Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl00849)

With the recent talk about HPB I thought this might be of interest. It is
from the Diary Leaves by Col Olcott and if you have read it just hit the
delete key .

Page 103. In tracing up HPB's literary history from that point until the
close of her life, one important fact should be borne in mind by such as are
willing to do her simple justice. She was not a learned woman, in the
literary sense, when she came to America. When, long after Isis Unveiled was
begun, I inquired of her ever-beloved aunt Mdlle. Fadeyef, where her niece
had acquired all this  varied kmowledge of recondite philosophies,
metaphysics, and sciences, this prodigiously intuitive comprehension of
ethnical evolution, the migrations of ideas, the occult forces of nature,
etc., she wrote me frankly that up to their last meeting, some four or five
years previously, Helena had "not even thought of such things in her
dreams," that her education had been simply that of any young lady of good
family. She had learnt, besides her native Russian, French, a little
English, a smattering of Italian, and music: she was astounded at my
accounts of her erudition, and could only attribute it to the same sort of
inspiration as had been enjoyed by the Apostles, who, on the Day of
Pentecost, spoke in strange tongues of which they had previously been
ignorant. She added that from her childhood her niece had been a medium,
more extraordinary for psychical power and variety of phenomena than any of
whom she had read in the whole course of a lifelong study of the subject. I
had a better chance than any of her friends to know what were her actual
literary attainments, having helped her in her correspondence and labours of
authorship and corrected almost every page of her MSS for years.

..snip...
Whether HPB did or did not acquire her practical psychical knowledge or
powers in the East, it is undeniable that she 'had' them, could practise
them whenever she liked, and that her explanations of them were identical
with those which are given in the teachings of every Eastern school of
Occult Science. I, personally, can further testify that she was in relations
with Eastern adepts, and that not only she, but even I, was visited by them,
conversed with them and was taught by them, before leaving America and after
reaching India."

On page 107 he says this. "Nor, as said, was she an orderly or accurate
writer; her mind seemed to rush ahead at such a pace, and streams of thought
came pouring from both sides in such force that confusion and want of method
were the result in her writing. She laughed once, but confessed the justness
of the comparison, when I told her that her mind was like Dickens's image of
Mugby Junction, with its ceaseless trains screaming out, backing and
shunting, and from morning to night keeping up a bewildering confusion. But
beginning with the 'Hiraf' article, and coming down to the last line she
wrote for type, one thing must honestly be said - her writing was always
full of thought-suggestion, brilliant and virile in style, while her keen
sense of humour often seasoned her most ponderous essays wit
hmirth-provoking ideas. To the methodical scholar she was exasperating, yet
never dull or uninteresting. Later on, I shall have occasion to speak of the
phenomenal changes in her literary and conversational moods and styles. I
have said, and shall always reiterate, that I learnt more from her than from
any schoolmaster, professor, or author I ever had to do with. Her psychical
greatness, however so overmatched her early education and mental discipline
that the critics who knew her only in literature have done her a bitter and
savage injustice. XB Saintine writes, in Picciola, that the penalty of
greatness is isolation; her case proves the aphorism; she dwelt on spiritual
heights wither only the eagles of manking soar. Most of her adversaries have
only seen the mud on her shoes; and, verily, sometimes she wiped them even
on her friends who could not mount on wings as strong as her own."

On page 98 he says "This will give my Indian readers an idea of the
extraordinary physical phenomena which were going on at the time in the
Western countries. In the East, similar displacements of solid things, such
as household furniture, cooking utensils, articles of clothing, etc are
occasionally heard of, but always with horror, and the eye-witnesses have
scarecely ever dreamt of making them the subject of scientific research: on
the contrary, they are looked upon as misfortunes, the work of evil spirits,
often of earth-bound souls of near relatives and intimate friends, and their
greatest desire is to abate them as unqualified nuisances. I only repeat
what has often been explained before by all theosophical writers, in saying
that intercourse between the living and their deceased friends and
connections is, to the Asiatic, an abhorrent proof that the dead are not
happily dissevered from earthly concerns, and thus are hampered in their
normal evolution towards the condition of pure spirit. The West, as a whole,
despite its religious creed, is grossly materialistic, imagining the future
life as but an extension of this in time, - and in space too, if one comes
to consider its physical conceptions of heaven and hell - and can only grasp
the actuality of post-morten conscious existence through such concrete
physical phenomena as M Aksakoff enumerates, and the many others which
astonish the visitors to mediums.**

Here is an interesting footnote. **In drafting the much-discussed "Third
Object" of the Theosophical Society, at New York, my mind was influenced by
the knowledge of this fact, and, at the same time, by my ignorance of the
full scope of Oriental Science. Had I known what evils were to come upon us
through the pretended development of psychical powers, I should have worded
it otherwise.**

He doesn't say how he would have worded it.

He continues; "The East, on the other hand, is spiritual and philosophical
in its conceptions, and phenomena of the above kind are to Asiatics but
evidence of the possession of a low order of psychical powers by those who
show them. The incidents of my flower-born ring, of Mrs Thayer's showers of
plants, flowers, and birds, and of Mrs Youngs's lifting of pianos on eggs,
strike the Western materialist's imagination, not as horrors but simply as
interesting lies, too scientifically revolutionary to be true, yet vastly
important if so, I suppose I must have heard a hundred times if once,in
India, that it was a great pity that HPB showed phenomena, for it went to
prove that she had not reached a high stage of Yoga. True, the Yogi is
warned by Patanjali, as the contempory 'bhikdhus' were by Gautama Buddha, to
beware of vainly showing their wonders when they found the 'siddhis' had
developed themselves in the course of their psychical evolution. Yet the
Buddha himself sometimes displayed his transcendent powers of this kind, but
improved the occasion to preach the noble doctrines of his Arya Dharma, and
spur his hearers to the noblest efforts to spiritualise, after de-brutifying
themselves. And so with most other religious teachers. Did not HPB adopt the
like policy? Did she not, even while doing her wonders, warn us all that
they were a very subordinate and insignificant part of Theosophy - some,
mere hypnotic suggestions, others physical marvels in the handling of matter
and force, by knowledge of their secrets and an acquired control over the
elemental races concerned with cosmic phenomena?"

Page 109.
"I am sure all earnest members of the Theosophical Society will be glad to
know that as early as July 1875, HPB affirmed the existence of the Eastern
Adepts, of the mystic Brotherhood, of the stores of divine knowledge in
their keeping, and of her personl connection with them."
Snip
"Spiritualism, in the hads of an adept, becomes Magic, for he is learned in
the art of blending together the laws of the Universe, without breaking any
of them and thereby violating Nature. In the hands of an inexperienced
medium, Spiritualism becomes UNCONSCIOUS SORCERY; (his Caps) for...he opens,
unknown to himself, a door of communication between the two worlds, through
which emerge the blind forces of Nature lurking in the astral Light, as well
as good and bad spirits."

Page 110
"I affirm my belief in the reality of ancient occult science, and the fact
that I had unexpectedly 'been brought into contact with living persons who
do, and had in my presence done the very marvels that Paracelsus, Albertus,
and Appolonius are credited with'. In saying this, I had in mind not only
HPB's multifariour phenomena, not only the beginnings of my intercourse with
the Mahatmas, but also the disclosure to my own eyes, in my own bedroom, in
a house where HPB did not live, and when she was not present, of the spirits
of the elements, by a stranger whom I casually met in New York, one day
shortly before penning the letter.
The stranger came by appointment to my chambers. We opened the folding doors
wich separated the sitting from the small bedroom, st on chairs facing the
wide doorway, and by a wonderful process of Maya (I now suppose) I saw the
bedroom converted, as it were, into a cube of empty space. The furniture had
disappiared from my vbiew, and there appeared alternately vivid scenes of
water, cloudy atmosphere, sunterranean caves, and an active volcano; each of
the elements teeming with beings, and shapes, and faces, ofwhich I caught
more of less transient glipses. Some of the forms were lovely, some
malignant and fierce, some terrible. They would float into view as gently as
bubbles on a smooth stream, or dart actoss the scene and disappear, or play
and gambol together in flame or flood. Anon, a misshapen monster, as horrid
to see as the pictures in Barretts Magus, would glare at me and plunge
forward, asthough it wished to deize me as the wounded tiger does its
victim, yet fading out on reaching the boundary of th cube of visualised
Akash, where the two rooms joined. It was trying on one's nerves, but after
my experiences at the Eddy's I managed not to 'weaken'. My stranger friend
declated himself satisfied with the result of the psychical test, and, on
leaving, said we might meet again. But until now we have not. He seemed a
fair-skinned Asiatic, but I could not exactly detect his mationality, though
I then fancied him a Hindu. He talked English as fluently as myself."

Hope this is of interest to you all.


             \\//
            (o o)
       --o00-(_)-00o--
 Stop the world,I wanna get off
   Bee Brown
   Member TSNZ,Wanganui Branch.
   Theos Int & L