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BLAVATSKY AND HER MISSION IN THE WORLD BY FRANZ HARTMANN


(The following text is an article that the esotericist Franz Hartmann wrote in homage to Blavatsky when she died.)



H.P.B. AND HER MISSION
 
H. P. Blavatsky is dead, but the great soul that was embodied in her form, still lives. The woman, called “the Sphinx of the nineteenth century”, because she was understood only by a few, has given up the ghost; but the great soul (the Maha Atma) dwelling within that mortal form and using it as an instrument for shedding rays of spiritual light into this era of mental darkness, has only left its habitation, and returned to a more congenial home, to rest from its labors.

It is doubtful whether there ever was any great genius and savior of mankind, whose personality while upon this earth, was not misunderstood by his friends, reviled by his enemies, mentally tortured and crucified, and finally made an object of fetish-worship by subsequent generations. H. P. B. seems to be no exception to the rule.

The world, dazzled by the light of her doctrines, which the majority of men did not grasp, because they were new to them, looked upon her with distrust, and the representatives of scientific ignorance, filled with their own pomposity, pronounced her to be “the greatest impostor of the age”, because their narrow minds could not rise up to a comprehension of the magnificence of her spirit.

It is, however, not difficult to prophesy, that in the near future, when the names of her enemies will have been forgotten, the world will become alive to a realization of the true nature of the mission of H. P. B., and see that she was a messenger of Light, sent to instruct this sinful world, to redeem it from ignorance, folly and superstition, a task which she has fulfilled as far as her voice was heard and her teachings accepted.

Then will the historian of those times ransack the archives for the purpose of finding some bit of history of the life of H. P. B., and unless all the vilifications that have been written about her have found their way to the pile of manure from which they emanated, it is not impossible that her memory may then be besmirched by scribblers of the future, in the same way as the memory of Cagliostro, Theophrastus Paracelsus, and other great souls, has been besmirched by irresponsible scribblers of the present time.

It is for this and for other self-evident reasons very desirable that something reliable in regard to the life of H. P. B. should be published by some competent person having been well acquainted with her, and being not a worshipper of personalities, but capable of studying and describing the life of the inner man. The true life of every spiritually awakened human being is not his external but his interior life.

To describe merely the events that took place in the earth-life of an embodied genius and not to paint his interior life, his thoughts and feelings, is to describe merely the history of the house which that genius inhabited during its earthly career and to take no notice of the inhabitant.

Thus even the best written account of the life of H. P. B., that has been published, resembles a painting of a bird of paradise after the bird has been stripped of its plumage and dressed for the kitchen. It is the treatment of a highly poetical subject with a careful avoidance of all poetry. But the feathers of a bird are as much an essential part of the bird as its muscles and bones, and the poetical and ideal part of a man is a more essential thing in his nature than the structure of his physical body or the cut of his coat.

It is H. P. B.’s inner life, her mode of thinking and feeling, that is of importance and ought to be understood; all the rest belongs to external things that are not worthy the attention of the true occultist.

Each person has a double nature, an external and an internal life, and H. P. B. formed no exception to that rule. She was neither wholly earthly nor wholly divine.

   Some poet says:

               Two natures are within each human being:
             One is a child of the clear light of day.
             In it is nothing dark, but all is seeing,
             There is all sunshine, nothing hid away.
             Its innermost thy eye may penetrate,
             There is no secret and no mystery;
             In it rule wisdom, justice, love and faith:
             Spotless as crystal is its purity.

               The other is a being born of night,
             Fill’d with dark clouds that change and change again.
             It baffles reason and ignores the light:
             It is a stranger in its own domain.
             Intangibly it fills our daily life
             With mocking goblins; its discordant reign
             Begetting errors and discordant strife:
             Tangling the threads and spoiling the design.


Thus every person has at his command a terrestrial and a celestial life. To the great majority entangled in the meshes of this world of illusions, these illusions appear to be the reality and the celestial life merely a dream: but there are others in whom the interior life has awakened, and who find the celestial life the real one, and this earthly life merely a dream or a nightmare.

This fact of a double existence has been recognized by every sage and saint and is known to every one in possession of the divine knowledge of self. It is referred to in many places in the Bhagavad Gita and in the Bible. It is that double life of the initiated, to which the apostle refers, when he says:

-      We live upon the earth, but our consciousness is in heaven.”

There may be those in whom the light has entirely swallowed up the darkness: those in whom there exists no more “body of sin.” They are the fully developed Adepts, and as such a one St. Paul presents himself in his letter to the Romans, chap. vii., vv, 5 and 6, where he says:

« When we were in the flesh, the motions of sins which were by the law, did work in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death: but now we are delivered from the law —that being dead, wherein we were held— that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter» (1)


Such sages and saints are the Buddhas and Arhats and the “Masters of Wisdom” with whom H. P. B. claimed to have become acquainted, and with whom everyone may become acquainted, if he outgrows his own narrow little self and rises up to their plane.

The circumstance that modern society does not know anything about the existence of holy persons and that modern science has not yet discovered any saints, does not invalidate the theory that there are human beings in whom the germ of Divinity contained in every person has become so much unfolded, that a higher realm of spiritual knowledge, unattainable by those who cling only to earthly things, has become revealed to them, and that the souls of such persons, having become self-conscious in the light of the Spirit, are in possession of extraordinary faculties.

Of such regenerated ones the Bible states that they cannot sin, because they are born of God. (1 John iii. 9). And in 1 Peter i. 33, we read that such souls having been purified in obeying the truth through the spirit of unfeigned, love, are “born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God” acting in them.


H. P. B. never made any claims of wanting her personality to be regarded as a god, saint or adept, and in a letter to the author of these notes she expressly repudiates such claims, saying that she is travelling on the Path, but has not yet attained the goal.

There was still a merely human nature even in H. P. B.; she could still rejoice with the joyful, and sympathize with the sorrowing, and this part of H. P. B.’s nature was made the continual object of criticism by the “ psychic researcher ”, who knowing nothing about divinity in humanity, saw in her only his own animal image reflected.

By such critics every nebulous spot in her nature was investigated and magnified by means of their own morbid imagination; but the sunny side of her nature they did not perceive, because there was no light in themselves.

The sum and substance of what they discovered, if shorn of what their own fancy added to it, was that H. P. B. was kind and generous even to a fault: that she was impulsive and energetic and sometimes allowed herself to be carried into extremes by her noble impulses.

They found that she smoked cigarettes, that she spoke her thoughts without much ceremony, and absolutely refused to be like these smooth-faced, sly and hypocritical saints, going about in continual disguise and being looked upon by the world as the pillars of church and state; while behind their sanctimoniousness is hidden nothing but rottenness and conceit.

The screech owls of scientific sophistry that came to interview the eagle of the Himalayas found that they could not follow its flight to mountain summits that were entirely beyond the range of their limited vision, and as they could not clip its wings, their envy became aroused and they hooted and chattered, hurling calumnies at the royal bird.

In many instances these calumniators overdid their work, and the extraordinary vituperance of their vilifications contains sufficient evidence of the character of the spirit that inspired such writings, so as to render any refutation quite unnecessary.

Some such writers charged her with having committed immoral practices, and all such stories, as soon as they were invented, found their way into print and were always readily taken up and circulated by those intrepid newspaper-writers who are ever on the alert, anxious to increase the circulation of their papers, by giving to their readers something spicy and sensational.

Such stories were often exquisitely absurd and caused no little hilarity among those who were acquainted with the facts. Thus I remember that while I was in India, a story made its round through some English and American papers, saying that a row had occurred among the Theosophists at Adyar, because H. P. B. had become jealous of Col. Olcott, on account of Madame Coulomb, and that Mr. Coulomb had in his rage refused to furnish any more funds to carry on the business of the Theosophical Society.

Those who are acquainted with the persons referred to, and know that the Coulombs were penniless and were suffered to remain at Adyar for charity's sake, will appreciate the roar with which this “news” was received by the Chelas.

There would have been no end of writing and wasting of time, if all the slanders about H. P. B., that were circulated by the pious missionaries of Madras and elsewhere, had had to be refuted, especially as it is far easier to make a calumnious assertion, than to disprove it.

Some of these calumnies may however have been made with the best of intentions; for instance certain persons threw doubts upon H. P. B.’s veracity, for the same reason that prompted a certain African king to order the beheading of a European traveler: because the latter had told the king, that in certain parts of Europe and at certain seasons, the water of the rivers and lakes became so firm that one could walk upon it; whereupon the king decided that such a liar should not be suffered to live.

I would have but little regard for the truth, if I were to attempt to claim that none of the accusations brought forth against H. P. B. had any foundation in facts; but the principal cause that brought troubles without end upon her, was her entire want of judgment in regard to the manner in which worldly affairs must be conducted, a childlike trust that the world would look at things in the way they appeared to her; an entire disregard as to what the public would say or think about her; a desire to shield her followers from the consequences of stupidities committed by them, etc., etc.

What H. P. B. wanted she thought, and what she thought she said, and what she said she acted, regardless of any consequences. In her, as in an innocent child, thoughts, words and acts were one and in harmony.

If we were to attempt to solve the mystery of the “Sphinx of the nineteenth century” and give a history about the true Ego of H. P. Blavatsky, we would first of all have to learn who is the individuality, the “new creature” (2): that was embodied in the form of H. P. B., and know something of its previous lives, so as to be able to understand what caused it to appear in a woman's form upon this earth.

We would then have to accept the theory that the soul of the regenerated is capable of living and acting beyond the limits of the physical form which is its dwelling and instrument for outward manifestation, and that the spiritual soul of such a person may be in an ethereal astral form in some distant country (say in Tibet)-while the physical body is still living and acting consciously and intelligently in Europe and America.

But the world is not yet ripe enough to receive a serious history, containing facts which are still a terra incognita to Europe and science, and whose correspondences are to be found only in the Acta Sanctorum, which now-a-days are regarded even by the church as being “legendary and fabulous,” or (to express it less politely) as being a tissue of lies.

Such a history would require readers acquainted with the doctrines of Reincarnation and Karma; readers that had themselves conquered their own nature, and by their own experience had been enabled to realize what it means to be in the world but not of it.

But although the Bible says: that “except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” {John iii. 3), nevertheless the terms “rebirth” and “regeneration” have become words without any meaning to the modern religionist, and absurdities to the scientist.

The religious visionary flatters himself with believing that he is already regenerated and has attained immortality. He does not know that regeneration in the spirit is accompanied with an opening of the spiritual senses, and that his “regeneration” cannot have taken place as long as he is blind to the light of the truth and deaf to the “voice of the silence”.

“Re-generation” now-a-days is a word without meaning to the man of the world, and to the churchman it means at best a change of belief and an improvement of morals. The modern “Christian” has no understanding for such passages of his Bible, as the following:

-       “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you." (Galat. iv. 19.)

-       “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.” (Galat. vi. 15.)

-       Etc., etc.

They do not believe what their teacher says of his true followers, that the regenerated ones, those in whom “the Son of God has come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephes. iv. 13) will do the same wonderful things that he performed himself.

They do not believe that no one can possibly be in possession of conscious immortality, unless the “new creature” has been born in him, and they flatter themselves in presuming that their spirit is already immortal. But the Spirit immortality of the Spirit of God will not render their souls immortal, if their souls refuse to be fructified by that Spirit of God and to bring forth the divine child.

Let such “Christians” reflect about the meaning of the words of the Bible, where it says:

« Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God» 
(John iii., 5.)

Little will it serve the sanctimonious to believe that their spirit is immortal, as long as they have no spirit which they can properly call their own; because their soul contains no divine love or spirit, and therefore cannot generate the “new creature” which can claim immortality in the Christ.

This union of the mortal soul with the immortal Spirit is the end and object of all Occultism and Theosophy. It was this regeneration that H. P. B. taught; for “spiritual regeneration" and “initiation” are synonymous terms.

But a doctrine which does not flatter men’s vanity by making men believe that they are already immortal, owing to the merits of a person that lived in the past, but claims that immortality is a boon, gained only by heroic efforts in battling with the lower elements in our nature, which prevent the action of divine grace within ourselves, is not welcomed by those who prefer to run after money and pleasures and expect to ride after death into heaven upon the back of another man; and therefore the history of a regenerated soul would be believed or understood only by few.

Much easier would it be to clothe such a history in the fictitious form of a novel, that makes no claims for belief and in which everyone may believe as much as he is capable of understanding and put away the rest. (3)



To understand the true mystery that surrounded H. P. B., it will first be necessary to understand the mystery called “Man”: for the Initiate, compared with the vulgar, is like a bird in comparison with an egg. The bird knows of eggs and their history, but the eggs know nothing of the existence of birds.

To solve the great mystery called man, mankind will have to crawl out of the “philosophical egg” and, by becoming free, attain the noble self-knowledge of Divinity in Humanity; but at the present time there seem to be few, even among the so-called “Theosophists”, having the faintest conception of what “divine self-knowledge” means.

Owing to the universal misconception existing in regard to the true nature of man and the ignoring of all that is divine in that nature, H. P. B. has been universally misunderstood and misrepresented.

After a long and patient observation, a conviction which I persistently refused to accept forced itself upon me, namely, that in this respect far more harm has been done by H. P. B.'s over-zealous friends and admirers, than by her enemies.

H. P. B. never asked to be deified, and denied the possession of miraculous powers; but there were many of her followers carrying on a fetish worship with her person, making the wildest and most extravagant statements on her behalf, which on investigation were found to be worthless, and thus only brought discredit upon her and her Theosophical Society, while, with very few exceptions, these enthusiastic friends were the first ones to desert her or become her enemies, when the illusions, which they themselves had created, exploded.

According to the stories, generated, believed and circulated by such admirers, H. P. B. was continually attended by spirits; invisible “Masters from Tibet” danced attendance on her; they either verbatim dictated her writings to her or “precipitated” her manuscripts while she was taking her nap. (4)

Gnomes, sylphs, undines and salamanders were at all times at her command, carrying her letters and superintending the kitchen. There was nothing going on in any part of the world which —according to their statements— H. P. B. did not know: but it was only too evident to outsiders, that H. P. B. did not know everything, and that even in her greatest troubles the fairy post did not work; but that for receiving information she, like other mortals, had to depend upon terrestrial mails and telegraphs.

The fact is, that at the bottom of all such statements there was a certain amount of truth, but the facts were exaggerated beyond all limits by her over-enthusiastic friends.

H. P. B., according to her own confession, was not a learned woman. She was not even clever. On the contrary, all the great things she did were performed by her and some of her associates in the most bungling possible manner, which often spoiled the good result, and in calling her “the greatest impostor of the age” the agent of the Soc. Psych. Res., who presented her with that title, merely certified to his own incapacity to judge about character, for H. P. B. —as all who were acquainted with her will testify— was never capable of disguising herself, and any imposture, great or little, which she could have attempted, would have immediately been found out, even by a child.

H. P. B. was neither clever nor “smart”, but she was in possession of that in which most of her critics are sadly deficient, namely, soul-knowledge, a department of “science” not yet discovered by modern scientists and would-be-philosophers. The soul that lived in her was a great soul, a Mahatma (from Maha, great, and Alma, soul).

This great soul, and not the dress which H. P. B. used to wear, should be the object of our investigation, not for the purpose of gratifying scientific curiosity — but for profiting by the example


Now, it appears to me that I hear a thousand voices ask the question:

What is the knowledge of the soul, and how can it be obtained?

Is there any other knowledge than that of the reasoning brain?

Can we know of any other thing than what we have been taught in our school, what we have read in books, or what we remember of having heard?


To this we would answer:

Woe to the people that does not know by heart that which is good and beautiful. Woe to those who have no interior perception for justice and truth; who cannot  feel true love, hope and faith, and who have to study the encyclopedia to find out the meaning of the terms benevolence, charity, generosity, spirituality, virtue, etc., etc.

All these things are not creations of the imagination, nor products of the physical body; but spiritual living powers, endowing with their qualities the soul that is in possession of them. If these powers are permitted to grow and to become unfolded, then will their true nature become clear to the mind, but no amount of intellectual speculation will enable him who possesses them not, to realize what they are.

The study of these powers and the art of developing them by practice formed the science of the soul, which Madame Blavatsky taught. All the rest of her doctrines, regarding the constitution of man, the evolution of worlds, etc., etc., were merely accessories to facilitate self-knowledge; to destroy bigotry and superstition, and by freeing the mind from prejudices, to give it a wider range of ennobling thought, and enable it to form a grander and higher conception of God, Nature and Man.

What can such a study have to do with the ghost stories, psychic researchers, coffee pots, trapdoors, and other tomfooleries, that haunt the minds of those who seek in external things for tests of the existence of things which they ought to possess themselves, before they can truly deserve to be called men made in the image of God?

Verily those who became her enemies because she could not gratify their curiosity ought to be blamed themselves for their willful rejection of divine truth.


The first thing necessary for the acquisition of soul knowledge is the possession of a soul, which means the power to feel. Among the opponents of H. P. B. very little of the soul element is to be found. They seem to exist entirely on the plane of the mind, that part of man which only reasons and speculates; but which has no actual knowledge, and which the ancient writers compared with the cold moonshine, because there is nothing in it of the warm sunshine of love.

The element of the soul is the will, and the divine will is universal love; such as creates a paradise — not in the imagination, but in the hearts of those who are in possession of it. When the morning star of divine love arises within the soul, peace enters with it.

Therefore it is not said, that the angels at the time when the Christ is born within the human heart sing: “Glory be to those who are well versed in science and sophistry”; but they are said to sing: “Glory be to that God who is universal Love, and peace to all men who are of good (i.e. divine) will”,




Notes
  1. The Bible quotations contained in this article are not intended to imply that my views are based upon speculations on the sayings of the Bible: but are merely added as corroborative evidence for those who attribute any importance to them.
  2. Galat. vi. 15.
  3. In the “Talking Image of Urur” such facts have been portrayed. There the “Master of the Image” represents the true Ego, the regenerated soul, while the Image itself is merely the elementary body, the personality, through which the true Ego acts.
  4. After the above was written, Lucifer magazine of May 15th comes to my hands, where I find this statement singularly corroborated by herself on page 243.


(This article was published in Lucifer magazine, July 1891, p.365-373; and later in the book HPB: in memory of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, 1891, p.58-67)







OBSERVATION

It is interesting to note that several things mentioned by Franz Hartmann about Blavatsky and little known by the public, were also reported by Blavatsky's sister in the biography she subsequently wrote about her, such as:


  • That Blavatsky was not a learned person and she was very surprised to be able to argue with erudite sages and she did not know where this knowledge came from.
  • O also that many individuals first adulated her, but when they saw that Blavatsky was not going to offer them what they wanted from her, then they became his fierce enemies.











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