Theos-Talk Archives (August 1998 Message tt00035)

To further elaborate on the uniqueness of the Blavatskian model
of chelaship, I think the most important thing to remember is
that the guru/chela relationship had always been understood to be
one between people who knew one another in the normal social
sense, people whose relative positions were clearly defined by
social norms.  A person found a guru by going to the wise man
everyone in the village recognized as a guru, and learned what
that person had to teach, and that was that.  Or he (very rarely
she, alas) went to the monastery or temple or whatever, and
studied under someone whose status was official and recognized.
"Guru/chela" was a socially constructed relationship with a long
cultural history.  There were at HPB's time many thousands,
perhaps millions, of Indians participating in traditional
guru/chela relationships.  But HPB shows not much respect for
these relationships, saying that the *real* gurus are now
inaccessible due to various causes like the spiritual degradation
of British colonialism, etc.  In short she takes an *abundant*
cultural resource and redefines it in terms of extreme scarcity
and inaccessibility-- while positioning herself in the catbird
seat as the only intermediary between the remote authorities and
their aspiring chelas.  (Is that just a Southern expression?
I've never known why catbirds were seen as specially privileged
in seating arrangements.)

When HPB becomes the go-between for aspiring chelas of *her*
particular gurus, a whole different set of circumstances is
found.  The identities of the gurus are secret, access to them is
tightly controlled and under mysterious circumstances (i.e. the
astral post office), there are no clearcut social norms defining
mutual obligations and roles, in short very little of the
relationship between Sinnett and K.H., for example, corresponds
to any historical precedent of guru/chela relations.  It is only
to be expected that such a relationship, wrenched out of every
traditional context, was unworkable in virtually every case in
which it was tried.  Therefore, it makes more sense to me to say
that HPB was a failure in translating the guru/chela model into
1880s Theosophical context than to say that all those chelas were
failures.  Rather like having people ride horses down the
interstate and blaming the riders when they get hit by cars.

Cheers,
Paul