From: Bart Lidofsky <bartl@sprynet.com>
Reply-To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Theos-World Why HPB did not return to India
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 21:00:51 -0500
It was one of many examples of Blavatsky referring to the Theosophical
Society after the time that you claim that she had dissolved it.
Bart
krsanna wrote:
> Bart -- What is the point you want to make with the article about
> why HPB did not return to India? What do you think HPB meant when
> she talked about the FTS (Fellows of the Theosophical Society)
> and "cutting off a diseased limb from the healthy body of the tree,
> and thus save it from infection?"
>
> She speaks of people with courage she found in America and Europe
> and her confidence in the Esoteric Section:
>
> "I was enabled and encouraged by the devotion of an ever-increasing
> number of members to the Cause and to Those who guide it, to
> establish an Esoteric Section, in which I can teach something of
> what I have learned to those who have confidence in me, and who
> prove this confidence by their disinterested work for Theosophy and
> the T.S. For the future, then, it is my intention to devote my life
> and energy to the E. S., and to the teaching of those whose
> confidence I retain."
>
> She speaks of her special relationship with the Esoteric Section she
> founded when the parent society was abolished:
>
> "Know, moreover, that any further proof and teaching I can give only
> to the Esoteric Section, and this for the following reason: its
> members are the only ones whom I have the right to expel for open
> disloyalty to their pledge (not to me, H.P.B., but to their Higher
> Self and the Mahâtmic aspect of the Masters), a privilege I cannot
> exercise with the F.T.S. at large, yet one which is the only means
> of cutting off a diseased limb from the healthy body of the tree,
> and thus save it from infection."
>
> She asks the Hindu who desire a regeneration of India to turn a new
> leaf and rally around the President-Founder, Olcott. She did not
> ask the Americans and Europeans, where Olcott's authority was
> terminated, to rally around Olcott. Adyar had been abolished as the
> parent society.
>
> "If, then, my Hindu brothers really and earnestly desire to bring
> about the regeneration of India... Let them bravely rally round the
> President-Founder..."
>
>
>
> WHY I DO NOT RETURN TO INDIA
>
> [This Open Letter one of the most extraordinary and deeply pathetic
> documents ever penned by H.P.B., may be found among the original
> Manuscripts in the Adyar Archives. Written to the Indian Members of
> The Theosophical Society in the last year of H. P. B.'s life it is
> like a karmic vision that both interpretes the past and throws a
> flood of light upon the future It embodies a message from H. P. B.'s
> long-suffering heart to all Theosophists without distinction. This
> Open Letter contains declarations very rarely made, and
> pronouncements which only those will understand who are firmly
> rooted in the Theosophical philosophy and will not mistake them
> for "claims," "dogmas" or delusions of grandeur. Facts and attitudes
> spoken of in this Letter afford a background of meaning against
> which may be measured various crises which took place in later years
> within the framework of the T.S.
> N. D. Khandalavala, quoting some short passages from this Letter in
> The Theosophist, Vol. XX October, 1898 pp. 23-24, states that it was
> at first intended to be circulated to the Indian
>
> Members, but "was afterwards, for certain reasons, not published."
> He was permitted to take a copy of it. With the "climate" prevailing
> at the time in the Indian T.S., the reasons which Khandalavala does
> not specify are easy to determine.
> There seems to he no reason to doubt the accuracy of a statement by
> W. E. Coleman in the Religio-Philosophical Journal (Chicago), of
> September 16, 1893, p. 266, that this Open Letter was sent to India
> by the intermediary of Bertram Keightley who left London for India,
> at H.P.B.'s special request, sometime in the Summer of 1890,
> reaching Bombay August 31, 1890 (The Theosophist, Vol. XII, Suppl.
> to October, 1890, pp. ii-iii). He was soon elected General Secretary
> of the newly-formed Indian Section of the T.S. which was chartered
> Jan. 1, 1891.
> The Open Letter which follows is one of the most important items
> of "source material" available today for the use of the future
> historian of the Theosophical Movement and its many vicissitudes. It
> deserves a close study on the part of all students.— Compiler.]
>
>
> TO MY BROTHERS OF ÂRYÂVARTA,
>
> In April, 1890, five years elapsed since I left India.
> Great kindness has been shown to me by many of my Hindu
> brethren at various times since I left; especially this year (1890),
> when, ill almost to death, I have received from several Indian
> Branches letters of sympathy, and assurances that they had not
> forgotten her to whom India and the Hindus have been most of her
> life far dearer than her own Country.
> It is, therefore, my duty to explain why I do not return to India
> and my attitude with regard to the new leaf turned in the history of
> the T. S. by my being formally placed at the head of the
> Theosophical Movement in Europe. For it is not solely on account of
> bad health that I do not return to India. Those who have saved me
> from death at Adyar, and twice since then, could easily keep me
> alive there as They do me here. There is a far more serious reason.
> A line of conduct has been traced for me here, and I have found
> among the English and Americans what I have so far vainly sought for
> in India.
>
> In Europe and America, during the last three years I have met with
> hundreds of men and women who have the courage to avow their
> conviction of the real existence of the Masters, and who are working
> for Theosophy on Their lines and under Their guidance, given through
> my humble self.
> In India, on the other hand, ever since my departure, the true
> spirit of devotion to the Masters and the courage to avow it has
> steadily dwindled away. At Adyar itself, increasing strife and
> conflict has raged between personalities; uncalled for and utterly
> undeserved animosity—almost hatred —has been shown towards me by
> several members of the staff. There seems to have been something
> strange and uncanny going on at Adyar, during these last years. No
> sooner does a European, most Theosophically inclined, most devoted
> to the Cause, and the personal friend of myself or the President,
> set his foot in Headquarters, than he becomes forthwith a personal
> enemy to one or other of us, and what is worse, ends by injuring and
> deserting the Cause.
> Let it be understood at once that I accuse no one. Knowing what I do
> of the activity of the forces of Kali Yuga, at work to impede and
> ruin the Theosophical movement, I do not regard those who have
> become, one after the other, my enemies—and that without any fault
> of my own—as I might regard them, were it otherwise.
> One of the chief factors in the reawakening of Âryâvarta which has
> been part of the work of the Theosophical Society, was the ideal of
> the Masters. But owing to want of judgment, discretion, and
> discrimination, and the liberties taken with Their names and
> Personalities, great misconception arose concerning Them. I was
> under the most solemn oath and pledge never to reveal the whole
> truth to anyone, excepting to those who, like Dâmodar, had been
> finally selected and called by Them. All that I was then permitted
> to reveal was, that there existed somewhere such great men; that
> some of Them were Hindus; that They were learned as none others in
> all the ancient wisdom of Gupta-Vidyâ, and had acquired all the
> Siddhis, not as these are represented in tradition and the "blinds"
> of ancient writings, but as they are in fact and nature; and also
> that I was a Chela of one of them. However, in the fancy of some
> Hindus, the most wild and ridiculous fancies soon grew up concerning
> Them. They were referred to as "Mahâtmas" and still some too
> enthusiastic friends belittled Them with their strange fancy
> pictures; our opponents, describing a Mahâtma as a full Jîvanmukta,
> urged that, as such, He was debarred from holding any communications
> whatever with persons living in the world. They also maintained that
> as this is the Kali Yuga, it was impossible that there could be any
> Mahâtmas at all in our age.
> These early misconceptions notwithstanding, the idea of the Masters,
> and belief in Them, has already brought its good fruit in India.
> Their chief desire was to preserve the true religious and
> philosophical spirit of ancient India; to defend the Ancient Wisdom
> contained in its Darśanas and Upanishads against the systematic
> assaults of the missionaries; and finally to reawaken the dormant
> ethical and patriotic spirit in those youths in whom it had almost
> disappeared owing to college education. Much of this has been
> achieved by and through the Theosophical Society, in spite of all
> its mistakes and imperfections.
>
> Had it not been for Theosophy, would India have had her Tukaram
> Tatya doing now the priceless work he does, and which no one in
> India ever thought of doing before him? Without the Theosophical
> Society, would India have ever thought of wrenching from the hands
> of learned but unspiritual Orientalists the duty of reviving,
> translating and editing the Sacred Books of the East, of
> popularizing and selling them at a far cheaper rate, and at the same
> time in a far more correct form than had ever been done at Oxford?
> Would our respected and devoted brother Tukaram Tatya himself have
> ever thought of doing so, had he not joined the Theosophical
> Society? Would your political Congress itself have ever been a
> possibility, without the Theosophical Society? Most important of
> all, one at least among you has fully benefited by it; and if the
> Society had never given to India but that one future Adept (Dâmodar)
> who has now the prospect of becoming one day a Mahâtma, Kali Yuga
> notwithstanding, that alone would be proof that it was not founded
> at New York and transplanted to India in vain. Finally, if any one
> among the three hundred millions of India can demonstrate, proof in
> hand, that Theosophy, the T.S., or even my humble self, have been
> the means of doing the slightest harm, either to the country or any
> Hindu, that the Founders have been guilty of teaching pernicious
> doctrines, or offering bad advice—then and then only, can it be
> imputed to me as a crime that I have brought forward the ideal of
> the Masters and founded the Theosophical Society.
>
> Aye, my good and never-to-be-forgotten Hindu Brothers, the name
> alone of the holy Masters, which was at one time invoked with
> prayers for Their blessings, from one end of India to the other—
> Their name alone has wrought a mighty change for the better in your
> land. It is not to Colonel Olcott or to myself that you owe
> anything, but verily to these names, which, but a few years ago, had
> become a household word in your mouths.
>
> Thus it was that, so long as I remained at Adyar, things went on
> smoothly enough, because one or the other of the Masters was almost
> constantly present among us, and their spirit ever protected the
> Theosophical Society from real harm. But in 1884, Colonel Olcott and
> myself left for a visit to Europe, and while we were away the Padri-
> Coulomb "thunderbolt descended." I returned in November, and was
> taken most dangerously ill. It was during that time and Colonel
> Olcott's absence in Burma, that the seeds of all future strifes, and—
> let me say at once—disintegration of the Theosophical Society, were
> planted by our enemies. What with the Patterson-Coulomb-Hodgson
> conspiracy, and the faintheartedness of the chief Theosophists, that
> the Society did not then and there collapse should be a sufficient
> proof of how it was protected. Shaken in their belief, the
> fainthearted began to ask: "Why, if the Masters are genuine
> Mahâtmas, have They allowed such things to take place, or why have
> they not used Their powers to destroy this plot or that conspiracy,
> or even this or that man and woman?" Yet it had been explained
> numberless times that no Adept of the Right Path will interfere with
> the just workings of Karma. Not even the greatest of Yogis can
> divert the progress of Karma or arrest the natural results of
> actions for more than a short period, and even in that case, these
> results will only reassert themselves later with even tenfold force,
> for such is the occult law of Karma and the Nidânas.
>
> Nor again will even the greatest of phenomena aid real spiritual
> progress. We have each of us to win our Moksha or Nirvâna by our own
> merit, not because a Guru or Deva will help to conceal our
> shortcomings. There is no merit in having been created an immaculate
> Deva or in being God; but there is the eternal bliss of Moksha
> looming forth for the man who becomes as a God and Deity by his own
> personal exertions. It is the mission of Karma to punish the guilty
> and not the duty of any Master. But those who act up to Their
> teaching and live the life of which They are the best exemplars,
> will never be abandoned by Them and will always find Their
> beneficent help whenever needed, whether obviously or invisibly.
> This is of course addressed to those who have not yet quite lost
> their faith in Masters; those who have never believed, or have
> ceased to believe in Them, are welcome to their own opinions. No
> one, except themselves perhaps some day, will be the losers thereby.
>
> As for myself, who can charge me with having acted like an impostor?
> with having, for instance, taken one single pie from any living
> soul? with having ever asked for money, or even with having accepted
> it, notwithstanding that I was repeatedly offered large sums! Those
> who, in spite of this, have chosen to think otherwise, will have to
> explain what even my traducers of even the Padri class and Psychical
> Research Society have been unable to explain to this day, viz., the
> motive for such fraud. They will have to explain why, instead of
> taking and making money, I gave away to the Society every penny I
> earned by writing for the papers, why at the same time I nearly
> killed myself with overwork and incessant labour year after year,
> until my health gave way, so that but for my Master's repeated help,
> I should have died long ago from the effects of such voluntary hard
> labour. For the absurd Russian spy theory, if it still finds credit
> in some idiotic heads, has long ago disappeared, at any rate from
> the official brains of the Anglo-Indians.
> If, I say, at that critical moment, the members of the Society, and
> especially its leaders at Adyar, Hindu and European, had stood
> together as one man, firm in their conviction of the reality and
> power of the Masters, Theosophy would have come out more
> triumphantly than ever, and none of their fears would have ever been
> realised, however cunning the legal traps set for me, and whatever
> mistakes and errors of judgment I, their humble representative,
> might have made in the executive conduct of the matter.
> But the loyalty and courage of the Adyar Authorities, and of the few
> Europeans who had trusted in the Masters, were not equal to the
> trial when it came. In spite of my protests, I was hurried away from
> Headquarters. Ill as I was, almost dying in truth, as the physicians
> said, yet I protested, and would have battled for Theosophy in India
> to my last breath, had I found loyal support. But some feared legal
> entanglements, some the Government, while my best friends believed
> in the doctors' threats that I must die if I remained in India. So I
> was sent to Europe to regain my strength, with a promise of speedy
> return to my beloved Âryâvarta.
> Well, I left, and immediately intrigues and rumours began. Even at
> Naples already, I learnt that I was reported to be meditating to
> start in Europe "a rival Society" and bust up Adyar (!!). At this I
> laughed. Then it was rumoured that I had been abandoned by the
> Masters, been disloyal to Them, done this or the other. None of it
> had the slightest truth or foundation in fact. Then I was accused of
> being, at best, a hallucinated medium, who had mistaken "spooks" for
> living Masters; while others declared that the real H. P. Blavatsky
> was dead—had died through the injudicious use of Kundalini—and that
> the form had been forthwith seized upon by a Dugpa Chela, who was
> the present H.P.B. Some again held me to be a witch, sorceress, who
> for purposes of her own played the part of a philanthropist and
> lover of India, while in reality bent upon the destruction of all
> those who had the misfortune to be psychologised by me. In fact, the
> powers of psychology attributed to me by my enemies, whenever a fact
> or a "phenomenon" could not be explained away, are so great that
> they alone would have made of me a most remarkable Adept—independent
> of any Masters or Mahâtmas. In short, up to 1886, when the S. P. R.
> Report was published and this soap bubble burst over our heads, it
> was one long series of false charges, every mail bringing something
> new. I will name no one; nor does it matter who said a thing and who
> repeated it. One thing is certain; with the exception of Colonel
> Olcott, everyone seemed to banish the Masters from their thoughts
> and Their spirit from Adyar. Every imaginable incongruity was
> connected with these holy names, and I alone was held responsible
> for every disagreeable event that took place, every mistake made. In
> a letter received from Dâmodar in 1886, he notified me that the
> Masters' influence was becoming with every day weaker at Adyar; that
> They were daily represented as less than "second-rate Yogis,"
> totally denied by some, while even those who believed in, and had
> remained loyal to them, feared even to pronounce Their names.
> Finally, he urged me very strongly to return, saying that of course
> the Masters would see that my health should not suffer from it. I
> wrote to that effect to Colonel Olcott, imploring him to let me
> return, and promising that I would live at Pondicherry, if needed,
> should my presence not be desirable at Adyar. To this I received the
> ridiculous answer that no sooner should I return, that I should be
> sent to the Andaman Islands as a Russian spy, which of course
> Colonel Olcott subsequently found out to be absolutely untrue. The
> readiness with which such a futile pretext for keeping me from Adyar
> was seized upon, shows in clear colours the ingratitude of those to
> whom I had given my life and health. Nay, more, urged on, as I
> understood, by the Executive Council, under the entirely absurd
> pretext that, in case of my death, my heirs might claim a share in
> the Adyar property, the President sent me a legal paper to sign, by
> which I formally renounced any right to the Headquarters or even to
> live there without the Council's permission. This, although I had
> spent several thousand rupees of my own private money, and had
> devoted my share of the profits of The Theosophist to the purchase
> of the house and its furniture. Nevertheless I signed the
> renunciation without one word of protest. I saw I was not wanted,
> and remained in Europe in spite of my ardent desire to return to
> India. How could I do otherwise than feel that all my labours had
> been rewarded with ingratitude, when my most urgent wishes to return
> were met with flimsy excuses and answers inspired by those who were
> hostile to me?
>
> The result of this is too apparent. You know too well the state of
> affairs in India for me to dwell longer upon details. In a word,
> since my departure, not only has the activity of the movement there
> gradually slackened, but those for whom I had the deepest
> affections, regarding them as a mother would her own sons, have
> turned against me. While in the West, no sooner had I accepted the
> invitation to come to London, then I found people—the S. P. R.
> Report and wild suspicions and hypotheses rampant in every direction
> notwithstanding—to believe in the truth of the great Cause I have
> struggled for, and in my own bona fides.
>
> Acting under the Master's orders, I began a new movement in the West
> on the original lines; I founded Lucifer, and the Lodge which bears
> my name. Recognizing the splendid work done at Adyar by Colonel
> Olcott and others to carry out the second of the three Objects of
> the T.S., viz., to promote the study of Oriental literature, I was
> determined to carry out here the two others. All know with what
> success this has been attended. Twice Colonel Olcott was asked to
> come over, and then I learned that I was once more wanted in India—
> at any rate by some. But the invitation came too late; neither would
> my doctor permit it, nor can I, if I would be true to my life-pledge
> and vows, now live at the Headquarters from which the Masters and
> Their spirit are virtually banished. The presence of Their portraits
> will not help; They are a dead letter. The truth is that I can never
> return to India in any other capacity than as Their faithful agent.
> And as, unless They appear among the Council in propria persona
> (which They will certainly never do now), no advice of mine on
> occult lines seems likely to be accepted, as the fact of my
> relations with the Masters is doubted, even totally denied by some;
> and I myself having no right to the Headquarters, what reason is
> there, therefore, for me to live at Adyar?
>
> The fact is this. In my position, half-measures are worse than none.
> People have either to believe entirely in me, or to honestly
> disbelieve. No one, no Theosophist, is compelled to believe, but it
> is worse than useless for people to ask me to help them, if they do
> not believe in me. Here in Europe and America are many who have
> never flinched in their devotion to Theosophy; consequently the
> spread of Theosophy and the T.S., in the West, during the last three
> years, has been extraordinary. The chief reason for this is that I
> was enabled and encouraged by the devotion of an ever-increasing
> number of members to the Cause and to Those who guide it, to
> establish an Esoteric Section, in which I can teach something of
> what I have learned to those who have confidence in me, and who
> prove this confidence by their disinterested work for Theosophy and
> the T.S. For the future, then, it is my intention to devote my life
> and energy to the E. S., and to the teaching of those whose
> confidence I retain. It is useless I should use the little time I
> have before me to justify myself before those who do not feel sure
> about the real existence of the Masters, only because,
> misunderstanding me, it therefore suits them to suspect me.
>
> And let me say at once, to avoid misconception, that my only reason
> for accepting the exoteric direction of European affairs, was to
> save those who really have Theosophy at heart and work for it and
> the Society, from being hampered by those who not only do not care
> for Theosophy, as laid out by the Masters, but are entirely working
> against both, endeavouring to undermine and counteract the influence
> of the good work done, both by open denial of the existence of the
> Masters, by declared and bitter hostility to myself, and also by
> joining forces with the most desperate enemies of our Society.
>
> Half-measures, I repeat, are no longer possible. Either I have
> stated the truth as I know it about the Masters and teach what I
> have been taught by them, or I have invented both Them and the
> Esoteric Philosophy. There are those among the Esotericists of the
> inner group who say that if I have done the latter, then I must
> myself be a "Master." However it may be, there is no alternative to
> this dilemma.
>
> The only claim, therefore, which India could ever have upon me would
> be strong only in proportion to the activity of the Fellows there
> for Theosophy and their loyalty to the Masters. You should not need
> my presence among you to convince you of the truth of Theosophy, any
> more than your American brothers need it. A conviction that wanes
> when any particular personality is absent is no conviction at all.
> Know, moreover, that any further proof and teaching I can give only
> to the Esoteric Section, and this for the following reason: its
> members are the only ones whom I have the right to expel for open
> disloyalty to their pledge (not to me, H.P.B., but to their Higher
> Self and the Mahâtmic aspect of the Masters), a privilege I cannot
> exercise with the F.T.S. at large, yet one which is the only means
> of cutting off a diseased limb from the healthy body of the tree,
> and thus save it from infection. I can care only for those who
> cannot be swayed by every breath of calumny, and every sneer,
> suspicion, or criticism, whoever it may emanate from.
>
> Thenceforth let it be clearly understood that the rest of my life is
> devoted only to those who believe in the Masters, and are willing to
> work for Theosophy as they understand it, and for the T.S. on the
> lines upon which they originally established it.
>
> If, then, my Hindu brothers really and earnestly desire to bring
> about the regeneration of India, if they wish to ever bring back the
> days when the Masters, in the ages of India's ancient glory, came
> freely among them, guiding and teaching the peoples; then let them
> cast aside all fear and hesitation, and turn a new leaf in the
> history of the Theosophical Movement. Let them bravely rally round
> the President-Founder, whether I am in India or not, as around those
> few true Theosophists who have remained loyal throughout, and bid
> defiance to all calumniators and ambitious malcontents—both without
> and within the Theosophical Society.
>
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