Richard Hodson was a member of the Society for Psychical
Research of London (SPR) who wrote a very negative report on Blavatsky where
he accused her of being a liar who had invented the existence of the Mahatmas.
And after having read this report, the Boston Courier
newspaper published the following article in its edition of July 18, 1886,
giving its opinion:
The text says:
THEOSOPHY AND THE PSYCHICAL SOCIETY
The London Society of Psychical
Research has perhaps fulfilled the hopes of none of its friends in its
discoveries, its investigations and its manifestoes, but it has made no more
egregious blunder than its report on Theosophy.
We have no especial desire to
enter into a defense of esoteric Buddhism, since in the first place it is
abundantly able to stand upon its own merits, and in any case the sort of
attacks which are made are so generally unintelligent and so prejudiced as to
merit no attention whatever, while, it may be added, it is not our plan to
become its champion, most of the so called expositions are but more or less
pitiful displays of the ignorance, or the flippancy, or the malice of the
writers, and as such may be left to work confusion of their authors.
The report of the Psychical
Society, as coming authoritatively from a body including many men of wide
reputation, is likely to receive more attention and be accredited with more
weight than really belongs to it.
It has already been shown in a
pamphlet published by Mr. Sinnett, upon how flimsy a foundation the evidence of
the report rested, and it is of interest in this connection to read the
following protest which has been sent from Negapatam [now Nagapattinam] signed
by nearly seventy people of standing, not one of whom is in any way connected
with the Theosophical Society:
“We, the undersigned, are much surprised to read the report of the
Society for Psychical Research on Theosophy, because the existence of the
Mahatmas or Sadhus was not invented by Madame Blavatsky or any other
individual. Our forefathers who had lived and gone long before the birth of
Madame Blavatsky and the Coulombs had full belief in the existence of the
Mahatmas and their psychical powers, and even had personal interviews with
them. There are persons in India, even at the present day, who have no
connection with the Theosophical Society, and yet have interviews with such
Superior Beings.
There are many reasons to prove these well established facts, but we
have no time and it would be useless to go into details. Let Mr. Hodgson and
the Committee, if they are in earnest, make deep researches into the matter and
find that their conclusions were not only hasty but also entirely unfounded.
The report of Mr. Hodgson and the conclusion of the Committee thereon, cannot
at all affect in the least our belief in the existence of the Mahatmas, but
will only betray their grossest ignorance of the Occult history of the Hindus.”
The truth is that Mr. Hodgson,
sent out by the London society to India, to investigate Madame Blavatsky, was
so entirely unfitted for the work confided to him that he fell a victim to
errors the most egregious.
He set down to the credit of
Madame Blavatsky's inventive powers theories and statements which may be found
even in plenty of English works upon Indian religions published in London a
century or more ago; and the society can hardly be willing to attribute to
Madame a term of life so extended as to suppose her to have instigated the
writing of books so old.
The report proved by far too
much, and is on the face of it absurd. The question, of course, is not here
upon the reality of the Sadhus, but of the origin of the belief in them; and
nothing is easier that to prove that this faith has been prevalent in India
from time immemorial.
Of course, as far as the truth or
absurdity of Theosophy goes, what Madame Blavatsky or anyone else may or may
not be is not of the slightest importance. An ethical system stands or falls by
its own merit, judged by the facts of human life and what man has been able to
discover of the universe.
There has never been a religion
or a philosophy that has not numbered among its professed upholders, and
usually among the most prominent of them, men of worthless character, who made
it merely a means to their own base ends.
If Theosophy falls to the ground
it will not be because Madame Blavatsky or another is proved to be worthless
and designing; and equally, if it stands, it will not be because the character
of these or any other of its adherents is placed above suspicion and reproach.
It may be added here that those
who are most deeply interested in Theosophy care little for the occultism which
in the popular mind is so closely connected with it.
Theosophy is in its essentials a
system of ethical philosophy, and the occultism which has been used –perhaps
unfortunately– to attract attention to it is no more to be confounded with
Theosophy than is the bell on a church is to be supposed to represent the
doctrines which it summons people to hear preached.
