H.
P. BLAVATSKY AND THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
Historical events
In 1882 The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in London,
England, for the purpose of examining impartially in a scientific spirit those
paranormal faculties which are inexplicable by recognized norms.
The SPR intrigued by certain happenings reportedly occurring by or in
the presence of H. P. Blavatsky, which after careful inquiry appeared to
several SPR members to merit investigation, a Committee of Reference was
appointed to amass evidence from theosophists visiting London during the summer
of 1884 – notably Henry S. Olcott, H. P. Blavatsky, and Mohini M. Chatterji, an
attorney from Calcutta, India; also Alfred P. Sinnett who had alluded in his
book The Occult World (1881) to several extra-ordinary happenings.
While their findings were inconclusive, a number of strange events
reported by several theosophists of repute led the SPR Committee to issue a
"preliminary and provisional Report" in December 1884. Because of its
tentative character it was circulated privately, and whereas the Committee
withheld endorsement of what they had seen and heard, the reportage by and
large was fair and open-minded.
At the theosophical headquarters in India, however, matters had taken a
drastically different turn. During HPB's and Olcott's several months' absence
in Europe, Emma and Alexis Coulomb – whom HPB had sheltered in 1880 and to whom
she had given posts of responsibility – had been dismissed for flagrant
misconduct by the Board of Control appointed by Olcott. Their keys to HPB's
rooms were handed over to Dr. Franz Hartmann. It was discovered that Alexis
Coulomb was in process of constructing a secret passage in the wall behind the
"shrine" (1) as well as trapdoors and sliding panels
elsewhere in her rooms – evidently in hopes of "proving" that
communications to and from the Adepts were nothing but a sham concocted by HPB.
In revenge, Emma Coulomb handed over to the Rev. Mr. George Patterson,
editor of a missionary paper, the Madras Christian College Magazine, a
number of letters purportedly written by HPB. (2)
Extracts from these appeared under the title, "The Collapse of Koot
Hoomi," in its September and October 1884 issues. Had these been genuine,
they would have confirmed that HPB had, with the Coulombs' assistance, engaged
in producing fraudulent marvels on a massive scale.
It seems rather partisan of Mr. Patterson to have accepted these
"incriminating" letters as having been written by H. P. Blavatsky
solely on Emma Coulomb's word.
A few months after her dismissal, Mme. Coulomb put on an
"Entertainment" on October 18, 1884, for the people of Madras, and
stated that the phenomena that had supposedly occurred spontaneously were fake,
that both she and her husband had assisted Mme. Blavatsky in producing them. (3)
When word of this base assault on her honor and that of her teachers and
the Theosophical Society reached HPB –then in Elberfeld, Germany– she was
outraged, and she and Olcott soon headed for India. Totally false, said HPB,
backed by Olcott who had experienced since his New York days sufficient
phenomena to know that the often mysterious incidents at Adyar occurring around
HPB – many in his presence – though often difficult to explain scientifically
were by no means faked.
The Richard Hodgson Report
The odor of "fraud" is subtle and pervasive, and Henry
Sidgwick, Frederic Myers, and their SPR colleagues soon got wind of the
possibility that HPB might have engaged in trickery. While reserving judgment,
they decided to check out the situation themselves.
They deputized one of their younger members, Richard Hodgson,
Australian-born Cambridge scholar and a student of pyschic phenomena, to go to
India and investigate firsthand whether or not the reported phenomena had
occurred at the theosophical headquarters at Adyar, Madras, and whether the
letters allegedly received from chelas and/or Mahatmas were genuine.
Apparently it never occurred either to the SPR or to Hodgson how
ill-equipped he was to undertake so delicate and significant a task as would be
demanded of him.
On arrival at Adyar in December, Hodgson received a warm welcome by both
HPB and Damodar, a young Brahman who had renounced family and caste in order to
work full time at the theosophical headquarters. At the outset HPB asserted
that the letters published in the Christian College Magazine were
forgeries.
At first Hodgson was predisposed to believe in her innocence, but soon
he adopted Emma Coulomb's position: that she (Emma) not only had assisted HPB
in fraudulent activities, but that HPB had herself written the so-called
"Mahatma" letters.
Surprisingly, the SPR Committee failed to check the veracity of
Hodgson's wholesale condemnations, and also accepted Emma Coulomb's statements
at face value. Equally surprising is the summary comment of the SPR Committee
of Reference in introducing Richard Hodgson's Report:
“For our own part, we regard her [H.P.
Blavatsky] neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar
adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as
one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history.”
– Statement and Conclusions of the Committee (4)
This opinion, arrived at without the requisite disciplined research that
HPB merited, introduces Richard Hodgson's "Account of Personal
Investigations in India, and Discussion of the Authorship of the 'Koot Hoomi'
Letters".
Totaling 200 printed pages, a fair part of it centers on Hodgson's claim
that Madame Blavatsky "forged" the so-called Mahatma letters which
she (and others) stated they had received from her teachers, the Adepts who
sponsored the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875.
For more than a century the Hodgson "verdict" has been cited
by encyclopedias, dictionaries, and biographies as the accepted judgment of history.
To refute the claim, spirited defenses were immediately made by William
Q. Judge, A. P. Sinnett, Annie Besant, and others, and through the years
excellent books defended her, among them:
·
William Kingsland's The Real H. P. Blavatsky, A
Study in Theosophy, and a Memoir of a Great Soul, 1928.
·
Beatrice Hastings' Defence of Madame Blavatsky,
Volume II, The "Coulomb Pamphlet," 1937.
·
K. F. Vania's Madame H. P. Blavatsky: Her Occult
Phenomena and The Society for Psychical Research, 1951.
·
Adlai E. Waterman's (penname of Walter Carrithers,
Jr.) Obituary: The "Hodgson Report" on Madame Blavatsky,
1885-1960; Re-examination: Discredits the Major Charges Against H. P.
Blavatsky, 1963.
It is gratifying to learn that Sir William Barrett, initiator of the
SPR, and who had believed along with his Cambridge associates that HPB had been
involved in fraud in connection with the production of supernormal phenomena,
had a change of heart.
According to Dr. J. H. Cousins, years later, in 1915, when he and Sir
William were riding together in a Dublin tramcar, he told Dr. Cousins that Richard
Hodgson had "come to believe in quite as extraordinary things as he had
condemned in the case of Madame Blavatsky, and he [Sir William] hoped that the
Report, which was a blot on the Proceedings of the S.P.R., would some day be
withdrawn". (5)
Alas! this has not occurred, and the dictum of the SPR is still given
primacy by academia and continues to mislead the general public. On the
positive side HPB has always had and continues today to have staunch defenders,
not alone among theosophists, but among admirers who independently recognize
the validity of her message. All are stunned by the unconscionable treatment
she has been accorded by generations of detractors. Regrettably, many find it
simpler to accept a prevailing view rather than check the facts for themselves.
The analysis that Dr. Vernon Harrison did
Notable among present-day defenders is Dr. Vernon Harrison of England.
"Impelled by a strong feeling of the need for JUSTICE," this
handwriting expert and professional examiner of questioned documents has made
an exhaustive study of the handwritings of the Mahatma letters received in the
early 1880s by Alfred P. Sinnett and Allan O. Hume. (6)
The content of the letters is not the present concern of Dr.
Harrison, nor are their authors – known to students of H. P. Blavatsky's
writings as the Mahatmas Morya (M) and Koot Hoomi (KH). His focus of interest
is to determine whether or not HPB, in disguised handwriting, wrote the Mahatma
letters herself, as Richard Hodgson categorically declared.
In 1986 Dr. Harrison wrote "a forceful critique" of Richard
Hodgson's Report, "J'Accuse: An Examination of the Hodgson Report of
1885," published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.
(7)
Herein step by logical step he demolishes the grounds on which Hodgson
based his charges and argued his case against the integrity of HPB. This year
Dr. Harrison authored "J'Accuse d'autant plus [I accuse all the more]: A
Further Study of the Hodgson Report," which, along with his 1986 Report,
is now available in one volume, with 13 full color plates, under the title: H.
P. Blavatsky and the SPR: An Examination of the Hodgson Report of 1885. (8)
Dr. Harrison, who joined the SPR as a young man and remains an active
member, finds it incredible that the SPR Committee were blind to the
extraordinary opportunity before them to observe and learn firsthand from HPB
herself, a superbly gifted mediator – but no medium – and more, that without
stringent scrutiny they should have accepted the unverified report of a young
man who, though well educated by ordinary standards, was incompetent to handle
an investigation of this scope and magnitude.
In his research Dr. Harrison examined microscopically each of the 1,323
slides comprising a complete set of the letters in the British Library, and
wherever appropriate "read the writing in a line-by-line scan at a
magnification of x50 diameters." (9)
From his extensive and detailed study, he has come to view the Hodgson
Report as "a highly partisan document forfeiting all claim to scientific
impartiality. It is the address of a Counsel for the Prosecution who does not
hesitate to select evidence to suit his case, ignoring and suppressing
everything that tends to contradict his thesis" (p.4).
In his Affidavit, he affirms:
"Having read the Mahatma Letters, I am
left with the strong impression that the writers 'KH' and 'M' were real and
distinct human beings, not demi-gods or 'shells'. . . ."
And under he further declares:
"I have found no evidence that the
Mahatma Letters preserved in the British Library were written by Helena
Blavatsky consciously and deliberately in a disguised form of her own
handwriting cultivated over a period of several years, as claimed by Richard
Hodgson. That is to say, I find no evidence of common origin between the 'KH',
'M' and 'HPB' scripts. In any ordinary legal case I would regard them as
different scripts and attribute them to three different persons."
According to Dr. Harrison, there still remain "unanswered
questions" with regard to HPB and the phenomena attributed to her,
especially during the early years of her stay in India, first in Bombay and
later in Adyar, Madras. About these, he is unable to express an opinion, as
"All witnesses and items of first-hand evidence are gone and I have no way
of checking whether any of the reported 'phenomena' were genuine; but, having
studied Richard Hodgson's methods, I have come to distrust his account and
explanation of the said 'phenomena'".
Hence, he concentrated on what is available: the handwritings of the
Mahatma and Blavatsky letters in the British Library. He concludes his Affidavit
with the following:
BE IT KNOWN THEREFORE that it is my professional OPINION derived from a
study of this case extending over a period of more than fifteen years, that
future historians and biographers of the said Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the
compilers of reference books, encyclopaedias and dictionaries, as well as the
general public, should come to realize that The Report of the Committee
Appointed to Investigate Phenomena Connected with The Theosophical Society,
published in 1885 by the Society for Psychical Research, should be read with
great caution, if not disregarded. Far from being a model of impartial
investigation so often claimed for it over more than a century, it is badly
flawed and untrustworthy.
Conclusion
The prophetic statement that "Time is the advocate of truth,"
is again proving its validity. Today, those whose thought-life and destiny have
been changed for the better by absorption of theosophic values are passionately
grateful to HPB for having had the raw courage, loyalty to truth, and fearless
will to become the transmitter of a philosophy of life that is at once
universal and yet intimately personal to meet the inner need of every human
being.
Notes
1. A cabinet in an upstairs room used
earlier by HPB and others for the transmission and receipt of Mahatmic letters
and messages; but the evidence of unfinished carpenter work indicated that the
cabinet had not been used by HPB for some time.
2. The so-called Blavatsky-Coulomb letters have never
been found, despite vigorous efforts by several researchers to retrieve them
from oblivion. Only an endorsed cheque for their purchase by Dr. Elliott Coues
from the Rev. Mr. Patterson has been found among the Coues archives at the
State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (Michael Gomes, "The
Coulomb Case, 1884-1984," The Theosophist, Feb 1985, p. 185).
3. See K. F. Vania's Madame H. P. Blavatsky: Her
Occult Phenomena and The Society for Psychical Research, pp. 238-41.
4. "Report of the Committee Appointed to
Investigate Phenomena Connected with The Theosophical Society," Proceedings
of the Society for Psychical Research, Part IX, December 1885, p. 207.
5. Quoted in "On the Watch-Tower," The
Theosophist, October 1925, p. 5.
6. The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, 1923,
transcribed and compiled by A. Trevor Barker; Second Edition, 1926,
photographic facsimile, Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, CA; Third and
Revised edition, 1962, The Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India;
In Chronological Sequence, 1993, Theosophical Publishing House, Quezon City,
Metro Manila, Philippines.
7. April 1986 (53:803), pp. 286-310. See editorial,
"In the Interests of Truth . . ." Sunrise, August-September
1986, pp. 193-8.
8. Published by Theosophical University Press,
Pasadena, 1997, 108 pages, cloth, ISBN 1-55700-117-0, $15.00.
9. H. P. Blavatsky and the SPR, Affidavit, p. 1.
(From Sunrise magazine, June/July 1997)
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