The Eclectic Theosophist ■J"-" FOLLOWING THE BLAVATSKY AND POINT LOMA TRADITION ISSUED BI-MONTHLY BY POINT LOMA PUBLICATIONS, INC.' Subscription (6 issues) P.O. Box 9966 - San Diego, California 92109 $2.50; foreign $3.00 Editors: W. Emmett Small, Helen Todd Per Copy 50c (Adyar), quotes H. P. Blavatsky: “My Work has appeared. It THE GREATEST NEED was born, the dear thing, last Saturday, September 29 . .”. John B. S. Coats Then Miss Hoskins adds this introductory note: “The year was 1877 the writer, Madame Blavatsky; the work, the two volumes It is with the work of our theosophical centers that of Isis Unveiled. During this year 1977, to mark the Centenary we should concern ourselves continually, not only with of its publication, each issue of the Journal will devote some sending out what we feel to be the pure waters of space either to passages from Isis Unveiled itself or to relevant commentary or notes to assist in introducing new readers to it.” Theosophy, but also with maintaining our contact with Eclectic readers, we feel, will be interested in this first selec­ the sometimes quite adulterated manifestations of that tion.—Eds. ‘purity’- By our intelligent interest and effort, we can try to bring back a certain standard into those areas The compiler of the Collected Writings of H. P. Bla­ where it has fallen below the level of excellence. vatsky, Boris de Zirkoff, inserts a brief note in the We need to be well organized in a world which de­ place where Isis chronologically belongs.* He recom­ mands it. But sometimes people ask whether we are be­ mends to the reader’s attention the account given by coming too organized and oriented toward the ma­ Col. Olcott in Old Diary Leaves of the way in which terialistic and commercialized society in which we Isis was written. The whole cjiapter is fascinating,! live. We may feel that all spiritual organizations, but the few extracts given here for the benefit of those amongst which we may be happy to include The Theo­ who do not have access to the Diaries must suffice. The sophical Society, have always accepted the idea that Colonel writes: the purity of any teaching is to some extent lost and “. nothing could have been more commonplace the power to channel truth defiled by too much contact and unostentatious than the beginning of Isis. One with very material things. Our work is that of spiritual­ day in the Summer of 1875, H.P.B. showed me some izing society and seeking to raise matter and all about sheets of manuscript which she had written and us to a higher level. said: T wrote this last night “by order”, but what It is easy to forget the need for a deep purity in our the deuce it is to be I don’t know. Perhaps it is for interest to make Theosophy known. Is it not true to a newspaper article, perhaps for a book, perhaps for say that however much we welcome needed funds, nothing: anyhow, I did as I was ordered’. And she without which it would be difficult to proceed, the put it away in a drawer, and nothing more was said strength of such a society as ours depends in the long about it for some time.” run more on the quality and sacrifice of our members A little later, while staying with friends, than it does on our bank accounts? Whilst it is im­ “. she wrote me that it was to be a book on the possible to stand outside the many methods which are history and philosophy of the Eastern Schools and accepted by the world around us, such as mass media their relations with those of our own times. She said advertising and so on, we should be careful not to gear she was writing about things she had never studied ourselves too closely to the current commercial trend. and making quotations from books she had never In this world, the development and distribution of read in all her life: that, to test her accuracy, Prof- food supplies, the provision of health and help, especial­ Corson had compared her quotations with classical ly after periods of national disaster, child and animal welfare and, in the plant world, the desperate need for more trees, all depend on man’s care. The danger of nuclear power, even the production of it for peaceful MEDITATIONS—I purposes, involves us in a quite appalling problem of O thou Golden Sun of most excellent splendor, disposal of nuclear waste, and one hardly realizes Illumine our hearts and fill our minds, so that we, sometimes what we are doing to nature about us. We Recognizing our oneness with the Divinity, which is have to be concerned and active and yet remain pure the heart of the Universe, and inviolate in our deepest concern. May see the Pathway before our feet, and tread it to those distant goals of perfection, —Extract from Presidential Address to the 99th Annual Conven­ tion of the Theosophical Society, (Adyar) Varanasi, India, De­ Stimulated by thine own radiant light. cember 26, 1974. (Tat savitur varenyam, bhargo devasya dhimahi, dhiyo yo nah prachodayat.) ISIS UNVEILED —Paraphrase from the Sanskrit by G. de Purucker The following is reprinted from The Theosophical Journal, —January/February 1977. The author, Ianthe H. Hoskins, who * Collected Writings, Vol. I, page 264. is General Secretary of the Theosophical Society in England \Old Diary Leaves, First Series, Ch. XIII. Page 2 THE ECLECTIC THEOSOPHIST July 15, 1977 works in the University Library, and had found her most intimate friends; not on the steamships or rail­ to be right. Upon her return to town, she was not ways she had been haunting in her world-rambles since very industrious in this affair, but wrote only spas­ her fifteenth year; not in any college or university, for modically, and the same may be said as to the epoch she never matriculated at either; not in the huge li­ of her Philadelphia residence, but a month or two braries of the world. To judge from her conversation after the formation of the Theosophical Society, . and habits before she took up this monster literary the writing of Isis went on without break or inter­ task, she had not learnt it at all, whether from one ruption until its completion in the year 1877. In her source or another; but when she needed it she had it, whole life she had not done a tithe of such literary and in her better moments of inspiration—if the term labor, yet I never knew even a managing daily jour­ be admissible—she astonished the most erudite by her nalist who could be compared with her for dogged learning quite as much as she dazzled all persent by endurance or tireless working capacity. From morning her eloquence and delighted them by her wit and hu­ till night she would be at her desk, and it was sel­ morous raillery.” dom that either of us got to bed before 2 o’clock a.m. After mentioning some of the “scarcely one hundred During the daytime I had my professional duties to books” to which she had access, the Colonel comes back attend to, but always, after an early dinner, we would again to the same question: “Then what books did she settle down together to our big writing-table and consult, and what library had she access to? . whence work, as if for dear life, until bodily fatigue would did H.P.B. draw the materials which compose Isis, and compel us to stop. What an experience!” which cannot be traced to accessible literary sources of The colonel then describes his own part in the work, quotation?” And now he gives the answer, derived not amanuensis, proof-reader, collaborator, contributing in­ from books but from his direct experience of the facts formation and ideas from his own fund of studies. He related: “From the Astral Light, and, by her soul-senses, continues: from her Teachers—the ‘Brothers’, ‘Adepts’, ‘Sages’, “She worked on no fixed plan, but ideas came stream­ ‘Masters’, as they have been variously called. How do ing through her mind like a perennial spring which I know it? By working two years with her on Isis and is ever overflowing its brim. Now she would be writ­ many more years on other literary work. ing upon Brahma, anon Babinet’s electrical ‘meteor­ “To watch her at work was a rare and never-to-be- cat’; one moment she would be reverentially quot­ forgotten experience. We sat at opposite sides of one ing from Porphyrios, the next from a daily news­ big table usually, and I could see her every movement. paper or some modern pamphlet that I had just Her pen would be flying over the page, when she brought home; she would be adoring the perfections would suddenly stop, look out into space with the of the ideal Adept, but diverge for an instant to vacant eye of the clairvoyant seer, shorten her vision thwack Professor Tyndall or some other pet aversion as though to look at something held invisibly in the of hers, with her critical cudgel. Higgledy-piggledy it air before her, and begin copying on her paper what came, in a ceaseless rivulet, each paragraph complete she saw. The quotation finished, her eyes would resume in itself and capable of being excised without harm their natural expression, and she would go on writing to its predecessor or successor. Even as it stands now, until again stopped by a similar interruption.” and after all its numerous re-castings, an examina­ And there is much, much more that should be read tion of the wondrous book will show this to be the if one is to understand not only the writing of the case.