HPB AND HER 'MASTERS'
OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
AN EXTENDED FAMILY:
EXTRAMURAL MASTERS
THE MASTERS,
DESCRIPTION OF A NEW BOOK
Having already begun
something of a philosophical pilgrimage to India, it remained for Blavatsky to
undertake her physical relocation. As was typical for her, circumstances
which might otherwise appear entirely arbitrary and coincidental were
interpreted as omens of her peculiar destiny. Thus it was that she was
introduced to the årya Samaj
of Dayananda Sarasvat (1824-1883).
Sales of Isis
Unveiled had gone well. The Theosophical Society, which by the latter
part of 1877 had dwindled to the stage at which meetings often were convened
with only the two founders present, underwent something of a small
renaissance. Blavatsky had been approached by two English Spiritualists,
Charles Carleton Massey (1838-1905) and Stainton Moses (of 'Imperator' fame),
and by her adoring disciple Emily Kislingbury, about
the formation of a London branch. Plans were afoot for similar
developments in Russia and Japan. Blavatsky was receiving applications for
membership from prominent figures in the business and scientific worlds,
including General Abner Doubleday (1819-1893) and Thomas Edison
(1847-1931). Most significant, though, was the friendship of Moolji Thackersey.
The Theosophical Society of the årya
Samaj of India
Olcott had first
encountered Thackersey, the owner of a Bombay mill,
during his 1870 passage to England at a time when India had surely not entered
his mind. Seven years later Blavatsky and Olcott were visited at their New
York Lamasery by the American Spiritualist, James Peebles (1822-1922), who
recognised Thackersey as
one of the figures in a mounted photograph inside the apartment. Peebles told
the delighted pair that he had himself encountered Thackersey
on a recent visit to Bombay and was able to furnish Olcott with his
address. Olcott wasted no time; the following day he wrote to his
erstwhile friend, lauding the achievements of the Theosophical Society in
disseminating the pristine wisdoms of India. Thackersey
replied almost immediately and the two were soon engaged in a regular
correspondence. For Blavatsky this link with India indicated nothing less
than that the benevolent regard of Providence - or, in Theosophical parlance,
her Masters - oversaw their mission.
Thackersey had become an avid disciple of the Hindu reformist
Dayananda Sarasvat. Dayananda's årya Samaj movement, with its
emphatic insistence on monotheistic anti-Brahmanical Hinduism, immediately
aroused sympathies in Blavatskian anticlericalism, which
had come to the fore during the writing of Isis Unveiled. Further,
Dayananda's embracing of the antique Vedas and of modern epistemology and
technology seemed to meld well with her occultistic
desire to present a 'modernised' prisca
theologia. The philosophical and theological
sympathies between the societies were no doubt further (and dishonestly)
exaggerated by Hurrychund Chintamon,
an årya Samaj devotee and
semi-official facilitator between the two groups, who seems to have
misrepresented Dayananda's stance on such pivotal issues as the existence of a
personal deity. Within six months Olcott's enthusiasm for the årya Samaj had multiplied and his
letters had become those of a suppliant:
A number of American
and other students who earnestly seek after spiritual knowledge, place
themselves at your feet and pray you to enlighten them.
Blavatsky's interest
was no less evident; characteristically she incorporated Dayananda into her macrohistorical ensemble:
H. P. B. told me ...
that he was an adept of the Himalayan Brotherhood inhabiting the Swami's body;
well known to our own teachers, and in relations with them for the
accomplishment of the work he had in hand.
By 23 May, 1878,
Blavatsky and Olcott, with the support of their Council, had agreed that the
Theosophical Society should amalgamate with the årya Samaj and would now be reconstituted as the Theosophical
Society of the årya Samaj
of India. Little remained to tie Blavatsky to New York and she was
eager to depart for India; such was not the case for Olcott who had serious
misgivings about financing the expedition and who had the not inconsequential
problem of his wife and two sons to support. Significantly, a flurry of
letters from his then Master, Serapis, together with Blavatsky's increased candour regarding the identity of her mysterious Indian
associate ('M:.') as being the Master Morya, appeared
to tip the scales in favour of the journey: 'definite
orders from Serapis. Have to go; the latest from 15 to 20th
Dec.' They departed on the 18th.
The joy (and
relief) which Blavatsky and Olcott experienced upon arriving in Bombay on
the morning of 16 February, 1879, was soon tempered by the realisation
that their partnership with the årya Samaj was not to be a happy one. Hurrychund
Chintamon, who had regaled them with great pomp upon
their landing, subsequently billed them for the privilege; indeed it was soon
discovered that he had embezzled 600 rupees Blavatsky had raised for
Dayananda's movement. Energetic as ever, Blavatsky chose not to be
daunted by the deception, nor indeed by the rigours
of life as a Russian emigre and newly-nationalised
American woman under the British Raj. She did not even create her
customary fuss when, during their introductory meeting, Dayananda overlooked
her in favour of Olcott. Further
indication of her emotional equilibrium is provided by the fact that only once,
it seems, did she bother overmuch with the constant police surveillance given
to suspect spies. Instead she set about Masters-hunting, inquiring
after supramundane phenomena from various of the Suny
sin the pair encountered in their travels. Often she would wander away and
return with flowers or a note from a member of the Brotherhood whom she claimed
to have encountered.
Marion Meade has
asserted that Blavatsky sought desperately to plunder her encounters with
Indian ascetics for phenomena which would prove the existence of the
Masters. Such a position is in keeping with Meade's programme
to reduce the Masters to simple instantiations of Blavatsky's romantic
temperament, mendacious disposition, and Orientalising
fervour. That noted, there are significant
episodes which illustrate Blavatsky's tendency to indulge in a little creative
myth-making in regard to the Masters. Some of her tales, most notably her
admittedly romanticised accounts of the Founders'
1879 travels, written under the pseudonym 'Radda-Bai'
and entitled From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan,
do not really compare favourably with the more
prosaic version in Olcott's Old Diary Leaves. Adepts abound
in Blavatsky's account, each performing numerous feats of wonder; Olcott's
seems more concerned with 'beautifully evoking the tropical
atmosphere'. Of more concern, perhaps, are the occasions wherein Blavatsky
appears likely to have cajoled or employed individuals to impersonate Masters
so as to beguile Olcott and others.
One likely candidate
for such fraudulence occurred on a visit to the Karli caves in April,
1879. Throughout the trip Olcott was given notes, flowers, and gifts, each
enigmatically delivered to him with messages from the Brotherhood of
Masters. A man, identified as Baburao, would
await the travellers at various of their train stops
and proffer the compliments of his master (interpreted by Olcott as a Master).
To cap all of this, and with customary flourish, Blavatsky sent a request to
the Masters by means of a scribbled note folded into a triangle and cast
unceremoniously out of the window of the train while it steamed across
uninhabited terrain at an altitude of three thousand feet. Upon arrival
at Bombay, Olcott was greeted with an answering telegram from the mysterious
Master Goolab Singh, receipted only 75 minutes
after Blavatsky's petition. Such marvels impressed Olcott deeply at the
time; many years later he discovered that Baburao had
been hired by Thackersey at Blavatsky's request as
her personal servant for the trip. It seems not to have occurred to
him that their fifteen-year-old domestic servant, Vallah
Bulla (reduced to 'Babula' by Blavatsky), was also
present on the train - though in a third class carriage - and may himself have
engineered the gifts and telegram.
The dramatic flair
which Blavatsky employed to such effect in casting a glamour over Olcott and
their growing band of Indian associates earned her something of a celebrity
status in Bombay; their premises on Girgaum Back Road
soon became a haven for the exotically-minded who would sit on the verandah and
listen to Blavatsky's inspiring talk of Masters. Dayananda commented
wryly in a missive of 23 November, 1880:
How amazing is it
that you came here (India) to become a disciple and a pupil and now want to
become Guru and Acharya (preceptor). Is it proper for any
one to do such contradictory things?
Dayananda's acuity underscores
a significant failing in the traditional analyses of Blavatsky's attraction to
India. Most studies suggest that upon her arrival she absorbed Indian
motifs with a remarkable alacrity so as to regurgitate them, with variable
success, as a sort of hotchpotch Occidentalised Indicism tailored for a Western readership. In this
way she has been seen as but one in a long stream of cultural appropriators and
exporters. The error is not entirely one of substance, rather of
emphasis; in reality, Blavatsky imported standard motifs of Western esotericism
into India and speedily arrayed them in local forms, thus fashioning an Indicised esotericism. Her notion of Masters,
unsurprisingly deemed peculiar by the Veda-literate årya
Samaj, had been predetermined in the main prior to
her departure from New York; certainly it was afforded colour
by its Indic overlays, but it remained staunchly a product of Western
esotericism(s). Thus Dayananda was right; Blavatsky did conceive of
herself as a teacher: she alone would have been unsurprised that Indians were
coming to her for lessons in what others would have perceived superficially as
indigenous religion.
'Budhism', Buddhism, and
Chelaship
The first months of
1880 proved to be one of the happiest and most productive periods of
Blavatsky's life. On the literary front she was occupied with crafting
exotic tales of India for Russian journals, for which she was paid handsomely,
and with contributing detailed articles to her newly-conceived Society journal,
The Theosophist. The Theosophical Society was expanding
successfully across India, incorporating native Hindus and several prized
converts from the British establishment. Blavatsky and Olcott were f?ted wherever they went: during a visit to Ceylon,
Blavatsky rode in procession on an elephant and was secretly pleased to find
Sinhalese women prostrating before her. The journey to Ceylon was
crowned with a ceremony held at a temple in Galle on 25 May at which time
Olcott and Blavatsky formally, and very publicly, converted to
Buddhism. This 'conversion' has led some to believe that the pair had
renounced their esoteric affiliations and philosophies and finally found a
normative, if Oriental, creed. In fact the Founders' 'Buddhism' was but an
arbitrary designation for an Indicised prisca theologia:
Our Buddhism was that
of the Master-Adept Gautama Buddha, which was identically the Wisdom Religion
of the Aryan Upanishads, and the soul of all the ancient world-faiths.
Our Buddhism was, in a word, a philosophy, not a creed.
Blavatsky concurred:
[O]ur periodical [The Theosophist] is described as a -
'Buddhist organ'! This is a puzzle indeed ... The Northern Buddhism, or
esoteric Arhat doctrine, has little in common with popular, dogmatic
Buddhism. It is identical - except in proper names - with the hidden
truth or esoteric part of Advaitism, Brahmanism, and
every other world faith of antiquity.
To emphasise the distinction between 'popular, dogmatic
Buddhism' and her own creed, Blavatsky coined the term 'Budhism':
"'Budhism' has preceded Buddhism by long
ages and is pre-Vedic'. 'Budhism', a term
arrived at through a rather eccentric etymology, is obviously a
Masters-generated esoteric arcanum:
Budhism would mean 'Wisdom', from Budha,
'a sage', 'a wise man', and the imperative verb 'Budhyadhwam',
'Know'; and Buddhism is the religious philosophy of Gautama, the
Buddha.
Central to every Blavatskian endeavour was the
propagation of the Theosophical doctrine of the Masters, and it was the promise
of their benevolence to their chelas and the evidence
of Blavatsky's phenomenal powers (which exhibited, it was believed, further
proof of the Masters' munificence), that stimulated many to join the
Society. Emblematic of this quest for chelaship is Alfred Percy Sinnett (1840-1924), editor of the Pioneer, the
leading English daily in India, who had contacted Blavatsky nine days after her
arrival in Bombay, offering to publish an article on the Society.
Interested in psychic phenomena, and a convinced Spiritualist, Sinnett invited the Founders to his home in Simla to spend the summer of 1870 and, he hoped, provide
some convincing miraculous divertissement. Blavatsky did not
disappoint.
Blavatsky's success
at Simla precipitated an explosion of interest in the
Theosophical Society and its Masters, and provided the impetus for Blavatsky,
uncouth and ill-mannered as she often was, to be welcomed into the society of
the Anglo-Indian elite. In front of Sinnett and
his guests, most notably Allan Octavian Hume (1829-1919), past Secretary to the
government of India, Blavatsky excelled herself in the manifestation of rappings, bell chiming, and the seemingly miraculous
production of monikered handkerchiefs. Less than content with these not
entirely uncommon Spiritualistic phenomena, Blavatsky decided to raise the
stakes on her abilities by announcing that her psychic link with the Masters
was so strong that they were able to supply her with information that she could
not otherwise have known. Thus when a picnic party was increased to seven
at the last moment, Blavatsky was able to direct the unexpected guest to the
location where he might dig in order to find a teacup and saucer to match the
other six; so, too, she was able to locate a prized heirloom for Mary
Anne Hume: a brooch believed to have been irretrievably lost some months
earlier. This last achievement, described in rapturous tones in the
Pioneer, caused a flurry of interest in Blavatsky, and yet more
applications for membership of her Society.
go to:
HPB AND HER
'MASTERS' OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
AN EXTENDED
FAMILY: EXTRAMURAL MASTERS
THE MASTERS, DESCRIPTION OF A NEW
BOOK
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