Blavatsky Net
Foundation

Blavatsky Net - Theosophy

"The principal Masters in question were Koot Hoomi and Morya, supposedly residents of Shigatse in Tibet...." (p. xv) "The theme of this book is that HPB's Masters were not the Himalayan sages whom she invented to distract her co-workers...." (p. xviii) "Mr. Johnson's suggestion---and he makes it clear that it is no more than that---is that the Mahatmas Morya and Koot Hoomi are fictitious Tibetan personae that conceal well-documented historical figures: Ranbir Singh and Thakar Singh." (p. xviii)

"If I can prove to the satisfaction of many scholars that Mme. Blavatsky fictionalized her Masters, and that the personae of Morya and Koot Hoomi are covers for other people, that does not detract one iota from the truth of the spiritual principles enunciated by her or the alleged Masters. But it does pull the rug out from under Alice Bailey, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, C.W. Leadbeater, and others who claim to have been in subsequent telepathic contact with the very people who can be shown to have been fictionalizations of quite different people." Italics added.

"Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can---if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong---to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it . . . ." Italics added.

"[I] had visit in body of the Sahib [Morya]!! [He] sent Babula to my room to call me to H.P.B.'s bungalow, and there we had a most important private interview...." (Extract from Olcott's handwritten diary for Tuesday, July 15, 1879.)

"This same Brother once visited me in the flesh at Bombay, coming in full day light, and on horseback. He had me called by a servant into the front room of H.P.B.'s bungalow (she being at the time in the other bungalow talking with those who were there). He [Morya] came to scold me roundly for something I had done in T.S. matters, and as H.P.B. was also to blame, he telegraphed to her to come, that is to say, he turned his face and extended his finger in the direction of the place she was in. She came over at once with a rush, and seeing him dropped to her knees and paid him reverence. My voice and his had been heard by those in the other bungalow, but only H.P.B. and I, and the servant saw him." (Extract from a letter written by Colonel Olcott to A.O. Hume on Sept. 30, 1881. Quoted in Hints On Esoteric Theosophy, No. 1, 1882, p. 80.)

"While Richard-Nafarre refers to all these sources, he never mentions any discrepancies, thus evading the challenges of explaining them. Evasion is also found in selective use of Albert Rawson’s testimony. . . . Richard-Nafarre ignores this evidence. . .presumably because it conflicts with other sources he prefers." (Quoted from Johnson’s book review in Theosophical History, Oct. 1992-Jan. 1993, p. 159)

If you want to use it as weight against another identification [like Johnson's own Ranbir Singh identification??]....fine. But it lacks much weight when there is no confirmation of the account...." 

"When we arrived [in India], and Master [Morya] coming to Bombay bodily, paid a visit to us at Girgaum....Olcott became crazy. He was like Balaam's she-ass when she saw the angel!...." (The Path, New York, March, 1896, p. 370)

"Olcott's only trip to Ranbir's kingdom was his 1883 journey to Jammu, but according to his own account of his visit there, he met no Mahatma, spending all his time in the company of the maharaja."

"...my procedure [used in his books] was to comb through the Theosophical literature looking for clues that are specific enough to point to specific prototypes or identifications for the Masters. Passages such as the one you cite [Olcott's 1879 account] are not useful in that way. I have said that passages such as the one you cite could be used as ‘disproof’ of ANY identification one could make, and therefore that their evidentiary value is weak."

"You...assume the accuracy of accounts [of meetings with the Masters] by the Founders [Olcott and H.P.B.] even when there is no evidence to confirm them. This will only fly with a Theosophical audience." Italics added.

". . . in May 1875, HPB's scrapbook noted that Hilarion and a companion ‘passed thro[ough] New York & Boston, thence thro[ough] California and Japan back.’. . .A recent discovery by Joscelyn Godwin provides intriguing evidence for the visit to New York by Hilarion mentioned in HPB's diary [scrapbook?] in 1875....A letter from Olcott...describes meeting an adept....at 433 West 34th Street." (pp. 59-60) 

"...I was reading in my room yesterday (Sunday) when there came a tap at the door---I said ‘come in’ and there entered the [younger] Bro[ther] with another dark skinned gentleman of about fifty....We took cigars and chatted for a while....[Then Olcott relates that a rain shower started in the room. Olcott continues the account:] They sat there and quietly smoked their cigars, while mine became too wet to burn....finally the younger of the two (who gave me his name as Ooton Liatto) said I needn't worry nothing would be damaged....I asked Liatto if he knew Madam B[lavatsky]....the elder Bro[ther]...[said] that with her permission they would call upon her. I ran downstairs---rushed into Madams parlour---and---there sat these same two identical men smoking with her and chatting....I said nothing but rushed up stairs again tore open my door and---the men were not there---I ran down again, they had disappeared---I . . . looked out the window---and saw them turning the corner...." (Olcott’s account is given in full in Theosophical History, Jan., 1994.)

"The names Ooton Liatto and Hilarion Smerdis have been equally impossible to find in biographical and historical reference books. While both may be pseudonyms, there is little doubt that two real adepts visited Olcott in New York." (p. 62) 

[1] "[The July 1879 account is]...of little use in providing a historical identification...If you want to use it as weight against another identification...fine. But it lacks much weight when there is no confirmation of the account." [2] "...I have said that passages such as the one you cite [the July 1879 account] could be used as ‘disproof’ of ANY identification one could make, and therefore that their evidentiary value is weak." [3] "You...assume the accuracy of accounts by the Founders even when there is no evidence to confirm them. This will only fly with a Theosophical audience."

1. ACCOUNT OF OLCOTT'S MEETING WITH A MAHATMA ON AUGUST 4, 1880

"In light of available knowledge of Afghani's comings and goings in India, can he be connected to the Founders of the Theosophical Society? The evidence is intriguing if not convincing. The first problem is that Olcott rarely identifies adepts when they appear in his narrative, beyond the fact of their status as such. Thus, on August 4, 1880, [Olcott tells us that] ‘a Mahatma visited H.P.B., and I was called in to see him before he left. He dictated a long and important letter to an influential friend of ours at Paris, and gave me important hints about the management of current Society affairs....’[Old Diary Leaves, Volume II, 1972 printing, p. 208]."

"But had you consulted Olcott's actual handwritten diary for August 4, 1880, you would have discovered that Olcott identifies this ‘Mahatma’ as Morya....Now with this new piece of information at your disposal, are you still willing to accept Col. Olcott's testimony of this encounter with a Master [now identified as Morya] at face value?"

"Describing a visit to the Golden Temple in Amritsar on 23 October 1880, [Olcott]. . . writes: ‘...at a shrine where the swords, sharp steel discs, coats of mail, and other warlike weapons of the Sikh warrior priests are exposed to view in charge of the akalis, I was greeted, to my surprise and joy, with a loving smile by one of the Masters, who for the moment was figuring among the guardians, and who gave each of us a fresh rose, with a blessing in his eyes....’ [Old Diary Leaves, volume 2, pp. 254-255, 1974 printing.]" 

"Our new friend was a native of Amritsar, in the Punjab, and had been brought up in the ‘Golden Temple’....Our sannyasin was...a regular Akali, one of the six hundred warrior-priests attached to the ‘Golden Temple’ for the purposes of divine service and the protection of the Temple....His name was Ram-Ranjit-Das. . . ." 

"It is apparent from Old Diary Leaves and Caves and Jungles that the same character is described by both as a Sikh officiating at the Golden Temple, in which he plays a supervisory role." (p. 151.)

"K.H. dates one of his earliest letters from ‘Amritas Saras’ (the Golden Temple) and refers to it as his home, but he makes it appear that he is only rarely there on visits from Tibet."

"the other day...I was coming down the defiles of [the] Kouenlun [mountains]---Karakorum you call them. . . .I...was crossing over to Ladakh on my way home....So I determined to emerge from the seclusion of many years and spend some time with her [HPB who was then in Amritsar]. I had come for a few days, but now find that I myself cannot endure for any length of time the stifling magnetism even of my own countrymen. I have seen some of our proud old Sikhs drunk and staggering over the marble pavement of their sacred Temple....I turn my face homeward to-morrow." (Extract from The Mahatma Letters, Letter No. 5 in the new chronological edition; No. 4 in the older editions).

"...In the afternoon we went to the Golden Temple again & found it as lovely as before. Saw some hundreds of fakirs & gossains more or less ill-favored. A Brother there saluted H.P.B. and me & gave us each a rose."

"I was sleeping in my tent, the night of the 19th, when I rushed back towards external consciousness on feeling a hand laid on me. The camp being on the open plain, and beyond the protection of the Lahore Police, my first animal instinct was to protect myself from a possible religious fanatical assassin, so I clutched the stranger by the upper arms, and asked him in Hindustani who he was and what he wanted. It was all done in an instant, and I held the man tight, as would one who might be attacked the next moment and have to defend his life. But the next moment a kind, sweet voice said: ‘Do you not know me? Do you not remember me?’ It was the voice of the Master K.H. . . .I relaxed my hold on his arms, joined my palms in reverential salutation, and wanted to jump out of bed to show him respect. But his hand and voice stayed me, and after a few sentences had been exchanged, he took my left hand in his, gathered the fingers of his right into the palm, and stood quiet beside my cot, from which I could see his divinely benignant face by the light of the lamp that burned on a packing-case at his back. Presently I felt some soft substance forming in my hand, and the next minute the Master laid his kind hand on my forehead, uttered a blessing, and left my half of the large tent to visit Mr. W.T. Brown, who slept in the other half behind a canvas screen that divided the tent into two rooms. When I had time to pay attention to myself, I found myself holding in my left hand a folded paper enwrapped in a silken cloth. To go to the lamp, open and read it, was naturally my first impulse. I found it to be a letter of private counsel. . . On hearing an exclamation from…[Brown’s] side of the screen, I went in there and he showed me a silk-wrapped letter of like appearance to mine though of different contents, which he said had been given him much as mine had been to me, and which we read together. . . .The next evening. . .we two and Damodar sat in my tent, at 10 o’clock, waiting for an expected visit from Master K.H. . . .We sat on chairs at the back of the tent so as not to be observed from the camp: the moon was in its last quarter and had not risen. After some waiting we heard and saw a tall Hindu approaching from the side of the open plain. He came to within a few yards of us and beckoned Damodar to come to him, which he did. He told him that the Master would appear within a few minutes, and that he had some business with Damodar. It was a pupil of Master K.H. Presently we saw the latter coming from the same direction, pass his pupil. . .and stop in front of our group, now standing and saluting in the Indian fashion, some yards away. Brown and I kept our places, and Damodar went and conversed for a few minutes with the Teacher, after which he returned to us and the king-like visitor walked away. I heard his footsteps on the ground. . . .Before retiring, when I was writing my Diary, the pupil lifted the portiere, beckoned to me, and pointed to the figure of his Master [K.H.], waiting for me out on the plain in the starlight. I went to him, we walked off to a safe place at some distance where intruders need not be expected, and then for about a half-hour he told me what I had to know. . . There were no miracles done at the interview. . .just two men talking together, a meeting, and a parting when the talk was over. . . ." (pp. 37-39, 43-45, 1972 reprinting.)

"...Lahore has a special interest, because there we saw, in his own physical body, Mahatma Koot Hoomi himself. On the afternoon of the 19th November [1883], I saw the Master in broad daylight, and recognized him, and on the morning of the 20th he came to my tent....On the evening of the 21st, after the lecture was over, Colonel Olcott, Damodar and I were sitting outside the shamiana, (pavilion or pandal), when we were visited by Djual Khool (the Master's head Chela, and now an Initiate), who informed us that the Master was about to come. The Master [KH] then came near to us, gave instructions to Damodar, and walked away. On leaving Lahore the next place visited was Jammu, the winter residence of His Highness the Maharajah of Cashmere....At Jammu I had another opportunity of seeing Mahatma Koot Hoomi in propria persona. One evening I went to the end of the ‘compound,’ (private enclosure) and there I found the Master awaiting my approach. I saluted in European fashion, and came, hat in hand, to within a few yards of the place on which he was standing....After a minute or so he marched away, the noise of his foot-steps on the gravel being markedly audible…." (Quoted from W.T. Brown’s pamphlet Some Experiences In India, 1884, pp. 15-17.)

"Brown described his background and his experiences with the Theosophical Masters in a report to the Society for Psychical Research which was never published during his lifetime. Recently published for the first time, it makes claims about his encounters with Koot Hoomi that are so specific as to have possibly raised concerns in the minds of Olcott and HPB. Although Brown’s testimony would seem to be of great value to the TS, it remained unpublished for reasons unknown. One might speculate that its details about the Masters were considered too indiscreet for public consumption, especially in the wake of the Coulomb scandal."

"W.T. Brown’s Some Experiences in India, first published in 1884, comes by way of the archives of the Society of Psychical Research. Our gratitude is extended to the S.P.R. for allowing the pamphlet to appear in this issue. . . .The pamphlet. . .is very rare." (p. 185)

"[Brown’s Report]. . .makes claims about his encounters with Koot Hoomi that are so specific as to have possibly raised concerns in the minds of Olcott and HPB. . . .Brown’s testimony. . . remained unpublished for reasons unknown. One might speculate that its details about the Masters were considered too indiscreet for public consumption, especially in the wake of the Coulomb scandal." Italics added.

"...[in Lahore] I was visited by him [Mahatma KH] in body, for three nights consecutively for about three hours every time....[in Jammu] I had the good fortune of being sent for, and permitted to visit a Sacred Ashram where I remained for a few days in the blessed company of several of the much doubted MAHATMAS....There I met not only my beloved Gurudeva [K.H.] and Col. Olcott’s Master [Morya], but several others of the Fraternity. . . ." (Quoted from Damodar And The Pioneers Of The Theosophical Movement, 1965, pp. 335-336.)  

"Damodar had genuinely met Koot Hoomi outside Lahore and at the palace of Ranbir Singh [at Jammu], and had gone so far as to publish an account of this exploit in The Theosophist....This is one of the great true [italics added] Mahatma stories of Theosophical history...." (Initiates of Theosophical Masters, p. 40)

"His Highness Raja Harbans Singh and other Sirdars [Johnson’s emphasis] sent their conveyances to bring the party to their quarters...." Johnson then comments on this Theosophist extract: "Most intriguing in all this are the references to ‘other Sirdars’....The lack of any mention of Thakar Singh's name seems inevitable if he was indeed the Master K.H."

"By that sort of logic every text that lacks mention of Thakar Singh becomes evidence of his identity with Kuthumi....."

"Lack of evidence thus becomes evidence. By [such] Wonderland logic [that Johnson uses], anything can be proved." (p. 244)

"...Lahore has a special interest, because there we saw, in his own physical body, Mahatma Koot Hoomi himself. On the afternoon of the 19th November [1883], I saw the Master in broad daylight, and recognized him, and on the morning of the 20th he came to my tent....On the evening of the 21st, after the lecture was over, Colonel Olcott, Damodar and I were sitting outside the shamiana, (pavilion or pandal), when we were visited by Djual Khool (the Master's head Chela, and now an Initiate), who informed us that the Master was about to come. The Master [KH] then came near to us, gave instructions to Damodar, and walked away. On leaving Lahore the next place visited was Jammu, the winter residence of His Highness the Maharajah of Cashmere....At Jammu I had another opportunity of seeing Mahatma Koot Hoomi in propria persona. One evening I went to the end of the ‘compound,’ (private enclosure) and there I found the Master awaiting my approach. I saluted in European fashion, and came, hat in hand, to within a few yards of the place on which he was standing....After a minute or so he marched away, the noise of his foot-steps on the gravel being markedly audible…." (Quoted from W.T. Brown’s pamphlet Some Experiences In India, 1884, pp. 15-17.)

"Brown described his background and his experiences with the Theosophical Masters in a report to the Society for Psychical Research which was never published during his lifetime. Recently published for the first time, it makes claims about his encounters with Koot Hoomi that are so specific as to have possibly raised concerns in the minds of Olcott and HPB. Although Brown’s testimony would seem to be of great value to the TS, it remained unpublished for reasons unknown. One might speculate that its details about the Masters were considered too indiscreet for public consumption, especially in the wake of the Coulomb scandal."

"W.T. Brown’s Some Experiences in India, first published in 1884, comes by way of the archives of the Society of Psychical Research. Our gratitude is extended to the S.P.R. for allowing the pamphlet to appear in this issue. . . .The pamphlet. . .is very rare." (p. 185)

"[Brown’s Report]. . .makes claims about his encounters with Koot Hoomi that are so specific as to have possibly raised concerns in the minds of Olcott and HPB. . . .Brown’s testimony. . . remained unpublished for reasons unknown. One might speculate that its details about the Masters were considered too indiscreet for public consumption, especially in the wake of the Coulomb scandal." Italics added.

"...[in Lahore] I was visited by him [Mahatma KH] in body, for three nights consecutively for about three hours every time....[in Jammu] I had the good fortune of being sent for, and permitted to visit a Sacred Ashram where I remained for a few days in the blessed company of several of the much doubted MAHATMAS....There I met not only my beloved Gurudeva [K.H.] and Col. Olcott’s Master [Morya], but several others of the Fraternity. . . ." (Quoted from Damodar And The Pioneers Of The Theosophical Movement, 1965, pp. 335-336.)  

"Damodar had genuinely met Koot Hoomi outside Lahore and at the palace of Ranbir Singh [at Jammu], and had gone so far as to publish an account of this exploit in The Theosophist....This is one of the great true [italics added] Mahatma stories of Theosophical history...." (Initiates of Theosophical Masters, p. 40)

[1] "[The July 1879 account is]...of little use in providing a historical identification...If you want to use it as weight against another identification...fine. But it lacks much weight when there is no confirmation of the account." [2] "...I have said that passages such as the one you cite [the July 1879 account] could be used as ‘disproof’ of ANY identification one could make, and therefore that their evidentiary value is weak." [3] "You...assume the accuracy of accounts by the Founders even when there is no evidence to confirm them. This will only fly with a Theosophical audience."

But if one accepts Johnson’s threefold line of reasoning, would not one have to also dismiss the accounts cited by K. Paul Johnson himself as evidence that real, physical adepts visited Olcott, Blavatsky and other Theosophists in New York City, Amritsar, Lahore and Jammu?