Theosophical Society,
H P Blavatsky
Concerning H.P.B.
Stray Thoughts on Theosophy
By
G R S Mead
First Published in Adyar Pamphlet No. 111
March 1920
G R S Mead
was H P Blavatsky’s personal secretary up to her death in 1891 and read the
oration at her funeral.
I (Wisdom) love them that love me -
Prov. viii, 17.
Where there is mystery, it is generally supposed that there must
also be evil.
Byron
LET
us for a few minutes turn our thoughts together to the woman without whom, in
every probability, there would have been no Theosophical movement today as we
understand it. Let us consider briefly the crude and blundering question:
"Do you believe in Blavatsky?"
To
me this question sounds strange, sounds even, if I may say so, vulgar.
"Blavatsky?" No one who knew her, knew her thus tout court. For her
enemies even, while she lived, she was Madame Blavatsky or at least H.P.
Blavatsky; while for her friends and lovers she was Helena Petrovna, or H.P.B.,
or the "Old Lady" - which once gave occasion to a pretty witticism of
a friend, who slyly remarked that it would have been awkward had Madame been
Monsieur.
When
then such an uncompromising question as this is put to us, how are we to answer
it in utter honesty, if, as is the case with most of us who have studied the
subject, we refuse to adopt either the ignorant position of blind prejudice,
which thinks it answers infallibly by screaming the parrot-cry of
"trickster," or the, to me still more ignorant view of blind
credulity, that once on a time tried to parade our Theosophic streets
proclaiming the Bandar-log mantra "H.P.B. says," as the universal
panacea for every ill, and solvent of every problem - a species of aberration
which, I rejoice to say, has long ceased from troubling us?
To
this question, the only answer that the vast majority of our present-day
fellowship can give, is perhaps somewhat on these lines: We never knew Madame
Blavatsky personally, and now, at this late date, in face of the absolutely
contradictory assertions made concerning her by her friends and her foes, it is
not to be expected that we can pronounce magisterially on a problem which has
baffled even her most intimate friends, or solve an enigma which is as
mysterious as the riddle of the ancient Sphinx. What we know is, that in spite
of all that people have said against the extravagantly abused woman for upwards
of a quarter of a century, the fundamentals of Theosophy stand firm, and this
for the very simple reason that they are entirely independent of Madame Blavatsky.
It is Theosophy in which we are interested, and this would remain an immovable
rock of strength and comfort, an inexhaustible source of study, the most noble
of all quests, and the most desirable of paths on which to set our feet, even
if it were possible, which it is not, conclusively to prove that H.P.Blavatsky
was the cleverest trickster and most consummate charlatan of the ages.
For
surely even the most prodigal of sons may recall dim - nay, even bright
-memories of the glories of the mansions of his father's house; his report need
not be necessarily false because he is in exile, feeding with the
"swine," and grown like unto them. He may by chance have eaten of the
"moly"; his memory of home may be coming back. Nay, in this case, it
has come back, though seemingly in a chaotic rush, for in fact and truth - and
this is what really counts in the whole matter - it has awakened the same
memory in many a one of us, his fellow exiles, who bless him for the story - a
true "myth" - which he has told.
All
this and more, even the most cautious of us can answer, and so set H.P.B's
testimony concerning herself, the "memories" concealed within her
books, which memories none but the knowing can know, against, on the one hand,
the faults of their scholarship - for she was no scholar and never claimed to
be one, a fact that makes her work the more extraordinary rather than helps to
clarify the problem - and, on the other hand, against the twenty years old
inimical Report of a member of a society which is now distinguished but was
then in its infancy. Indeed the enigma of H.P.B. is ridiculously far from being
so simple as the fervent believers in the infallibility of that very one sided
account would have it to be.
The
enigma of H.P.B. is, even for those who knew her most intimately, insoluble, as
anyone may see for himself by reading the straightforward objective account of
her, given by her lifelong colleague in the work, H.S. Olcott, in his Old Diary
Leaves. No one has in any way given so true a portrait of H.P.B. in her
ordinary daily life as has our President-Founder; it is an account of utter
honesty, hiding nothing, palliating nothing, but painting in bold strokes the
picture of that to me most humanely loveable bundle of inexplicable
contradictions; that puzzling mixture of wisdom and folly; that sphinx clad in
motley; that successful pioneer of a truly spiritual movement (who was yet, to
all appearances, the least fitted to inaugurate such an effort because of her
almost mischievous delight not only in outraging the taboos of conventional
thought, but also in setting at nought the canons of deportment which tradition
has decreed as the outer and visible signs of a spiritual teacher); that
frequent cause of despair even to her best friends, and yet, in spite of her
utter incomprehensibility, the most winsome of creatures.
As
for myself, when I am confronted with the notorious S.P.R. (Society for
Psychical Research) Report - though I must confess that I rarely hear anything
about it nowadays - I have a very simple answer to make; and it runs somewhat
on these lines. You who believe in the S.P.R. investigator's account say that
Mme. Blavatsky was a trickster, You did not know her personally; nor, as a
matter of fact, did the Committee who adopted the investigator's account. Even
the investigator himself had to get the data on which he based his theory from
others, when he arrived in
Since
those days, however, such a change has come over the general opinion of the
S.P.R. with regard to psychic matters, and Dr Hodgson himself has so
fundamentally altered his own position, owing to his now mature firsthand.
experience, that one need not be held to be departing entirely from an
impartial judgment in thinking it more probable that Dr Hodgson's inexperienced
hypotheses with regard to Mme. Blavatsky are not to be preferred to the many
years of testimony in her favour brought forward by her friends in all
countries.
Oh,
but - some one will say under the influence of this notorious Report - they
were all deluded, hypnotized. She was, on the showing of the evidence, helped
by many skilful confederates all over the world; it was all a clever system of
deception.
This
is indeed the main burden of the hypotheses put forward by this Report; on all
occasions confederates, trapdoors, etc., hypnotism. Anything, everything, but
the admission that H.P.B. was, even at times, so common a thing as an ordinary
spiritualistic medium! No; she must be proved lower even than that - an
unmitigated fraud in every direction. Even an impartial outsider must feel
inclined to exclaim; Surtout pas trop de zèle, Messieurs les Inquisiteurs! We
have throughout presented to us the picture of nothing but a cunning
prestidigitatrice, with the elaborate preparations and carefully planned surprises,
carried out by astute confederates. It is true that this host of confederates
has never been brought into court; they have disappeared into the invisible.
Indeed they have, and that too not metaphorically; or rather, perhaps, they
have never been anywhere else than in the invisible, for did not H.P.B. call
them elementals?
Be
that as it may be, I, for my part, when investigating a subject, prefer
firsthand evidence. I have, therefore, as opposed to the endorsers of and the
believers in this Report, so to speak, never left her side; I worked with her
in the greatest intimacy, was her private secretary. The picture which the
Report paints of H.P.B. flatly contradicts all my personal experience of her,
and therefore I cannot but decline to accept it.
I
went to her after the publication of the Report, three years after, when the
outcry was still loud and suspicion in the air; for the general public of that
day, believing in the impossibility of all psychic phenomena, naturally
condemned H.P.B. without any enquiry. I went with an accurate knowledge of the
Report and of all its elaborate hypotheses in my head; it could not have been
otherwise. But a very few months' firsthand. acquaintance with H.P.B. convinced
me that the very faults of her character were such that she could not have
possibly carried on a carefully planned fraud, even had she wanted to do so,
least of all an elaborate scheme of deception depending on the manipulation of
mechanical devices and the help of crafty confederates.
She
was frequently most unwise in her utterances, and if angry would blurt out
anything that might come into her head, no matter who was present. She did not
seem to care what anyone might think, and would sometimes accuse herself of all
kinds of things - faults and failings - but never, under any circumstances,
even in her wildest moods, did she ever utter a syllable that in any way would
confirm the speculations and accusations of Dr Hodgson. I am myself convinced
that had she been guilty of the things charged against her in this respect, she
could not have failed, in one or other of her frequent outbursts or
confidences, to have let some word or hint escape her of an incriminating
nature. Two things in all the chaos of her cosmos stood firm in every mood -
that her Teachers existed and that she had not cheated.
But
the irreconcilables will say: Oh, she was too cunning for you; besides, she
glamoured you.
The
irreconcilables are of course privileged to say anything their fancy may
dictate; it is far easier to be seemingly wise at a long distance and to
imagine things as one would desire them to have been, than to have, like
myself, to try to solve the actual problem that was daily before my own eyes,
for three years and more, and the further and still more complex problem
contained in a most voluminous literary output, every page of which one has
read, and many of which one has had in one way or other to edit. What, however,
has always been a personal proof to myself of H.P.B's bona fides, is a purely
objective thing, incapable of being explained away by impatiently casting it
into the wastepaper basket of psychological theoretics.
To
all intents and purposes, as far as any objective knowledge was concerned, I
went to work with H.P.B. as an entirely untried factor. I might, for all she
knew to the contrary, have been a secret emissary of the enemy, for she was to
my knowledge spied on by many. In any case, supposing she had been a cheat, she
must have known that it was a very dangerous experiment to admit an untried person
to her most intimate environment. Not only, however, did she do this, but she
overwhelmed me with the wholeheartedness of her confidence. She handed over to
me the charge of all her keys, of her MSS, her writing desk and the nests of
drawers in which she kept her most private papers; not only this, but she
further, on the plea of being left in peace for her writing, absolutely refused
to be bothered with her letters, and made me take over her voluminous
correspondence, and that too without opening it first herself. She not only
metaphorically, but sometimes actually, flung the offending missives at my
head! I accordingly had frequently to open all her letters and not only to read
them but to answer them as best I could; for this strange old lady cried out
with loud outcry to be relieved of the burden of letter-writing, that she might
write her articles and books, and would wax most wrathful and drive me out,
whenever I pestered her to answer the most pressing correspondence or even to
give me some idea of what to reply in her name.
Now
I am not saying it was right of a woman who day by day received a large batch
of letters, some of them - many of them - containing the most private thoughts of
men and women all over the world, admitting the reader to the intimacy of their
inner life, [When some of her bitterest foes were attacking her - men and women
who previously had poured forth their confidences into her unwilling ears - she
exclaimed to me: "God! how they must respect me!" They knew she would
not make use of their confessions against them.] thus to entrust them to a
young man comparatively ignorant of life and almost entirely unable to deal
with them, otherwise than each morning, so to speak, to beard the lion in his
den - for the Old Lady was leonine - and persist in parading the most important
of this correspondence before the eyes of H.P.B., to her even increasing
annoyance and a regular periodical outburst, when both correspondence and
secretary were first committed to an infernal w.p.b., and finally some sort of
a compromise was arrived at.
I
grumbled then, but now I rejoice, for so I learned in a short time what might
otherwise have taken me many long years to acquire; but it seemed to me, and
still so seems, to have been somewhat rough on her correspondents, unless
indeed in many cases the fool had to be answered according to his folly - and I
was a useful fool for that answering side of the business.
But,
be this as it may be, convinced me wholly and surely that whatever else H.P.B.
may have been, she was not a cheat or trickster - she had nothing to hide; for
a woman who, according to the main hypothesis of the S.P.R. Report, had
confederates all over the world and lived the life of a scheming adventuress,
would have been not only incredibly foolhardy, but positively mad to have let
all her private correspondence pass into the hands of a third party, and that,
too, without even previously opening it herself.
All
this and much else proved to me that H.P.B. was assuredly not a cheat and
trickster, certainly not while I knew her; and in every probability was not in
the past when I did not know her. Of one thing, however, I am certain, that I
know far more about H.P.B. her life and work, than those members of the S.P.R.
who have persistently done their best to disgrace her before the world, and
that their hypotheses are ludicrously insufficient to unriddle that sphinx of
the nineteenth century, H.P.Blavatsky who was, at the lowest computation, not
only as interesting as a dozen Mrs So and So's, on whom the S.P.R. have
expended so much energy, but who, further, was the chief means of opening many
windows into the greatness of things, not one of which will be shut again, for
the lifework of the greatest of her detractors in the S.P.R. does but ever more
and more support her own contentions.
"Do
you believe in H.P.B? Yes; I believe in H.P.B. As for H.P. Blavatsky, I have no
more high opinion of her than had H.P.B. herself, for she straitly distinguished
between the two; but I reject with scorn the ludicrous attempt to explain even
H.P.Blavatsky by calling her a trickster and a common charlatan. I believe
firmly in H.P.B's bona fides; but above all things I believe with all my soul
in the great things she fought for, in the deep Mysteries of which she gave
tidings. I should, however, like always to be allowed, if I can, to state them
in my own way, and, if I am able, to support them in my own way, for I
frequently dissent from H.P.B's methods and from her manner.
She
was filled with imperfections, even as we all are, but she - when she touched a
height, it was a great height. There was something colossal, titanic, even
cosmic, about H.P.B. at times; indeed I have sometimes had the apparently whimsical
notion that she did not belong to this planet, did not fit into this evolution.
But, indeed, who shall unriddle the enigma of H.P.B.? What did she not touch at
times? Multiplex personality in contact with multiplex personalities - as
complex perchance as man's whole nature, in miniature at least!
I
make the surface critic an unconditional present of the faulty apparatus of her
controversial writings - though that is perhaps somewhat too generous a gift on
all occasions. She was no scholar, had no training at school, or college, or
university; was no scientist, had presumably never witnessed a laboratory
experiment in her life; she was no mathematician, *[Indeed her favourite habit
was to count on her fingers. On one occasion when she was engaged on a chapter
of The Secret Doctrine, she called her niece into her room and addressed her
somewhat as follows: "Here, my dear, you are a mathematical pundit; where
does the comma go? I am certain of the figures but can't see where the
confounded comma comes in." This was the value of the circular measure of
two right angles, and anyone who has read the learned disquisition of the
matter in The Secret Doctrine will be somewhat puzzled to account for the fact
that the writer knew so little of mathematics as to confuse the decimal point
with a comma!] no formal philosopher of the schools, could not, most probably,
have told you the difference between the positions of Kant and Schopenhauer had
you asked her - and yet she wrote on all these things, and frequently with the
greatest acumen.
Of
all this I make a present to the critic; I class all this as mostly ephemeral,
as what will to a large extent pass away, as what has in some measure already
passed away, for science has grown much in later years and is now denying many
things that she denied, and affirming many that she affirmed twenty years ago.
But the giant's grip of the whole scheme of things, the titanic sweep of
world-processes envisaged, the cyclopean piling of hypotheses on hypotheses
till her hypothetical Ossas and Pelions reached to heaven, and to the heaven of
heavens - the fresh atmosphere of life and reality with which she surrounded
her great expositions - all this I claim for her enduring reputation. She was a
titan among mortals; she pointed the way to me and to many others, and that is
why we love her. Setting forth on the way she showed, we know she lied not as
to the direction. Our titan was elemental, as indeed are all titans; but in
laying foundations it is necessary to have giants, and giants when they move
cannot but knock over the idols in the shrines of the dwarfs.
Let
me then speak of a subject of which I presumably know as much as even the most
industrious adverse critic of H.P.B's work - her literary remains. I have
carefully read all she has written; much of it I have edited, some of it I have
read many, many times. I think I may say without any undue boasting that no one
knows better than I do the books from which she quotes and the use she makes of
quotations. She was, indeed, more or less mediæval, or even, at times,
Early-Christian, in her quotation work; let us grant this fully in every way
-though perhaps we are a little inclined to go too far in this nowadays. But
what I have been most interested in, in her writing, is precisely that which
she does not quote from known sources, and this it is which forms for me the
main factor in the enigma of H.P.B. I perpetually ask myself the questions:
Whence did she get her information - apparent translations of texts and
commentaries, the originals of which are unknown to the Western world?
Some
ten years ago or more, the late Professor Max Müller, to whom all lovers of the
Sacred Books of the East owe so deep a debt of gratitude, published his most
instructive set of Gifford Lectures, entitled Theosophy or Psychological
Religion. These I reviewed in much detail, in a series of three articles in
this REVIEW. The aged Professor wrote to me a kindly note on the subject,
taking exception to one or two points, and we exchanged several letters.
He
then expressed himself as surprised that I should waste, as he thought, what he
was good enough to call my abilities on "Theosophy," when the whole
field of Oriental studies lay before me, in which he was kind enough to think I
could do useful work. Above all, he was puzzled to understand why I treated
seriously that charlatan, Mme Blavatsky, who had done so much harm to the cause
of genuine Oriental studies by her parodies of Buddhism and Vedanta, which she
had mixed up with Western ideas. Her whole Theosophy was du réchauffé of
misunderstood translations of Sanskrit and Pâli texts.
To
this I replied that as I had no object to serve but the cause of Truth, if he
could convince me that Mme. Blavatsky's Theosophy was merely a clever or
ignorant manipulation of Sanskrit and Pâli texts, I would do everything in my
power to make the facts known to the Theosophic world; for I naturally did not
wish to waste my life on a "swindle" - the epithet he once used of
Esoteric Buddhism at an Oriental Congress. I therefore asked him to be so good
as to point out what in his opinion were the original texts in Sanskrit or
Pâli, or any other language, on which were based either the "Stanzas of
Dzyan" and their commentaries in The Secret Doctrine, or any of the three
treatises found in The Voice of the Silence. I had myself for years been
searching for any trace of the originals or of fragments resembling them, and
had so far found nothing. If we could get the originals, we asked nothing
better; it was the material we wanted.
To
this Professor Max Müller replied in short note, pointing to two verses in The
Voice of the Silence, which he said were quite Western in thought and therefore
betrayed their ungenuineness.
I
answered that I was extremely sorry he had not pointed out the texts on which
any sentence of the "Precepts" or any stanza of the "Book of
Dzyan" was based; nevertheless, I should like to publish his criticism,
reserving to myself the right of commenting on it.
To
this Professor Max Müller hastily rejoined that he begged I would not do so,
but that I would return his letter at once, as he wished to write something
more worthy of the REVIEW. I, of course, returned his letter, but I have been
waiting from that day to this for the promised proof that H.P.B was, in these
marvellous literary creations, nothing but a sorry centonist who out of tags of
misunderstood translations patched together a fantastic motley for fools to
wear. And I may add the offer is still open for any and every Orientalist who
desires to make good the, to me, ludicrous contention of the late Nestor of
Orientalism.
I
advisedly call these passages, enshrined in her works, marvellous literary
creations, not from the point of view of an enthusiast who knows nothing of
Oriental literature, or the great cosmogonical systems of the past, or the
Theosophy of the World Faiths, but as the mature judgement of one who has been
for some twenty years studying just such subjects. Nor can it be maintained
with any show of confidence that the Stanzas and their Commentaries, and the
Fragments from what is called the Book of the Golden Precepts, are adequately
paralleled by the writings of spiritualistic mediumship; they are different
from all these, belong to a different class of transmission.
The
Stanzas set forth a cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis which, in their sweep and
detail, leave far behind any existing record of such things from the past; they
cannot be explained as the clever piecing together of the disconnected archaic
fragments still preserved in sacred books and classical authors; they have an
individuality of their own, and yet they bear the hallmark of an antiquity and
the warrant of an economy which the Western world thinks to have long passed
away. Further, they are set in an atmosphere of commentary apparently
translated or paraphrased from Far Eastern tongues, producing a general
impression of genuineness that is difficult for a scholar who has sufficiently
overcome his initial prejudices to study them, to withstand.
As
for the Fragments which purport to be treatises of a mystic Buddhist school,
they too bear on their faces every mark of genuineness, even in their heretical
nature and in the self-confession of their sectarian character. It is far more
difficult to believe they are forgeries, begotten of a Western brain, than to
believe they are, if not literal translations, at least free versions from
genuine documents, perhaps of the Aryasanga school sermons for pupils on the
Path.
Almost
without exception I find that people who loudly condemn H.P.B. when asked
"Have you read these things?" answer: "Oh, I really can't be
bothered to read anything that woman wrote; she was an impostor" or
"No, I have not read these things; and anyway I am not an Oriental
scholar, but Professor Max Müller in The Nineteenth Century," etc., etc.
All
of which is rather in favour of H.P.B. than against her, for there must be
something almost superhuman on the side of one who can arouse such blind
prejudice in otherwise fair-minded folk.
The
enigma of H.P.B. which no Report or a thousand such Reports can solve, among
many other riddles, presents us in limine with the question: Whence did H.P.B.
become possessed of these things? What is the most simple hypothesis to account
for it all? If you say she was a spiritualistic medium - then you must extend
this term enormously beyond its ordinary connotation, and translate it into a
designation of great dignity, and carry it up into the heights of exalted
genius; for nothing short of this, I am convinced, will satisfy the
unprejudiced enquirer.
I
have tried every hypothesis and every permutation and combination of hypotheses
of which I have heard or which I have devised, to account for these truly great
things in H.P.B's literary activity, and I am bold to say that the only
explanation that in any way has the slightest pretension to bear the strain of
the evidence is that these things were dictated to, or impressed upon, her
psychically by living teachers and friends, most of whom she had known
physically. It is true that, as she herself stated, and as was stated through
her, she at times got things tangled up badly, but she strove her best to do
her best in most difficult circumstances.
Indeed,
one of the most interesting facts in the whole problem is that she was herself
as much delighted with the beauty of these teachings and amazed at the vastness
of the conceptions as anyone else. If she herself had invented them, she often
would say, then she was a world-genius, a Master, instead of being, as she knew
she was, the very imperfect servant who simply declared there were true Masters
to serve. She might repudiate everything else, but this she never gainsaid.
Doubtless she has distorted many things, has not heard correctly, has transmitted
them imperfectly, for she was ever very ill and harassed, the object of
never-ceasing attack, treachery, and ingratitude, in addition to being
naturally of a very fiery and tempestuous nature. All of which things make it
all the more surprising that so much was achieved and not that more was not
accomplished. The powers that were used must thus have been very great, perhaps
an earnest and foreshadowing of what may be accomplished in the West if found
necessary, and an absolute departure from the conventional conditions of the
contemplative life as a means of illuminations.
H.P.B.
was a warrior not a priestess, a prophetess rather than seeress; she was,
moreover, most things you would not expect, as an instrument for bringing back
the memory of much that was most holy and wise in antiquity. She was indeed as
it were the living symbol of the seeming foolishness in this world, whereby the
wisdom was forthshadowed. In this birth, I am persuaded, I shall never look
upon her like again; she alone has given me the feeling of being in contact
with someone colossal, titanic, at times almost cosmic. I have sometimes
wondered whether this strange being belonged to our humanity at all - and yet
she was most human, most lovable. Had she run away from some other planet, so
to speak? Did she normally belong to their evolution? Quien sabe?
To
all of such questions none of us who knew her and loved her can give any sure
answer; she remains our sphinx, our mystery, our dearly loved Old Lady. She was
not a teacher in any ordinary sense, for she had no idea of teaching in any
orderly or systematic fashion; indeed she detested the very idea of being
considered a spiritual or ethical teacher, cried out loudly against it,
protested she was the least fitted of all to be called to such an office. No,
she was better than that, better than any formal instructor, for she was as it
were a natural fire at which to light up enthusiasm for the greater life of the
world, a marvellous incentive to make one grip on to the problems of self-knowing,
a wonderful inspirer of longings for return, a true singer of the songs of
home; all this she was at times, while at times she was intensified confusion.
It
is some thirteen years since H.P.B. departed from her pain-racked body, and yet
somehow or other with each year my affectionate remembrance of her does but
increase, and I ever look back to her and her work for inspiration to revive
the feeling of greatness and large-heartedness, and that fresh atmosphere of
freeing from conventionality which meant springtime, and growth, and a bursting
of bonds, and a flowing of sap, and the removing of mountains as the young
shoots burst from their tiny mustard seeds and shook the earth heaps from their
shoulders. It was the virile life in her, the breadth of view, the quick
adaptability, the absence of prudery and pietism, the camaraderie, the
camp-life as it were of those earlier days, that made the blood circulate in
the veins, and the muscles tense for strenuous hardship and advance into
regions ever more and more unknown.
But
why do I, who am no hero-worshiper, allow myself thus enthusiastically to write
of my "occult mother-in-law," as she humorously called herself? I
know not, except that these are Stray Thoughts on Theosophy, and my thoughts
not infrequently stray to her who set my feet on the way, and that in writing
about her I have revived some deeper feelings than I had intended to arouse,
for my main object was to lead up to a suggestion concerning White Lotus Day, a
suggestion which has already been adopted by the President-Founder at the last
General Meeting of the Society. This paper however, was written before I
received the Report of that meeting, and when I had already written as follows:
As
the years roll round, on May the 8th, the day of her departure from her body,
many gatherings of Theosophists celebrate H.P.B's memory, and we call it White
Lotus Day, though why precisely I know not. Perhaps it might have been better
to have followed the Platonists and have chosen her birthday for this keeping
of her memory green, but be that as it may be, it was never intended by her
friends to be a day of lamentation - and, indeed, I do not think that any so
regard it, and sure it is that H.P.B. herself would have screamed out against
any such absurdity. Equally would she, I think, have cried out, against any
attempt at making such a gathering an occasion for pietism or hero-worship.
Indeed, I know no one who detested, more than she did, any attempt to
hero-worship herself - she positively physically shuddered at any expression of
reverence to herself - as a spiritual teacher; I have heard her cry out in
genuine alarm at an attempt to kneel to her by an enthusiastic admirer. But
would H.P.B. desire to keep this day for herself, and thus to inaugurate the
idea of starting a sort of calendar of Theosophical "saints," and of
adding to May 8th many other dates of departures of distinguished colleagues? I
think not; I have somehow never been able to persuade myself that H.P.B., could
approve of White Lotus Day as it is. But since it does exist, I would suggest
that its utility might be vastly increased by keeping it as the day on which we
specially call to mind the memory of all our well-known colleagues who have
left the body - not only of H.P.B., though of her first and foremost, but of T.
Subba Row, of W. Q. Judge, though he did grievous wrong, of Piet Meuleman of
Holland, of many others. Let us make it a time of keeping clean the memory of
the links of the chain, a day of the history-making of those who are as yet
comparatively the few, but who will ere long be the great majority of our
Theosophical Fellowship. White Lotus Day if you will, but Commemoration Day as
well.
At
the same time our President-Founder was settling it all at Adyar on these
lines, and the suggestion is now a fact accomplished. But enough for the moment
of these Stray Thoughts concerning H.P.B.
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