Quest Magazine

K. Paul Johnson's House of Cards?

A critical examination of Johnson's thesis on the Theosophical Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi, by Daniel H. Caldwell. P. 0. Box 1844, Tucson, AZ85702: published by the author, November 1996. Pp, 43.

The purpose of this monograph, according to the author, is to give a critique of K. Paul Johnson's thesis relating to H. P. Blavatsky's Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi.  Johnson in his own introduction to The Masters Revealed [1994, 5-6] summarizes this hypothesis as follows:

Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia, founding president of the Amritsar Singh Sabha, corresponds in intriguing ways to clues about- Koot Hoomi's identity in the writings of Olcott and HPB, .. Maharaja Ranbir Singh of Kashmir has many correspondences to Morya as described by HPB.... Although much of HPB's portrayal of Morya and Koot Hoomi was designed to mislead in order to protect their privacy, enough accurate information was included to make a persuasive case for their identities as these historical figures.

Caldwell analyzes the techniques used in supporting the hypothesis of this identification and examines in detail the best primary evidence on the question, especially the accounts written by Henry Steel Olcott and others concerning their encounters with and knowledge of the persons in question. The monograph includes an appendix by David Reigle on Tibetan sources purportedly used by HPB.

Caldwell (41) concludes:

Johnson has devoted a great deal of time and effort in researching various portions of H. P. Blavatsky's life and the historical identities of her Masters. Johnson's books should he read by every Theosophist and occult student.

Unfortunately, Johnson's books are marred by numerous serious mistakes and inaccuracies.

All in all, Johnson's "identifications'' of the two Masters don't withstand a critical analysis of the sum total of evidence and testimony concerning the adepts involved. I believe that anyone who carefully studies the evidence and seriously thinks through the issues involved will reasonably conclude that Johnson's so-called "persuasive case" about the Masters M and K.H. is nothing but a "house of cards." Even as "suggestions," Johnson's conjectures on these two Masters are highly implausible and dubious when carefully scrutinized in light of all the known facts.

February 1997

The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity

by Paul Heelas
Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Pp. x + 266.

The author of this scholarly, serious, and not unfriendly study of the New Age movement: is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Cultural Values and a Reader (roughly equivalent to an American Associate Professor) in the Department of Religious Studies of Lancaster University. The book examines the origins, development, characteristics, and import of the New Age movement, especially in Britain and America.

The New Age movement: is viewed in relationship to "modernity," that: is roughly, contemporary mainstream views and practices. The New Age is said to be ambivalent about mainstream society, on the one hand offering a spiritual alternative to its religious values and on the other hand exemplifying and celebrating some of the characteristics of our time.

Theosophy is treated as part of the New Age movement, three key figures in its incipient development being identified as H. P. Blavatsky, Carl Gustav Jung, and George I. Gurdjieff. However, Theosophy does not figure largely in this study, for the author sees it: as historically seminal rather than contemporarily central to the movement: "Even the Theosophical headquarters in Madras is no longer New Age -and this despite the fact that: the Society (founded in New York) is generally accorded a significant: role in the development of what has happened in the west" (122).

That view is only half right. It is true that contemporary Theosophy is not distinctively New Age; indeed, many Theosophists would think of themselves and of the Society as Perennial Age rather than New Age. Yet there are clearly links between Theosophy and the New Age movement. In as far as the latter has a core Set of ideas, they arc largely compatible with and indeed derived from Theosophy. Most of the ideas set forth as characterizing the New Age in appendix 1 (225-6) are familiarly Theosophical.

The error in the author's view is in assuming that: modern Theosophy has ever been New Age, in the current sense of the term. Certain characteristics of the New Age are nor traditionally Theosophical ones. For example, the New Age is typically anti- or at least non-intellectual; Theosophy has always been in one sense an intellectual movement. Blavatsky spoke of it as a form of jñana yoga, union through knowledge, and the early appeal of Theosophy was to the intelligentsia of both West and East.

Also the New Age is generally countercultural, that is, opposed in lifestyle to the prevailing culture. Theosophists have often been superficially countercultural (for example, being vegetarians and eschewers of furs before such practices became fashionable). But in other ways, they have generally been conventional, educated, middle-class, professional, involved citizens. Relatively few were ever of the drop-out, turn-on persuasion that was much more typical of the early New Age movement.

The New Age tends, as the subtitle of this book indicates, to celebrate and focus upon the "self," that is, the sense of personal identity. Key expressions in this book are self-actualization, self-empowerment, self-enhancement, self-ethic, self-help, self-responsibility, self-spirituality, and self-work ethic. Theosophy too is centrally concerned with "self" bur distinguishes between the personal transitory self, the individual abiding Self, and the transcendent cosmic SELF. Its message is that: of Delphi and the Upanishads: know yourself and, knowing that, nothing else need be known. But the "self" which is to be known in Theosophy is something radically different from that of pop self-culture.

This book is a useful work for the information it contains. A casual reader may find it numbingly data-filled, and the interpretation of the data is sometimes superficial. But the book's virtue is that it contains facts and examines them without either credulity or incredulity and without either naivete or condescension.

-JOHN ALGEO

January 1997 and June 1997

The Theosophical Enlightenment

by Joscelyn Godwin
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Pp. xiii +448. Paper.

Joscelyn Godwin is a professor at Colgate University who has distinguished himself as the author of a series of volumes on the history of the esoteric, particularly in its relationship to music.

The Theosophical Enlightenment is one of the most important books ever written on the history of the esoteric. The author with a charming and yet erudite style tells us all we essentially need to know about the English esoteric world from the time of the French Revolution to the early part of this century.

In this volume students of the writings of H. P. Blavatsky will find the essence of the teachings of many of the sages about whom she wrote. In addition these esotericists are linked to the social and political background of their time, and the reader will also be able to trace their links to one another.

The Theosophical Enlightenment is in three parts. The first deals with a revisionist approach to myth which developed into a universal view of history. The persons in this section include Richard Payne Knight, Sir William Jones, Henry O'Brien, Thomas Inman, and Godfrey Higgins, whose Anacalypsis was seen by one contemporary reviewer as a precursor to Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled. In this first part Professor Godwin does the reader a signal service in summarizing the 1500 pages of the Anacalypsis.

The second part of this book deals with the esoteric sciences in England up until 1850 and covers such diverse characters as Emanuel Swedenborg, Francis Barrett (author of The Magus) , the novelist Bulwer-Lytton, and Frederick Hockley. The third part views the rise of Spiritualism and deals in some derail with the mysterious Emma Hardinge Britten who was one of the founders of the Theosophical Society. It also outlines the origins of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Christian disciples of Jacob Boehme, and the Rosicrucians associated with such figures as P. B. Randolph and Hargrave Jennings. It also investigates the mysterious Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, treated more fully in The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, by Joscelyn Godwin, Christian Chanel, and John Deveney (Weiser, 1995).

Godwin sees Blavatsky as a product of the skeptical enlightenment of the nineteenth century who brought together in the Theosophical Society the two threads of western and Oriental esotericism, a joining which did not survive the century. He devotes well over 50 pages to the early Theosophical Society and brings forth a number of little known details.

The research in this volume is encyclopedic and fascinating. Very few errors can be noted, although the "legal gentleman" mentioned on page 287 who conducted telepathic experiments with G. H. Felt was W. Q. Judge, and not H. S. Olcott: as supposed (see Path 7: 344).

This volume is dedicated to Leslie Price, who founded the journal Theosophical History and to James A. Santucci, the current editor.

I recommend The Theosophical Enlightenment as essential reading for those students interested in the history of esoteric ideas and in particular for students of H. P. Blavatsky.

-JOHN COOPER {reprintedfrom Theosophy in Australia 60.3, September 1996} 

January 1997

Graceful Exits: How Great Beings Die

edited by Sushila Blackman.
New York: Weatherhill, 1997. Paperback, 160 pages.

In Graceful Exits: How Great Beings Die, Sushila Blackman has collected death stories of Hindu, Tibetan, and Zen masters.

Hindus believe that the last thoughts before death affect one's next incarnation. Hence, it is best to think of God on dying so that one will be forever liberated. A famous example is Mahatma Gandhi's last exclamation, "Sri Ram, Sri Ram, Sri Ram!" as he died from an assassin's bullets.

Tibetan monks practice meditations to Be performed immediately before and after death to effect final liberation or at least reincarnation in desirable circumstances. They study the texts we call the Tibetan Book of the Dead so they can properly navigate the various bardos, or stages between death and rebirth. As the dying person’s life-force leaves the body, a great clear light appears-the light reported in so many near-death experiences. Tibetan masters teach that if one can recognize and merge into that light, one is liberated from all separate existence.

Many of the stories in this book have to do with foreknowledge of death without fear or anxiety. In the Japanese tradition, Zen masters on the verge of death givetheir last words in the form of a death poem, or jisei. The beautiful death poem of Basho, the greatest of Japan's haiku poets, was "Sick, on a journey, yet over withered fields dreams wander on." Several death stories of Zen masters involve humorous behavior or nonsensical statements very much like Zen koans.

The afterword presents an unexpected poignancy. Shortly before completing this book, Sushila Blackman learned that cancer had metastasized to her bones. She had unknowingly been collecting these stories to prepare for her own death, which came a little more than a month after she wrote the afterword.

These stories make the point that death is just another passage in life, which we need not fear. We, like the great beings, can make a graceful exit.

-MIKE WILSON

Summer 1998