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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