BLAVATSKY'S NEW REINCARNATION EXPLAINED BY A. HAMERSTER

 

In 1917 Charles Leadbeater claimed that Blavatsky had reincarnated immediately after passing away in 1891, but in 1900 Master Kuthumi had specified that Blavatsky could not quickly return to earth. And to try to reconcile this contradiction, the theosophist A.J. Hamerster wrote the following reflection:

 

 

A CONTRADICTION AND POSSIBLE EXPLANATION

 

A reader of The Theosophist draws attention to the contradiction existing between a statement by the Master K.H., and one by Bishop Leadbeater, both regarding the reincarnation of H.P. Blavatsky, who died in 1891. The Master’s statement, found in a letter written to Dr. Besant in 1900, is as follows:

 

-      "The intense desire of some to see Upasika ⁽¹⁾ reincarnate at once has raised a misleading Mayavic ideation. Upasika has useful work to do on higher planes and cannot come again so soon." ⁽²⁾

 

From this it follows that at least nine years after her death H.P. Blavatsky had not yet reincarnated.

 

 

C.W. Leadbeater, on the other hand, speaking in Sydney seventeen years later, states categorically:

 

"Madame Blavatsky lives now in a masculine body which she took directly she left the other one. When she left that body ... she stepped into the body of an Indian boy, then about fourteen years old ... I am told that the parents of that boy were immensely surprised at the change in him. He fell into a river and got his body drowned, and then when they carried him home and were preparing to burn the remains, the remains revived; but they [the parents] said they did not recognize their son in the least. He had been a good, quiet, docile boy up to that period, but after that time he was no longer at all the same gentle and meek entity ... She [H.P.B.] has held that body ever since." ⁽³⁾

 

According to this story, therefore, H.P. Blavatsky had already been nine years in incarnation when the Master wrote that her time for reembodiment had not yet come.

 

How to explain the contradiction?

 

 

Altogether to solve it seems to me impossible. There are several such contradictions in our Theosophical literature. We have to accept them and try our best to see through them to the truth and the circumstances that caused them.  Anyhow they are nothing to be afraid or ashamed of. The greatest works of human and superhuman endeavour are not altogether free of them. The PIoly Scriptures of every great Faith are full of them. They are there as it were for a test of our strength and faith. Do not let us shrink from them, afraid to touch them, but on the contrary, seek them out, squarely face them and try our hand on their explanation. As the sparks fly upwards, so is man born unto error.

 

No human being, however perfect, can be entirely free from it. In the present case, part of the explanation is to be found, I think, in the three words which I have italicized: “I am told.” From these it follows that at least part of the story was not based on C.W. Leadbeater’s first-hand knowledge, but was received by him orally, or in writing from others, from whom is not any longer ascertainable how much of the story was thus communicated to him, and accepted by him at second-hand.

 

For myself, I am inclined to think that C.W. Leadbeater may have been mistaken in the fact of H. P. Blavatsky’s immediate reincarnation. Mind: he spoke more than a quarter of century after her death, and at least seventeen years after the Master’s letter was written. It may well have been that H.P.B. reincarnated some years after that letter was written, in the way described by C.W. Leadbeater. The circumstantial evidence given in the story is too strong to be entirely rejected. I, at least, would rather accept the story of the drowning and the resurrection before the cremation, of the change in the boy and the surprise of the parents as real, than the correctness of the mere time-indication of the “immediate” rebirth, whether obtained by his own clairvoyance or through others.

 

It would also be more in agreement with C.W. Leadbeater’s further statement that H.P.B. “did make a tentative effort once at occupying another [body] just for a few hours occasionally,” but she dropped it because she found it a misfit. It is much more acceptable to think of this tentative effort as having occurred before rather than after she had taken the body of the drowned Hindu boy, which she has held “ever since.”

 

It is perhaps apposite to repeat a story told to me by Mr. N. Sri Ram, who was for a long time the faithful secretary of Dr. Annie Besant. The incident related may well have been the case referred to by C.W. Leadbeater. Dr. Besant was once riding with Rai Bahadur G.N. Chakravarti (Inspector of Schools in the United Provinces) and his daughter, when the little girl impulsively touched H.P.B.’s ring, which Dr. Besant was wearing on her finger, and said:

 

    -   “I gave you this.”

 

A.J.H.

 

(Theosophist, January 1939, p.275-276)

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

1. The designation which the Masters used for meaning “lay sister.”
2. The Theosophist, May 1937, p.108.
3. Theosophy in Australia, September 1917, p.144-151; reproduced in The Theosophist, May 1938, p.131

 

 

 

 

 

 

OBSERVATIONS

 

Chakravarti surely ordered his daughter to say this affirmation to impress Mrs. Besant and make her believe that the girl was the reincarnation of Blavatsky, and Mr. Hamerster does not take into account the most obvious answer to explain the contradiction that exists between what Master Kuthumi claimed and what Charles Leadbeater later stated, and this is that Leadbeater made up that story of Blavatsky's reincarnation to further manipulate his followers.