Re: Theos-World Of historical interest perhaps?
Mar 17, 2006 09:06 AM
by Steven Levey
Thank you for this. It is an amazing commentary, and so self validating to me, (although others may look for and find areas of contention, or mismatiching quotes), that it requires nothing from me.
Steve
nhcareyta <nhcareyta@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
In light of recent postings, this article written in 1991 and
subsequently published in The Canadian Theosophist might be of
interest. It was sent to me whilst involved in personal
correspondence with the author during my early stages of
disenthrallment and disillusionment with the Adyar T.S.
IN MEMORY OF H P. BLAVATSKY
BY D. J. BUXEY
"We cannot exaggerate the debt we owe to H.P.B. She brought us the
Light...and we can best carry on her work by remembering the
gratitude that we owe her.
- Dr. Annie Besant.
H.P.B. resigned ("in utter disgust." as she called it) from the
Theosophical Society on the New Day of Spring, March 21, 1985.
She ended her words on the matter with:
I leave with, one and all, to every one of my friends and
sympathizers, my loving farewell. I would implore you all to be true
to the Society (this essay is being written only "to be true to the
Society", as she puts it. - D.J.B.) and not to permit it to be over-
thrown by the enemy.
Fraternally and ever yours - in life or death.
H.P. Blavatsky.
Adyar was happy to see her go. As she put it later, there was hatred
from every department in Adyar towards her.
Why did the Council of the T.S. accept her resignation? Perhaps, as
she put it, (I am quoting from The Canadian Theosophist. Sept.-Oct.
1982, p.80. Vol.63, No. 4):
"Mankind - the majority at any rate - hates to think for itself. It
resents as an insult the humblest invitation to step for a moment
outside the old well-beaten track, and, judging for itself, to enter
into a new path in some fresh direction."
This essay is being written, in her memory, precisely for the T.S. to
move "in some fresh direction" in the second century of its existence.
As I was writing my paper for the International Conference, as
invited, and came to this point, the biographer of H.P.B., my
neighbour, came in I asked him why he ended his book on H.P.B. with
her resignation and did not go further. His answer shook me. He said,
as invited, he speaks to the lodges, but never became a member -(this
surprised me) - "as so sordid is the history of the T.S. that I want
no part of it."
I then remonstrated. "You are then presenting only part of the
picture."
His reply was, "Be it so. but I cannot wash dirty linen in public."
After her resignation, H.P.B. then left India on March 30, 1885,
against her will as she put it later to friends. As she saw the
shores of her beloved India recede, she wept like a baby. She was
carried on board ship without a change of clothes, and, in her own
words, "...indecent haste."
And now, with her out of the way Adyar started playing games. It
started "manufacturing" Masters in their factory, - not merely
manufacture, but commercializing and selling "Them" also, much as the
Christian missionaries sell Jesus - their American TV. programs earn
at least a 100 million dollars.
In the last bulletin of Convention No. 4 that a friend sent to me
from Adyar, it mentioned that a property in Holland reverted to
Adyar. But I happened to read Dr. Besant's Watch Tower notes in The
Theosophist of how the property was made to be donated. The donor
said that she was made a member or pupil of the Great White
Brotherhood (Annie Besant's eyes widened at this stage) and she was
put on probation by the Master K.H. This was Bishop Wedgewood's
mischief - when I went to see him in Camberley in 1950 he had already
gone mad (from tertiary syphilis. -Ed.). Dr. Besant said that she had
never heard of such a thing (that the property was being donated), -
all sorts of things happened behind her back - but she was accepting
the property nevertheless. This is just an example to illustrate the
point. The property, Huizen has now come to belong to Adyar.
H.P. Blavatsky now declared:
a. I cannot now live at Headquarters from which the Masters and
Their Spirit are virtually banished.
b. The Presence of Their portraits will not help. They are a
dead letter.
(These portraits are now in the E.S.Shrine Room.)
c. No advice of mine on occult lines seems likely to be accepted.
d. 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?
This letter has been kept secret from Adyar-ites to this day. Only
when a Parsee judge objected was it partially repeated in The
Theosophist of 1929. By then Annie Besant was losing her memory (she
asked Krishnamurti if they had ever met!), and was nearly dying, so
they (Adyar officials) felt it was of no harm then. But all
derogatory references to Adyar, even until then (1929) were removed.
After H.P. Blavatsky's departure from Adyar, the Masters
became "alive" at the Adyar Convention.Who was to stop them? A
member, Franz Hartman, astonished at all these goings on, wrote to
H.P.B. and I quote from her very long letter of April 1885:
"As to ... that portion of your letter where you speak of the "army"
of the deluded (viz. T.S. members at the Convention) and
the "imaginary" Mahatmas of Olcott - you are absolutely and sadly
right". (Note "sadly right" and "imaginary
Mahatmas, Olcott's Old Diary Leaves is pure fantasy and imagination -
D.J.B.)
"Have I not seen the thing for nearly 8 years? Have I not struggled
and fought against Olcott's ardent and gushing imagination and tried
to stop him every day of my life?" (Note her words, "his gushing
imagination" on Masters. - DJ.B.)
"Was he not told by me that if he did not see the Masters in their
true light and did not cease speaking and inflaming people's
imagination, that he would be held responsible for all the evil the
Society might come to?" ("Note the words, "inflaming people's
imagination" by tall stories about Masters. - D.J.B.)
Who started inventing all this? To the German theosophist, (Hartman)
H.P.B. explained:
Then came Damodar and several other fanatics (note this word, -
D.J.B.) calling them "Mahatmas" and little by little, the Adepts were
transformed into Gods on earth.
They...were becoming with every day more legendary and miraculous.
The idea that Masters were motal men never crossed anyone's mind,
though They wrote themselves repeatedly"
Why did she not stop all this? As she put it at the end:
"I was always occupied with The Theosophist, and ever in my room. All
were left to Olcott and Damodar, two fanatics." (The word "fanatics"
appears again. D.J.B.) "How I protested and tried to swim against the
current, only Mr. Sinnett knows, and the Masters."
The Masters (made, as H.P.B. says, omniscient, omnipotent and
omnipresent) leave the Society. We will quote only three phrases of
what the Masters said, from Their numerous statements:
1. `The Society has liberated itself from our grasp and influence,and
we have let it go."
2. "This policy (Olcott's) has done more harm to the spirit of
the Society than several Coulombs can do." (What a strong and
damaging statement to make, "more than what several Coulombs can
do." - DJB.)
3. "He (Olcott) saved his body (organization)but the T.S.is now a
soulless corpse." (Or, he saved the body but killed the soul. - D.J.B)
Now with the Master K.H. saying "the T.S, has failed", H.P.B. is
asked to start a new movement. Her words:
"Acting under the Master's orders. I began a new movement in the West
on the original lines ... I founded (the magazine) Lucifer."
Now the Lucifer was founded to attack The Theosophist, otherwise why
two magazines? How else would her voice be heard? How else could she
crusade, a brave and lone warrior against falsehood? With this we
must slowly end her story.
History continues, as the story of others begins, and it is with her
memory that we are more concerned about here. Just as Krishnamurti
told me many a time, once with tears in his eyes, how he was thrown
out of Adyar at a moment's notice (he came to continue H.P.B.'s
work), just as I saw, year after year, the pain in his eyes and
words, we find from her letters the pain coming, as in this sentence:
"...those for whom I had the deepest affection, regarding them as a
mother would her own sons ... have turned against me..."
At this point we must stop; her story is over. What about her
successor? His story would start. H.P.B. had told Wm.Q. Judge in July
1886 (and a number of times thereafter), "Take my place, Judge, ...
replace me at Adyar."
But Annie Besant played politics. "Politics" means fighting for
power. She need not have, for Judge was to die in a year, but she did
not know this. She would have come to power in any case, and later
confessed to many people, such as B.P. Wadia that she was misled.
An Australian, Mouni Sadhu, in his In Days of Great Peace, says on
p.49:
"On my enquiry late in 1926, Mrs. Besant wrote to me:
`It is true that after the death of Col. Olcott in 1907, the Masters
withdrew their direct guidance of the T.S.' "
Besant died broken-hearted, and as Krishnamurti was to tell me and
others later, she nevertheless was sincere, but the others were not.
Olcott also realized this. In his biography, Hammer on the Mountain a
conversation appears on page 299- 300:
Olcott - "I have learned more, particularly as regards Judge -
"Yes, Henry," I (Laura Langford - Holloway) said eagerly,
Olcott - "I know now and it will comfort you to hear it, that I
wronged Judge - not willfully or in malice; nevertheless I have done
this and I regret it."
"God bless you", I said and then thanked him for his brave
recantation.
H.P.B. tells her Masters she wants to start a new movement in her
beloved India, the home of the Mahat mas, "of whom every Hindu school
boy knows". (Mahatmas being true sanyasins etc.), but not in Europe.
Master K.H. asks her to go to pondicherry, but Adyar threatens arrest
(as its existence is at stake), and in utter disgust, Master K.H.
asks Aurobindo to go to Pondicherry. Was there any way to save the
situation then? Yes, by recalling her, as the Master told her "most
plainly":
"Master told me most plainly that if the Society did not recall me
before 1886 (which it did not - D.J.B.) They would retire entirely
from any connection with it, signify it to the London Lodge and other
European and American Societies, and break every connection with
every member."
Conclusion:
H.P.B. asks, "Whom do I blame?" (for this mess). She
answers, "Certainly not I."
Obviously blame goes to Olcott, as the Masters pinned the blame on
him, but she is so noble, so chivalrous, that she puts it this
way, "Loaded and heavy is his karma, poor man...", but she does not
blame him. Then whom? "To human nature, demanding money." -
All this was done for money - for organization, not teachings. So far
as teachings were concerned, she had said, as J. Krishnamurti had
told in practically the same words:
"I saw with terror and anger the false track they (the T.S.) were all
pursuing."
When Judge started his magazine The Path, she had said, so far as the
mas, "of whom every Hindu school boy knows". (Mahatmas being true
sanyasins etc.), but not in Europe.
Master K.H. asks her to go to pondicherry, but Adyar threatens arrest
(as its existence is at stake), and in utter disgust, Master K.H.
asks Aurobindo to go to Pondicherry. Was there any way to save the
situation then? Yes, by recalling her, as the Master told her "most
plainly":
"Master told me most plainly that if the Society did not recall me
before 1886 (which it did not - D.J.B.) They would retire entirely
from any connection with it, signify it to the London Lodge and other
European and American Societies, and break every connection with
every member."
Conclusion:
H.P.B. asks, "Whom do I blame?" (for this mess). She
answers, "Certainly not I."
Obviously blame goes to Olcott, as the Masters pinned the blame on
him, but she is so noble, so chivalrous, that she puts it this
way, "Loaded and heavy is his karma, poor man...", but she does not
blame him. Then whom? "To human nature, demanding money." -
All this was done for money - for organization, not teachings. So far
as teachings were concerned, she had said, as J. Krishnamurti had
told in practically the same words:
"I saw with terror and anger the false track they (the T.S.) were all
pursuing."
When Judge started his magazine The Path, she had said, so far as the
teachings are concerned:
"Bravo! Judge, ... your Path outclasses my Lucifer any day." While
for Adyar she said,
"Adyar is the laughing-stock of the theosophists themselves, let
alone their enemies.
Even Swami Vivekananda had said, "God knows what happened. But Judge
was the best representative the theosophists ever had."
Post Mortem
Is there a post mortem? Possibly yes.
Annie Besant died. She possibly saw things in a better light, and as
reported in The Theosophist Dec.1941. P.232, told Arundale. "The
Lodges have become confused ... they have forgotten what theosophy
is. Their members run here, there, and everywhere, everywhere but
towards Theosophy."
"...everywhere but towards Theosophy". This is why this paper is
being written. May there be a new turn of direction by 1991.*
* The approximate time of writing of this essay. Add a prayer for a
belated new turn of direction in 1996. -Ed.
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