Theosophical Society,
H P Blavatsky
Mr A Lillies Delusions
By
H P Blavatsky
[From Light, 1884.]
H P Blavatsky robustly defends herself against
allegations that she had never visited
I
WRITE to rectify the many mistakes—if they are, indeed, only “mistakes”—in
Mr.
Lillie’s last letter that appeared in Light of August 2nd, in answer to the
Observations
on his pamphlet by the President of the London Lodge.
I.
This letter, in which the author of Buddha and Early Buddhism proposed
to
Consider briefly some of the notable omissions made in the “Observations,’
begins
with two most notable assertions concerning myself, which are entirely
false,
and which the author had not the slightest right to make. He says:
For
fourteen years (1860 to 1874) Madame Blavatsky was all avowed
Spiritualist,
controlled by a spirit called “John King” ... she attended many
seances.
But
this would hardly prove anyone to be a Spiritualist, and, more over, all
these
assertions are entirely false. I say the word and under line it, for the
facts
in them are distorted, and made to fit a preconceived and very erroneous
notion,
started first by the Spiritualists, whose interest it is to advocate
“spirits”
pure and simple, and to kill, if they can, which is rather doubtful,
belief
in the wisdom, if not in the very existence, of our revered Masters.
Though
I do not at all feel bound to unbosom my private life to Mr. Arthur
Lillie,
nor do I recognize in him the right of demanding it, yet out of respect
to
a few Spiritualists whom I esteem and honour, I would set them right once for
all
on the subject. As that period of my life (1873-1879) in
its
spiritual transactions, will be given very soon in a new book called Madame
Blavatsky,
published by friends, and one which I trust will settle, once and for
ever,
the many wild and unfounded stories told of me, I will briefly state only
the
following.
The
unwarranted assumption mentioned above is very loosely based
on one single document, namely, Colonel
Olcott’s People from the other World. As this book was written partly before,
and partly after, my first acquaintance with Colonel Olcott, and as he was a
Spiritualist, which he has never denied, I am not responsible for his views of
me and my “power” at that time.
He
wrote what he then thought the whole truth, honestly and sincerely; and as I
had a determined object in view, I did not seek to disabuse him too rudely of
his
dreams.
It was only after the formation of the Theosophical Society in 1875,
that
he learned the whole truth. I defy anyone, after that period, to find one
word
from his pen that would corroborate his early views on the nature of my
supposed
“mediumship.” But even then, when writing of me in his book, he states distinctly
the following:
Her
mediumship is totally different from that of any other person I ever
met,
for instead of being controlled by spirits to do their will, it is she who
seems
to control them to do her bidding.
Strange
“mediumship,” one that resembled in no way any that even Colonel
Olcott—a
Spiritualist of thirty years’ standing—had ever met with! But when
Colonel
Olcott says in his book (p. 453) that instead of being controlled by, it
is
I who control the so-called spirits, he is yet made to say by Mr. Lillie, who
refers
the public to Colonel Olcott’s book, that is I who was controlled! Is
this
a misstatement and a misquotation, I ask, or is it not?
Again,
it is stated by Mr. Lillie that I conversed with this “spirit” (John
King)
during fourteen years, “constantly in
with,
I here assert that I had never heard the name of “John King” before 1873.
True
it is, I had told Colonel Olcott and many others that the form of a man,
with
a dark pale face, black beard, and white flowing garments and fettah, that
some
of them had met about the house and my rooms, was that of a “John King.” I had
given him that name for reasons that will be fully explained very soon, and I
laughed heartily at the easy way the astral body of a living man could be mistaken
for, and accepted as, a spirit. And I had told them that I had known
that
“John” since 1860; for it was the form of an Eastern Adept, who has since
gone
for his final initiation, passing through and visiting us in his living
body
on his way, at
Whether
Messrs. Lillie and Co. believe the statement or not, I care very little, as
Colonel Olcott and other friends know it now to be the true one. I have known
and conversed with many a “John King” in my life—a generic name for more than
one spook—but, thank heaven,I was never yet “controlled” by one! My
rnedium-ship has been crushed out of me a quarter of a century or more; and I
defy loudly all the “spirits” of the Kâma Loka to approach—let alone to control
me—now. Surely it is Mr. Arthur Lillie who must be “controlled” by some one to
make untruthful statements which can be so easily refuted as this one.
2.
Mr. Lillie asks for Information about the seven years’ initiation of Madame
Blavatsky.
The
humble individual of this name has never heard of such an initiation.
With
that accuracy in the explanation of Esoteric terms that so preeminently
characterizes
the author of Buddha and Early Buddhism, the word may be intended for
‘‘instruction”? If so, then I should be quite justified in first asking Mr. Lillie
what right he has to cross-examine me. But since he chooses to take such liberties
with my name, I will tell him plainly that he himself knows nothing,
not
merely of initiations and
borderland
of
country
closed for centuries to the average traveller. Even Csomo de Koros knew very
little of the real gyelukpas and Esoteric Lamaism, except what he was
permitted
to know, for he never went beyond Zanskar and the lamasery of
Phagdal—erroneously
spelt by those who pretend to know all about Tibet, Pugdal which is incorrect,
just because there are no meaning-less names in Tibet’, as Mr. Lillie has been
taught to say. And I will tell him also that I have lived at different periods
in Little Tibet as well as in Great Tibet, and that these
combined
periods form more than seven years.
Yet
I have never stated either verbally or over my signature that I had passed
seven consecutive years in a convent. What I have said, and repeat now,
is
that I have stopped in Lamaistic convents; that I have visited Tzi-gadze, the
Teshu
Hlumpo territory anti its neighbour hood, and that I have been further
into,
and have visited such places of
Europeans,
and such as he can never hope to visit.
Mr.
Lillie had no right to expect more “ample details” in Mr. Finch’s
pamphlet.
Mr. Finch is an honourable man, who speaks of the private life of a
person
only so far as that person permits him. My friends and those whom I
respect
and for whose opinion I care, have ample evidence—from my family for
instance—that I have been in
As
to—The names, perhaps, of three or four ... English [ Anglo-Indian] officials, who
would certify to having seen me when I passed, I am afraid their vigilance
would not be found at the height of their trustworthiness. Only two years back,
as I can prove by numerous witnesses, when journeying from Chandernagore to
Upon
my return, five days later, to
the
Deputy Commissioner. It notified me in the politest of terms that, having
heard
of my intention of going over to Tibet, the government could not allow me
to
proceed there before I had received permission to that effect from Simla, nor
could
it accept the responsibility of my safety, The Râjah of Sikkhim being very
averse to allow travellers on his territory, etc.
This
I would call shutting the stable-door when the steed is stolen. Nor had
the
very “trustworthy” official even heard that a month before Mr. Sinnett had
kindly
procured for me permission, since I went to Sikkhim but for a few days,
and
no farther than the old Tibetan borderland. The question is not whether the
Anglo-Indian
Government will or will not grant such permission, but whether the
Tibetans
will let one cross their territory. Of the latter, I am sure any day. I
invite
Mr. Lillie to try the same. He may at the same time study with profit
geography,
and ascertain that there are other routes than those laid down into
Tibet,
besides via “English officials.” He tries his best to make me out, in
plain
words, a liar. He will find it even more difficult than to disprove that
he
knows nothing of either Tibet or Buddhism or our “Byang Tisubs.”
I will surely never lose my time in showing
that his accusations against
One,
Whom no insult of his can reach, are perfectly worthless. There are numbers of
men quite as intelligent as he believes himself to be, whose opinion of our Mahâtmâs’
letters is the reverse of his. He can “suppose” that the authorities by him
cited knew more about
As
to my having been in
proof
in store—when I believe it needed—than Mr. Lillie’s rancorous ingenuity
will
ever be able to make away with.
If
the teachings of Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism are considered atheistic, then
I am an atheist too. And yet I would not deny what I wrote in
anthropomorphic
extra-cosmic God, and the Divine Essence of the Advaitis and
other
Esotericists, then, I must only lose a little more of my respect for the
R.
A. S. in which he claims membership; and it may justify the more our
assertions
that there is more knowledge in “Bâbu (?) Subba Row’s” solitary head than in
dozens of the heads of “Orientalists” about
The
same with regard to the Master’s name. If Mr. Lillie tells us that “Kuthumi ”
is not a Tibetan name, we answer that we never claimed it to be one. Everyone
knows that the Master is a Punjabi, whose family was settled for years in
But
if he tells us that an expert at the
dictionary
for the words “Kut” and “Humi,” “and found no such words,” then I
say:
Buy a better dictionary or replace the expert by a more “expert” one. Let
Mr.
Lillie try the glossaries of the Moravian Brothers and their alphabets. I am
afraid
he is ruining terribly his reputation as an Orientalist. Indeed, before
this
controversy is settled he may leave in it the last shreds of his supposed
Oriental
learning.
Lest
Mr. Lillie should take my omitting to answer a single one of his very
indiscreet
questions as a new pretext for printing some impertinence, I say: I
was
at Mentana during the battle in October, 1867, and left
the
same year for
accident,
are questions that pertain to my private life, with which, it appears
to
me, Mr. Lillie has no concern. But this is on a par with his other ways of
dealing
with his opponents.
Mr.
Lillie’s other sarcasms touch me very little, for I know their value. I may let
them pass without any further notice. Some persons have an extraordinarily
clever way of avoiding an embarrassing position by trying to place their
antagonists in the same situation. For instance, Mr. Lillie could not answer
the criticisms made on his Buddha and Early Buddhism in The Theosophist, nor
has he ever attempted to do so. But he applied himself instead to collect every
vile rumour and idle gossip about me, its editor.
Why
does he not show, to begin with, that his reviewer was wrong? Why does he not,
by contradicting our statements, firmly establish his own authority as an
Orientalist,
showing first of all that lie is a genuine scholar, who knows the
subject
he is talking about, before he allows himself to deny and contradict
other
people’s statements in matters which he knows still less about? He does
nothing
of the kind, however—not a word, not a mention of the scourging
criticism
that he is unable to relute. Instead of that, one finds the offended
author
trying to throw ridicule on his reviewers, probably so as to lessen the
value
of what they have to say of his own book. This is clever, very clever
strategy—whether
it is equally honourable remains, withal, an open question.
It
might be difficult, after the conclusions reached by qualified scholars
in
India concerning his first book, to secure much attention in The Theosophist
for
his second, but if this volume in turn were examined with the care almost
undeservedly
devoted to the first, and if it were referred to the authority of
such
real Oriental scholars and Sanskritists as Mr. R. T. H. Griffith, for
instance,
I think it would be found that the aggregate blundering of the two
books
put together might excite even as much amusement as the singular
complacency
with which the author betrays himself to the public.
H.
P. BLAVATSKY.
August
3rd, 1884.
Theosophical Society,