THE OPINION OF A HINDU
ABOUT H.P.B.
[The subjoined paper was not
published in January, because H.P.B. was the Editor of Lucifer; I print it here
now, among the many testimonies to her great worth. — Ed.]
In perusing the article headed,
''The Theosophical Society and H.P.B.", by Mrs. A. Besant in the December
number of Lucifer, I was struck with several things, and although I cannot
fully express my mind on all that I think and know about the subject, I yet
feel myself constrained to speak a few words on it.
There is not the least doubt that H.P.B.
is a woman of mysterious and wonderful occult powers, and must have acquired
them, I believe, with great, very great difficulty and drawbacks; for
now-a-days it is very rare to find out, i.e.,
to recognize, a powerful Yogi in India, and especially to succeed in getting
anything out of him; the more so by a woman born of Mlecha tribe. That,
however, somehow or other — hew, it is more than I can say — she has succeeded
in getting the key of the true Hindu and therefore of the subsequent Buddhistic
Secret Philosophy, there can be no (Question, no doubt and no hesitation about
it.
Those who really understand anything
about the sublime and mysterious philosophy of the Hindus —including the Hindus
themselves— can at once find out what she knows and what she is; it does not
require the demonstration of her occult powers to convince such a person. A few
words on the real point, nay, only one word and the sign of a particular place,
and he knows at once what she is.
I am not known to the Theosophical
Society in India, England, or America, although I know H.P.B. very well. I am
not a Russian, an Englishman, or an American, and therefore I have no earthly
reason to speak well or ill of a person, unless I am thoroughly convinced of
the one thing or the other. Add to this the fact that I am a Hindu and a
Brahmin of the high caste, and then you will be able to judge what motive can
have actuated me, except truth, in speaking one word in favor of a person who, I
must say, does not do justice to the philosophy of my ancestors, by revealing it
to the Ausoon of the West, who are
every inch Mlecha, in spite of all their vaunted civilization and modern
science.
Those who call H.P.B. “a fraud"
are much mistaken, they do not know her. I would be glad to give up everything
I have in this world to become such a fraud, if anybody will come forward to
teach me. Is it not sufficient for the Westerns to know that a proud Brahmin,
who knows not how to bend liis body before any mortal being in this world,
except his superiors in relation or religion, joins his hands like a submissive
child before the white Yogini of the West?
Why so?
Because she is no longer a Mlecha
woman; she has passed that stage; and every Hindu — the purest of the pure
amongst the Brahmins — would be proud and delighted to call her Hindu and a
mother — there is no doubt about it.
India cannot forget her, has not
forgotten her, and the Hindus will, at no distant time, get their Yogini back
to their house. They may be careless and ignorant, but they are certainly not
ungrateful or faithless, like most of the civilized people of the West.
I am really very sorry for the
conduct of some of my mistaken countrymen, during the Coulomb farce on the
missionary stage in India, who for fear of disclosing the names of the Yogis to
the people of the West, lost no time in concealing the fact, so as to make it
appear that there were no real Yogis in India at all.
I myself certainly do not like the
idea of publishing the Secret Philosophy of the East for the information of the
people of the West, who have nothing but contempt and hatred for everything
called Eastern, and especially Indian; there may be very, very few exceptions
to these; but there is one consolation in this; that those books are dead
letters for the Saheb loks unless
fully explained, and H.P.B. is the only person who can explain them in the West.
But I sincerely hope that she will not abuse her authority, unless with the
consent of those from whom she received.
As a Brahmin, I would always object,
and I consider it my duty to do so, to the publishing of the secret sublime
Truths of my religion and ancestors, especially amongst the people whose food
is beef, who drink spirituous liquors, and have beds composed of spring
cushions made of down and feathers.*
It is very easy to envy the powers
possessed by others, and to wish to possess the same; but it is very, very
difficult to attain these, more difficult than I am able to express.
(* A true Hindu would never care for
the Western civilization which, like an onion, only emits a strong smell of a
peculiar kind, too much provocative of passion, and discloses no substance when
the several skins are taken off.)
Rai B. K. Laheri, F.T.S.
(This
article was published in Lucifer
magazine, June 1891, p.309-311; and later in the book HPB: in memory of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, 1891, p.45-47)
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