The Masters Unveiled

"The Masters Revealed" is a highly interesting book about Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, better known as Madame Blavatsky, who founded a curious religious group in 1875, known as the Theosophical Society. The message of the Theosophists was an eclectic blend of Hinduism, Buddhism and Western esotericism, with the legend of Atlantis thrown in for good measure. In many ways, the Theosophists were an early version of "New Age", and their society was quite successful until about 1930. Although founded in the United States, the Theosophical Society soon moved it's headquarters to Adyar in India.

Madame Blavatsky became notorious for claiming that her society was guided by Mahatmas or Masters, mysterious and semi-heavenly beings from Tibet. Only Blavatsky herself could communicate with the Masters, although other leaders of the society occasionally encountered them as well. Most people assume that the Masters were figments of Blavatsky's over-heated imagination, or that she simply made it all up. The author of "The Masters Revealed" offers a third and more intricate perspective: the Masters were real people of flesh and blood, real people who *did* teach a spiritual message to Blavatsky, who then distorted the true source of her teachings, claiming she got ít from heavenly beings! It should be noted that Johnson isn't entirely hostile to Blavatsky. He even affectionately calls her "HPB", the Theosophical designation. According to Wikipedia the author is a former member of the Theosophical Society, who later joined a similar group, the Church of Light. Interestingly, the book have also been re-published in India by something called Sri Satguru Publications (I actually have the Indian edition).

As already mentioned, the book is extremely interesting. It turns out that the Theosophical Society had contacts with Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and various Indian nationalists, who opposed British colonialism in India and often conspired with Russian agents (Blavatsky was Russian herself). The book often reads like a detective story, and actually gives you a certain insight into Indian 19th century politics and history, which presumably explains why there is also an Indian edition of it. The Theosophists collaborated with both the Vedic fundamentalist Arya Samaj and the Sikh reform group Singh Sabha. They also had good contacts with the great Ranbir Singh, the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, a reform-minded and religiously tolerant ruler who opposed the British Raj. By mistake, Blavatsky and her entourage also established contacts with two Indian travellers to Tibet, who later turned out to be British spies!

So who were the Masters? The most important Masters within Theosophy are named "Master M" (or Morya) and "Master KH" (or Koot Hoomi). Johnson believes that Morya was based on the Maharaja Ranbir Singh, who was a follower of the Advaita Vedanta philosophy, and discussed it at length with Blavatsky and her "number two" Olcott during their stay in Kashmir. Koot Hoomi was based on Thakar Singh, a Sikh activist involved in attempts to restore the throne of Punjab to his cousin, the Maharaja Dalip Singh (or Duleep Singh).

More disturbingly, the book also claims that Madame Blavatsky later got cold feet, thinking that a Indian rebellion against the British would ultimately fail, and wrote a letter to the British foreign office, offering to expose the anti-British conspiracy of the Sikhs and their allies! The conspiracy was revealed anyway, without HPB's aid, and her letter might not even have been taken seriously. Paul Johnson believes that Blavatsky might not have offered to snitch on the conspirators had she known that the Russians were involved, since she was at bottom a Russian patriot, with pan-Slavists in her circle of friends. Instead, Johnson speculates, Blavatsky assumed that the nationalist conspiracies in India were French affairs, and apparently she had some kind of conflict with the French. I'm not sure whether this makes any sense, but even so, the episode still paints Blavatsky in a bad light. She seems to have been something of an adventurer and opportunist. Incidentally, she had offered her services to the Russian secret service at an earlier stage of her career, and was suspected of being a Russian spy during her visit to the United States!

Final point. "The Masters Revealed" says very little about the religious message of the Theosophical Society. It's primarily a book about Blavatsky's political entanglements. The book could therefore be a hard read to absolute beginners. Still, I recommend it. It gives a fascinating back-stage look at a New Religious Movement and their untractable founder, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.