Martyrdom is pleasant to look at and criticize, but harder to suffer. There never was a woman more unjustly abused than H.P.B.

—Mahatma M.

Though years have gone by since the passing of H.P.B. on May 8, 1891, her appeal to the thoughtful portion of the world is still strong—in spite of her enemies and detractors. The reason for this appeal lies in no small measure in the synthetic nature of her philosophy. There are no gaps in her Message, no flaws or inconsistencies, no sweeping, unsubstantiated statements. Her Teaching has withstood the searching analysis and the critical probing of some of the best minds of the last century and of ours, and the open-minded and dispassionate cannot but admit that it is above censure. Attacks on the Theosophical Movement that H.P.B. launched have generally if not always centred round personalities, including her own, rarely round her Teaching. Each one who contacts that Teaching inevitably judges it from the standpoint of his own knowledge, experience and consciousness, based on what he has already learnt; for the intuitive, those who have cultivated the faculty of reading not only between the lines but within the words, all parts of the Philosophy, when put into place, as in a jig-saw puzzle, go to make a perfect Whole. There is nothing left out.

Her mission it was to demonstrate the synthesis of religion, science and philosophy. Her Message was for all. To the religiously inclined she brought the tidings of freedom of thought and offered the light of knowledge to dispel the lurking doubts begotten of blind ignorance and blind opinion, and to reveal the pettiness of separative creeds and the grandeur of true Religion. To men of science she offered new vistas of knowledge and pointed out that matter was not divorced from spirit and that man, the microcosm, and God, the Macrocosm, were indissolubly linked. Just as she divested religion of superstition, so she denied to science the right to dogmatize. She told the arrogant scientists of the 19th century that greater knowledge than theirs had built mightier civilizations in ages gone by, of which they knew nought. And to philosophers she showed that the ancient philosophies of Asia offered better solutions to humanity's problems, individual or collective, than modern Western ones could offer, and that philosophy was not merely a speculative and intellectual system of knowledge but also had its practical and ethical aspects. Practical ethics and ethical practice was her message to the philosophers of our era.

Many have speculated on the source of her knowledge and inspiration. What made her able to discourse illuminatingly and to write voluminous works on subjects that stagger the imagination by their vastness and profundity? The years prior to the launching of her Movement in 1875 contain the clue. She travelled all over the world for 20 long years, when modern means of rapid transport were unknown—not sightseeing, but acquiring knowledge. It was a veritable Pilgrimage in quest of knowledge of the World Invisible. They were years of preparation during which observations were made and material was gathered for the books she was to write. She saw both the dark and the light sides of Nature, with discernment noted the evils of black and the beneficence of White Magic, and learnt, sitting at the feet of Those she called Masters, how to serve the cause of human brotherhood by the right method of changing the Manas and the Buddhi of the race.

Given below are a few selected extracts from her writings, which convey some idea of the source of her Occult Knowledge:

"When, years ago, we first travelled over the East, exploring the penetralia of its deserted sanctuaries, two saddening and ever-recurring questions oppressed our thoughts: Where, WHO, WHAT is GOD? Who ever saw the IMMORTAL SPIRIT of man, so as to be able to assure himself of man's immortality?

"It was while most anxious to solve these perplexing problems that we came into contact with certain men, endowed with such mysterious powers and such profound knowledge that we may truly designate them as the sages of the Orient. To their instructions we lent a ready ear. They showed us that by combining science with religion, the existence of God and the immortality of man's spirit may be demonstrated like a problem of Euclid....In our studies, mysteries were shown to be no mysteries. Names and places that to the Western mind have only a significance derived from Eastern fable, were shown to be realities. Reverently we stepped in spirit within the temple of Isis; to lift aside the veil of 'the one that is and was and shall be' at Saïs; to look through the rent curtain of the Sanctum Sanctorum at Jerusalem; and even to interrogate within the crypts which once existed beneath the sacred edifice, the mysterious Bath-Kol. The Filia Vocis—the daughter of the divine voice—responded from the mercy-seat within the veil, and science, theology, every human hipothesis and conception born of imperfect knowledge, lost forever their authoritative character in our sight. The one living God had spoken through His oracle—man, and we were satisfied. Such knowledge is priceless; and it has been hidden only from those who overlooked it, derided it, or denied its existence." (Isis Unveiled, I, vi-vii)

"Many years of wandering among 'heathen' and 'Christian' magicians, occultists, mesmerizers and the tutti quanti of white and black art, ought to be sufficient, we think, to give us a certain right to feel competent to take a practical view of this doubted and very complicated question. We have associated with the fakirs, the holy men of India, and seen them when in intercourse with the Pitris. We have watched the proceedings and modus operandi of the howling and dancing dervishes; held friendly communications with the marabouts of European and Asiatic Turkey; and the serpent-charmers of Damascus and Benares have but few secrets that we have not had the fortune to study. Therefore, when scientists who have never had an opportunity of living among these oriental jugglers and can judge at the best but superficially, tell us that there is naught in their performances but mere tricks of prestidigitation, we cannot help feeling a profound regret for such hasty conclusions. That such pretentious claims should be made to a thorough analysis of the powers of nature, and at the same time such unpardonable neglect displayed of questions of purely physiological and psychological character, and astounding phenomena rejected without either examination or appeal, is an exhibition of inconsistency, strongly savouring of timidity, if not of moral obliquity." (Ibid, I, 42-43)

"What we have said in the introductory chapter and elsewhere, of mediums and the tendency of their mediumship, is not based upon conjecture, but upon actual experience and observation. There is scarcely one phase of mediumship, of either kind, that we have not seen exemplified during the past twenty-five years, in various countries. India, Thibet, Borneo, Siam, Egypt, Asia Minor, America (North and South) and other parts of the world, have each displayed to us its peculiar phase of mediumistic phenomena and magical power. Our varied experience has taught us two important truths, viz.: that for the exercise of the latter, personal purity and the exercise of a trained and indomitable will-power are indispensable; and that spiritualists can never assure themselves of the genuineness of mediumistic manifestations, unless they occur in the light and under such reasonable test conditions as would make an attempted fraud instantly noticed." (Ibid, I, 320)

"Tell me, dear one," Madame Blavatsky asked her aunt, Madame Fadéef, in a letter written about 1875 or 1876, when she was writing Isis Unveiled, "do you take any interest in physiologico-psychological mysteries? Here is one for you which is well qualified to astonish any physiologist: in our Society there are a few exceedingly learned members—for instance, Professor Wilder, one of the first archaeologists and Orientalists in the United States, and all these people come to me to be taught, and swear that I know all kinds of Eastern languages and sciences, positive as well as abstract, much better than themselves. That's a fact! And it's as bad to run up against a fact as against a pitchfork. So then tell me: how could it have happened that I, whose learning was so awfully lame up to the age of forty, have suddenly become a phenomenon of learning in the eyes of people who are really learned? This fact is an impenetrable mystery of Nature. I—a psychological problem, an enigma for future generations, a Sphinx! Just fancy that I, who have never in my life studied anything and possess nothing but the most superficial smattering of general information; I, who never had the slightest idea about physics or chemistry or zoology, or anything else—have now suddenly become able to write whole dissertations about them. I enter into discussions with men of science, into disputes out of which I often emerge triumphant....It's not a joke; I am perfectly serious; I am really frightened because I do not understand how it all happens. It is true that for nearly three years past I have been studying night and day, reading and thinking. But whatever I happen to read, it all seems familiar to me....I find mistakes in the most learned articles, and in lectures by Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and others. If some archaeologist happens to call on me, on taking leave he is certain to assure me that I have made clear to him the meaning of various monuments, and pointed out things to him of which he had never dreamed. All the symbols of antiquity, and their secret meaning, come into my head and stand there before my eyes as soon as the conversation touches on them." (The Path, December 1894)

And in a letter to her sister, Madame Vera Jelihovsky, she wrote: "Just about this time I have begun to feel a very strange duality. Several times a day I feel that besides me there is someone else, quite separable from me, present in my body. I never lose the consciousness of my own personality; what I feel is as if I were keeping silent and the other one—the lodger who is in me—were speaking with my tongue. For instance, I know that I have never been in the places which are described by my 'other me,' but this other one—the second me—does not lie when he tells about places and things unknown to me, because he has actually seen them and knows them well. I have givin it up; let my fate conduct me at its own sweet will; and besides, what am I to do? It would be perfectly ridiculous if I were to deny the possession of knowledge avowed by my No. 2, giving occasion to the people around me to imagine that I keep them in the dark for modesty's sake. In the night, when I am alone in my bed, the whole life of my No. 2 passes before my eyes, and I do not see myself at all, but quite a different person—different in race and different in feelings. But what's the use of talking about it? It's enough to drive one mad. I try to throw myself into the part and to forget the strangeness of my situation. This is no mediumship, and by no means an impure power; for that, it has too strong an ascendency over us all, leading us into better ways. No devil would act like that. 'Spirits,' maybe? But if it comes to that, my ancient 'spooks' dare not approach me any more. It's enough for me to enter the room where a séance is being held to stop all kinds of phenomena at once, especially materializations. Ah no, this is altogether of a higher order! But phenomena of another sort take place more and more frequently under the direction of my No. 2." (The Path, December 1894)

In another letter to her sister she wrote:

"Well, Vera, whether you believe me or not, something miraculous is happening to me. You cannot imagine in what a charmed world of pictures and visions I live. I am writing Isis; not writing, rather copying out and drawing that which She personally shows me. Upon my word, sometimes it seems to me that the ancient Goddess of Beauty in person leads me through all the countries of past centuries which I have to describe. I sit with my eyes open and to all appearances see and hear everything real and actual around me, and yet at the same time I see and hear that which I write. I feel short of breath; I am afraid to make the slightest movement for fear the spell might be broken. Slowly century after century, image after image, float out of the distance and pass before me as if in a magic panorama; and meanwhile I put them together in my mind, fitting in epochs and dates, and know for sure that there can be no mistake. Races and nations, countries and cities, which have for long disappeared in the darkness of the prehistoric past, emerge and then vanish, giving place to others; and then I am told the consecutive dates. Hoary antiquity makes way for historical periods; myths are explained to me with events and people who have really existed, and every event which is at all remarkable, every newly-turned page of this many-coloured book of life, impresses itself on my brain with photographic exactitude. My own reckonings and calculations appear to me later on as separate coloured pieces of different shapes in the game which is called casse-têete (puzzles). I gather them together and try to match them one after the other, and at the end there always comes out a geometrical whole....Most assuredly it is not I who do it all, but my Ego, the highest principle which lives in me. And even this with the help of my Guru and teacher who helps me in everything. If I happen to forget something I have just to address him, or another of the same kind, in my thought, and what I have forgotten rises once more before my eyes—sometimes whole tables of numbers passing before me, long inventories of events. They remember everything. They know everything. Without them, from whence could I gather my knowledge?" (The Path, January 1895)

ALTRUISM is like a muscle, it must be used or it atrophies.

—Norman Cousins