Quest Magazine

The Man Who Met the Masters: Colonel Henry Steel Olcott

By John Algeo

Originally printed in the SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2008 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Algeo, John. "The Man Who Met the Masters: Colonel Henry Steel Olcott." Quest  96.5 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2008):180-185.

I was made simply to look upon them as men, my fellow-mortals; wiser, truly, infinitely more advanced than I, but only because of their having preceded me in the normal path of human evolution. [ODL 1.15:250]

WHEN COLONEL OLCOTT first met the masters who were working through Helena Blavatsky, he received an impression of them, which much later he recorded in his autobiographical book Old Diary Leaves. The epigraph above is Olcott's record of that impression. In this sentence, Olcott is talking about three things: himself ("I"), the masters ("them"), and how he and they came to be different ("evolution"). So to unpack the meaning of this sentence, we need to look at those three things: evolution, mastership, and Olcott's relation to the masters.

Evolution

Theosophical Society - John Algeo was a Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Georgia. He was a Theosophist and a Freemason He was the Vice President of the Theosophical Society Adyar.

Evolution has been a dominant topic in the Western world since Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently advanced the theory of natural selection (along with heredity and variation) as the means by which evolutionary changes are preserved and propagated. Their theories were made public in 1858; and Darwin's revolutionary book, On the Origin of Species, was published the following year.
 
The twentieth-century discovery of genes and their mutations explained how variations originate, which was unknown in the nineteenth century. More recently, evolutionary development biology (called "evo-devo," for short) has demonstrated how heredity contributes to evolutionary changes. A recent issue of the New York Times (June 26, 2007) included a whole section, "Science Times," on evolution. So the subject is still developing among scientists.
 
Today, the "theory" of evolution is accepted fact, and the means by which physical evolution happens are fairly well known. Except for some dogmatic religious fundamentalists, no one doubts the reality of the scientific concept of evolution by natural selection. Yet the scientific concept is not the whole story. A concept of evolution has been part of Indic thought for centuries and is embraced in Theosophical thinking as well. Madame Blavatsky wrote:

 

The idea of Darwinian-like evolution, of struggle for life and supremacy, and of the "survival of the fittest" among the Hosts above as the Hosts below, runs throughout both the volumes of our earlier work [Isis Unveiled]. . . . But the idea was not ours, it is that of antiquity. [SD 1:202]

Theosophical tradition embraces evolution, albeit with some differences from the usual scientific ideas. First, whereas scientific evolution is concerned centrally with changes in material forms, Theosophical evolution postulates three independent but interrelated developments:

It now becomes plain that there exists in Nature a triple evolutionary scheme, for the formation of the three periodical Upadhis [vehicles or expressions]; or rather three separate schemes of evolution, which in our system are inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point. These are the Monadic (or spiritual), the intellectual, and the physical evolutions. [SD 1:121]

Science is necessarily concerned with only the third of these evolutions, as it can consider only material reality, which can be studied objectively and quantified. But intellectual and spiritual evolutions are also real, although subjective and qualitative.

 
Second, Theosophical evolution recognizes not only causes but also purposes. That is, it is teleological—it holds that evolution has an underlying design and reason, namely subtler expression through physical or material evolution, wider consciousness through intellectual evolution, and increased awareness of the ultimate unity of existence through spiritual evolution:

The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life. There is design in the action of the seemingly blindest forces. [SD 1:277]

Science, however, is concerned exclusively with causes. Theosophy, on the other hand, sees evolution also as matter of progression, design, and control. But design does not imply a "Designer," that is, a personal God who creates the design. Rather, design is implicit in everything in the universe, and its expression through evolution is the working out of an inherent order:

The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. . . . The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated by almost endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a mission to perform, and who . . . are "messengers" in the sense only that they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws. [SD 1:274]

In this way, Theosophical evolution differs from what today is called "intelligent design," which may be no more than a way of trying to smuggle the Abrahamic God into what ought to be pure science.

Theosophical evolution also sees the human condition as part of an even wider panorama than does scientific evolution. Human life has evolved out of animal, vegetal, and mineral antecedents, and it has before it future evolution into yet subtler, more expansive, and more unified states of being. Most of us are, at present, only partly human. We are developing our human and rational minds, but within an emotional maelstrom. Our future evolution will increasingly order and organize our emotions and further develop our free intellectual, intuitive, and spiritual natures.

Mastership

Although we are all human, we are not all at the same level of human development. Our partial humanity varies in the degree of its fullness and its incompleteness. Yet there is a sort of common average humanity, from which most of us depart only slightly, however great the differences among us may seem to be.

Nevertheless, some human beings have indeed gone farther than the rest of us in reaching full human stature. They are the saints, sages, Hindu rishis, Tibetan chohans, Confucian jens—enlightened beings—among us. Their numbers include most notably the renowned teachers of humanity, such as the Buddha, Christ, Zoroaster, Confucius, Plato, and so on. And they also include less well-known and somewhat less advanced followers of those greatest ones. In the Theosophical tradition, those advanced humans collectively are called "mahatmas," "great souls," or "masters" (that is, those who have mastered the wisdom of life and who are thus qualified to be schoolmasters in the art of living to show the rest of us the way to wisdom).
 
These masters, as indicated by the quotation from Olcott's Old Diary Leaves that serves as the epigraph to this article, are not supernatural beings. Instead they are our "fellow-mortals, wiser, truly, infinitely more advanced" than we are, but only because they have gone further than we have "in the normal path of human evolution." Where they have gone, we can follow. What they are, we can become. Part of their role is to help us along that way of becoming like them. They are our elder brothers, who have a fraternal concern for our well-being.
 
The existence of such teachers can hardly be doubted. The history of human cultures all over the globe records them and their work. Exceptionally talented, knowledgeable, and successful human beings have existed everywhere and have been generally recognized for their exceptionableness. What is particularly Theosophical is not the recognition of the existence of masters, but is instead an explanation of just how they differ from the rest of us and of their role in the historical process of evolution.
 
It is also Theosophical tradition that some among those masters were influential in the founding of the Theosophical Society. Indeed, it is said that they were the actual "inner founders" of the Society, who inspired Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott to become its "outer founders" and who guided those two in various ways in their work for humanity through the Society. Both Blavatsky and Olcott claimed to be in touch with the master "inner founders" and to be working for them in the world.
 
Blavatsky and Olcott were essentially modest people, who claimed no authority, much less infallibility, for themselves. Both of them admittedly made mistakes aplenty during their lives. Furthermore, neither did they claim any infallibility or ultimate authority for their master teachers. Being a master teacher—whether in the outer secular world of music or science or whatever subject, or in the inner sacred world of spiritual aspiration—does not protect one from making mistakes. All humans, even advanced ones, are subject to human error. But the wise are likely to make fewer errors than the foolish and to have better judgment in correcting themselves.
 
Therefore, both Blavatsky and Olcott were guided to some extent by the master teachers with whom they were in personal contact. That guidance was not in details or usually by specific direction. It concerned goals to be reached, not methods of getting there. It was strategic, not tactical. A wise teacher does not tell a student exactly how to do something, because each of us is in some ways unique and what works well for one person will not work at all for another. Thus each of us has to discover how we can best achieve the ends we strive for. Moreover, making the effort to learn for ourselves how to do a thing is far more educational and long-lasting than just blindly following a set of guidelines. The masters, like all master teachers, do not dictate. They inspire.

Olcott and the Masters

Blavatsky had had some contact with the masters from her childhood. Consequently, she looked upon them as a normal part of her life. She referred to them, but she did not discuss them in any detail or record her specific relationship with them. Olcott, on the other hand, came into knowledge of the masters relatively late in his life, as a result of his meeting with Blavatsky in 1874, when he was in his forty-second year of age. So for him, knowledge of, communications from, and interaction with the masters were all quite remarkable and notable events. Consequently, he noted such events first in his private diaries and later in his published account, Old Diary Leaves.

Olcott's autobiographical record in Old Diary Leaves of his contact with the masters is an interesting personal history of one man who met the masters. The purpose of the rest of this article is to bring to your attention some of what Henry Olcott had to say about the masters and his dealings with some of them. 
 
Blavatsky did not spring knowledge of the existence of the masters upon Olcott all at once, but did so gradually. As he says, "Little by little, H. P. B. let me know of the existence of Eastern adepts and their powers" (1.1:17). Through Blavatsky at first, Olcott began correspondence with the masters: "Many of their letters I have preserved, with my own endorsement of the dates of their reception." The letters continued through much of his life, often under circumstances in which Blavatsky could have had no part.
 
Olcott's intercourse with the masters was not limited, however, to correspondence. He describes his first direct personal contact with one of them as follows:

Our evening's work on Isis was finished, I had bade good-night to H. P. B., retired to my own room, closed the door as usual, sat me down to read and smoke, and was soon absorbed in my book. . . . 

I was quietly reading, with all my attention centered on my book. Nothing in the evening's incidents had prepared me for seeing an adept in his astral body; I had not wished for it, tried to conjure it up in my fancy, nor in the least expected it. All at once, as I read with my shoulder a little turned from the door, there came a gleam of something white in the right-hand corner of my right eye; I turned my head, dropped my book in astonishment, and saw towering above me in his great stature an Oriental clad in white garments, and wearing a head-cloth or turban of amber-striped fabric, hand-embroidered in yellow floss-silk. . . . He told me . . . that it lay with me alone whether he and I should meet often in this life as coworkers for the good of mankind. . . . Suddenly the thought came into my mind: "What if this be but hallucination; what if H. P. B. has cast a hypnotic glamour over me? I wish I had some tangible object to prove to me that he has really been here; something that I might handle after he is gone!" The Master smiled kindly as if reading my thought, untwisted the fehtâ [turban] from his head, benignantly saluted me in fare-well and—was gone . . . . on the table lay the embroidered head-cloth; a tangible and enduring proof that I . . . had been face to face with one of the Elder Brothers of Humanity. [1.24:377-80]

 

This contact was an astral, not a physical one, yet the turban that remained behind was a solidly material memento of the visit.

 
After Olcott moved to India, other contacts with the masters appear to have been entirely on the physical plane. Among the most notable of these was an incident at Lahore, when on two successive days, Olcott and a companion, William Brown, were both visited by the master whom Olcott knew as KH On the second evening, Olcott was waiting for a prearranged meeting with the master, about which he reports, "I heard his footsteps on the ground, so it was no wraith, but the man in his external body." Olcott further reports:

I went to him, we walked off to a safe place at some distance where intruders need not be expected, and then for about a half-hour he told me what I had to know, and what does not concern third parties, since that chapter of T. S. history was long since closed. . . . There were no miracles done at the interview, no magic circles traced on the ground, no gum-burning lamps placed around it and burning with steely-blue flames: just two men talking together, a meeting, and a parting when the talk was over. [3.4:44-5]

Later in Olcott's life, his connection with some of the masters seems to have become so close that he no longer had any need of either letters or bodily contact (whether such contact was astral or physical). Instead, Olcott believed he was in telepathic contact with the masters. Thus, Olcott relates the following event, which occurred in his sixtieth year:

Just before daybreak, on the 10th of February [1892], I received clairaudiently a very important message from my Guru: its impressiveness was enhanced by the fact that he told me things which were quite contrary to my own belief, and hence it could not be explained away as a case of auto-suggestion. [4.25:442]

In this message, Olcott was told six things, some of which involved specific information that proved to be correct. The first of the six things, however, was particularly surprising. It was that "a messenger from him [the master] would be coming," whom Olcott should hold himself ready to go and meet. Olcott was greatly impressed by this prediction, so even though he had been told "neither the name of the person nor the time of his or her arrival" (5.8:90-1), he "kept a traveling-bag packed a full year-and-a-half, so as to be ready to start at a moment's notice." But for all that time, there was no sequel: "Nothing more having been heard of the matter I had, naturally, come to think that I had, perhaps, been deceived as to the terms of the message."

 
Olcott put the matter out of his mind, but two years later, while he was accompanying Annie Besant on a lecture tour in India, he reports that:

The familiar voice again spoke as I lay in that state between sleeping and waking, and said: "This is the messenger whom I told you to be ready to go and meet: now do your duty." The surprise and delight were such as to drag me at once into the state of waking physical consciousness and I rejoiced to think that I had once more received proof of the possibility of getting trustworthy communications from my Teacher at times when I could not suspect them of being the result of auto-suggestion. The development of Mrs. Besant's relations with our work in India have been, moreover, what, to me, is the best possible evidence that she is, indeed, the agent selected to fructify the seeds which had been planted by H. P. B. and myself during the previous fifteen years. [5.8:91-2]

An undated Mahatma Letter to A. P. Sinnett includes the following injunction from the Master KH: "Meanwhile use every effort to develop such relations with A. Besant that your work may run on parallel lines and in full sympathy" (ML 463). This letter is tentatively dated by the editor of the chronological edition, Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., in 1884, ten years before the event reported above and five years before Besant joined the Theosophical Society. The editor also comments that the letter "would seem to indicate that the Mahatma K. H. had fore-knowledge of her role in theosophical work."

 
What is clear is that Olcott's identification of Annie Besant as his and Blavatsky's successor in India and in the world was fully accurate. Furthermore, that identification, which Olcott attributed to his own master, was apparently anticipated a decade earlier by another of the elder brothers.

Conclusions

What shall we make of such communications, of which those cited above are only a few examples? What were the letters, astral appearances, physical contacts, and telepathic messages? Were they all just fraud and imagination, or were they what Olcott thought them to be: veridical contacts with evolved human beings who were using him to further their work in the world? Do masters of the sort Olcott and Blavatsky talked about really exist? Was Olcott in touch with them as he believed himself to be? Answers to those questions cannot be supported by definitive, objective evidence. Instead, such answers depend on initial suppositions about what is possible and what is impossible.

 
Those who assume a purely materialistic worldview will discountenance any possibility of Olcott's beliefs being true. They will also reject the whole Theosophical tradition about a triple evolution of matter, intellect, and spirit, as well as Theosophical tradition about the masters as evolved human beings. Similarly, those who are convinced believers in any fundamentalist religion, of whatever creed, will also reject the Theosophical tradition as heretical and damnable.
 
Theosophy exists as a third way between scientific materialism and religious dogmatism. Theosophists hold Theosophy, not as an infallible statement of absolute truth, but as a way of viewing life that is internally consistent, experientially supported, and pragmatically useful. Henry Steel Olcott lived his life according to that view. Marie Russak, who then served as his secretary, records that on February 3, two weeks before his death, Olcott was visited by four of the masters who came to tell him that his work was over and to thank him for it. The day before that visit, Olcott dictated and signed his last message:

 

To my beloved brothers in the physical body: I bid you all farewell. In memory of me, carry on the grand work of proclaiming and living the Brotherhood of Religions.
 
To my beloved Brothers on the higher planes: I greet and come to you, and implore you to help me to impress all men on earth that "there is no religion higher than Truth," and that in the Brotherhood of Religions lies the peace and progress of humanity.

 

So spoke the man who had met the masters: Henry Steel Olcott.

Note: All citations of Old Diary Leaves (ODL) are by volume, chapter, and page(s). Citations of The Secret Doctrine (SD) are by volume and page(s). The citation from the Mahatma Letters is by page in the chronological edition.

John Algeo was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and has lived in Texas, California, Florida, Illinois, and Georgia. John joined the Theosophical Society at the age of sixteen and became president of the Florida Lodge (Miami) while still in his teens. He is a past president of the American Dialect Society, the American Name Society, and the Dictionary Society of North America. John retired in 1994 to accept the presidency of the Theosophical Society in America. He currently serves as international vice-president of the society, is revising his textbook, Origins and Development of the English Language for its sixth edition, and continues to lecture at academic and Theosophical meetings throughout the world.

From the Archives: Passage to India: A Mission from the Masters

By Paula Chernyshev Finnegan

Originally printed in the SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2008 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Finnegan, Paula Chernyshev. "From the Archives: Passage to India: A Mission from the Masters." Quest  96.5 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2008):188-189.

 

MOST OF US KNOW THAT THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY was founded in 1875, but the events leading to how the international headquarters was established makes another very fine story. Here we document the story of the move to India using passages from The Esoteric World of Madame Blavatsky by Daniel Caldwell; Old Diary Leaves by Henry S. Olcott; and The Dawning of the Theosophical Movement by Michael Gomes.
 
Madame Blavatsky had been instructed by her teachers, also known as the Masters to travel to America which she did in 1873. She met Colonel Olcott in October 1874 and together they founded the Theosophical Society in New York City. HPB was then instructed to establish TS headquarters in India. She was joined by Olcott who was at first reluctant, but was convinced after a visit from a Master, which is related in this issue (see "The Man Who Met the Masters: Colonel Henry Steel Olcott" page 181).
 
In chapter IV, "Pilgrimage to India 1878," Gomes relates:

 

The decision to go to India came for Olcott during the writing of Isis Unveiled. From the time he learned "what India had been to the world, what she might be again," from H. P. Blavatsky, "an insatiable longing" had possessed him to go "to the land of the Rishis and Buddhas, the Sacred Land among lands; but I could not see my way clear to breaking the ties of circumstance which bound me to America."

He continues with Olcott's words after Olcott's experience with the Master, "Before the dawn of that sleepless night came, I began to devise the means and to bend all things to that end."

 

 
In The Esoteric World of Madame Blavatsky, Caldwell writes that in September 1877, the publication of Isis Unveiled had a powerful public impact and the New York Herald-Tribune considered the work as one of the "remarkable productions of the century." On July 8, 1878, HPB became a naturalized U.S. citizen, an event that received widespread publicity in various newspapers. Soon after her naturalization, Blavatsky announced that she and Colonel Olcott would be leaving for India by the end of the year. The New York Daily Graphic printed this interview with HPB on December 10, 1878:

 

 

Helen P. Blavatsky is leaving America, as she says, forever. A very damp reporter found his way into the pleasant French flat at Eighth avenue and Forty-seventh street this morning, and his ring was answered by a colored servant, who expressed serious doubts as to whether his mistress would see any one at so early an hour. The interviewer was, however, ushered into a breakfast room, which was in a very disordered condition, and invited to a seat on a vacant stool. The disorder was a necessary result of yesterday's auction sale, and the only semblance of occupancy left were an uncleared breakfast table and three human occupants. Colonel Olcott sat at the table busily making memoranda in a notebook and burning his handsome moustache with a half-finished cigar that struggled ineffectually to reach beyond the outskirts of his beard.
 
When the reporter was finally ushered into Mme. Blavatsky's own room, he found that lady seated at the end of a letter and tobacco laden table, twisting a fragrant cigarette from a quantity of loose tobacco of a famous Turkish brand. The room was the inner temple of the Lamasery, which has become so widely known in recent years.
 
The reporter said: "And so you are going to leave America?"
 
"Yes, and the Lamasery where I have spent so many happy, happy hours. I am sorry to leave these rooms, although there is little to regret about them now," glancing about at the bare floors and walls, "but I am glad to get away from your country. You have liberty, but that is all, and of that you have too much, too much!"
 
"When shall you leave?"
 
"I know neither the time nor the vessel, but it will be very soon. I am going first to Liverpool and London, where we have branch Theosophical societies. Then I shall go direct to Bombay. Oh! how glad I shall be to see my dear Indian home again!" and as she arose and wrapped a morning gown of strange design about her, she looked very much the Oriental priestess which she claims she is not.

 

In Old Diary Leaves 2:1, Colonel Olcott describes the "The Voyage Out."

 

Though we left American soil on the 17th of December (1878), we did not get away from American waters until 12.30 p.m. on the 19th, as we lost the tide of the 18th and had to anchor in the Lower Bay. Imagine the state of mind of H. P. B. if you can! She raged against the captain, pilot, engineers, owners, and even the tides. My Diary must have been in her portmanteau, for in it she wrote:
 
"Magnificent day. Clear, blue, cloudless [sky], but devilish cold. Fits of fear lasted till 11. The body is difficult to manage. . . . At last the pilot took the steamer across the Sandy Hook bar. Fortunately we did not get stuck in the sand! . . . All day eating at 8, 12, 4, and 7. H. P. B. eats like three hogs."
 
I never knew the meaning of the phrase written by H. P. B.'s hand in my Diary on 17th December, 1878: " All dark-but tranquil," until at London, when her niece translated for me an extract from the letter written by her aunt to her mother (Mme. Jelihovsky) from London on 14th January, 1879, and which she has kindly copied out for the present use. H. P. B. writes her sister:
 
"I start for India. Providence alone knows what the future has in store for us. Possibly these portraits shall be the last. Do not forget your orphan-sister, now so in the full meaning of the word.
 
"Good-bye. We start from Liverpool on the 18th. May the invisible powers protect you all!
 
"I shall write from Bombay if I ever reach it. ELENA."

 

LONDON, 14th January, 1879.
 
If she ever reached it? Then she was not certain that she would; that New York prediction might come true. Very well; but how, then, about all this romance we have been having circulated, about her having had complete foreknowledge as to our Indian career? The two clash . . .
 
On 15th January we sent on our heavy baggage to Liverpool; on the 17th I issued an Executive Notice appointing, ad interim, Major-General A. Doubleday, U. S. A., F. T. S., Acting President of the T. S.; Mr. David A. Curtis, Acting Corresponding Secretary; and Mr. G. V. Maynard, Treasurer; W. Q. Judge was already elected Recording Secretary. This arrangement was for the purpose of carrying on the work at the New York Headquarters until the future disposal of the Society should have been decided upon, according to what should happen after we had settled at Bombay.

 

 

Olcott and HPB then embarked on the one-month voyage to India aboard a British passenger/cargo steamer. The Speke Hall SS was built in 1878 by Charles Connell & Company in Scotstoun for Alexander & Radcliffe, Liverpool. It is surprising that Olcott describes it as "dirty and disagreeable" since it was a new ship. Blavatsky and Olcott arrived in Bombay in February 1879 where they soon established temporary headquarters.
 
In chapter 8 of The Esoteric World of Madame Blavatsky, "London, Bombay, and Allahabad, 1879," Caldwell relates the story told in Old Diary Leaves.

 

 

On the 17th [of January] we left for Liverpool, after a delightful stay of a fortnight [in England] with and among our kind friends and colleagues. The next day we passed at the Great Western Hotel, Liverpool, and at 5 p.m. embarked on the Speke Hall in a downpour of rain. The vessel was dirty and disagreeable to see; and what with that, and the falling of rain, the smell of damp tapestries and carpets in the saloon and cabins, and the forlorn faces of our forty fellow passengers, all equally disgusted as ourselves, it was a wretched omen for our long voyage out to India.
 
Meanwhile HPB was making it lively for the servants and her fellow passengers who, with one or two exceptions, were shocked by her ironclad language [and] outraged by her religious heterodoxy. The ship being struck by a tremendous sea, HPB was pitched against a leg of the dining-table, got her knee badly bruised, [and was] laid up in her cabin with her lame knee.
 
At the rate of 250 to 300 miles a day, we sailed up the Mediterranean, past Gibraltar, past Algiers, on to Malta. Port Said [Egypt] was reached on 2nd February, and then came two days and nights in the Suez Canal. [We] emerged into the Red Sea and began the third and final stage of our sea pilgrimage to the Land of Desire. That night the moon paved with silver the waters of the Gulf of Suez, and we felt as if we were sailing on a dream sea. Nothing of moment happened until the 12th, when a flue burst in the boiler, and we had to stop for repairs. On the 15th [of February], at noon, [we] were but 160 miles away from [the Bombay lights], and the next morning entered Bombay Harbor. Before sunrise I was on deck and, as we steamed rapidly towards our anchorage, reveled in the panorama of the harbor that was spread before me. Elephanta, ahead of us, was the first locality we asked to be shown us, for it was the type and visible representative of that Ancient India. Alas! as one turned towards the promontory of the Malabar Hill the dream was dispelled. The India we saw there was one of sumptuous bungalows, framed in the luxury of English flower gardens, and surrounded with all the signs of wealth gained in foreign commerce.
 
The ship's anchor was hardly dropped before we were boarded by three Hindu gentlemen in search of us. All seemed strangers to us, but when they pronounced their names I opened my arms and pressed them to my breast. We went ashore in their bunder boat and landed on the Apollo Bunder. The first thing I did on touching land was to stoop down and kiss the granite step; my instinctive act of puja!
 
The noonday Bombay sun of mid-February is a surprise to a Western visitor, and we had time to feel its full power before Mr. Hurrychund came . . .
 
The streets of Bombay charmed us with their strikingly Oriental character. The tall apartment houses in stucco, the novel dresses of the motley Asiatic population, the quaint vehicles . . . all these vivid impressions filled us with delight.
 
Before leaving New York, I had written Hurrychund to engage for us a small, clean house in the Hindu quarter. We were taken to a house on Girgaum Back Road, standing in a comparatively forlorn compound, and adjoining his glass-roofed photographic studio. Cocoa palms nodded their fronds over our roof, and Indian sweet-scented flowers rejoiced our sense of smell; after the dismal sea voyage it seemed like Paradise. The ladies of our friends' families called on HPB and a number of Hindu and Parsi gentlemen on our whole party; but the rush of visitors began the next morning.
 
On the evening of 17th February, a reception was held at the photographic studio, at which over 300 invited guests were present. The usual welcome address, with garlands, limes, and rose-water as accompaniments, was given us. Soon after landing, they were contacted by Alfred Percy Sinnett, then Editor of the Government paper, the Pioneer of Allahabad. This contact soon proved of the utmost importance.

 

Caldwell continues with A. P. Sinnett's recollection of how he first made the acquaintance of HPB.

Col. Olcott['s] and Mme. Blavatsky['s] arrival in India had been heralded 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.

Because of the dangerous nature of ocean travel at that time, HPB and Olcott were fortunate to have suffered only a bruised knee and bouts of sea sickness. They fared much better than their ship; the Speke Hall was lost on June 3, 1885 during a cyclone while on passage from Cardiff to Bombay. After their long voyage, the founders were rewarded with a warm welcome and wonderful reception. But Blavatsky and Olcott had come to India to establish the international headquarters of the Theosophical Society, and they wasted no time working toward that goal. By the autumn of 1879, they began publishing The Theosophist which continues to be the international journal for the TS. It was through their dedication and tireless energy that the Society and the Theosophical movement survived, and began to flourish, during those early days in India.

Paula Chernyshev Finnegan is a Theosophist, a biologist, and a native Chicagoan. Her interest in anthropology and Native American studies led her to the Quest Bookshop and the TS in the early 1990s. Paula has worked as coordinating editor for Quest magazine for three years. She would like to thank Janet Kerschner for combing the Archives in search of photographs and resources for this article.

Viewpoint: Butterflies Are Not Free

By Betty Bland

Originally printed in the SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2008 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bland, Betty. "Viewpoint: Butterflies Are Not Free." Quest  96.5 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2008):164-165.

Theosophical Society - Betty Bland served as President of the Theosophical Society in America and made many important and lasting contributions to the growth and legacy of the TSA.

THE DRIFTING DAZZLING BEAUTY OF A BUTTERFLY wafting on the summer breezes, floating from flower to flower, conjures in us an aesthetic appreciation and a certain longing to be carefree like this diaphanous illusion. As the Buddhist teachings affirm, "All beings wish to be happy." And we human beings add the strength of our highly developed mental and emotional faculties to this search for happiness as a driving factor in our lives.
 
What can make us happy? After our basic needs are met, we begin to seek in all sorts of places. Thrills, power, and wealth might be pursued as the key to a sense of satisfaction. When the sense of meaning, purpose, and love are missing from our lives, our psyche can drive us into strange and self-destructive places. The things we long for the most are those things that are our half-remembered birthright. Our inner nature calls to us and tells us that we are so much more than this crazy merry-go-round in the physical world.
 
We are like the grub or caterpillar, pushing around in the dark, earthbound and prickly. We eat, we sleep, and we gather experiences, but an inner sense keeps nagging at us. Something important is missing. We begin weaving the web of self-examination—around and around, back and forth, until we might feel that there is nothing but darkness in our cocoon. In the process of this transformative pain, our insides can turn to mush. Nothing fits the old mold. What we might have thought was real and important is no longer so.
 
Whether this psychological alteration is long or short depends on many factors, but it must come in some way to each of our lives, turning ourselves inside out so that we no longer focus on self-pity and indulgences, but begin to recognize the fundamental unity with all of existence. Even the faintest glimmer of this realization begins to alter our nature that our wings of flight are just a breath away. It will not be long until we break free of our cocoon, fly into the sunlight of compassion, and sip the nectar of meaning in unity.
 
The butterfly is born, but not without a price. The process of change brings it to a state of amorphous chaos in which nothing seems certain. Yet in the unfoldment of time and under the condition that nothing goes awry, the lovely creature emerges in all its glory.
 
This imagery applies to the path of each human spirit in that we have undergone long development as self-protective, self-interested beings focused solely on our survival, who finally, through difficulties of one sort or another, have been catapulted into ourselves in order to grow beyond our accustomed boundaries. This happens cyclically within each life and on a grander scale through many lifetimes. Each new birthing is an initiatory experience along our return pathway to the divine nature hidden within, the only source of true happiness.
 
Because the pattern of development is so different for each of us in the way that it manifests, I might add an additional allusion to the butterfly. That is, "If a butterfly flutters its wings in China, there will be a powerful hurricane in the Atlantic." The truth of this phenomenon, which is called "sensitive dependence upon initial conditions" by chaos theorists, becomes more apparent daily as the Internet and ever-increasing mobility exponentially expand our realms of influence. Each person's pathway has different circumstances, so that there are as many pathways to Spirit as there are people. Together we are forming this lovely pattern of emerging butterflies. And we each impact untold others.
 
It is well to remember that the Theosophical Society in its many national sections, as well as the international Society as a whole, is a conglomerate entity which follows this same sort of pattern. We are blessed more than many organizations by the solid foundation of our long history. Yet it is clear that the further back into time our beginnings reach, the more transformational processes we will have to undergo to fulfill our mission as we develop and the world changes.
 
The Society has recently undergone an international election that unleashed controversy that wounds us all—and that to some may seem like a backward step. However, it is by virtue of our functioning as a group, buffeting against one another elbow to elbow, that our prickles are shorn and our predispositions turned to mush. As a microcosm of the entire human family we must learn to develop our own strengths while at the same time honoring our fellows undergoing the same process. Our interactions with one another create the environment and feedback that replicate the idea of a cocoon on a larger basis. Our self-focus and personal agendas must undergo radical change. With the necessity of looking into one another's eyes we are made to see ourselves more clearly, so that through a more lucid consciousness we are transformed and thus able to participate in building a more effective nucleus of the universal brotherhood of all.
 
It is neither simple nor easy, but our work as a Society draws each of us into the chaos of transformation and thereby recreates us to be contributing parts of the larger whole. By working together we bring about change in ourselves, from being selfishly ground-based caterpillars into the winged creatures of selfless service. Just as the individual has to experience trials and setbacks as a part of growth, so also the Society has to undergo the trauma of changes. To become a butterfly is difficult. It is not free, but it is worth it.
 
After a contentious election in 1954, Sidney Cook, National Vice President, wrote:
What is tremendously important is that after any electoral event in the Theosophical Society there be a renewal of our sense of oneness. So deep is the knowledge of our brotherhood—it is the very foundation cement of our Society's being—that when the partisanship ceases the true nature of our brotherly relationship and purpose again comes rapidly to the surface and directs our deliberations, our decisions and our actions. . . . Here lies the real test. It is in our groups, lodges, committees, boards, that our deepest principle must most evidently prevail. It is there we become or fail to become the nucleus upon which the whole welfare of the Society rests and upon which its whole vital work must be based. There can be no understanding of the Wisdom, no comprehension of the work without it.
 
Now that the exaggerations of difference, fanned during an election, have disappeared, let the enthusiasm of our brotherhood possess us (The American Theosophist, August 1954, p. 150).

Explorations: The Power of Sangha in Theosophical Work

By Vicente Hao Chin

Originally printed in the SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2008 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Chin, Vicente Hao. "Explorations: The Power of Sangha in Theosophical Work." Quest  96.5 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2008):186-187.

 

ONE ENCOUNTERS THE AGELESS WISDOM mainly through two avenues: the first is through books, and the other is through people. It is the second that I believe has a greater impact on influencing someone to walk the spiritual path. I may read a book on karma, and after reading it, nod my head and say, "Oh, yes, this is true. I believe in karma," and end there. It is rare that reading a book alone will trigger a basic redirection of one's life path, although this does happen. But, it is when we meet someone whose life strikes a chord of truth within us, and are continuously exposed to such a person, that we realize the power of such association in creating turning points in our lives. Allow me to share four facets of this power of long-term association with spiritually inclined people, in our case, the Theosophical sangha.
 
The first is the chance to begin. We are introduced to a new way of life when we meet people who embody such a life and worldview. We notice within them a different kind of inner power; one of equanimity and wisdom that goes beyond the smartness and cunningness that we normally see all around us.
 
My first encounter with the ageless wisdom was through a orange-robed yogi who spoke at our college. I do not remember what he talked about, but after the lecture I approached him and asked to be taught how to meditate. The following Sunday I received my introduction to raja yoga, which led me to the Theosophical Society. There I met a lady who was to have an enduring influence on my young life. I have been involved with the Theosophical Society ever since, and my life has never been the same. The first power of sangha, then, is the chance to begin our initial steps towards the spiritual path in this life. The right community can kindle the spiritual fire within.
 
Kindling the spiritual fire is but the first step. This flame must be sustained, and here we encounter the second power of the sangha, the power to nurture. Being with a spiritual group like the TS, not just an intellectual debating society but a living spiritual community, enables us to sustain our initial effort to tread the path toward the higher life.
 
It is not easy trying to live according to one's principles. The worldly life has its own smart rules that sneer at integrity and truthfulness, at spirituality and selflessness, at meditation and nonacquisitiveness. It offers so many tantalizing experiences and sights that it is easy for one to get carried away. The sangha enables us to sustain our sight of the distant light ahead of us, or, to put it another way, to constantly be aware of this inner vision of the truer life. The spiritual community sustains and energizes this inner insight that begins as a series of intermittent sparks and becomes a tiny unsteady flame that needs to be gently fanned for it not to be blown out.
 
My parents were businesspeople. Being the eldest in the family, I was expected to pursue the life of a businessman after I graduated. The people around me, the immediate surrounding culture, my uncles and relatives, were of similar business minds. It is hard to say what I would be doing today if it I had not encountered yoga and the Theosophical Society. The weekly association with Theosophists had a sustaining impact in my young life, such that despite being involved in the business world, I was never fully immersed in or carried away by it. One becomes like the double-headed eagle, capable of seeing in two directions: the life in the outer world, and the life in the inner. This dual vision is one of the most crucial stages in one's effort to live the higher life. It keeps one's feet on the ground, cognizing one's duties and one's humanity, but at the same time not losing sight of the reality of our transcendent nature.
 
The third power of the sangha is the power to inspire. This, of course, depends upon the type of organization or group one is associated with. Speaking of my own exposure to the Theosophical Society, I may say that encountering certain individuals in the Society has pivotally uplifted my own small efforts, giving strength to my young wings. This is possible because we see embodied in certain individuals the fruits of the wisdom and the worthiness of such a life. We realize that some day, we too can reach such heights, such levels of integration.
 
The power of example is a very potent one. People are the highest embodiments of truth outside of ourselves. They give us conviction and certainty about the validity of the spiritual or theosophic way of life. The deep, balanced, and exemplary lives of spiritual people are the proof that the wisdom is ultimately sound and that committing our lives to the higher life is worth it. Finally, the fourth power of the sangha is the power to teach how to truly serve. Again, this depends upon which particular group one associates. When there is at least one person in the group who exhibits the quality of cheerful and spontaneous service, we may be blessed with the discovery of, perhaps, the most important activity that a human being can engage in the life of service.
 
Most people are not naturally endowed with a service-oriented nature. On the contrary, we almost always start with selfishness. The budding spirituality that inclines towards selfless service needs to be nurtured in an environment that is not cynical about compassion and the giving of oneself.
 
It is rather unfortunate that the practical man or woman is often subconsciously nurtured to think that one should do certain things only when there is a resultant personal gain from it. In a world of competition, the aim is to get ahead, to acquire more, to gain. One even learns that it is smart to use Machiavellian ways to surge ahead. I was not lacking in such exposure, however, the timeless principles of the ageless wisdom constantly reminded me to look the other way, to be willing to lose, to give way, or to assist, if doing so would mean lightening the burden of someone. These principles taught me that there is no such thing as an enemy. We are all travelers or pilgrims in quest of a distant paradise. Let us not quarrel about precious stones or jewels that we may have picked up along the way. We will have to divest ourselves of them eventually and enter the sacred land holding each other's hands, not jewels and stones.
 
Our journeys are not independent of one another, but intertwined in complex and mysterious ways so that the joys and pains of others are really shared by everyone. The spiritual community teaches us how to serve; not in the way a merchant would give his goods in exchange for something in return, but to give and serve unconditionally. It is truly a difficult lesson to learn because the encrusted ego would like to continue to strengthen itself, and is not willing to let go of its imagined treasures without a corresponding gain. The sangha has the power to soften and melt such encrustations so that one day, in one life, the soul will be ready to let go of that center called the self and awaken to the Self Universal.
 
The Theosophical community is indeed a blessing to those whose lives revolve around its sphere of influence. It has, first, the power to allow a soul to begin the quest; second, it has the power to nurture the flame that sustains the quest; it has the power to inspire and uplift the soul to transcending heights; and, finally, it has the power to teach how to truly serve without self.
 
The Theosophical sangha, while bestowing blessings and power on the pilgrim soul, does not demand for itself any allegiance to any doctrine or dogma. It is a sangha that points not to itself, but to something beyond itself. This is the transcendent power of a truly spiritual sangha. One feels truly blessed to be under its motherly wings.
 
For our part, let us share in nurturing the spiritual quality of the Theosophical sangha for the sake of future pilgrims to come. Let our programs, activities, and gatherings always be imbued with a wisp of the eternal. And let this begin with our tiniest actions, with the casual words that flow from our lips, with the daily fleeting thoughts that cross our minds, until our own lives have become permeated with the soundless melody of the song of life, the song of the eternal. Then, truly, every new pilgrim will be in the midst of a genuinely transformative community, the Theosophical Society.

 

Vicente Hao Chin, Jr. is president of the Theosophical Society in the Philippines; founder and chairman of the Golden Link School, which focuses on bringing Theosophical principles and ideals to primary school children; and editor of the chronological edition of The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett. This article is from a talk given at Summer National Gathering in 2007.

September - October 2008

VOLUME 96, NUMBER 5

 

Contents

Viewpoint: Butterflies Are Not Free
By Betty Bland

The Man Who Met the Masters:
Colonel Henry Steel Olcott
By John Algeo

The Light of the Russian Soul:
A Personal Memoir of Early Russian Theosophy
By Elena F. Pisareva, translated by George M. Young

The Universal Brotherhood of Humanity
By Edward Abdill

Explorations: The Power of Sangha in Theosophical Work
By Vicente Hao Chin

From the Archives:
Passage to India: A Mission from the Masters
By Paula Chernyshev Finnegan

  1. The Light of the Russian Soul: A Personal Memoir of Early Russian Theosophy
  2. Zen Tea and Catholic Eucharist
  3. Explorations: Healing the Rift: Working with the Power of the Land
  4. Sustaining Nature

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