Bertram Keightley was one of Blavatsky's main students in
London and when she died he wrote the following article in tribute to her.
WHAT H.P.B. DID FOR ME
My first introduction to H.P.B. took
place at an important meeting of the London Lodge T.S. in Mr. Hood's rooms in
Lincoln's Inn, where she suddenly and most unexpectedly made her appearance,
having come over at a moment's notice from Paris in obedience to that voice
whose commands were ever her absolute law.
From the time when I first looked
into her eyes, there sprang up within me a feeling of perfect trust and
confidence, as in an old and long-tried friend, which never changed or
weakened, but rather grew stronger, more vivid, and more imperious as close
association taught me to know the outer H.P. Blavatsky better. Not that I could
always understand her motives and actions; on the contrary many a night has
been spent in pondering, in anxiously seeking a clue — that could not be found.
But, however puzzled, I could never
look into her eyes without feeling sure that "it was all right somehow", and
again and again the feeling was justified —often months or even years
afterwards— when the turning of some corner in the pathway of my own inner
growth gave a new and more extended view of the past, and made its meaning so
clear and obvious that instinctively the thought rose in the heart, "What
a blessed fool I must be not to have seen that ages ago".
H.P.B., however, was very slow
indeed to interfere with anyone's life, to advise or even to throw light upon
its tangled skein — in words at least. When we first met, I stood at the
parting of two very different life-roads; repeatedly did I ask her guidance and
direction; well did she know that any words she spoke would be gladly, eagerly
followed. But not one hint even could I extract, though she was acquainted in
detail with all the facts. Seeing, at last, that I had no right to force upon
another the responsibility for my own life —the first lesson she ever taught me—
I decided on adopting the course which duty to others seemed to point out.
All was settled, every preparation
made, trunks and boxes packed for departure to enter on a new line of life. I
was in the act of bidding her farewell at midnight; she stopped me with the
words, "If you do so and so (i.e.
follow the course I had decided upon) the consequences will be thus" (i.e. disastrous to myself and others).
We parted; by morning I had decided
to act upon her warning, did so, changed the whole tenor of my life, and stand
to-day in my present position. Looking back over the years that have fled since
she uttered those few words, I see clearly that her warning would have been
fulfilled with the certainty of fate, had I not heeded her voice; and though,
since then, my debt of gratitude to her guiding and saving hand has grown like
a mountain avalanche, yet I look back to those few minutes as perhaps the most
decisive in my life.
But the debt owed to H.P.B. on this
and similar scores is small compared with other items in the long account, which
even the faithful and devoted service of many lives will fail to balance.
Born with the skeptical and
scientific spirit of the closing 19th century, though brought up in the truest
sense religiously, thought and study early dissolved away every trace of faith
in aught that could not be proved, especially faith in any future such as is
taught by creeds and churches. Entering on life with no surer guide than the “constitutional
morality” innate and educated into almost every child born of parents such as
mine; with a sentimental admiration for altruism and unselfishness drawn from
the example and loving care of home surroundings, which the relentless logic of
a hopeless materialism was slowly gnawing away; what would have been the
probable outcome?
Surely a slow descent into utter
selfishness and self-absorption. From this fate H.P.B., by her teaching, her
experimental demonstration, above all by the force of her daily life, saved me
as she saved many another. Before I knew her, life had no ideal worth striving for
—to me at least— since the ultimate blank destruction to which materialism must
point as the final outcome of the world -process, chilled each generous emotion
or effort with the thought of its perfect uselessness; left no motive to strive
after the difficult, the remote, since death, the all-devourer, would cut short
the thread of life long ere the goal be reached, and even the faint hope of
benefitting generations yet to come sank into ashes before the contemplation of
the insane, idiotic purposelessness and meaninglessness of the whole struggle.
From this enervating paralysis,
crushing all real inner life and tainting each hour of the day, H.P.B.
delivered me and others. Do we not owe her more than life?
Yet further. Every thinking or
feeling man finds himself surrounded on all sides by terrible problems,
sphinxes threatening to devour the very race unless their riddles are solved.
We see the best intentioned efforts do harm instead of good; blank darkness
closes us in; where shall we look for light?
H.P.B. pointed out to us the yet dim
star shining down the pathway of time, she taught those who would listen to
seek within themselves its ray, pointed out the road to be travelled, indicated
its sign posts and dangers made us realize that he who perseveres and endures
in self-forgetting effort to help humanity holds in his hands the clue to
life's tangled mazes, for his heart and mind alike grow filled with the wisdom
that is born of love and knowledge, purified from all taint of self.
This H.P.B. caused many to realize; does she not deserve all our
devotion?
How can I write of my own personal
relations with, or feelings towards H.P.B.?
With her in Paris; constantly seeing
her at the Arundales' in London; at the Gebhards' in Elberfeld; again in London
before her departure for India in the autumn of 1884; I took up the thread in
Ostend in 1887. Thenceforward working daily and hourly at her side, striving to
help, however feebly, in her noble work, I left her only at her express command
to go on "foreign service"; for she never suffered personal affection or
feelings to weigh one straw in the balance when the good of the Cause was
concerned.
Writing thus after so many have
spoken of her, there remains little upon the surface for me to record, and I
cannot express aught of the feeling and consciousness that lie below. None but
her own equal could ever give a true picture of our leader, whether as loving
friend, as wise teacher, as more than mother to us all; stern and unbending
when need arose; never hesitating to inflict pain or use the surgeon's knife
when good could be wrought thereby; keen-sighted, unerring to detect hidden
weakness and lay it bare to the sight of her pupils — not by words, but almost
tangibly; forcing by daily, hourly example whom she loved to rise to the level
of her own lofty standard of duty and devotion to Truth; H.P.B. will ever
occupy a unique place in our hearts and minds, a place ever filled with that
ideal of human life and duty which found expression in her own actions.
One marked characteristic of her
life, both as a whole and in detail, was a marvelous singleness of heart and
purpose. She was above all else the Servant of Man; none came to her with a
sincere, honest appeal for help and failed to get it; no enemy, no one even who
had most cruelly and wantonly injured her, ever came to her in need and was
thrown back.
She would take the clothes off her
back, the bread from her mouth, to help her worst, her most malicious foe in
distress or suffering. Had the Coulombs ever turned up in London between 1887
and 1891 in distress and misery, she would have taken them in, clothed and fed
them. To forgive them she had no need, for anything approaching hatred or the
remembrance of personal injury was as far from her nature as Sirius from the
earth.
Thus she bore her heavy burden, the
Karma of the Theosophical Society and all its members good and bad, in
ill-health, physical pain, utter exhaustion of brain and body, working day and
night for the Cause to which she had vowed her life. A spectacle this not often
to be seen, and more seldom still finding an imitator.
Few, but those who enjoyed it, realize
how great was the privilege of close association with her in her work; to me it
stands as the greatest of boons, and to deserve its resumption at some future
time shall be the purpose of my future. Most keenly I feel how little I profited
by the grand opportunity in comparison with what might have been gained in
power and knowledge to serve humanity; but each of us can assimilate only
according to his preparedness, and what lessons we can learn depends on our own
fitness, not on the favor of our teacher. Therefore let us strive unceasingly
to be better prepared when next that teacher comes amongst us.
Many are the tributes of gratitude,
love, and devotion that H.P.B.'s departure has called forth. From circumstances
mine comes to stand among the last and briefest; but it is in deeds not words
that her life must blossom and bear fruit in her pupils. She left us the charge "to keep the link unbroken", to hand on to others the help she gave so freely
to ourselves. Let us up and be doing. Brothers, for the time is short, the task
mighty, and our Teacher's noblest monument will be the growth and spread of the
light she brought to the world.
(This
article was first published in Lucifer
magazine, August 1891 p.452-455; and later in the book HPB: in memory of Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky,
1891, p.90-93)
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