THE ENIGMA OF THE THIRD VOLUME OF THE SECRET DOCTRINE

 

Charles James Ryan was a theosophist of the old Theosophical Society Point Loma and in this article he analyzes what is known as the Third Volume of The Secret Doctrine (which corresponds to volumes 5 and 6 of the Spanish edition).

 

 

SOME NOTES ON THE SECRET DOCTRINE ESPECIALLY IN REGARD TO THE SO-CALLED "THIRD VOLUME"

 

We must now consider the puzzling problem of the so-called "Third Volume" about which so much controversy has raged. Subtitled "Occultism," it was published in 1897 by The Theosophical Book Concern, Chicago; The Theosophical Publishing Society, London; and The Theosophical Publishing Society, Benares.

 

It was compiled and edited by Mrs. Besant alone, from writings left by H.P. Blavatsky.

 

Is this "Third Volume" of The Secret Doctrine, properly so-called?

 

Is it the one to which H.P. Blavatsky referred when she said that a third and most of a fourth volume were written, or is it merely a compilation of more or less incomplete articles left by her, some of which she intended drastically to alter or re-write at some future time, presumably as part of the third or fourth volumes?

 

After considerable research in the records at the Theosophical Headquarters at Covina, the following interesting information has been found which shows the conflicting nature of the evidence.

 

 

What Blavatsky said about it

 

That, according to H.P. Blavatsky herself, a third volume and at least part of a fourth were written is supported by her own plain statements. In her letter to the American Convention of 1888 she writes:

 

Now with regard to the Secret Doctrine, the publication of which some of you urged so kindly upon me, and in such cordial terms a while ago, the MSS. of the first three volumes is now ready for the press; and its publication is only delayed by the difficulty which is experienced in finding the necessary funds.

 

On examining the original edition of The Secret Doctrine we find many corroborations of the definite statement just quoted.

 

1) In the Preface of Volume I we read:

 

« A large quantity of material has already been prepared, dealing with the history of occultism as contained in the lives of the great Adepts of the Aryan Race, and showing the bearing of occult philosophy upon the conduct of life, as it is and as it ought to be. Should the present volumes meet with a favorable reception, no effort will be spared to carry out the scheme of the work in its entirety. The third volume is entirely ready; the fourth almost so. »

 

2) Volume I, xl:

 

« Such a point ... cannot be offered in these two volumes. But if the reader has patience ... then he will find all this in Volume III of this work. »

 

3) Volume II, 437:

 

« In Volume III of this work (the said Volume and the IVth being almost ready) a brief history of all the great adepts ... will be given ... Volume IV will be almost entirely devoted to Occult teachings. »

 

4) Volume II, 797, closing paragraph of the book:

 

« These two volumes only constitute the work of a pioneer so that these two volumes should form for the student a fitting prelude for Volumes III and IV it entirely depends upon the reception with which Volumes I and II will meet at the hands of Theosophists and Mystics, whether these last two volumes will ever be published, though they are almost completed. »

 

5) Volume II, 106:

 

« There is no space to describe the fires ... though we may attempt to do so if the third and fourth volumes of this work are ever published. »

 

Observe that she says "if the third and fourth volumes are ever published," not "ever written." So, in addition to H.P.B.'s explicit statement to the American Convention of 1888, before the publication of the book, we have five equally clear statements given in The Secret Doctrine itself.

 

 

 

Besant and Mead's modifications to these citations

 

Before testimony confirming H. P Blavatsky's statements about the actual existence of the third and part of the fourth volumes is offered, it is necessary to mention certain omissions and changes that Mrs Besant and G.R.S. Mead made in their 1893 edition of The Secret Doctrine in the passages just quoted.

 

1)   The sentence after the word "entirety" deleted.

2)   The words "Volume III of this work" deleted, and replaced by "a future volume of the present work."

3)   The entire paragraph deleted.

4)   The words "Volumes III and IV" deleted and replaced by "other works," and the last words "though they are almost completed" deleted.

5)   The words "third and fourth volumes" deleted and replaced by "the rest."

 

So it appears that the information given by H.P. Blavatsky in the original edition and several times repeated, regarding the third and fourth volumes was carefully removed in the 1893 edition.

 

What can the reason have been?

 

We do not.

 

 

 

What Archibald Keightley said about it

 

Now for a few corroborations of H.P.B.'s statements that the third volume was ready and the fourth in preparation.

 

Dr Archibald Keightley, one of H.P. Blavatsky's closest friends, writes in a letter to The New York Times and quoted in The Theosophist, July 1889, describing her activities in London:

 

« The third volume of The Secret Doctrine is in MS ready to be given to the printers. The fourth volume, which is to be largely hints on the subject of practical Occultism, has been outlined but not yet written ... the actual work of writing will not be commenced until we are about ready to bring it forth. »

 

It turned out, however, that although the third volume was written it had to be put aside for a while, for Claude Falls Wright, Mr. William Judge's secretary, writes in The Path, February 1891, that:

 

« H.P.B. has within the last week or two begun to get together the MSS (long ago written) for the Third Volume of the Secret Doctrine: it will, however take a good twelve months to prepare for publication. »

 

Presumably when H.P.B looked over the manuscript she saw an opportunity for making changes and improvements such as she had made in the first two volumes up to the last moment.

 

In regard to the existence of the MS of a third volume "ready for the printers," as Dr Keightley writes to the New York Times, evidence is at hand that no such considerable mass of material has ever been found, nor was such seen by the Keightleys, who had the greatest opportunity of knowing the facts of the case: a fourth volume is still more difficult to explain.

 

 

 

What Bertram Keightley said about it

 

For instance, we learn from Bertram Keightley that he and Dr Keightley went through the entire MS. of The Secret Doctrine and devised a plan for its arrangement in which H.P.B. fully concurred. The book was to be published in four volumes (1) The Evolution of Cosmos (2) The Evolution of Man (3) Lives of Great Occultists (4) Practical Occultism. The plan was never fully carried out for lack of material, we are told. Bertram Keightley writes in The Theosophist of September, 1931, in regard to the two completed volumes:

 

« After this was done, there still remained a certain amount of matter over mostly unfinished fragments or "Appendices" or bits about symbolism, which could find no suitable place in the selected matter or — more frequently — were not in a condition or state for publication. Of course we asked H.P.B. about this matter as it was she herself — not Arch, or myself — who had set it aside for the time being. She put this left over matter in one of the drawers of her desk and said that "someday" she would make a Third Volume out of it. But this she never did, and after H.P.B.'s death, Mrs. Besant and Mr. Mead published all that could possibly be printed — without complete and extensive revision and re-writing — as part of Volume III in the revised edition. »

 

We find no evidence here of a Third Volume, "ready for the printers."

 

 

 

What Annie Besant said about it

 

The evidence of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Mead must also be examined. In the Preface to Volume III as published six years after H.P.Blavatsky's death, Mrs. Besant writes:

 

« The task of preparing this volume for the press has been a most difficult and anxious one and it is necessary to state clearly what has been done. The papers given to me by H.P.B. were quite unarranged and had no obvious order. I have therefore taken each paper as a separate section, and have arranged them as sequentially as possible. ... This volume completes the papers left by H.P.B. with the exception of a few scattered articles that still remain and that will be published in her own magazine Lucifer. »

 

In the same Preface Mrs. Besant writes that the Buddha series (on pages 376 to 385) "were given into my hands to publish as part of the Secret Doctrine."

 

In view of the above statements by Mrs. Besant that the papers generally were given to her by H.P.B., and that the Buddha pages were given into her hands, the following information is difficult to explain and only adds to the mystery of the original papers left by H.P.B.

 

 

A Mr. W. Mulliss of the Hamilton Spectator, Ontario, Canada, interviewed Mrs. Besant on October 6, 1926 at Los Angeles, California, on behalf of his own and several other newspapers. From the report in the O. E. Library Critic of June 1938 we quote:

 

« Mr. Mulliss. Your critics have insisted that somebody or other has deliberately suppressed the Third and Fourth Volumes of The Secret Doctrine to which H.P.B. makes reference in the First Volume of The Secret Doctrine. What have you to say to this? Do you regard the Third Volume of your edition of The Secret Doctrine entitled "Occultism" as containing any of the matter intended for the Third and Fourth Volumes?

 

Mrs. Besant. I was appointed H.P.B.'s literary executor, and the matter from which I compiled the Third Volume of "Occultism" in The Secret Doctrine published under my direction was compiled from a mass of miscellaneous writings found in her desk after her death. These I took under my own charge.

 

Mr. Mulliss. Did Mead help you in the compilation of these articles?

 

Mrs. Besant. No. The papers came absolutely under my own hand and Mead had nothing to do with them.

 

Mr. Mulliss. Well what about the material for the Third and Fourth Volumes?

 

Mrs. Besant. I never saw them and do not know what became of them. »

 

Obviously, from the above, Mrs. Besant, at the moment at least, did not claim her compilation called "Vol. Ill" to be the one mentioned by H.P.B.

 

 

 

What George Mead said about it

 

When we turn to G.R.S. Mead's testimony we find it still more confusing. He writes in Lucifer, July 1897:

 

« It is somewhat a novel form of experience for the present writer who has edited in one form or another almost all that H.P.B. has written in English, with the exception of Isis Unveiled to find himself turning over the leaves of The Secret Doctrine as one of the general public for with the exception of pp. 433-594 he has seen no word of it before. But other work has prevented his sharing in the labor of editing the MS., and the burden has fallen on the shoulders of Mrs. Besant. »

 

The pages he mentions are the private Instructions given by H.P.B. to her pledged students. He continues:

 

« The editor was bound to publish these [various writings] but we entirely share her private opinion, that it would have been better to have printed them as special articles in Lucifer than to have included them as part of The Secret Doctrine.

 

However this may be, the reader will hardly be edified when he compares the above paragraphs by Mead with his considered statement made after he left the Theosophical Society and seemingly felt free to express opinions which are, to put it mildly, rather startling when coming from a man who held a high character for sincerity when he was still working harmoniously with William Judge. »

 

He writes in The Occult Review for May 1927, as quoted in The O.E. Critic, June 1927:

 

« Next, I come to Vol. III. With this I refused to have anything to do whatever. I judged the disjecta or rejecta membra from the manuscript or type-script of Vols. I and II not up to standard, and that it would in no way improve the work. They could, I thought, be printed preferably as fugitive articles in Lucifer but they could not possibly be made into a consistent whole. Mrs. Besant, who put a far higher value on everything H.P.B. had written than I did, persisted in her view and by herself edited the matter for publication, but even when every scrap that remained had been utilized, it made a very thin volume. I therefore persuaded her to add the so-called Instruction of what is known as the "Esoteric Section" or Eastern School; which had hitherto been secret documents.

 

My argument was that the "occult teachings" as they were deemed by the faithful, were now in the hands of hundreds, scattered all over the world, some of whom were by no means trustworthy, and that it was highly probable that we should some day find them printed publicly by some unscrupulous individual or privately circulated illegitimately. Fortunately, Mrs. Besant agreed, and they were included in Vol. Ill, save certain matter dealing with sex questions. A load of anxiety was lifted off my mind. I thought that the making of these "Instructions" accessible to the general public might possibly put an end to this unhealthy inner secret school. But this hope, alas, was not to be fulfilled. »

 

 

 

The contradictions Besant and Mead said

 

The reader will observe that in the quotations just given Mrs. Besant writes in the Preface to her Volume III that the writings of which it is composed were given to her by H.P.B., and from this we are led to conclude that they were intended for the third volume. But in the interview with Mr. Mulliss Mrs. Besant says that this volume was compiled from miscellaneous writings found in H.P.B.'s desk after her death and that she (Mrs. Besant) never saw the material for the third and fourth volumes and did not know what became of them!

 

Mead is still more confusing. He writes that he declined to have anything to do with the third volume after judging the miscellaneous writings and finding them not up to standard, yet in his original statement in 1897 he plainly says he had never seen a word of the third volume until it was in print except the strictly private part that he had "persuaded" Mrs. Besant to publish to all the world out of H.P.B.'s Instructions to her most trusted students!

 

Perhaps it is no wonder that the Masters of Wisdom refrain from giving out the real secrets of occultism, which, in the hands of the unfit and unworthy, however fair-seeming and intellectual, would produce disastrous effects.

 

 

 

Other testimonials

 

As if some puckish sprite desired to make the puzzle of the third volume more difficult, others who claimed to be well informed offered different answers.

 

1. In The O.E. Library Critic, April, 1927, the editor publishes the statement that the Angarika Dharmapala, the eminent Buddhist leader, friend and pupil of H.P.B., said that G.R.S. Mead told him that the missing volumes of The Secret Doctrine had been written but had unaccountably disappeared. Mead was closely associated with H.P. Blavatsky for some time before her death, but had no connection with the publication of the first two volumes of The Secret Doctrine.

 

2. Basil Crump, in The O. E. Library Critic for September, 1939, claims that though part of the MSS. of the third and perhaps the fourth volumes of The Secret Doctrine were destroyed by H.P.Blavatsky herself shortly before her death because it did not satisfy her, most of it was saved and taken to India where it is held in safekeeping until the time comes for its release.

 

3. In The Canadian Theosophist, April, 1939, Thomas Green, a Theosophist, is quoted as saying that he was employed by the H.P.B. Press in London to set up the type for the third and part of the fourth volumes of The Secret Doctrine, and that H.P.B. had the forms broken up just before they were about to be printed.

 

4. James M. Pryse who was one time in charge of the press, denies that this was possible, but Mr. Pryse was not working there until eight months before H.P.Blavatsky's death.

 

 

 

Observations

 

Almost incredible as the statements of Mr. Crump and Mr. Green appear they are given some plausibility by a remark in The Secret Doctrine, Volume II, 798, where H.P.B. writes:

 

« Until the rubbish of the ages is cleared away from the minds of the Theosophists to whom these pages are dedicated, it is impossible that the more practical teaching contained in the Third Volume should be understood. Consequently, it entirely depends upon the reception which Volumes I and II will meet at the hands of Theosophists and Mystics, whether the last two volumes will ever be published, though they are almost completed. »

 

Is it impossible, then, that when she had completed the first two volumes she decided or was instructed by her Master to publish no more, and therefore had the MSS. of the third volume removed and the type broken up?

 

 

In November 1889 she wrote to Judge N. D. Khandalavala in India that the rest of her life would be devoted to her trusted pupils, to the teaching of those whose confidence she retained and who were sincerely working for Theosophy. She added:

 

By leaving it [India] I have been able to write The Secret Doctrine, Key to Theosophy, Voice of the Silence, and to prepare two more volumes of The Secret Doctrine which I could never have done in the turbulent atmosphere of India.

 

Notice the words "two more volumes."

 

 

 

The orthodox Brahmans

 

The theory that connects the disappearance of the true third volume with the orthodox Brahmans cannot be omitted. We know, from the storm aroused in those circles by the so-called "Prayag Letter" (See The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, page 461), and by the opposition shown by the learned Subba Row who finally refused to help in the production of The Secret Doctrine, that any further revelation of the deeper meanings of the Hindu Scriptures would have been extremely unpopular with the Brahmans. H.P.Blavatsky writes in The Letters of H.P.Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, page 95:

 

-      "Such as Subba Row — uncompromising initiated Brahmans will never reveal — even that which they are permitted to."

 

She then writes that Subba Row warned her that:

 

-      "You have been guilty of the most terrible of crimes. You have given out secrets of Occultism — the most sacred and the most hidden. Rather that you should be sacrificed than that which was never meant for European minds."

 

Subba Row was a chela of H.P.B.'s Master, but for all that he was a thorough-paced Brahman, and it cut him to the quick to see some of the teachings so closely guarded within the exclusive portals of the Brahman caste being given to the profane, the mlechchhas. Though he died in 1890 there must have been many left who knew of H.P.B.'s work and who would have been glad to suppress the two last volumes of The Secret Doctrine in view of the possibility of what they might contain, especially the fourth which was to treat of occultism, as we know.

 

 

 

In conclusion

 

There can be no doubt that H.P.B. intended to write a third volume of her great work and probably a fourth, and that some reason exists to believe that the third and some preparation for the fourth was actually written though nothing was published of all this. The opening paragraphs or even the whole "Introduction" of Mrs. Besant's "Third Volume" may have been intended or even used for the real third volume. The closing words of the first paragraph are significant:

 

« Outside the Theosophical circle, therefore, the present volume is certain to receive at the hands of the general public a still colder welcome than its predecessors have met with. »

 

Although the so-called "Third Volume" contains brief references to some of the topics mentioned by H.P.B. as the main features of Volumes III and IV, it does not fulfill this promise. It has no resemblance to the important and profoundly instructive work which she obviously intended to produce. It is merely a compilation touched up by Mrs. Besant as she thought best.

 

Although the so-called third volume cannot be accepted as the authentic "Third Volume of The Secret Doctrine" that H.P.B. had in mind, and although most of the best "miscellaneous writings" were published in Lucifer, it is not just to call the volume "spurious" as some over hasty critics have done. It contains much information and valuable teaching which is obviously authentic H.P.B. material, though it displays haste and incompleteness in many places.

 

Regardless of the problem of putting Mrs. Besant's "Third Volume" in its proper place among H.P.B.'s works, it is more than probable that the "miscellaneous writings" are by no means published just as H.P.B. left them. This conclusion is reached by an examination of the great number of alterations Mrs. Besant and Mead made in their 1893 edition of The Secret Doctrine which anyone can verify by a comparison with the original. Though most of these thousands of changes are of small importance, some are quite significant.

 

Strong evidence for changes, additions and omissions in the so-called Third Volume is provided by Mrs. Alice Cleather in The Canadian Theosophist, December 1937. Mrs. Cleather was one of H.P. Blavatsky's Inner Group of pledged students and she possessed a copy of the original report of the oral teachings received directly from H.P.B. These oral teachings form part of the private Instructions published in the "Third Volume" between pages 433 and 594, which Mead cynically said that he "persuaded" Annie Besant to insert in order to fill it out, and incidentally, as he hoped, to break up her Esoteric School. These Instructions had been entrusted to the recipients under the seal of strict secrecy — perhaps with the object of testing their worthiness!

 

Mrs. Cleather published a facsimile of page 559 in The Canadian Theosophist mentioned above, on which she marked the large number of alterations made on that single page. They consist of changes in arrangement, construction of sentences, capitalizing, the use of synonyms in place of original words, and above all of omissions and additions. One addition is significant as it seems to reflect psycho-occult teaching that Mrs. Besant is believed to have received from Brahmans after she threw off the restraining influence of William Judge. This addition reads: "The head should not be covered in meditation. It is covered in Samadhi." Hardly one line on this page is left without some alteration.

 

~ * ~

 

On summing up all the information to hand on the subject of the so-called "Volume III" it is not easy to find any valid justification for calling this collection of miscellaneous writings by H.P.Blavatsky an integral part of The Secret Doctrine as conceived by H.P.B. and the Masters, although as said it contains most valuable and obviously authentic H.P.B. material. We are, however, in no position accurately to judge how seriously the matter has been revised and altered, or whether H.P.Blavatsky would have permitted much of it to be published without a great number of alterations and additions which she alone was qualified to make.

 

(The Theosophical Forum, March 1945)