Letters Between Blavatsky and Judge

Helena P. Blavatsky

Helena P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge

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A 2011 Editorial Note:

The following letter from Helena P. Blavatsky

to William Q. Judge is dated 3 October, 1886. It is

reproduced from “H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings”,

T.P.H., volume VII, pp. 136-138. We also have the

letter as published by the magazine “Theosophical

Forum” in its August 1932 edition, pp. 251-153.

We must thank the Campbell Theosophical Research

Library, in Australia, for kindly sending us, in

October 2011, a copy of that edition of the magazine.

The letter is the natural sequence to LBBJ-5. It

expands an examination of the same topics, including

editorial and economical matters and the difficulties with

Mohini. It was written in the same day as H.P.B.’s answer

to the manifesto signed by Mohini and Arthur Gebhard.

The text also discusses the concept of Nirmanakaya

and the idea of a disciple having one of his principles

“blended” to part of the consciousness of a much higher being.

We add explanatory notes to the letter.

(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)

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Ostende Rue d’Ouest 17.

October 3 1886

My dear W.Q.J. – Yours received –

Bouton is an old Shylock [1] – & would skin his own mother. I cannot lose over 500$. I make him an offer of 400$ in three months instalments – 100$ each – or 300$ down. The secret is – does he care to have the Secret Doctrine or not – & whether he still wants to have Isis illustrated as he proposed to me in a letter. If he does – he will come down. If not, then there is little chance. But I feel sure you could manage it. You know that the copyright of Isis is mine – unless he has swindled me in this too. You ought to ascertain it. And if the copyright in Washington is in my name – then I suppose you could prevent him to sell even the remainder of the edition I do not know the laws & you do.

But do try to come to some arrangement with him. If he gives me the 400 by instalment – then I want you to have a $100 out of it – 25$ each time; & if he gives only 350 down at once then let him send me a cheque for 275$ – & give you another for $75. I don’t want you to take trouble & bother yourself for me for the Prussian King. But do try to settle something definite with the old devil, so as to close accounts for ever in the matter of Isis hitherto printed. And tell me whether you can copyright for me the S.D. and what I have to do for it. Take to him my letter & try to mesmerize him & wig on the right side. I tell you seriously the publisher who will have the S.D. will make lots even if I myself do little. But I must fence and guarantee myself, securely in this matter of copyrighting.

And now to other things & far more serious. Arthur is with you now & you will find Arthur changed. One solitary month with Mohini has altered him so, that he is no more the same man. And the fruit of all this is – a manifesto written by Mohini & signed by both himself & Arthur. Anything more ungrateful, cold, unjust to poor Olcott and cruel I have never read. Nor did I ever expect such a thing from Mohini, who, if he is now regarded as a Jesus on wheels & a Saint owes to Olcott’s advertisements of him & my enthusiastic claims for him. Now Mr. Mohini Babu (he passed 2 weeks with me) is cold, dignified & reserved with me, friendly and “patronizing” – but still never showing his little game right before my nose, but only behind my back. I will give you an example which will show his present drift. Poor old Dr Bergen who is as devoted as devotion itself to the Master’s (ideal I call it with all those who do not know Them personally) – & who went on purpose to London to hear of, & about Them, and went to see the Arundales, heard to his amazement that the Masters were no longer regarded as the living actual Adepts, but either white Magicians with grayish tints, or “fictions” or something he could not make out. The Mahatmas he was told were unreachable Beings they could neither communicate, nor take concern in worldly or private affairs could never write letters or send messages – therefore our Masters could never be MAHATMAS.[2] You see what the consequences of all this have to be don’t you? Then when Bergen protested & said that he, at any rate, would never give up the living Masters; would always remain devoted to Them etc. Miss Arundale arose & looking him straight in the face, said: “I thought once as you do; it took me six months to come to Mohini’s views; BUT NOW I THINK AS HE DOES.” Plain this: Mohini is then exercising for over six months his influence over Miss Arundale to make her lose faith & belief even in the Masters. To me Mohini never said it so openly; but so many points more for him in wiliness & cunning. To me he said he was not of Bowaji’s way of thinking; that he blamed him etc. and his policy seems to be identical. Both are determined, I see, to gradually destroy the Society. They are undermining it slowly but surely; hence the “Manifesto,” the sense of which is “Society useless; Brotherhood a flapdoodle; President – a vain, worldly, conceited, untheosophical & unbrotherly & pernicious fool. Down then, with President, Head-Quarters, Society & all.” You will see it, because I answered it, & Sinnett will answer it too and we are going to print it to distribute among Fellows. Such was Mohini’s influence on Arthur that he who was all devotion when he arrived, now said to Sinnett in going away, “What matters it, so long you do good that you work within or outside the T.S. Why should there be any connection with it for us theosophists. Now keep this letter private and confidential don’t say anything to him but watch & see. But then I should not wonder in these days of Libra, Dugpas & universal reckoning if even you found yourself influenced by Arthur, Mohini and Co – Well, when I lose YOU – then will I say – Goodbye Society – “Gone to join her grandmother”. Your friend of the “Libra” is right in many ways; but of this later on. Ah, my poor dear Judge, do not be wiled away, for pity sake. Things will change & then everyone will be rewarded or – DAMNED. See if it don’t.

Olcott is a conceited ass, but there is no one more faithful & true than he is to the Masters & the original ideal & no one is more devoted to the Society planned & established under Their Orders – than he is. I must, & will defend him publicly, & admit his shortcomings as sincerely in print. I tell you we are on the eve of a crisis brought by Mohini and Bowaji and he who will remain true will be saved while all others will go to the Devil. The trouble with you is that you do not know the great change that came to pass in you a few years ago. Others have occasionally their astrals changed and replaced by those of Adepts (as of Elementaries) & they influence the outer, & the higher man. With you, it is the NIRMANAKAYA not the “astral” that blended with your astral. Hence the dual nature & fighting. Fakir? Fakir be damned. The man knows not the difference between a Nirmanakaya of an Adept & his astral.

Do write to me, for mercy sake, I am sending you on the Reincarnation as you asked, extracts from the S.D. & a full answer, I believe.

Your ever truly & faithfully (who?!) well, your friend anyhow

HPB

I am not coming just now to the U.S. who is the humbug who invented it?

NOTES:

[1] Shylock – the rich and unmerciful money-lender in William Shakespeare’s play “The Merchant of Venice”.(CCA)

[2] The function of memory implies an ability to be in tune with something at some definite level, or levels, of consciousness. Mohini had been a disciple; but discipleship occurs mainly at buddhic and buddhi-manasic level. Once the disciple loses access to the buddhi-manasic consciousness, he loses the actual substance of memory pertaining to that level. Hence an ex- disciple, having lost his main buddhic and buddhi-manasic focus, will often lose every actual memory of the process of discipleship and the sense that Masters are real beings. A similar process seems to have happened to Ms. Mabel Collins. The loss of buddhi-manasic consciousness provokes an exaggeration of skepticism, separative views and cunning, as shown by H.P.B. in the following lines. (CCA)

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On the role of the esoteric movement in the ethical awakening of mankind during the 21st century, see the book “The Fire and Light of Theosophical Literature”, by Carlos Cardoso Aveline.

Published in 2013 by The Aquarian Theosophist, the volume has 255 pages and can be obtained through Amazon Books.

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