Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
H.P. Blavatsky The Light-Bringer
By GEOFFREY A. BARBORKA
Messengers Of The Brotherhood
EVIDENCE that emissaries from the occult Brotherhood had been sent to the western world prior to H. P. Blavatsky's coming is contained in a letter from Mahatma K. H. to A. P. Sinnett, who placed a note on it saying that it was received at Umballa on the way to Simla on August 5, 1881. In the opening sentence of the passage quoted the Mahatma comments on a book by Eliphas Levi entitled High Magic, because Sinnett had mentioned this work in his letter to the Mahatma :
No wonder you find it cloudy, for it was never meant for the uninitiated reader. Eliphas studied from the Rosicrucian MSS. (now reduced to three copies in Europe). These expound our eastern doctrines from the teachings of Rosencruez, who, upon his return from Asia dressed them up in a semi-Christian garb intended as a shield for his pupils, against clerical revenge. One must have the key to it and that key is a science per se. Rosencruez taught orally. Saint Germain recorded the good doctrines in figures and his only cyphered MS. remained with his staunch friend and patron the benevolent German Prince from whose house and in whose presence he made his last exit—Home.
In order to show the status that H. P. Blavatsky had attained in becoming the messenger of the great Brotherhood, some passages on the requirements which candidates must fulfil are apposite.
When we take candidates for chelas, they take the vow of secrecy and silence respecting every order they may receive. One has to prove himself fit for chelaship, before he can find out whether he is fit for adepts hip. J Once we are upon the topic, I wish you would impress upon your London friends some wholesome truths that they are but too apt to forget, even, when they have been told of them over and over again. The Occult Science is not one in which secrets can be communicated of a sudden, by a written or even verbal communication. If so, all the 'Brothers' should have to do, would be to publish a Hand-book of the art which might be taught in schools as grammar is. It is the common mistake of people that we willingly wrap ourselves and our powers in mystery—that we wish to keep our knowledge to ourselves, and of our own will refuse—'wantonly and deliberately' to communicate it. The truth is that till the neophyte attains to the condition necessary for that degree of Illumination to which, and for which, he is entitled and fitted, most if not all of the Secrets are incommunicable. The receptivity must be equal to the desire to instruct. The illumination must come from within. Till then no hocus pocus of incantations, or mummery of appliances, no metaphysical lectures or discussions, no self-imposed penance can give it. All these are but means to an end, and all we can do is direct the use of such means as have been empirically found by the experience of ages to conduce to the required object. And this was and has been no sec ret for thousands of years. Fasting, meditation, chastity of thought, word, and deed; silence for certain periods of time to enable nature herself to speak to him who comes to her for information; government of the animal passions and impulses ; utter unselfishness of intention, the use of certain incense and fumigations for physiological purposes, have been published as the means since the days of Plato and Iamblichus in the West, and since the far earlier times of our Indian Rishis. How these must be complied with to suit each individual temperament is of course a matter for his own experiment and the watchful care of his tutor or Guru.
Every human being contains within himself vast potentialities, and it is the duty of the adepts to surround the would-be chela with circumstances which shall enable him to take the 'righthand path,'—if he have the ability in him. We are no more at liberty to withhold the chance from a postulant than we are to guide and direct him into the proper course. At best, we can only show him after his probation period was successfully terminated—that if he does this he will go right; if the other, wrong. But until he has passed that period, we leave him to fight out his battles as best he may; and have to do so occasionally with higher and initiated chelas such as H.P.B., once they are allowed to work in the world...It was not a meaningless phrase of the Tathagata that 'he who masters Self is greater than he who conquers thousands in battle' : there is no such other difficult struggle.
To show you how exact a science is occultism, let me tell you that the means we avail ourselves of, are all laid down for us in a code as old as humanity to the minutest detail, but every one of us has to begin from the beginning, not from the end. Our laws are as immutable as those of Nature, and they were known to man and eternity before this strutting game cock, modern science, was hatched.. .we build our philosophy upon experiment and deduction.
