This article was translated from German to English and published in The Word journal, where the translator
wrote the following:
Dr. Franz Hartmann is well known as one of the oldest members of the Theosophical
Society. He was a good friend of H.P.B., and continues to hold her in high esteem.
He never grows tired of speaking in glowing terms of her wonderful work in popularizing
some of the profound fundamental principles of the "ancient wisdom" or
the "wisdom religion" taught by the sages of the East, as well as by Jesus
of Nazareth, Buddha and other religious reformers of the world.
The following short sketch of the life and doings of H.P.B. was written by
him in German and published In the German monthly called "Theosophischer Wegweiser." from
which it was translated. It contains some highly Interesting particulars from the
biography of H.P.B. and original comments upon her work which will show to the attentive
reader that, with all his admiration for the great teacher of the Theosophical
Society, Dr. Hartmann is by no means blind to her shortcomings. But, as a true theosophist,
he is fully prepared to broadly distinguish between the personality of the laborer
and the grand work accomplished by her labor.
So while the biographer captivates
the reader's curiosity by telling some striking adventures passed through by H.P.B.,
he gives the reader considerable information as to the work done by her and
obtains his assent to the opinion that any discussion of the personality is quite
irrelevant. This impartial platform renders the sketch the more valuable.
~ * ~
MADAME BLAVATSKY LIFE
By Franz Hartmann
One of the most memorable figures of the last century was Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky. She was a Russian by birth, endowed with most remarkable
psychic forces, with great will power and superior intelligence. She is entitled
to be reckoned among the greatest reformers of the mental life of modern times.
For in spite of whatever may be said about her personality by her numerous
enemies and detractors, there is not one that was able honestly to deny that the
doctrines promulgated by her did teach many thousands of people to see with their
own mental eyes, did pull them out of the swamp of materialism and thus enable
them to see the bright light of knowledge, and to liberate themselves not only from
the worry of doubt but even from downright despair.
She was a true champion of
light and liberty. Her writings more than any other publications of modern
times have tended to put an end to all superstition, scientific as well as
religious. Her writings did more than anything else to start that higher conception
of the universe which is at the present time moving and spreading throughout
the world.
The truth promulgated by her is eternal and will be appreciated more
and more, though the name of Blavatsky may sink into oblivion. What she taught
was not an invention of her own; neither was it essentially new; it was the Ancient
Wisdom, which is contained in every system of religion hidden under symbols and
allegories. She, however, lifted the veil of these secrets, and displayed in the
light of day the spiritual kernel previously concealed within the hard ·shell. She
never pretended to have discovered these truths by her own acumen, but asserted
to have been led up to and instructed in them by certain Adepts, i.e., men of a
superior mental evolution. The names of these Adepts are of no importance to
the general public, for they do not demand blind belief in their authority, and
they prefer to continue to be unknown.
If we consider the sublime and exalted character of the new aspect of
the world promulgated by the Adepts through H.P. Blavatsky, a discussion of the
personal attributes of this instrument of the masters of wisdom appears to us
as meaningless as if we proposed to describe the brush by means of which Rafael
painted his Madonna. Yet Blavatsky was not a blind tool of the Adepts; she was
not a spiritistic medium in the common sense of that word; she understood what
she wrote; she was instructed by the Masters and reproduced the thoughts
communicated to her in a suitable form.
There are, no doubt, a good many people who would like to learn some
particulars about this remarkable person, and as I was intimately acquainted
and in mental communication with her for many years I shall here add a few
remarks to the reports already published (1), so as to
throw some light upon a few misconceptions.
In 1831 there was at Yekaterinoslaw, in Russia, an old woman. She lived
very retired, and was seldom seen anywhere. Her circle of acquaintances was
very limited. She was known, however, to be very charitable. Rumors were abroad
that she was engaged in occult studies, which caused her to be regarded as a
magician by some and shunned as a witch by others. One of her few intimate
friends was the wife of the Russian Colonel Peter Hahn. This friend became the
mother of H.P. Blavatsky.
The old woman one day foretold her acquaintances that she would die on a
certain date, which she named, and she added that she would reincarnate
immediately. In fact, she died on the day she had named without any indisposition
whatever preceding her death: At the same hour Helena Hahn, who lived to become
H.P. Blavatsky, was born.
Thus we may presume that the soul of this mysterious woman was
reincarnated in Helena. This supposition grows more probable owing to the fact that
when little Helena had learned to speak she would repeat to her mother certain
things which the old woman had confidentially told the mother before she died.
Moreover, little Helena had the habit of going to the tomb of the old woman and
remaining there for hours, although nobody had ever spoken to her of the
existence of this tomb.
A good-sized volume might be filled with tales regarding the clairvoyant
power of Helena and the occult phenomena occurring in her presence. But these
things are hardly worth mentioning at a time when anybody acquainted with
spiritism knows all about such facts. However, it is of importance to know that
Helena often had visions of living people appearing to her in their astral bodies,
among which, it is claimed, were two Adepts, who were said to live in Tibet. These Adepts she met at a more advanced age on the physical plane, namely, in Tibet
and the East Indies, and they were her instructors and taught her day by day to
the end of her life on earth; and they did this even while their abiding place
was located at a distance of thousands of miles from where she was living.
No
doubt this assertion sounds very strange to those who are as yet quite ignorant
of those psychic forces which have not yet been developed in everyone; but the
fact that a practical acquaintance with so-called telepathy enables a man to transfer
his thought to another man at any considerable distance is well known to-day,
and we also know that a greater or lesser amount of miles intervening between
two people is of as little importance in thought transference as it is in
wireless telegraphy. The power which will carry thought to any distance
whatever is the will. Remembering that force and matter are essentially the
same thing, and looking at the phenomena of thought transference in this light,
the fact that a man may be able to transfer his thoughts to another man with
whom he is mentally connected by mutual sympathy, or even that he may appear to
the other in person, does no longer appear· supernatural at all. It seems to be
entirely within the range of natural law.
Helena's mind was in connection with the minds of her teachers. We are
told that the soul which dwelt within the body of Helena had in one of its preceding
incarnations lived in the body of a disciple (chela) of these Adepts in Tibet, and
that this soul had incarnated in Helena in order to be able to take upon
herself the charge of carrying the knowledge of the ancient wisdom of the East to
the nations of the West.
Helena's organism was especially adapted to this
purpose, although by no means owing to any particular holiness or ethical
perfection on her part, but rather on account of her psychical and physiological
development or accomplishments acquired during her previous incarnation; and,
furthermore, by virtue of her remarkable intellectual faculties and physical
constitution, all of which enabled her to live on the physical plane and in the
super-sensuous world, as it were, at the same time. The spiritual connection
established with her Masters in a previous earth-life continued in this life. Her
own intellect enabled her to reproduce in a suitable form whatever the Adepts taught
her. In this way her writings, "Isis
Unveiled," "The Secret
Doctrine," and numerous other books and articles were produced.
I am fully convinced that H.P. Blavatsky was an Initiate —that is, that her
spiritual consciousness was awakened— and that was the very reason why she was
understood by but few people, and why she was called the "Sphinx of the nineteenth
century." There is a deep sense in this simile. The upper part of the body
of the Sphinx of old and her head represented a woman, a human shape, but the
lower part of the body was like that of a lioness, with the addition of an eagle's
wings. Madame Blavatsky was not only possessed of the spirit and mind of man,
but also of the animal properties of humanity very strongly accentuated, coupled
with an iron power of will and an imagination soaring to great heights. With such
a constitution she could not be otherwise than of an excitable temper, very
sensitive and easily: aroused, willful and not free from vanity.
This she
showed at an early age when she felt offended at her governess telling her she
was such a bad girl that she would never get married; that even the old and
ugly General Blavatsky would never think of marrying her. That was too humiliating
for proud Helena, and she determined to prove her governess wrong. So she
flirted with the old General, who was at that time Governor of Caucasia, and after
a short courtship Helena, hardly seventeen years old, was married to him. But short
as the courtship had been, the actual state of marriage was shorter still.
Helena, now Madame Blavatsky, of whom we shall hereafter speak as
H.P.B., ran away and began traveling through the world. Dressed up as a cabin
boy and hidden away in the hold of a steamer, she went from Odessa to
Constantinople, where she met with Countess K____, a former acquaintance of
hers, with whom she traveled in Egypt, Greece and other parts.
In Egypt H.P.B. met an old Copt, said to be a magician, who gave her instructions
in occult matters. Her relatives at Tiflis, in Caucasia, did not know where she
was staying, but she corresponded with her father, who paid her traveling
expenses.
In 1851 she went to Canada and lived for some time with an Indian tribe.
Thence she went to New Orleans and witnessed the feats of sorcery performed by black
men and called “voodoo.” Then she wended her way through Texas, Mexico and the West
Indies. In 1853 she arrived in Bombay, India. Her attempt to reach Tibet in the
company of an Englishman and a Hindu chela, by way of Nepaul, did not succeed.
So she went to South India, and thence to England and again to America, where
she lived at New York, Chicago and San Francisco. In 1855 she sailed again, by
way of Japan and China, to the East Indies, landing at Calcutta.
In 1856 she met three Germans traveling in pursuit of mystic studies at Lahore,
and traveled with them and a Tartar Shaman to Cashmere and Leli, in Ladakh,
where she witnessed most astonishing occult feats, described in "Isis Unveiled," Vol. II., pp. 599-626. The Shaman led her into certain regions
visited by few Europeans. She left India in 1857, a short time before the rebellion.
In 1858 she traveled through France and Germany to Russia. In 1866 she
went again to India and succeeded in reaching Tibet. Thence she went again to
New York, in 1871. During her stay in Tibet she is reported to have lived with
the Adepts and to have been personally instructed by them. (2)
In traveling in America, in Mexico, Egypt, India and many other parts of
Asia, such as are still little known, H.P.B. had in view the main object of obtaining
information on occult subjects. In 1875 the Theosophical Society was founded at
New York. A few years later the headquarters were transferred to India, first
to Bombay, then to Adyar, near Urur, a village at Madras, where Colonel H.S.
Olcott was the manager. There H.P.B. lived and wrote until 1885, when she left for
Italy accompanied by the author of this sketch. We remained a month at Torre
del Greco, near Naples. She then moved to Wuerzburg, Germany; afterwards to
Ostend, Belgium, and finally to London, where she died May 8th, 1891.
The adulation offered to the personality of H.P.B. by her devotees is just
as foolish as the vilifications uttered against her by certain self-conceited
models of virtue, unable to discriminate between the tool and the Master workman.
She was in the habit of speaking her opinion straightforwardly, and sometimes her
remarks, hitting some sore spots, used to offend most seriously those to whom
they were best applicable. Her most implacable enemies, however, were always
found among certain would-be disciples, inflated with the vainglory of their
own greatness, who had been disappointed in their expectations of being made
into Adepts, and who turned the brunt of their wounded ambition against her.
If the end of H.P.B.'s aspirations had been nothing but the satisfaction
of amazing the world by occult phenomena, and if it had been the mission of the
Theosophical Society to investigate the genuineness of such phenomena, or if there
had been ·an intention to make money by exhibiting to the public bogus phenomena;
if such had been the intention of H.P.B., then a searching investigation into
the nature of the phenomena produced by her might be of importance. But such
was not the case. The phenomena were for H.P.B. no more than a means to attain her
end, namely, that of enticing mankind to forsake the dark caves of materialism
and superstition, and of inducing men to investigate their own systems of
religion and to seek first after that wisdom which is not to be found either in
books or in any phenomena whatever, whether genuine or fraudulent, and which is
not to be found anywhere else than within the man's own Higher Self.
Such was the aim and object which H.P.B. had in view. Her intention was
to lead man to think for himself, independent of any belief in authority; to
descend into the temple of God within his own inward self, where is the abiding
place of the Spirit of Truth. The doctrine which she held forth was none else than
that which every sage in the world, Socrates included, has ever taught, and
which is this: "Man know thyself!" Within our own self salvation is to
be found.
Whosoever truly finds himself, does find God and immortality. And whosoever
teaches men to tread the right way leading to this higher self-knowledge, or who
induces them to seek it out for themselves, is a savior of mankind. Looked at in
this light, H.P.B. appears to me as a savior, a benefactor of the human race,
in presence of whose great spirit all the defects and weaknesses of her personality
vanish into insignificance.
The Theosophical Society may cease to exist, there being few people
sufficiently matured to realize the ideals held up as the goal of Theosophy;
and the name of "Blavatsky" may sink into oblivion; but the mists
which H.P.B. scattered in order to clear the way for the light of Truth will
never again bar the way of progress toward that light.
Many of the discoveries described in H.P.B.'s work, "The Secret Doctrine'' have been
corroborated by academical science since her death, and many prophecies of hers
have been fulfilled. It was she who enlarged the scientific horizon of the world;
it was she who raised religion to a higher mental platform, and thereby
established a connection between real science and the spirit of true religion.
Let her Manas rest forever in peace!
Notes
- See "Lotusbluethen," 1893, Vol. 1
- These events the author has gleaned partly from H.P.B.'s own narrative and partly from reports made by Mrs. Jelihovsky, a sister of H.P.B.'s.
(The Word, November 1906, p.96-102)
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