Man is a soul plus a personality. Generally when thinking of H.P.B. we think of her as soul, that great soul who worked in and through the Theosophical Movement of our age. But we often forget that she worked through a personality, or if we remember it we think of the difficulties that personality seemed to make among those who worked with her.

Suppose we look at this personality and try to find out what and who it was.

How the personality obscures the real man is brought out in the Bhagavad-Gita. Arjuna did not realize at first that Krishna was anything other than his friend, the prince, the charioteer, and therefore when he was given the divine eye and saw who Krishna really was, he realized the enormity of his behaviour and confessed:

Having been ignorant of thy majesty, I took thee for a friend, and have called thee "O Krishna, O son of Yadu, O friend," and blinded by my affection and presumption, I have at times treated thee without respect in sport, in recreation, in repose, in thy chair, and at thy meals, in private and in public; all this I beseech thee, O inconceivable Being, to forgive (Bhagavad-Gita, XI, 42)

Have we erred in the past in our estimate of H.P.B.? The Mahatmas have said:

After nearly a century of fruitless search, our Chiefs had to avail themselves of the only opportunity to send out a European body upon European soil to serve as a connecting link between that country and our own.

So we learn one fact: the body of H.P.B. was the best available for the purpose of the Theosophical Movement, the only one which could form the link between Masters' world and the Western world.

All of us know of her birth in Russia and all of us are familiar with her photographs in the years when she was acting as a link betwen the two worlds, and we see her sad face, her inconveniently bulky proportions, the mark left on her body by her illnesses, but few of us are as familiar with the photographs of her early life when as "the lovely young girl" she first went to the Masters. All we see and remember is the body engraved with the suffering caused by the very people she had loved and helped. Yet, in 1874, soon after her arrival in New York, the newspaper, The Daily Graphic, described her as "a remarkably good-natured and sprightly woman. She is handsome...dresses with remarkable elegance, is bien gantée and her clothing is redolent of some subtle and delicious perfume which she has gathered in her wanderings in the Far East."

We hear a lot of her "temper" and her "outspokenness," but as we become more familiar with all that the Masters have written about her we get a different picture. Thus, for instance:

...her strange ways make her in your opinion a very undesirable transmitter of our messages. Nevertheless...once that you have learned the truth; once told, that this unbalanced mind, the seeming incongruity of her speeches and ideas, her nervous excitement...nothing of it is due to any fault of hers, you may, perchance, be led to regard her in quite a different light.

What is the truth? The Master continues:

This state of hers is intimately connected with her occult training in Tibet, and due to her being sent out alone into the world to gradually prepare the way for others....No man or woman, unless he be an initiate of the "fifth circle," can leave the precincts of Bod-Las and return back into the world in his integral whole—if I may use the expression.

All that was visible on the surface was her personality. Some may have glimpsed her real inner nature, but only if they were her peers. The Masters have said that the personality known to the world as H.P.B. was known to them "otherwise." Thus in one place Master K.H. says:

In the superficial details of her homely, hard-working, commonplace daily life and affairs, you discern but unpracticality, womanly impulses, often absurdity and folly; we, on the contrary, light daily upon traits of her inner nature the most delicate and refined.

We get an interesting sidelight on her character—and one of great value to her students and to all those who seek to live the inner life in the outer world, sacrificing their personal feelings. Said the Master:

She never stops one moment to consider the propriety of things when concerned in carrying out [Master's] orders. In the eyes of you...it is the one unpardonable sin; in our sight...it is the greatest virtue; for before it became with her a habit, she used to suffer in her Western nature and perform it as a self-sacrifice of her personal reputation.

We are told also that "there never was a woman more unjustly abused than H.P.B." Countess Wachtmeister wrote to Mr. Sinnett on February 17, 1886:

Do you know that ever since the 1st January, my first thought on waking in the morning has been "what impertinence or annoyance will the post bring today," and a feeling of thankfulness on going to bed if there has been nothing, which is very rare.

Just imagine what a life to lead, particularly for one who is in bad health, constantly suffering and has to write the "Secret Doctrine."...Just try for one moment and place yourself in her position; after so many years' labour for the Society which she created to find all the Theosophists either tearing herself or themselves to pieces—then wanting to write this book, which is to benefit the world by giving out truths hitherto unknown—and to find herself literally unable to do it through all the wounds and contusions she receives from all these stones so liberally shied at her from all sides, but the hardest from those whom she has loved so dearly.

What did she say of herself? She said that she was but the window through which the Light comes. She did not even admit her own great part in the Work but gave all the credit to her Master. She wrote:

...for so many years I stand set in the pillory, a target for my enemies and some friends also. Yet I accept the trial cheerfully. Why? Because I know that I have, all my faults notwithstanding, Master's protection extended over me. And if I have it, the reason for it is simply this: for thirty-five years and more, ever since 1851 that I saw any Master bodily and personally for the first time, I have never once denied or even doubted Him, not even in thought. Never a reproach or murmur against Him has escaped my lips, or entered even my brain for one instant under the heaviest trials....Unswerving devotion to Him who embodies the duty traced for me, and belief in the Wisdom—collectively, of that grand, mysterious, yet actual Brotherhood of holy men—is my only merit, and the cause of my success in Occult philosophy. (Raja-Yoga or Occultism, pp. 14-15)

The following tribute to her by Charles Johnston was reprinted in the April 1964 issue of THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT:

There was something in her personality, her bearing, the light and power of her eyes, which spoke of a wider and deeper life....That was the greatest thing about her, and it was always there; this sense of a bigger world, of deeper powers, of unseen might; to those in harmony with her potent genius, this came as a revelation and incentive to follow the path she pointed out. To those who could not see with her eyes, who could not raise themselves in some measure to her vision, this quality came as a challenge, an irritant, a discordant and subversive force, leading them at last to an attitude of fierce hostility and denunciation.

When the last word is said, she was greater than any of her works, more full of living power than even her marvellous writings. It was the intimate and direct sense of her genius, the strong ray and vibration of that genius itself, which worked her greatest achievements and won her greatest triumphs. Most perfect work of all, her will carried with it a sense and conviction of immortality. Her mere presence testified to the vigour of the soul.

How explain H.P.B.? It has been said: "Those who cannot understand her had best not try to explain her." All we can do is to remember the mysteries of the human soul and its vehicles and be increasingly grateful to that Great Soul and to the personality through which it worked and suffered for our benefit.

How can we repay our debt? The advice given by the Mahatma should point to us the way in which we should think of her:

Do not forget that all the good results that are in store for our India...are all due to her individual efforts. You can hardly show her enough respect and gratitude, or more than she is entitled to...You will have to carefully impress [her friends] with the sense of the exalted position she ought to—if she does not—hold among those Hindus who have remained true to the Past, care not for the Present, and work but for the Future, which will be great and glorious if she is only supported and helped by them....

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to see happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he proposes to remove.

—Samuel Johnson