Theos-Talk Archives (June 1999 Message tl00045)

In a message dated 6/13/99 12:25:49 PM Central Daylight Time, 
davidgreen@hotmail.com writes:

> Recently, I read Mr. David Green's post a bit more closely. I was shocked 
>  >to
>  >find that on the basis of one book he would actually conclude that HPB,
>  >despite an enormity of evidence to the contrary, actually never went to
>  >Tibet.
>  
There is the book by R. Paul Johnson, titled The Masters Revealed: Madame 
Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge, SUNY Press, that is a 
academic book having to pass through an blind academic review process before 
it is published, that works with a number of documents, including those of 
HPB, to establish on  reasonable grounds that:

1. There were "mahatmas" with real historical identities and names which this
book reveals and identifies for the first time (collating a number of 
previously unavailable documents of Albert Rawson, Agardi Metrovitch, Jamal 
ad-Din al-Afghani, Paulos Metamon, and Louis Bimstein aka Max Theon, etc., 
etc., etc.,).  So, Serapis Bey is shown to probably be the Coptic Christian 
Paulos Metamon under whom Rawson and HPB studied together in the 1850s, Koot 
Hoomi was the cover-identity of Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia, Morya was the 
cover-identity for Maharaja
Ranbir Singh of Kashmir.

2. That by her own admission in letters, HPB inflated into mythical 
proportions 
the image of these "mahatmas" in order to give them political cover for a 
variety of 
reasons and instructed people who knew them or met them to "move the 
geographical references from Kashmir and the Punjab to Tibet" (a Mahatma 
Letter gave the same instruction).

3. That HPB concealed her travels with fictional accounts of where she had 
been, 
and that while she did have Tibetan connections, she was never personally in 
Tibet.  Rather, the times she claims to have been there, it was really 
Sikkhim, Kashmir, or Darjeeling.

This accords with the old Imperial Russian records that are now available 
since the break-up of the old Soviet Socialist Union.  It has led to 
subsequent research by I believe Antoine Faivre, Professor of Esoteric 
Studies, Sorbonne, that the Stanzas of Dyzan are a poor rendition of the 
Central Asian (Kalmuck and Mongol) version of early Dzog chen texts found 
also among the Bon po, including the Kun byed rgyal po'i mdo in its essential 
upadesa points (i.e. "stanzas" usually oral of a guru to direct disciple).

I think this research will make HPB and her mahatmas much more interesting, 
down to earth and concrete than the inflated fantasies of many of her 
followers (or actually, the followers of Besant and the headbeater guy - A.P. 
Sinnett got thoroughly disgusted how Leadbeater jacked off every chance he 
thought no one was around and Krishnamurti reported how Leadbeater wanted 
group jack off sessions with him, his brother, and other boys.).  Anyway, 
back to topic, the above title makes HPB a much more interesting and complex 
person (a powerful woman who got into places where women usually were 
forbidden), establishes with reasonable certainty that her quest was mixed 
spiritual and political (as were the motives of her teachers and companions - 
in essence, anti-western imperialism and anti-Christian missionary 
fundamentalism or anykind of fundamentalism, AND shows her involvements in 
India home-rule BEFORE besant was even around)), and thus, that while there 
were "mahatmas," they weren't the superbeings (even HPB admits it) typically 
believed in by theosophers but were glossed as such, in terms of identity and 
location, to protect them and HPB.  HPB later regrets she created such an 
inflated image of them because the members of the TS, especially Olcott (she 
complains), had gone totally delusional in their fantasies of them having 
fantastic powers and ruling secretly as the secret government on earth 
guiding all events etc. etc. in her April 1886 letter to Franz Hartmann 
(Letters of HPB to Hartmann, 369-372).

Time for some sobering up with a more realistic assessment of the greatness 
of HPB and her accomplishments and her flaws and failures.

Grigor Vahan Ananikian