THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY AND MADAME BLAVATSKY
The following letter has been
received from a valued contributor, and we deem it of sufficient importance to
print it in this place:
« Dear Bro. Judge,
With pleasure I acknowledge the
receipt of your letter, asking whether I am prepared to support H. P. Blavatsky
in whatever course she may pursue.
While I know that the action of
an individual matters but little, I know also that it does have its due effect:
a loyal heart is one of the occult powers. Hence I am glad to answer that I do
and shall at all times, in all places, and to all persons, unqualifiedly
sustain Madame Blavatsky. I will follow her lead so long as I can understand
her, and when I cannot understand I will follow with my intuition; when that
fails I will blindly and doggedly follow still.
For this course there are
reasons. Intuition and analogy alike furnish them. They lie at the very basis
of-the unseen or occult world, and that world is the only real one. It is not a
world of form like ours. Here all tends to form, to segregation, to
crystallization; consequently to limitations and boundaries.
This is true alike of forms
social and political, religious, civic, domestic; it is also true of the minds
of men; they also, against our best interests and endeavor, strive to cast us
in a mould, that the free soul may not do its boundless work in us, and in
order to bind us yet awhile to Nature and the lower natural order.
In that other world which is the
True, this order changes. This world is subversive of forms. Its influence
penetrates so far into the material world in this respect, that its subversion
becomes the condition of free growth; what does not change, be it an
institution, a creature, or the mind of man, solidifies and passes into the
change we call death, which is a more violent and sudden wrenching asunder of
that which is no longer capable of free growth. The life condition is one of
sloughing off as well as receiving, and all nervous action proceeds by
ganglionic shocks.
So it must be with the
Theosophical Society if it is to live and expand in helpfulness and power. Men
must fall away from us e're then as the forest sheds the autumnal leaf. Shocks
must occur, not alone coming from the outside, but internal shocks, the necessary
efforts of the theosophical organism to adjust itself to the laws of growth.
Many there be who lament these
effects; it is because they know them, not as laws. I am as enamored of Peace
as any man, but I do not choose it at the expense of spiritual growth.
For us there is no real and
lasting Peace-outside of the Eternity. This is a dark age; there is stern work
to be done. The lurid action of this cycle is not to be turned by repose, by
“sweetness and light” Let all weak and wounded souls fall to the rear – and let
us get to that work.
There is none too much time to do
it in. The future of the race is now at stake. It is seed time, and the ground must be harrowed and torn. I know
that there is one who has devoted all her being to this work; one who under
beneficent and all wise suggestions is hastening it on; concentrating Karma and
bringing it to a head in all directions; culminating these internal shocks that
the organism may grow faster, that it may be able to stand alone forcefully when
it has lost her, and that by its increased action and usefulness it may merit
and obtain an increase of spiritual influence, a new outpour of power and aid
from that unseen world where Karma is the sole arbiter.
And any man or woman may know
this as absolutely as you and I and some others do, who will take the trouble
to consider the matter from the standpoint of soul and not from that of mind alone.
Then too there is the standpoint
of heart, and it is of great value. What says the Ramayana
“Be grateful. Sages prescribe
expiations for murderers, robbers, drunkards, and other sinners, but no
expiation can wash away the sin of one whose offense is ingratitude.”
Why is this?
All these sayings are based upon
universal laws. So I can tell you (and you know it) why this offense is so
deep; why this “sin” cannot be pardoned. It is because Karma is inflexibly
just, and he who breaks a chain of influence by refusing to recognize the
source whence it comes to him, and by turning aside from that source, has by
his own action perverted the stream from his door. His punishment is simply
this; the stream fails him; he discovers in after times the full and arid
misery of his position.
In our world here below we think
we stand as isolated centres of energy, having no vital connection with one
another and the world at large except by our own will. We do, indeed, succeed
in locking up an enormous amount of energy by thus impeding its free flow. But
as the evolutionary order and the very nature of Deity are against us, sooner
or later we are swept aside, but not without repeated opportunities of choice.
These occasions are now
repeatedly furnished for us, in matters theosophical, by H. P. Blavatsky; in
every test surmounted, in every glimpse of intuition or act of faith, we grow.
We do not grow, as a body or as individuals, when from lack of these virtues,
and being ungrateful, we fail to give in our constant adhesion to her who
stands in this dark age as the messenger of the higher Powers.
For in that other world, through
and with which she works, there are hierarchies held inviolable from cycle to
cycle; vast organizations formed by universal law, wherein every member stands
in his own order and merit, and can no more be expunged or disregarded by those
above or below him than I can blot out a star.
All efface themselves for this
work, reincarnating again and again for it alone. There is no other divine
method of work than this, which directs the ever welling torrents of cosmic
energy down through unbroken chains of great Beings and reverent men.
To drop one link is impossible.
In the occult world it is not permitted to receive the message and reject the
messenger. Nor is it allowable to be ignorant of these universal, self
sustaining laws.
Was it not an adept who said:
“Ignorance of law cannot be pleaded among men, but ignorance of fact may. In
occultism, even if you are ignorant of some facts of importance, you are not
excused by The Law, for it has regard for no man and pursues its adjustments
without regard to what we know or are ignorant of.”
The sole question is this. Did H.
P. Blavatsky bring us theosophical revelations from the East or did she not?
No one denies that she did. They
split up on conventional and personal questions, but not upon this one. Then
none of those who have even remotely felt the influence of those revelations,
least of all a Society formed and sustained by her, are really in a position to
deny her their full support She does not pay our dues and rental; but are we “sustained,”
as a body, by those things, or by the fresh impetus to occultism and the new
ideas given out by her and through her agency and request?
Even in the material world some
show of gratitude is demanded of us, but in the Eternity it is written: Let all
things return through that source whence they proceeded forth.
This august Law cannot be
violated. The Divine, working on our plane, must have human agents or vehicles.
In private human relations they are human, subject to error. In all that
pertains to their appointed mission they are to be held as infallible; if they
err there, the consequence falls upon them alone.
He who follows the guide
appointed him in the occult order is the gainer by his utter faith and love,
even should that guide lead him into error. For his error can soon be set right
and is so, while his lack of faith and love cannot be made up for; they are
organic defects of the soul.
We are constantly tried upon the
question of form versus spirit, as a test of the power of illusion over us. In
the Theosophical Society, we naturally hold to our rules and laws. These only
govern the exoteric body.
Thinkers amongst us must long
have foreseen the moment when these forms must change; a moment when we should
be asked to testify to our belief in the esoteric body; that is to say, in the
actuality of our Society as a spiritual factor, with spiritual chiefs. We may
welcome any such hour of test as a sign of progression on our part. It would
set formal laws aside.
Well it is when spirit and letter
go together. They are often divorced by the urgencies of this life, and were we
not madmen then to choose the letter?
New forms grow all too soon, but
when the spirit is fled, life is lost to that form. We have an opportunity of
making such choice when we are asked whether we are ready to endorse H. P.
Blavatsky or prefer to stand upon our own independence.
That independence is a fancied
thing, as you know. We are not the natural product of this era, but a graft
watered with the heart’s blood of our Founder, one out of season in the mere
natural order, but permitted, rendered possible, by the eternal order, and
constantly invigorated through her. There are those who say, “Surely I can
study theosophy on my own account”
Not so; no one can get divine
wisdom on his own account, or for it. Separation and remoteness are only
apparent We must in thought recognize the sources of our enlightenment and go
out in love towards them.
Minds and hearts closed to these
truths are not open to diviner influences at all. They must recognize that the
heralds who speak with trumpet voice to the age alone make spiritual progress
possible to the great mass of men, and each of us must admit and stand ready to
pay the debt of Humanity.
I do not consider it in the least
necessary for me to know what Madame Blavatsky might do, or even why she does
it. I accept the test gladly, as a new step onward, full of joy for my comrades
who do so, full of sorrow for those who do not “Every human action is involved
in its faults, as the fire in its smoke,” says the Gita.
Nor does the Lord create those
actions or the faculty of acting, we are told, but that “each man’s own nature
creates them; nature prevaileth."
Every organism thus differentiates
the one life according to its progress, more or less, while above all the Lord
awaits the final evolution of nature into Himself—Itself. Thus it is that her
personality –and all personalities– are beside the question.
Here too we are tested upon our
power to rise above appearances, to look beyond conventions. These shocks are
no doubt needed also. So I look to the spirit and to the fixed attitude behind
all those various deeds. It is one of generosity, self abnegation, absolutely
fearless devotion to an Ideal, – the highest Ideal known.
Each hour of her life is given to
the enlightenment of mankind, and such pearls she distributes throughout those
weary hours as might singly ransom the eccentricities of an hundred lives.
These personalities are naught. Behind hers there is a mystery. She is second
to no mere man, and if called to any issue we must choose her from among men
and forms; let us hope we shall never be so called, but that all will follow
our true Leader.
The Theosophical Society stands
to Madame Blavatsky as a child; our life is hers; in and for us she lives. Her
great longing is to see us able to stand alone, to have a claim of our own upon
the Great Ones; able to draw our own sustenance and strength from the gods
before she leaves us.
You who know that I have never
met her personally may ask how I know this. Shall I study the True faithfully
and not know that true heart?
It is Karma appoints us our
guides through our own attractive influences, and as such H. P. Blavatsky
stands to all the theosophists of the century, recorded or unrecorded. We must
be prepared to sacrifice some such things as forms, rules, tastes, and
opinions, for the sake of Truth and occult progress.
For such progress an opportunity
is now offered us through the acceptance of a simple test of intuition and
faith. For this Madame Blavatsky has my profound and renewed gratitude, and I
am, as ever, hers and Yours faithfully,
Jasper Niemand, F. T. S. »
(The Path, August
1888, p.143-147)
OBSERVATION
I find Jasper Niemand's attitude towards Blavatsky a bit fanatical.
Personally, my appreciation for Blavatsky is due to the fact that my research
has led me to conclude that she was most likely the messenger of the
trans-Himalayan Masters, and therefore her teaching is worth studying. But if
someone can prove me I am wrong, I will be the first to thank them because I am
not interested in defending an instructor but rather in finding the best instructors,
and so far the more I investigate Blavatsky the more I conclude that she has
been the greatest occultist who has ever existed.
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