"There is a tide in the affairs of men/Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune", Brutus hammers home to Cassius, this argument, in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. The Tipping Point is the name of such a "tide...taken at the flood" . It is defined as "the culmination of the build-up of small changes that effects a big change". It comes in everybody's life, sometimes more than once, though not everyone takes notice of it. But if one remains sensitive to it, one can translate its forebodings to one's advantage. It is like a bend in the road that commands the view on both sides. A man positioned at the bend can see clearly both, the road traversed and the road ahead. In this article I will be telling about some telling Tipping Points in the life of a remarkable torch bearer who electrified the lives of those who came in her contact. Nevertheless, the pageant passes through my own gate!
"You have come to the right man at the right time", Dr. M. Sengupta apprised me in a scintillating voice, after examining my eyes. The year was 1954 and the place was his Consultation Chamber at Chowringhee in Calcutta. Dr. Sengupta was an ophthalmologist with the Eye Infirmary of the Calcutta Medical College. "You have come not a day too soon", the enthused doctor continued, "we received the Beta Ray Applicator only a couple of days back... the first of its kind in India. And you will be my first patient !". I had infected an allergic condition of the eyes, medically classified as vernal conjunctivitis, that visits a patient every spring. It is therefore popularly known as spring catarrh. My condition was serious as my conjunctivae had vascularized intensely. I was advised to see him the next day at the Infirmary where I was to receive a 10-20 second exposure of beta rays to my eyes, twice every week.
It was perhaps on my ninth or tenth appointment with him that he asked me to see him in his Chamber, that evening. When I reached there in the evening I found that he had no visitor other than me. This looked unusual as I had not the flimsiest hookup with him. Out of the blue he asked me how I was inspired by Annie Besant. I then recalled I had made a casual mention in the morning how Annie Besant had been advised to go back to England after a similar eye infection. Presently, I told him that I considered Annie Besant a virtual think factory. She was a freethinker. When her husband, a clergyman, demanded that she should accept church dogmas or leave him, she chose to leave him. How can anybody endowed with the faculty of clear and independent thinking succumb to such an uncalled-for highhandedness? She was a Fabian socialist and a matchless speaker. GB Shaw acclaimed her as the greatest orator of the century.
The amused doctor interrupted me. And asked: "But do you know that she was first of all a theosophist"? Till then I didn't have the foggiest idea of who a theosophist was, but the learned doctor's interruption seemed to suggest that my recountal of facts stood feebly before it. He then introduced me to theosophy and to its founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, popularly addressed as HPB. I was to learn later on that she was a noblewoman of Czarist Russia who ferreted out the buried past of India and put it on a pedestal for everyone to see and seek inspiration from, at a time when Britannia ruled the waves and India was at its lowest ebb. She upbraided Indians for fawning over their white masters instead of having recourse to their own unequivocal spiritual inheritance. To start with, the good samaritan gave me a copy of HPB Speaks which I still treasure. Thanks to the doctor my romance with theosophy continues unabatedly well into my ripening age.
HPB was born with certain psychic powers. I have no hesitation in calling her what Sri Krishna characterizes as a yogbhrisht, that is, some one born to finish one's previously unfinished yogic innings. She could see a presence where it was an empty space for others. All nature was animated for her. She could hear voices that were totally inaudible to others. Before she would turn fifteen, she had read the whole library of her nani which she had inherited from her father, Prince Paul Vassilyevich. A gifted girl, she rode a half-broken horse as facilely as she played her piano. Fearless to the core, she was witty, unswerving, and dazzling. The Tipping Point came to her when she was seventeen. Her governess was so helpless before her that one day she gave way to her spleen. Citing her wilfulness, she taunted her that she would never find a husband for herself .
And that not even that old governor of Erivan, Nikifor Blavatsky, whom Helena chided as a "plumeless raven", would take her for a wife. Helena took up the gauntlet. And before the year was out, she a Hahn, had become a Blavatsky! On the very first day she spurned Nikifor reminding him that he was her grandfather's age. Nikifor cordoned her off with a posse of Kurd horsemen, lest she should escape. But escape she did in less than a month's time. On horseback and camelback, through wilds and ravines, deserts and creeks, this juggernaut of courage finally surfaced in Constantinople, nowadays called Istanbul. Her escape itself would provide enough grist for a thriller. She would reiterate later on that she was never for once "Wife Blavatsky". She heaved a sigh of relief on her arrival on this foreign land. Though she was moneyless and friendless, she felt she was now free, free to search the unknown, who she had been seeing in her visions since childhood and who had been protecting her all through
Let me make it clear here that visions come only to those who have an awakened kundalini. Others see only dreams. It is a misnomer to consider dreams analogous to sleep only. Dreaming goes on nonstop. Just as the stars are not visible during the day, though they are there, dreams are not felt when we are out of the bed, though they never leave us. Howsoever awake we may appear to be, we are always dreaming. Gurdjieff expressed it blandly in his oft quoted remark: man is asleep. Dreams drain us because they are just trains of thoughts. Visions vitalize us because they are impulses of light. Helena didn't dream. She was a visionary but she was clueless about her mission. Help came to her in the form of an acquaintance, a Russian Countess, Kisselev by name. Kisselev gave her company in her travels through Turkey, Egypt and Greece while becoming a conduit for roubles from her father Col. Peter Von Hahn. Back home no one knew about her whereabouts except her dear father.
In 1851 she found herself in London. And then came her second Tipping Point. She met with the Master of her visions in Hyde Park, London! You can imagine her overwhelming awe at standing face to face with the form of her visions, in flesh and blood! She gives his name as Mahatma Morya or M. He was a very tall and majestically built Hindoo Kshatriya with a flowing beard. In her booklet From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan, she calls him Thakore Goulab Singh and herself Radda(Radha?) Bai. He told her to prepare herself for the work he wanted her to do. She was then to see him in Tibet to get initiated into the lore of Ancient Wisdom. However, she could make it to Tibet quite late, in 1855, as the country remained impervious to foreign intrusion for a long time. On reaching Tibet Helena was so struck by the pristine beauty and serenity of her abode that she exclaimed she would rather live in a cave in Tibet than live in any modernized city of the world.
For miles and miles stretched an unbroken stillness amid undulating peaks and valleys of the Karakoram ranges so that meditation happened spontaneously. There, for three years, under the guidance of Mahatma M, she poured assiduously over oblong tablets of cryptic texts, written in Senzar, a pre-Sanskrit language. She was now ready to go into the world and work on herself without the supervision of her guru. She returned to Russia in 1858, after a gap of ten years. Nikifor had by then resigned to his fate and did not trouble her anymore. She stayed for a short while at Pskov with her sister Vera and then went into the Caucasus mountains to experiment on her psychic powers. From there she emerged in 1865, and traveled extensively through the Balkans, Egypt, Syria, Greece and some other European countries. In 1868, she again went to Tibet to see another Hindoo Master, Mahatma Koot Hoomi or KH, of course at the behest of her guru.
Somewhere in her writings she addresses KH as Thakore Lal Singh. He was a friend of Mahatma M and a Kshatriya like him. Come to think of it, was it a coincidence that both the Masters were Kshatriyas? Then how do we explain the fact that the 24 tirthankars of Jainism, from Rishabhdev to Mahavira, were also Kshatriyas? And so was Gautam Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, a Kshatriya. And so were Sri Rama and Sri Krishna, the two Titans of Hindu pantheon, Kshatriyas. And so was Padmasambhava who was invited by the Tibetan King Trisong Detsen to establish Buddhism there. And so was Bodhidharma, who had been invited by the Chinese Emperor Wu. Is it not baffling? It looks as if the Kshatriyas had been assigned the onerous task of upholding dharma.
Though it would mean a little diversion let us first try to understand who do we mean by a Kshatriya.There is a Sanskrit saying: kshetragyah sah kshatriyah, that is to say, one who is a kshetragya is a kshatriya. Sri Krishna defines kshetragya(Gita:xiii:1,2) as the knower of kshetra, that is, the knower of this body. So etymologically speaking, a Kshatriya is one who knows this body. Now only a Yogi is capable of knowing the body inside out. So Kshatriyas were, as a rule, yogis. If the reverse is also true, then yogis must be Kshatriyas. In that sense HPB was no less a Kshatriya than any other Kshatriya. Sri Krishna's most lovable Kshatriya was Arjun. Sri Krishna addresses him by his five attributes in the Gita. They are: Arjun(uncrooked), Parantap(austere), Gudakesh(conqueror of sleep), Dhananjaya(worriless about money), and Savyasaachi(ambidextrous). Helena was endowed with all the five attributes. She wrote with both hands.
Anybody having these qualities can claim to be a Kshatriya. Helena stayed with Mahatma KH for two years and engaged herself in the most advanced esoteric practices. With her intense and prolonged austerities she had by then attained a critical mass of esoteric wisdom. She was now ready to become a footsoldier of her gurus. In 1870, she set out on a tour of Cyprus, Egypt, the Middle East, Russia, and France. Finally she landed in New York City on July 7, 1873. Her task was to challenge orthodoxy, be it of religion or of science. Orthodoxy is deadweight, a rutted mechanism in which one runs just to get a hang of it, indulges in religion for it is there, and earns money for the sake of money. It is a canker that eats into the soul of man and therefore orthodox religion turns into a set of empty rituals. Physical science in the absence of the inner science becomes crass commerce without any morality.
Helena had predicted 125 years ago, that European science will boomrang upon itself in the form of consumer industrialization and militarization which will annihilate humanity and Nature on this earth, because it had no link with its soul. Gandhi called modern science amoral because there was violence in its heart. He abhorred vivisection which inflicted pain on lower forms of life in the name of experimentation. May I remind you that the second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki was also a part of an experiment. On September 7, 1875, she founded The Theosophical Society in New York with the express purpose of creating a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity which did not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, sex, caste or color. Its main task was to investigate the yet unexplained laws of Nature as also the powers that lie latent in every man. Col. Henry Steel Olcott, a veteran of the Civil War became its first President.
It is so unfortunate that man is oblivious of his own worth. When we look outward, the involvement of the other becomes inevitable and therefore a clash becomes an inevitability. But when we look inward, there is nobody to pick a quarrel with. There is no frittering of energy. The pool of energy builds up steadily till one day it becomes critical. It is then that kundalini rises up and one becomes qualified to understand one's worth. People with a sparking plug in them become an easy vehicle for this transformation in the company of an adept like HPB. HPB who had been a disciple till then, had now attained the necessary right to become a mentor. She published her first book Isis Unveiled in 1877. It is a voluminous book of 1300 pages but its first edition was sold like hot cakes in no time. In it she challenges the dogmas of Christian theology and the fallacies of orthdox science in the backdrop of the ancient inner science.
She had arrived. Thousands of people sought membership of The Theosophical Society. Its branches sprang up in all the places she had toured earlier.The Mahatmas had told her that her real work lay in India. They had been preparing her for this all through. Now the time had arrived. When she landed in Bombay in February 1879, along with Col. Olcott, a better reception than would be accorded to Prince Of Wales, awaited them. There were 50,000 people to greet them on the quay. She established the Theosophical Headquarters in the city of her landing and started The Theosophist journal in October the same year, with herself as Editor. It produced an electrifying effect. Eminent persons in India and abroad became attracted to theosophy. Allan O Hume, Lt. Governer, sent in his resignation to the Viceroy saying he would rather serve Blavatsky than the Queen-Empress. He was to become later on the founder of the Indian National Congress.
AP Sinnett, the Editor of The Pioneer, known as the mouthpiece of the government, became so enamoured of the Mahatmas, he begged Helena's indulgence to seek correspondence with them. Earlier, the same Sinnett had branded Indians, negroes. Blavatsky was a great leveler. In five years time that she stayed in India, about 125 centers of The Theosophical Society sprang up. People from all communities, castes, and social statuses, joined them. People took pride in calling themselves theosophists. She was bringing everybody under one banner, thus facilitating Gandhi's work of mobilizing people for a common cause. Gandhi would become a theosophist in 1891, when he was studying for law in England. In fact it was two of Blavatsky's British disciples who first of all introduced Gandhi to Gita! It was his brush with theosophy that rooted out the misinformations about Hindu religion, spread by Christian missionaries.
Nehru was introduced to theosophy at the age of eleven by Ferdinand Brooks, his English tutor. He became so fascinated with it that he joined The Theosophical Society at the age of thirteen and it was Annie Besant who presided over the ceremony of his initiation. It was theosophy that raised the esteem of Hindu religion(minus its mumbo jumbo) in Nehru's eyes. Blavatsky was preparing the ground for India's independence on the advice of the Himalayan Mahatmas. Ironically, it was in India that the slander game against her started. She became so disgusted, she cut short her stay and left India in 1885, never to return. She settled in London at the request of her English followers. There she published her magnum opus of 1537 pages, The Secret Doctrine, in 1888. It is a treasure trove, a perennial pool of eternal wisdom. However it produced a curious effect on people. They began to adore her, hate her, slander her, and fear her!
In 1889, Annie Besant joined the Blavatsky Lodge, which was the English version of The Theosophical Society in England. Blavatsky was very happy to have her with her. She called her "A regular Demosthenes in skirts". Annie Besant would later on found the Central Hindu School, based on the principles of theosophy, in Benares which would become a nucleus for Madan Mohan Malviya to build BHU around. The epidemic of flu in England brought untimely to a full stop on May 8, 1891, a journey that had started on one fateful night in 1848 from Erivan and that had aroused a million hearts all over the world, to have a look at their own Self, to understand their own worth. Helena lies buried in Woking cemetery in London. But her work goes on.
The Tipping Point in my life first effected by the good theosophist eye surgeon of Calcutta, repeated itself on September 5, 1982, in Delhi. While I was returning home after a visit to Dr. Pradeep Jaina, in Connaught place, with my second daughter, I happened to notice a dimly lit, and unpretentious bookshop tucked in a corner, under the stairway, on platform No. 1, of the New Delhi railway station. Somehow I felt I will get the book that held definitive answers to my questions, in that bookshop. I was halfway up on the stairway, but decided to come down. My train would chug off at 10 P.M., while the station clock showed an hour less. I had a comfortable margin of time. I took my daughter's arm and got down.
When I asked the only attendant there, standing at the gate, if he had any book by Swami Muktananda, he held me by the arm(which I consider unusual), took me inside the shop, and gave me a copy of Chiti Shakti Vilas. Very few people would believe that a book can change the inner chemistry of a man. But I say it can, if there is a spark plug inside. To make a fire, a spark is needed. I have never looked back since then. When I was halfway through the book, it happened. Shaktipat happened. Muktananda says, "When shaktipat happens, shakti takes over. She takes you under her wings". Then meditation starts happening effortlessly. One spontaneously becomes a witness to every activity. One notices that things just happen. The feeling that I am the doer, vanishes. One becomes disengaged but not idle.
It looks as if one has entered the camp of the Cosmic Conspirator and taken a seat behind the Cosmic projector. When I see humans conspiring, I feel very sorry for them. There is not one in a billion chance of their winning. After the publication of The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky remarked: "The fingers were mine, and the pen was mine. The rest is of the Mahatmas. I don't even understand it fully". When she had a fall from the horse in 1851, and the horse crushed her, someone she had seen in her visions, lifted her up. When I began to write this article, I had invoked the Bard of Avon. While I wrap it up, I invoke him again. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy", Hamlet drives home the fact to Horatio. Let everyone understand that there is a spark-in-hibernation, in each one of us. Our only purusharth, the task of pride, lies in uncovering it.
Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi.
"You have come to the right man at the right time", Dr. M. Sengupta apprised me in a scintillating voice, after examining my eyes. The year was 1954 and the place was his Consultation Chamber at Chowringhee in Calcutta. Dr. Sengupta was an ophthalmologist with the Eye Infirmary of the Calcutta Medical College. "You have come not a day too soon", the enthused doctor continued, "we received the Beta Ray Applicator only a couple of days back... the first of its kind in India. And you will be my first patient !". I had infected an allergic condition of the eyes, medically classified as vernal conjunctivitis, that visits a patient every spring. It is therefore popularly known as spring catarrh. My condition was serious as my conjunctivae had vascularized intensely. I was advised to see him the next day at the Infirmary where I was to receive a 10-20 second exposure of beta rays to my eyes, twice every week.
It was perhaps on my ninth or tenth appointment with him that he asked me to see him in his Chamber, that evening. When I reached there in the evening I found that he had no visitor other than me. This looked unusual as I had not the flimsiest hookup with him. Out of the blue he asked me how I was inspired by Annie Besant. I then recalled I had made a casual mention in the morning how Annie Besant had been advised to go back to England after a similar eye infection. Presently, I told him that I considered Annie Besant a virtual think factory. She was a freethinker. When her husband, a clergyman, demanded that she should accept church dogmas or leave him, she chose to leave him. How can anybody endowed with the faculty of clear and independent thinking succumb to such an uncalled-for highhandedness? She was a Fabian socialist and a matchless speaker. GB Shaw acclaimed her as the greatest orator of the century.
The amused doctor interrupted me. And asked: "But do you know that she was first of all a theosophist"? Till then I didn't have the foggiest idea of who a theosophist was, but the learned doctor's interruption seemed to suggest that my recountal of facts stood feebly before it. He then introduced me to theosophy and to its founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, popularly addressed as HPB. I was to learn later on that she was a noblewoman of Czarist Russia who ferreted out the buried past of India and put it on a pedestal for everyone to see and seek inspiration from, at a time when Britannia ruled the waves and India was at its lowest ebb. She upbraided Indians for fawning over their white masters instead of having recourse to their own unequivocal spiritual inheritance. To start with, the good samaritan gave me a copy of HPB Speaks which I still treasure. Thanks to the doctor my romance with theosophy continues unabatedly well into my ripening age.
HPB was born with certain psychic powers. I have no hesitation in calling her what Sri Krishna characterizes as a yogbhrisht, that is, some one born to finish one's previously unfinished yogic innings. She could see a presence where it was an empty space for others. All nature was animated for her. She could hear voices that were totally inaudible to others. Before she would turn fifteen, she had read the whole library of her nani which she had inherited from her father, Prince Paul Vassilyevich. A gifted girl, she rode a half-broken horse as facilely as she played her piano. Fearless to the core, she was witty, unswerving, and dazzling. The Tipping Point came to her when she was seventeen. Her governess was so helpless before her that one day she gave way to her spleen. Citing her wilfulness, she taunted her that she would never find a husband for herself .
And that not even that old governor of Erivan, Nikifor Blavatsky, whom Helena chided as a "plumeless raven", would take her for a wife. Helena took up the gauntlet. And before the year was out, she a Hahn, had become a Blavatsky! On the very first day she spurned Nikifor reminding him that he was her grandfather's age. Nikifor cordoned her off with a posse of Kurd horsemen, lest she should escape. But escape she did in less than a month's time. On horseback and camelback, through wilds and ravines, deserts and creeks, this juggernaut of courage finally surfaced in Constantinople, nowadays called Istanbul. Her escape itself would provide enough grist for a thriller. She would reiterate later on that she was never for once "Wife Blavatsky". She heaved a sigh of relief on her arrival on this foreign land. Though she was moneyless and friendless, she felt she was now free, free to search the unknown, who she had been seeing in her visions since childhood and who had been protecting her all through
Let me make it clear here that visions come only to those who have an awakened kundalini. Others see only dreams. It is a misnomer to consider dreams analogous to sleep only. Dreaming goes on nonstop. Just as the stars are not visible during the day, though they are there, dreams are not felt when we are out of the bed, though they never leave us. Howsoever awake we may appear to be, we are always dreaming. Gurdjieff expressed it blandly in his oft quoted remark: man is asleep. Dreams drain us because they are just trains of thoughts. Visions vitalize us because they are impulses of light. Helena didn't dream. She was a visionary but she was clueless about her mission. Help came to her in the form of an acquaintance, a Russian Countess, Kisselev by name. Kisselev gave her company in her travels through Turkey, Egypt and Greece while becoming a conduit for roubles from her father Col. Peter Von Hahn. Back home no one knew about her whereabouts except her dear father.
In 1851 she found herself in London. And then came her second Tipping Point. She met with the Master of her visions in Hyde Park, London! You can imagine her overwhelming awe at standing face to face with the form of her visions, in flesh and blood! She gives his name as Mahatma Morya or M. He was a very tall and majestically built Hindoo Kshatriya with a flowing beard. In her booklet From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan, she calls him Thakore Goulab Singh and herself Radda(Radha?) Bai. He told her to prepare herself for the work he wanted her to do. She was then to see him in Tibet to get initiated into the lore of Ancient Wisdom. However, she could make it to Tibet quite late, in 1855, as the country remained impervious to foreign intrusion for a long time. On reaching Tibet Helena was so struck by the pristine beauty and serenity of her abode that she exclaimed she would rather live in a cave in Tibet than live in any modernized city of the world.
For miles and miles stretched an unbroken stillness amid undulating peaks and valleys of the Karakoram ranges so that meditation happened spontaneously. There, for three years, under the guidance of Mahatma M, she poured assiduously over oblong tablets of cryptic texts, written in Senzar, a pre-Sanskrit language. She was now ready to go into the world and work on herself without the supervision of her guru. She returned to Russia in 1858, after a gap of ten years. Nikifor had by then resigned to his fate and did not trouble her anymore. She stayed for a short while at Pskov with her sister Vera and then went into the Caucasus mountains to experiment on her psychic powers. From there she emerged in 1865, and traveled extensively through the Balkans, Egypt, Syria, Greece and some other European countries. In 1868, she again went to Tibet to see another Hindoo Master, Mahatma Koot Hoomi or KH, of course at the behest of her guru.
Somewhere in her writings she addresses KH as Thakore Lal Singh. He was a friend of Mahatma M and a Kshatriya like him. Come to think of it, was it a coincidence that both the Masters were Kshatriyas? Then how do we explain the fact that the 24 tirthankars of Jainism, from Rishabhdev to Mahavira, were also Kshatriyas? And so was Gautam Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, a Kshatriya. And so were Sri Rama and Sri Krishna, the two Titans of Hindu pantheon, Kshatriyas. And so was Padmasambhava who was invited by the Tibetan King Trisong Detsen to establish Buddhism there. And so was Bodhidharma, who had been invited by the Chinese Emperor Wu. Is it not baffling? It looks as if the Kshatriyas had been assigned the onerous task of upholding dharma.
Though it would mean a little diversion let us first try to understand who do we mean by a Kshatriya.There is a Sanskrit saying: kshetragyah sah kshatriyah, that is to say, one who is a kshetragya is a kshatriya. Sri Krishna defines kshetragya(Gita:xiii:1,2) as the knower of kshetra, that is, the knower of this body. So etymologically speaking, a Kshatriya is one who knows this body. Now only a Yogi is capable of knowing the body inside out. So Kshatriyas were, as a rule, yogis. If the reverse is also true, then yogis must be Kshatriyas. In that sense HPB was no less a Kshatriya than any other Kshatriya. Sri Krishna's most lovable Kshatriya was Arjun. Sri Krishna addresses him by his five attributes in the Gita. They are: Arjun(uncrooked), Parantap(austere), Gudakesh(conqueror of sleep), Dhananjaya(worriless about money), and Savyasaachi(ambidextrous). Helena was endowed with all the five attributes. She wrote with both hands.
Anybody having these qualities can claim to be a Kshatriya. Helena stayed with Mahatma KH for two years and engaged herself in the most advanced esoteric practices. With her intense and prolonged austerities she had by then attained a critical mass of esoteric wisdom. She was now ready to become a footsoldier of her gurus. In 1870, she set out on a tour of Cyprus, Egypt, the Middle East, Russia, and France. Finally she landed in New York City on July 7, 1873. Her task was to challenge orthodoxy, be it of religion or of science. Orthodoxy is deadweight, a rutted mechanism in which one runs just to get a hang of it, indulges in religion for it is there, and earns money for the sake of money. It is a canker that eats into the soul of man and therefore orthodox religion turns into a set of empty rituals. Physical science in the absence of the inner science becomes crass commerce without any morality.
Helena had predicted 125 years ago, that European science will boomrang upon itself in the form of consumer industrialization and militarization which will annihilate humanity and Nature on this earth, because it had no link with its soul. Gandhi called modern science amoral because there was violence in its heart. He abhorred vivisection which inflicted pain on lower forms of life in the name of experimentation. May I remind you that the second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki was also a part of an experiment. On September 7, 1875, she founded The Theosophical Society in New York with the express purpose of creating a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity which did not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, sex, caste or color. Its main task was to investigate the yet unexplained laws of Nature as also the powers that lie latent in every man. Col. Henry Steel Olcott, a veteran of the Civil War became its first President.
It is so unfortunate that man is oblivious of his own worth. When we look outward, the involvement of the other becomes inevitable and therefore a clash becomes an inevitability. But when we look inward, there is nobody to pick a quarrel with. There is no frittering of energy. The pool of energy builds up steadily till one day it becomes critical. It is then that kundalini rises up and one becomes qualified to understand one's worth. People with a sparking plug in them become an easy vehicle for this transformation in the company of an adept like HPB. HPB who had been a disciple till then, had now attained the necessary right to become a mentor. She published her first book Isis Unveiled in 1877. It is a voluminous book of 1300 pages but its first edition was sold like hot cakes in no time. In it she challenges the dogmas of Christian theology and the fallacies of orthdox science in the backdrop of the ancient inner science.
She had arrived. Thousands of people sought membership of The Theosophical Society. Its branches sprang up in all the places she had toured earlier.The Mahatmas had told her that her real work lay in India. They had been preparing her for this all through. Now the time had arrived. When she landed in Bombay in February 1879, along with Col. Olcott, a better reception than would be accorded to Prince Of Wales, awaited them. There were 50,000 people to greet them on the quay. She established the Theosophical Headquarters in the city of her landing and started The Theosophist journal in October the same year, with herself as Editor. It produced an electrifying effect. Eminent persons in India and abroad became attracted to theosophy. Allan O Hume, Lt. Governer, sent in his resignation to the Viceroy saying he would rather serve Blavatsky than the Queen-Empress. He was to become later on the founder of the Indian National Congress.
AP Sinnett, the Editor of The Pioneer, known as the mouthpiece of the government, became so enamoured of the Mahatmas, he begged Helena's indulgence to seek correspondence with them. Earlier, the same Sinnett had branded Indians, negroes. Blavatsky was a great leveler. In five years time that she stayed in India, about 125 centers of The Theosophical Society sprang up. People from all communities, castes, and social statuses, joined them. People took pride in calling themselves theosophists. She was bringing everybody under one banner, thus facilitating Gandhi's work of mobilizing people for a common cause. Gandhi would become a theosophist in 1891, when he was studying for law in England. In fact it was two of Blavatsky's British disciples who first of all introduced Gandhi to Gita! It was his brush with theosophy that rooted out the misinformations about Hindu religion, spread by Christian missionaries.
Nehru was introduced to theosophy at the age of eleven by Ferdinand Brooks, his English tutor. He became so fascinated with it that he joined The Theosophical Society at the age of thirteen and it was Annie Besant who presided over the ceremony of his initiation. It was theosophy that raised the esteem of Hindu religion(minus its mumbo jumbo) in Nehru's eyes. Blavatsky was preparing the ground for India's independence on the advice of the Himalayan Mahatmas. Ironically, it was in India that the slander game against her started. She became so disgusted, she cut short her stay and left India in 1885, never to return. She settled in London at the request of her English followers. There she published her magnum opus of 1537 pages, The Secret Doctrine, in 1888. It is a treasure trove, a perennial pool of eternal wisdom. However it produced a curious effect on people. They began to adore her, hate her, slander her, and fear her!
In 1889, Annie Besant joined the Blavatsky Lodge, which was the English version of The Theosophical Society in England. Blavatsky was very happy to have her with her. She called her "A regular Demosthenes in skirts". Annie Besant would later on found the Central Hindu School, based on the principles of theosophy, in Benares which would become a nucleus for Madan Mohan Malviya to build BHU around. The epidemic of flu in England brought untimely to a full stop on May 8, 1891, a journey that had started on one fateful night in 1848 from Erivan and that had aroused a million hearts all over the world, to have a look at their own Self, to understand their own worth. Helena lies buried in Woking cemetery in London. But her work goes on.
The Tipping Point in my life first effected by the good theosophist eye surgeon of Calcutta, repeated itself on September 5, 1982, in Delhi. While I was returning home after a visit to Dr. Pradeep Jaina, in Connaught place, with my second daughter, I happened to notice a dimly lit, and unpretentious bookshop tucked in a corner, under the stairway, on platform No. 1, of the New Delhi railway station. Somehow I felt I will get the book that held definitive answers to my questions, in that bookshop. I was halfway up on the stairway, but decided to come down. My train would chug off at 10 P.M., while the station clock showed an hour less. I had a comfortable margin of time. I took my daughter's arm and got down.
When I asked the only attendant there, standing at the gate, if he had any book by Swami Muktananda, he held me by the arm(which I consider unusual), took me inside the shop, and gave me a copy of Chiti Shakti Vilas. Very few people would believe that a book can change the inner chemistry of a man. But I say it can, if there is a spark plug inside. To make a fire, a spark is needed. I have never looked back since then. When I was halfway through the book, it happened. Shaktipat happened. Muktananda says, "When shaktipat happens, shakti takes over. She takes you under her wings". Then meditation starts happening effortlessly. One spontaneously becomes a witness to every activity. One notices that things just happen. The feeling that I am the doer, vanishes. One becomes disengaged but not idle.
It looks as if one has entered the camp of the Cosmic Conspirator and taken a seat behind the Cosmic projector. When I see humans conspiring, I feel very sorry for them. There is not one in a billion chance of their winning. After the publication of The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky remarked: "The fingers were mine, and the pen was mine. The rest is of the Mahatmas. I don't even understand it fully". When she had a fall from the horse in 1851, and the horse crushed her, someone she had seen in her visions, lifted her up. When I began to write this article, I had invoked the Bard of Avon. While I wrap it up, I invoke him again. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy", Hamlet drives home the fact to Horatio. Let everyone understand that there is a spark-in-hibernation, in each one of us. Our only purusharth, the task of pride, lies in uncovering it.
Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi.
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