Theos-Talk Archives (April 2003 Message tt00169)

Tuesday, April 29, 2003

Dear Friends:
A year after H P B's death at a meeting commemorating her life
and work Jasper Neimand talked and quoted a number of letters
from H P B.

These were recorded and printed in PATH magazine as

SHE BEING DEAD, YET SPEAKETH

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SHE BEING DEAD YET SPEAKETH

Article by H. P. Blavatsky


[In the will of the late H. P. Blavatsky was made the request
that her friends should assemble on the anniversary of her death
and read passages from the Bhagavad-Gita and the Light of Asia.
This was accordingly done on May 8th, in Adyar, London, New York,
and other places. In New York, among other interesting items
reported at the time, Mrs. J. Campbell Keightley read, after a
few introductory remarks, extracts from the private letters of
H.P.B. In response to many requests we print these as follows.
The remarks, being extemporaneous, are quoted from memory.]

MR. PRESIDENT, FRIENDS:

This being the first occasion upon which I have ever spoken in
public, I will ask you to condone my inexperience while I make a
few remarks upon the extracts chosen from the letters of Madame
Blavatsky to a few friends.

In regard to Mme. Blavatsky, the world, to use a phrase of
Charles Lamb, was "the victim of imperfect sympathies." It failed
to know her; that failure was its own great loss. Among the many
accusations flung at her was one which, at the last ditch, it
never failed to make; it said that Mme. Blavatsky had no Moral
Ideal. This was false.

She had this ideal; she had also the Eastern reverence for an
ideal--a reverence to the Western world unknown. We might hence
expect to find her teaching that Ideal to a great extent under
the privacy of a pledge, and there are indications of this in all
that has been published concerning the Esoteric School. That her
ideal was ever present to her mind and heart these extracts from
private letters to her friends will show.

Her main teachings can be reduced to the following propositions:

That Morals have a basis in Law and in fact.
That Moral Law is Natural Law.
That Evolution makes for Righteousness.
That the "fundamental identity of all souls with the Oversoul"
renders moral contagion possible through the subtle psychic
medium.
That the Spiritual Identity of all Being renders Universal
Brotherhood the only possible path for truth-seeking men.
She distrusted the appeal to sentiment. She saw that existing
religions fail in it; that modern civilization frustrates it;
that emotionalism is no basis for the Will which annuls all
temptations of the flesh, and the Faith which shall make
mountains move.
Hence she taught the scientific aspect and bearing of sin. Taught
that Universal Law, in every department, rigidly opposes and
avenges the commission of sin, showing the free will of man
counterbalanced by the declaration "Vengeance is mine, saith the
Law; I will repay."
She taught that the awful responsibility of the occultist,
extending down to the least atom of substance, forever forbade
our asking that question of Cain which we do ask daily--"Am I my
Brother's keeper?" She taught that the deep reply reverberated
down the ages, as we may read it in our bibles: "What hast thou
done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth to me from the
ground."
Justice she taught, and the true discrimination of it; Mercy,
too, and Love. She wrote of one: "He has developed an
extraordinary hatred to me, but I have loved him too much to hate
him." Above all she taught that "the pure in heart see God";
taught it as a scientific fact; showed it to be, so to say,
materially as well as spiritually possible through the spiritual
laws working in the one Substance, and, in the showing, lifted
our courage higher than the visible stars.

___________


The first of these extracts from H.P.B.'s letters is dated Nov.
29, 1878, and is interesting from the fact that it speaks of the
original institution of three degrees of the T.S., a fact often
disputed in these later days.

YOU will find the aims and purposes of the Theosophical Society
in the two inclosed circulars. It is a brotherhood of humanity,
established to make away with all and every dogmatic religion
founded on dead-letter interpretation, and to teach people and
every member to believe but in one impersonal God; to rely upon
his (man's) own powers; to consider himself his only saviour; to
learn the infinitude of the occult psychological powers hidden
within his own physical man; to develop these powers; and to give
him the assurance of the immortality of his divine spirit and the
survival of his soul; to make him regard every man of whatever
race, color, or creed, and to prove to him that the only truths
revealed to man by superior men (not a god) are contained in the
Vedas of the ancient Aryas of India. Finally, to demonstrate to
him that there never were, will be, nor are, any miracles; that
there can be nothing 'supernatural' in this universe, and that on
earth, at least, the only god is man himself.

"It lies within his powers to become and to continue a god after
the death of his physical body. Our society receives nothing the
possibility of which it cannot demonstrate at will. We believe in
the phenomena, but we disbelieve in the constant intervention of
'spirits' to produce such phenomena. We maintain that the
embodied spirit has more powers to produce them than a
disembodied one. We believe in the existence of spirits, but of
many classes, the human spirits being but one class of the many.

"The Society requires of its members but the time they can give
it without encroaching upon that due to their private affairs.
There are three degrees of membership. It is but in the highest
or third that members have to devote themselves quasi entirely to
the work of the T.S. . . .
"Everyone is eligible, provided he is an honest, pure man or
woman, no free lover, and especially no bigoted Christian. We go
dead against idolatry, and as much, against materialism."

"Of the two unpardonable sins, the first is
Hypocrisy--Pecksniffianism. Better one hundred mistakes through
unwise, injudicious sincerity and indiscretion than Tartuffe-like
saintship as the whitened sepulchre, and rottenness and decay
within. . . . This is not unpardonable, but very dangerous, . . .
doubt, eternal wavering--it leads one to wreck. . . . One little
period passed without doubt, murmuring, and despair; what a gain
it would be; a period a mere tithe of what every one of us has
had to pass through. But every one forges his own destiny."

"Those who fall off from our living human Mahatmas to fall into
the Saptarishi--the Star Rishis, are no Theosophists."

"Allow me to quote from a very esoterically wise and exoterically
foolish book, the work and production of some ancient friends and
foes: 'There is more joy in the Kingdom of Heaven for one
repentant sinner than for ninety-nine saints.' . . . Let us be
just and give to Caesar what is Caesar's, however imperfect, even
vicious, Caesar may be. 'Blessed be the peacemakers,' said
another old adept of 107 years B.C., and the saying is alive and
kicks to the present day amongst the MASTERS."

"The Esoteric Section is to be a School for earnest Theosophists
who would learn more (than they can from published works) of the
true Esoteric tenets. . . . There is no room for despotism or
ruling in it; no money to pay or make; no glory for me, but a
series of misconceptions, slanders, suspicions, and ingratitude
in almost an immediate future: but if out of the . . .
Theosophists who have already pledged themselves I can place on
the right and true path half a dozen or so, I will die happy.

Many are called, few are chosen. Unless they comply with the
lines you speak of, traced originally by the Masters, they cannot
succeed. I can only show the way to those whose eyes are open to
the truth, whose souls are full of altruism, charity, and love
for the whole creation, and who think of themselves last. The
blind . . . will never profit by these teachings. They would make
of the 'strait gate' a large public thoroughfare leading not to
the Kingdom of Heaven, now and hereafter, to the Buddha-Christos
in the Sanctuary of our innermost souls, but to their own idols
with feet of clay. . . .

The Esoteric Section is not of the earth, earthy; it does not
interfere with the exoteric administration of Lodges; takes no
stock in external Theosophy; has no officers or staff; needs no
halls or meeting rooms. . . . Finally, it requires neither
subscription fees nor money, for 'as I have not so received it, I
shall not so impart it,' and that I would rather starve in the
gutter than take one penny for my teaching of the sacred truths.
. . .

Here I am with perhaps a few years or a few months only (Master
knoweth) to remain on earth in this loathsome, old, ruined body;
and I am ready to answer the call of any good Theosophist who
works for Theosophy on the lines traced by the Masters, and as
ready as the Rosicrucian pelican to feed with my heart's blood
the chosen 'Seven.' He who would have his inheritance before I
die . . . let him ask first. What I have, or rather what I am
permitted to give, I will give."

"Many are called but few are chosen. Well, no need breaking my
heart over spilt milk. Come what may, I shall die at my post,
Theosophical banner in hand, and while I live I do fervently hope
that all the splashes of mud thrown at it will reach me
personally. At any rate I mean to continue protecting the
glorious truth with my old carcass so long as it lasts. And when
I do drop down for good, I hope in such Theosophists as . . . and
. . . to carry on the work and protect the banner of Truth in
their turn.

Oh, I do feel so sick at heart in looking round and perceiving
nothing save selfishness, personal vanity, and mean little
ambitions. What is this about 'the soldier not being free'? Of
course no soldier can be free to move about his physical body
wherever he likes. But what has the esoteric teaching to do with
the outward man? A soldier may be stuck to his sentry box like a
barnacle to its ship, and the soldier's Ego be free to go where
it likes and think what it likes best. . . .

No man is required to carry a burden heavier than he can bear;
nor do more than it is possible for him to do. A man of means,
independent and free from any duty, will have to move about and
go, missionary-like, to teach Theosophy to the Sadducees and the
Gentiles of Christianity. A man tied by his duty to one place has
no right to desert it in order to fulfill another duty, let it be
however much greater; for the first duty taught in Occultism is
to do one's duty unflinchingly by every duty.

Pardon these seemingly absurd paradoxes and Irish Bulls; but I
have to repeat this ad nauseam usque for the last month. 'Shall I
risk to be ordered to leave my wife, desert my children and home
if I pledge myself?' asks one. 'No,' I say, 'because he who plays
truant in one thing will be faithless in another. No real,
genuine MASTER will accept a chela who sacrifices anyone except
himself to go to that Master.'

If one cannot, owing to circumstances or his position in life,
become a full adept in this existence, let him prepare his mental
luggage for the next, so as to be ready at the first call when he
is once more reborn. What one has to do before he pledges himself
irretrievably is, to probe one's nature to the bottom, for
self-discipline is based on self-knowledge. It is said somewhere
that self-discipline often leads one to a state of
self-confidence which becomes vanity and pride in the long run. I
say, foolish is the man who says so. This may happen only when
our motives are of a worldly character or selfish; otherwise,
self-confidence is the first step to that kind of WILL which will
make a mountain move:

" 'To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night
the day, thou can'st not then be false to any man.' " The
question is whether Polonius meant this for worldly wisdom or for
occult knowledge; and by 'own self' the false Ego (or the
terrestrial personality) or that spark in us which is but the
reflection of the 'One Universal Ego.'

"But I am dreaming. I had but four hours' sleep. . . . Give my
sincere, fraternal respects to . ., and let him try to feel my
old hand giving him the Master's grip, the strong grip of the
Lion's paw of Punjab (not of the tribe of Judah) across the
Atlantic. To you my eternal affection and gratitude.

Your H.P.B."


"To live like cats and dogs in the T.S. is positively against all
rules--and wishes of 'the Masters,' as against our Brotherhood--
so-called--and all its rules. THEY are disgusted. THEY look on,
and in that look (oh Lord! if you could only see it as I have!)
there's an ocean deep of sad disgust, contempt, and sorrow. . . .
The ideal was besmeared with mud, but as it is no golden idol on
feet of clay it stands to this day immovable . . . and what the
profane see is only their own mud thrown with their own hands,
and which has created a veil, an impassable barrier between them
and the ideal . . . without touching the latter. . . .

Have a large Society, the more the better; all that is chaff and
husk is bound to fall away in time; all that is grain will
remain. But the seed is in the bad and evil man as well as in the
good ones,--only it is more difficult to call into life and cause
it to germinate. The good husbandman does not stop to pick out
the seeds from the handful. He gives them all their chance, and
even some of the half-rotten seeds come to life when thrown into
good soil. Be that soil. . . .

Look at me--the universal Theosophical manure--the rope for whose
hanging and lashing is made out of the flax I have sown, and each
strand it is twisted of represents a 'mistake' (so-called) of
mine. Hence, if you fail only nine times out of ten in your
selections you are successful one time out of ten--and that's
more than many other Theosophists can say. . . . Those few true
souls will be the nucleus for future success, and their children
will. . . . Let us sow good--and if evil crops up, it will be
blown away by the wind like all other things in this life--in its
time."

"I am the Mother and the Creator of the Society; it has my
magnetic fluid, and the child has inherited all of its parent's
physical, psychical, and spiritual attributes--faults and virtues
if any. Therefore I alone and to a degree . . . can serve as a
lightning conductor of Karma for it. I was asked whether I was
willing, when on the point of dying--and I said Yes--for it was
the only means to save it. Therefore I consented to live--which
in my case means to suffer physically during twelve hours of the
day--mentally twelve hours of night, when I get rid of the
physical shell. . . .

It is true about the Kali Yuga. Once that I have offered myself
as the goat of atonement, the Kali Yuga recognizes its
own--whereas any other would shrink from such a thing--as I am
doomed and overburdened in this life worse than a poor weak
donkey full of sores made to drag up hill a cart load of heavy
rocks. You are the first one to whom I tell it, because you force
me into the confession. . . .You have a wide and noble prospect
before you if you do not lose patience. . . . Try to hear the
small voice within."

"Yes, there are 'two persons' in me. But what of that? So there
are two in you; only mine is conscious and responsible--and yours
is not. So you are happier than I am. I know you sympathise with
me, and you do so because you feel that I have always stood up
for you, and will do so to the bitter or the happy end--as the
case may be."

"He may be moved to doubt--and that is the beginning of wisdom."



[To: W Q J] "Well, sir, and my only friend, the crisis is
nearing. I am ending my Secret Doctrine, and you are going to
replace me, or take my place in America. I know you will have
success if you do not lose heart; but do, do remain true to the
Masters and Their Theosophy and the names. . . . May They help
you and allow us to send you our best blessings. . . ."



"There are traitors, conscious and unconscious. There is falsity
and there is injudiciousness. . . . Pray do not imagine that
because I hold my tongue as bound by my oath and duty I do not
know who is who. . . . I must say nothing, however much I may be
disgusted. But as the ranks thin around us, and one after the
other our best intellectual forces depart, to turn into bitter
enemies, I say--Blessed are the pure-hearted who have only
intuition--for intuition is better than intellect."

"The duty,--let alone happiness--of every Theosophist--and
especially Esotericist--is certainly to help others to carry
their burden; but no Theosophist or other has the right to
sacrifice himself unless he knows for a certainty that by so
doing he helps some one and does not sacrifice himself in vain
for the empty glory of the abstract virtue. . . . Psychic and
vital energy are limited in every man. It is like a capital. If
you have a dollar a day and spend two, at the end of the month
you will have a deficit of $30."

"One refuses to pledge himself not to listen without protest to
any evil thing said of a brother--as though Buddha our divine
Lord-- or Jesus--or any great initiate has ever condemned any one
on hearsay. Ah, poor, poor, blind man, not to know the difference
between condemning in words--which is uncharitable--and
withdrawing in silent pity from the culprit and thus punishing
him, but still giving him a chance to repent of his ways. No man
will ever speak ill of his brother without cause and proof of the
iniquity of that brother, and he will abstain from all
backbiting, slandering, and gossip. No man should ever say behind
a Brother's back what he would not say openly to his face.
Insinuations against one's neighbor are often productive of more
evil consequences than gross slander. Every Theosophist has to
fight and battle against evil,--but he must have the courage of
his words and actions, and what he does must be done openly and
honestly before all."

"Every pledge or promise unless built upon four pillars--absolute
sincerity, unflinching determination, unselfishness of purpose,
and moral power, which makes the fourth support and equipoises
the three other pillars--is an insecure building. The pledges of
those who are sure of the strength of the fourth alone are
recorded."

"Are you children, that you want marvels? Have you so little
faith as to need constant stimulus, as a dying fire needs fuel! .
. . Would you let the nucleus of a splendid Society die under
your hands like a sick man under the hands of a quack? . . . You
should never forget what a solemn thing it is for us to exert our
powers and raise the dread sentinels that lie at the threshold.
They cannot hurt us, but they can avenge themselves by
precipitating themselves upon the unprotected neophyte. You are
all like so many children playing with fire because it is pretty,
when you ought to be men studying philosophy for its own sake."

"If among you there was one who embodied in himself the idea
depicted, it would be my duty to relinquish the teacher's chair
to him. For it would be the extreme of audacity in me to claim
the possession of so many virtues. That the MASTERS do in
proportion to their respective temperaments and stages of
Bodhisatvic development possess such Paramitas, constitutes their
right to our reverence as our Teachers. It should be the aim of
each and all of us to strive with all the intensity of our
natures to follow and imitate Them. . . .

Try to realize that progress is made step by step, and each step
gained by heroic effort. Withdrawal means despair or timidity. .
. . Conquered passions, like slain tigers, can no longer turn and
rend you. Be hopeful then, not despairing. With each morning's
awakening try to live through the day in harmony with the Higher
Self. 'Try' is the battle-cry taught by the teacher to each
pupil. Naught else is expected of you. One who does his best does
all that can be asked. There is a moment when even a Buddha
ceases to be a sinning mortal and takes his first step toward
Buddhahood. The sixteen Paramitas (virtues) are not for priests
and yogis alone, as said, but stand for models for us all to
strive after--and neither priest nor yogi, Chela nor Mahatma,
ever attained all at once. . . . The idea that sinners and not
saints are expected to enter the Path is emphatically stated in
the Voice of the Silence."

"I do not believe in the success of the . . . T.S. unless you
assimilate Master or myself; unless you work with me and THEM,
hand in hand, heart. . . . Yes; let him who offers himself to
Masters as a chela, unreservedly, . . . let him do what he can if
he would ever see Them. . . . Then things were done because I
alone was responsible for the issues. I alone had to bear Karma
in case of failure and no reward in case of success. . . . I saw
the T.S. would be smashed or that I had to offer myself as the
Scapegoat for atonement. It is the latter I did. The T.S.
lives,--I am killed. Killed in my honor, fame, name, in
everything H.P.B. held near and dear, for this body is MINE and I
feel acutely through it. . . . I may err in my powers as H.P.B. I
have not worked and toiled for forty years, playing parts,
risking my future reward, and taking karma upon this unfortunate
appearance to serve Them without being permitted to have some
voice in the matter. H.P.B. is not infallible. H.P.B. is an old,
rotten, sick, worn-out body, but it is the best I can have in
this cycle. Hence follow the path I show, the Masters that are
behind--and do not follow me or my PATH. When I am dead and gone
in this body, then will you know the whole truth. Then will you
know that I have never, never, been false to any one, nor have I
deceived anyone, but had many a time to allow them to deceive
themselves, for I had no right to interfere with their Karma. . .
. Oh ye foolish blind moles, all of you; who is able to offer
himself in sacrifice as I did!"

Path, June, July, August, 1892