The  U.S.S. Bennigton swayed Gently as itd berth in San Diego Bay on July 21, 1905. Suddenly two explosions on board the gunboat shattered the quiet of that summer morning. Hot steam escaped from the ruptured boilers throughout the ship, scalding men to death. Several sailors braved the danger below deck to save their comrades. Two won Congressional Medals of Honor for their acts of heroism. The only officer killed was Ensign Newman K. Perry, but the eventual death toll from the boiler explosions totaled sixty-five.

On July 29, the Theosophists held a memorial service at the Isis Theater. The stage was decorated with an altar, an American flag, flowers, and a large white wreath. Raja Yoga pupils entered the stage, reciting quotations and singing songs as they placed wreaths on the altar. Point Loma residents also participated in the military memorial service in August. A delegation of Raja Yoga boys marched from the Aryan Temple to Fort Rosecrans's cemetery. Later a group of Point Loma men walked in military formation to the cemetery. During the service, the Raja Yoga boys stood at attention at graveside with soldiers from Fort Rosecrans and sailors from the Bennington and the U.S.S. Chicago. After the service, all of the Point Loma males marched in a double line to place wreaths on the graves, then marched back to Point Loma. In the years following the disaster, the U.S. military honored the Bennington dead every Decoration Day. During the period of Tingley's leadership, Raja Yoga pupils placed wreaths on the graves of the sailors as well as on the Bennington monument every year on that day.

They called it  "higher patriotism," a phrase originated in a cyclical understanding of the United States as the birthplace for greater brotherhood among human beings and combined a belief in the exceptional nature of the country with one in the international scope of Theosophical interest and activity. By projecting Theosophical assumptions into both the past and the future.

 

American Patriotism among American Theosophists before Point Loma

Theosophists at Point Loma were not deaf to the patriotic utterances and expectations in their society. Those Theosophists who eventually moved to Point Loma were children of their time in this respect as in so many others. Yet the unique blend of internationalism and exceptionalism that marked Point Loma's "higher patriotism" was equally rooted in the esoteric tradition of Theosophy. The major leaders of this tradition who predated Point Loma's settlement influenced later Point Loma patriotism as much as the surrounding culture did.

In The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky advocated a variant form of exceptionalism by situating the United States in the grand drama of racial evolution. She argued that the mixture of racial types in the present United States constituted a suitable racial nursery for the emergence of the sixth sub-race of the Fifth Root-Race. In twenty-five thousand years the seventh sub-race would emerge as the final stage before the full flower of the coming Sixth Root-Race. Since each Root-Race slowly grew from the previous Root-Race before the latter's termination, members of the Sixth Root-Race would appear on earth before the Fifth Root-Race completed its cycle. The overlap occurred over hundreds of thousands of years. The first members of the Sixth Root-Race would slowly incarnate into human societies in greater numbers, initially "regarded as anomalous lusus naturae, abnormal oddities physically and mentally. Then, as they increase ... one day they will awake to find themselves in a majority." When the Sixth Root-Race fully emerges on earth, "there will be no more Americans ... for they will have now become a new race, and many new nations."

Blavatsky's remarks about the coming sub-race affected Theosophists in other nations. Canadian members of the Adyar-based society combined their continentalism with Canadian nationalism in repeating and commenting upon Blavatsky's idea of American uniqueness. Fred Housser, for example, claimed that Canada's natural environment provided the racial nursery necessary for the coming waves of spiritual Egos. And Canada's rich Native American heritage was a sign that Canada possessed the ancient wisdom to such a degree that it could serve as the racial home for advanced human beings on the North American continent.

Members of the Adyar-based society in Australia and New Zealand also believed that the next sub-race would appear in America, but insisted that Queensland would host an auxiliary of that sub-race. They pointed to the mixing of racial types in Australia as evidence of this assertion and applauded the 1915 lectures of Leadbeater, who repeated these ideas. In the 1920s nationalism, social reform, and Theosophical tenets combined in the "Advance! Australia" movement.

George Arundale, general secretary of the Theosophical Society in Australia from 1926 to 1928 and later president of the worldwide Theosophical Society based in Adyar, pushed for this program. He instructed local lodges to hold ceremonies highlighting Australian nationalism, to instruct others in the duties of citizenship, and to promote Australian distinctiveness as the natural result of brotherhood. His slogan was "theosophize Australia W2

Blavatsky believed that the importance of the United States lay in its potential for future greatness. The American society of her day did not necessarily impress her. For example, in describing the lingering negative spiritual effects of the age then dying out, the Kali Yuga, she noted that poverty, materialism, and selfishness plagued the United States as much as the latter's parent European societies. But she believed that advanced spiritual Egos incarnating Americans were pathfinders of a future sub-race that would exhibit even greater spiritual maturity as the races cycled inevitably toward the highest spiritual fulfillment possible in this Round. She proudly acknowledged the United States as her "adopted country, and the only land of true freedom in the whole world." She retained American citizenship after leaving the United States and wrote the American Conventions of the Theosophical Society that "a large part of my heart and much of my hope for Theosophy lie with you in the United States, where the Theosophical Society was founded." She reminded American Theosophists in convention that the "life of the Soul, the psychic side of nature, is open to many of you. The life of altruism is not so much a high ideal as a matter of practice.... There, then is part of your work: to lift high the torch of liberty of the Soul of Truth that all may see it."

W.Q. Judge repeated these notions of American uniqueness in The Ocean of Theosophy. He stated that "Each race has its karma as a whole. If it be good that race goes forward. If bad it goes out-annihilated as a race-though the souls concerned take up their karma in other races and bodies." The life waves of spiritual Egos who built ancient civilizations reincarnated in contemporary European and American societies. As if echoing repeated comparisons in American history between the American nation and ancient Israel, judge asserted that "The karma of the nineteenth century in the West is the karma of Israel, for even the merest tyro can see that the Mosaic influence is the strongest in the European and American nations." In another popular work, Echoes from the Orient, judge narrowed his theme to the United States: "We are preparing here in America a new race which will exhibit the perfection of the glories that I said were being slowly brought to the surface from the long forgotten past."

For Judge the United States was a seedbed. He opined that the American stock of Anglo-Saxon origin, based on the racial strength of England and Ireland, were among the first of the sixth sub-race who would eventually people the world as advanced human beings. They in turn prepared the way for the final sub-race of the Fifth Root-Race, who were but previews of the great Sixth Root-Race, who would populate the western half of a North American continent that would be split in half. The name of the ocean on whose shores the members of the Sixth Root-Race will reside, said judge, is appropriately called "pacific," because the Sixth Root-Race, being spiritually advanced over anything humans could imagine at present, will be naturally peaceful and harmonious. Eventually Point Loma writers echoed judge in this viewpoint, as in so much else. They spoke of the American continent being purified of the poisons left from the negative karma of older races who indulged their passions. In contrast to Europe, where spiritual, elemental poison still affected life, in North America the land and air were pure and thus ready for advanced beings to incarnate on that continent.

Judge looked to American history, as well as Theosophical doctrine, for proof that the Masters were preparing the United States for a special role in the grand drama of unfolding cycles. He insisted that the Founding Fathers stood divine. An 1883 article, perhaps penned by judge or someone associated with him, asserted that the Masters "oversaw the drafting of the Declaration and the drawing of the Constitution." The Masters, according to this writer, chose Thomas Paine to publicize for Americans the value of tolerance and reason. Paine said in The Age of Reason that a certain kind of thinking came to him on its own, and the writer credited the Masters with that thinking. Paine, said judge, was perhaps the greatest advocate for that essential freedom that Theosophy also teaches. Point Loma Theosophists later applauded Paine as well. In his day Paine probably never heard the word "theosophy" and might have resented any hint that he resembled it. Curiously, however, Paine's millennialism resembles somewhat the envisioned future that Theosophists hoped for. He believed that the American and French Revolutions were cosmic conflicts between good and evil, liberty and oppression, tolerance and intolerance, reason and blind faith. He looked for the creation and maintenance of a republican paradise on earth, in which all human beings live equally and freely and the many social and economic ills besetting human civilization would vanish."

Another aspect of American exceptionalism emphasized in Blavatsky's thought was the mixing of racial types in American society. Her viewpoint distantly resembled the elevation of the Anglo-Saxon race prevalent in many contemporary appraisals of America's greatness, like that of Protestant clergyman Josiah Strong (1847-1916). Strong drew particular attention to the United States, "the great home of the Anglo-Saxon." He was ambivalent about the introduction of large numbers of immigrants to American society. When he spoke in favor of the growing ethnic diversity in America, he interpreted the process as inevitably strengthening Anglo-Saxons. The United States, he noted, contains "a new commingling of races. And while the largest injections of foreign blood are substantially the same elements that constituted the original Anglo-Saxon admixture ... there are strains of other bloods being added which ... may be expected to improve the stock and aid it to a higher destiny." Strong believed that this racial mixing would strengthen Anglo-Saxons. As God's chosen instrument, an Anglo-Saxon America wilt "impress its institutions upon mankind," these being Protestant Christianity and the civil liberties of democratic government.

Blavatsky did not focus upon the Anglo-Saxon race. The scheme of racial evolution described in her works was too vast to single out a given designation current in the racial theories of her day. Many racial theorists assumed that white, Anglo-Saxon stock would assimilate other racial groups and blend the strengths of those groups into their own, weeding out racial weaknesses from the other groups. For Blavatsky, the process was more complex. Over long periods of time, various life waves would reincarnate at progressively higher levels. The particular racial and national designations of any given historical period were only relatively important. Anglo-Saxons primarily served as models for future human beings. In an 1889 article she stated that at certain periods in the cycles of races, "a forecast or antetype ... of humanity in its perfect state is dimly shadowed forth. Such a period the white race is now entering upon." Yet Blavatsky believed that only certain individuals within that race would reflect the glories to come. During the historical period in which Blavatsky lived, she believed that the United States was important, because at this moment in the great cyclic passage of time, racial strains mixed to produce the vanguard of the next sub-race."

Unlike Blavatsky, Judge overtly praised the peculiar qualities of Anglo-Saxons. One Theosophist recalled judge saying that the Portuguese and Spanish destroyed the treasures of the ancient American peoples whom they conquered. In India, they would have done the same. Fortunately, the British controlled India, and because they are predominantly Anglo-Saxon they preserved India's antiquity. The writer claimed that Anglo-Saxons were not perfect, but they had an appreciation for ancient history (and by extension, ancient wisdom) lacking in the Portuguese and Spanish, whom the English and Dutch had to "beat back ... from the Old World and the New" in order to preserve valuable records of the past."

American Theosophists agreed with Blavatsky and judge about the role of the United States. Belief that the United States was the birthplace for a new sub-race justified UB and TS efforts to educate children, as discussed in a previous chapter. British Theosophist James Pryse wrote that "If America is the nursery for the coming race then we may expect great souls to incarnate here in the near future and should strive to make the conditions as advantageous as possible." Elizabeth Spalding echoed this idea-, "America is the nursery of a great coming nation, and the children of America should be started in right paths." Hargrove enthusiastically told a San Diego newspaper reporter shortly before the laying of the SRLMA`s cornerstone that the school would serve American children. "They go where the force is a rising force," he said, implying that the United States, with Point Loma at its spiritual center, naturally attracted incoming spiritual Egos with advanced abilities."

Theosophists reveled in the many nationalities represented in American society. One writer said that while riding a train he noticed the variety of national origins of his fellow passengers. Sharing his car were an African couple, a Russian fisherman, Danes and Swedes from a nearby lumber camp, two or three Jews, and Chinese taundrymen. "I said to myself. 'What a mixture!' . . . 'But they're Americans at that."' The language of a prominent Then the chief sang the legend of his people, and although it was in monotone Tingley felt "something sacred & older about it." After the Raja Yoga pupils with her sang a few selections, the elderly people chanted "Om" again. Tingley concluded that "it was a great mistake to call them barbarians."

Higher patriotism found classic expression in Tingley's autobiographical The Gods Await, published near the end of her life. "In a country that based its life wholly on principle and the spirit of human brotherhood, patriotism would be altogether a noble thing, and its aim would not be to set hearts beating at the sound of a drum but to induct all minds into broader conceptions of the meaning of life." This elevation of human brotherhood over nationalism had Theosophical roots. Tingley's prose often targeted a general audience, but she grounded her statements in a Theosophical understanding of human nature. "The highest law of our being demands that we should build our nations on the rock of that enduring wisdom which belongs to the divine soul of man." For Tingley, the "highest law" was not that of a Providential God but the unfailing karmic law of cosmic Rounds and Root-Races. Higher patriotism or universal brotherhood reflected the development of the higher nature so important in all other aspects of life at Point Loma. Nationalism that separated peoples, pitting them against one another in war, was of the lower nature. In wartime, the hatred bred among belligerents did not evaporate at death. Because of karmic necessity, spiritual Egos who died in war carried wartime emotions into future reincarnations, reproducing and increasing the animosity. Therefore, each nation should strive for peace, the only arrangement of human societies consistent with higher patriotism. Tingley said that "The soul of a nation-the living essence of its being-is the aggregation of its thoughts, feelings, actions, and ideals, backed by the divine quality of the god within. To the degree that the people of any country nourish their national soul with thought of that spiritual and godlike kind, to that degree their country is protected, impregnable, beyond the reach of violation."

Point Loma Theosophists repeated this internationalist outlook often and enthusiastically. Pierce called his nation the United States of the World, perhaps echoing that phrase from noted liberal Protestant minister Lyman Abbott. Kenneth Morris (1879-1937), whose Welsh heritage was always a powerful part of his writing personality, nonetheless agreed with the theme that patriotism makes one open to all nations. He pointed out that people from many nations lived at Point Loma and argued that "the students [or Point Loma residents] do not lose their nationality. You find patriots who are member of the UB and TS captured more dramatically the enthusiasm that early Theosophists felt over the promise of racially mixed Americans: "How can he [the future American] be described! This superb type of the new race. The pleasant task is difficult, for is he not the result of a century's inflow to us of the energy, the courage, the self reliance and independence of the progressive nations of the earth? Receiving this variety of the world's best into the fierce burning furnace of our national life during its formative period, what wonder that we have evolved a new type of man, a new nation and a new race."

Although Theosophists rejoiced over racial mixing in theory, in practice their attitudes give a more ambivalent impression. Theosophists from the South reflected prevailing attitudes from that region regarding African Americans. For example, Georgia Theosophists Walter and Estelle Hanson moved to Point Loma with "their negro 'Mammie'." They came from Macon where earlier efforts to spread Theosophy resulted in the formation of racially separate Theosophical lodges. The majority of Point Loma residents were European Americans. Apparently no African Americans lived permanently on the site. Lambert told a Cuban official visiting Point Loma in 1908 that aside from Cuban "colored" children, no other "colored" children attended the Raja Yoga schools. A Point Loma official justified this fact by saying that "We know the colored people in this country, and we know the colored people in this country are worse than the colored people in Cuba."

In 1927 a touring choir of young African Americans from the Piney Woods School in Mississippi arrived unexpectedly at Point Loma. Out of courtesy, several residents gathered to listen to the choir's performance, and Tingley praised the school and its founder for fostering principles of brotherhood. Yet she arranged for them to eat in the "Little Dining Room," not the larger refectory where most Point Loma residents ate.

If their attitudes toward African Americans resembled those of many white Americans of the period, their assumptions about Native Americans departed from the norm. They thought of Native Americans as the residue of the Fourth Root-Race, the "degenerate offshoots" of "the highest Atlantean races." Native Americans supposedly preserved the ancient wisdom in their myths and cultures. One writer advised juvenile readers, "We can learn much from the Indians. Perhaps if we do team more about simplicity of life and reverence, we shall understand Indians and many other races better, and help them to learn that a wonderful new age of Brotherhood is at hand." Tingley met a group of elderly Native Americans during one of her tours. After telling them through an interpreter about her work, they responded by chanting what sounded to her like "Om," a sacred mantric syllable from ancient India.
aware that their patriotism is divinely founded; and therefore, that the patriotism of other nations is equally divinely founded."

Theosophists at Point Loma expressed this international outlook in various ways. One former Raja Yoga pupil recalled the prominent display of flags from many nations in the rotunda of the Academy building as well as during community ceremonies. The pupils learned to identify all of them. They also learned about the cultural heritage of various countries represented among Point Loma residents. Swedish Theosophists, for example, celebrated the midsummer festival of their nation with a maypole and traditional costumes. The Swedes also met regularly to read aloud and converse in Swedish. One Swedish participant confided to her diary that "It is as though when we come together the old norse spirit is awakened."

Following Tingley's era, the international spirit prevailed. One former pupil from that period remembered that no classes were held on the day of George V's coronation to honor both the new king and the loyalty of British Theosophists. Point Loma Theosophists also acknowledged regional differences within the United States. Several members of the community came from states of the old Confederacy. Tingley insisted that the Raja Yoga band play "Dixie" in their honor as well as the National Anthem during July Fourth celebrations.

Despite their respect for regional and international distinctions, Point Loma Theosophists believed that higher patriotism found embodiment in future Americans whose commonalties prevailed over all other ethnic and national loyalties. One writer asserted that "The new American yet to be born will ... have an immense sense of soul power, of confidence, of generous comradeship, resting on and completed by physical health.... Fierce individualism will have vanished; the national consciousness will be once more, and in far higher degree, what it was in the hours of the Declaration of Independence." The writer's juxtaposition of brotherhood with the ideal American was deliberate. Blavatsky's assertion that racial advance would occur in the United States made the elevation of the country crucial to the Point Loma worldview.

Point Loma Theosophists highlighted this combination of Theosophical principle with emphasis on American life and society in their use of patriotic symbols from American history, especially the Revolutionary War era. Tingley said that the writers of the Constitution established many principles that were profoundly spiritual. She speculated that they included high ideals in this document based on lessons learned in previous lifetimes.

Theosophists saw remnants of the ancient wisdom in these principles of deistic divinity and rational individualism. The Founding Fathers' insistence on the universal application of democratic government and republicanism were really calls for higher patriotism. The early republican insistence on the rational capabilities of each human being and a social environment that allowed each person the right to exercise those capabilities paralleled Theosophical views of human evolution toward higher spiritual levels.

Before moving to Point Loma, Theosophists of the UB and TS actively associated patriotic images with Theosophy. During a Lotus Group meeting in 1898, children representing various nations, each holding that nation's flag, took center stage by turns during a tableau that emphasized brotherhood as well as American uniqueness. The Scottish spokesperson said that Scotland stood for truth, the German spokesperson that Germany claimed that all "Men are brothers." The Italian representative thanked America for seeking "the new dawn of a brighter day." Other nations claimed that their strengths were those very qualities that Americans associated with their own nation. Switzerland was always a land of liberty, Holland always provided a home for the homeless. The ceremony ended with India as the oldest nation, and the United States as the youngest, stacking their flags beneath a picture of Washington. The children grasped a long strip of cloth while the American representative said, "A song for our banner! The watchword recall Which gave the Republic her station: 'United we stand-divided we fall!"' The ceremony concluded with the singing of "Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue."

The centrality of the flag in this children's tableau was hardly accidental. Theosophists invested considerable meaning in the flag, assuming that a nation's banner symbolized its character and aspirations. The American flag summarized for Theosophists the universal ideals that they believed lay at the heart of America. At the crucial Chicago convention of 1898, where Tingley was given leadership over the Theosophical Society, those in attendance stood and sang the National Anthem-a song in praise of the flag at the end of the convention proceedings. The writer reporting this event noted that it was "a fitting close to this eventful and memorable day." In one early ceremony the children articulated the meaning of the colors of the American flag: red represented courage, white purity, and blue hope. At another celebration, combining Flag Day with the anniversary of Tingley's 1896 crusade, children learned that the American flag evolved from the St. George cross of Richard the Lion-hearted, a crusader for justice and right like Tingley. Not surprisingly, Point Loma Theosophists displayed the flag frequently. One former resident recalled that during the Tingley era, an American flag flew from dawn to dusk above the section of group homes known as the boys' department. Point Loma Theosophists also unfurled it for special occasions. At the laying of the SRLMA cornerstone, the American flag was run up the flagpole as the band played "Red, White and Blue" and "Hail Columbia." Harris Jr. recalled that during the 1899 Universal Brotherhood Congress he carried the flag in a procession from the Homestead building northward to a site called the IBL Colony. When the Great White Fleet visited San Diego in 1908, the squadron passed Point Loma as it entered the Pacific. Raja Yoga boys on the balcony of the Aryan Temple spotted the flagship and signaled for someone to dip the American flag fluttering on a high flagpole on the Point Loma grounds. The flagship responded, and all the Point Loma residents gave the navy three cheers and watched the fleet for two hours until it sailed out of sight.

The SRLMA flag resembled the American flag. It had seven gold and purple stripes rather than thirteen red and white ones, and a field of purple with the UB and TS emblem in gold in the upper left-hand comer rather than a blue field with white stars. During the cornerstone ceremony, it fluttered from a flagpole beside the American flag, and afterward flew each day. Its colors had symbolic meaning for the Theosophists. One writer said that purple represented royalty and the sacred in ancient times, complementing the gold of sunlight or spiritual purity. The emblem of the UB and TS was a six-pointed star resembling the Star of David, combining a downward-pointing triangle with an upward-pointing triangle to symbolize the higher and lower natures. Encircling this star was a serpent swallowing its tail, symbolizing cyclic time and reincarnation. Within the six-pointed star was an Egyptian or Tau cross, symbolizing the key to divine wisdom. Above the serpent was a swastika, an ancient symbol for the dual nature of humanity. The swastika's arms bent at right angles, resembling a turning wheel and symbolizing progression and evolution. The seven-pointed star surrounding the serpent hinted at the sacrality of the number seven, and the clasped hands beneath the entire picture symbolized brotherhood. Completing the emblem in the purple field was the legend "Universal Brotherhood."

Certain historic figures from the Revolutionary War era embodied higher patriotism. Washington, an individual who even during his lifetime symbolized many ideals for Americans, was the warrior on horseback, bravely fighting for freedom and against tyranny. He was also the father of the new nation, shepherding the young republic through its first difficult years in a harsh world of competing nations. He was a model of virtue, an honorable citizen soldier. No figure from that era endured as many symbolic transformations as Washington. Point Loma Theosophists readily admitted that he never embraced Theosophy as articulated by Blavatsky. But they thought that his inner qualities made him a Theosophist. He was tranquil and persevering in wartime. His courage and sense of mission turned defeat into victory at the Battle of Trenton. One Point Loma writer asked, "Is it too much to say that the real battle was fought in that little tent on the banks of the Delaware, long before Washington crossed the river or entered Trenton?" His patience, severely tested at Valley Forge, was of the higher nature as well. Since earliest childhood his mother taught him to listen to his heart. At Valley Forge his heart told him to wait until events in the Revolution unfolded in his favor. Tingley explained that he exercised self-control and other virtues expertly because he relied upon wisdom gained in previous incarnations.

Washington's impact on others at Point Loma is impossible to gauge with precision, but various references hint at his significance. In a 1902 performance by Raja Yoga boys the players reenacted Washington's mythic chopping down of the cherry tree, depicted Washington acting benevolently toward Native Americans, and at the end gave him three cheers. When Hanson and other Raja Yoga pupils toured New York's Metropolitan Museum in 1913, Hanson confided to her diary that the most impressive painting she viewed was Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware": "It made all my blood leap proudly, and my heart throb with reverence to see that grand, heroic face, stamped with a colossal sorrow, but its determination & courage greater still."

Despite these affirmations of higher patriotism across national line, British and American Theosophists at Point Loma occasionally experienced friction. One former Raja Yoga pupil remembered that in her youthful innocence she praised the Boston Tea Party in the presence of a female British resident. She realized that she offended the woman when the latter responded that "It was nothing but a waste of tea!" Members of two separate families of British origin, one from Liverpool, the other from the British West Indies, believed that Lambert did not like the British. Former Raja Yoga pupils in these families claimed that Lambert treated them prejudicially as students in the Raja Yoga schools because of their nationality. A member of one of these families also recalled that later, on the eve of World War II, de Purucker made disparaging remarks about Winston Churchill in one of his regular public lectures. She claimed that the many nationalities represented among members of the post-Tingley Point Loma community led to disagreements over which side to support in the coming European conflict."

For updates click homepage here