Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00325)

Part I

As this posting was too long , it had to be split


MAHATMAS Part III

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About H.P.B.


W.Q.Judge:	"In 1875, in the City of New York, I first met H.P.B. in
this life...It was her eye that attracted me, the eye of one whom I
must have known in lives long passed away. She looked at me in
recognition at that first hour, and never since has that look
changed...Not as a questioner of philosophies did I come before
her...but as one, wandering many periods through the corridors of
life, was seeking the friends who could show where the designs for the
work had been hidden. And true to the call she responded, revealing
the plans once again, and speaking no words to explain, simply pointed
then out and went on with the task. It was as if but the evening
before we had parted, leaving yet to be done some detail of a task
taken up with one common end; it was teacher and pupil, elder brother
and younger, both bent on the one single end, but she with the power
and the knowledge that belong but to lions and sages.

Others I know have looked with suspicion on an appearance they could
not fathom, and though it is true they adduce many proofs which hugged
to the breast, would damn sages and gods, yet it is only through
blindness they failed to see the lion's glance, the diamond heart of
H.P.B...she was laying down the lines of force all over the land...

The explanation has been offered by some too anxious friends that the
earlier phenomena were mistakes in judgment, attempted to be rectified
in later years by confining their area and limiting their number,
but...I shall hold to her own explanation made in advance and never
changed. That I have given above. For it is easier to take refuge
behind a charge of bad judgment than to understand the strange and
powerful laws which control in matters such as these.

Amid all the turmoil of her life, above all the din produced by those
who charged her with deceit and fraud and others who defended, while
month after month, and year after year, witnessed men and women
entering the theosophical movement only to leave it soon with
malignant phrases for H.P.B., there stands a fact we all might
consider--devotion absolute to her Master. "It was He," she writes,
"who told me to devote myself to this, and I will never disobey and
never turn back."...

.she ever was devoted to Theosophy and the Society organized to carry
out a programme embracing the world in its scope. Willing in the
service of the cause to offer up hope, money, reputation, life itself,
provided the Society might be saved from every hurt, whether small or
great. And thus bound body and soul to this entity called the T. S.,
bound to protect it at all hazards, and in the face of every loss, she
often incurred the resentment of many who became her friends but would
not always care for the infant organization as she had sworn to do.
And when they acted as it opposed to the Society, her instant
opposition seemed to them to nullify professions of friendship. Thus
she had but few friends, for it required a keen insight, untinged with
personal feeling, to see even a small part of the real
H.P.Blavatsky...

She worked under directors who, operating from behind the scene, knew
that the T. S. was, and was to be, the nucleus from which help might
be spread to all the people of the day, without thanks and without
acknowledgment...I asked her what was the chance of drawing people
into the Society...she said:--

"When you consider those days in 1875 and after, in which you could
not find any people interested in your thoughts, and now look at the
wide-spreading influence of theosophical ideas--however labeled--it is
not so bad. We are not working that people may call themselves
Theosophists, but that the doctrines we cherish may affect and leaven
the whole mind of this century.

This alone can be accomplished by a small earnest band of workers, who
work for no human reward, no earthly recognition, but who, supported
and sustained by a belief in that Universal Brotherhood of which our
Masters are a part, work steadily, faithfully, in understanding and
putting forth for consideration the doctrines of life and duty that
have come down to us from immemorial time.

Falter not so long as a few devoted ones will work to keep the nucleus
existing. You were not directed to found and realise a Universal
Brotherhood, but to form the nucleus for one; for it is only when the
nucleus it formed that the accumulations can begin that will end in
future years, however far, in the formation of that body which we have
in view."

H.P.B. had a lion heart, and on the work traced out for her she had a
lion's grasp, let us...sustain ourselves in carrying out the designs
laid down on the trestle-board, by the memory of her devotion and the
consciousness that behind her task stood, and still remain, those
Elder Brothers who, above the clatter and the din of our battle, ever
see the end and direct the forces distributed in array for the
salvation of "that great orphan--Humanity."	W. Q. Judge
"Yours till Death and After, H.P.B..." -- Judge Articles, II p. 1



"...in 1875 she told me that she was then embarking on a work that
would draw upon her unmerited slander, implacable malice,
uninterrupted misunderstanding, constant work, and no worldly reward.
Yet in the face of this her lion heart carried her on...

Much has been said of her "phenomena," some denying them, others
alleging trick and device. Knowing her for so many years so well, and
having seen at her hands in private the production of more and more
varied phenomena that it has been the good fortune of all others of
her friends put together to seem I know for myself that she had
control of hidden powerful laws of nature not known to our science,
and I also know that she never boasted of her powers, never advertised
their possession, never publicly advised anyone to attempt their
acquirement, but always turned the eyes of those who could understand
her to a life of altruism based on a knowledge of true philosophy.

If the world thinks that her days were spent in deluding her followers
by pretended phenomena, it is solely because her injudicious friends,
against her expressed wish, gave out wonderful stories of her
"miracles" which can not be proved to a skeptical public and which are
not the aim of the Society nor were ever more than mere incidents in
the life of H.P.Blavatsky.

Her aim was to elevate the race. Her method was to deal with the mind
of the century as she found it, by trying to lead it on step by step;
to seek out and educate a few who, appreciating the majesty of the
Secret Science and devoted to "the great orphan Humanity," could carry
on her work with zeal and wisdom; to found a Society whose
efforts--however small itself might be--would inject into the thought
of the day the ideas, the doctrines, the nomenclature of the Wisdom
Religion, so that when the next century shall have seen its 75th years
the new messenger, coming again into the world, would find the Society
still at work, the ideas sown broadcast, the nomenclature ready to
give expression and body to the immutable truth, and thus to make easy
the task which for her since 1875 was so difficult and so encompassed
with obstacles in the very paucity of the language--obstacles harder
than all else to work against."	W. Q. Judge
"H.P.B.--A Lion-hearted Colleague Passes" WQJ Articles II p. 5



"This article is meant for members of the T.S...Those members who
believe that such beings as the Masters may exist must come to one of
two conclusions in regard to H.P.B.: either that she invented her
Masters, who therefore have no real existence, or that she did not
invent them but spoke in the names and by the orders of such beings.

If we say she invented the Mahatmas, then, of course, as so often was
said by her, all that she has taught and written is the product of her
own brain, from which we would be bound to conclude that her position
on the roll of great and powerful persons must be higher than people
have been willing to place her.

But I take it most of us believe in the truth of her statement that
she had those teachers whom she called Masters and that they are more
powerful beings than ordinary men.

The case I wish to deal with...is this: H.P.B. and her relations to
the Masters and to us; her books and teachings; the general question
of disciples and chelas...Chelas and disciples are of many grades, and
some of the Adepts are themselves the chelas of higher Adepts...[they
are those who have] devoted himself or herself to the service of
mankind and the pursuit of knowledge of the Self...[Some] have gained
through knowledge and discipline those powers over mind, matter,
space, and time which to us are the glittering prizes of the
future...So much being laid down, we may next ask how we are to look
at H.P.B.

[Let the inquirer then place .every one has the right to place her if
he pleases for her] on the highest plane...But taking her own sayings,
she was a chela or disciple of the Masters, and therefore stood in
relation to them as one who might be chided or corrected or reproved.
She called them her Masters, and asseverated a devotion to their
behests and a respect and confidence in and for their utterances which
the chelas has always for one who is high enough to be his Master.

But looking at her powers exhibited to the world, and as to which one
of her Masters wrote that they had puzzled and astonished the
brightest minds of the age, we see that compared with ourselves she
was an Adept...

[They] "The Mahatmas .Subba Row [said to the writer] in 1884: "The
Mahatmas are in fact some of the great Rishis and Sages of the past,
and people have been too much in the habit of lowering them to the
petty standard of this age." But with this reverence for her teachers
she had for them at the same time a love and friendship not often
found on earth. All this indicates her chelaship to Them, but in no
way lowers her to us or warrants us in deciding that we are right in a
hurried or modern judgment of her.

Now some Theosophist ask if there are other letters extant from her
Masters in which she is called to account, is called their chela, and
is chided now and then, besides those published. Perhaps yes. And
what of it ? Let them be published by all means, and let us have the
full and complete record of all letters sent during her life; those
put forward as dated after her death will count for naught...since the
Masters do not indulge in any criticisms on the disciples who have
gone from earth. As she has herself published letters and parts of
letters from the Masters to her in which she is called a chela and is
chided, it certainly matte if we know of others of the same sort.

For over against all such we have common sense, and also the
declarations of her Masters that she was the sole instrument possible
for the work to be done, that They sent her to do it, and that They
approved in general all she did. And she was the first direct channel
to and from the Lodge, and the only one to date through which came the
objective presence of the Adepts. We cannot ignore the messenger,
take the message, and laugh at or give scorn to the one who brought it
to us. There is nothing new in the idea that letters are still
unpublished wherein the Masters put her below them, and there is no
cause for any apprehension. But it certainly is true that not a
single such letter has anything in it putting her below us; she must
ever remain the greatest of the chelas...

There only remains...the position taken by some and without a
knowledge of the rules governing these matters, that chelas sometimes
write messages claimed to be from the Masters when they are not. this
is an artificial position not supportable by law or rule. It is due
to ignorance of what is and is not chelaship, and also to confusion
between grades in discipleship. It has been used as to H.P.B.

The false conclusion has first been made that an accepted chela of
high grade may become accustomed to dictation by the Master and then
may fall into the false pretense of giving something from himself and
pretending it is from the Master. It is impossible. The bond in her
case was not of such a character to be dealt with thus. One instance
of it would destroy the possibility of any more communication from the
teacher. It may be quite true that probationers now and then have
imagined themselves as ordered to say so and so, but that is not the
case of an accepted and high chela who is irrevocably pledged...This
idea, then, ought to be abandoned; it is absurd, contrary to law, to
rule, and to what must be the case when such relations are established
as existed between H.P.B. and her Masters."
W. Q. Judge
"Masters, Adepts, Teachers and Disciples"	WQJ Art. II, p. 9