Category: Blog

Our second May birthday president featured in the Lessons is a Gemini. Although Kennedy entered Congress while Elbert Benjamine was alive, and like Nixon was a well-known name during the Truman administration, his presidency occurred after the Brotherhood of Light lessons were complete. (Note that the date of death below is incorrect, as he died in 1963, not 1962.) Individuals whose charts appear in the Brotherhood’s lessons in the photograph below are Supreme Court Justice and past California governor Earl Warren, administering the oath of office, to the left of the podium, with JFK facing him from the right of it. Behind JFK in the front row is past Vice President Nixon. Behind them is incoming VP Johnson. Elsewhere in the group are outgoing president Eisenhower and his predecessor Truman, and First Ladies Edith Wilson, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Lady Bird Johnson. This captures an era of orderly peaceful transition of the presidency from one party to another.

The National Archives website includes the full text of Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address along with explanatory context.

Sarah Stanley Grimke, Norman Astley, and Hurrychund Chintamon were authors of the first three volumes in the History of the Adepts series. The final volume is an annotated edition of Tom Clark and His Wife by Paschal Beverly Randolph. All these authors have been unjustly neglected and/or unfairly defamed so I felt obliged to let them speak for themselves.

Harry Truman is back in the news in 2024 due to the multiple Oscar-winner Oppenheimer, which I have not yet seen. But there is also a new book to report. A major new historical study of Truman’s predecessor as Vice President, Henry Wallace, unveils new evidence from Kremlin archives that became available to Western scholars after the downfall of the Soviet Union. The World That Wasn’t by Ben Steil describes the turmoil in the Democratic Party over Wallace’s Communist associations in America and Russia, which led to his replacement by Truman as the vice presidential nominee in 1944. Truman is highly praised as a much better prepared and qualified VP candidate, who became a better president than Wallace could have been as the Cold War unfolded.

When Henry Wallace was replaced in 1944 as the running mate of FDR, Upton Sinclair’s alter ego Lanny Budd was disappointed that Democratic Party leaders trusted Harry Truman more as vice president and future president.  Various scandals made Wallace a liability in the coming election, and FDR’s failing health meant that the vice president would likely succeed the president within a year. In fact, Truman only served 82 days as vice president. In One Clear Call, ninth in the Lanny Budd series of spy novels, published in 1948, Sinclair disparaged Truman as a centrist but hinted that fate might prove the party leaders correct:      

“They were astonished and a little frightened by the clamor of the workers in Chicago, who did want Wallace and came to the convention hall and said so.  All the same, the delegates cast their votes for Senator Harry Truman, whom they knew and liked, and of whom they could feel certain that he didn’t have any eccentric ideas. In so doing they were making more history than they dreamed—something which happens frequently to humans, who are fated to live in the present, to forget the past quickly, and have no means of penetrating the future.”

By the final eleventh volume, published in 1953, Sinclair has become a Cold War realist Democrat, like many former Socialists who had come to distrust Stalin, the Soviet Union and American Communists.  Lanny Budd is sent by Truman on a spy mission to Moscow: “He explained that some three months previously he had been flown to Moscow as a personal representative of President Truman, to interview Marshal Stalin on the President’s behalf.”

David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1993 biography of Truman was my April audiobook selection, and an interview with the author helps explain why he was drawn to this subject.

This chapter from The Masters Revealed (SUNY Press, 1994) describes one of several figures in Spiritualist and Theosophical history whose natal chart is mentioned in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons.

ONE OF THE LEAST-KNOWN yet most influential figures in Theosophical history, Dr. J.M. Peebles was a catalyst without whom modern Theosophy  might have evolved very differently. Peebles was born in 1822 in Whitington, Vermont, not far from Chester, where Albert Rawson was born a few years later. His parents were middle-class farmers, and Peebles was educated for the Universalist ministry. He remained a minister into the 1860s, when he began a career in diplomacy. In 1868 he was a member of the Northwest Congressional Indian Peace Commission, and in 1869 was appointed U.S. consul at Trebizonde, Turkey. But in his fifties he changed careers again, earning an M.D. from the Philadelphia University of Medicine and Surgery in 1876, an M.A. from the same institution the following year, and a Ph.D. from the Medical University of Chicago in 1882. He practiced and taught medicine in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and San Diego before moving to Battle Creek, Michigan in 1896. Around 1910 he moved to his final home, Los Angeles. He interrupted his practice in 1886 to represent the U.S. Arbitration League at the conference of the International Peace Commission held in Berlin.’ His transition from ministerial to medical studies is a striking similarity to Rawson. More suggestive of their being kindred spirits is Peebles’s participation for many years in Freemasonry, the Odd Fellows, and the Independent Order of Good Templars, of which he was a founder and first chaplain. Among his other enthusiasms were abolitionism, temperance, woman suffrage, and vegetarianism, all of which he actively supported. He was also affiliated with the Free Thought movement, and preceded Rawson on the platform of the 1878 convention cited in the latter’s biography.

Most important for the evolution of Theosophy is Peebles’s role as a Spiritualist writer and traveling lecturer, which occupied much of his time and energy for the last half of his long life. His first books on the subject, The Practical of Spiritualism and The Spiritual Harp, appeared in 1868. In the following year he published Seers of the Ages, which promoted Spiritualism as a means of reconciling world religions. Most of his published works were about Spiritualism and his travels on its behalf. He made three tours around the world as a traveling lecturer, the first of which is crucial to Theosophical history. Much of his time abroad was spent in Egypt, India, and Ceylon, and in each country his activities are relevant to the mystery of the Masters. HPB appears in his narrative of his visit to Cairo:

“Madame Blavatsky, assisted by other fine brave souls, formed a society of Spiritualists about three years since [written 1874]. They have fine writing-mediums and other forms of the mani­festations. They hold weekly seances during the winter months. Madame Blavatsky is at present in Odessa, Russia. The lady whose husband keeps the Oriental Hotel, is a firm Spiritualist. Fired with the missionary spirit, I left a package of pamphlets and tracts in her possession, for gratuitous distribution.”

Much of his time abroad was spent in Egypt. The allusion to the lady married to the keeper of the Oriental Hotel presumably refers to Emma Coulomb. Perhaps his first meeting with HPB was simultaneous with Olcott’s, as he was present at the Eddy brothers’ seances in Chittenden where the founders first met. However, an uncanny succession of coincidences involving Peebles suggests that he may have been in league with HPB before her arrival in America. The most peculiar of the coincidences occurred in the fall of 1877, when Peebles, just returned from India, paid a visit to HPB and Olcott at their West 47th Street apartment, the ”Lamasery.” Marion Meade reports that he ”noticed on the wall a photograph of two Indians, shipboard passengers with whom Henry had traveled to England in 1870,” and was surprised to see that one of them was a man he had recently met in Bombay, Moolji Thackersey. When Peebles told them of Moolji’s current activities in the Arya Samaj, Olcott took his address and wrote to him in Bombay the following day.

As a result of this letter the TS became allied with the Arya Samaj, but another, more durable alliance with the Buddhists of Ceylon also resulted from the same conversation. In a 1927 reminiscence, Anagarika Dharmapala explained how this came about. He remembered that when he was ten years old there was a great debate, lasting three days, between Christian missionaries and a Buddhist priest, Mohottiwatte Gunananda. The High Priest Sumangala assisted his young colleague with preparations for the debate. Peebles happened to be in Ceylon at the time, and read of the event in a report in English, which he showed to Olcott and HPB when he visited them in New York. As a result, ”they wrote to Gunananda and Sumangala that, in the interest of universal brotherhood, they had just founded a society inspired by oriental philosophies and that they would come to Ceylon to help the Buddhists. The letters from Colonel the first of which is crucial to Theosophical history. Much of his time abroad was spent in Egypt, India, and Ceylon, and in each country his activities are relevant to the mystery of the Masters. HPB appears in his narrative of his visit to Cairo:

Burton’s trip to America never materialized, but it is interesting that he would have chosen Peebles for a traveling companion. While Around the World yields little in the way of specific clues about the Masters, it provides abundant evidence of the cultural milieu in which Theosophy emerged. Peebles portrays Spiritualism as part of a progressive cultural trend which he calls Liberalism or Free Thought. His passage through Italy evokes condemnation of the Pope and glorification of Garibaldi. Although not entirely free from racist assumptions (especially about ”Aryans”), he is sincerely and sympathetically interested in all the peoples he encounters. Every non-Christian religion is treated with honor and respect, although he condemns the ”shrewd, selfish conduct, and theological dogmas” of Christian missionaries as a ”curse to the native mind.”

The literary career of Dr. Peebles has extended well beyond his long lifetime. In 1990, a book entitled To Dance with Angels was published under the alleged authorship of his discarnate spirit. Novelists Don and Linda Pendleton co-wrote the portions that are not direct dictations from Peebles. The trance medium with whom they worked was Thomas Jacobson, but Peebles reportedly dictates to twenty-five mediums in North America alone. The messages are standard Spiritualist homilies, but are relevant to Theosophical history because they allege that Olcott and Peebles are working together now in the Spirit world. The discarnate Peebles makes frequent references to Masters, although it is not quite clear whether he claims that status for himself. The respect and love he inspires among his followers, who call him a Great Spirit, would seem to entitle him to Mahatmic status.

KPJ comment: Peebles is like Albert Rawson in that he gives conflicting testimony about the early New York TS that contradicts not just other witnesses but their own previous comments supporting or attacking Blavatsky. Her own testimony is equally confusing. As Marc Demarest’s latest blog post reports from his own inquiries– all these people mix fact and fiction in their commentaries about one another, and are misunderstood by subsequent writers according to biased versions of “who do you trust?” In 1994 I trusted misinformation about Peebles in printed books; my later research shows he was not the visitor recently returned from India to the US in 1877; the editorial material in the reprint of Hurrychund Chintamon explains that it was David E. Dudley, MD.

[Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, who was sometimes identified as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. which was the name of his grandfather.]

Although Lanny Budd is evidently an alter ego of the author and a vehicle for his insights and opinions, Upton’s 1962 autobiography makes it clear that an actual American spy in the second world war also was a model for Lanny, which had previously been stated in his wife’s 1957 memoirs. “One such guest, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., was important because he had made up his young mind to be something more than a rich man’s son…. He made up his mind to do something about it. He would no longer be a self-centered aimless parasite, a playboy, spending his father’s millions on frivolity! After cruel debates with his grandmother and parents, he wrote a book called Farewell to Fifth Avenue, and went forth on his own to start a chain of truth-telling newspapers.” [Mary Craig Sinclair, Southern Belle, 271-272.] Later in the book she explains the factual basis of one aspect of the Lanny Budd novels.  Upton knew from personal experience about being recruited by FDR:

“Franklin D. Roosevelt showed his esteem for Upton by offering him a diplomatic post through Neil Vanderbilt: —The telephone rang and a man’s voice said it was Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr, speaking from Phoenix, Arizona. Neil had a message from his life-long friend F.D.R. to deliver to Upton: to offer him a most important diplomatic post.” [Ibid., 360.]

In his own autobiography, Upton wrote “Neil really was a Presidential agent. He traveled to Europe on various pretexts and came back and reported secretly to the boss.  He had been able to go into Germany and into Italy…Neil told me of the secret door by which he had entered the White House, and what Franklin wore and how he behaved. Presently, I said with some excitement and hesitancy, `That would make a wonderful story for Lanny Budd.’ Neil said `That is why I am telling it to you.’ It was a magnificent gift, and I here express my gratitude. Presidential Agent became the title of volume five of the series.” [Upton Sinclair, Autobiography, 241-2.]

Upton Sinclair’s series of Lanny Budd spy novels incorporates many tales of the paranormal into his political narratives.  In the second volume, Between Two Worlds, Lanny learns that his stepfather, an adherent of New Thought, “had become interested in certain souls which had ‘passed over’ into that realm of eternity…To his wife he said gently, `I have learned through Madame Zyszynski that Marcel is waiting for you.’” Marcel Detaze was a great artist, the previous husband of Lanny’s mother Beauty Budd and father of his half-sister Marceline. [Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds, Kindle edition, location 13288]

By the end of the series astrology has entered the narrative while Spiritualism and psychic research continue as themes. “But several years ago in Munich an astrologer had cast his horoscope and told him that he was fated to die in Hongkong. Lanny had no particle of belief in astrology, nor in the integrity of this sharp-witted Rumanian. But something in his subconscious mind had picked up this theme and proceeded to make up stories about it.  As a result, one interesting method of tapping the subconscious mind had been quite spoiled for Lanny; he no longer amused himself looking into a crystal ball, because all he saw there was a Cook’s tour of the land of Cathay.” [Upton Sinclair, A World to Win, Kindle edition, location 886] Lanny does not die in Hong Kong, but others do, changing his life and that of his wife-to-be.

Beauty’s second husband Parsifal Dingle is an Iowa-born enthusiast of New Thought: “In brief, Mr. Dingle believed that there was a God, and that he, Mr. Dingle, was a part of Him.  This God was alive and He was real, and He lived and worked in you; He would guide you if you asked him, especially if you believed that He would. The way of asking was to retire to some quite place, as Jesus had directed, close your eyes and think about God and His goodness, and believe that He would do what you asked, if it was a good and proper thing.” [Upton Sinclair, Between Two Worlds, Kindle edition, locations 10523-10525]

Lanny has spent his entire life in the South of France with his mother, who had never married his father Robbie Budd. When he first travels to Newcastle, Connecticut to meet his paternal relatives, he encounters both a Quaker aunt and Unitarian uncle along with his Episcopalian father, grandfather, stepmother, and stepsiblings. “Great-Great-Aunt Bethesda was a Quaker, gentle, quiet, like a little gray dove. She said: `Has thee had a pleasant trip?’ – and this was something new to Lanny, and awakened his curiosity. He knew that the old gentleman [Uncle Eli Budd– ed.] was a Unitarian, and that this had been a scandal in its time, and still was to Grandfather Samuel, and perhaps to Stepmother Esther.” [Upton Sinclair, World’s End, Kindle edition, location 6530] These reflect aspects of Upton’s own family background.

Cornelius Vanderbilt IV – Wikipedia

https://library.duke.edu/exhibits/2020/parapsychology

Mental Radio was published as authored by Upton Sinclair, but Mary Craig is the main character, whose psychic explorations are meticulously recorded: ‘We have written down our observations as we go along; we have presented the evidence carefully and conscientiously, without theories; and what any scientist can do, or ask to have done, more than this, I cannot imagine. Those who throw out these results will not be scientists, but merely another set of dogmatists—of whom new crops are continually springing up, wearing new disguises and new labels. The plain truth is that in science, as in politics and religion, it is a lot easier to believe what you have been taught, than to set out for yourself and ascertain what happens.” [Upton Sinclair, Mental Radio, 146]

Mary Craig wrote about her spiritual and intellectual quests in her autobiography Southern Belle, published in 1957: “Bergson felt that a memory was never erased, but lasted as long as the body did- possibly longer!. One other of Bergson’s ideas remained with me. He didn’t believe in the supreme importance of Art. I was glad to have an ally! Philosophy now became my chief study. I read William James Psychology, two large volumes packed with information news to me; also his Will to Believe, which I surely had.”[Mary Craig Sinclair, Southern Belle, 92]

“We were eager to meet the head of the Dalcroze dance school.  Eurythmics, which Jacques Dalcroze had created, was so beautiful that we named it ‘music made visible.’ After one of the Dalcroze performances we ran into Bernard Shaw.” This acquaintanceship led to a long friendship which features in the first Lanny Budd novel. [Ibid., 143]

Mary Craig had experienced psychic phenomena but gave little thought to the subject before knowing Upton. “But now I was married to a man who had read books about every important subject in the world, or so it seemed to me, and one of the many was psychic research. In his youth he had met Minot J. Savage, minister of the Unitarian Church of the Messiah in New York, and Dr. Savage had assured him that he believed in what were called `psychic phenomena.” [Ibid., 214]

Another California writing friend was the subject of a strong premonition felt by Mary Craig the day of his death. ‘Now I said to Upton, ‘I have the strangest feeling about Jack London, that he is in trouble. You ought to try to help him. You ought to telephone him.’ Upton had spent so much energy trying to help alcoholics, and all in vain, that he felt he could do nothing. Next day came the news that Jack London had died by poison. There followed a letter from George Sterling, saying that it was suicide.” [Ibid., 15]

An important figure in the world of psychical research was interested in Mary Craig which whom he had common interests. When the Sinclairs met Dr. J.B. Rhine, the Duke University parapsychologist, they discussed telepathy experiments, “and he asked what had caused me to become so seriously interested in the subject. I told him at some length of my search for God and for a purpose in the universe, and I knew that the place to find Him was in the mind.  Rhine remarked that this had been his own motivation. [Ibid., 377]

Meremar, above, was the home of Lincoln Steffens from 1927 until his death in 1936. The last 17 years of Genevieve Stebbins’s life were spent in Monterey County, most of that time in Carmel-by-the-Sea. It was a haven for creative geniuses.

Donna Marek’s Crème de Carmel is a charming guide to local history.  She reports: “The first Spanish mission in the area was the Presideo Chapel built in 1770 in Monterey, but the following year it was relocated on the Carmel River and renamed the Mission San Carlos de Borremeo.” [Donna Marek, Crème de Carmel, 8.]  Monterey became the capital of both Californias in 1770, and continued as capital of only Alta California under Spanish rule in 1804, continuing as capital under Mexican sovereignty from 1822 through 1846. Carmel remained undeveloped except for the Carmel Mission and nearby ranches until 1888 when eighty acres in Carmel Woods was subdivided into lots. The community of Carmel-by-the-Sea was created in 1903 and rapidly developed with home sites and businesses. It was incorporated as a town on October 31, 1916.

By the late 1920s the atmosphere had changed, as it was no longer an artist colony but a popular beach resort, as reported by biographer Justin Kaplan. It continued to attract famous writers but Kaplan reports that by 1927, when Lincoln Steffens arrived, “the real colony had disappeared” but Steffens welcomed visits from Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. [Justin Kaplan, Lincoln Steffens, 326.] Marek reports that “Steffens also knew John and Carol Steinbeck, and suggested that Steinbeck write a series of articles for the San Francisco News about the Oklahoma migrants and how they were treated in Monterey County. Over the next four years, those articles led to Steinbeck’s writing The Grapes of Wrath.” [Donna Marek, Creme de Carmel, 29.]

Robert Louis Stevenson had lived for several months in Monterey in 1879 and wrote articles for the Monterey Californian.  Carmel is featured in Treasure Island.  The poet Robinson “Jeffers moved to Carmel in 1916 where he and his wife raised their two sons…Jeffers built their home—called Tor house—near the ocean, an undertaking that took five years.” [Ibid., 30.] The Benedict Cottage in Carmel on Scenic Drive was the site of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson’s 1926 scandal. “The stories that surfaced about her affair threw Carmel into the national limelight.”[Ibid, 31.]

The Sea Lion Point Trail at Point Lobos is the most easily accessible short walk to scenic overlooks where the rocky shoreline and sandy beaches can be viewed from above.  The name Point Lobos would seem to imply that wolves inhabited the area, but the Spanish term for what we call Sea Lions translates to Sea Wolf, which Jack London used as a title for a book about seafarers based in the central California coast. [Jerry Emory, Monterey Bay Shoreline Guide, 254-55.]

Lincoln Steffens relocated to Carmel-by-the-Sea several years after the Astleys moved there. He is not often associated with “the occult” but his biographer Justin Kaplan commented “Despite his later claim that he had shunned the fraternities as all bunk and pretension, Steffens was glad to belong to Zeta Psi, the oldest of Berkeley’s Greek-letter societies.  And it was on his urging that Frederick Willis, his closest friend in college, also joined. Willis was interested in theosophy, the survival of the soul after death, ‘sacred occultism,’ and parapsychology, and considered himself an expert mesmerist. Like many other students he had given himself over to the passion that motivated William James, in 1884, to establish an American Society for Psychical Research with its various committees on Thought Transference, hypnotism, and Apparitions and Haunted Houses.  In the Zeta Psi fraternity house near Bancroft Way, Steffens took instruction from Willis and began his own experiments with mesmerism, clairvoyance and thought transference.” [Justin Kaplan, Lincoln Steffens, 30.]

When Steffens was an undergraduate, Berkeley was not the thriving intellecual community it later became. Kaplan reports that “as an intellectual community, as a breeding place for philosophers, William James had said in 1883, ‘it’s a poor place’; and some of his disciples who had been invite to teach there with a sense of going into exile. Yet it was at Berkeley, fifteen years later, that James, reading his paper ‘Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results,’ first announced pragmatism as a theory of truth and formulated his subsequent creed.”(Ibid., 29.]

Mary Craig gives an amusing anecdote about Lincoln Steffens, in which Upton insists on a morning hike in cold weather and refuses to wait for Steffens to drink some coffee.  An hour later “Upton hurried into the kitchen to prepare breakfast for his guest, and Steffens sat next to the blaze and asked grimly, ‘Does he wake up like that every day?’ ‘Yes,’ I said sweetly. Isn’t it wonderful?’ `Maybe so,’ said Steff. But he won’t get another chance to take me strolling before I get my coffee! He talked a steady stream of politics for half an hour! How do you stand such a fellow?’”[Mary Craig Sinclair, Southern Belle, 171.]

Astrology and natal chart of Lincoln Steffens, born on 1866/04/06 (astrotheme.com)

Bibliography

Benjamine, Elbert, Imponderable Forces. Albuquerque: The Church of Light 2014nn

Laws of Occultism. Albuquerque: The Church of Light,2014.

Mental Alchemy. Albuquerque: The Church of Light, 2014.

Natal Astrology. Albuquerque: The Church of Light, 2014.

The Next Life. Albuquerque: The Church of Light, 2014.

Spiritual Alchemy. Albuquerque: The Church of Light, 2013.

Emory, Jerry, Monterey Bay Shoreline Guide. Berkeley; University of California Press, 1999.

Jeffers, Robinson, The Wild God of the World. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Kaplan, Justin, Lincoln Steffens. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013.

Labor, Earle, Jack London: A Life. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2018

London, Jack, The Iron Heel. New York; Review of Reviews, 1907.

Martin Eden. New York: Macmillan, 1909.

The Red Plague. New York: Macmillan 1912

          The Sea-Wolf. New York: Macmillan, 1902

Marek, Donna, Crème de Carmel. New York; Roberts Reinhardt 1994

Sinclair, Mary Craig, Southern Belle. New York: Crown, 1957.

Sinclair, Upton, Autobiography of Upton Sinclair, New York: Viking, 1962

Between Two Worlds. New York: Viking, 1941

Dragon’s Harvest. New York: Viking, 1942.

Dragon’s Teeth. New York: Viking, 1943.

Mental Radio. Monrovia, California: Upton Sinclair, 1930.

Oil! New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1927

Presidential Agent. New York: Viking, 1946

The Profits of Religion. Pasadena,: Upton Sinclair, 1917

Return of Lanny Budd. New York: Viking, 1953.

Wide is the Gate. New York: Viking, 1944

A World to Win. New York: Viking, 1948.

World’s End. New York: Viking, 1940.

Steffens, Lincoln, The Shame of the Cities. New York: McClure, Philips and Company, 1904.

Steil, Ben, The World That Wasn’t. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2024.

These announcements appeared on two consecutive weeks with the Brotherhood of Light giving public lectures in a small Oregon city. The are among the earliest such news stories I have found, published in the Roseburg News in November 1921.

Here is a history of Maccabee Hall by the current owners.

Our History

Unlike Upton and Mary Craig Sinclair, Jack London and his wife convey a general skepticism, even cynicism, about the paranormal. Jack’s experiences of an astrologer deadbeat dad and a flakey spiritualist medium mother seem to have left him an embittered cynic who tried to find humor in his personal history. But while he was a professed skeptic, two of his novels turned out to be weirdly prophetic. The Scarlet Plague is set in the 2010s, although published in 1908, and describes a catastrophic global pandemic. The Iron Heel, published in 1912, describes the arrival of a totalitarian communist dictatorship in the USA, predicting all the details of what Leninism and Stalinism would inflict on Russia– but he foresaw these events occurring in America and not Russia and died in 1916 before history proved him both right and wrong in his dystopian visions of the 20th and 21st centuries. Here is what his widow Charmian wrote about him in 1921: from pages 284-285, The Book of Jack London, Volume Two:

In logic he bowed to no one. His supple mind that never stiffened from disuse was of a clarity that allowed of no master. He but grasped and applied the conclusions of Master-minds, used them in the mosaic of his own. Yet here is a curious thing: In his dreams, at widely-spaced intervals, appeared the Man who would contest Jack’s self-mastership; to whom he  would eventually bend a vanquished intelligence. He never met such an one in the flesh, yet that entity stalked through more than the hallucinations of sleep. It was long ago that he first told me of this ominous figure in his consciousness. The last manifestation was within a very few years of his death. The man, imperial, inexorable with destiny, yet strangely human, descended, alone, a vast cascade of stairways, and Jack, at the foot, looked up and waited as imperially for the meeting that was to be his unknown fate. But the Nemesis, in that form at least, never overtook him. Was it Death? Or may it have been a reflection of his most exalted self that he came face to face with at these times?

Mental Radio is newly available as a free audiobook on Youtube:

An excellent brief biography of Mary Craig is found at the Mississippi Writers and Musicians website.

After reading four books by Jack London, I felt compelled to get the two-volume Book of Jack London by his wife Charmian Kittredge London who survived him almost forty years, and a recent biography of her that resolves several outstanding historical puzzles. Eleven books by Upton Sinclair (nine novels, two non-fiction investigations) led me finally to acquire the books of his wife Mary Craig Kimbrough Sinclair, who is featured in Mental Radio as a psychical researcher into telepathy and clairvoyance. Her 1957 autobiography Southern Belle is a captivating narrative of a life of adventures and friendships with many famous writers, reformers, scientists, and politicians. The thirteenth chapter, New Powers of the Human Mind, recounts her work reported in Mental Radio in 1930 and later discussed in Upton’s autobiography of 1962. Now that the Sun has entered Pisces, I was intending another post about Albert Einstein based on Upton’s including him in his Lanny Budd series of spy novels. But Mary Craig exemplifies so many virtues associated with Aquarius that her non-fiction accounts of the Einsteins deserve to be included in the March update, and she is entitled to this February shout out. They were not personal friends when Albert wrote the introduction, but they became warm personal friends for the rest of their lives. [A point of clarification here: Einstein wrote the introduction to the German translation of Mental Radio, not the original edition in English.]

Marc Demarest has just posted about some major research breakthroughs in his Chasing Down Emma blog. Given all the condemnation for decades from the Theosophical Society directed at Thomas H. Burgoyne for his youthful misdeeds as Thomas Henry d’Alton, this now suggests projection in Freudian terms by Blavatsky in light of Marc’s new research.

https://ehbritten.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-cheltenham-insolvency-note-on.html

Douglas Brinkley’s 2016 biography provides vast documentation of FDR’s environmental agenda and legacy, especially the Civilian Conservation Corps. Despite his disability, he was a lifelong enthusiast of outdoor recreation, as were Norman Astley, Elbert Benjamine, Fred Skinner, and Upton Sinclair. Land management and wildlife protection were as important to him as business recovery, because the Depression was both financial and ecological with Dust Bowl conditions driving families off their farms. Reforestation was an early priority for the CCC, and the Virginia Blue Ridge was one of the first areas to benefit from the program. The book contains many anecdotes about FDR’s personal visits to the region overseeing CCC projects and across the country as the National Park system expands dramatically.

FDR is vividly portrayed by Upton Sinclair in the fifth volume of his Lanny Budd series, Presidential Agent, in which the protagonist becomes an official secret agent. Published in 1944, it masterfully portrays all the intrigues of the Nazi government in the years leading up to the invasion of Poland. These WW2 era World Leaders whose natal charts appear in the Brotherhood of Light lessons also appear as characters in the Lanny Budd series: Chiang Kai-Shek, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Mohandas Gandhi, Hirohito, Adolf Hitler, Pierre Laval, Benito Mussolini, Philippe Petain, Josef Stalin. Written while FDR was president, the Lanny Budd novels contain many anecdotes that turn out, upon investigation, to be historically accurate, both geographically and chronologically.

In 2024 most updates to this blog will feature individuals whose natal charts were published in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons. I have broken down the categories of people involved; the third largest single group is 31 US political and military leaders. (For comparison and context, there are 38 actors, directors and musicians, 33 scientists, athletes, and explorers, 24 authors, 14 Church of Light leaders, 14 world leaders, and 15 miscellaneous criminals etc.)

8 US Presidents– Calvin Coolidge, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman

2 Vice-Presidents– Alben Barkley, Henry A. Wallace

5 Senators– Hugo Black, Hiram Johnson, Gerald P. Nye, Margaret Chase Smith, Eugene Talmadge

1 Representative– John S. McGroarty

5 Governors– Thomas Dewey, Huey Long, George Murphy, Culbert Olson, Earl Warren

4 Military– Douglas MacArthur, Dale H. Maple, George Marshall, Eddie Rickenbacker

6 Labor, Legal, Business Leaders–  Paul H. Bruns, Harry Bridges, John L. Lewis, Tom Mooney, Daniel C. Roper, Wendell Willkie

All of these individuals are overshadowed historically by a single president about whom I am currently reading. A biographical study of FDR as an environmentalist by Douglas Brinkley will be featured in the next blog post when Aquarius arrives.

Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America (publishersweekly.com)

The early 20th century literary scene in California accounts for many of the natal charts in the Brotherhood of Light books. Jack London died in 1916, a year before Norman and Genevieve Astley returned to California, two years before the Brotherhood of Light opened to the public. His father was an eminent astrologer, his mother a Spiritualist medium, but his tone and attitude towards California occultists is affectionately mocking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl6rHgT5tIg

Second only to Upton Sinclair among prolific and famous California authors of the early twentieth century, Jack London achieved huge literary success at a young age despite modest origins. I have now read two of the autobiographical novels set partly in California, The Sea-Wolf and Martin Eden and am engaged in a 2017 biography of London by Earle Labor.

London’s natal Sun in Capricorn is one degree from that of his father of record, astrological author W. H. Chaney. The biographical record is unclear as to whether Chaney was his biological father.

Patrick Bowen discovered the Thomas Moore Johnson correspondence just when I had gotten interested mostly due to Sarah Stanley Grimke and Thomas H. Burgoyne; Ronnie had gotten interested mostly due to research on Alexander Wilder and fellow Platonists. Ronnie’s presentation to the 2022 International Theosophical History Conference is well worth a listen to my friends and colleagues in The Church of Light. Patrick Bowen and I enjoyed working with him.

In 2022 I was invited to participate in an International Theosophical History Conference, where I spoke about the interaction of Cayce and Theosophy in my own research and the larger New Age of the late 20th century. Henceforth I am restricting my blog posts to twentieth century topics due to relentless distracting twenty-first century noise about my nineteenth century research topics. My book on Cayce did not attract one single negative review or public comment, nor any online denunciations as far as I know. So it was fun to write about my twentieth century encounters with a twentieth century spiritual movement based on my home turf. In future I will serialize the book in this blog, updated with comments and illustrations for each section.

Upton Sinclair had written almost 100 books when Walt Disney adapted The Gnome Mobile for the movies in 1967. When Disney’s natal chart was published in the Brotherhood of Light lessons, he was near the beginning of a career of major accomplishments.

Excerpts from the Autobiography; the full text is available here:

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair.

Lincoln Steffens figures prominently in Sinclair’s historical novels, but also in his autobiography. His writings will feature in 2024 posts.

Steffens and I became friends at that time. He remained always one of my closest and dearest friends, and we met whenever we were in the same neighborhood. In 1914, I remember, he came out to Croton, near New York, where we had rented a little house, and spent several weekends with us.  Once I took him for a tramp in the snow before he had his coffee.

By the time that Norman and Genevieve Astley moved to Carmel Woods, Lincoln Steffens lived nearby, and Sinclair wrote enthusiastically about an extended visit to the area:

On to Carmel, a town that boasts more scenery to the square mile than any other place I know, a broad beach, bordered by deep pine woods and flanked by rocky headlands; at one side a valley, with farms, a river running through it and mountains beyond.

Tramping the hills and forests and beaches of Carmel, riding horseback over the Seventeen Mile Drive, there began to haunt my brain a vision of a blank-verse tragedy; the story of a child of the coal mines who is adopted by rich people and educated, and finally becomes a leader of social revolution.

That poem never materialized. Later in the 1920s Sinclair and his second wife Mary Craig Kimbrough Sinclair acquired a beachfront cottage in southern California where she became immersed in psychical research later reported in Mental Radio:

We had made too many friends and incurred too many obligations in Pasadena, so we found a cottage down on the oceanfront near Alamitos Bay, Long Beach, and moved there.  During both of my trips to Boston, Craig stayed alone in the little beach cottage and never minded it. Somehow she felt safe, and the waves on the other side of the boardwalk lulled her to sleep.  She had become fascinated with the problem of her own mind, and studied it with the help of scores of books that I had got for her.  I still have more than a hundred volumes on psychology and philosophy and psychic research that she had read and marked—Bergson, William James, William McDougall.

Bergson and William James are the first two of only three writers recommended in The Quest of the Spirit in 1913 which marks an important congruence of Mrs. Sinclair’s studies with those of the Astleys.

Those who serve God truly in this age serve the ideal of brotherhood, of helping our fellow-beings, instead of exploiting their labor, and beating them down and degrading them in order to exploit them more easily.  The religion I am talking about is not yet “established.” It rarely dwells in temples built with hands, nor is it financed with bond issues underwritten by holders of front pews.  It does not have an ordained priesthood, nor enjoy the benefit of apostolic succession. It is not dressed in gold and purple robes ,nor are its altar cloths embroidered with jewels.  It does not honor the rich  and powerful, nor sanctify interest and dividends, nor lend support to political machines, nor sprinkle holy water upon flags and cannon, nor send young men out to slaughter and be slaughtered in the name of the Prince of Peace.

This is an eloquent summary of Sinclair’s spiritual values at age 85.

This valuable contribution by Stanislav Panin, a graduate student at Rice University, is subtitled “The Past and the Future of ‘Going Native in Reverse’ in the Study of Esotericism.” I share this with special appreciation for the situation he describes about Esoteric Studies in the 2020s which reflects my own experiences in the 1990s.

Excerpts:

In any case, we see that academia influenced the development of Western esotericism, and esoteric groups influenced academic research throughout the 20th century. However, what is the future of their interaction, if there is any future at all? I see the following four general tendencies related to this problem:

1. Integration of the members of esoteric groups into the academic field, i.e. the process of “going native in reverse”;

 2. Rejection of works as “too esoteric” by a number of scholars and the  growth of (neo)empiricism in their research;

 3. Creation of “Esoteric Theology” as a field.

 4. Rejection of projects considered as “too scholarly” (in the form of either “esoteric studies” or “esoteric theology” by those insiders who have an an inimical attitude toward rationalism and the academia. (p7)

 We should also keep in mind that, on the other hand, esoteric and pagan communities may abandon any attempts to use the analytical mind and the academic approach to esotericism because many followers of esoteric movements have an inimical attitude toward rationalism and to academia in general. After my report, related to the history of the academic study of esotericism in Russia, which was presented at one semi-academic conference dedicated to the study of esotericism, one woman said “How dare you scientists? Scholars use your poor rational mind to explore universal esoteric truth? How can you understand with your rational mind super-rational reality?” This was not the only case when people reacted in such manner when they heard about the academic study of esotericism. Some of them write critical reviews in their blogs, in social networks, on different websites where they blame scholars for their approach too rational for the study of esotericism. Therefore, we should consider that it is a point of view of numerous people from different esoteric groups. (p8)

This passage from the chapter The Conquest of War is in Cosmic Alchemy, Volume 17 of the Brotherhood of Light Lessons, and is relevant to the early 20th century politics of California but also the present moment in 2023 globally:

No truly spiritual individual can put any one of these four freedoms aside with a shrug and the platitude that he is not his brother’s keeper. He should recognize that he is an intelligent cell in the body of the Cosmic Man, and that as such he has a part to play in carrying out the Divine Plan of universal progression. It is his mission to exert his energies, to the fullest extent he is capable, toward assisting other cells in the body of the Cosmic Man to develop to their highest possibilities. The deific objective calls for the fullest cooperation of all in its attainment. And every individual has a responsibility, that rightly he cannot shirk, to exert as much pressure as he is capable toward advancing the real interests of other members of society. To the extent of his abilities and opportunities each is responsible for the progress of society as a whole. But before the individual, no matter how spiritually inclined and energetic, can be of service toward the advancement of the race, he must know what things really contribute to race advancement, and what things are destructive.

If he permits his opinions to be directed by popular vogue, or if, in the erroneous belief it is spiritual, he supports fanaticism, no matter how good his intentions, instead of assisting human progress, he is a hindrance, and often a nuisance besides. Our popular reformers, no doubt, find great self-satisfaction, but more often than not, in the ignorance both of human nature and of what constitutes real welfare, they make a sorry muddle of their own and other people’s lives. Before we can advance the interests of the race through publicly and privately advocating right measures, through the ballot box, and through personal example, we must know what things rightly may be expected to benefit society. It is the province of cosmic alchemy to provide this information.

A few chapters into Sinclair’s 1962 autobiography published in his eighty-fourth year, I find him discovering Carmel as a friendly place for writers and artists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIJNjOzowuE&t=21s

Whatever happened to the Adepts and Initiates? No new evidence has come to my attention about other characters in The Masters Revealed and its sequel, but these eighteen have been research subjects for various articles and books published over the last three decades, often noted in this blog individually.

Albert L. Rawson has been the subject of biographical articles by John Patrick Deveney and discussed in a book by Susan Nance featured in this blog.  His colorful family life is much better understood due to the proliferation of new genealogical and local history information online.

Max Theon, born Louis M. Bimstein, has been featured in several new and forthcoming books from Israel that shed new light on the Cosmic Philosophy he espoused with his wife Alma Theon. Letters to the Sage provides some new information on Theon as a figure in the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.

Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and his associates Charles-Ernest Renan and Henri Rochefort were all discussed by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt as meeting with Mme. Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott, and Mohini Chatterji in March 1884 in Paris.  Three recent books by Dominic Green explore this evidence which confirms a relationship I had hypothesized in 1990.

Maria, Duchese de Pomar and Countess of Caithness, was investigated in Art Magic by Marc Demarest in association with Emma Harding Britten’s Chevalier Louis de B— and later in my own introduction to Sarah Stanley Grimke’s Collected Works. Richard Francis Burton is also investigated in the same volume as another prototype for the Chevalier. Burton’s associate in Damascus, Abdelkader, Sufi sheikh from Algeria, is subject of a new biography mentioned in this blog.

Blavatsky’s publisher Mikhail Katkov is prominently featured in Katya Hokanson’s 2022 A Woman’s Empire by a scholar of Russian language and literature. Ranbir Singh, Maharaja of Kashmir, is also illuminated by this book’s discussion of The Durbar in Lahore.

James Martin Peebles is discussed at length in relation to the Bengal Renaissance in my chapter for Imagining the East, as are Mohini Chatterji and Norendro Nath Sen.

A.P. Sinnett and A.O. Hume are explored in relation to the Mahatma Letters and Richard Hodgson in my foreword and appendix to the reprint of Hurrychund Chintamon’s Commentary on the Text of the Bhagavad-Gita.

But two cases where progress is uncertain are those of “Ooton Liatto” and “Paolos Metamon” whose names cannot be solidly confirmed with historical evidence and may be aliases. “Agardi Metrovitch” likewise cannot be solidly linked with a historical name, but the latest evidence from a Hungarian researcher suggests he was opera singer Giovanni Metrovitch. Forthcoming volumes of letters by Blavatsky and her book The Durbar in Lahore may offer new clues to these and other mysteries.

This week I received a hardcover of Armies of God, a library copy from Cheshire, England, and Dominic Green’s out-of-print 2007 study does provide citations for the statements made in his 2022 book. On page 196 he describes the meeting of Theosophical leaders with Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, witnessed by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt:

In Paris, he had no shortage of visitors. Urabist exiles, Catholic nationalists, Irish revolutionaries, religious cranks, and Wilfrid Blunt. When Blunt visited in March 1884, he found the Sage of the East lecturing to a very curious party of strangers. They were led by Madame Helena Blavatsky, the Russian Jewish [sic, no one ever called her Jewish but many called her an anti-Semite] inventor of Theosophy, a fashionable medley of spiritualism, personality cult, and quasi-scientific search for the common roots of all religion. Blavatsky saw Afghani as an authentic Persian mystic, one of those “Aryans” who seemed somehow related to Theosophical sources. He was also the ex-Master of the Star in the East lodge at Alexandria, many of whose founders had been inspired by Blavatsky when she had visited Egypt to study Sufism.

Both shaping new ideologies to bridge East and West, and both convinced of their imminent global triumph, Blavatsky and Afghani met to discuss a third mystic. What, he asked Blavatsky, did Afghani think of the Madhi? She thought he must be a humanitarian, because he sought against the Ottoman and British empires, but she was really troubled by his attachment to the slave trade.

The source of the author’s information is revealed in the endnotes, which I had not found in the new book. The citation reads: 27 March 1884, Blunt, Gordon, 208-209. Green comments:

For several possible reasons, Blunt does not name the “Russian Lady” as Madame Blavatsky. Her companions were Col. H.S. Alcott [sic], founder of the Theosophical Society, and two Bengali Hindu adepts on their way to study for the bar in London. Blavatsky and Alcott came to Europe to meet with their London and Paris lodges and to lobby the British Foreign Office for the religious rights of Ceylonese Hindus.

Here is the Blunt book about Gordon in Khartoum:

Gordon at Khartoum – Google Books

The “collective biography” genre includes most of my writing, and like its predecessor this one features 32 main characters in turn of the (20th) century esoteric circles. The distinction between “Adepts and Mahatmas” and “Initiates” in the two books is generational, not an attempt to define them as inherently at different spiritual levels. The latter are generally younger and were disciples or associates of the former. Due to the voluminous discussion of some of these Initiates by Dominic Green in The Religious Revolution, I have posted the introduction to Initiates of Theosophical Masters on academia.edu.

Powerpoint slides from a 2022 conference and a book introduction from 1998 are now shared on academia:

https://www.academia.edu/107323023/Blavatsky_in_Edgar_Cayces_Library

https://www.academia.edu/106481276/Edgar_Cayce_in_Context_Introduction

Here is the text I wrote to narrate the Powerpoint slides:

Blavatsky in Edgar Cayce’s Library—talk for 10/5/22

My initial interest in Theosophical history resulted from an encounter with a large collection of books, many by Theosophical authors, at the newly opened A.R.E. Library and Conference Center in Virginia Beach in the 1970s. This led eventually to two dozen other libraries in America, France, England, and India, and to publication of three books by SUNY Press as part of its Western Esoteric Traditions series. The first two focused on Theosophical origins in Europe and Asia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

• My last book in the series has a very different focus with a central figure who spent his entire life in the American South, who was a faithful churchgoer and popular Sunday School teacher—hardly comparable to Helena Blavatsky’s global travels and language proficiency. The cover shows Edgar Cayce in similar attire and pose over five decades, from his mid-twenties to his mid- sixties from bottom to top. Although they clearly are photographs of the same person, a professional photographer himself, each decade defines a different stage in his development as a clairvoyant counselor. Son of a farm family in rural Christian County, Kentucky, he moved to the county seat Hopkinsville where he worked as a bookstore clerk. A mysterious loss of his voice for months led to a local medical doctor placing him in trance and asking him to diagnose his affliction and recommend a course of treatment. The treatment’s success led to local media attention as Cayce was used as a medical clairvoyant by osteopaths, allopaths, and chiropractors. Eventually he made national headlines in 1910. His photography career took him to Selma, Alabama, where he joined the Birmingham TS in 1922 and soon thereafter delivered a lecture there. By 1925 when his spiritual source directed him to relocate to Virginia Beach, past life readings entered his vocabulary and brought Atlantis and ancient Egypt into the picture. Medical readings still predominated through the brief history of the Cayce Hospital and the National Society of Investigators. The Association for Research and Enlightenment, founded in 1931, defines his shift of focus as the clients for his readings become more numbers and the questions they ask more complicated. Astrology, the Great White Brotherhood, Earth Changes, along with other predictions of world events, missing persons become elements in the organizational synthesis. Finally, in the 1940s another new emphasis appears, as the Search for God books are created in dialogue with Study Group Number 1 in Norfolk which solicits each reading and then responds with further questions. Practical occultism, yoga, self-awareness of attitudes and emotions, the Collective Unconscious, all reflect Theosophists, Fourth Way disciples, students of analytic psychology, posing questions to Cayce from all over the country. Through every phase of his career, however, the Bible is always the most frequently cited source and he claimed to have read it from cover to cover every year of his life.

• Along with the 14000+ transcribed trance discourses recorded by Cayce’s secretary, the library collection also includes more than 80,000 books on related subjects: Alternative medicine, metaphysical spirituality, esoteric lore about lost civilzations. Blavatsky is one of the most influential writers of the 19th century in this collection.
• I grew up familiar with the Cayces as a child because my five first cousins in Virginia Beach were all related to Edgar’s wife Gertrude Cayce through the House family with whom the Cayces in 1930. My uncle Cecil’s wife Irma Anderson had a younger sister married to Thomas House Jr.
• Dr. House had come to Kentucky to become director of the Cayce Hospital, and after his who untimely death his widow and son lived with the Cayces.
• The A.R.E. lost ownership of the hospital building during the Depression which went through various uses before being bought again in 1955.
• The area along the Virginia Beach boardwalk is completely transformed from its appearance during Cayce’s life. This scene is of a community filled with hotels and rooming houses as well as private beach cottages.
• By 2022 the boardwalk area had lost every vestige of historic frame architecture.
• Doris Anderson married Tommy House in 1936 and they lived with her mother intermittently while raising three children, until Mrs. Anderson died in 1974.
• Dolly Rice, who published under her married name as Doris Agee, was the firstborn of all the Rice cousins, and in 1969 became the author of an extremely successful small paperback that was among the earliest of a series of Cayce related paperbacks.
• Her younger cousin Caroline House was called Stephanie in this 1973 book about the past life reading she had received from Edgar at the time of her birth, and her quest to confirm his statement that her most recent past life was as the Woman’s Suffrage and Temperance leader Frances Willard.
• In conclusion, regarding Theosophy and its influence, the beginning of past life readings thereafter must be related to his exposure to Theosophy where Leadbeater had been providing them for years. Although his health readings combine allopathic, homeopathic, osteopathic, and naturopathic treatments, the context always include New Thought and Spiritualist approaches to spiritual healing as well. Cayce’s interpretation of Christianity manifested his own roots in Disciples theology, mixed up with endorsements of such works as the Aquarian Gospel, but his acceptance of reincarnation, the Great White Brotherhood, and a universalistic embrace of all world religions were largely determined by his Theosophical associations of the early 1920s. His specific descriptions of Atlantis and Lemuria vary in details from those of Theosophical writers but his general context for such description is questions raised by such authors. The final section of the book examines the Indian origins of key elements of Cayce’s elaborate meditation instructions for participants in Search for God groups. They open with a series of hatha yoga stretches and breathing and chanting of Om. This is followed by recital of the Lord’s Prayer which is tied to kundalini awakening and the chakras. This is followed by a period of silent meditation in which one hears the voice of the silence while focusing attention on the pineal gland as the “third eye.” The absorption of yogic influences in the readings bears the imprint of Cayce’s long association with Bhagat Singh Thind, a Punjabi Sikh immigrant to California who wrote several books promoting Surat Shabd Yoga, the set of practices developed by the Radhasoami movement.

This concluding portion of the epilogue to In Search of the Masters describes 1990 research in Paris. The headquarters of the Theosophical Society in France was a beautiful and hospitable place to pursue historical mysteries.

In the 1880s, Paris welcomed many refugees from Jamal ad-Din’s circle of disciples in Egypt. Dalip Singh found a home there from which to plan his return to India. Mikhail Katkov, through his Paris-based disciple Cyon, attempted to influence French policy and public opinion. During the same decade, the Theosophical Society emerged in Paris, attracting much attention from the intelligentsia. Lydia Pashkov’s literary career in Paris began in the 1870s and continued for more than twenty years. My research mission in Paris was to trace the careers of Jamal ad-Din, Sanua, and Pashkov and to seek a French connection to the Dalip Singh conspiracy. I also hoped to uncover more information on Masonic links to T.S. history. But in a trip filled with unexpected findings, my French travels proved no exception. The objectives with which I came to France were not well satisfied; nevertheless, other surprising discoveries made the research an overall success. Theosophical officialdom in the various societies has shown an ambivalent reaction to my research. While few responses have been openly hostile, neither have they been particularly helpful or encouraging– until Paris. At the Theosophical Society headquarters there I was helped in ways which will become apparent in this account of my research progress in France.

The morning of my arrival, the Secretary General of the French Section of the Society showed me to the apartment of my host, the section’s Archivist. While awaiting his return from an appointment, I examined a packet of information gathered for me the Librarian for the T.S. Headquarters. The most striking material he had gathered was from a 1988 French novel, Samarcande, by Amin Maalouf. The writer, of Lebanese origin, had used Jamal ad-Din as a major character in his historical novel about a young American’s quest for a secret manuscript. The protagonist, Benjamin Lesage, is a Marylander in search of an Omar Khayyam text of which he has learned from his cousin, Henri Rochefort. Rochefort is an historical character, a communard exiled in 1871 who later returned and edited a Socialist magazine, l’Intransigeant. In the novel, set in the 1890s, Rochefort directs his American cousin to Jamal ad-Din, who may be able to help locate a copy of the mysterious text.  My interest was keenly aroused within moments of starting to read the chapters the Librarian had copied for me, since it was an obscure text which had led me to Jamal ad-Din in my own quest. He was the first among the Master figures I discovered in my research, and the Chaldean Book of Numbers was my own equivalent of the Omar Khayyam text. In Samarcande, he is first mentioned well into the tale, by Rochefort, who describes their acquaintance:

“He collaborated regularly with the Intransigeant; we met often.  He introduced me to his disciples: Muslims from India, Jews from Egypt, Maronites from Syria. I believe that I was his closest French friend, but certainly not the only one. Ernest Renan and Georges Clemenceau knew him well and, in England, people like Lord” Salisbury, Randolph Churchill and Wilfrid Blunt. Victor Hugo, shortly before he died, met him too.”

The novel is so well grounded in historical research that I didn’t immediately recognize its fictional status. Maalouf has Rochefort read to his cousin from his memoirs the following portrayal of the Persian sage:

“I was introduced to an exile, celebrated throughout Islam as a reformer and revolutionary, the Sheikh Jamal ad-Din, a man with the head of an apostle. His beautiful black eyes, full of sweetness and fire, and his dark brown beard which flowed to his belly, gave him a singular majesty. He represented the type of the dominator of crowds. He barely understood French which he spoke with difficulty, but his intelligence which was always awake made up easily enough for his ignorance of our language. Under his appearance of serene repose, his activity was all-consuming.”

Rochefort continues his account with a description of a visit to Jamal ad-Din’s Paris apartment, filled with books, papers and cigar smoke.  There he was shown the Manuscript of Samarcand, which he describes to his enraptured cousin. Rochefort tells of the Shah’s inviting Jamal ad-Din to Teheran, and the broken promises which led to the rupture between them. Constitution, elections, and restrictions on foreign business were rejected by the same Shah who had earlier agreed to them as a condition of Jamal ad-Din’s support.  Thus, when he felt he had no choice but to rebel, Jamal ad-Din fled to the sanctuary from which he was dragged by the Shah’s soldiers. “That day, in the sanctuary, the Manuscript of Samarcand was lost under the boots of the soldiers of the Shah.”

After  learning of the subsequent adventures of Jamal ad-Din– the tobacco boycott, a brief visit to England, and his final arrival in Constantinople Benjamin Lesage decides to seek out the Master (so named in the text repeatedly) for clues to the Khayyam manuscript. He finds him surrounded by disciples and spies of the Sultan, living in luxury but unable to influence people or events:

“I lived in Paris in one dark room, but it opened onto the wide world. It was a hundred times smaller than this house, but I was less cramped there. I found myself thousands of kilometers from my people, but I worked for their advancement more effectively than I can here or in Persia. My voice was heard from Algiers to Kabul; now, only those can hear me who can honor me with their visit. Of course, they are always welcome, especially if they come from Paris.”

When Lesage tells him that he is American, Jamal ad-Din comments that after he was expelled from India in 1882, he went to America and seriously considered staying. He expresses regret for not having done so, for the Sultan is insane and criminal-­ although the only hope for the Muslims. “I tell you, we Muslims of this century are orphans.” The subject of the Manuscript of Samarcand is introduced, and the Master advises Lesage to go to to his disciple Mirza Reza in Persia for assistance. But while he is there, Mirza Reza assassinates the Shah, and Lesage returns to Jamal ad-Din with the details of his disciple’s fate. The Master is incredulous, horrified, but admits his moral responsibility for the crime. He recalls his words to Mirza Reza which the disciple took as instructions for assassination, but insists that he never intended the result. After telling Lesage that he suffers from cancer of the jaw, he gives him his testament, which appeared in translation in the Intransigeant, the only journal to uphold his innocence:

“I do not suffer from being a prisoner, nor do I fear my approaching death. My only cause for sorrow is knowing that I have not seen the fruit of the seed I have sown. Tyranny continues to crush the peoples of the Orient, and obscurantism stifles their cries for liberty. Perhaps I would have succeeded better had I planted my seeds in the fertile soil of the people instead of the arid soil of royal courts. And you, people of Persia, in whom I have placed my greatest hopes, do not believe that in eliminating one man you can win liberty. It is the weight of age-old traditions that you must dare to shake off.”

Homa Pakdaman’s Djamal ad-Din Assad Abadi dit Afghani reveals the factual basis of almost all aspects of Maalouf’s portrayal of the Master. She confirms his friendships with Henri Rochefort, Ernest Renan, Georges Clemenceau and Wilfrid Blunt. These men were the most influential Western supporters of Jamal ad-Din; at least my efforts to identify others were unavailing. Rochefort’s leftist politics and Journalistic career place him at the center of the milieu in which the most important early French T.S. leaders moved. Louis Dramard and Arthur Arnould were both exiled communards who became involved in Socialist Journalism after their return to France. A letter by HPB cited in Charles Blech’s Contribution a l’Histoire de la Societe Theosophigue en France refers to “M. de Rochefort, whom I highly esteem, but who is not a Theosophist and laughs at us.” By the 1880s, Renan had completed his multi-volume study of Christian origins, of which the Life of Jesus is the best known. His scholarship had dealt a severe blow to the Church, powerfully affecting public opinion in a liberal direction. His extensive travels in the Near East may have brought him into contact with some members of HPB’s network of adept associates.  In a letter to her sister written in the summer of 1884, Mme. Blavatsky mentioned him among those who regularly attended meetings of the Societe Theosophique d’Orient et d’Occident at the home of Lady Caithness: “You shall see there the elite of Parisian society and intelligentsia. Renan, Flammarion, Madame Adam, and lots of the aristocracy from the Faubourg St. Germain.” Another reference to Renan is found in Felix K. Gaboriau’s farewell to readers of le Lotus written upon his resignation as editor in March 1889.

Georges Clemenceau, born in 1841, entered politics as mayor of Montmartre. From 1876 to 1885 he served as a deputy from Paris. Representing the extreme left, he wielded great influence, overturning three cabinets in 1882, 1885 and 1886. In 1887 he obliged the President to resign.  During Jamal ad-Din’s stay in Paris, Clemenceau was director of La Justice. Later he was publisher of l’Aurore, which became a leading voice of the Dreyfusards. In 1906 and again during the World War he was President of the Conseil (the Third Republic’s most powerful post), but failed in his effort to become President of the Republic after the war.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, the sole English disciple of Jamal ad-Din, was a convert to Islam who maintained a sympathetic interest in Indian, Irish and Egyptian struggles against the British empire. His skill as a poet and writer and his string of romantic conquests make him one of the more colorful figures of the late Victorian era. As a Member of Parliament, he was spokesman for many unpopular causes.

aPakdaman’s study, an adaptation of her dissertation, exposes several previously unknown facts about Jamal ad-Din. He was in Bombay for a month in the spring of 1869 before he went to Cairo, which coincides with one period of HPB’s presence in India. In Alexandria, his disciples published a journal in Arabic and French entitled Jeune Egypt which suggests a Mazzinian inspiration. When Jamal ad-Din arrived in Paris, Sanua published a notice in his paper calling him “our Master,” while Rochefort’s l’Intransigeant and Clemenceau’s La Justice also announced his arrival.

Maalouf’s wording of Rochefort’s description of Jamal ad-Din’s physical appearance is taken directly from the journalist’s memoirs, as I discovered by reading Pakdaman. She also confirms that Rochefort’s journal was the only one to defend Jamal ad-Din in the case of the Shah’s assassination. While the tale of the Master’s trip to America seems unfounded, Pakdaman turned out to be the source of Maalouf’s version of Jamal ad-Din’s death. She suggests that he was murdered by the Sultan’s doctor, based on accounts of two historians, one of whom cites two eyewitnesses. And finally, the passage in which the Master laments having sown his seed in the arid soil of royal courts is found in Pakdaman’s book, taken from Jamal ad-Din’s last letter to a Persian friend.

I arrived at the Bibliotheque Nationale on a Friday, only to discover that Saturday would be the last chance to use the library before its three week annual closing. This caused me to cut my projected month in France in half. The Maalouf and Pakdaman books were the only French sources on Jamal ad-Din I found; with only one day remaining I turned to James Sanua and Lydia Pashkov for additional clues. Examination of the first fifteen years of Sanua’s Abou Naddara took up less time than anticipated since only ten per cent of its contents were in French, the rest Arabic. It focused almost entirely on contemporary Egyptian politics, offering very little of Theosophical interest. Sanua’s Masonic connections also remained obscure. It was noted in July 1885 that he spoke to an unnamed lodge on the Mahdi. The only noteworthy finds in Abou Naddara appeared in 1887. A speech to “the glorious memory of Garibaldi” was listed among the $heikh’s activities for that year, but far more intriguing was another paean to one of HPB’s mentors. In September 1887, under the heading “to the Katkov family,” he wrote:

“In the name of the Egyptian National Party and the Indian Muslims of whom my journal Abou Naddara is the organ, I associate myself with the French press to render a supreme homage to the memory of Katkov, illustrious publicist, who sympathized heartily with the sufferings of my compatriots and whose writings so powerfully contributed to make Russia as well as France reJect the disastrous convention destined to deliver Egypt definitively to England.

May Allah, clement and merciful, deign to pour out on the widow and children of Katkov his ineffable consolations and accord to the soul of the defunct peace eternal.”

This is the first evidence of any link between Sanua and Katkov, although their mutual acquaintance Jamal ad-Din made such a link probable. In the private library of the T.S. Archivist, I found two letters from HPB to her sister which also show esteem for Katkov. In the first, written in Paris in 1884, she assures Vera of his interest in her work:

“What is money?  Le it be switched!  Katkoff is bombarding me with telegrams. One of them was sent to me here by post from Madras. Twenty-nine words! I expect it cost him at least 500 francs, and when I wrote to him from here he sent another asking for my articles. He must be wanting them badly if he asks for them at such cost. So we shall have money.”

In 1886, HPB wrote from Germany that she was sending Katkov a subscription to le Lotus (Journal of the French T.S.), adding:

“I simply adore Katkoff for his patriotism.  I do not mind his not sending me any money again, God bless his soul. I deeply respect him, because he is a patriot and a brave man speaking the truth at whatever cost! Such articles as his are a credit to Russia.  I am sure that if darling uncle were still living he would find an echo of his own thoughts in them…Oh, if only the Regents were hanged in Bulgaria and Germany checkmated, I should die in peace.”

Here, as in so many other instances, HPB’s Russian writings reveal vastly more of her true self than she wanted her English-speaking Theosophists to see.                                        

After returning from a trip to Aix-en-Provence described in Book II’s epilogue, I found two previously overlooked passages of interest in the same private library, which contained a full run of ‘Boris de Zirkoff’s magazine Theosophia. In Manly P. Hall’s “Mme. Blavatsky– A Tribute,” a private letter written by HPB in 1890 is cited. It refers to Olcott having met two Masters personally, “one in Bombay and the other in Cashmere.” Since Olcott claims considerably more such encounters, for example with K.H. at Lahore, this reference is a bit confusing. What is remarkable about it, however, is that Olcott never really went to Kashmir proper, but only to Jammu.  By his own account of his trip there, he met no Master at all– spending all his time in the company of the Maharaja Ranbir Singh. So here, at the end of the research trail, was .yet another clue to the identity of the Master M.  In Bombay, Olcott may well have met Jamal ad-Din or the mysterious Greek Hilarion.  The other find in Theosophia was an article by Mary K. .Neff referring to a clipping in HPB’s scrapbook, now in the Adyar archives.  It consists of an article by Herbert Monachesi, one of the T.S. founders, written for the New York Sunday Mercury of October 6, 1875. This was in the midst of the birth of the Society, and is one of the very few clues to Monachesi’s interests at the time.  The article, “Proselyters from India,” states that in 1870, Moolji Thackersey and Tulsidas Jadarjee went to America as missionaries, sent there by unnamed superiors. “Strangely enough, Col. Olcott crossed the Atlantic on the same ship with them.” If this is reliable, it points to further avenues of research into Theosophical origins. The “accidental” nature of Thackersey’s role in T.S. history is extremely suspect; it was he who suggested the formation of the Arya Samaj and later its amalgamation with the T.S. But this elusive personage carried most of his secrets to the grave, and with them all opportunity to fully unravel the mystery of the Mahatmas.

At the beginning of the book I reflected on the endlessness of HPB’s quest or that of any sincere seeker. At its conclusion, it is tempting to try to summarize, synthesize, and explain the significance of all that has gone before. But such an enterprise would be premature, and I feel quite unqualified to attempt it. Dharma gates beyond measure stand open to investigators of Theosophical history. May this book herald the 1991 centenary of Mme. Blavatsky’s death as the beginning of a new understanding of her life. 

[This is the last excerpt about Indian research from In Search of the Masters. At the end in Pondicherry we arrive at a twentieth century contemporary of Elbert.] KPJ

On the 49-hour train ride south to Madras, there was ample opportunity to reflect on where I’d been and what might lie ahead. My reading for the trip was V.P. Varma’s Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. This seemed relevant to my quest for the historical Masters for several reasons. Aurobindo Ghosh had attained fame as a leader of the extremist wing of the Freedom Movement before he was imprisoned in 1908, suspected of involvement in a bomb plot. In prison, he experienced a radical transformation of outlook, and emerged as a yogi who had renounced politics. Even so, in 1910 he was obliged to flee to Pondicherry and French protection, in fear of another imprisonment. There he spent the remaining 40 years of his life, evolving an elaborate interpretation of Hindu philosophy and religion. Pondicherry was among my destinations in South India, more importantly as the site of Thakar Singh’s death than for reasons associated with Aurobindo. But while I felt strongly drawn to Pondicherry as a possible source of clues in my quest, the main objective of the southern half of my trip was the Adyar Library and Research Centre.

Having begun my journey at the meeting place of Blavatsky and Olcott, I felt a sense of closure in approaching Adyar. There was Olcott’s final resting place, the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society since 1882, and the greatest single research facility for T.S. history. Although most of my years as a Theosophist were spent as a member of the independent T.S. based in Pasadena, I had always hoped to make a pilgrimage to Adyar. Within an hour of my arrival, I met Rudi Jansma, a Dutch Theosophist of the Pasadena society doing research in the Adyar Library. He informed me of the presence of Joy Dixon, whose discussion of the Hodgson report is included in the last chapter. Her doctoral research was on T.S. influence on English culture from 1890 to 1930. The day after my arrival; Nancy Anderson of Loyola University–New Orleans arrived to pursue research for a biography of Annie Besant. Only a few other visitors were present– Dutch, Australian, Finnish, French– so the 250 acres of tropical forest and the half-mile of adjacent beach provided many opportunities for solitary reflection. The friendly and efficient staff and the relaxed pace made the T.S. an ideal retreat from the constant stress of Indian travel.

The first objective of my Adyar research was a review of the early years of The Theosophist. As the official magazine of the T.S., it was the most likely source for clues about the characters I had hypothesized as the Mahatmas and their disciples. But even in my most hopeful moments I had not imagined the extent of proof which would be found in the Adyar Library.  The first unexpected find was an article by Alexander Wilder, listed as a Vice-President of the T.S.  for the U.S.

Wilder was among the Founders’ intimate friends in New York, where he had contributed the “Before the Veil”” section of Isis Unveiled and helped in other ways during its production. His name did not emerge in my earlier research on Rosicrucian influences behind the founding of the T.S. as reported in Book I. But in “The Brethren of the Rosy Cross,” written for the February 1880 Theosophist, he strongly hinted at his status among the Rosicrucian adepts who secretly sponsored the Society:

“When Cagliostro/Balsamo was immured in a Roman dungeon, to be tortured and murdered, it was fondly imagined that the Golden Secret would be disclosed.  The hope was illusory. It could be communicated to none except those who were able to successfully comprehend it…A preparatory discipline was necessary for this purpose: and whoever accomplished that successfully, would certainly never betray it. If such a one could entertain the impossible idea of doing such a thing, the treasure would certainly be found not to be in his possession.

So the Rosicrucian philosophers have lived in every age. They have jostled others in the church or at the market place, yet without being recognized. They are numerous enough now, to constitute the salt of the eartn. They always have maintained their existence, and each of the Brotherhood knows infallibly every member of the fraternity. Their existence may be a myth, yet it is not.  The parable is for those who can comprehend it. ‘None of the wicked will understand, but the wise will understand,’ said the prophet Daniel.”

This seems to be the last appearance of Wilder in any T.S. publication. Later in the year, the Rosicrucian adepts would be completely supplanted by the Himalayan Mahatmas as Blavatsky’s alleged Masters. Wilder, like Sotheran and Rawson, would become irrelevant to the mission of the T.S. Fortunately for the historical record, his claims about the Brothers of the Rosy Cross appeared just before they were to be replaced by other Masters.

In September 1880, a notice appeared to the effect that “David E. Dudley, Esq., M.D.·, an American physician and surgeon of ability and learning, and a Councillor of the Theosophical Society…has recently taken up his resldence in Bombay.” Dudley was among the witnesses to HPB’s Indian travels cited in 1878 by Rawson, but this is the first evidence of his T.S. membership I discovered. Another character from previous researches appears semi-unexpectedly as a Theosophist in the February 1881 issue, which lists “Jowahir Singh, Punjab” as a subscriber. This Arya Samaj member was presumably part of the “Punjab T.S.” in Lahore which had been announced in the previous month: “…at the former capital of the late lion-hearted Runjeet Singh, a branch was recently organized by Sikhs and Punjabis…” A note in the May 1881 supplement states that Arya Samaj members were hosts of the Founders on a trip to Lahore and Amritsar.  It should be recalled that Bhai Jawahir Singh was the young Sikh most responsible. for the success of the Arya Samaj in the PunJab. Secretary of the Lahore Arya Samaj and the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College fund committee, he drew other young Sikhs under Dayanand’s influence. But he was also among those who resigned from the Arya Samaj in 1888 due to the anti-Sikh fanaticism expressed by its Hindu leaders. In 1883 he supported Bhai Gurmukh Singh in starting the first Khalsa press.  In his T.S. affiliation I found yet another link in the network of Punjabi Sikhs which included the Master K.H.

In March 1882, a correspondent from Lahore wrote about a meeting held the previous month in Rawalpindi at the home of Sirdar Nihal Singh, on the subject “What SamaJees are Needed in Aryavarta?”‘  The speaker, Pandit Gopi Nath, denounced the Aryas and Brahmos for creating sectarian hatred, concluding that “most needed in Aryavarta are those which make it incumbent upon themselves to preach the cause of UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD and try to create union in the country instead of sectarian strife and ‘disunion.”  This shows clearly that Sikhs and Theosophists were united in opposing the sectarian direction of Swami Dayanand and his followers.

Although the first three years of The Theosophist provided a series of unexpected and intriguing pieces of evidence, the most convincing proof that I was on the right track was in the volumes for 1883 and 1884.  Ranbir Singh’s first appearance in its pages is found in the May 1883 supplement. The article concerns the visit of the Aryan Patriotic Association to Jammu, and reveals much about the links between Ranbir Singh and the T.S.:

“Rao Bishen Lal, F.T.S., Pundit of Bareilly, who arrived in Jummu on the 7th instant. waited upon His Highness the MaharaJa on Saturday evening last,at the temple of Rugo Nath Das [Raghunath], and, we are glad to hear, that His Highness took so much interest in the deputation that he was pleased to invite all the members at once to a private interview which lasted for an hour and a half, among those present being the Heir apparent and the Princes. Dewan Anant Ram, Prime Master [Minister?], and Pundit Ganesh Chowbey, spoke highly about Pundit Bishen Sahai’s attainments, and as being one of the leading men in India devoted to the interests of the country, and His Highness, in order to signify the pleasure he felt in meeting the deputation– especially D. Nath Bawaji– offered the latter gentleman a seat higher than his own on account of his proficiency in the occult sciences. His Highness promised to co-operate heartily with all patriotic schemes tending toward the re-establishment of Aryavarta’s ancient glory. The Princes were then introduced; after which ceremony His Highness, we are further informed, intends paying the deputation a return visit in some apartments close to the Palace, to which place His Highness desired them to remove from their lodgings in the European quarters.”

Dharbagiri Nath, called Bawaji, was among the most elevated of the Masters’ alleged chelas in the Theosophical Society. Ranbir Singh’s gesture of sitting in a lower position than he recalls his identical behavior with Olcott, and suggests a paradoxical modesty indeed. The Maharaja’s invitation of the delegation into apartments near the palace also foreshadowed his behavior with Olcott and Damodar. It would be interesting to know the contents of the long interview he granted the group, but one can surmise that  it  involved “patriotic schemes tending  toward  the re-establishment of Aryavarta’s ancient glory.” The patriotic group proceeded next to Lahore, where they sought support of the native chiefs for educa•tional and publishing projects in the region. I would wager that among their hosts in Lahore were some members of the Mahatmic network previously identified in my research.  But this was a quest for truth, not mere further speculation, and that did not appear until the January 1884 supplement.

In the previous month, December 1883, and in a special issue dated December 1883/January 1884, a vast amount of fraudulent testimony about the Masters appeared, as described in the previous chapter. What I did not realize until reviewing these issues was the elaborateness of the deception. Numerous witnesses appear whose existence is otherwise unknown. “‘Rama Sourindo Gargya Deva”‘ of Darjeeling is one whose existence was questioned by Hodgson, but several equally dubious personages are cited. Ten-dub Ughien, called by HPB “‘the lama next to our Mahatma– and the chief and guide of his chelas on their travels,” was supposedly K.H.’s companion on a trip to Lake Manosavara, where they were seen by a “‘disinterested witness.”‘ The previously cited tale of Tibetan Koothumpas by Mohini Chatterji appears in the December issue, as does Damodar’s article “A Great Riddle Solved,”‘ citing witnesses to K.H. in Tibet. All this appears calculated as a blind in the sense that readers were to be rendered blind to the implications of genuine testimony in the very next issue. The January 1884 supplement describes the arrival of Olcott, Damodar and Brown in Lahore on the previous November 18. “His Highness Raja Harbans Singh and other Sirdars [my emphasis] sent their conveyances to bring the party to their quarters”‘– these quarters being the maidan outside the city where K.H. and Djual Kul visited their tents on the 19th and 20th.(49) Among those who came to welcome the party at a special reception on the night of the 18th were “Sirdar Dayal Singh Majethia (Reis and Jagirdar of Amritsar),” ”Bhai Gurmukh Singh, President, ‘Guru Singh Sabha’ (of the Sikhs),” and “Sheikh Wahabuddin, Commissioner, deputed by H.H. the Maharaja of Kashmir.” The latter gentleman escorted the Theosophists to Jammu, where they arrived on November 22. Later in the same supplement, a financial report provides the information that Ranbir Singh donated 2500 rupees for travel expenses, and the Maharaja of Holkar gave 200. In light of Murphet’s statement that previous travel expenses were paid by the Masters, and HPB’s mysterious references to Holkar and “‘Some One,” this is suggestive indeed. But far more important are the references to “‘other Sirdars,”‘ and to Dayal Singh Majithia and Bhai Gurmukh Singh. The latter, Thakar Singh’s most trusted partner in the Singh Sabha, was thus associated with Olcott’s visits to Lahore in 1883 and in 1896, as recounted in chapter 2. The lack of any mention of Thakar Singh’s name seems inevitable if he was indeed the Master K.H., but the reference to “other Sirdars”‘ probably includes him, particularly since Bhai Gurmukh Singh was present. As for Dayal Singh Majithia, his association with Surendra Nath Banerjea and the Indian Association led me to consider, in chapter 2 of Book III, that he might be an alternate candidate for K.H. His Brahmo Samaj membership argued against this, however, and the public mention of his name in 1883 makes it even less likely. In Chapter 2 of Book IV he appears among the financial and spiritual sponsors of the Dalip Singh conspiracy. His presence during these crucial days in Lahore suggests that he was the basis of Djual Kul, whose name is even quite similar to his. Sirdar Dayal Singh Majithia’s status as a journalist, educational philanthropist and Indian nationalist all link him with the concerns of the previously identified Mahatmas. The case for this identification was strengthened by the discovery that he and Banerjea were both present at the 1884 annual convention of the T.S., at which “‘the first program of the Indian National Congress was drafted and its organization sketched out.”

This information is found in Sven Eek’s Damodar and the pioneers of The Theosophical Movement.  The circumstances of this meeting are explained in Murphet’s biography of Olcott, in which Dr. Kewal Motwani is quoted as saying:

“As a result of his fervent appeal to the patriotic instincts of the people, seventeen of those present at the annual Convention of the T.S., 1884, formed the Indian’ National Union, changed to the Indian National Congress the following year, ‘to serve the Motherland.’ Strictly speaking, Olcott was the Father of the Indian National Congress, although the title was given to Mr. A.O. Hume…”

It was indeed Hume who actually organized the Congress, although the groundwork was laid by Banerjea, Dayal Singh Majithia and others inspired by Olcott.

The crucial factor in the evidence found in the January 1884 supplement to The Theosophist is the triangular link it shows. Olcott and Damodar are seen first in the company of Punjabi Sikh Sirdars and Singh Sabha members, after which they proceed to Jammu and the court of Ranbir Singh. That this configuration of influences coincides with the most dramatic Mahatmic encounters in Theosophical history can hardly be accidental. Any possibility of mere coincidence is reduced to insignificance by the next source I encountered, HPB’s The Durbar in Lahore.

Mikhail Katkov published this work as part of the same series as Caves and Jungles of Hindustan.  It is quite distinct from the larger work, however, due to its status as a journalistic account of an historic event. Apparently a purely non-fiction work, it describes the trip to the Punjab taken by the Founders in the fall of 1880. This is crucial to the question of the identities of M. and K.H. as can be seen by a review of chronology. In late August, HPB, Olcott and their servant Babula left Bombay for Meerut, where they visited with Swami Dayanand. They then headed to Simla, where they arrived on September 8. Until the Founders’ departure for Amritsar on October 21, HPB provided the Simla Theosophists with a non-stop program of paranormal phenomena, all attributed to K.H. Among the highlights were September 29, when Mrs. Sinnett received a note from K.H., found high up in the branches of a tree. On October 3, the Masters materialized a cup and saucer for an unexpected picnic guest in the morning, then produced a missing brooch for Mrs. Hume at supper. Sometime in early October, Sinnett wrote to K.H. via HPB, sending a second letter before a reply to the first arrived. On the 16th, Hume sent his first letter to K.H., and Alice Gordon’s handkerchief was mysteriously duplicated by Mme. Blavatsky, claiming Mahatmic assistance.

Sinnett received his replies on the 18th and 19th, and on the 20th the Masters materialized a note and another brooch inside a pillow belonging to Mrs. Sinnett. The next day the Founders left Simla, having thoroughly captivated the Humes, Sinnetts and Gordons by these magical performances. It is entirely beyond the scope of this inquiry to evaluate the reality of these phenomena; my own guess is that they were a combination of fraud and genuine psychism, done without the aid of the Masters, although with their foreknowledge and approval.

The Founders stayed at. Amritsar from October 23 to No.vember 3, during which period another alleged paranormal communication occurred. Sinnett wrote to K.H. via HPB, who transmitted its contents telepathically to its intended recipient, allegedly thirty miles beyond Rawalpindi at the time. A telegram response from Jhelum reached Sinnett the same day, but on the 29th, K.H. wrote him a letter from Amritsar. On the 1st of November, K.H. replied to Hume’s first letter, again from Amritsar. On the 3rd, the Founders proceeded to Lahore for the Durbar.

With this background in mind,, the revelations of HPB’s Russian account of the trip are easier to discern. On the first page of her tale, she refers to Ranbir Singh as being “constantly suspected of Russian intrigues,” and being summoned to meet the new Viceroy along with Punjab rajas “who since 1849 had not yet become accustomed to British domination and were often forgetful of it.” Before she describes the durbar itself, HPB gives a lengthy account of her visit to Amritsar. Upon the Founders’ arrival, the platform was crowded with 200 Aryas and Sikhs. “Mulraj–Singh, President of the local Arya Samaj and a very wealthy Sikh,” held a reception for them in his home. After a detailed description of Amritsar, the Golden Temple, and Sikhism, she comments:

“Their esteem for Nanak is so great that even now they almost deify a certain Baba Khein-Singh, Just because he is the 16th direct descendant of the founder of Sikhism. This disgusting Baba (father) leads a parasitical existence in Rawalpindi, surrounded by the veneration of thousands who bring him, as voluntary offerings, over 2 lakhs of rupees (200 thousand) per year.  Contrary to custom and even the law of the Sikhs, this holy man has, besides his wife, a whole harem; as for the offerings of his zealous but far from rational worshippers, he spends them in the company of English functionaries, residents and collectors, in crazy festivities, hunting and drunken orgies.”

K.H. appears in the name given him for Russian readers in the next passage: “Hardly had we arrived in the Temple-yard, when ?

When we reached the large square from which there is a descent to the lake, we found the whole left side of the stand occupied by the chairs of the English, behind which the rajas and sardars thronged reverently. We did not go there but went straight into the court of the temple where Ram-Das awaited us, and he led us to the MaharaJa of Faridkot, who had sent orders from Simla to have comfortable seats prepared for us there.                        

At this point it should be recalled that the Raja of Faridkot (not Maharaja, as HPB has it) was a Singh Sabha member and the most faithful of the firm supporters of Thakar Singh in the Dalip Singh plot a few years later. Another evidence for Thakar Singh’s identity as Ram-Das and K.H. is the mention of sirdars present at the ceremony. Even more significant is the great length at which HPB praises Dalip Singh’s mother as a heroine:

The chief wife, adored by RanJit-Singh, Rani (Queen) Jindan, renounced the bliss of the suttee through her love for her son, and remained in this vale of tears to fight for him and defend his filial right to the throne. Sadly did this woman, famous in the contemporary history of England’s conquests, end her days. The son she loved so well was the first to enter into an agreement with her enemies against her, driven by cowardice and greed to betray his mother and his country. He still thrives, has grown fat, and while spending the greater part of the year on his estate in England, Elveden Hall…indulges his passion for hunting and maintains the appearance of a regular English country squire. As for the Rani, she lived and suffered for many years in lonely exile, in an obscure corner of Kensington, where she spent her remaining days, until the final liberation of death, secluded in her room with the faithful woman servant who followed her from India.”

The intensity with which HPB discusses the life of Rani Jindan seems evidence of some personal acquaintance with the tragedy. The outrage she expresses at Dalip Singh’s accommodation to English life seems to foreshadow his later about-face. In further explanation of the Rani’s heroism, HPB describes her role as a leader and fighter in the last Sikh war. After being imprisoned, she escaped to Nepal, but was tricked by the East India company into coming to a border town to meet Dalip. He had actually long since converted and gone to Scotland, but she did not learn of this until after her capture by the British and deportation to England:

“…the faith of the destroyers of her people and her country,” she said. She almost died of grief. Later the devoted mother often expressed her sorrow in bitter regret that she had not voluntarily offered her body to burn over her husband’s funeral pyre.  “I ignored the sacred custom,” she said, “and renounced the bliss of becoming a sati, and the gods have punished me for it!” She died in Kensington (London), refusing to live or to eat with her son, and even to touch him or her grandchildren.

The significance of these passages lies not merely in strengthening the supposition that Thakar Singh was K.H./Ram-Das, but also in their publication by Katkov, who a few years later invited Dalip to Moscow. HPB clearly got the inside story of the Sandhanwalia family history from someone who bitterly resented Dalip’s conversion to Christianity. The mostly likely source of this information, particularly in light of its context of the presence of Ram-Das, was Thakar Singh/Koot Hoomi, who succeeded in leading his cousin back to Sikhism five years later.

The most valuable feature of The Durbar in Lahore is its detailed descriptions of Ranbir and his entourage… No other ruler’s camp is described in one tenth the detail provided here. This is evidence at the very least of the Founders’ acquaintance with Ranbir Singh– for at whose authority could they have been allowed into the inner sanctum of his tent? The presence of Ram-Das/K.H. as their tour guide in Lahore, as in Amritsar, suggests that it was in his company that they visited Ranbir’s camp. Three years later, almost to the day, K.H. was to again appear in Ranbir’s court, to spirit off Damodar to an ashram.  And finally, while Ram-Das appears under the same name as in Caves and Jungles, his friend the Hindu Gulab-Singh from that series is nowhere to be found in The Durbar in Lahore. This would seem to be due to the same person’s presence in this narrative under his real name of Ranbir Singh.

The conclusion of the tale focuses on rumors which began circulating among the British due to Ranbir’s failure to appear in the viceregal procession.    All sorts of explanations are put forth, most based on theories about Russian intrigues. HPB offers no comment on any of this.  Finally, the great durbar begins, with the princes seated by rank, Ranbir Singh closest to the Viceroy’s throne. While people around her speculate on how he may be punished for missing the procession, HPB describes him: “The hero of all these discussions, in the meantime, sat immovable, somewhat pale but quite calm.  On his dark, bronzed face two large, almost black, circles were visible under   his   eyes, and occasionally he     shrank   almost imperceptibly and trembled slightly as though he were cold.

But even his trembling could be detected rather by the rustling of the high diamond aigrette on his turban than by his impassive features. The Maharaja’s boldly dyed whiskers curled as bravely as ever, and his eyes, black as coals, gazed more lazily around, but no more morosely than usual; he looked through half-lowered lids more as though he were ill than perturbed.

-Then follows an account of a long and silly ceremony in which the princes all make obeisance and give gifts to the Viceroy and then all receive gifts in return. “The magnificent Ranbir Singh” receives a gift worth Rs. 50,000 from the Empress. He leaves hastily at the end of the ceremony, prompting further speculations about his intent to be rude. Finally, when pressed, one of his courtiers admits that he had taken a laxative that morning on instruction of the most learned doctor of Kashmir. HPB concludes:

In this simple way, prosaically and unexpectedly, the formidable cloud that had hung suspended over the political horizon was dissolved, solving the mystery that had stunned the Anglo-Indian colony, the mystery of the ‘Russian intrigues’ and the ‘unprecedented’ impertinence resulting from it, displayed by the Maharaja of Kashmir.”

There were two points in the history of the T.S. at which the Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi appeared as solid historical personag.es rather than elusive semi-ethereal beings. At both of these points, the same triangular configuration is found. The Founders of the T.S., the MaharaJa Ranbir Singh, and an Amritsar Sikh Sirdar are found working in collusion. In October and November 1880, the Founders’ trip to the Punjab to meet these figures coincided with the beginning of the Mahatma correspondence. Three years later, Olcott, Damodar and Brown made another trip to the Punjab and then proceeded to Jammu. This second journey to the Masters coincided with an elaborate effort to prove their existence, combining false testimony with true in order to preserve the secret. The information I found in the pages of The Theosophist at the Adyar Library was sufficient to remove my remaining doubts about the identities of Morya and Koot Hoomi….

One further reference to Ranbir Singh is found in Eek’s Damodar and the Pioneers of the Theosophical Movement. In a letter to The Epiphany, dated February 16, 1884, Damodar responded to critics of his alleged trip from Jammu to the Masters’ ashram by saying “As regards my flying to Tibet and coming back within two days’… on my return to Jammoo, I distinctly told the enquirers there that I had gone to a place within His Highness’ Dominion, but that for certain reasons I could not give its name or exact locality.”

After these immensely satisfying discoveries, the rest of my stay in India was anti-climactic. In four days in Pondicherry, I visited the Aurobindo ashram, various ashram–operated businesses, and Auroville, “city of the future.” While Pondy was the cleanest and most charming city I saw in India, the ashram atmosphere was of a cloying Bhakti piety, and I was glad to return to Madras. The memory of Thakar Singh’s martyrdom in Pondicherry was a constant source of sadness during my stay. Suffering through the worst case of food poisoning of my life, I tried to accept it as a means of reliving the agony in which he died. But I had gone to Pondy filled with hopes of discovering something of importance there, and this eluded me completely. The significance of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was not to be revealed to me until I arrived in France, as reported in the epilogue to Book II.

A day after my return to Madras, I was astounded to find the following article in Indian Express:

“New Delhi, April 7 (PTI) Over 50 Sikhs under the banner of ‘Delhi Sri Guru Singh Sabha’ took out a procession from Tilak Bridge to India Gate in the capital on Saturday to protest killings in the Batala and Panipat bomb blasts.

The protestors who wore black bands also observed a two-minute silence in memory of those killed in the terrorist violence.”

The Batala blast was a Sikh terrorist attack on a Hindu religious procession, which killed 36 persons and injured 78 on April 3. The Panipat attack on a public bus in Haryana caused lZ deaths and 31 injuries.  The Akali Dal factions which dominate Punjabi politics tacitly support such terrorist violence’. Every source on Punjab history had reported that the Singh Sabha became extinct in the 1920s due to the rise of the Akali Dal. So in the midst of the horror, here was one bright spot. Not only were 50 Sikhs brave enough to publicly denounce Sikh terrorism against Hindus, which in itself was unprecedented. More amazingly, the organization founded in 1873 by Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia is not extinct after all, and is speaking out for brotherhood exactly as he would have wished. A small spark of light in a sea of darkness, perhaps. ‘ But even so, after spending days contemplating the martyrdom of Thakar Singh, my spirits were lifted by this completely unexpected news.

My last ten days in India were spent mostly reading at the Broadlands Hotel, a rambling three-story former harem in Madras. All my library research objectives were met, and archives access was denied me by the President of the Society.  So I devoted my nergies to fiction, finding in Kim an eerily familiar portrayal of late 19th century Indian politics. Widely recognized as Kipling’s greatest work, Kim tells of the adventures of a young Irish orphan growing up in the streets of Lahore.  Reared by the Indian proprietress of an opium den, Kim becomes half-Indianised, speaking Urdu and English with equal facility. He goes on a quest across North India with an old Tibetan lama in search of a sacred river, and this quest gives the novel its main story line. But in his travels, Kim is used by an Afghan horse trader as a courier for British intelligence. The message he delivers to Colonel Creighton of Umballa is an impersonal, unaddressed statement, with five microscopical pinholes in one corner, that most scandalously betrayed the five confederated kings, the sympathetic Northern Power, a Hindu banker in Pashawar, a firm of gun-makers in Belgium, and an important semi-independent Mohammedan ruler to the South.” The plot, so reminiscent of the Dalip Singh conspiracy, is foiled, and later Kim is recognized as a Sahib, educated in·an .English school, and trained to become a “chain-man,” or spy in the Great Ga.me. At the end of his quest, Kim is ready to begin his career. in service to the Empire. For its vivid evocation of Indian life, and its verisimilitude to the politics of the period, Kim is excellent reading for anyone drawn to the mystery of the Masters.  But it is unarguably a tale told from the opposite side. In the late 1980s; T.N. Murari wrote two sequels which are based on political values completely opposed to Kipling’s. In The Imperial Agent, the young adult Kim grows gradually disenchanted with his role in service to the British.  His sense of Indianness wins out over his identification with the Sahibs. In The Last Victory, Kim becomes acquainted with such leaders of the Freedom Movement as Mohandas Gandhi, Annie Besant and Jawaharlal Nehru. He dies a martyr of Indian nationalism.

My trip to India, which included discovery of a vast treasury of useful facts, thus ended with absorption in fiction as I tried to come to an intuitive understanding of the human drama of the Mahatmas. The role of fiction in portraying history is of great importance; most of our imaginative acquaintance with history comes from films and novels. As a librarian, I tend to think  in  terms of a neat division between fiction  and non-fiction. As a Theosophist, I feel disillusionment in discovering how fictional was HPB’s portrayal of her Masters. But on reflection, after reading Kim, I realized that the relationship between fiction and truth is not one of simple opposition. My own path of discovery was based on a particle theory of truth– the accumulation of verified facts as a means of attaining an accurate understanding of history. But even after all these facts were collected, I remained at a loss to explain the deeper meaning of it all. Blavatsky made liberal use of untruths in her effort to convey truth as seen according to a wave theory– coherence rather than correspondence being the ultimate value. Regardless of her inaccuracies in details, she did succeed in presenting a more coherent rendition of the crucial issues of East-West relations than any other Westerner of her time.

India’s capital provided a unique opportunity to trace the course of 19th century history as a prelude to the freedom movement which led to independence. The first night in Delhi, my friends and I went to the sound and light show at the Red Fort. This magnificent spectacle sweeps through 400 years of history, culminating in national independence in 1947. The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 was particularly emphasized, as the Mogul Emperor of the time lived at the Red Fort. Throughout my stay in Delhi, I was surrounded by symbols of the greatness of the Indian nation. Far more than Bombay, Delhi gives the Western observer a sense of hope for India’s future. It is a clean, hard-working, orderly city in which the beggars and con men of Bombay seem a million miles away. In Bombay, I was surrounded by reminders of the­ colonial past.  Since my goal was to retrace the steps of the T.S. Founders, this was an appropriate starting point. But in Delhi I was confronted continually by symbols of India’s pre-colonial past and its future as a great independent nation. Faith in India’s future was the motivating factor for the Mahatmas’ sponsorship of the Theosophical Society. In Delhi I began to see their lives in context of inevitable progression toward the national destiny.

Although my hypotheses have been rejected by one Theosophical publisher as providing an “all-physical” solution to the mystery of the Masters, the evolution of a nation is ultimately a spiritual process. The exhibitions in the Nehru Museum lead one through this process as it is seen in the life of one man. ,Jawaharlal Nehru, who met Annie Besant when he was 13 and joined the T.S. immediately, was the first leader of free India.  His descendants have governed the nation for almost all the years since his death, but shortly before my arrival Rajiv Gandhi lost his bid for reelection. Nehru’s father, Motilal, was also a Theosophist, and Mohandas Gandhi’s link with the T.S. was a crucial element in his awakening as a leader. In his student years he visited the T.S. in London, met HPB, and first read the Bhagavad Gita there in a Theosophical translation into English. The roles of Annie Besant and Mahatma Gandhi in the Indian freedom movement are well documented in the Nehru Museum.  Thus my researches in the adjacent Nehru Library were carried out amid many reminders of the Theosophical contribution to India’s destiny.

The  Kashmir State:  A  Biography of MaharaJa Gulab  Singh 1792–1858, by K.K. Panikkar, I learned that Ranbir’s mother was a Rukwal Rajput married in 1809.(19) Unfortunately, the origin of the Rukwal tribe was nowhere to be found.                                ‘

Arva Samaj in the Freedom Movement: 1875–1918 by K.C. Yadav and K.S. Arya reveals the deep involvement of Swami Dayanand’s followers in nationalistic agitation. Part 2, “Eminent Arya Freedom Fighters,” .includes a portrait of Shyamji Krishnavarma, the brilliant scholar and leader of the Bombay Samaj who remained loyal to the T.S. Born in 1857 to a Brahmin family in Kutch, he was educated in his home town of Mandavi before completing high school in Bombay.  There he took a prize in Sanskrit, which was an omen of his future career. In 1875 he married a rich merchant’s daughter, and shortly thereafter was involved in the founding of the Arya Samaj in Bombay. In 1877-78 he did a propaganda tour through Western India for Swami Dayanand. After being introduced to the English Sanskritist Professor Monier Williams, he went to England in April 1879 at his invitation. He completed a B.A. in 1883, returned home to India and was Diwan at Ratalam for several years. In 1888 he became a lawyer at Ajmer, and later pursued this career at Udaipur. In 1895 he was dismissed from the position of Diwan in Junagarh, for reasons involving a conspiracy of British local officials. Krishnavarma returned to London in 1897, and two years later he became politically active on behalf of the Boers. In January 1905 he founded The Indian Sociologist, an “organ of freedom and of political and social reforms.” Later in the same year he started the Indian Home Rule Society. In 1906 he opened India House in London, but left :for Paris in 1907 due to fear of the “police noose very close on him.” In 1914 he went to Geneva where he continued the struggle for Indian freedom until his death March 31, 1930. Thus the young man who was a devoted disciple of the Theosophical Masters became in maturity yet another freedom fighter who had to flee British wrath and find French protection. The details of his connection to the Mahatma figures proposed in this book remain hidden; however the facts as stated above qualify him as one of the adepts in the broad definition which has emerged in the course of investigation.

A biography of another member of the Masters’ secret world is found in Advanced Historv of the Panjab, Vol. ll, by G.S. Chambara. It provides the hitherto unknown information that Professor Bhai Gurmukh Singh revived the Singh Sabha movement in 1876, three years after it was founded by Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia.  Apparently the group had become virtually defunct until Bhai Gurmukh Singh took an interest in it.  Born in 1849 th son of a poor cook, the young Sikh showed academic promise which was recognized by Prince Bikram Singh of Kapurthala, his home city. By 1876, when he joined forces with Thakar Singh, he had become a language scholar. Chhambara writes “It was a result of their joint efforts, that the Panjab University Oriental College, which had been opened in 1876, introduced also teaching of the Panjabi language in 1877; Professor Singh himself being appointed a lecturer for the subject.” Bhai Gurmukh Singh founded the Lahore Singh Sabha in 1879 while Thakar Singh remained in Amritsar. Both were leaders of the progressive faction of the group, opposed by the conservatives led by Khem Singh Bedi.

The Punjab University may well have been the first project in which Thakar Singh and his disciple Bhai Gurmukh Singh were associated with the Maharaja of Kashmir. Ranbir Singh’s patronage of the university is mentioned in the first chapter of Book III, where it is recorded that we was honored as its First Fellow for his patronage of language studies and translations. Bhai Gurmukh Singh, it should be recalled, was on terms of intimate friendship with Olcott as late as 1896. It was not until I reached Adyar that I found evidence of how early and how important were his links with the T.S. But in coming to recognize the close bond between the founders of the Amritsar and Lahore Singh Sabhas, I also was obliged to reevaluate the character of Baba Khem Singh Bedi.

Gopal Singh’s History of the Sikh People 1469-1988 gives a much more detailed portrait of Khem Singh than was available in sources previously consulted. The author writes:

Born in 1832, in the house of S. Attar Singh Bedi, at Una, (in the district of Hoshiarpur) and a great grandson of Baba Sahib Singh Bedi, he was a great friend of the British Government. is jiagir was, therefore, continued after the annexation of the Panjab.  In 1857 too, he was of much use to the Government and was later awarded large tracts in the district of Montgomery…He opened many women’s educational institution’s, though female education was not much encouraged in those days.  He helped develop the newly-formed district of Montgomery. Due to his vast influence, he was knighted and was nominated member of the Council of States…He died in 1904, leaving four sons.

Relations between Khem Singh, Thakar Singh and Bhai Gurmukh Singh were apparently strained for some time before the latter two took up the cause of Dalip Singh. The identity of Khem Singh as the Chohan seems less certain in light of facts uncovered in the Nehru Library. For example, the Amritsar Akal Takht, under Khem Singh’s influence, excommunicated Bhai Gurmukh Singh on March 18, 1887, just as Dalip Singh went to Russia. Most Singh Sabhas sided with the Lahore progressives led by Bhai Gurmukh Singh; most orthodox Sikhs did not. Although Khem Singh Bedi seems to have thoroughly opposed Thakar Singh and his followers once the Dalip Singh plot was initiated, after Thakar’s death he changed his position as described in chapter 2.

My search in the library uncovered six sources which were particularly enlightening on the subject of the Masters of the T.S. The Gulabn_gma _2f_Diwal_KirEal Ram, a biography of Gulab Singh written during the reign of Ranbir, was translated from Persian in 1977. Sukhdev Singh Charak, biographer of Ranbir Singh, translated and annotated the text. Its title page calls Ranbir “the benevolent and exalted, the diamond of the diadem of Government, the lustre of the sword of kingship, the decorator of the crown and throne, the ferocious lion of battle and war…”(17) This source identifies five wives of Gulab Singh, but not which one was mother of Ranbir. This was of interest due to a note in Olcott’s diary written when passing through Jaipur on the train. As he passed a castle, he commented that this was where “my Father ‘s mother was born long ago.” In Founding of The City of Amritsar: A Study of Historical. Cultural, Social and Economic Aspects. edited by Dr. Fauja Singh, includes a chapter entitled “Amritsar and the Singh Sabha Movement” by Gurdarshan Singh. He writes:

“The leaders of the Amritsar Singh Sabha, being drawn almost exclusively from the rich and aristocratic classes of the Sikhs, were not ready to shed off their old prejudices against the low caste Sikhs…who were allowed to visit the gurdwaras only at specified hours… Baba Khem Singh Bedi tried to wield absolute control over the activities…he aspired for reverence due a guru…The radical among the Sikhs dissociated themselves…The gulf between the two parties ultimat ly resulted in the formation of an independent Khalsa Diwan at Lahore in 1886.”

Thakar Singh, it may be supposed, was well respected by the radicals of Lahore by this point due to his intrigues with Dalip. Despite  his status as founder of the Singh Sabha,  his anti-British activities had alienated him from his former Amritsar colleagues. Later in Adyar I unearthed evidence which made it perfectly clear that Blavatsky and Olcott were allied with Bhai Gurmukh Singh and against Baba Khem Singh Bedi from the beginning of the Theosophical work among the Sikhs. But while my research on the Singh Sabha at the Nehru Library provided the groundwork for later explorations in Adyar, in March 1990 the Punjab was off limits to foreign travelers. Crossing the Pakistani border to Lahore was even less feasible. So after five days in Delhi, I proceeded directly to Jammu, keenly regretting that Amritsar and Lahore could not be included in my investigations.

The research journey of early 1990 began in Vermont with a visit to Chittenden, where Blavatsky met both Olcott and Dr. Peebles in 1874 at the Eddy Brothers seances. It ended in France visiting research facilities in Paris and Aix-en-Provence. But Indian travel took 3/4 of my time and had the greatest value for historical discoveries. So for this series of blog posts I am excerpting only the sections on Bombay, Delhi, Jammu, Adyar, and Pondicherry. KPJ

The first two days in Bombay were devoted to sightseeing in the company of three Westerners who arrived the same night as I. We constantly encountered the same con game by which Blavatsky and Olcott were caught upon their arrival. Indians give you something which you haven’t asked for (such as carrying bags across the street) and then demand payment, just as happened to the T.S. Founders in 1879 with Hurrychund Chintamon. But even though Ross, Alfred, Virginia and I had to fight our way through scores of persistent beggars and crooks, our first taste of India was delightful. We arrived on Holi, a festival day in which colored water and powder is sprayed and thrown on anyone who shares the holiday spirit. This symbolizes tarnishing the old and beginning the new, and represents the arrival of spring. Once we were all thoroughly dowsed with water and powder, every Indian we met responded to the sight with friendly smiles, and indeed it was as if we had become honorary Indians.  The feeling of being swept up in Indianness, rather than standing outside looking in, persisted throughout the trip. The immediate acceptance which Blavatsky and Olcott found in many parts of India became more understandable once I tasted the Indian readiness to absorb foreigners. After seeing the Hanging Gardens and Towers of Silence, the Jain Temple, Chowpatty Beach, several museums and the Elephanta Caves, I was ready to begin my research.

The Asiatic Society Library impressed me as the most beautiful building in Bombay– from the outside. The interior, however, was dusty and ill-maintained. Pigeons fiew around the rafters, and in the work areas books were piled on floors in disarray. Later I read that a renovation campaign was being launched to restore the early 19th century building to its original grandeur. The uniqueness of the collection certainly merits the effort.

The first relevant source I discovered was Swami Dayananda Sarasvati: A Study of His Life and Work by Krishnan Singh Arya and P.D. Shastri. This 1987 publication includes a revealing letter from Olcott to Dayananda, dated February 1878. Written in New York, it expresses the state of mind in which the T.S. President approached the Arya Samaj leader:

I had arrived in India filled with perplexity about Olcott’s understanding of the Masters upon his arrival 111 years before. This passage recalled one very important fact, which is that Swami Dayanand had been described by HPB to Olcott as an initiate of her Masters. That the Swami later referred to M. and K.H. as nonexistent suggests that in one case or the other HPB deceived Olcott about her Masters’ identities.

A second visit to the Asiatic Society Library led to a discovery far more intriguing than the previous day’s find. I had looked through all the entrie’s on the T.S. and the Arya Samaj, and was doubting that there was more to find, when an Indian engaged me in conversation at the card catalog. Upon learning of my quest, he suggested that I examine Emma Coulomb’s pamphlet Some Account of my Intercourse_with Madame Blavatsky. This was entered under Psychic Phenomena rather than Theosophy, so without the help of my fellow researcher I would have missed it– which would have been a great shame in light of what it contained.

In the first hundred pages of the pamphlet, only a few nuggets of information related to my hypotheses or characters. In her preface, Coulomb comments that although she states the truth, and only the truth, “‘I do not state the whole truth, nor shall I do this, unless I am provoked to it. Madame Blavatsky alone will know what I keep back…” This may refer to political secrets, for part of the reason the Coulombs were expelled from the Adyar Headquarters of the T.S. was “‘that Madame Coulomb repeatedly said to members of the T.S., as well as to outsiders, that the T.S. had for its object the overthrow of the British rule in India. “‘

In the same letter to Emma cited in chapter 2 regarding the Maharaja of Holkar and the Phoenix venture, HPB also made a mysterious reference to a man in Poona. Mme. Coulomb omits the name, although it was given in the letter. HPB writes of a businessman she visited in Poona where he lived with his wife and children. He told her that she looked “younger by ten years, younger than he had seen me in America…”‘ No further researches succeeded in uncovering this man’s identity, but he may explain various elusive references to Indian visitors during HPB’s New York years.

By far the most significant find in the pamphlet was a letter from HPB to Alexis Coulomb, written in Paris on April 1, 1884. This was just after Blavatsky had been warned of the Coulombs’ threats in Adyar, to which she responded “‘If you compromise me before Lane-Fox, Hartmann and the others– ah well, I shall never return to Adyar, but will remain here or in London where I will prove by phenomena more marvellous still that they are true and that our Mahatmas exist, for there is one here at Paris and there will be also in London.“‘(Italicized in the original.)    

This letter is not among those whose authenticity is d’isputed, for Coulomb immediately showed it to several Theosophists including Hartmann.  It admits nothing which would support the Coulombs’ later charges against her, and indeed asserts the reality of the phenomena and the Masters. What makes it such a crucial bit of evidence from the perspective of the present inquiry is that it was written IN THE MIDDLE OF JAMAL-AD-DIN’S STAY IN PARIS AND FIVE MONTHS BEFORE THAKAR SINGH’S ARRIVAL IN LONDON. There was a short period of time in which such a letter could have been written if referring to these two hypothetical Mahatmas; it was written exactly then.

The Lanny Budd series of eleven novels was published from 1940 through 1953. Its fictional protagonist is the heir of an American munitions fortune, but his adventures take him through real places meeting real people all over Europe from WW1 through WW2. I am not yet halfway through the first volume but consider the series a masterpiece and his Pulitzer well-deserved. Elbert’s political history writings echo Sinclair’s in so many ways, perhaps because they were contemporaries and lived in southern California and shared many interests. But I suspect they were personal friends as he got the birth data from the source.

This is an excerpt from In Search of the Masters, 1990; the epilogue was a travel diary beginning in Vermont and ending in France, with four segments about India in between. This is the third of the four; others will be shared as future blog posts along with the Vermont and France segments when they are relevant to people featured in the BOL lessons.

The spring of 1990 was a period of extreme tension and violence in India’s northwestern states of Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir. Terrorist violence in Punjab had sharply increased since the 1990 elections, and every day the newspaper reported at least five to ten deaths in clashes between police and terrorists there. Far more appalling, and unnerving to the traveler, were incidents such as the bombing of a Hindu religious procession in Batala, causing 36 deaths. Buses and trains were regularly attacked, and at times all non-Sikhs were removed and killed by the terrorists. Travelers were killed by mines on the roads and by gunfire at roadblocks. The Indian government forbade foreigners to enter the Punjab, and thus when I bought a bus ticket to Jammu I assumed it would pass through Himachal Pradesh. A few hours after leavin Delhi, however, I found myself passing through the heart of the Punjab. When I expressed my alarm to Sudesh, a Kashmiri Hindu I met on the bus, he reassured me by saying that Punjab was much less dangerous than Kashmir. And indeed, despite the regularity of terrorist attacks and the unwillingness of Sikh political leaders (of various Akali Dal factions) to condemn the violence, most Indians seemed confident that peace would eventually be restored in the Punjab. After several days in Delhi, I had come to see the Sikhs as an integral part of India.  They make up 8% of the capital region’s population, and live there in peace and harmony, although the massacres following Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination are vividly remembered. Despite a substantial number of die-hard terrorists, aided and abetted by Pakistan, the great majority of Punjabi Sikhs are loyal to India and deplore the violence.

In Kashmir, on the other hand, the existence of India in its present boundaries seems very much at stake.  Virtually all of the 100,000 plus Kashmiri Hindus fled their homes during the early spring of 1990, most of the refugees settling in Jammu. Kashmiri Muslim separatists, their leaders trained and armed in Pakistan, had given notice to their Hindu neighbors that they faced the choice of death, flight or conversion to Islam. Unlike the Punjabis, a large majority of Kashmiri citizens favored independence or union with Pakistan. To utter a word in favor of India was to risk being murdered. While Jammu’s Hindus and Ladakh’s Buddhists looked on in horror, the Muslims in Kashmir indulged in a rampage of anti-India, pan-Islamic violence. My week in Jammu was the last week before the army was called out and curfews were enforced. Although at times I was filled with anxiety, in retrospect these were the best of times in which to understand the Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi in historical context.

My journey to Jammu had been envisioned as the climax of the trip in a spiritual as well as an intellectual sense. Olcott’s November 1883 trip to Lahore and Jammu marked the culmination of his search for the Masters, as well as the quest of Damodar Mavalankar. Despite the considerable skepticism with which I regard much of the literature about the Mahatmas, Jammu had a deeply religious significance for me. Ranbir Singh built seven temples in the vicinity during his reign, and the palace complex where he welcomed Olcott and Damodar is now the center of state government. While Bombay and Delhi were stimulating and necessary parts of my journey northward, Jammu was the destination. And despite the flood of refugees and soldiers, it was a very pleasant and comfortable city. The pace was relaxed, the architecture charming, and the spring weather refreshing. There were no beggars and little filth. After the teeming masses of Bombay and Delhi, the rotten stink of the former .and the fierce dusty heat of the latter, Jammu seemed a completely different world. The people and their city are clean, noble, dignified and handsome.

Before doing research in the traditional manner, I visited the two temples associated with Ranbir Singh to familiarize myself with his legacy. The Ranbireshwar Temple overlooks the city, and in the evenings it becomes a community center of sorts. I sat in the courtyard of the temple, under a tree which sheltered a lingam in a small enclosure. A statue of Ranbir Singh stands on a tall pedestal in the center of the courtyard. People regularly performed puja to the statue, the tree, or the lingam, by draping flowers, ringing bells, and bowing. The temple, lingam and virtually everything in the temple complex are painted in a flesh tone. Inside the temple is another huge lingam. Just outside the entrance is a portrait of Ranbir, to which people also make obeisance. As I sat under the tree, a family of six happened by and sat on the other side. Their friendly children chased one another around the tree using me as a sort of station in the game. With families and children everywhere, phallic symbols in profusion, and all painted in flesh tones, my thoughts turned to the myth of the Masters. According to Blavatsky, Morya and Koot Hoomi were virgin ascetics. In one Mahatma letter, M. called himself a poor Tibetan fakir.” But the real Ranbir had five wives and many children, and was completely enmeshed in the world of physical reality, despite his undeniable spiritual qualities. The Raghunath temple complex is one of the largest in North India, but is relatively new, dating from the nineteenth century. Ranbir’s shrine is the largest of the seven domed temples along the front tier. Flesh colored bases are topped with gray stone domes, all decorated with golden spires. Behind the front tier, which lies along the main bazaar, there is a large enclosed courtyard behind which is a huge older temple complex containing idols in great profusion. I made the rounds of the various gods, worshipped Ganesh with the aid of a friendly priest, then returned to the front and Ranbir’s temple, the tallest of all. The reverence with which visitors entered his shrine revealed that he is still seen as the father of his people. It was a surprise to find the Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara across the bazaar from the Raghunath complex. It appeared to date from Ranbir’s reign, and its prime location suggests that it was built with his approval and support.

Jammu’s most important research attraction was the State Archives Repository, located in the palace complex where Olcott and Damodar were welcomed by the MaharaJa. Although relatively few of the archival materials were in English, there was an English index to Ranbir’s Persian correspondence.  There I found a number of entries which expanded my understanding of the mysterious Theosophical Masters. Ranbir Singh’s interest in comparative religion is suggested by the presence of a “description of the adventures of the Naqashbands of Bukhara,” combined with notes on the route between Peshawar and Bukhara. Not long after this, there appears an entry for the diary of Shah Mohammed “regarding his tour through Balakh, Bukhara, Kabul and Kohkand with a description of political influence of Russia in Kohkand and Bukhara in the S. year 1922 [1865 A.D.J.] The next year there were two diaries submitted. Mohammad Khan Bukhari and Malik Mohammad Kishtawari reported on a “Journey into Russian Turkestan with a description of· the Russian administration in the districts.” Mehta Sher Singh described a tour undertaken at the command of Ranbir Singh “describing the trade etc. in Russian Asia, Kabul, Peshawar and Yarkand.” In the same year, Ranbir received a note “on the military strength of Kabul under the late Dost Mohammed Khan (Amir of Kabul) and Amir Sher Ali Khan.”

My main obJective in searching through the State Archives was to find correspondence with the T.S. Founders, and in this regard the Journey to Jammu was a complete failure. The references to Kabul and the expanding Russian empire, however, led to another, equally satisfying proof of one of my hypotheses about the Masters. It was initially confusing in that the date given, 1293 A.H., corresponds to 1915 A.D. and is thus obviously wrong. After long perplexity, I concluded that it is a transposition of S. 1923, which equals 1866-67. The entry reads “Letter, dated Ludhiana the 29th of ZilhaJ 1293 A.H. from ShuJa-u-Mult, ex King of Kabul and Princ·e Jalal-ud-Din regarding their interview with His Highness MaharaJa Ranbir Singh Jang Bahadur.”(38)  “Prince Jalal-ud-Din” is none other than Jamal d-Din “al-Afghani,” and Shuja-u-Mult a title for the Amir -Muhammed Azim Khan, with whom he was exiled from Kabul.  Placed in context of their pro-Russian policies and Ranbir’s strong interest in Russian support, this would appear to be the “smoking gun” proving Jamal ad-Din’s relationship with the Maharaja. While the details of their later involvements with Mme. Blavatsky or the Russian government remain occult, this entry alone made my journey to Jammu worthwhile, despite all the anxiety of travel in the region.  The date for Jamal ad-Din’s flight from Kabul is given as 1868 in other sources, so some confusion remains. But the identity of the “Prince” and ex-King is quite clear, and the context of pro-Russian policies is equally apparent. The later association of Afghani and Ranbir remains, however, a mystery.

Other fragments of proof of a network linking the men identified herein as the Mahatmas were also found in the same index. In 1870, Ranbir Singh received an acknowledgment of two donations, of Rs. 50,000 and 30,000, “as financial aid to the [Punjab] University and for translation of Oriental works respectively.” This refers to the same institution and the same special interest as those of Bhai Gurmukh Singh, F.T.S. and leading disciple of Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia. Although the Singh Sabha involvement in the Oriental College of the Punjab University came a few years later, it is almost inescapable that this was the context in which Ranbir Singh/Mahatma Morya became acquainted with Thakar Singh/Mahatma Koot Hoomi and the Singh Sabha, the “Lodge” of the latter.

A surprising Mahatmic connection appears in the Maharaja’s purchase of real estate in Varanasi from “Sardar Dayal Singh, Rais Amritsar.” The briefly mentioned possibility (Book III, chapter 2) that Dayal Singh Majithia was among the Theosophical Mahatmas became much more significant in light of evidence unearthed a few days later at Adyar. The last item of interest for Theosophical history is the program, in English, of the ceremonies at the Durbar in Lahore held November 15, 1880. The T.S. Founders were present at this ceremony, and in Adyar I later discovered Mme. Blavatsky’s revealing account of the experience.

The day of my trip to the State Archives was the most moving of the entire trip, due in part to the setting.  Jammu is a city of winding lanes climbing steep hills, and the Archives Repository is at the top of one of the steepest. With only a vague set of directions, I wandered uphill, not sure that I’d ever find the Palace complex which remains the center of government. Then, as I rounded a corner, the gateway to the Palace came into view, and I knew immediately that this was the place I was looking for. It appeared exactly as I had envisioned i,t while reading Olcott’s account of his visit in 1883. On the way I had visited the Sri Ranbir Singh Public Library, which was alas devoid of useful material. Descending back to the center city, I was shaken from my historical euphoria by a startling confrontation. Seeing many people milling about the courtyard of the Ranbireshwar Temple, I decided to take a photograph, and walked over to the fence to do so. Pointing the camera so as to include the people in the foreground, I was  immediately challenged by an extremely irate young man who told me in an agitated voice that photography was forbidden there. Having seen Indians taking pictures the day before, I knew this was untrue, but wasn’t prepared to argue with him. So I told him that I hadn’t taken the picture, and proceeded down the hill toward my hotel. Before I had gotten very far, I was surrounded by two dozen outraged young Hindus, demanding to know who I was and what I was doing there. Unsatisfied with my reply, they insisted on seeing my passport, and seemed to become more threatening as I showed reluctance to hand it over. Feeling that I had little choice, I complied, which produced an immediate about-face, apologies, and an invitation to sit and talk. The man who had initially accosted me acted as spokesman for the group, and explained that they were holding a meeting of the Kashmir Hindu Students Union in front of the temple. This was a group of young Hindu refugees driven from their homes by Muslim separatist violence and threats. For over an hour, I talked with them, first in the shadow of Ranbir Singh’s statue and later with a smaller group in a teahouse. They urged that I include their story in my book, and I agreed.

cover illustration, Ray M. Hershberger; l-r Maharaja Ranbir Singh, Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia

After reading Dominic Green’s The Religious Revolution (Macmillan 2022) I was surprised to find that his bibliographic citation to my research was to my first self-published book which went out of print almost thirty years ago. The pen and ink portrait on the cover by my friend Ray Hershberger features Jamal ad-Din at the top. Everything Green writes about Theosophy in India is insightful and amusing, but nothing strikes me as a major breakthrough compared to this discussion of Egypt:

On March 27, 1884, Blavatsky’s party crossed the Seine, rounded the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens, and made the ascent to Afghani’s attic. Blavatsky and Afghani had first met in Cairo in the early 1870s, probably through the Star of the East Masonic lodge.  Each had moved to India in 1879, Blavatsky to Bombay after the seance scandal, and Afghani, expelled from Egypt for plotting against the Khedive, to Hyderabad. In India, the British had spied on them both, taking Afghani for a Muslim rabble-rouser and Blavatsky for a Russian agent.  In India, Afghani fished in the same waters as the Theosophists, and used the same bait.  In a talk at Calcutta University in 1882, he called on Hindus and Muslims to form an Indian nation by reviving their original wisdom and language. Afghani and Blavatsky were fellow travelers on the road of philosophical religion.  They were also heading toward a confrontation with the European empires.  When the English radical Wilfrid Scawen Blunt squeezed into the attic, he found Blavatsky and Afghani deep in conversation about the Mahdi of Sudan. The Mahdi had expelled the slave traders and Turkish garrison from the upper reaches of the Nile and declared a caliphate.  If his revolt spread, it would soon threaten Egypt, the Suez Canal, and the Red Sea ports, and even sever the links between Britain and India.  Who, Blavatsky asked, was this man who threatened to close the sea lanes and the empire that depended on them?

The endnotes to the book do not cite a source for the 1884 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt meeting with Blavatsky, Olcott, and Jamal ad-Din in Paris, and that this was a renewal of old acquaintances in Egypt from 1870. I discovered an earlier book from Green that goes into greater detail, so have ordered it. This is more relevant to the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and its successors than to Theosophists, thanks to the legendary beginning of the HBofL in Egypt in 1870 although its documented founding was in 1884 in England. A Masonic lodge is of huge importance in the story, so I look forward to further insights from the older book.

These are all the published reviews of my first two books, and appraisals in later books, that I shared on a Theosophical history website in 2000. Of the 22 reviewers, only two were unfriendly, from opposite points of view, both more polemical than historical in tone.

For Theosophists the book event of 1994 is without much doubt this product of 8 years of painstaking research by scholar-librarian and theosophist Paul Johnson. Though it will not be happily received by those who cherish the larger-than-life Mahatma legends, the book is noteworthy first for the individuals who contributed to its compilation, and additionally for its broad range of acknowledged sources…Rather than definitive assertions of fact, it is a look through many windows at fascinating, incomplete scenes and events of 19th century occultism. These findings are fitted together to make a hypothesis accompanied by an invitation to look further, dig more deeply, and objectively begin to know the uniquely gifted visionary that HPB was.” Claire Walker, Reflections of a Theosophist, 1994

“Previous works about the mysterious Madame Blavatsky are full of conflicting information, since she left behind a trail of concocted legends. The Masters Revealed, by K. Paul Johnson, strips away most of the fantasy and provides a wealth of new material…K. Paul Johnson’s book is a real original. In straightforward, readable prose, it presents a panorama of heroes, heroines and eccentrics. Tracing Madame Blavatsky’s secret life, it often reads like an occult whodunit about a woman who was, in fact, as fascinating as the legends she created about herself.” Edward Hower, The New York Times Book Review, 1995

“Whether read as a ‘whodunit’ or as fact, it is a remarkable piece of research in a hitherto unexplored field of study.” Joy Mills, The Quest, 1995

“Johnson’s The Masters Revealed is somewhat quixotic, but offers the best separation of fable from history of the founders of the Theosophical Society. In many ways Johnson’s theses provide a beginning at independent, non-fabulous accounts of whom the real cohorts of HPB were.” Paul Nagy, Critical Notice, 1995

“Notwithstanding the reservations that a theosophical student might have, there is no doubt that Johnson has done his research, has examined records and archives and followed up clues in H.P.B.’s handwriting. It must also be said that his handling of the information he has discovered is objective, and the conclusion he comes to as to the possible identities of the theosophical Masters, notably Morya and Koot Hoomi, is well justified.” Geoffrey Farthing, The Theosophical Journal, 1995

“It turns out that Blavatsky may really have known what she was talking about. Much of the information in her books is truly old occult teaching, known to a relatively few. Madame seems to have both had access to a few formerly secret works…and to have absorbed a great deal from personal contact with a number of people who had made a lifelong study of the occult. Although she was accused of being a Russian spy, this does not seem to have been true. This book is an interesting study of an aspect of a still-mysterious personality.” Gordon Stein, The American Rationalist, 1995

The Masters Revealed is a record of historical research with a flawed thesis that dooms it to frustration. Johnson has…not revealed HPB’s Masters. He has not touched the mystery.” John Algeo (President, Theosophical Society in America), Theosophical History, 1995

“Johnson is on the right track. He understands, as many of Blavatsky’s biographers have not, that her life and work contain an intricate web of fact and fiction, of sincere and profound spiritual understanding combined with a taste for chicanery and the more than occasional deception.” Richard Smoley, Parabola, 1995

“At last, the historical identities of Madame Blavatsky’s occult ‘Masters’ have been revealed…A scholarly work that will shape the future of skepticism of this mysterious ‘religion.'” The Skeptic, 1995

“Each account advances piecemeal a complex argument about Blavatsky’s career. Johnson admires her doctrines but denies her claims that they were dictated by a secret society of spiritual advanced ‘Masters.’ He argues that Blavatsky frequently lied about events while her ideas were her own synthesis of various European and Asian esoteric traditions. He further claims that Blavatsky was a political figure no less than a religious one, like other revolutionaries who worked from secret societies, such as Giuseppe Mazzini; above all, that her `Masters’ were real figures…involved in a secret struggle against British rule in India and Egypt.” John Ferris, Intelligence and National Security, 1995

“Consider, for example, what becomes of Madame Blavatsky in the hands of K. Paul Johnson, the best-informed but hardly the most reliable commentator on Theosophy. Though he acknowledges HPB’s light regard for the truth and reluctantly explodes several features of her legend, Johnson airily maintains that she ‘devot[ed] all her energies to the enlightenment and liberation of humanity.’ Her lies, he declares, were told with the most selfless of motives, to protect the identities of her politically active tutors in Egypt and India…such piety obscures both the cynical glee Blavatsky must have taken in perpetrating ruses and the obvious self-interestedness of her concocted ‘Mahatma letters.'” Frederick Crews, The New York Review of Books, 1996

[Initiates of Theosophical Masters] “provides useful information about the figures surrounding H.P. Blavatsky in her Indian years and about the parallels between Theosophy and other religious movements that introduced the religious teachings of Asia and the Middle East to the West…the comparisons between Theosophy and the movements, specifically Radhasoami, Baha’i, and the Fourth Way, will hopefully provide future researches with landmarks to aid them in their investigations.” Mike Ashcraft, Gnosis, 1997

“Readers familiar with New Testament scholarship will recognize Johnson’s strategy as a form of demythologization– a search for the ‘historical Masters.’ Strip away the mythical veneer from Blavatsky’s portraits of these adepts and examine carefully her connections with secret societies, political reform movements, religious reform organizations, and agencies of the British, French, and Russian governments. You will discover real human beings undergirding and inspiring Blavatsky’s invention of her Masters…While Blavatsky says these beings chose her. Johnson concludes that she chose them.” Stephen Prothero, Religious Studies Review, 1997

[Initiates of Theosophical Masters] “draws an evocative portrait of the occult revival since the end of the nineteenth century, including the Orient…and its intricate connections with the independence struggles of the time.” Bulletin d’Histoire des Religions, 1997

[Initiates of Theosophical Masters] “deserves to be read by all students of Blavatsky and of the history of religious ideas.” John Cooper, The High Country Theosophist/Theosophy in Australia, 1997

“By deconstructing Blavatsky’s life and work, Johnson has been able to decode her ‘Master mythos’ as referring not to ethereal spectres but to living religious, political, and esoteric figures. He proves (I think conclusively) from her work that these figures…were involved in political agitation in various forms (including the liberation of India from the British.) Cloaking their identities became a necessity. Blavatsky commandeered the earlier Freemasonic concept of Unknown Superiors or Secret Chiefs and used it as a gloss to cover the identities of her ‘comrades’ in revolution.” New Dawn, 1998

“In 1994, an American scholar, K. Paul Johnson, published a book, The Masters Revealed, which suggested that ‘the Masters’ were, in fact, a combination of numerous adepts and teachers whom Blavatsky had met in her travels in Asia and the Levant, and fictionalized personae based on living people whom Blavatsky was known to have associated with in India.” Mick Brown, The Spiritual Tourist, 1998

“K. Paul Johnson speculates that one of the chelas of the Mahatmas, one Chandra Cusho, is a fictionalization of Sarat Chandra Das, and that the Mahatma Ten-Dub Ughien is based on Ugyen Gyatso. Although it is possible that Madame Blavatsky’s obsession with Tashilunpo and its secret archives and with the Tashi Lama may have come from a reading of Bogle, it may also have been derived from the connection of Das and Ugyen Gyatso to the monastery and to the Sengchen Lama, from whom they received Tibetan texts that they brought back to Darjeeling.” Donald S. Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 1998

“In an intricate feat of deduction, K. Paul Johnson, a scholarly explorer of the esoteric tradition, maintains in The Masters Revealed (1994) that among the real life models for Madame Blavatsky’s Tibetan Masters were Das and his fellow pundit Ugyen Gyatso, along with their Tibetan patron, Losang Palden, the chief minister of the Panchen Lama…densely written, fascinating, and controversial.” Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, Tournament of Shadows, 1999

“The modern scholar K. Paul Johnson has connected them with Indian political and spiritual leaders Blavatsky was acquainted with; although questions remain even about Johnson’s thesis, it remains the most plausible one.” Richard Smoley and Jay Kinney, Hidden Wisdom, 1999

“Blavatsky claimed to have obtained her wisdom in hidden lamaseries in Tibet and Central Asia, where she had found secret texts like the (imaginary) Stanzas of Dzyan. She also relied on material channeled from great supernatural Masters, members of the Great White Brotherhood, a select club that included Jesus, the Buddha, Confucius, Mesmer, and Cagliostro, as well as real-life occultists she had consulted over the years…the living Masters, whom she had exalted into mythological supernatural beings.” Philip Jenkins, Mystics and Messiahs [citing KPJ], 2000

“K. Paul Johnson’s impressive biographical research shows that Blavatsky was more involved with the campaign for Indian independence than had been previously recognized…his original biographical hypothesis [is] that Blavatsky’s Masters were in large part real people whose character she exaggerated and whose true identity she concealed for political reasons. While not gainsaying this idea, which Johnson presents in startling and often compelling detail, it should be made clear that however much real ‘Masters’ may have figured in Blavatsky’s development, in her peculiar mental state they were reworked unconsciously into dream characters, whom she never met except in her mind’s eye.” Tim Maroney, The Book of Dzyan, 2000.

 

This is a truly beautiful book! In this case it can be judged by its cover but also by its contents. The first half provides a thorough but concise summary of the history of the Orphic hymns and interpretations of Orpheus from ancient Greece through the Roman Empire down to the present. The second half consists of translations of the hymns. These are the first two endorsements of the new book among seven quoted on the publisher’s website.

“Tamra and Ronnie have outdone themselves! This book is the most comprehensively intelligent and pleasurably accessible portrait of Orphic mythology now available. Their modern translations of the Orphic hymns yield fresh fruit from an ancient vine. The culmination of their historical and practical research yields a book that testifies to the 21st century: this music is magic, and the magic is real. Anyone interested in the intersections of music, myth, and magic will delight in this work.”

– Matt Marble, author of Buddhist Bubblegum

“This book is a marvel of pagan revivalism. Tamra Lucid and Ronnie Pontiac have created a symphonic and learned study of the Orphic mythos encompassing history and meaning; translation of key odes; and reconstructed practice. If you yearn for evidence that the old deities are with us today, look no further than The Magic of the Orphic Hymns.”

– Mitch Horowitz, PEN Award–winning author of Occult America and Uncertain Places

The first Orphic Fragment in the book is a Charm rather than a Hymn, written on gold leaf and used as an invocation to the gods:

Exploding from the Great Soul,

souls reel and writhe,

seeking each other in space.

From planet to planet we fall,

crying for home in the abyss,

we are your tears, Dionysus.

Mighty one! God of freedom!

Bring your children back into

your heart of singing light.

The great accomplishment of a book like this is the way it enables what I call “time travel.” Within my narrow range of expertise, late 19thc history, I admire all authors who can bring that period vividly back to life. But the ability to take us back in time not two centuries but more than two millennia requires a special gift. The editors’ introductory explanations share a deep understanding of historical context. The translations themselves bring the past magically back into the present.

These are all the natal charts in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons. All but a few are of individuals rather than organizations. The highlighted names have already been featured in blog posts, while the italicized names are subjects of posts scheduled for the future. There are many names of famous athletes, scientists, and international political leaders that we can presume were included for their fame and newsworthiness and not due to any connection to the Church of Light founders. Several are Church of Light leaders who were personally acquainted with Elbert.

Two of the next posts scheduled are Upton Sinclair, September 20, and Henry A. Wallace, October 7. Sinclair like Hiram Johnson was a famous political leader and California acquaintance of Elbert (or others in the Research Department) who got their chart data from them or their families. Wallace was a native Iowan allied with the same progressive political factions.

1. T.H. Burgoyne, Professor Nicholas Murray Butler, Tom Mooney, Dr. Charles D. Coryell, Sarah Stanley Grimke, Elbert Benjamine, Fred H. Skinner, Marchesse Gulielo Marconni, Marie Dressler, Anthony H.K. Fokker, Montgomery Clift, Gene Tunney, Bette Davis, Alice Faye.
2. Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Dionne Quintuplets, Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe, Count Zeppelin, Albert Einstein, O.O. McIntyre, Dr. Louis Pasteur, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Captain Hugo Eckener, David Belasco, Thomas A. Edison, Luther Burbank.
3. Ethel Barrymore, Evalyn Walsh McLean, Hedda Hopper, Ernie Pyle, Goodwin J. Knight, Harold E. Stassen, Eva Braun, Henry Agard Wallace, Tallulah Bankhead, Margaret Chase Smith.
4. Governor Frank Murphy, George Westinghouse, Albert Dyer, Daniel C. Roper, James Branch Cabell, Leopold Stokowski, John Henry Nash, Edgar Bergen. Hugo L. Black, Thomas E. Dewey, Lenora Conwell, Greta Garbo, W.H. Chaney, John Leslie Jackie Coogan, John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Jessie Woodson James, King of the Hobos (Jeff Davis), Major Edward Bowes, Arturo Toscanini, The Church of Light, The Brotherhood of Light Research Department.
5. William Dudley Pelley, Aimee Semple McPherson, Howard Jones, Hugh A. Robinson, Norma Shearer, Mars Baumgart, Judge Clarence H. Gilbert, Max Reinhart, Margre Gestring, John Steven McGroarty, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Astor, Nikola Tesa, Madame Shumann-Heunk, Henry M. Stanley, Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Dr. Charles Horace Mayo, Governor Eugene Talmadge, Ben Bernie, Edith Cavell, Emile Coue, Jack London, Nicola Lenin, Huey P. Long.
6. (Volume 9) Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Richard Loeb, Billy Sunday, Sainte Therese, Amelia Earhardt, William T. Grant, Clark Gable, Bulwer-Lytton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Donald Wills Douglas, Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe, J. Edgar Hoover, Walt Disney.
7. (Volume 14) Noel Coward, Walter Hampden, Dr. W.A. Christensen, Robert Emmett Sherwood, Beardsley Ruml, Ralph Waldo Trine, Edward Doane, Charles Fillmore, Josef Stalin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Eugene W. Iscailuz, Irvin S. Cobb, Norma Madsden, Gen. Eddie Rickenbacker, Faith Baldwin, Edgar Cayce, Maria M. Benjamine, Robinson Jeffers, Dr. Josph B. De Lee, Elbert Hubbard, Gerald P. Nye.
8. (Volume 17) Robert Anthony Eden, Joan Crawford, Speed Mad Youth, Janet Gaynor, John Nance Garner, Shirley Temple Black, Doris Chase Doane, H.S.D. Starnaman, W.M.A. Drake, Judy Garland, George R. Saunders, Margarita Silby, Adelaide E. Himadi, Enid Schultz, Vena S. Naughton, A.E. Charles.
9. (Volume 18) John A. Capone, Joel Kupperman, Lew Ayres, David Lee Norman, Margaret Campbell, Josephine Powell, Herman Wilhelm Goering, Dale H. Maple, Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII, Philippe Petain, Pierre Laval, FDR again, Harry S. Truman.
10. (Volume 19) Lawrence Leopold Weitz, Douglas Montero, Daniel Frohman, Samuel Harwick, Wendell Willkie, Pax Waller, Jack Doyle, King Vidor, Gaston B. Means, Hiram Johnson, Harry Bridges, Paul Bruns, Robert B. Story-Judd, Esther Williams.
11. (Volume 20) Elizabeth D. Benjamine, Start of Church of Light Crusade Meetings 1-5-41, Parent-Teachers Association, Yehudi Menuhin, Eva LeGalliene, Ethelbert Nevin, Culbert Olson, Mohandas Karachand Gandhi, Wiley Post, Louisa May Alcott, Earl Warren, Harry Houdini, Sylvan Muldoon, John Barrymore, Elaine Barrie Barrymore, Eleanora Duse, Edith Mary Corn, James Doolittle, Opening of New Church of Light Home.
12. (Volume 21) Vicki Draves, Alben W. Barkley, George C. Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John L. Lewis, Chiang Kai-Shek, Hirohito, Bismarck, Herbert Spencer, Maryln Taylor.

[Many more names of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries appear in the sections of the BOL Lessons on decanates, but without individual charts. Full charts of these individuals can be found on the CofL website.]

The California Museum website has an informative page on Johnson, who had been Theodore Roosevelt’s vice presidential candidate in 1912 when the Republicans nominated William Howard Taft and Roosevelt founded the “Bull Moose” Progressive Party to run against him.

This is a second verbatim extract from the 1997 article for The Neural Surfer that included material about Morya previously excerpted. I consider it illegitimate to go back and revise (as opposed to excerpt intact) something written 25 years ago but have a much changed perspective over the years. KPJ

There is more evidence supporting the identification of Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia (upper right photo) as a prototype of K.H. than there is concerning Ranbir Singh and Morya.  Summarizing that presented in The Masters Revealed:

In April 1878, HPB wrote an article entitled “The Akhund of Swat” which included a glowing encomium for Sikhism.  This referred to Sirdars, each of whom was chief of one of twelve misls.  She added that Sikh Sirdars had secret councils consisting of learned gurus, some of whom were “Masters in Spiritual Science…[who] exhibited astounding miracles.”

In Caves and Jungles HPB describes an acquaintance who is an Akali or temple functionary, an Amritsar native, named Ram-Ranjit-Das, who has a spiritual link to Gulab-Singh.

In Old Diary Leaves Olcott describes “one of the Masters” who meets him at the Amritsar Golden Temple where he is “figuring among the guardians.”

HPB, in a letter reproduced by Richard Hodgson in his report, wrote to Moolji Thackersey about a Sikh friend of the TS that Moolji had presumably described in a letter, commenting “You call him a Sirdar” and adding that “he is of Amritsar.”

She inquires about finding descendants of Ranjit Singh, and asks Moolji to recruit rajas and maharajas to the TS.  Thakar Singh was a Sirdar from Amritsar, a relative of Ranjit Singh, and an associate of several rajas and maharajas with TS links.

The first letter from K.H. to Sinnett dates from October 1880, the month in which the TS Founders visited Amritsar en route to the Durbar in Lahore.

An early K.H. letter was dated from “Amritas Saras” (the Golden Temple) and refers to `greasy’ Tibetans and Punjabi Singhs” as “our best, most learned and holiest adepts.”

The Sikh reform organization the Singh Sabha, founded in Amritsar by Thakar Singh and others, shared many objectives with the Arya Samaj of Swami Dayananda, and worked cooperatively with it.  Ranbir Singh also endorsed much of the Arya Samaj reform program, and was very supportive of the Singh Sabha.  HPB initially portrayed Dayananda as affiliated with M. and K.H., but changed her attitude later.

HPB’s The Durbar in Lahore includes detailed descriptions of Amritsar, the Golden Temple, and Sikhism, and describes a Lahore meeting with Ram-Ranjit-Das, who takes HPB and Olcott to the Maharaja of Faridkot.  This maharaja was a Singh Sabha member and strong supporter of Thakar Singh in later political plots.

The same work includes lengthy discussion of the deposed Maharaja Dalip Singh, in which HPB denounces his conversion to Christianity and shows great sympathy for his widowed mother. Thakar Singh was later instrumental in Dalip’s reconversion to Sikhism.

In November 1883, Olcott went to Lahore en route to Jammu, at the joint invitation of Ranbir Singh and K.H. according to HPB’s letter to Sinnett.  In Lahore he was visited in the flesh by K.H., accompanied by another Master, as were William T. Brown and Damodar Mavalankar according to the testimony of all three.

According to the January 1884 supplement to The Theosophist, Olcott, Damodar and Brown were transported to their quarters by conveyances provided by “Raja Harbans Singh and other Sirdars.”  These quarters were the site of the visit by K.H. described above.

At a reception welcoming the group to Lahore, they were greeted by Sirdar Dayal Singh Majithia of Amritsar and Bhai Gurmukh Singh, both important colleagues of Thakar Singh in the Singh Sabha, as well as a commissioner deputed by Maharaja Ranbir Singh.

Thakar Singh was the cousin of the deposed maharaja Dalip Singh, and in early 1883 decided to go to England to visit him on family business.  But as of November 9 he was still at home and writing to the lieutenant-governor of the Punjab attempting to get permission for the trip.  Sometime in the summer of 1884 he arrived in London, where Sinnett had relocated.

K.H., in a letter to Sinnett during the collapse of the Phoenix venture, sounded a note of patriotic desperation, saying he was “bound to devote the whole of my powers as far as the Chohan will permit me to help my country at this eleventh hour of her misery.”

Another letter from K.H. appealed to patriotic motives repeatedly, commenting that “In the presence of his country perishing in its nationality for want of vitality, and the infusion of fresh forces, the patriot catches at a straw.”

Within two years Thakar Singh embroiled his cousin Dalip in a patriotic scheme involving a plot to restore him to the throne with Russian and French support.  This was regarded as beginning the liberation of all India from British rule.

K.H. had referred to a “dark satire” in the phrase “jewel in the crown” and HPB had called British rule “that curse of every land it fastens itself upon”– in the very letter where she welcomed the friendship of the Sirdar and expressed hope of finding a descendant of Ranjit Singh.

In an April 1884 letter to Alexis Coulomb written in Paris, HPB said in reference to the Mahatmas that “there is one here now and there will be also in London.”  This was during the period when Thakar Singh was attempting to go to London.

Olcott received an unsigned letter saying that “unless you put your shoulder to the wheel yourself Kuthumi Lal Singh will have to disappear off the stage this fall.”  Later the same month of June 1883, two more Mahatma letters came to Olcott,recommending that he “put your whole soul in answer to A.P.S. [Sinnett] from K.H.” and that he “Be careful about letter to Sinnett.  Must be a really Adeptic letter.”  This coincides with the period when Thakar Singh decided to leave India.

In 1896 Olcott toured the Punjab again.  On their first evening in Lahore, he and his companion Lilian Edger dined at the home of Sirdar Amrao Singh, described as a “pillar of strength in our Lahore branch.”  Amrao Singh had been a conspirator in the plot to restore Dalip Singh to the throne, lending a servant for Thakar Singh’s use in delivering secret letters to various maharajas appealing for support.

On the same trip they were visited by Bhai Gurmukh Singh, who had become the greatest figure in the Singh Sabha movement, after beginning his career as a protege of Thakar Singh and his colleagues.

Dayal Singh Majithia, another Sirdar who welcomed Olcott, Brown, and Damodar to Lahore, was present at the TS convention for 1884 which led to the forming of the Indian National Congress.  Dayal Singh supported Thakar Singh’s anti-British schemes, although Gurmukh Singh opposed them.

As of September 1 I have a dozen natal charts from the BOL Lessons about historically identifiable individuals, and will devote the next year to discussing them. For literary pseudonyms lacking birth and death dates, any historian relying on such data is left hanging in mid-air– are these real people or not? For the year ahead I will discuss real people with confirmed dates and places of birth and death and ignore alleged, semi-fictional entities with no dates or places of birth, no parents, just magical Mahatmas we meet in dreams and visions but never interrogate about history.

In Search of Morya is excerpted from “Strain at a Gnat, Swallow a Camel,” published in 1997 in The Neural Surfer, on online journal edited by David Christopher Lane. Below is a 2023 reformatted condensation of the section on Ranbir Singh, Maharaja of Kashmir. (In recognition of editorial and authorial integrity, I have not gone back and revised anything excerpted from published works, just share relevant passages verbatim from the 1997 text.)

Caves and Jungles of Hindustan portrays an adept called “Gulab-Singh” as the chief sponsor and companion of the TS Founders in their Indian travels; he is the Rajput ruler of a small native state, called a Thakur in most references but a raja and prince in others.  In a letter to Prince Dondukov-Korsakov, HPB identifies Gulab-Singh as Morya.  Her tales of meeting him in London in her youth, which appear in Caves and Jungles and HPB Speaks, are variations on similar stories about Morya appearing elsewhere.  Ranbir Singh was the most important Rajput ruler who sponsored and supported the TS Founders in their travels and activities; his father was named Gulab Singh. In Old Diary Leaves Olcott describes Caves and Jungles as heavily fictionalized, but also describes Gulab-Singh as a real adept known to him and HPB.  He gives no indication that Gulab-Singh and Morya are the same person, unlike the HPB letter cited above. 

According to Isis Unveiled, HPB visited Ranbir Singh’s kingdom in her youthful travels, passing from Kashmir to Leh, Ladakh (part of his domain).  She calls Ladakh “central Tibet” which suggests that as of 1877 her familiarity with Tibet was quite limited.

In an entry in Olcott’s diary, HPB noted that Edward Wimbridge had brought her a copy of the London Illustrated News which contained “Holkar’s and Some One’s portrait, among others.”  The volume containing a portrait of Maharaja Holkar of Indore, a TS sponsor, also contains a portrait of Maharaja Ranbir Singh of Kashmir, among those of other native rulers. Ranbir Singh is the only one with major ties to the TS, which suggests that he was “Some One.”  HPB’s reverence and evasiveness indicate that she is referring to some important Master figure that she is reluctant to name in the diary.

HPB’s least-known book The Durbar in Lahore gives a lengthy, detailed description of Ranbir Singh and his entourage.  It portrays the main objective of her and Olcott’s trip to Lahore as meeting Ranbir and some Punjabi Sikhs including Maharaja Bikram Singh of Faridkot.

In the preface to Isis Unveiled HPB refers to “influential correspondents” in Kashmir and other places, indicating that there was some connection with important persons in that kingdom prior to her departure from New York for India.

In a letter from K.H. to Sinnett, Ranbir Singh is called “the prince first on the programme” for support of the Phoenix newspaper venture that was to be edited by Sinnett under the Masters’ guidance.

In May 1883, a supplement in The Theosophist described a visit to Jammu by supporters of the Indian Patriotic Association, who had an audience with Ranbir Singh and his sons.  Among them was “D. Nath Bawaji,” the alleged chela with multiple aliases; Ranbir Singh treated him with special hospitality and warmth.  After the death of Ranbir Singh, Bawaji (usually spelled Babaji) rebelled against HPB and disappeared from Theosophical history.

In a letter to Sinnett, HPB says that Ranbir Singh “sent for” Olcott to visit him in the Fall of 1883, and that K.H. ordered him to go to a certain pass.  Thus Olcott’s travel plans were being guided jointly by the orders of Ranbir Singh and K.H., according to HPB.

In his Old Diary Leaves description of his stay in Jammu, Olcott describes Ranbir in extremely favorable terms, as a “thoughtful Vedantin, well acquainted with philosophical systems” who “fully believed in the existence of living Mahatmas.”

Damodar Mavalankar, who had vanished from Ranbir Singh’s guest house and was gone for three days, returned reporting that he had left there with K.H. to go to an ashram of the Masters. He later identified this ashram as being “within His Highness’ Dominion.”

In an article written later, Damodar said that Ranbir Singh “not only believed in the existence of the HIMALAYAN MAHATMAS, but seemed sure of the fact from personal knowledge.”

Ranbir Singh was a chief financial sponsor of the Punjab University, which was deeply influenced by the Singh Sabha, an organization with ties to the TS Founders.  Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia, my nominee for K.H.’s primary prototype, was the founding President of the Singh Sabha.

Ranbir Singh was a profoundly religious ruler, a Hindu who was very supportive of scholarship in Buddhist and Islamic texts as well as those of his own faith, and a social reformer with ideals similar to those of Swami Dayananda Sarasvati’s Arya Samaj, with which the TS leaders were loosely allied at the time of the Lahore durbar.

 A summary paragraph in The Masters Revealed explains the crucial elements of the evidence presented thus far:

     There were two points in the history of the TS at which the Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi appeared as solid historical personages rather than elusive semi-ethereal beings.  At both of these points, the same triangular configuration is apparent:  the Founders of the TS, the Maharaja Ranbir Singh, and an Amritsar Sikh Sirdar are found working in collusion.  In October and November 1880, the Founders’ trip to the Punjab to meet these figures coincided with the beginning of the Mahatma correspondence.  In November 1883, Olcott’s trip to Lahore and Jammu again involved Punjabi Sikh Sirdars and the Maharaja of Kashmir.

August 30 is the birth date of Huey Pierce Long, the most controversial governor of his time, which accounts for his inclusion among the natal charts provided in the Brotherhood of Light lessons. I am currently reading the biography Kingfish by Richard D. White, described here by the publisher:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/189884/kingfish-by-richard-d-white-jr/

Long became part of Hollywood history when a thinly-veiled portrait of him as Willie Stark won multiple Oscars in 1950. This clip from All the King’s Men is the most memorable speech:

There are three categories of new evidence about individuals for whom the Brotherhood of Light books provide birth charts and biographical sketches. First are recent historical books and articles that share new information or perspectives; in Gandhi’s case Accidental Gods. Second are documents or images from genealogical sources about associations and family backgrounds. Third there are often documentary films or videos that shed new light on the subject. Here is a very recent documentary of interest to readers today.

How is Gandhi remembered in India 75 years after his death? | DW News – YouTube

The ever-shifting use of the terms “adept,” “Master” and “Mahatma” over 150 years requires a distinction between Olcott and Blavatsky.  He characterized as Mahatmas acquaintances from Egypt, Tibet, China, Siam, Hungary, and Cyprus, writing “During the three years when I was waiting to come to India, I had other visits from the Mahatmas, and they were not all Hindus or Cashmeris. I know some fifteen in all, and among them Copts, Tibetans, Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, a Hungarian, and a Cypriote.” This is an anachronistic falsification of history. In her letters to Franz Hartmann HPB protested that before coming to India she had spoken of adepts—not capitalized– a more inclusive category of associates than “Mahatmas.” She wrote: “I said to him that I had known adepts, `the brothers’ not only in India and beyond Ladakh, but in Egypt and Syria… The names of the Mahatmas were not even known at the time, since they were called so only in India.”

The Masters Revealed title characters include 15 nationalities and 21 ethnicities; in terms of 2023 borders, 12 from India, 4 from Russia, 2 each from Egypt, the US, and the UK, and 1 each from Hungary, Iran, Algeria, Poland, Malta, Cyprus, Italy, Spain, Tibet, and Sri Lanka. The Indian subdivision includes men of seven different ethnicities speaking as many languages, natives of Gujerat, Punjab, Kashmir, Mysore, Indore, Bengal, and Sikkim. Yet somehow the book has been repeatedly misrepresented as being entirely about two literary pseudonyms, Morya and Koot Hoomi, rather than 32 historical individuals– and strongly condemned on that basis. “The Mahatmas” has come in Theosophical circles to be synonymous with these two aliases instead of any historically documented people with birth and death dates.  Birth and death dates and biographical information “downgrade” them. But in wider popular culture “the Mahatma” came to be identified solely with one person, Mohandas Gandhi.  “The Masters” is even more problematic as it can refer to multiple competing sects promoting guru-worship. To avoid the confusion caused by all this, the term adepts is adopted here as consistently as possible. 

Anna Della Subin discusses the Theosophical Mahatmas at length, with Krishamurti as a human who was deified, but she devotes equal attention to Mahatma Gandhi in this award-winning book.

This 2022 book is the most enthralling example of “collective biography” of all I’ve found in recent years. I was cited in reference to the Theosophical deification of Krishnamurti, but for this blog more relevant is the Brotherhood of Light lessons about Mohandas Gandhi whose status as a “Mahatma” was a matter of public acclaim rather than mysterious claims. Will follow up from volume 20 of the BOL lessons.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250296870/accidentalgods