David N. Snyder wrote:
I'm not an expert on Theosophy like Nicholas (Will) but I have always respected and admired their work in propagating the Dhamma in Sri Lanka and Dhammic ideas in general to the West.
If someone falsely claims to receive instructions from an immortalized Tibetan master, while referring to
all Jews and Arabs as spiritually degenerate people, and claiming to understand Buddhism (or what Blavatsky called "bodhism") better than the Buddha himself, perhaps that's not the historical individual we'd want to promote Dhammic ideas to the West.
Not to mention the fact that, according to Madame Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, Satan is "the only god" of this planet:
It is “Satan who is the god of our planet and the only god,” and this without any allusive metaphor to its wickedness and depravity. For he is one with the Logos, “the first son, eldest of the gods,” in the order of microcosmic (divine) evolution; Saturn (Satan), astronomically, “is the seventh and last in the order of macrocosmic emanation, being the circumference of the kingdom of which Phoebus (the light of wisdom, also the Sun) is the centre.” The Gnostics were right, then, in calling the Jewish god “an angel of matter,” or he who breathed (conscious) life into Adam, and he whose planet was Saturn.
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd2-1-13.htm
Someone cannot be an expert on Theosophy while denying that Blavatsky claimed to receive instruction from an immortalized Tibetan master. It's one of the most well-known facts of her life among both her admirers and detractors.
Will wrote:
Firstly, HPB's main gurus were Hindus not Tibetans, secondly you know not whereof you speak.
"This state of hers is [H.P.B.'s]
intimately connected with her occult training in Tibet, and due to her being sent out alone into the world to gradually prepare the way for others. After nearly a century of fruitless search, our chiefs had to avail themselves of the only opportunity to send out a European body. . . . " The Mahatma Letters, 2nd edition, Letter 26. Italics added.
http://blavatskyarchives.com/latermessengers.htm
In 1870, HPB’s family – then living in Odessa, Ukraine, which was at that time spoken of as being part of Russia – had all but given up hope of ever hearing from her again. In the summer of 1868 she had been summoned to go to Tibet by the Master M. in order to receive indepth tuition and training from the Masters in preparation for her great mission as their Messenger to the world...
HPB didn’t explain the meaning of the various characters but Wesley Needham of the Tibetan collection at Yale University has done so, after analysing those drawn by both HPB and the German woman. The Tibetan letters in the top panel spelt the mantra “Om tram ah hri hum,” while the lower characters were the bija or seed syllable mantras connected with the five Dhyani Buddhas spoken of in Tibetan Buddhism. In her biography of HPB, Sylvia Cranston wrote, “Thus it is confirmed that an unlearned German woman could reproduce in Tibetan seed-syllables a sacred Buddhist mantra of which she had likely no previous knowledge. The catalyst for this remarkable feat and her accompanying visions was, as we have seen,
an occult letter reputed to be from one of HPB’s teachers in Tibet.”
https://blavatskytheosophy.com/the-mast ... blavatsky/
I don't mean to be rude or disrespectful, and I'm sorry for giving that impression. I wouldn't be able to readily recite facts about her life and writings, like I am now, unless I was once a follower of Madame Blavatsky's.
For over a year, I belonged to a church that regarded her as a foundational spiritual authority:
The Fillmores became familiar with the efforts of Helena Pertrovna Blavatsky
(1831-1891) and the Theosophists. Blavatskyʼs life reads like a work of fiction. Born to
an aristocratic Russian family she exhibited psychic abilities, traveled throughout the
world and introduced many Eastern religious concepts to America from her office in
New York City. Before the Fillmores began publishing their own books, they were
selling ten Theosophical related books including Blavatskyʼs Isis Unveiled.
13 Two of the
Buddhist related books they sold were published by the Theosophical Society: A
Buddhist Catechism by Henry Steel Ollcot and Esoteric Buddhism by A.P. Sinnett...
Myrtle Fillmore first experimented with mystic practice beginning in 1886 and led
the way for others. The personal experiences of this once ailing housewife and her
entrepreneurial husband were essential, but their mentors and the writings of Emerson
and Blavatsky served as a cornerstone for the Fillmoreʼs path into mysticism.
http://av.unityonline.org/institute/2011Lyceum/Page.pdf