by Marion Meade
More common today is a second type of sensitive, the “clairvoyant medium,” who claims to psychically see, hear and sense unseen presences while in her normal state of consciousness.
From a distance of one hundred years, the evidence for H.P.B.’s psi faculty for physical phenomena appears to be extremely shaky and in some instances completely non-existent. For that matter, much of the evidence points to fraud. On at least two occasions she seems to have hired individuals to impersonate her Mahatmic entities. The most that can be said for her in these instances is that if she was not cheating, she had the bad luck to look as though she were.
On the other hand, I do not believe there can be much doubt that she was a genuine sensitive. Members of her family attested to the fact that since early childhood she claimed to see and hear invisible entities, and later as an adult H.P.B. herself supplied detailed accounts of hypnotic states in which other personalities seemed to be colonizing her body. Apparently it was not until her forties that she began attaching names to these unseen personages, whom she called Masters or Mahatmas, feeling that they were supplying her with information. Unlike other sensitives, she rejected the idea that they might be spirits of the dead, nor would she have accepted the more recent theory that they might be secondary personalities of hers. Developing her own interpretation of these experiences, she preferred to believe that the communicating entities were living men who had chosen her as a channel through which they could feed messages to the world. She believed that they spoke to her telepathically or visited her in their astral and physical bodies. Theoretically, it is possible that she was tapping some cosmic reservoir of memories or tuning into the minds and/or memories of living persons, but whether these people were, as she thought, supermen living in Tibet or simply symbolic forms of dramatization is an unanswerable question.
In psychical research, the principal test for mediumistic data is whether or not it can be verified. Is the knowledge being presented available in the sensitive’s own memory or the memory of some other persons, or can it be found in publications, extant documents or objects? In the case of H.P.B., virtually all her data was available in Eastern scripture or from occult writings. Even though she synthesized the material in a fresh, provocative way, the fact remains that it predated her psychic experience. At the same time, it should be kept in mind that, while she was not a formal scholar, she did happen to be a voracious reader with a remarkably retentive memory. Analyses of her two major works, supposedly written with the aid of her Mahatmas, reveal nothing that was not already known—there are no unexpected discoveries, no startling revelations, and in fact the data could be found in books readily available to anyone willing to take the time and effort to seek it.
In spite of the fact that the first full-scale investigation conducted by the Society for Psychical Research was an inquiry into Theosophical phenomena, Madame Blavatsky’s psi faculties were never tested. It is unclear whether the S.P.R. ever requested her to undergo testing, but it appears that they did not. If they had suggested the idea, she would not have cooperated because she refused to submit to even the simplest test when repeatedly urged to do so by some of her followers. The fact that her phenomena occurred spontaneously and unexpectedly lends some validity to the charge that they were consciously prearranged to achieve certain effects. Without exception, the psychical researchers of the past century have given H.P.B. short shrift, either ignoring her completely or dismissing her as did Frederic Myers when he called her an imposter, or William James, who in personal letters rather uncomplimentarily termed her a “jade.”
On balance, there is Madame Blavatsky’s own word for the genuineness of her psi feats, and the testimony of many individuals who swore they had witnessed them, opposed by the conclusions of the Society for Psychical Research, which investigated the Theosophical Society but did not test H.P.B. (nor did its investigator personally witness a single phenomenon of hers). My own guess is that unusually strong hypnotic powers may account for some of her phenomena, that she did indeed possess genuine psi powers to a degree but they fell far short of the miraculous productions with which some have credited her.
APPENDIX B:
The Mahatma Papers
The question arises as to just how Alfred Sinnett, and later others, managed to carry on a correspondence with individuals they had never seen and whose precise whereabouts remained unknown. Supposedly the letters from Koot Hoomi and Morya were not written by hand, in fact were not written at all, but were produced by a paranormal process called “precipitation.” It is interesting to note that Sinnett failed to notice anything unusual about them until K.H. pointed out, “Bear in mind that these my letters are not written but impressed or precipitated, and then mistakes corrected”; and then of course Sinnett asked how this particular process worked. K.H.’s explanation did not provide a great deal of enlightenment:
I have to think it over, to photograph every word and sentence carefully in my brain, before it can be repeated by “precipitation.” As the fixing on chemically prepared surfaces of the images formed by the camera requires a previous arrangement within the focus of the object to be represented, for otherwise—as often found in bad photographs—the legs of the sitter might appear out of all proportion with the head, and so on; so we have to arrange our sentences, and impress every letter to appear on paper, in our minds before it becomes fit to be read. For the present, that is all I can tell you. When science will have learned more about the mystery of the lithophyl (or lithobiblion) and how the impress of leaves comes originally to take place on stones, then I will be able to make you better understand the process. But you must know and remember one thing: we but follow and servilely copy nature in her works...
Presumably K.H. was describing telepathy; nevertheless, the fact remains that his messages did materialize as letters, and someone would have had to pick the words from his mind and transfer them to paper. These amanuenses, who served as psychic centers for the transmission of letters through space, were, K.H. explained, agents of the Brotherhood (chelas), of whom H.P.B. was one. According to Koot Hoomi, “Very often our letters—unless something important and secret—are written in our handwritings by our chelas.” The messages would then be delivered to their destinations paranormally, as when an envelope dropped on someone’s head or was found in the Adyar shrine. Or, as often happened, they would arrive by regular post.
So much for messages from the Mahatmas; it was also necessary for chelas to send letters to them. The general procedure was described as follows: Sinnett would write his letters by hand, place them in envelopes and either give or mail them to Madame Blavatsky, who would forward them to Tibet. One method of transmission, she said, was “to put the envelope sealed on my forehead; and then, warning the Master to be ready for the communication, have the contents reflected by my brain carried off to His perception by the current formed by Him.’’’ In an alternate process, she supposedly unsealed the letter,
read it physically with my eyes, without understanding even the words, and that which my eyes see is carried off to the Master’s perception and reflected in it in His own language, after which to be sure no mistake is made, I have to burn the letter with a stone I have (matches and common fire would never do), and the ashes caught by the current become more minute than atoms would be, and are rematerialized at any distance where the Masters may be.
Theosophical writers who have undertaken the unenviable task of making sense of the Mahatmas’ methods of composition argue that the letters were not written with ordinary pen and ink: the calligraphy is actually imbedded in the paper. To non-Theosophists who have examined that portion of the correspondence in the British Library, there is not the least sign of mystery about them; they do not appear to differ from any collection of letters written a century ago. The instruments used were steel pens, red and blue pencils, and various color inks, mainly black and red, but also brown and yellow. The paper used in the early letters was glossy rice paper, commonly available in India
, and later a variety of stationery in pink, yellow and blue tints.
One curious aspect of the letters is that the calligraphy varies greatly. Although much publicity was given to “the familiar K.H. hand,” in truth there was no standard Koot Hoomi script. For example, in the first letter he sent to Sinnett, there were three different scripts within the text and a fourth for the signature. The first letter from Master Morya also contains several different kinds of calligraphy. For a while both K.H. and M. developed a more or less recognizable script, although in 1886 William Hubbe-Schleiden received a letter from Koot Hoomi in a totally different hand from any of his previous communications. Theosophists account for this by explaining that many chelas were employed to actually pen the messages. In addition to the several handwritings of K.H. and M., it should be remembered that there were other Masters who corresponded: Serapis Bey, Tuitit Bey, Hilarion, Djual Khool, and “the old Gentleman.”
Superficially, none of these Mahatmic scripts seem to resemble each other, or for that matter, Madame Blavatsky’s handwriting. During her lifetime two professional handwriting experts compared Mahatma letters with her admitted letters. Richard Hodgson submitted several samples to F. G. Netherclift of the British Museum who first decided they could not have been written by Madame Blavatsky, but after being given some earlier Mahatma letters changed his mind and finally concluded that the entire bundle was her work. Two years later, suspicious Theosophists submitted specimens of Mahatmic writing to Ernst Schutze, calligraphist to the German emperor, who reported they could not have been produced by H.P.B.
Since no satisfactory conclusion can be reached on the basis of either expert’s testimony, it is necessary to look elsewhere for answers. That H.P.B. was capable of writing in a variety of scripts is known from Henry Olcott’s recollections that the manuscript of Isis Unveiled contained “three or four” calligraphies, very often two of them on one page.
Moreover, it is also a fact that she was able to reproduce the handwritings of other people, apparently quite successfully:
1. At Simla, on October 3,1880, the day of the cup and saucer phenomenon, a judge received a membership diploma bearing Henry Olcott’s signature, along with a letter in Henry’s handwriting, neither of which Olcott had written.
2. In August, 1883, while H.P.B. was vacationing at Ootacamund, Forster Webster, a secretary to the British government, received a letter written in handwriting that he swore was his own.
3. On October 24, 1885, in a letter to Sinnett from Wurzburg, H.P.B. penned a bit of doggerel in what she claimed was Richard Hodgson’s handwriting: “In India I was a fool—in the West I have become a donkey. Theosophy alone is true—and S.P.R. is an old monkey.” If she wanted to, she told Sinnett, she could forge a letter that would so closely resemble Hodgson’s script that an expert could not detect the truth.
Putting together everything that is known of H.P.B.’s life, it would be illogical to assume that she did not write the letters from the various Masters.
APPENDIX C:
Parallel Cases
Catherine Elise Muller (“Helene Smith”) was an unmarried woman who held a responsible job with a Geneva business firm. In 1891, after becoming interested in Spiritualism, she joined a séance circle where her mediumistic talent quickly surfaced and while in trance she unfolded memories of three previous incarnations. Claiming to have once been Marie Antoinette, she wrote in what she said was the queen’s handwriting. To be sure, the script was different from her own, but it was later determined that it was not Marie Antoinette’s either. Going back to the fifteenth century when she had been the Arab wife of a South Indian prince, Catherine was able to write rudimentary, ungrammatical fragments of Sanskrit and also showed considerable familiarity with the history of that period. Finally, as a former inhabitant of Mars, she described the planet’s flora, fauna and intelligent beings, and wrote what she claimed was the Martian language. It was subsequently determined that her “Martian” was mainly derived from French.
Many features of the “Helene Smith” case, as studied by Swiss psychologist Theodore Flournoy, seem to parallel Madame Blavatsky’s: Catherine’s mediumistic trances, her sense of actually becoming her control “Leopold,” whom she said penetrated her body, the changes in handwriting while she was in trance, her various mixed states of consciousness. Flournoy, distrusting a single formula for describing mediumistic states, rejected the theory of multiple personality in Catherine’s case and instead suggested an interplay of factors in which telepathy worked in alliance with cryptomnesia (hidden and disguised memories). Environment, he believed, was one of the keys to Catherine, who from her earliest years had felt superior to her surroundings. Flournoy explained her visions as escapes from, and compensation for, her commonplace daily life.
In 1913, Pearl Lenore Curran, a thirty-one-year-old St. Louis housewife, suddenly began to “bring through” on the Ouija Board the spirit of “Patience Worth,” who claimed to have lived in the seventeenth century. Through Mrs. Curran, “Patience” produced remarkable poems, novels, and parables and could switch at will from a style ninety percent Anglo-Saxon to one as modern as Jane Eyre; she also possessed extensive historical and Biblical knowledge, particularly of Palestine and Rome, that would have taken years of study to acquire. “Patience” seemed to be a genius, but Pearl Curran was neither scholar nor writer, not even much of a reader. More significantly, she was not a medium.
According to psychologist Walter Franklin Prince, who spent ten months studying Mrs. Curran, she was an intelligent, vivacious woman who had never manifested any talent for literature, philology, history or deep philosophical thinking prior to the emergence of “Patience Worth.” Neither did she possess an extraordinary memory, so that he was forced to rule out the possibility of her having spent years in libraries indulging a passion for antiquities and philology before the accumulated knowledge suddenly burst forth when she was thirty-one. Because she failed to display the common symptoms of hysteria, such as childhood illnesses, somnambulism, nervousness, sensory hallucinations, Prince rejected the theory that a self-conscious secondary personality with “Patience’s” knowledge and aptitudes had formed within Mrs. Curran’s conscious mind.
Dr. Prince concluded: “Either our concept of what we call the subconscious must be radically altered, so as to include potencies of which we hitherto have had no knowledge, or else some cause operating through but not originating in the subconscious of Mrs. Curran must be acknowledged.” The “Patience Worth” case remains as puzzling today as when Dr. Prince studied it in 1927.
Alice Bailey was born into an upper-class English family in 1880; her mother died when she was six, her father two years later, and she was raised by her grandparents. An ill-adjusted and headstrong child whose heroine was Joan of Arc, she suffered a miserable adolescence (“nobody loved me and I knew I had a hateful disposition”). One Sunday morning when she was fifteen and sitting alone in the drawing room reading, the door opened and in walked a tall man wearing European clothes and a turban. He told her that if she could achieve self-control, he had an important work for her to do someday. In 1918, then living in Southern California, Alice joined the Theosophical Society and was admitted into the Esoteric Section. The first time she entered the Shrine Room at the Krotona center in Hollywood, she saw a portrait of her visitor and was told that he was Master Koot Hoomi. The following year, sitting on a hill near her home, she was startled to hear a strain of music, then a voice saying, “There are some books which it is desired should be written for the public. You can write them. Will you do so?” Alice called this entity “The Tibetan” (subsequently identified as Master Djual Khool).
As a result of her thirty-year collaboration with Djual Khool, Alice Bailey received clairaudiently, and later telepathically, a virtual library of metaphysical and spiritualistic writings. She insisted that she did not do automatic writing, which she believed dangerous. Rather, “I simply listen and take down the words that I hear and register the thoughts which
are dropped one by one into my brain.” She rejected, too, the idea that the writings came from her subconscious and when she learned that Carl Jung took the position that “The Tibetan” was her personified higher self and Alice the lower self, she replied: “Some of these days (if I ever have the pleasure of meeting him) I will ask him how my personified higher self can send me parcels all the way from India, for that is what He has done.”
Alice Bailey did not long remain a Theosophist; in 1923 she established her own organization, the Arcane School.
NOTES AND SOURCES
Documentation is supplied for all quotations and for items that might be considered debatable or controversial. Otherwise, I have given references only when they seem important or useful to the reader, who may wish to further pursue the life of Madame Blavatsky.
CW = Collected Writings
HPBSP = H.P.B. Speaks
INC = Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky
