SeC
10-12-2006, 06:00 AM
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky: Speaking The Truth Without Malice
By R D PARKAR
A film on Russia-born Helena Petrovna Blavatsky is currently in the making. Even 110 years after she passed away, Madame Blavatsky - as she is more popularly known and remembered - continues to fire the imagination of a great many people. Very few know enough about Mme Blavatsky. That's precisely why she has often been referred to as 'The Sphinx' of the nineteenth century. She has been, equally, complimented and criticised; accused and praised.
Mme Blavatsky's life and teachings are of relevance even today. With Colonel H S Olcott and W Q Judge, she founded the Theosophical Society in New York, 127 years ago. Its objects were to form a nucleus of Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour, study of religions, philosophies and sciences, and investigation of unexplained laws of nature.
Mme Blavatsky brought theosophy to the world at a very critical period in human history - at a time when superstition and materialism had begun to overshadow any quest for truth. In the initial years of the Society, she performed phenomena to show people that "there are no miracles". The idea of the miracle as something inexplicable is irrelevant to the occultist, who holds that there is an invisible side to both man and nature, involving laws, forces and processes not apprehensible by the intellect and senses.
Mme Blavatsky's teachings are embodied in three major works: The Secret Doctrine, Isis Unveiled and The Key to Theosophy. Isis Unveiled deals with ancient and modern science and theology. Mme Blavatsky provides a rationale for various phenomena and carries out an impartial comparison of major world religions.
She writes: "The work now submitted to public judgment is... meant to do justice, and to speak the truth alike without malice or prejudice. Men and parties, sects and schools are but ephemera of the world's day. Truth alone is eternal." Hence, the motto of the Theosophical Society: "There is no religion higher than truth".
The Secret Doctrine, with two volumes titled Cosmogenesis and Anthropogenesis, addresses genesis and the evolution of the worlds and man. Mme Blavatsky wanted to show that there exist great beings called mahatmas, masters or elder brothers whose knowledge and power far transcend those of ordinary mortals; and that there is a path leading to them.
Mme Blavatsky never wanted a great following. She said: "We are working so that the doctrines we cherish may affect and leaven the whole mind of this century...On the day when theosophy will have accomplished its most holy and most important mission, namely, to unite firmly a body of men of all nations in brotherly love and bent on a pure altruistic work, not on a labour with selfish motives, on that day only will theosophy become higher than any nominal brotherhood of man."
She wanted to free our shackled minds from priestcraft. She wished all men to know that they are potentially divine, and that as men, they must bear the burden of their own sins. Hence she brought forward to the West the old Eastern doctrines of karma and rebirth. Her object was to make religion scientific and science religious.
She laid emphasis on practice of ethics and altruism. Mme Blavatsky's thoughts and her philosophy have influenced many poets, writers, statesmen, philosophers and scientists. Several of them have found in her writings a deep mine of wisdom and so, paid her glowing tributes.
In his autobiography, Mahatma Gandhi writes that it was reading Mme Blavatsky's The Key to Theosophy that "stimulated in me the desire to read books on Hinduism." From her life and writings, it is clear that Mme Blavatsky was no Sphinx - if anything, she was a practical philosopher.
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Helena_Petrovna_Blavatsky/id/5611192
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
July 30, 1831 - May 8, 1891
Russian born author of Isis Unvealed and The Secret Doctrine, Madame Blavatsky, with the American Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, founded the Theosophical Society in 1875.
Although she was presented with a Certificate of the Rite of Adoption by John Yarker in 1877, she had no association with regular Freemasonry, as the following quote will attest:
If you will kindly refer to my Isis Unveiled (Vol. II, p. 394), you will find me saying: "we are under neither promise, obligation, nor oath, and therefore violate no confidence"--reference being made to Western Masonry, to the criticism of which the chapter is devoted; and full assurance is given that I have never taken "the regular degrees" in any Western Masonic Lodge. Of course, therefore, having taken no such degree, I am not a thirty-third degree Mason.
Excerpted from the Franklin Register and Norfolk County Journal, Franklin, Mass., February 8, 1878 as copied from a cutting pasted in her Scrapbook, Vol. IV, pp. 174-175 and reprinted in H.P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, 1874-1878. Vol. One. The Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, Ill.: 1977. ISBN: 0-8356-0082-3.
Isis Unveiled: A Master Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. H.P. Blavatsky, Corresponding Secretary of the Theosophical Society. Vol. II.--Theology. Fourth Edition. New York: J.W. Bouton, 706 Broadway, London: bernard Quaritch. 1878.
http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/esoterica/blavatsky_hp/blavatsky_hp.html
By R D PARKAR
A film on Russia-born Helena Petrovna Blavatsky is currently in the making. Even 110 years after she passed away, Madame Blavatsky - as she is more popularly known and remembered - continues to fire the imagination of a great many people. Very few know enough about Mme Blavatsky. That's precisely why she has often been referred to as 'The Sphinx' of the nineteenth century. She has been, equally, complimented and criticised; accused and praised.
Mme Blavatsky's life and teachings are of relevance even today. With Colonel H S Olcott and W Q Judge, she founded the Theosophical Society in New York, 127 years ago. Its objects were to form a nucleus of Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour, study of religions, philosophies and sciences, and investigation of unexplained laws of nature.
Mme Blavatsky brought theosophy to the world at a very critical period in human history - at a time when superstition and materialism had begun to overshadow any quest for truth. In the initial years of the Society, she performed phenomena to show people that "there are no miracles". The idea of the miracle as something inexplicable is irrelevant to the occultist, who holds that there is an invisible side to both man and nature, involving laws, forces and processes not apprehensible by the intellect and senses.
Mme Blavatsky's teachings are embodied in three major works: The Secret Doctrine, Isis Unveiled and The Key to Theosophy. Isis Unveiled deals with ancient and modern science and theology. Mme Blavatsky provides a rationale for various phenomena and carries out an impartial comparison of major world religions.
She writes: "The work now submitted to public judgment is... meant to do justice, and to speak the truth alike without malice or prejudice. Men and parties, sects and schools are but ephemera of the world's day. Truth alone is eternal." Hence, the motto of the Theosophical Society: "There is no religion higher than truth".
The Secret Doctrine, with two volumes titled Cosmogenesis and Anthropogenesis, addresses genesis and the evolution of the worlds and man. Mme Blavatsky wanted to show that there exist great beings called mahatmas, masters or elder brothers whose knowledge and power far transcend those of ordinary mortals; and that there is a path leading to them.
Mme Blavatsky never wanted a great following. She said: "We are working so that the doctrines we cherish may affect and leaven the whole mind of this century...On the day when theosophy will have accomplished its most holy and most important mission, namely, to unite firmly a body of men of all nations in brotherly love and bent on a pure altruistic work, not on a labour with selfish motives, on that day only will theosophy become higher than any nominal brotherhood of man."
She wanted to free our shackled minds from priestcraft. She wished all men to know that they are potentially divine, and that as men, they must bear the burden of their own sins. Hence she brought forward to the West the old Eastern doctrines of karma and rebirth. Her object was to make religion scientific and science religious.
She laid emphasis on practice of ethics and altruism. Mme Blavatsky's thoughts and her philosophy have influenced many poets, writers, statesmen, philosophers and scientists. Several of them have found in her writings a deep mine of wisdom and so, paid her glowing tributes.
In his autobiography, Mahatma Gandhi writes that it was reading Mme Blavatsky's The Key to Theosophy that "stimulated in me the desire to read books on Hinduism." From her life and writings, it is clear that Mme Blavatsky was no Sphinx - if anything, she was a practical philosopher.
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Helena_Petrovna_Blavatsky/id/5611192
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
July 30, 1831 - May 8, 1891
Russian born author of Isis Unvealed and The Secret Doctrine, Madame Blavatsky, with the American Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, founded the Theosophical Society in 1875.
Although she was presented with a Certificate of the Rite of Adoption by John Yarker in 1877, she had no association with regular Freemasonry, as the following quote will attest:
If you will kindly refer to my Isis Unveiled (Vol. II, p. 394), you will find me saying: "we are under neither promise, obligation, nor oath, and therefore violate no confidence"--reference being made to Western Masonry, to the criticism of which the chapter is devoted; and full assurance is given that I have never taken "the regular degrees" in any Western Masonic Lodge. Of course, therefore, having taken no such degree, I am not a thirty-third degree Mason.
Excerpted from the Franklin Register and Norfolk County Journal, Franklin, Mass., February 8, 1878 as copied from a cutting pasted in her Scrapbook, Vol. IV, pp. 174-175 and reprinted in H.P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, 1874-1878. Vol. One. The Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, Ill.: 1977. ISBN: 0-8356-0082-3.
Isis Unveiled: A Master Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. H.P. Blavatsky, Corresponding Secretary of the Theosophical Society. Vol. II.--Theology. Fourth Edition. New York: J.W. Bouton, 706 Broadway, London: bernard Quaritch. 1878.
http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/esoterica/blavatsky_hp/blavatsky_hp.html