The editor of The
Word magazine asked the esotericist Franz Hartmann for his honest opinion about
Madame Blavatsky, and Dr. Hartmann gave it to him by sending the following
letter:
« To the Editor of The Word:
Dear Sir:
Your favor has been received. I
am requested to write an article about the real underlying character of H.P. Blavatsky
and of her object in life. Such a task is very difficult, because there are two
classes of readers, neither of which wishes to hear the truth. There are those
bigoted admirers of Blavatsky who, so to say, make even her petticoat an object
of idolatrous worship; and if I were to say anything that would indicate that she
was not a perfect saint I would be regarded as a renegade, traitor or what not.
Then there are her enemies, who make of her an adventuress, an imposter, a
plagarist, and even worse. Both classes are alike far from the truth.
H.P. Blavatsky was neither a
saint nor a devil, and she did not claim to be either. She was a human being,
having many agreeable and perhaps a few disagreeable qualities; but she was an Initiate,
and, moreover, a person of such a rare "mediumistic" constitution that
she was enabled to live at the borderland of two worlds, visit both and bring
them into communication with each other.
Enough has already been written about
her personality, but it should be said that anyone who did not know her personally
will not be able to judge her correctly. As to the knowledge of her real
underlying character, the only way to judge it is to study her writings. This
will make it clear to any unprejudiced mind that they were inspired from a
higher source than from her own personal study or speculation.
The things which
she wrote were taught or dictated to her by some superior Intelligence. Whether
this Intelligence was her own Higher Self, or, as she claimed, some adept
living in Tibet, we cannot know of a certainty, and still less prove it to
others. I believe it to be quite true, as she said, that a great many things which
she wrote were written by her while her body was asleep.
She wrote in Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, Sanskrit and other languages correctly, which she could not even read
while in her normal state; and I doubt whether she would in her lower
personality have fully understood all she ever wrote in her "Secret Doctrine.'' if she had ever
attempted to study it.
I lived as a guest of H.P. Blavatsky
at the headquarters at Adyar from 1883 to 1885. I went with her to Europe,
stayed with her at Toure del Greco, Naples; saw her "afterwards repeatedly
at Wurzburg and London, and saw enough of her to be convinced that she was the
most extraordinary person I have ever seen, and that she was in possession of
very peculiar occult powers, such as thought reading, answering to mental questions,
etc.
I had been investigating
spiritistic and occult phenomena for fifteen years in America before going to
India, and the phenomena which I witnessed in the presence of H.P. Blavatsky were
therefore nothing new to me. I did not care to know whether the "occult letters"
I received had their origin in the brain of Blavatsky or whether they were ''precipitated''
by some Tibetan adept or chela. I was only interested in their contents.
What was her object in life?
Her object undoubtedly was to spread
the theosophical teachings all over the world, to cause people to do their own thinking,
and thus to guide them on their way to finding the truth. This object was to her
paramount to all other considerations, and she may have been right in thinking that
such a high object justifies the means for its attainments, especially if those
means never did anybody any harm.
Her ambition to lead mankind up to a higher
conception of life, to overthrow religious and scientific superstitution, and to
cause people to realize the presence of the Holy Ghost within themselves,
caused her to vulgarize the high philosophy of the East and to act against the
commandment of the Bible contained in Matthew, VII., 6, a circumstance which
she regretted to the end of her days.
(Cid's observation: it is the
verse that says "Don’t give that which is holy to the dogs, neither throw your
pearls before the pigs, lest perhaps they trample them under their feet, and
turn and tear you to pieces.")
H.P. Blavatsky had a powerful
imagination, and was very impulsive and self-willed. This may sometimes have
led her into trouble; but in her mortal personality she was nothing more than a
servant of a higher power, whose nature we can only judge by what it taught
through her instrumentality.
Her personal faults, if she had
any, are her own; her teachings belong to the world. By her death we have lost a
master-mind who brought spiritual truths nearer to our intellectual understanding
and exhibited the teachings of ancient sages and mystics in a modern and
comprehensible form. Requiescat in pace.
Yours
FRANZ HARTMANN. »
(The Word, May 1907, p.72-73)
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