Violet Tweedale was a Scottish poet
who became interested in spiritualism and theosophy, and in her memories she
recounted various experiences she had with Blavatsky:
At that early period some one
happened to mention to me that a certain Madame Blavatsky had just arrived in
London, bringing with her a new religion. My curiosity was at once fired, and I
set off to call upon her.
I shall never forget that first
interview with a much maligned woman, whom I rapidly came to know intimately
and love dearly. She was seated in a great armchair, with a table by her side
on which lay tobacco and cigarette paper. Whilst she spoke her exquisite taper
fingers automatically rolled cigarettes. She was dressed in a loose black robe,
and on her crinkly gray hair she wore a black shawl. Her face was pure Kalmuk,
and a network of fine wrinkles covered it. Her eyes, large and pale green,
dominated the countenance — wonderful eyes in their arresting, dreamy
mysticism.
The oriental teachings brought by Blavatsky
I asked her to explain her new
religion, and she answered that hers was the very oldest extant, and formed the
belief of five hundred million souls. I inquired how it was that this
stupendous fact had not yet touched Christendom, and her reply was that there
had never been any interference with Christian thought. Though judge of all,
Christianity had been judged by none. The rise of Japan was a factor of immense
potency, and in time would open out a new era in the comprehension of East by
West. Then the meaning would flash upon the churches of the words,
"Neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem."
I explained to her my difficulties,
which she proceeded to solve by expounding the doctrines of reincarnation and
Karma. They jumped instantly to my reason. I there and then found the Just God,
of whom I had been in search. From that day to this I have never had reason to
swerve from those beliefs. The older I grow, the more experience I gather, the
more I read, the more confirmed do I become in the belief that such provide the
only rational explanation of this life, the only natural hope in the world to
come.
I have offered those beliefs to very
many people whom I discovered to be on the same quest as I had been. I have
never once had them rejected by any serious truth-seeker, and I have seen them
passed on and on by these people to others, forming enormous ramifications which
became lost to view in the passage of time and their own magnitude.
In these early days there was little
literature available for the student, but the circle of clever brains which
rapidly surrounded Blavatsky set to work with a will under her guidance, and
now, after the lapse of thirty years, there is an enormous literature always
commanding a wide sale, and the little circle that gathered round "the old
lady" has swollen into very many thousands.
What was the secret of Helena
Petrovski Blavatsky's instant success?
I have no doubt that it lay in her
power to give to the West the Eastern answers to those problems which the
Church has lost.
In her way Blavatsky was a true
missioner. "Go forth on your journey for the weal and the welfare of all
people, out of compassion for the world and the welfare of angels and
mortals," was the command given by the Lord Buddha to his disciples, and
Christ, following the universal ideal, five hundred years later, commanded,
"Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel of the whole
Creation."
I began to study those, to me, new
doctrines at once, and I also took up their occult side, no light task, but one
of absorbing interest. Not till then did I fully realize that in no one human
life could that long, long path be trodden, in no new-born soul could be
developed those divine possibilities of which I could catch but a fleeting
illusive vision.
"Thou canst not travel in the
Path before thou hast become the Path itself." Did not the Christ warn his
followers that the Path must be trodden more or less alone? "Forsake all
and follow me." So, also in the Bhagavad Gita it is written:
"Abandoning all duties come unto me alone for shelter. Sorrow not, I will
liberate thee from thy sins."
"The secret doctrine"
written by Blavatsky proved a mine of wealth, and I read the volumes through
seven times in seven different keys. The works of A. P. Sinnett, text books
then, and now brought up to date by expanding knowledge, were extremely
helpful. For advanced students "The Growth of the Soul" is
unsurpassed. A very short time elapsed before mental food was supplied for
practically every branch of mysticism and occult development, and students
flocked into headquarters from all parts of the world.
It is interesting to remember the
two adjoining villas in Avenue Road, St. John's Wood, where we used to
congregate to study, and hear lectures thirty years ago, and to look now on the
stately buildings in Tavistock Square. They are designed by the great architect
Lutyens, whose wife, Lady Emily, is an ardent theosophist.
I am glad that I have lived to see
these doctrines take firm root in the West, and grow so amazingly that in all
cities they are now held by vast numbers, and even in cases where they have not
been finally adopted they are acknowledged to be the only logical conclusion
for those who desire to possess a rational belief. I am glad that I can look
back with love and profound gratitude to Helena P. Blavatsky, the woman who
grafted on the West the wisdom of the ages. I have no doubt that she is enabled
to see the mighty structure raised on her small beginnings, and doubtless she
has met on "the other side" men and women whose debt to her is
equally as great as mine.
Blavatsky began by exploding the
theory that men are born equal. If this one life were all, then this great
error ought, in common justice, to be absolute truth, and every man should
possess common rights in the community, and one man ought to be as good as
another. If every soul born to-day is a fresh creation, who will in the course
of time pass away from this life for ever, then why is it that one is only
fitted to obey, whilst another is eminently fitted to rule?
One is born with a tendency to vice
and crime, another to virtue and honesty. One is born a genius, another is born
to idiocy. How, she asked, could a firm social foundation ever be built up on
this utter disregard of nature? How treat, as having right to equal power, the
wise and the ignorant, the criminal and the saint? Yet, if man be born but once
it would be very unjust to build on any other foundation.
Re-incarnation implies the evolution
of the soul, and it makes the equality of man a delusion. In evolution time
plays the greatest part, and through evolution humanity is climbing.
"Souls while eternal in their essence are of different ages in their
individuality."
Many of us must know people who
though quite old in years are children in mind. Men and women who having
arrived at three score years and ten are still utterly childish and
inconsequent. They are young souls who have had the experiences of very few
earth lives. Again, we all know children who seem born abnormally old. Infant
prodigies, musicians, calculators, painters who have brought over their genius
from a former life.
I remember once meeting with a
curious experience, which is not very easy to describe. It was an experience
more of feeling than of seeing.
I was standing in Milan Cathedral.
In front of me and behind was gathered a crowd of peasants. High Mass was being
celebrated, and all the seats were occupied.
After a few moments I began to feel
a curious sensation of being intently watched. Some penetrating influence was
probing me through and through, with a quiet but intensely powerful directness.
I had the sensation that my soul was being stripped bare. I looked round, but
could see nothing to account for my sensation. Every one seemed intent on their
devotions. I began to wonder if some malicious old peasant was throwing over me
the spell of the evil eye, but again my feelings were not conscious of an evil
intent; it was more an absorbed speculation directed towards me. Some one was
probing my soul, speculating on my spiritual worth or worthlessness, with an
intensely earnest yet cold calculation.
Just in front of me stood a peasant
woman of the poorest class. Her back was towards me, and over her shoulder hung
a baby of not more than a year old. Suddenly I met the eyes of the child full.
Then I knew. As a psychological experience it was most interesting, but it sent
a little thrill of creepiness through me.
The baby did not withdraw its gaze,
but continued leisurely to look me through and through. The eyes were large and
gray, the expression that of a contemplative savant, with a faint dash of irony
in their glance. I do not pretend to be anything but what is now called
"psychic," but I am certain that those windows of the soul, with that
age-long experience flooding out of them, would have arrested the most material
person. My husband, who is accustomed to my "flights of imagination,"
was very much struck by that look of maturity, that suggestion of æonic
knowledge.
Blavatsky taught me to look on man
as an evolving entity, in whose life career births and deaths are recurring
incidents. Birth and death begin and end only a single chapter in the book of
life. She taught me that we cannot evade inexorable destiny. I made my present
in my past. To-day I am making my future. In proportion as I outwear my past,
and change my present abysmal ignorance into knowledge, so shall I become free.
The
phenomena produced by Blavatsky
I have often heard Blavatsky called
a charlatan, and I am bound to say that her impish behavior often gave grounds
for this description. She was foolishly intolerant of the many smart West End
ladies who arrived in flocks, demanding to see spooks, masters, elementals,
anything, in fact, in the way of phenomena.
Madame Blavatsky was a born
conjuror. Her wonderful fingers were made for jugglers' tricks, and I have seen
her often use them for that purpose. I well remember my amazement upon the
first occasion on which she exhibited her occult powers, spurious and genuine.
I was sitting alone with her one
afternoon, when the cards of Jessica, Lady Sykes, the late Duchess of Montrose
and the Honorable Mrs. S.—— (still living) were brought in to her. She said she
would receive the ladies at once, and they were ushered in. They explained that
they had heard of her new religion, and her marvelous occult powers. They hoped
she would afford them a little exhibition of what she could do.
Madame Blavatsky had not moved out
of her chair. She was suavity itself, and whilst conversing she rolled
cigarettes for her visitors and invited them to smoke. She concluded that they
were not particularly interested in the old faith which the young West called
new; what they really were keen about was phenomena.
That was so, responded the ladies,
and the burly Duchess inquired if Madame ever gave racing tips, or lucky
numbers for Monte Carlo?
Madame disclaimed having any such
knowledge, but she was willing to afford them a few moments' amusement.
-
"Would one of
the ladies suggest something she would like done?" comment Madame Blavatsky.
Lady Sykes produced a pack of cards
from her pocket, and held them out to Madame Blavatsky, who shook her head.
-
"First remove
the marked cards," she said.
-
Lady Sykes laughed
and replied, "Which are they?"
Madame
Blavatsky told her, without a second's hesitation. This charmed the ladies. It
seemed a good beginning.
-
"Make that
basket of tobacco jump about," suggested one of them.
The next moment the basket had
vanished. I don't know where it went, I only know it disappeared by trickery,
that the ladies looked for it everywhere, even under Madame Blavatsky's ample
skirts, and that suddenly it reappeared upon its usual table. A little more
jugglery followed and some psychometry, which was excellent, then the ladies
departed, apparently well satisfied with the entertainment.
When I was once more alone with
Madame Blavatsky, she turned to me with a wry smile and said, "Would you
have me throw pearls before swine?"
I asked her if all she had done was
pure trickery.
-
"Not all, but
most of it," she unblushingly replied, "but now I will give you
something lovely and real."
For a moment or two she was silent,
covering her eyes with her hand, then a sound caught my ear. I can only
describe what I heard as fairy music, exquisitely dainty and original. It
seemed to proceed from somewhere just between the floor and the ceiling, and it
moved about to different corners of the room. There was a crystal innocence in
the music, which suggested the dance of joyous children at play.
-
"Now I will give
you the music of life," said Madame Blavatsky.
For a moment or two there fell a
trance-like silence. The twilight was creeping into the room, and seemed to
bring with it a tingling expectancy. Then it seemed to me that something
entered from without, and brought with it utterly new conditions, something
incredible, unimagined and beyond the bounds of reason.
Some one was singing, a distant
melody was creeping nearer, yet I was aware it had never been distant, it was
only becoming louder.
I suddenly felt afraid of myself.
The air about me was ringing with vibrations of weird, unearthly music,
seemingly as much around me as it was above and behind me. It had no
whereabouts, it was unlocatable. As I listened my whole body quivered with wild
elation, and the sensation of the unforeseen.
There was rhythm in the music, yet
it was unlike anything I had ever heard before. It sounded like a Pastorale,
and it held a call to which my whole being wildly responded.
Who was the player, and what was his
instrument?
He might have been a flautist, and
he played with a catching lilt, a luxurious abandon that was an incarnation of
Nature. It caught me suddenly away to green Sicilian hills, where the pipes of
unseen players echo down the mountain sides, as the pipes of Pan once echoed
through the rugged gorges and purple vales of Hellas and Thrace.
Alluring though the music was, and
replete with the hot fever of life, it carried with it a thrill of dread. Its
sweetness was cloying, its tenderness was sensuous. A balmy scent crept through
the room, of wild thyme, of herbs, of asphodel and the muscadine of the wine
press. It enwrapt me like an odorous vapor.
The sounds began to take shape, and
gradually mold themselves into words. I knew I was being courted with subtlety,
and urged to fly out of my house of life and join the Saturnalia Regna. The player was speaking a language which I
understood, as I had understood no tongue before. It was my true native tongue
that spoke in the wild ringing lilt, and I could not but give ear to its
enchantments and the ecstasy of its joy.
My soul seemed to strain at the
leash. Should I let go? Like a powerful opiate the allurement enfolded me, yet
from out its thrall a small insistent voice whispered "Caution! Where will
you be led: supposing you yield your will, would it ever be yours again?"
Now my brain was seized with a sense
of panic and weakness. The music suddenly seemed replete with gay sinfulness
and insolent conquest. It spoke the secrets which the nature myth so often
murmurs to those who live amid great silences, of those dread mysteries of the
spirit which yet invest it with such glory and wonderment.
With a violent reaction of fear I
rose suddenly, and as I did so the whole scene was swept from out the range of
my senses. I was back once more in Blavatsky's room with the creeping twilight
and the far off hoarse roar of London stealing in at the open window. I glanced
at Madame Blavatsky. She had sunk down in her chair, and she lay huddled up in
deep trance. She had floated out with the music into a sea of earthly oblivion.
Between her fingers she held a small Russian cross.
I knew that she had thrust me back
to the world which still claimed me, and I went quietly out of the house into
the streets of London.
Encounter
with an adept
On another occasion when I was alone
with Madame Blavatsky she suddenly broke off our conversation by lapsing into
another language, which I supposed to be Hindustanee. She appeared to be
addressing some one else, and on looking over my shoulder I saw we were no
longer alone. A man stood in the middle of the room. I was sure he had not
entered by the door, window or chimney, and as I looked at him in some
astonishment, he salaamed to Madame Blavatsky, and replied to her in the same
language in which she had addressed him.
I rose at once to leave her, and as
I bade her good-by she whispered to me:
- "Do not mention
this."
The man did not seem aware of my
presence; he took no notice of me as I left the room. He was dark in color and
very sad looking, and his dress was a long, black cloak and a soft black hat
which he did not remove, pulled well over his eyes.
I found out that evening that none
of the general staff were aware of his arrival, and I saw him no more.
_ _ _
I remember clearly the first night
that Annie Besant came to headquarters as an interested inquirer. She arrived
with the socialist, Herbert Burrows. Madame Blavatsky told me she was destined
to take a very great part in the future Theosophical movement. At that time
such a thing seemed incredible, yet it has come to pass.
(Book “Ghosts I
Have Seen, and Other Psychic Experiences,” chapter 4, p.51-62)
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