Since theosophy
promotes brotherhood between people, William Judge proposed to the Indian
members of the Theosophical Society (most of whom were Brahmins) to make a
change in the caste system by eliminating the hierarchies within the Brahmanical caste. And for that he wrote an article
that he asked Colonel Olcott to publish in the Theosophist which is the main journal of the Theosophical Society
in India.
INDIA AND HER THEOSOPHISTS (1)
I am moved to say a word, not by way of fomenting controversy, but
merely to express my own view about a thing which needs discussion. I
distinctly disclaim the right or the desire to criticize the life or manners of
the Hindu nation; nor have I any proposals to make for sweeping reforms in
their life and manners. What I would direct myself to is the Theosophical
movement there in relation to the national character of the Hindu, and to
matters connected therewith.
I cannot agree with the statement that the Hindus and Hindu Theosophists
are not intellectually active. They are, and always have been, too active
intellectually, altogether and at the expense of some other activities more
important. That the peculiar characteristic of the educated Hindu is
intellectual activity can hardly be doubted. It is exhibited on all occasions;
in hair-splitting dialogues; in endless commentaries; in fine controversies
over distinctions; in long explanations; in fact, in every possible place and
manner.
This is the real difficulty: it was the cause of India’s decadence as it
has become the obstacle against her rising to her proper place among nations.
Too much intellectual activity in a nation like this, living in the tropics,
with religion as a heritage and the guide for every act, is sure to lead, in
any age, to spiritual pride; and spiritual pride in them then brings on
stagnation.
That stagnation will last until gradually there arise men of the same nation
who, without fear of caste, or favor, or loss, or ostracism, or any other
punishment or pain, will boldly bring about the reaction that shall result in
the death of spiritual pride and the acquirement of the counterbalancing wheel
to pure intellectual activity.
Intellectualism represents the letter of the law, and the letter
killeth, while the spirit maketh alive. For seventeen years we have had constant
and complete evidence that the above views are correct. The Theosophist, full of the articles by Hindus, always
intellectual; Lucifer printing
similar ones by Hindus; The Path now
and then doing the same; articles on mighty themes of abstract scope by
Brahmans who yet belong to one of the eighty-four castes of Brahmans.
But if the spiritual activity prevailed we would have seen articles,
heard orations, known of efforts, to show that a subdivision of the highest of
the four castes into eighty-four is not sanctioned by the Vedas, but is
diametrically against them and ought to be instantly abandoned. I should not
suggest the destruction of the four castes, as those are national divisions
which exist everywhere.
The Hindu, however, has the tradition, and the family lines, and the
power to restore this disturbed state of things to equilibrium. And until it is
restored the day of Āryavarta’s restoration is delayed. The disturbance began
in the Brahmanical caste and there it must be harmonized first. Spiritual pride
caused it and that pride must be killed out.
Here then is the real opportunity for Indian Theosophists. It is the
same sort of call that the Christians’ Jesus made on the young man whom he told
to take up the cross and follow him. No foreigner could do this; no European
Secretary could hope to succeed at it unless he were an incarnation of Vishṇu.
It means loss, trouble, fight, patience, steadiness, altruism, sacrifice.
Where then are the Indian Theosophists —most of whom are in the
Brahmanical caste— who will preach all over India to the Brahmans to give up their
eighty-four divisions and coalesce into one, so that they, as the natural
teachers and priests, may then reform the other castes?
This is the real need and also the opportunity. All the castes will
follow the highest. Just now they all, even to the outcastes, divide and
subdivide themselves infinitely, in accordance with the example set.
Have those Indian Theosophists who believed that the Mahatmas are behind
the Theosophical movement ever asked themselves why those Masters saw fit to
start the Society in America and not in India, the home of the Adepts?
It was not for political reasons, nor religious, but simply and solely
because of the purely “intellectual activity” and spiritual pride of the Hindu.
(2)
For the West is every bit as selfish as the East. Those in Europe and
America who know of Karma think selfishly on it; those who do not know, live for
self. There is no difference in this respect.
In the West there is as much to be fought and reformed as in India, but
the problem is differently conditioned. Each hemisphere must work upon itself.
But the Western Theosophist finds himself in a very uncomfortable corner when,
as the champion of Eastern doctrine and metaphysic, he is required to describe
the actual present state of India and her Theosophists.
He begins to tell of such a show of Branches, of Headquarters buildings,
of collecting manuscripts, of translation into English, of rendering into
vernaculars, of learned pundits in the ranks, of wonderful Yogis, of the gigantic
works of long dead Hindus, and then he stops, hoping his interlocutor has been
dazzled, amazed, silenced.
But pitilessly his examiner pushes, and inquires if it be true that
every one of the four castes is subdivided into nearly hundreds, if women are
educated, if educated Hindu women are active in the Society, if the Hindu
Theosophists are actively and ever as martyrs working to reform within itself,
to remove superstition; if he is showing by the act of personal sacrifice —the
only one that will ever bring on a real reform— that he is determined to
restore India to her real place?
No reply is possible that does not involve his confusion. For his merciless
questioner asks if it be true that one of the Mahatmas behind the Society had
written to Mr. Sinnett that he had ventured down into the cities of his native
land and had to fly almost immediately from the vile and heavy atmosphere
produced by the psychical condition of his people? (3)
The reply is in the affirmative. No Ṛishi, however great, can alter a
people; they must alter themselves.
(Cid's observation: Rishi is how Masters are called in India, and these
high beings have a hard time being submerged within the low vibrations that
humans generate, and not only in India, but in the world in general.)
The “minor currents” that the Adepts can deflect have to be sought in
other nations, so as to, if possible, affect all by general reaction. This is
truth, or else the Mahatmas lie. I believe them; I have seen the evidence to
support their statement.
So there is no question of comparison of nations. The Indian Section
must work out its own problem. The West is bad enough, the heavens know, but
out of badness —the rājasika quality—
there is a rising up to truth; from tamoguṇam
comes only death. If there are men in India with the diamond hearts possessed
by the martyrs of the ages, I call upon them from across these oceans that roll
between us to rise and tell their fellow Theosophists and their country what
they ought to know.
If such men are there they will, of themselves, know what words to use,
for the Spirit will, in that day and hour, give the words and the influence.
Those who ask for particularity of advice are not yet grown to the stature of
the hero who, being all, dareth all; who having fought many a fight in other
lives rejoices in his strength, and fears neither life nor death, neither
sorrow nor abuse, and wisheth no ease for himself while others suffer.
Henry Olcott’s commentaries
1. The publication of the
following article was inadvertently delayed.
(Cid's observation: I think that
rather Colonel Olcott was hesitant to publish William Judge’s article since he
knew that its content would annoy the Brahmins.)
2. I dissent from this theory as
being unsound. Admitting H.P. Blavatsky to have been the agent of the Masters
would not that imply that she and they were unable to foresee and prevent the
ignominious collapse of the Cairo attempt of 1871 at founding an Occult
Society; although she did her best to make it succeed, and fortified her
influence with psychical phenomena quite as strange as those we saw, four years
later at New York?
But for that fiasco, a Theosophical
Society would have been formed by French, Russians, Arabs, and Copts in one of
the moral pest-holes of the world. And, furthermore, although it was actually
started at New York, it had fallen almost into the article of death by the close
of 1878, when the two Founders sailed for India; and it was not until its dry
bones were electrified by the smouldering spiritual life of India that it
sprang with resistless rush along the path of its Karmic mission.
When Mr. Judge becomes my
successor and comes to live in India, he will know more about the Hindus and
what is possible and impossible for their would-be reformers. He writes now, in
all kindness and good intent, in the strain of an Arya Samajist, and as H.P.B.
and I did before and just after coming to India and replacing theory with
actual knowledge of the Indian situation of affairs.
(Cid's
observations: here Olcott is not taking into consideration the cycle that
governs masters and which I detail in this other article link.
And
therefore the Occult Society that Blavatsky started in Cairo in 1871 —which I
am not sure has been endorsed by the masters— cannot be considered in the same
way with the Theosophical Society that she started in 1875 in New York, and
which there I have found historical documentation that shows that the masters
supported it.
And I also
consider it unfair for Olcott to say that the Theosophical Society was dying in
1878, because it was normal that this organization had few members since it had
only been in existence for a few years, but like later Blavatsky and Olcott
developed it enormously in India, from in the same way William Judge developed
it enormously in America where it had more than a hundred lodges.
As for
making even a small reform in the caste system that governs Indian society,
then I do agree with Colonel Olcott that it is wanting too much.)
3. Mr. Judge should not convey
the false impression that the Mahatmas find the spiritual aura of India worse
than those of Europe and America, for everybody knows that H.P.B. reiterated
continually the assertion that the spiritual state of the West was unbearable,
and she yearned for our transfer to India.
What Mahatma K.H. wrote Mr.
Sinnett (vide Occult World, p. 120, 2nd edition) was that he had seen drunken
Sikhs at the Golden Temple, at Amritsar, and heard an educated Hindu vakil
declaring Yoga a delusion and the alleged Siddhis impossible; and that he could
not endure even for a few days the stifling magnetism “even of his own
countrymen”; i.e. that it was as stifling as those of other races.
What he found the magnetism of
London and New York [to be] has often been described by H.P.B. to a host of
witnesses. Mr. Judge has forgotten that every true Yogi of our day finds the
same state of things and flies to the jungle to escape it. It is the evil
effect of modern education devoid of spiritual stimulus which has made the whole
world spiritually leprous as it is.
(Cid's observation: when I practiced a lot chi-kung, I became more
sensitive towards energies, and although I did not even reach a twentieth of
the purity and sensitivity that a master has, I was still very bothered by the
low vibrations that people emitted. So I imagine that for masters it must be
really very unbearable to have to deal with all those low vibrations that are
so abundant in populated places.)
(The Theosophist,
Vol. XIV, September 1893, p.723-725; Echoes of Orient II, p.112-115)
FINAL REMARK
Many
individuals (including Gandhi) tried to reform the caste structure that prevails
in India, but unfortunately all of them failed because the Indians do not want
to give up the delusional idea of believing they are superior to others who are
below their caste. And although
William Judge wrote here with good intentions, he put Colonel Olcott in trouble
and surely this article contributed to the animosity that Colonel Olcott later
developed against William Judge.
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