Theosophical Society,
H P Blavatsky
Established in
By
Sara M Carmichael
JUDGED
by ordinary standards of common sense, Mme. Blavatsky's long stay in
Each
sees the worst features in the character of the other, and ill appreciates the
best. The responsibility for this state of things would, I think, be found very
equally divided, but at all events it is possible, that in wishing to secure
the
hearty good-will of the natives, Mme. Blavatsky did
not find herself really so
much impeded as I have sometimes been inclined to
think, by starting on terms
which may almost be said to have cultivated the
ill-will of the Europeans. The
too readily enlisted sentiment of race antagonism
may thus have put the natives
all the more on her side, when it was seen that she
was not on intimate or
friendly relations with the Anglo-Indian
community.
However
this may be, Mme. Blavatsky came to
Society
in the soil where she believed, not quite correctly as subsequent events
proved, that it was destined chiefly to flourish,
armed for her task (for good
or evil as we like to look at the matter) with a
flourishing stock of
misconceptions concerning the social
conditions of the country. She was
guiltless of any inclination to concern herself
practically with politics, and
indeed, on the subject of politics, though greatly
misconceiving the true
character of the English government at that time,
was less prejudiced than in
other ways, for at any rate she consistently
recognized the theory that, bad
though it might be, the English Government was
immeasurably the best
behalf of individual native wrongs, and since the
organs of native interests are
apt in
native wrongs, Mme. Blavatsky, living almost entirely
at first in native
society, imbibed a good many ideas, on her first
establishment in the country,
which used to be the subject of warm argument between
her and myself, when I
first made her acquaintance.
This
acquaintance was formed at the close of the year 1879, during the earlier
part
of which she reached Bombay, accompanied by Colonel Olcott and two persons who
were supposed to be Theosophists in the beginning, but fell off from the
Society at an early date, under circumstances which constituted the first of
the long series of troubles that have attended the progress of the Theosophical
movement. I never knew either of them, but they do not appear to have been
persons anyone of soberer judgment, in Mme. Blavatsky's place,
would have brought over as companions in an
enterprise like that she had in
hand. The four strangely assorted travelers settled
down in one of the native
quarters of
authorities. Their movements about the country and
into the neighboring native
states were not of a kind that the ordinary habits of
Europeans would account
for, and as a matter of course, in a country where
great interests have to be
guarded from possible foreign intrigue, they
were put under surveillance.
But
Englishmen are not clever at the tricks of police surveillance — no more so
in
to tell her, when we laughed over the narrative of
her adventures afterwards, I
pitied the unhappy police officer, her spy, a great
deal more than herself. She
pursued this officer with sarcasms all the while
that he, in the performance of
his irksome duty, pursued her in her vague and
erratic wanderings. She would
offer him bags or letters to examine, and address him
condolences on the
miserable fate that condemned him to play the part
of a mouchard. I suspect from what I heard at Simla at the time, that the Bombay Government must have
been treated by the superior authorities to remarks that were anything but
complimentary on the manner in which they conducted this business. At any rate,
the mistake concerning the objects of the Theosophists was speedily seen
through,
and the local government instructed to trouble itself no
more about them.
I
had been in correspondence with Colonel Olcott and Mine. Blavatsky, partly
about this business, during the summer. Their arrival
in
with a few newspaper paragraphs dimly indicating
that Mme. Blavatsky was a
marvelous person, associated with a modern
development of “magic”, and I had
seen her great book, Isis Unveiled, which naturally
provoked interest on my part
in the authoress. From some remarks published in
the Pioneer, of which I was at
that time the editor, the first communications
between us arose. In accordance
with arrangements made by letter during the summer,
she came to
visit my wife and myself at our cold weather home at
that station in December
1879.
I
well remember the morning of her arrival, when I went down to the railway
station to meet her. The trains from
hazree, or early breakfast,
when I brought our guests home. She had evidently
been apprehensive, to judge from her latest letters,
lest we might have formed
some ideal conception of her that the reality would
shatter, and had recklessly
painted herself as a rough, old, “hippopotamus”
of a woman, unfit for civilized
society; but she did this with so lively a humor
that the betrayal of her bright
intelligence this involved more than
undid the effect of her warnings. Her rough
manners,
of which we had been told so much, did not prove very alarming, though I
remember going into fits of laughter at the time when Colonel Olcott, after the
visit had lasted a week or two, gravely informed us that Madame was under
“great self-restraint” so far. This had not been the impression my
wife and I had formed about her, though we had
learned already to find her
conversation more than interesting.
I
would not venture to say that our new friends made a favorable impression all
round, upon our old ones, at
were loud in her praises and eager for her society.
Her dinner-table
qualifications it will, of course, be
understood did not include those of the
bon vivant, for her dislike of alcohol in all forms
amounted to a kind of mania,
and led her to be vexatious sometimes in her attack
on even the most moderate
wine-drinking on the part of others.
An illustration, by-the-by, of the manner
in which Mme. Blavatsky is constantly made the
subject of the most extravagant
falsehoods is afforded by a statement which has, I
hear, been made quite
recently in
not know who the he or she is, and do not seek to
know — told my informant that he or she had actually seen Mine. Blavatsky
intoxicated at Simla. As I know her to be a total
abstainer, not merely on principle (in connection with her occult
training), but by predilection as well — by
virtue indeed, as I have described,
of an absolute horror of alcohol — and as she has
never resided at Simla under
any roof but my own and one other, beneath which I
was myself at the same
time a guest — the statement is for me exactly as if
it asserted that,
during her Simla visit, Mme.
Blavatsky was double-headed like the famous
“Nightingale”.
I
want to give my readers an idea of Mme. Blavatsky, as I have known her, that
shall be as nearly complete as I can make it, and I
shall not hesitate to put in the shadows of the picture. The first visit she
paid us was not an unqualified success in all respects. Her excitability,
sometimes amusing, would sometimes
take an irritating shape, and she would vent her
impatience, if anything annoyed
her, by vehement tirades in a loud voice directed
against Colonel Olcott, at that time in an early stage of his apprenticeship to
what she would sometimes
irreverently speak of as the “occult
business”. No one with the least discernment could ever fail to see that her
rugged manners and disregard of all conventionalities were the result of a
deliberate rebellion against, not of
ignorance or unfamiliarity with, the customs of
refined society. Still the rebellion was often very determined, and she would
sometimes color her language with expletives of all sorts, some witty and
amusing, some unnecessarily violent, that we should all have preferred her not
to make use of.
She
certainly had none of the superficial attributes one might have expected in a
spiritual teacher ; and how she could at the same time be philosopher enough to
have given up the world for the sake of spiritual advancement, and yet be
capable of going into frenzies of passion about trivial annoyances, was a
profound mystery to us for a long while, and is only now partially explainable,
indeed, within my own mind, by some information I have received relating to
curious psychological laws under which initiates in occult mysteries, circumstanced
as she is, inevitably come. By slow degrees only, and in spite of herself — in
spite of injudicious proceedings on her
part that long kept alive suspicions she might easily have allayed, if she
could have kept calm enough to understand them, — did we come to appreciate the
reality of the occult forces and unseen agencies behind her.
It
is unnecessary for me to give an elaborate account here of occult wonders
performed by Mme. Blavatsky during her various
visits to us at
Simla. These are, most of
them, recorded in The Occult World. Those which took place during her first
visit were not of great importance, and some of them were so little protected
by the conditions that would have been required to guarantee their bona fide
character that they were worse than useless. My wife and I were patient
observers, and by not jumping to any conclusions too precipitately, were
enabled in the long run to obtain the satisfaction we desired; but guests,
especially if they happened to be of a very materialistic temperament, would
regard anything Mme. Blavatsky might do of an apparently abnormal character as
so much juggling, and hardly disguise these impressions from her. The result in
such cases would be a stormy end to our evening after such guests had gone.
To
be suspected as an impostor deluding her friends with trickery, would sting her
at any time with a scorpion smart, and bring forth a flood of passionate
argument as to the cruelty and groundlessness of
such an imputation, the
violence of which would really have tended with
most hearers to confirm
suspicions rather than to allay them.
Recollection
of this time supplies me with a very varied assortment of memory
portraits of Madame, taken during different
conditions of her nerves and temper.
Some
recall her flushed and voluble, too loudly declaiming against some person
or other who had misjudged her or her Society;
some show her quiet
and companionable, pouring out a flood of
interesting talk about Mexican
antiquities, or
far-reaching kind, and a memory for
names and places and archaeological theories she would be dealing with, that
was fairly fascinating to her hearers.
Then,
again, I remember her telling anecdotes of her own earlier life, mysterious
bits of adventure, or stories of Russian society, with so much point, vivacity,
and finish, that she would simply be the delight for the time being of everyone
present.
I
never could clearly make out her age at this time, and was led partly by the
look of things, for the hard life she has led has
told upon her complexion and
features, and partly by her own vague reference
to remote periods in the past,
to overestimate it by several years. She has
always had a dislike to telling her
age with exactitude, which does not spring in her
case from the vanity which
operates with some ladies, but has to do with
occult embarrassment. The age of
the body in which a given human entity may reside
or function, is held by occult
initiates to be sometimes a very misleading fact,
and chelas under strict rules
are, I believe, forbidden to tell their ages. In
Mme. Blavatsky's case the
problem was somewhat complicated by the fact
that she had, within the few years previous to my first knowledge of her, grown
to somewhat unwieldy proportions.
Mr
A. O. Hume, whose name has been a good deal mixed up in very different ways,
both with the early beginnings of the Theosophical movement in India and with
some of its latest phases, was at Allahabad when Mme.
Blavatsky first came there, holding an appointment for the time on the Board of
Revenue in the N. W. P., and he took great interest in our remarkable guest. He
presided
one afternoon at a public meeting which was held at
the Mayo Hall to give
Colonel
Olcott an opportunity of delivering an address on Theosophy, and a
passage from his brief speech on that occasion
may fitly find a place here as
showing in graceful language the manner in
which, at that time, the subject was
opening up: —
“This
much I have gathered about the Society, viz. that one primary and
fundamental object of its existence is the
institution of a sort of brotherhood
in which, sinking all distinction of race and
nationality, caste and creed, all
good and earnest men, all who love science, all who
love truth, all who love
their fellowmen, may meet as brethren, and labor hand
in hand in the cause of
enlightenment and progress. Whether
this noble ideal is ever likely to germinate
and grow into practical fruition ; whether this
glorious dream, shared in by so
many of the greatest minds in all ages, is ever
destined to emerge from the
shadowy realms of Utopia into the broad sunlight
of the regions of reality, let
no one now pretend to decide. Many and marvelous
are the changes and
developments that the past has
witnessed; the impossibilities of one age have
become the truisms of the next; and who shall venture
to predict that the future
may not have as many surprises for mankind as has
had the past, and that this
may not be one amongst them. Be the success,
however, great or little of those
who strive after this grand ideal, one thing we
know, that no honest efforts for
the good of our fellowmen are ever wholly
fruitless. It may be long before that
fruit ripens ; the workers may have passed away long
ere the world discerns the
harvest for which they wrought; nay, the world
at large may never realize what
has been done for it, but the good work itself
remains, imperishable,
everlasting. They who wrought it have necessarily
been by such efforts purified
and exalted, the community in which they lived and
toiled has inevitably
benefitted directly or indirectly,
and through it, the world at large. On this
ground, if on no other, we must necessarily sympathize
with the Theosophists.
The
Theosophists in those days had all their troubles before them in an
unsuspected future, and the movement seemed to be
advancing gaily with many
friendly hands stretching out to aid it, and
nothing but petty squabbling among
the members at the
Mme.
Blavatsky's temperament always magnified the annoyance of the moment,
whatever it might be, till it overshadowed her
whole sky. Colonel Olcott spoke
at the meeting which Mr Hume opened with the
remarks just quoted, but one of his hearers, at all events — his distinguished
colleague, — was not altogether
pleased with his address, and no sooner were we
clear of the Hall compound on
our drive back than she opened fire upon him with
exceeding bitterness. To hear
her talk on this subject at intervals during the
evening one might have thought
the aspirations of her life compromised, though the
meeting and the speech —
about which I do not remember that there was anything
amiss — were not important to the progress of the Society in any serious
degree.
Colonel
Olcott bore all these tantrums with wonderful fortitude, taking them as all so
much probation to be set down to the account of his occult chelaship;
and with all this exasperating behavior Mme. Blavatsky nevertheless had a
strange faculty of winning affection. Her own nature was exceedingly
warm-hearted and affectionate, as it is still, and must remain as long as she
lives, in spite of the cruel disappointments and trials, the sickness and
suffering of later years, the
poignant regret she has spent over irremediable
mistakes that have compromised
the success of her cause, and the passionate sense
of wrong under which she
fumes, as the unteachable
world complacently listens to the tales of her
traducers, or as flippant newspapers make fun of
the wonderful stories told
about her, as though she were a mountebank or
impostor.
Thus
the prestige of her occult power, uncertain and capricious though it has latterly
become, invests her with so much interest for people who have emerged from the
bog of mere materialistic incredulity about her, that anyone with a tendency
towards mysticism is apt to become possessed with something like reverence for
her attributes, in spite of the strangely unattractive shell with which she
sometimes surrounds them. Thus, in one way and another, large numbers of people
in
Mme.
Blavatsky visited us again at Simla in the autumn of
1880, when most of the phenomena described in The Occult World took place. She
was much better inclined now than on her first arrival in
languishes when confided too exclusively to native
direction. Mme. Blavatsky
therefore came to Simla
prepared for society. She would protest against the
“flap-doodle” of “Mrs Grundy” — favorite phrases often on her
lips, — but to
serve her cause she would even condescend to put off
occasionally the red
flannel dressing-gown in which she preferred to
robe herself, and sit down in
black silk amid the uncongenial odors of champagne
and sherry. Of course, beyond a very narrow circle, the wonders she wrought
were quite ineffective
in kindling that zeal for intelligent inquiry into
the higher psychic laws of
nature by virtue of which they were accomplished,
which it was the intention of
their promoters to awaken. No one could understand
Mme. Blavatsky without
studying her by the light of the hypothesis —
even if it were only regarded as
such — that she was the visible agent of unknown
occult superiors. There was
much in her character on the surface as I have
described it, which repelled the
idea that she was an exalted moralist trying to lead
people upward towards a
higher spiritual life. The internal excitement, superinduced by the effort to
accomplish any of her occult feats, would,
moreover, render her too passionate
in repudiating suspicions which could not but be
stimulated by such protests on
her part. Conscious of her failure very often to do
more than leave people about
her
puzzled and vaguely wondering how she did her “tricks”, she would constantly
abjure the whole attempt, profess violent resolutions to produce no more
phenomena under any circumstances for a sneering, undiscerning, materialistic
generation; and as often be impelled by her love of wielding the strange forces
at her command to fall into her old mistakes, to hurriedly rush into the
performance of some new feat as she felt the power upon her, without stopping
to think of the careful conditions by which it ought to be surrounded, if she
meant to do more than aggravate the mistrust which drove her into frenzies of
suffering and wrath. Once, however, recognize her as the flighty and defective,
though loyal and brilliantly-gifted representative of occult superiors in the
background, making through her an experiment on the spiritual intuitions of the
world in which she moved, and the whole situation was solved, the apparent
incoherence of her character and acts explained, and
the best
attributes of her own nature properly appreciated.
So
much exasperation and trouble have been brought about in recent years by the
disputes which have arisen concerning the authenticity of Mme. Blavatsky's
phenomena, that the general opinion of
Theosophists has been apt to condemn the whole policy under which such displays
have been associated with the attempt to recommend the exalted spiritual
philosophy of the “Esoteric Doctrine” to the outer world.
It
is easy to be wise after the event; it is easy now to see that in Europe, at
all events, where sympathy with new or unfamiliar ideas can best be courted by
purely intellectual methods, the Theosophical position, as now understood by
its most devoted representatives, would be stronger without, than with the
record of Mme. Blavatsky's phenomena behind it.
Still
I am very far myself from thinking that the idea of awakening the attention of
the world in regard to the possibilities for all men of greatly elevating and expanding
their own inner nature and capabilities along the lines of occult study, by the
display of some of the powers which such study was capable of bringing about,
was in itself an injudicious idea. It is plain, of course, that Mme. Blavatsky
has to bear the responsibility of having often misapplied that idea; that she
is suffering from the prompt retribution of circumstances in the ignominy that
has been heaped upon her of late, is also apparent. But cool observation of the
whole position will show that, with all her mistakes, she has infused into the
current of the world's thinking a flood of ideas
connected with the possibilities of man's spiritual evolution, that many
thinkers are at work with now in profound disregard of, not to say ingratitude
for, the source from which they have come.
Mme.
Blavatsky's failures and mistakes are glaring in
the sight of us all; trumpeted in every newspaper
that mocks her as an impostor,
and proclaimed (by the irony of fate) in the
proceedings of a Society that has
stultified its own name by investigating an episode
in her career, as if
psychical developments were so much ironmongery,
and the depth of nature's
mysteries could be expressed — by a sufficiently
acute observer — in decimals of an inch. But her successes are only apparent to
those who have eyes to see, and an enlightened understanding to comprehend.
And
just as the history of Mme. Blavatsky's work is a party-colored page, so her
personality, her external character, is equally variegated. I have said a good
deal of her impetuosity and indiscretions of speech and manner and of the way
in which she will rage for hours, if allowed, over trifles which a more
phlegmatic, not to speak of a more philosophical temperament would barely care
to notice.
But
it must be understood that, almost at any time, an appeal to her philosophical
intellect will turn her right off into another channel of thinking, and then,
equally for hours, may any appreciative companion draw forth the stores of her
information concerning Eastern religions and mythology, the subtle metaphysics
of Hindu and Buddhist symbolism, or the esoteric doctrine itself, so far as in
later years some regions of this have been opened out for public treatment.
Even in the midst of passionate lamentations — appropriate in vehemence to a
catastrophe that might have wrecked the fruits of a life-time — over some
offensive sneer in a newspaper article or letter, an allusion to some unsolved
problem in esoteric cosmogony, or misinterpretation by a European orientalist of some Eastern doctrine, will divert the flow
of her intense mental activity, and sweep all recollection of the current
annoyance, for the moment, from her mind.
The
record of Mme. Blavatsky's residence in
blended with the history of the Theosophical
Society, on which all her energies are spent, directly or indirectly, and
indirectly in so far only as she was obliged during this period to do what
literary work she could for Russian magazines to earn her livelihood, and
supplement the narrow resources on which the headquarters of the Society were
kept up. The Theosophist, the monthly
magazine devoted to occult research, which she
set on foot in the autumn of her
first
year in India, paid its way from the beginning, and gradually came to earning a
small profit, subject to the fact that its management was altogether
gratuitous, and all its work, in all departments, performed by the little band
of Theosophists at the headquarters ; but all the while that sneering critics
of the movement in the papers would be suggesting, from time to time, that the
founders of the Society were doing a very good business with “initiation fees”,
and living on the tribute of the faithful, Mme. Blavatsky was really at her
desk from morning till night, slaving at Russian articles, which she wrote
solely for the sake of the little income she was able to make in this way, and
on which, in a far greater degree than on the proper resources of the Society,
the headquarters were supported, and the movement kept on foot.
Thus
energetically promoted, the Society continued to make steady progress.
Colonel
Olcott travelled about the country with indefatigable
perseverance,
founding new branches in all directions, and Mme.
Blavatsky herself went with
him and some others to
theosophical party was fêted by
large and enthusiastic native audiences. The
movement took firm root in the island at once,
and flourished with wonderful
vigor.
Here,
of course, Madame Blavatsky's open profession of Buddhism as her religion was
all in her favour, though it had been rather against
her in
exoteric Hindus and Buddhists are not at all in
sympathy, though the esoteric
docrines of the initiates of both
schools are practically identical. The
Singalese welcomed, with delight, a lead which
showed them how to set up schools in which their children could be taught the
essentials of secular education without coming into contact with European
missionaries.
During
the autumn of 1881 I returned to
landing at
building was divided into two portions — the
lower given over to the Society
service
and to Colonel Olcott's Spartan accommodation ; the
upper part, reached by a covered stairway, corresponding to the slope of the
hill, to Mme. Blavatsky and the office work of the Theosophist. There was also
a spare room in this upper portion, all the rooms of which were on one level,
and opening on to a broad covered-in verandah, which constituted Mme.
Blavatsky's sitting, eating, and reception room all in one. Opening out of it
at the further end she had a small writing-room.
On
the whole she was more comfortably housed than, knowing her wild contempt for
the luxuries of European civilisation, I had expected
to find her ; but the establishment was more native
than Anglo-Indian in its organisation, and the covered
verandah was all day long, and up to late hours in the evening, visited by an
ebb and flow of native guests, admiring Theosophists who came to pay their
respects to Madame. She used to like to get half a dozen or more of them round
her talking on any topic connected with the affairs of the Society that might
arise in a desultory, aimless way, that used to be
found rather trying by her European friends.
The
latest embarrassment or little difficulty or annoyance, whatever it might be,
that had presented itself, used to fill her horizon for the moment, and give
her fretful anxiety out of keeping with its importance, and there has rarely
been a period during the five or six years I have had to do with the Society
when there has not been some situation to be saved — in Mme. Blavatsky's
estimation, — some enemy to be guarded against, some possible supporter to be
conciliated. How it was possible for any nervous system to stand the wear and
tear of the perpetual agitation and worry in which — largely in consequence of
the peculiarities of her own temperament, of course — Mme. Blavatsky spent her
life, persons of calmer nature could never understand. But she would generally
be up at an early hour writing at her Russian articles or translations, or at
the endless letters she sent off in all directions in the interest of the
Society, or at articles for the Theosophist; then during the day she would
spend a large part of her time talking with native visitors in her verandah
room, or hunting them away and getting back to her work with wild protests
against the constant interruption
she was subject to, and in the same breath calling
for her faithful “Babula”,
her servant, in a voice that rang all over the
house, and sending for some one
or other of the visitors she knew to be waiting
about below and wanting to see
her.
Then
in the midst of some fiery argument with a pundit about a point of
modern Hindu belief that she might protest against as
inconsistent with the real meaning of the Vedas, or a passionate remonstrance
with one of her
aides of the Theosophist about something done amiss
that would for the time
overspread the whole sky of her imagination with a
thundercloud, she would
perhaps suddenly “hear the voice they did not
hear” — the astral call of her
distant Master, or one of the other “Brothers”,
as by that time we had all
learned to call them, — and forgetting
everything else in an instant, she would
hurry off to the seclusion of any room where she
could be alone for a few
moments, and hear whatever message or orders she
had to receive.
She
never wanted to go to bed when night came. She would sit on smoking
cigarettes and talking — talking with a tireless
energy that was wonderful to
watch — on Eastern philosophy of any sort, on the mistakes
of theological
writers, on questions raised (but not settled)
in
intensity and excitement, on some wretched matter
connected with the
administration of the Society, or some
foolish sarcasm levelled against herself
and the attributes imputed to her in one of the
local newspapers. To say that
she never would learn to, estimate occurrences at
their proper relative value,
is to express the truth so inadequately that the
phrase does not seem to express
it at all. Her mind seemed always like the
exhausted receiver of an air-pump, in
which a feather or a guinea let fall, drop with
apparently the same momentum.
Of
society in the European sense of the term she had absolutely none at
She
never paid visits, and as the custom of the English communities in the East
requires
the new-comer to make the first calls, she, ignoring this necessity, was left
almost absolutely without acquaintances of her own kind in that station of
India where she was supposed to be most at home. I often wondered that none of
the English residents at Bombay had the curiosity to break through the
conventionalities of the situation and take advantage of the opportunity lying
within reach of their hands for making friends with one of, at all events, the
most remarkable and intellectually-gifted women in the whole country — rugged
eccentricities and cigarettes notwithstanding. But certainly at first the
quarters where Madame Blavatsky established herself, and the habits of her heterogeneous
native household, and the wild tales which I have no doubt
from the first were circulated about her, may have
intimidated any but the most
adventurous of the English ladies accustomed to the
decorous routine of
Anglo-Indian etiquette.
She
herself may have fretted occasionally against her isolation, but at all events
did not regret the loss of European “society” in the special sense of the word;
she would have found it a terrible burden to go out to formal parties of any
kind, to forego the ease of the nondescript costumes — loose wrappers — that
she wore, to put herself in any position in which her fingers would be
restrained from reaching, whenever the impulse prompted them to do so, for her
tobacco pouch and cigarette papers. Rebel as she had been in her childhood
against the customs of civilized life, so equally was she a rebel against the
usages of English society in India; and the strange discipline of her occult
training that had rendered her spirit devoted and submissive to the one kind of
control she had learned to reverence, left the fierce independence of her outer
nature quite unaltered.
She
joined me at
went up to Simla with me
to be the guest for the remainder of that season of Mr A. O. Hume. She was far
from well at the time, and the latter part of the journey — a trying one for
the most robust passenger — was an ordeal that brought out the peculiar
characteristics of her excitable temper in anamusing
way, I remember; for the “tongas” in which the
eight-hours' drive up the mountain roads from Kalka
at the foot of the hills to the elevated sanatorium is accomplished, are not
luxurious conveyances. They are low two-wheeled carts hung on a crank axle, so
that the foot-boards are only about a foot above the road, with seats for four
persons, including the driver, two and two back to back — just accommodation
enough in each for one passenger with his portmanteau (equivalent, if he has
one with him, to a passenger), and a servant.
We
had two
The
general character of the
bunch of keys by its steel ring, still they are no
less loosely linked together,
and n nervous passenger is liable to be disturbed
by the extraordinary positions
into which they get during any little disagreement
between the team and the
driver. One such disagreement arose soon after our
start on the journey of which
I
am speaking, and Madame's impassioned anathemas directed against the whole
service of the
not, I remember thinking at the time, to have had
their comicality wasted upon
an audience of one. Then, as the day and the
dreary drive wore on, Madame's
indignation at the annoyance of the situation only
waxed more vehement, instead
of settling down into the dogged despair with
which the more phlegmatic Briton
as a rule accepts the disagreeables
of a
incensed whenever the driver sounded his
ear-piercing horn close behind us. She
would break off whatever she was talking about to
launch invectives at this
unfortunate “trumpet” whenever it was blown, and as
often, up to the end of the
journey; and, seeing that a
his horn whenever he approaches a turn in the road
(which may conceal another
fifty or sixty miles of it, consists chiefly of turns
all the way up, the
trumpet was more effectually cursed by the time
we got to our destination than
the jackdaw of
I
do not think it worth while to add to the wonderful records of Mme.
Blavatsky's
“phenomena”, contained in other portions of this volume, any
description of the relatively insignificant
incidents of that kind, which were
all that occurred at the period to which I have now
come. The manifestations of
abnormal occult power which had been displayed so
freely in the summer of 1880 had given rise to a good deal of acrimonious
discussion. Whatever
policy had been under trial, by the mysterious
authorities whom Madame Blavatsky spoke of as her Masters, when she was freely
permitted to exercise whatever abnormal gifts she possessed, and even helped to
achieve results beyond her own reach, had now fallen into discredit. The days
of phenomena working were all but over. All that occurred now were concerned
merely with the despatch and receipt of letters, or in some way incidental to
the work of the Theosophic movement. It would rarely
happen that even these presented themselves under conditions that
rendered the transaction complete enough to be
described as a wonder; though
with the experience of Madame Blavatsky that most of
us about her at this time
had had on other occasions, incidents that were
incomplete as tests of occult
power, would necessarily share the retrospective
credit attaching to other
similar incidents that had been complete in the
past. However, the mot d'ordre
in
the Theosophical Society was now coming to be unfavorable to the craving for
phenomena as such, that each new set of acquaintances Madame Blavatsky might
make would necessarily feel at first. Mr Hume — who at that time was greatly
interested in the information I had begun to obtain shortly before in reference
to the views of Nature entertained by the adepts of Indian occultism — and I,
were far more intent now on enlarging our comprehension of this “Esoteric
Doctrine” than on witnessing further displays of a mysterious power of which we
could not fathom the secrets.
We
used to spend long hours together, day after day, in trying to develop the unmanageable
hints we obtained in the form of written answers to questions, with the help of
Mme. Blavatsky; but the task she had to perform in endeavoring to elucidate
these hints, was almost hopelessly embarrassing; for though her own knowledge
was very great, it had not been originally implanted in her own mind on
European methods; it was not readily recast in a European mould, and above all,
she had no clear idea as to what she was at liberty to tell us, and how far her
general obligations of secrecy still applied.
It
was an uphill and not very profitable beginning that was made at this time with
an enterprise that assumed considerable proportions in the end, and it was not
till a later period, when I had returned to my own house at Allahabad,
that my instruction in occult philosophy, leading up to the subsequent
development of the book called Esoteric Buddhism, began to make real progress.
By that time, to my lasting regret, Mr Hume's sympathies had been alienated
from the undertaking.
It
has been, in this way, Mme. Blavatsky's fate, throughout her work on the
Theosophical Society, to make and lose many
friends.
The peculiarities of her
character, which these memoirs will have
disclosed, sufficiently account for
this checkered record of success and failure. No
personal demeanor could be
imagined worse calculated than hers to retain the
confidence of people earnestly
pursuing exalted spiritual ideas, during that
intermediate stage of
acquaintanceship intervening between the
first kindling of an interest in her
general theories of occultism, and the
establishment of a profound intimacy. It
is only people who know her hardly at all, or only
through her writings, and, at
the other end of the scale, those who knew her so
thoroughly that she herself
cannot mislead them, by external roughness and
indiscretion, into distrusting
the foundations of her character, who do her
justice. People who are familiar
with her without being closely intimate and long
acquainted with the conflicting
elements of her nature, can hardly escape some
shock to their confidence, sooner or later, some uncomfortable suspicion about
her code of
truthfulness, of right or wrong,
which once planted in their minds, and not
immediately brought forward and frankly discussed
with her, will be sure to
rankle and grow.
It
is easy for people whose work lies altogether on the physical plane of
existence, who deal with one another by the light of principles which are
perfectly well understood all round, to remain beyond the reach of all moral
reproach, to regulate their conduct so that all men recognize the purity of
their intentions, and the high standards of right by which they are governed.
The course of life before an occult chela endeavoring
to carry out
a work of spiritual philanthropy amongst people
on the “physical plane” — “in
the world” — (as the occult phrase would express
it, distinguishing between the
normal community of human kind at large, and the
secluded organization in
contact with other modes of human existence, besides
those of ordinary living
flesh) is immeasurably more embarrassing.
Such
a person is entangled, to begin with, in a network of reserve. He cannot but be
cognizant of a great many facts connected with the occult life which he is not at
liberty to disclose, which, indeed, he is bound to guard even from the betrayal
which an indiscreet silence in face of indiscreet questioning might sometimes
bring about. There would be no difficulty in his way if he were simply a chela of the ordinary kind concerned as such merely with
his own spiritual and psychic development ; but when
he has to make some disclosures, and must not go too far with these — when he
is not allowed, withal, to be judge of what information he shall communicate
and what keep back, — his task may often be one that is replete with the most
serious
embarrassment.
These
embarrassments would, of course, be least for a person of naturally cool
and taciturn temperament, but amongst occultists,
as amongst people “in the
world”, temperaments vary. Of course Mme. Blavatsky's
excitable and passionate disposition has been a frightful stumbling-block in
her way: but what is the use in an orchard of the most gracefully shaped tree
that bears no fruit ?
She
might have been born with the manners of Mme. Récamier,
and the sedate discretion of an English judge, and have been perfectly useless
in her generation. Whereas, with all her defects, the possession of her
splendid psychic gifts, of her indomitable courage — which carried her through
the ordeals of initiation in the mysteries of occult knowledge, and again held
her up against the protracted
antagonism of materialistic opinion when she came
back into the world with an
onerous mission to discharge, — and of her
spiritual enthusiasm, which made all
suffering and toil as dust in the balance compared
with her allegiance to her
unseen “Masters”, the possession, in short, of her
occult attributes has
rendered her an influence in the world of great
potency. The tree may not have
assumed a shape that passing strangers would
admire, but the fruit it has borne
has been a stupendous harvest.
When
I say that suffering and toil have been with Mme. Blavatsky as dust in the
balance compared to her duty, I say that with
deliberate conviction; but, of
course, the phrase must not be taken to mean t