The Masters Who
Guided Helena Blavatsky
10.
Blavatsky on Herself:
From Mahatma Letters to Sinnett: Appendix
“I have learnt my English from Him! (Master K.H.) I was
taught dreadful Yorkshire by my nurse called’governess’. From the time my father brought me to
England, when I was fourteen, thinking I spoke beautiful English—and people
asked him if he had me educated in Yorkshire and Ireland—and laughed at my
accent and my way of speaking—I gave up English altogether, trying to avoid
speaking it as much as I could. From fourteen till I was over forty I never
spoke it, let alone writing and forgot it entirely. I could read—which I did
very little—in English—I could not speak it. I remember how difficult it was
for me to understand a well-written book so far back only as 1867 in Venice.
All I knew when I came to America in 1873 was to speak a little. I wish people saw
an article I once attempted to write for ‘The Banner of Light’ when instead of ‘
sanguine’ I put ‘sanguinary’, etc. I learnt to write it through ‘Isis’
Letter No. 140, Jan 6 1886,
From Master K.H. to
Sinnett: Feb 1882.
My Brother—I have been on a long journey after supreme
knowledge, I took a long time to rest. Then upon coming back I had to give all
my time to duty and all my thoughts to the Great Problem. It is all over now……and
I am my Self once more. But what is Self? Only a passing guest, whose concerns
are like a mirage of the great desert……
…….Look around you my friend: see the “three poisons raging
within the heart of man—anger, greed, delusion, and the five obscurities—envy,
passion, vacillation, sloth, and unbelief—ever preventing them seeing truth.
They will never get rid of the pollution of their vain, wicked hearts, nor
perceive the spiritual portion of themselves. Will you not try for the sake of
shortening the distance between us—to disentangle yourself from the net of life
and death in which they are caught, to cherish less—lust and desire? Young Portman
is seriously meditating to leave all, to come over to us, and “become a Tibetan
Monk” as he puts it. His ideas are singularly mixed up on the two entirely
different characteristics and qualifications of the “Monk” or ‘Lama’ and the
living “Lha”, or ‘Brother’……
………We may be anxious to befriend such as we have an interest
in, and yet be as helpless to do so, as is one who sees a friend engulfed in a
stormy sea when no boat is near to be launched and his personal strength is paralysed
by a stronger hand that keeps him back. Yes, I see your thought….but you are
wrong. Blame not the holy man for strictly doing his duty by humanity. Had it
not been for the Chohan and his restraining influence you would not be reading
now again a letter from your Trans-Himalayan correspondent. The world of the
plains is antagonistic to that of the mountains, that you know but what you do
not know is the great harm produced by
your own unconscious indiscretions……
…….I can come nearer to you, but you must draw me by a
purified heart and a gradually developing will. Like the needle the adept
follows his attractions. Is this not the law of the disembodied Principles? Why
then not of the living also? As the social ties of the carnal man are too weak
to callback the “Soul” of the deceased except where there is a mutual affinity
which survives as a force in the region within the terrestrial region, so the
calls for mere friendship or even enthusiastic regard are too feebler to draw
the “Lha” who has passed on the stage of the journey to him he has left behind,
unless a parallel development goes on. …..
…….All this I say to you because I read your heart and
detect in it a shade of sadness, not to say disappointment , that hovers there.
You have had other correspondents but are not perfectly satisfied. To gratify,
I write you therefore with some effort to bid you keep a cheerful frame of
mind. Your strivings, perplexities and forebodings are equally noticed , good
and faithful friend. In the imperishable Record of the Masters you have written
them all. There are registered your every deed and thought; for, though not a
chela, as you say to my brother Morya, nor even a “protégé” --as you understand
the term-still, you have stepped within the circle of our work, you have
crossed the mystic line which separates your world from ours, and now whether
you persevere or not; whether we become later on, in your sight, still more
living real entities or vanish out of your mind like so many dream-fictions—perchance
an ugly nightmare—you are virtually OURS. Your hidden Self has mirrored itself
in our ‘Akasha’; your nature is yours, your essence is ours. The flame is
distinct from the log of wood which has served it temporarily as fuel…..and
whether we two meet face to face in in our grosser ‘rupas’—you cannot avoid
meeting us in Real Existence. Yea, verily good friend, your Karma is ours, for
you imprinted it daily and hourly upon the pages of that book where the
minutest particulars of the individuals stepping inside our circle are
preserved; and that your Karma is the only personality to be when you step
beyond. In thought and deed, by day, by soul-struggles by nights, you have been
writing the story of your desires and your spiritual development. This, every
one does who approaches us with any earnestness of desire to become our
co-worker; he himself “precipitates” the written entries by the identical
process used by us when we write inside your closed letters and uncut pages and
books and pamphlets in transit. ………
During the past few months, especially when your weary brain
was plunged in the torpor of sleep, your eager soul has often been searching after
me, and the current of your thought been beating against my protective barriers
of “Akasha” as the lapping wavelets against the rocky shore. What that “inner
Self” has longed to bind itself to, the
carnal man has not ratified…..
If you hear seldom from me, never feel disappointed, my
Brother. Nature has linked all parts of her Empire together by subtle threads
of magnetic sympathy, and, there is a mutual correlation between a star and a
man; thoughts run swifter than an electric fluid, and your thought will find me
if projected by a pure impulse, as mine will find, has found, and often impressed
your mind.
