Uncle Rostya says? What do we know, you and I,
about metaphysics, ancient philosophies and religions, about psychology and
various other puzzles? Did we not learn together, with the only difference that
you did your lessons better? And now look at what I am writing about, and
people - such people too, professors, scientists - read and praise! Open ‘Isis’ wherever you like
and decide for yourself. As to myself I speak the truth: Master narrates and
shows all this to me. Before me pass pictures, ancient manuscripts, dates - all
I have to do is to copy, and I write so easily that it is no labor at all, but
the greatest pleasure.”
(But the ancient manuscripts to which H. P. B.
refers were not only seen by psychic means. Hodgson, the great self-exposer of
the S. P. R., discovered a page of a mysterious and ancient manuscript at
Adyar. This was proof to him, as it was written in cypher, that she was a
Russian spy. It was from a page of a Senzar manuscript, lost by H. P. B. and
deeply lamented as lost!)
In another letter of about the same date, H. P.
B. wrote her sister:
“Do not believe that Theosophy contradicts or,
much less, destroys Christianity. It only destroys the tares, but not the seed
of truth: prejudice, blasphemous superstitions, Jesuitical bigotry. We respect
men’s freedom of conscience and their spiritual yearnings far too much to touch
religious principles with our propaganda. Every human being who respects
himself and thinks has a holy of holies of his own, for which we Theosophists
ask respect. Our business concerns philosophy, morals, and science alone. We
ask for truth in everything; our object is the realization of the spiritual perfectibility
possible to man: the broadening of his knowledge, the exercising of the powers
of his soul, of all the psychical sides of his being. Our theosophical
brotherhood must strive after the ideal of general brotherhood throughout all
humanity; after the establishment of universal peace and the strengthening of charity
and disinterestedness; after the destruction of materialism, of that coarse
unbelief and egotism which saps the vitality of our country.”
NOTE:
[1] Copyright 1894.
000
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.
000
