Teaching of the Mahatmas. The teachings of the great mahatmas. Further contacts with the Great Initiates

, an ornithologist, a high-ranking official of the English administration in India. The correspondence began in 1880 and lasted for about five years. Later, the letters were collected and published by Trevor Barker in 1923, after the death of Sinnett, who for certain reasons was against the publication of the correspondence.

Controversy about the existence of the Mahatmas

At the same time, Blavatsky's sister Vera Zhelikhovskaya, with reference to the Boston Courier dated July 18, 1886, cites the following opinion of seventy pundit scholars from Negapatam regarding the report of the London Society for Psychical Research, which questioned the existence of the Mahatmas:

“We, the undersigned, were indescribably surprised to read the Report of the Psychic Society of London on Theosophy. We dare to declare that the existence of the Mahatmas, otherwise Sadhu, was in no way invented by either Madame Blavatsky or anyone else. Our great-great-grandfathers, who lived and died long before the birth of Madame Blavatsky, had complete faith in their existence and psychic powers, knew and saw them. And at present there are many persons in India who have nothing to do with the Theosophical Society, who are in constant contact with these higher beings (Superior Beings). We have many means to prove these true facts; but we have neither the time nor the inclination to prove it to the Europeans ... "

Since the contacts with the Master Moriah during the life of Blavatsky were not only hers, after her death people involved in the Theosophical movement continued to declare that they met the Master or received messages from him. These included William Quan Judge, leader of the American section of the Theosophical Society, and Annie Besant, head of the European section.

Mahatma Moriah in Post-Theosophical Movements

Agni Yoga

Agni Yoga, or Living Ethics- a syncretic religious and philosophical doctrine that unites the Western occult and theosophical tradition and the esotericism of the East. The doctrine, authored by N. Roerich and Helena I. Roerich, was first published in a series of books published in 1924-38. The source base of the Living Ethics is the same as that of Blavatsky's "Secret Doctrine", whose translator into Russian was H. I. Roerich.

According to its creators, the teaching of Living Ethics arose in the process of communication between N.K. and Helena I. Roerich and the "Great Teacher" (known in theosophical circles as Mahatma Morya). This communication continued in 1920-1940. The question of the existence of a person who could be identified with Mahatma Moriya remains controversial to this day. From the diary entries of Helena I. Roerich it follows that at the first stages the so-called automatic writing was used for communication, further records were obtained by means of clairaudience, which, according to her own statement, was possessed by Helena I. Roerich. Subsequently, she assured that she herself did not use automatic writing to contact the Great Teacher. The basis of the teaching of Agni Yoga is made up of 14 books with texts described by Helena I. Roerich as recordings of these conversations. The last of these books, The Overground, was first published in 1990.

Helena Roerich's diaries are a chronicle of her communication with Mahatma Moriah, or the Great Lord: information obtained through clairaudience, answers to questions, visions and comments on what is happening. Roerich considered herself clairvoyant and clairaudient, however, she did not consider this a mediumship and wrote in her letters:

“From the books of the Teaching, you can see how Vladyka M. warns against all magic and in what strong expressions Vladyka speaks against mediumship and any violent mechanical methods for opening centers recommended by irresponsible pseudo-occult schools. Where Vladyka M. is, there are no mechanical devices or magic signs. "

The opinion of the admirers of Agni Yoga about the contacts of Helena Blavatsky with the Masters was reflected in some modern philosophical publications in Russia. So, Ph.D. V. V. Frolov, executive secretary of the International Center of the Roerichs, in his article "Brief Philosophical Dictionary" says:

Blavatsky called herself not the creator of the system, but only the conductor of the Higher Forces, the keeper of the intimate knowledge of the Teachers, the Mahatmas, from whom she received all theosophical truths.

The screams and fires in the enemy army were due to the fact that while Napoleon's order was being read to the troops, the emperor himself was riding around his bivouacs. The soldiers, seeing the emperor, lit bunches of straw and with shouts: vive l "empereur! Ran after him. Napoleon's order was as follows:
“Soldiers! The Russian army goes against you to avenge the Austrian, Ulm army. These are the same battalions that you defeated at Gollabrunn and which you have been constantly pursuing up to this point since then. The positions we are occupying are powerful, and as long as they move to bypass me on the right, they will flank me! Soldiers! I myself will lead your battalions. I will keep far from the fire if you, with your usual courage, bring disorder and confusion into the ranks of the enemy; but if victory is even for a moment doubtful, you will see your emperor undergoing the first blows of the enemy, because there can be no hesitation in victory, especially on the day when it comes to the honor of the French infantry, which is so necessary for the honor of his nation.
Under the pretext of withdrawing the wounded, do not upset the ranks! Let everyone be fully imbued with the idea that we must defeat these mercenaries of England, inspired by such hatred against our nation. This victory will end our campaign, and we can return to our winter quarters, where we will find new French troops that are being formed in France; and then the peace that I make will be worthy of my people, you and me.
Napoleon ".

At 5 o'clock in the morning it was still completely dark. The troops of the center, the reserves and the right flank of Bagration were still stationary; but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry and artillery, which were to be the first to descend from the heights, in order to attack the French right flank and throw it, according to disposition, into the Bohemian mountains, had already stirred and began to rise from their overnight camps. The smoke from the fires, into which they threw everything unnecessary, ate my eyes. It was cold and dark. The officers hastily drank tea and had breakfast, the soldiers chewed crackers, kicked off the shot, warming up, and flocked against the fires, throwing the remains of booths, chairs, tables, wheels, tubs, everything superfluous that could not be taken with them into the wood. Austrian column leaders scurried between the Russian troops and served as harbingers of the march. As soon as the Austrian officer showed up near the regimental commander's parking lot, the regiment began to stir: the soldiers ran away from the fires, hid tubes in their bootlegs, bags in carts, disassembled their guns and built up. The officers buttoned themselves, put on swords and knapsacks and, shouting, walked around the ranks; carts and orderlies harnessed, packed and tied the carts. Adjutants, battalion and regimental commanders sat on horseback, crossed themselves, gave the last orders, instructions and instructions to the remaining convoys, and the monotonous stomp of a thousand feet sounded. The columns moved, not knowing where and not seeing from the people around them, from the smoke and from the growing fog, neither the area from which they left, nor the one into which they entered.
A soldier in motion is just as surrounded, constrained and drawn by his regiment, as a sailor is by the ship on which he is. No matter how far he went, no matter how strange, unknown and dangerous latitudes he entered, around him - as for a sailor always and everywhere the same decks, masts, ropes of his ship - always and everywhere the same comrades, the same ranks, the same sergeant major Ivan Mitrich, the same company dog ​​Beetle, the same bosses. The soldier rarely wants to know the latitudes in which his entire ship is located; but on the day of the battle, God knows how and whence, in the moral world of the army, one stern note for all is heard, which sounds like the approach of something decisive and solemn and arouses their unusual curiosity. On the days of battles, soldiers excitedly try to get out of the interests of their regiment, listen, look closely and eagerly ask about what is happening around them.
The fog became so strong that, despite the fact that it was dawn, it was not visible ten paces in front of us. The bushes seemed to be huge trees, the flat places were cliffs and slopes. Everywhere, from all sides, one could encounter an enemy invisible ten paces away. But for a long time the columns marched in the same fog, going down and up the mountains, bypassing gardens and fences, across new, incomprehensible terrain, nowhere colliding with the enemy. On the contrary, now in front, now behind, from all sides, the soldiers learned that our Russian columns were marching in the same direction. Each soldier felt good about his soul because he knew that where he was going, that is, no one knew where, there were still many, many of ours going.
- Oh, you, and the Kurskians have passed, - they said in the ranks.
- Passion, my brother, that our troops have gathered! The evening watched as the lights were laid out, the end of the edge could not be seen. Moscow - one word!
Although none of the column commanders approached the ranks and did not speak to the soldiers (the column commanders, as we saw at the military council, were out of sorts and were dissatisfied with the business undertaken and therefore only carried out orders and did not bother to amuse the soldiers), despite for that, the soldiers walked merrily, as always, going into action, especially offensive. But, having passed for about an hour everything in a thick fog, most of the army had to stop, and an unpleasant consciousness of the ongoing disorder and confusion swept through the ranks. How this consciousness is transmitted is very difficult to determine; but there is no doubt that it is transmitted unusually faithfully and quickly spreads, imperceptibly and irresistibly, like water over a hollow. If the Russian army were alone, without allies, then perhaps a long time would have passed before this consciousness of disorder would have become a general certainty; but now, with special pleasure and naturalness, attributing the cause of the riots to the stupid Germans, everyone was convinced that there was a harmful confusion caused by the sausages.
- What have become? Al barred? Or have you stumbled upon a Frenchman?
- No, not to hear. And then he would have fired.
- They were in a hurry to speak, but they came out - they became useless in the middle of the field - all the damned Germans are confusing. Ecky devils are stupid!
- Then I would have let them go ahead. And then, I suppose, they are huddling behind. So stop eating now.
- But what, will it be there soon? The cavalry, they say, has blocked the road, - said the officer.
“Eh, damned Germans, they don’t know their land,” said another.
- What division are you? - shouted, approaching, the adjutant.
- Eighteenth.
- So why are you here? you should have been ahead a long time ago, now you will not make it through the evening.
- Here are the orders that are stupid; they themselves don't know what they are doing, ”the officer said and drove off.
Then a general drove by and angrily shouted something in a non-Russian way.
“Tafa lafa, you can't figure out what he is muttering,” the soldier said, mimicking the general who had driven away. - I would shoot them, scoundrels!
- At nine o'clock ordered to be on the spot, but we did not even go half. That's the order! - repeated from different sides.
And the feeling of energy with which the troops entered the cause began to turn into annoyance and anger at the stupid orders and at the Germans.
The reason for the confusion was that during the movement of the Austrian cavalry, marching on the left flank, the higher authorities found that our center was too far from the right flank, and all cavalry were ordered to switch to the right side. Several thousand cavalry advanced ahead of the infantry, and the infantry had to wait.
Ahead, there was a clash between an Austrian column leader and a Russian general. The Russian general shouted, demanding that the cavalry be stopped; the Austrian argued that it was not he who was to blame, but the higher authorities. The troops, meanwhile, stood bored and discouraged. After an hour's delay, the troops finally moved further and began to descend downhill. The fog, spreading on the mountain, only spread thicker in the lower reaches, where the troops descended. Ahead, in the fog, one, another shot rang out, at first incoherently in different intervals: draft ... tat, and then more and more smoothly and more often, and business began over the Goldbach River.
Not expecting to meet an enemy below the river and accidentally bumping into him in the fog, not hearing a word of inspiration from the higher commanders, with the consciousness spreading through the troops that it was late, and, most importantly, in a thick fog, not seeing anything in front of and around them, the Russians are lazy and slowly fired at the enemy, moved forward and again stopped, not receiving orders from the commanders and adjutants, who were wandering through the fog in an unfamiliar area, not finding their troops. This is how things began for the first, second and third columns, which went down. The fourth column, at which Kutuzov himself was, stood on the Prazen Heights.
At the bottom, where the business began, there was still a thick fog, it cleared up above, but everything was not visible from what was happening in front. Whether all the forces of the enemy, as we assumed, were ten versts from us, or whether he was here, in this line of fog, no one knew until nine o'clock.
It was 9 o'clock in the morning. The fog spread like a continuous sea down, but near the village of Shlapanice, at the height at which Napoleon stood, surrounded by his marshals, it was completely light. Above him was a clear blue sky, and a huge ball of the sun, like a huge hollow crimson float, swayed on the surface of the milky sea of ​​fog. Not only all the French troops, but Napoleon himself with his headquarters was not on the other side of the streams and lower reaches of the villages of Sokolnitsy and Shlapanitsy, behind which we intended to take a position and start a business, but on this side, so close to our troops that Napoleon could in our army to distinguish horse from foot. Napoleon stood somewhat ahead of his marshals on a small gray Arabian horse, in a blue greatcoat, in the same one in which he made the Italian campaign. He silently gazed into the hills, which seemed to protrude from the sea of ​​fog, and along which Russian troops were moving in the distance, and listened to the sounds of shooting in the hollow. At that time, his still thin face did not move a single muscle; shining eyes were fixedly fixed on one place. His assumptions turned out to be correct. Part of the Russian troops had already gone down into the hollow to the ponds and lakes, partly they were clearing those Pratsen heights, which he intended to attack and considered the key of the position. In the midst of the fog, he saw how in the depression made up by two mountains near the village of Prats, all in one direction towards the hollows were moving, shining with bayonets, Russian columns and one after another disappeared into the sea of ​​fog. According to the information he received in the evening, from the sounds of wheels and footsteps heard at night at the outposts, from the disorderly movement of Russian columns, according to all assumptions, he clearly saw that the Allies considered him far ahead of them, that the columns moving near Pratzen constituted the center of the Russian army, and that the center is already weakened enough to successfully attack it. But he still hadn't started business.
Today was a solemn day for him - the anniversary of his coronation. Before morning he dozed off for several hours and healthy, cheerful, fresh, in that happy mood in which everything seems possible and everything works out, got on a horse and rode out into the field. He stood motionless, looking at the heights visible from behind the fog, and on his cold face there was that special shade of self-confident, deserved happiness that happens on the face of a loving and happy boy. The marshals stood behind him and did not dare to entertain his attention. He looked first at the Pratsen Heights, then at the sun emerging from the fog.
When the sun completely came out of the fog and splashed with a blinding brilliance over the fields and fog (as if he was just waiting for this to start a business), he took off the glove from his beautiful, white hand, signaled to the marshals with it and gave the order to start the business. The marshals, accompanied by the adjutants, galloped in different directions, and in a few minutes the main forces of the French army moved quickly to those Prazen heights, which were more and more cleared by the Russian troops descending to the left into the hollow.

At 8 o'clock, Kutuzov rode out on horseback to Prats, in front of the 4th Miloradovich column, the one that was supposed to take the place of the columns of Przhebyshevsky and Langeron, which had already gone down. He greeted the men of the front regiment and gave the order to move, indicating that he himself intended to lead this column. On reaching the village of Prats, he stopped. Prince Andrew, among the huge number of persons who made up the retinue of the commander-in-chief, stood behind him. Prince Andrew felt agitated, irritated, and at the same time restrainedly calm, as a person is at the approach of a long-desired moment. He was firmly convinced that today was the day of his Toulon or his Arkol bridge. How it would happen, he did not know, but he was firmly convinced that it would. He knew the location and position of our troops, as far as they could be known to someone from our army. His own strategic plan, which, obviously, now had nothing to think about to be carried out, was forgotten by him. Now, already entering Weyrother's plan, Prince Andrew was pondering potential accidents and making new considerations, such as might require his quickness of thought and decisiveness.
To the left below, in the fog, one could hear a firefight between invisible troops. There, it seemed to Prince Andrey, the battle would concentrate, there would be an obstacle, and "there I will be sent," he thought, "with a brigade or a division, and there, with a banner in hand, I will go forward and break everything that will be in front of me." ...
Prince Andrew could not indifferently look at the banners of the battalions passing by. Looking at the banner, he kept thinking: maybe this is the very banner with which I will have to go ahead of the troops.
By morning the night fog left only frost on the heights, turning into dew, while in the hollows the fog spread out as a milky white sea. There was nothing to be seen in the hollow to the left where our troops had descended and from where the sounds of gunfire came. Above the heights was a dark, clear sky, and to the right was a huge ball of the sun. Ahead, far away, on the other side of the misty sea, could be seen protruding wooded hills, on which the enemy army was supposed to be, and something could be seen. To the right, the guard entered the area of ​​fog, sounding like stomp and wheels and occasionally glittering with bayonets; to the left, behind the village, the same masses of cavalry approached and hid in the sea of ​​fog. Infantry moved in front and behind. The commander-in-chief stood on the outskirts of the village, letting the troops pass by him. Kutuzov that morning seemed exhausted and irritable. The infantry walking past him stopped without an order, evidently because something ahead was holding them back.
- Yes, tell me, finally, to line up in battalion columns and go around the village, - Kutuzov said angrily to the general who had approached. - How can you not understand, your excellency, my dear sir, that it is impossible to stretch out along this defile of the street of the village when we are going against the enemy.
“I was supposed to line up behind the village, your Excellency,” replied the general.
Kutuzov laughed bitterly.
- You will be good, deploying the front in view of the enemy, very good.
“The enemy is still far away, your Excellency. By disposition ...
- Disposition! - Kutuzov cried bitterly, - and who told you this? ... Please do what you are ordered.
- I'm listening with.
“Mon cher,” Nesvitsky said in a whisper to Prince Andrei, “le vieux est d" une humeur de chien. [My dear, our old man is very out of sorts.]
An Austrian officer with a green plume on his hat, in a white uniform, galloped up to Kutuzov, and asked on behalf of the emperor: did the fourth column go into action?
Kutuzov, not answering him, turned away, and his gaze accidentally fell on Prince Andrey, who was standing beside him. Seeing Bolkonsky, Kutuzov softened the angry and caustic expression of his gaze, as if realizing that his adjutant was not to blame for what was being done. And, without answering the Austrian adjutant, he turned to Bolkonsky:
- Allez voir, mon cher, si la troisieme division a depasse le village. Dites lui de s "arreter et d" attendre mes ordres. [Go, my dear, see if the third division has passed through the village. Tell her to stop and wait for my order.]
As soon as Prince Andrey drove off, he stopped him.
“Et demandez lui, si les tirailleurs sont postes,” he added. - Ce qu "ils font, ce qu" ils font! [And ask if arrows are posted. - What are they doing, what are they doing!] - he said to himself, still not answering the Austrian.
Prince Andrew galloped off to carry out the order.
Having overtaken all the battalions in front, he stopped the 3rd division and made sure that, in fact, there was no rifle line in front of our columns. The regimental commander of the former in front of the regiment was very surprised by the order given to him from the commander-in-chief to scatter the riflemen. The regimental commander stood here in full confidence that there were still troops ahead of him, and that the enemy could not be closer than 10 versts. Indeed, there was nothing to be seen ahead, except for a desert country, leaning forward and covered with thick fog. Ordering on behalf of the commander-in-chief to fulfill the lost, Prince Andrey galloped back. Kutuzov still stood in the same place, and, sinking in his old age on the saddle with his corpulent body, yawned heavily, closing his eyes. The troops were no longer moving, but rifles were at their feet.
“Okay, okay,” he said to Prince Andrey and turned to the general, who, with a watch in his hands, said that it was time to move, since all the columns from the left flank had already descended.
“We’ll have time, Your Excellency,” Kutuzov said through a yawn. - We'll make it! He repeated.
At this time, behind Kutuzov, the sounds of greeting regiments were heard in the distance, and these voices began to approach rapidly along the entire length of the stretched line of advancing Russian columns. It was evident that the one with whom they greeted was traveling soon. When the soldiers of the regiment in front of which Kutuzov stood, shouted, he drove a little to the side and looked around with a grimace. On the road from Prazen galloped like a squadron of multicolored horsemen. Two of them galloped side by side in front of the others at a large gallop. One was in a black uniform with a white sultan on a red englised horse, the other in a white uniform on a black horse. These were two emperors with their retinue. Kutuzov, with the affectation of a campaigner at the front, gave order to the standing troops and, saluting, drove up to the emperor. His whole figure and manner suddenly changed. He assumed the appearance of a subordinate, non-judgmental person. With an affectation of deference, which obviously struck the Emperor Alexander unpleasantly, he rode up and saluted him.
An unpleasant impression, just like the remnants of fog on a clear sky, ran over the young and happy face of the emperor and disappeared. He was, after ill health, somewhat thinner that day than on the Olmutsk field, where Bolkonsky saw him for the first time abroad; but the same enchanting combination of majesty and meekness was in his beautiful, gray eyes, and on his thin lips the same possibility of various expressions and the predominant expression of a complacent, innocent youth.
At the Olmüts review he was more stately, here he was more cheerful and energetic. He blushed a little, having galloped these three miles, and, stopping the horse, sighed with relief and looked back at the faces of his retinue, just as young, as lively as he was. Czartorizhsky and Novosiltsev, and Prince Bolkonsky, and Stroganov, and others, all richly dressed, cheerful, young people, on fine, well-groomed, fresh, just slightly sweaty horses, talking and smiling, stopped behind the sovereign. Emperor Franz, a ruddy, long-faced young man, sat extremely erect on a handsome raven stallion and looked anxiously and unhurriedly around him. He called one of his white adjutants and asked something. “That's right, at what time they left,” thought Prince Andrei, observing his old acquaintance, with a smile that he could not resist, remembering his audience. In the retinue of the emperors were selected good fellows orderlies, Russian and Austrian, guards and army regiments. Between them, the bearers in embroidered blankets led the beautiful spare royal horses.
As if through the open window suddenly smelled of fresh field air into a stuffy room, so smelled of youth, energy and confidence in success from this brilliant youth who had galloped up to the cheerless Kutuzov headquarters.
- Why don't you start, Mikhail Larionovich? - hastily addressed the Emperor Alexander to Kutuzov, at the same time politely glancing at the Emperor Franz.
“I’m waiting, your majesty,” answered Kutuzov, leaning forward respectfully.
The Emperor ducked his ear, frowning slightly to indicate that he had not heard.

Who are the Himalayan Mahatmas? And why are they called the Teachers of Humanity?

For a long time, many peoples had legends and religious beliefs about the presence outside of ordinary reality of some powerful creatures: angels, archangels, asuras, devas and others who are not gods, but at the same time, who have a reputation for more than just people.

Western science reacted very distrustfully to the messages of H.P. Blavatsky about the presence in the inaccessible Himalayas of a colony of sages who do not need the benefits of civilization, who are not members of any academies, but at the same time have information about all world events, scientific discoveries and intending teach and instruct all of humanity. For some Europeans, such a thought was simply blasphemous, for others, at least, funny. At the same time, some of the most liberal scientists made a kind of middle decision: recognizing in the Mahatmas the "fakirs" or "yogis" stubbornly hiding from people, they questioned the reliability of the phenomena they produced, consisting in materialization, teleportation, reading minds, etc., calling all this is trick or deception.

It is known that spiritually outstanding people from time to time appeared on the horizon of history, left their mark on the minds and hopes of people and went into physical oblivion. The most significant in this sense, the so-called Great Initiates, are considered the founders of world religions - Buddha, Krishna, Moses, Christ, Mohammed, as well as the founders of some philosophical schools and esoteric teachings - Hermes, Pythagoras, Plato and others.

The traditional interpretation of the words "initiation" and "initiate" means receiving and receiving admission into Freemasonry, the occult and other secret lodges. In this case, initiation means a kind of secret ritual that changes the neophyte's inner value system according to the principle of severe stress. However, in our days, familiarization with the higher laws practically nowhere has the character of a shock psychophysical impact, being carried out slowly and gradually, sometimes throughout the entire physical life.

In order for the ceremony not to have the character of external tinsel and deception, but to touch the soul of the neophyte, the convert himself must have some moral, intellectual and physical qualities. It is said that "absolute spiritual harmony, perfect power over feelings, complete balance of all elements of the personality are required", as well as the absence of any physical or mental disabilities.

For this kind of initiation, not external attributes are important, but internal initiation, which consists in the ability to consistently open esoteric knowledge not only for oneself, but also through one's soul - for others. Agree that not everyone is capable of this.

In esoteric and spiritual literature, there are synonyms and related words that should be mentioned here.

Bodhisattva - literally: one whose essence (sattva) has become intelligence (bodhi), and who needs another incarnation to attain nirvana.

Arhat is a Buddhist monk who has attained nirvana.

An Avatar is a physical embodiment of a higher spiritual being (Arhat) who attained nirvana and, according to the laws of evolution, freed from the need for further incarnations, but voluntarily agreed to this step in order to help the spiritual development of humanity. An example is Krishna - the avatar of Vishnu and Christ - the incarnation of the Son of God.

Star man - according to the teachings of modern Hermeticism is an "awakened man", freed from hypnosis, the spell (illusion, maya) of physical reality and has the right to absolute truth. The latter does not mean comprehension of the entire infinity of knowledge in the human sense, but implies the mastery of a certain higher principle, the "key" of fundamental science, which allows you to extract any information. The star man experiences compassion and love for people, but his selflessness and altruism is selective and constructive. He only helps those for whom he has the strength and who, in his opinion, deserves help. As the "guru" of this doctrine himself, John Baines, writes: the star man "is not a perfect being and does not strive to be one ... His efforts are aimed at achieving" relative perfection, "for there is no absolute perfection." The star man is not able to bend his soul, lie, dodge, commit meanness. In some cases, when there is no other way out, the star man can assert his position with his fists - for example, Christ expelled the merchants from the temple. However, fighting is still not his style, because with active resistance to evil, everyone is inevitably drawn into the "wheel of reincarnation", receiving, according to the law of karma, a negatively acting charge of active information, which he then must work out in the physical body by suffering.

It is known that the cosmological ideas of the ancients meant the ordeal of the spirit during its physical incarnation through the hierarchy of gradually complicating states (mineral, plant, animal and human), after which the spirit gradually loses its connection with the physical level, reaching ever thinner and more distant levels. including its total merging with the Absolute.

At one of the intermediate "stations" of this path, the Mahatmas (they are also White Brothers or Teachers) are located, who have not yet lost the features of their human appearance and gender.

The famous theosophist, successor to H.P. Blavatsky as leader of the Theosophical Society, Annie Besant in the article "Who Are They - Teachers?" (The Theosophist magazine, February 1939) wrote: "These are people who have evolved over the past centuries through hundreds of lives similar to our own. In the past they lived, loved, worked and acted the same way we live, love and work now. They are blood from blood and flesh from our flesh: they are part of our humanity and are no different from us, except, perhaps, that they are older and wiser than us. They are earthly people who have overcome death and achieved immortality. "

However, despite their humble statement, the Mahatmas are, of course, more than humans. Their very existence is unique, and their nicknames are invariably written with a capital letter as a proper name - as a sign of respect.

Despite the fact that the Mahatmas have existed as personalities much longer than ordinary people, they are not out-of-mind struldbrugs or devoid of emotions "initiates" of Sir Bulwer Lytton. These are not the supermen of Hollywood, not the Olympic gods with their purely human flaws, or the mutant Hogbens suffering from an inferiority complex. In a word, these are people with many abilities that are inaccessible to humanity, but freed from our shortcomings. These are the Great Initiates, these are Star People who have reached the maximum possible associated with our development plan.

However, Mahatmas are not eternal either. Their Path on a cosmic scale is just as short as the Path of earthly people on an earthly one. Their further abode is not on human, personal, but on purely spiritual being, which, one must think, by today both Moriah and Kut Humi have already reached ...

The appearance of the Great Initiates, as tradition testifies, is not associated with any one esoteric teaching, is not the privilege of a single religion. Over the course of centuries of human history, there were several dozen Great Initiates, gradually replacing each other ...

In addition, a wide gradation of spiritual development proper is revealed, where it is a general rule: the stronger the spirit is connected with the Earth and the physical body, the less significant the laws and values ​​of the subtle world are for it, and vice versa. So, for example, if for a common man in the street a systematic violation of cosmic morality turns out to be something ordinary and real, then for a developed adept, a master, or for a somewhat sophisticated psychic who enters the astral plane, the laws of the subtle world are incomparably more significant, and therefore their violation is very painful for them.

Mahatmas never leaned towards categorical judgments, did not consider their statements final and complete. Mentoring, authoritarian style, spying on every step and petty tutelage are offensive to anyone. But they turn out to be alien to the Mahatmas, who never considered thought to be the ultimate truth, but allowed alternatives to thought. Sending their messages to people, the Mahatmas turned out to be condescending to their weaknesses and in rather general terms they gave any advice. They never sought to radically reorganize humanity, in every possible way encouraging independent human activity.

Actually, they could accelerate the spiritual evolution of people only up to certain limits, since in their understanding people themselves must suffer, temper their spirit and raise it to the heights of the Hierarchy. Spiritual evolution is very difficult for a person, since it is associated with endurance, trial, altruism and maximum unconnection with the world of things. All these qualities are unusually far from all physical life, and therefore each individual is between two paths - physical and spiritual ...

It is also known that an undeveloped spirit is incapable of autochthonous (independent) development, for it is entirely at the mercy of physical life, and therefore it evolves only by incarnating.

As for the world of Mahatmas, they are all Avatars, Supreme Souls, who do not require physical incarnation for their further evolution. This does not mean that they have reached a "ceiling" or that their development has stopped. It's just that their further progress is carried out outside the contradictory conditions of physical life, and it is quite possible that invisible help to humanity is one of such conditions ...

An ordinary individual, as you know, is closely related to things around him, which to some extent are likened to him, representing a kind of elongation of the individual in time and space. This subjective world includes not only inanimate objects, but also the surrounding animals, landscape and even some of the space objects. The ability to include foreign objects in the intimate world, their own field of activity, rapidly decreases as they move away in time, space or quality. Thus, each of us turns out to be quite sharply delimited from the majority of potential things, objects, objects, as not included in his world, and which do not really exist for him. The noted "egoism" has a completely natural character, and the entire physical world is based on this principle.

It is known that subtle or multidimensional reality does not obey these laws, as well as the dualistic logic of Aristotle-Descartes, which breaks existence into relatively independent subject and object. Since the subtle world in our understanding turns out to be infinitely diverse and has no boundaries in time and space, for most researchers who do not recognize any other logic, this world simply does not exist, it is a fiction. And in fact, the "tool" for comprehending and mastering the higher worlds is not the mind, consciously operating with dual logic, but the "supermind" possessing multiple-valued logic, which a "sound mind" and "sober mind" usually fails to grasp. That is, as Professor G.G. Vorobiev from the United States - "determinism is a black-and-white coloring of concepts, the desire to see cause-and-effect relationships in everything. Determinism has brought benefits to science, but even more harm." We are talking, as can be seen from here, about a kind of surrogate of the ancient Indian law of karma - mechanistic, rigid inheritance or connection, the extreme manifestation of which is the unambiguous Laplacian definition of dependence or cause - determinism, which reduced all the variety of things and connections between them to some limited aggregate, calling the rest are fiction or disorder.

How flawed and limited this point of view turns out to be is demonstrated by the following case.

In 1929, an unusual radio transmission was caught on a wavelength of 75 meters. Someone, who identified himself as NIKOMO and introduced himself as an envoy of an alien civilization, broadcast a memorandum for two hours, now known in ufology as the Message of the KOH (Coalition Observer Detachment).

But what do extraterrestrial civilizations have to do with our topic? - you probably ask.

It is known that during an expedition to Tibet in the twenties N.K. Roerich and his entourage saw a luminous UFO over one of the peaks. "This is a sign of Shambhala," Nikolai Konstantinovich said then ...

But to this day, the opinions of ufologists do not coincide. If some of them believe that all the phenomena now known under the abbreviation UFO are purely terrestrial in origin, proving to be a manifestation of aborigines from parallel worlds, others just as passionately refer the "sign of Shambhala" to alien intelligence. So, for example, one of the researchers of such a contact, Alla Ter-Hakobyan, directly states that Shambhala is one of the structural units of the mentioned KOH on Earth.

Now listen carefully to the lines of the Message of KOH, and you will easily understand that the mind that prepared this text was very familiar with the logic and psychology of earthly man:

"... We know in the Universe several intelligent races that have a straightforward structure of a logical foundation with branches extending to infinity. They constitute their own unification of races, they are not included in the Coalition, since we could not find a common language with them. The fundamental difference between their thinking and ours is lies in the fact that the area of ​​the figure describing the logical foundation is finite for us, but in their thinking it is infinite. negative reactions to informational influences ...

Using your mathematical language, we can say that your logic is based on a discrete foundation instead of a continuous one, and the most primitive function that has only two values ​​is taken as a basis. This suggests the inevitable conclusion that if your method of perceiving being can be called thinking, then this system of thinking is the most primitive of all possible ...

If humanity is inclined to think about joining the Coalition, it will first have to do the work on restructuring the logical foundation of its thinking according to the scheme generally accepted in the Coalition of the thinking base, "otherwise, concludes NIKOMO, humanity will have a progressive inferiority complex and will not be able to exchange information with other extraterrestrial civilizations, members of the Coalition, left alone. "

As you can see, if this is a message from Shambhala, then the style of the Mahatmas has changed significantly over the past hundred years, it has become more rigorous and knowledge-intensive, however, just as much as humanity itself has changed during this time. The latter is essential for comprehending the essence of the messages themselves, which were never empty moral teachings cut off from the earthly listener ...

It is known that on the higher levels of the Hierarchy energy is monistic, qualifying as "prana", "qi", "fohat", "life force", "entelechy", "Holy Spirit", etc., which cannot have polarities. Even non-incarnate spirits, having found traces of such a ranking, the desire to separate themselves from the environment, are clearly visible only on the lower layers of the astral level. As for the higher floors, the spirits practicing on them already hypothetically separate "themselves" from "others", being in a certain indefinite state until they completely merge with the Absolute.

We can say that the evolution of the White Brothers has reached such transcendental heights that their very existence in the human environment and in the physical body has become extremely difficult and dangerous for them. Natural human emanations (arrogance, arrogance, greed, selfishness, lust) have an extremely negative effect on their naked souls, deprived of that protection or aura, thanks to which every person on Earth is still alive.

It is said that when Mahatma Kut Humi visited one of the provinces of India in his physical body, he constantly inhaled a certain drug that emits ozone, but nevertheless then he became poisoned and was ill for a long time. This was the leading reason why Coot Humi and Moriah refused to contact the third type with Hume, Sinnett and people like them, preferring to communicate at a distance and through intermediaries, and not at all because of their own selfishness, as the ornithologist professor tried to imagine. ... As another materialist, Ulyanov-Lenin, would say about this strange situation: “Mahatmas are terribly far from the people,” and in this sense he would be, of course, right: the mutual discrepancy, the glaring difference in their spiritual organizations simply did not allow physical contact. Zarathustra in the famous work of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said: "What is an ape in relation to man? A laughing stock or a painful shame. And thus a person for a superman must be a laughing stock or a painful shame." - But in fact, should a "superman" of the type of the Himalayan Mahatmas despise weak and defenseless humanity, at the same time, imposing his will on him, the will of the strong?

The difference between the spiritual organizations of the Mahatmas and humanity does not mean arrogance and contempt for people, and, moreover, the desire to cram into a teacher, suppressing any of their own attempts. The main reason for the Mahatmas' appeal to humanity was not arrogance or pride, not a desire to demonstrate or emphasize their incredibly high level of development, but only endless compassion for humanity, as for a "great orphan", pacing around the world like a blind kitten and not finding the Way. Prompting people to search independently, the Mahatmas understood that they had no right to cancel their spiritual searches, clearing the road in front of them like scavengers and suffering with them from contact with their polluted auras. They knew that this would not give anything good: people would not appreciate such a generous gift, turning into inert consumers and stopping in their development, or even turning it back.

In connection with the latter, I would like to say that most people, when in contact with the Rays of Higher Wisdom, at best do not experience anything, and at worst they do not endure goodness, ecstasy, an increase in their spirituality or enlightenment, but only mental anguish or truly physical pain. So, for example, a vicious spirit, devoid of a mortal physical shell, languishes because it cannot satisfy its by no means vanished carnal desires. Own vibrations of the majority of people living on Earth today are extremely far from pure vibrations of the spiritual level, and therefore any refined information from the highest hierarchical layers is perceived by them as pain and torment. With this in mind, the Mahatmas insisted not on an immediate, revolutionary, but on a slow and gradual mastery of the highest truths by humanity, since human nature, possessing inertia and an exaggerated sense of self-preservation (egoism), fiercely resists any changes, and radical intervention can only harm. In a similar way, Swedenborg writes in his revelations how one spirit "cried openly with inner torment when the stream of heavenly breath touched him, and meanwhile he calmly and with joy breathed the vapors of the underworld."

The fantastic modesty of the Mahatmas is not so much the result of their exquisite upbringing as a vital necessity. The same Mahatma Moriah reported: "... As long as people doubt, there will be curiosity and quest, and quest stimulates thinking, generating efforts; but as soon as the secret of our existence becomes thoroughly known, not only a skeptical society will not extract from this benefit, but the secret of our stay will be under constant threat and will require a very large expenditure of energy to guard. "

Having reached the highest spiritual heights, the Mahatmas did not rest on their laurels, but continued to work on themselves. It is known that Kut Humi entrusted the burden of correspondence to his colleague Moriah for some time, since he himself (or his spirit) was in other places with the aim of "advanced training", from where the transmission of any messages to the physical level was simply impossible ...

The fact that the Mahatmas turned out to be outsiders for Western science, culture and society does not mean anything, except that Western civilization has not yet matured to the understanding of the Higher Truths. All this turns out to be all the more strange for us because the Gospels, literally, are oversaturated with phenomena, but no one, in all history, has ever called Jesus a magician and charlatan, despite the fact that at that distant time He also failed to convince the ruling elite and the Pharisee priests in its highest destiny ...

"Pros and cons"

Almost a century and a half have passed since Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1830-1891) opened the world to the doctrine of Theosophy, created on the basis of previously unknown to science esoteric philosophical sources of India and Tibet. The new doctrine, with its fundamental nature, originality and breadth of problems, attracted the attention of the general public; interested in him and many representatives of scientific circles in Western countries. On the basis of the works published by Blavatsky, a theosophical movement arose in the West, which soon spread throughout Europe.

Of course, not all representatives of Western society accepted the new teaching with enthusiasm. Since Theosophy had a clearly expressed spiritual and moral orientation and was positioned by Blavatsky as a "synthesis of science, religion and philosophy," conservative clerical circles in the West saw in it a dangerous competitor to the Church and tried to do everything to compromise it - along with Blavatsky herself, of course.

E.P. Blavatsky, however, did not attribute the merit of creating a new teaching to herself alone: ​​she argued that the true creators of Theosophy were the keepers of the traditions of esoteric (secret) spiritual wisdom of India and Tibet, unknown to the Western world - spiritual Teachers, or Mahatmas ("Great Souls"). One of them, Mahatma M., was her direct spiritual mentor.

As Elena Petrovna reported, the abode of the Mahatmas, or spiritual Teachers of the East, exists in the remote regions of the Himalayas; it is inaccessible for visiting by ordinary people. Spiritual Teachers of the East resolutely refuse to communicate with people from the outside world, but agree to share their knowledge with them, sending their colleagues to them, one of whom was E.P. Blavatsky.

According to Blavatsky, Mahatmas have unusual (paranormal) psychic and spiritual abilities; thanks to them, they developed a special, non-rational way of knowing the world around them, atypical for Western science. This method of cognition allowed Indian yogic philosophers to gain deep knowledge in the field of hidden (inaccessible to experimental research) properties of nature, man and the Cosmos.

But perhaps the main difference between Mahatmas and ordinary people was not so much their amazing spiritual and mental abilities as their high level of moral development, due to which the main goal of their life and activities of the Mahatmas was seen in all-round assistance to the spiritual evolution of people all over the world.

To confirm the fact that the Mahatmas do possess extraordinary knowledge of the secrets of nature and paranormal powers, H.P. Blavatsky herself from time to time demonstrated phenomenal manifestations in public, in particular, the so-called materialization - the appearance of objects literally out of thin air or their equally paranormal disappearance in front of others. Many scientists of that era wished to see these "phenomena" with their own eyes, being sure that, unlike the gullible onlookers, they would most likely be able to catch Blavatsky who produced them in deception, but having visited an unusual woman, pundits were baffled by what they saw ...

Probably the same was the reaction of modern scientists who investigate the paranormal abilities of the Indian guru Satya Sai Baba through the analysis of their videos. Sai Baba was much more fortunate than our compatriot - he lived in the era of the existence of video cameras, which captured the miracles he performed, thereby giving the ability to be convinced of their truth. And if Blavatsky's enemies declared her abilities to be fake, then few people expressed such accusations against Sai Baba - slow-motion video impartially demonstrated to skeptics the phenomenon of materialization in all its inexplicable power: the objects materialized by the miracle worker actually appeared from space, and not from where. then from the sleeve of the famous guru.

Blavatsky's ideas, as well as her paranormal abilities, split public opinion in the Western world into two camps. Some theosophical ideas aroused interest and enthusiasm, while others - skepticism and irritation. Someone believed what Blavatsky said, and someone not only did not believe, but also declared her a charlatan.

Thus, the idea of ​​the existence in the East of a community of spiritual Teachers with unusual knowledge initiated a powerful wave of disputes, discussions, ideological confrontation, and with all that - an unrelenting interest in the phenomenon, which in the West began to be called the White Brotherhood, and in the East from ancient times it was called Shambhala. ...

After the death of Blavatsky, the idea of ​​the real existence of the Himalayan community of hermits-yogis, spiritual Teachers of the world, was impressively reflected in their work by Helena and Nicholas Roerichs. The Roerichs brought into the world a new philosophical teaching of the Mahatmas - Agni Yoga, or Living Ethics. Official science believes that it was the Roerichs who were the authors of this teaching, but Helen and Nicholas Roerichs themselves asserted that the texts of Agni Yoga were transmitted to them by their spiritual Teachers. The spiritual and philosophical heritage of the Roerichs for the time being was little known due to the Soviet censorship, but in the years of perestroika, the teaching of Agni Yoga came out of the underground. And again, public interest flared up in the ideas transmitted to the world by the same unknown Mahatmas, and discussions and disputes began again. As in the time of Blavatsky, sharply critical works appeared, pursuing the goal of not giving an objective assessment of the new teaching, namely, to discredit its ideas, and at the same time to belittle the significance of the Roerichs' cultural and educational activities, which were certainly progressive in their essence. At the same time, disputes regarding the authors of Agni Yoga - the Himalayan adepts-philosophers unknown to the world - flared up with renewed vigor ...

So does this phenomenon exist or not? Is the Himalayan Brotherhood a common myth? Embodied in a beautiful legend, the eternal dream of mankind about a Perfect Man and a harmonious society of free and noble workers?

It is possible to understand this only on the basis of an impartial, objective analysis of the facts, of which there are many today. But - what a paradox! - when it comes to the idea of ​​the real existence of the Mahatmas, for some reason few people succeed in an impartial analysis. Attention is drawn to the fact that the assessment of the spiritual heritage of the Roerichs and Blavatsky by many contemporary publicists often turns out to be devoid of objectivity and healthy criticism. Some followers of the Roerichs and Blavatsky exalt them to heaven, but at the same time ascribe to them unusual tendencies, thereby profaning their views. On the other hand, many critics, instead of giving an objective assessment of the ideas of Blavatsky and the Roerichs, for some reason seek to falsify these ideas and thus reach the point of direct slander against our undoubtedly outstanding compatriots. This is where the strange negative assessments of Blavatsky and the Roerichs as creators of harmful myths, which supposedly powder the brains of good people, come from here and do not lend themselves to rational explanation.

Oddly enough, other representatives of the scientific community, who, by their very status, should have approached any problems of history objectively, impartially and balanced, resort to such assessments. So, with a sharp condemnation of the myths composed, in his opinion, by Blavatsky and the Roerichs about the Mahatmas, the doctor of historical sciences A. Andreev, and then a whole group of authors united by him, spoke out. A. Andreev called the assertion of theosophists about the existence in the Himalayas of a community of philosophers and spiritual leaders of the East that had departed from the world "theosophical myth." Literally, translated from Greek, "myth" means "word, legend, legend." It should be noted right away that if in the ordinary, everyday meaning, the myth is understood as a fairy tale, legend, fiction (and in the negative sense - as ignorant or deliberately false ideas about something), then in a philosophical context the concept of myth has a completely different meaning. It is no coincidence that there is a separate area in philosophical science - the philosophy of myth, because mythology is a part of world culture. But A. Andreev put into the concept of the "theosophical myth" invented by him, not a philosophical, but a philistine context, and even with a negative meaning, interpreting in this case the myth not just as a "legend" or "legend", but as a delusion or deception. It is not by chance that all information about Shambhala, available in the works of Blavatsky and the Roerichs, A. Andreev calls not only “fantasized”, but also “falsified”.

It seems, however, that the point of view of Mr. Andreev and his associates is far from objectivity, and in two aspects at once. First, the community of spiritual Teachers of the East, about whom both Blavatsky and the Roerichs wrote, may turn out not only to be a myth - in a purely philosophical sense of the word - but also a reality. And secondly, even if we consider the idea of ​​Shambhala only as a myth, it is still not clear why A. Andreev and his associates give this myth a negative meaning and consider it a delusion harmful to society? In the end, both Blavatsky and the Roerichs in their works presented Shambhala as a perfect society of highly spiritually developed individuals who devoted their lives to work for the benefit of humanity. Just think - on our planet there is, albeit a very small, but still real community, living according to the covenant: "Love your neighbor as yourself"; members of this community do not deceive anyone, do not exploit, do not quarrel with each other, do not envy or hate each other, and the main goal of their life is to study the secrets of nature and help the spiritual evolution of the main part of mankind ...

What could be harmful in such an idea, even if we assume that it is just a myth? How right was E.I. Roerich, who wrote to her followers: “… teach those who come to you exactly the joy. The joy of knowing about the existence of the Stronghold of Light. Joy that the most cherished dream of mankind is truly embodied here on Earth. "

The island of Utopia T. Mora and the City of the Sun Campanella never really existed, but no one has yet thought to declare these myths harmful to society. What is the fault of a similar image, which has existed since ancient times in both Eastern and Western folklore, before A. Andreev? Only by the fact that it was subsequently interpreted by Blavatsky and the Roerichs as a phenomenon that exists in reality?

And if we assume that Shambhala is not only a myth, but also a real phenomenon? Are the assertions that there is a community of hermits-philosophers hidden from the world in the Himalayas so fantastic?

Shambhala as reality

Upon acquaintance, on the one hand, with the works of A. Andreev, and on the other hand, with the teachings of Blavatsky and the Roerichs, it becomes quite obvious that neither A. Andreev nor any of their opponents managed to prove that the communities of spiritual Teachers The East has never existed as a historical reality - and cannot exist in principle. In our opinion, there is nothing implausible in the idea of ​​the existence of Mahatmas.

Anticipating the skepticism of the Western public regarding the reality of the existence of a community of philosophers closed to the uninitiated in the Himalayas, the Mahatmas reported in one of the books of Agni Yoga: “... When you read about the discovery of dinosaur eggs, you easily accept the message. You will just as easily receive a message about a new species of monkey; the viability of grains in the tombs of the pyramids; about an unknown metal; about a new tribe of descendants of the shipwrecked. A whole series of messages that come out of your everyday life, you will easily accept.

Why is it difficult to accept that a group that has acquired knowledge through hard work can unite in the name of the Common Good? Experienced knowledge has helped to find a convenient place where currents make it easier to communicate in different directions.

You, of course, have heard the stories of travelers about the presence of unknown yogis in the caves. If you continue this fact in the direction of extensive active knowledge, you will easily reach the sensation of a group of Teachers of Knowledge. "

Obviously, from everything that Blavatsky told the world about the Mahatmas, the second point should have caused the greatest distrust (especially on the part of representatives of science), namely, the paranormal psychospiritual abilities of the Teachers of the East and their possession of unique knowledge of the world around them, in certain directions superior to the achievements of Western experimental science.

However, if we approach this issue with an open mind, there is nothing unscientific in the very idea of ​​the existence in the Himalayas of a community of yogis with unusual psychic powers. After all, the existence of people with paranormal powers is a scientifically proven fact; the unusual possibilities of Indian yogis is another fact, equally well-known in the West. If persistent training according to a system worked out over many centuries can give people phenomenal physical capabilities, then why cannot there be a similar training of mental abilities with the achievement of appropriate results?

The fact of the unusual knowledge of the Mahatmas - especially in the field of the psycho-spiritual nature of man - is also not so fantastic. The history of bygone civilizations is fraught with many mysteries. In our time, it is widely known that some ancient civilizations possessed knowledge unusual for their era and advanced technologies (in particular, those used in the construction of pyramids and other "wonders of the world").

The scientific ideas and foresight contained in ancient Indian philosophy were also noted by the outstanding scientists of our era. Academician Vernadsky in his work "Noosphere" wrote: "In the history of philosophical thought, we find, many centuries before our era, intuitions and constructions that can be associated with scientific empirical conclusions, if we transfer these thoughts that have come down to us - intuitions - into the realm of real scientific facts of our time. (…) Some of the philosophical searches of India (…) - the philosophy of the Upanishads - can be so interpreted if they are transferred to the field of science of the twentieth century. "

Thus, on the basis of facts known to science, one cannot conclude that what Blavatsky and the Roerichs told about the Himalayan Brotherhood of Hermits is, as A. Andreev asserts, a hoax, and not a real phenomenon.

In addition, in the annals of the Theosophical movement there are many testimonies and artifacts of the very real, "earthly" activities of the Mahatmas. All these arguments contradict A. Andreev's assertions that “on the earthly plane the Mahatmas do not in any way reveal their presence”, in connection with which they can be attributed the status of “otherworldly forces”, in which, in his opinion, the Theosophists believed.

If we analyze a number of facts from the history of the Theosophical movement carefully and without bias, it becomes obvious that there are many weighty arguments in favor of the real existence in the East of a group of philosophers and yoga adepts with unusual psychic abilities and knowledge. As they say, facts are stubborn things. That is why, without pretending to somehow influence the opinion of the reader, we would like in this article to cite a number of facts that speak in favor of the real existence of the Mahatmas.

Eyewitness accounts

The first argument in favor of the real existence of spiritual Teachers in the East is the testimony of people who personally saw the Mahatmas or even communicated with them. As you know, in any controversial issues, even in legal proceedings, such a factor as testimony is taken into account. Among the contemporaries of E.P. Blavatsky - and not only members of the Theosophical Society - there were many people who witnessed the real existence of the Mahatmas, that is, they literally saw them with their own eyes. We deliberately do not include here the testimony of H.P. Blavatsky and her closest collaborator G.S. Olcott, who can be considered biased because of the active role they played in the Theosophical movement. But we cannot ignore the testimony of a fairly large number of other witnesses from among people who are interested in theosophical ideas, especially considering that most of them belonged to the British high society and would hardly risk their reputations by deceiving someone, and it is not known for what ...

At various times, their meetings with the Mahatmas or the facts of their real appearances in front of a limited circle of persons were confirmed (even in writing) by both many members of the Theosophical society and those who did not belong to it, who were interested in occult phenomenal manifestations. The names of the people who left such testimonies, as well as their memories, are given in theosophical literature: "Letters of the Mahatmas", books by J. Barborka "Mahatmas and Their Teachings", V. Hanson "Mahatmas and Humanity", Sinnett "The Occult World", etc. ., as well as in the memoirs of contemporaries E.P. Blavatsky, who belonged to theosophical circles. These are Ramaswamy, Ross Scott, W. Eglinton, W. Brown, F. Arundale and many others.

For example, let us give just one case that happened to the Englishman W. Eglinton, who was not a member of the Theosophical Society, who did not believe in the existence of Mahatmas, but was interested in theosophical teaching. Eglinton specially came from London to India in order not only to study the basics of Theosophy, but to understand whether the existence of the Mahatmas is true or is it a deception. One of the Masters, Mahatma Kut Humi, who played a particularly active role in the founding of the Theosophical Society, provided Eglinton with convincing proof of the reality of his existence. To this end, Mahatma Kut Humi suddenly appeared in front of Eglinton, demonstrating his paranormal abilities to him, and had a long conversation with him.

After this visit, which took place on March 24, 1882, W. Eglinton wrote a letter to a member of the Theosophical Society, Mrs. Alice Gordon, with whom he was well acquainted. The text of his letter is given in the book by J. Barborka "Mahatmas and Their Teachings":

"Dear Mrs. Gordon,

Finally, your hour of triumph has come! After many battles that we had at the table, discussing the existence of [Mahatma] K [ut] X [umi], for all my stubborn skepticism about the miraculous powers that the Brothers have, I was inclined to fully believe that such individuals with individual characteristics do exist, and my former skepticism will now be matched by my persistently unchanging conviction that they exist. I am not allowed to tell you everything I know, but I can say that K [ut] X [umi] appeared in front of me personally two days ago, and what he told me stunned me. (...) ".

The personal testimonies of people who confirmed the real existence in India of spiritual Teachers - yoga adepts with unusual abilities, should include a letter signed by 70 (!) Most authoritative pandits- learned clergymen of India. This letter arose as a protest against the numerous accusations of fraud and deceit brought forward by the reactionary press against H.P. Blavatsky. The letter was published in the Boston Courier on July 18, 1886, and in it, in particular, it was said that “Mahatmas or Sadhus are not the invention of Madame Blavatsky, but the Superior Beings, in whose existence none of the enlightened Hindus does not doubt that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers knew, with whom even now many Hindus, who have nothing in common with the Theosophical Society, are in constant relationship. "

The original text of this letter is given in the aforementioned book by J. Barborki and other books on theosophical subjects.

In the same book, J. Barborki cites the testimony of the outstanding German scientist G. Fechner, who also communicated with Mahatma Kut Humi, and long before Blavatsky's appearance in the West and the beginning of the Theosophical movement. In one of his letters to the British theosophist, journalist A.P. Sinnett, Mahatma Kut Humi mentioned his conversation with G.T. Fechner, a famous German physicist and psychologist, the author of many scientific works. According to Mahatma, he met with Fechner during the days when he lived in Germany, receiving higher education at the university.

Sinnett, in turn, informed his compatriot, the English psychologist Charles Massey, that Mahatma Kut Humi had met and talked with Fechner. Ch.K. Massey, who was originally a Theosophist but later retired from the Theosophical movement, was very skeptical about the idea of ​​the existence of the Mahatmas. Hearing from Sinnett that Mahatma Kut Hoomi wrote to him about his conversation with Fechner, Massey decided to check whether this was really so. To this end, he wrote to Dr. Wernecke, who lived in Weimar, asking him to obtain information from Fechner about this meeting. Wernecke entered into correspondence with Fechner, who was in Leipzig, and received the following answer: “What Herr Massey inquires about is basically true. The name of the mentioned Hindu, who came to Leipzig, was, however, not Kut Humi, but Nisi Kanta Chattopadhyaya. In the mid-seventies, he lived for about a year in Leipzig, where he aroused a certain interest in himself because of his nationality, but in other respects he did not particularly stand out. He was introduced to several families and became a member of the Academic Philosophical Society, in which you were also, where he once gave a lecture on Buddhism ... I also once heard in a private circle his lecture on the status of women in India. I remember very well how he visited me once, and although I cannot remember the content of our conversation, his statement that I asked him about the faith of the Hindus is most likely true. "

Note also that there is nothing surprising in the fact that in Germany Mahatma Kut Humi was known under a different name - it is quite possible that Nisi Kanta Chattopadhyaya was his real, i.e. given at birth, the name under which he studied at the university in Germany, and Kut Humi later became a spiritual name, adopted by him after joining the Himalayan brotherhood of Adepts.

It goes without saying that H.P. Blavatsky could not have known about the meeting of Mahatma Kut Humi with G. Fechner, so this fact is another confirmation that the existence of Mahatmas was not her invention, as the opponents of Theosophy argued.

Artifacts

The second argument proving the real existence of the Mahatmas are various artifacts associated with their activities, and above all, their messages to the Western followers of Theosophy.

One of these artifacts is a telegram sent by Mahatma Kut Khumi, written personally by him (in that era, the text of telegrams was written by hand). The text of this telegram is given in the Letters of the Mahatmas, and the detailed history of this dispatch was set out in the book by J. Barborka, The Mahatmas and Their Teachings: “... On October 24, Mr. Sinnett sent a letter from Simla to Amritsar to Madame Blavatsky. It went to her for three days, arriving on the 27th at 2.00 pm. H.P.B. immediately “forwarded” a message from the journalist to Mahatma, who received it 30 miles from Rawalpindi at 2.05 pm. Coot Hoomi sent a telegram to Mr. Sinnett at 4:00 pm from Jelum. In relation to this, the Mahatma made the following comments: if it is H.P. B [Lavatskaya] was “the author of my letters, if it was she who created my messages, then, if you do not admit that she is omnipresent or has the gift of flying from Amritsar to Jhelam - a distance of more than 200 miles - in two minutes, how could she write in me a message in my own handwriting in Jelam less than two hours after your letter was received by her in Amritsar? "

This should be proof enough for any of the detractors! Madame Blavatsky could not write a telegraphic message in any way. "

Photo 1. Text of the telegram: 30 words written in the own handwriting of Mahatma K.Kh. Above is the point and time of departure of the telegram - Jelum, 16:25, and the destination - Allahabad.

Their letters are also interesting evidence of the reality of the Mahatmas. Among the letters sent by the Mahatmas to British Theosophists were not only written in the usual way, but also created by the so-called "precipitation" method unknown in the West, based on the paranormal phenomenon of materialization. This is how most of the letters of the Mahatmas were created.

When analyzing the handwritten text obtained in this way, it becomes clear that it involves a technique or technique unknown to the science of that era. As an illustration, we present an enlarged fragment of the Mahatma's letter, which clearly shows the unusual structure of handwritten text on paper, indicating that methods unknown to Western science were used to create this image.

Photo 2. Fragment of letter from Mahatma K.Kh. August 1882
Society for Psychical Research, London

Enlarged image of part of the text of the letter (see photo above). The photo clearly shows the characteristic details of the image obtained by the deposition method: the text is written as if from diagonal lines

Numerous demonstrations of H.P. Blavatsky's various phenomenal manifestations in the presence of a large number of witnesses, which deliberately excluded the possibility of any deception. For the most part, these phenomena were based on the materialization of various objects - from jewelry (brooches and rings) to household items (cups and saucers). As E. Blavatsky emphasized, she mastered the ability to commit these paranormal manifestations under the direct guidance of the Mahatmas. The phenomenal manifestations (in particular, the phenomenon of materialization), demonstrated by E. Blavatsky, are described in detail in the books of A.P. Sinnett, G. Olcott, J. Barborki, K. Wachtmeister; the names and surnames of the witnesses of these phenomena are also indicated there, which sometimes in writing confirmed the reality of these phenomena. Many such artifacts have accumulated in the first decades of the history of the Theosophical movement.

Scientific ideas ahead of the era

And yet, in our opinion, the most important proof of the real existence of the community of spiritual Teachers of the East is not even the evidence of people who saw them and not the presence of a number of convincing artifacts, but the third argument - scientific truths and foresight set forth in books transmitted by the Masters through their collaborators to Western society. The scientific discoveries predicted by the spiritual Teachers of the East were actually made tens of years after it was said in the works of E. Blavatsky.

X-rays, the radiant matter of William Crookes, the discovery of the electron by Thomson, the theory that matter (matter) is equivalent to energy (Einstein's formula E = mc2), and space and time are interdependent, and much, much more - all this was set forth in philosophical the works of E.P. Blavatsky before it was announced by the representatives of official science.

In the time of Blavatsky, it was believed that the atom is indivisible. And in the letters of the Masters of Shambhala addressed to a member of the British Theosophical Society A.P. Sinnett, it was said that science would soon discover the divisibility of the atom. The same idea was expressed in Blavatsky's fundamental work The Secret Doctrine. In this work, it was clearly stated that the atom is divisible and must be composed of particles, or subatoms. The letters of the Mahatmas were received by A. Sinnett in 1881-1884, The Secret Doctrine was published in 1888. And only in 1897 J. Thomson announced the discovery of the electron. Let us emphasize that the concept of the infinite divisibility of matter, which exists in the scientific concepts of the Mahatmas, was not a hypothesis of a narrow, particular nature; such a view was of tremendous ideological significance for the future of all science.

In the same work, Blavatsky wrote that continuous vibrations are inherent in matter. In the time of Blavatsky, many scientists considered atoms not only indivisible, but also immobile in all states of matter, except for gas (although already M. Lomonosov and other representatives of his era adhered to a different, correct point of view). The Secret Doctrine stated that although matter appears to be inert, it is highly active, its particles vibrate, but so rapidly that this movement is imperceptible to the physical eye.

The materials received from the Masters of Shambhala by A. Sinnett (later they were published under the title "Letters of the Mahatmas") also said that there are invisible planets in the solar system that have not been discovered by science. Here is a quote from that source: “Neither the intra-mercurial planets, nor those in the orbit of Neptune, have yet been discovered, although this is strongly suspected. We know that such exist and where they are; and that there are countless planets "burned out", scientists say; in obscuration - we say; planets in the process of formation and not yet luminous, etc. (...) Edison's tasimeter, which has the greatest degree of sensitivity and is attached to a large telescope, can be very useful in its improved form. A tasimeter adapted in this way will make it possible not only to measure the heat of the most distant of the stars, but will also detect such radiations that are invisible and otherwise not detectable, hence the planets as well. (…) Science will hear sounds from some planets before it sees these planets. This is a prophecy. "

As the followers of Theosophy later noted, this prophecy came true with the discovery of quasars.

We add that in 1982, NASA officially recognized the possibility of the existence of an unknown planet, stating that far beyond the outer planets of the solar system there really is some kind of celestial body. Scientists are currently unsure as to how many undiscovered celestial bodies may be in our solar system - one or more.

Another interesting and ideologically very important idea of ​​Theosophy and Agni Yoga is the idea of ​​the existence of non-physical species, or states, of matter - the so-called subtle matter - and the presence in space of subtle worlds, or planes of being formed by this matter. The teachings of Shambhala speak of subtle matter, and in modern physics there is the concept of dark matter. According to the latest astrophysical data, our Universe is 95% composed of types of matter unknown to modern science, inaccessible to laboratory studies due to its invisibility. This matter, called "dark", is not visible with light of any wavelength. As astrophysicists note, light passes through this matter, practically not interacting with it, therefore, with the same success, "dark" matter could be called transparent or invisible. (Subtle matter has a similar nature, according to Theosophy and Agni Yoga. This matter is described in these teachings as transparent, invisible to ordinary vision due to the sparseness of its structure.) Of course, the question of whether dark and subtle types of matter are related, is there they are the same or not, the science of the future will decide. But one thing is clear: there are certain parallels between the ontological and cosmogonic views of the Mahatmas and the latest hypotheses (and even discoveries!) Of modern scientists.

Without a doubt, many scientific ideas are about subtle matter, about the divisibility of the atom, etc. - were expressed in ancient Indian classical philosophy, centuries and millennia ago. But in the teachings of Theosophy and Agni Yoga, this knowledge was concretized and set forth in a completely rational language close to science.

The conclusion that can be drawn from all these facts is one: to give such accurate predictions of future scientific discoveries and at the same time discover such deep knowledge of man, the Earth and the Cosmos - knowledge that exceeds the scientific achievements of modern civilization - could only be a very powerful organization, and quite real, not mythical... It is quite obvious that this organization had to possess colossal, complex knowledge of the environment, which only a few geniuses - Blavatsky and the Roerich family - could never have realized, despite their creative potential and really great knowledge.

There is one more, more prosaic consideration. If we assume that Blavatsky and the Roerichs were such outstanding philosophers that they were able to develop their own philosophical teachings, significantly different from the classical tradition - for what purpose did they claim that these teachings, which are of obvious value to society, were transmitted to them by the Mahatmas? It is difficult to understand from what considerations a person who created something outstanding could attribute the authorship of his creation to someone else, but not to himself.

Finally, an elementary comparison of the literary styles of the main part of the texts of Agni Yoga and the works of E.I. Roerich and N.K. Roerich shows that the books of Agni Yoga (with the exception of the first book, Leaves of the Garden of Moria, in two parts) and the works of the Roerichs in their literary style are clearly different from each other. Consequently, the teaching of Agni Yoga was not created by the Roerichs themselves, but was transmitted to them by someone else with a very characteristic literary style.

Of course, the creative contribution of the Roerich family (mainly Helena I. Roerich) to the creation of this teaching is enormous, due to which Mahatma M., who transmitted it to the Roerichs, considered Elena Ivanovna a co-author of this teaching. But clearly something else is also - the main author of the teaching of Agni Yoga was not an invention of either Blavatsky or the Roerichs, he really existed as a historical person.

Who created the teachings of the Mahatmas?

There is one more argument in favor of the fact that the teachings of the Mahatmas were created precisely by a whole organization of highly developed spiritually and intellectually individuals, and not only by H.P. Blavatsky and the Roerichs, according to their opponents. If we assume that the teachings of Theosophy and Agni Yoga were really created by Blavatsky and the Roerichs on the basis of the already existing Eastern teachings, and not received from the Himalayan community of philosophers and spiritual ascetics, then a reasonable question arises - which teachings were taken as their basis?

There is no definite answer to this question yet. In Agni Yoga one can see similarities with various yoga systems, and with Buddhism, and with Vedanta, and with Kashmir Shaivism, and with neo-Vedantism; a number of ideas of Theosophy and Agni Yoga are close to Western schools of philosophy - Hermeticism, Pythagoreanism, Platonism and Neoplatonism, the teachings of Leibniz, Holbach (oddly enough!), Bergson, Russian cosmism, etc. But besides all this, Living Ethics has a lot of new, original, not associated with any of the already existing teachings.

Amateurs in matters of philosophical sciences, perhaps, underestimate the importance of the problem of the philosophical genesis (origin) of the teachings of the Mahatmas. Meanwhile, the question of the primary sources of the teachings of Theosophy and Agni Yoga is very important. If professional historians of philosophy and orientalists were able to prove that Theosophy and Agni Yoga are just the result of processing of old, already known, philosophical sources, and there is nothing new in them, this could be an argument in favor of the fact that Theosophy and Agni Yoga are not in fact, it was only the Blavatsky and the Roerichs who created, and not the generations of unknown keepers of the esoteric heritage of the East, whose heirs were the Mahatmas. But the fact of the matter is that there is no such evidence to this day.

Claiming that Theosophy and Agni Yoga are a reworking of the already known philosophical teachings of India, the critics of Blavatsky and the Roerichs did not take the trouble to provide substantiated evidence of their opinion.

A characteristic story happened on this basis with the famous Orientalist, Professor Max Müller, the author of many books and teaching aids.

Like other conservative scientists, M. Müller considered the works of E.P. Blavatsky's compilations of well-known sources on Indian philosophy, and herself a charlatan.

Professor Müller's unflattering opinion of Blavatsky and her works, of course, was not due to the fact that he had become acquainted with her works. On the one hand, Müller's opinion was influenced by the image created by Blavatsky's many years of slanderous campaign launched against her in the press by opponents of Theosophy.

On the other hand, M. Mueller's judgment was clearly not free from a certain amount of conservatism inherent in most representatives of academic science. Many connoisseurs of classical Indian philosophy, even in the era of Blavatsky, were hostile to the statement that, in addition to the philosophical systems known to science, in India and Tibet there could be some teachings unknown to the West, on the basis of which theosophy was created.

However, adherence to conventional wisdom and disdain for the philosophical doctrine unknown to M. Mueller played a bad joke on him.

Professor Mueller's silence

In March 1904, the scientific secretary E.P. Blavatsky George R. Mead, published in the "Theosophical Review" a message about his correspondence with M. Mueller. Mead had a BA and MA. He received an honors degree from Cambridge, where he majored in classical philology (Greek and Latin), and also studied philosophy at Oxford and wrote several scholarly papers on Gnosticism, Hermeticism and the origins of Christianity.

The correspondence between the two scientists began after M. Müller published several of his lectures, in which he gave a critical assessment of the teachings of Theosophy. J. Mead wrote three-article reviews of these lectures.

Müller sent Meade his comments, correcting him on one or two points, and correspondence ensued between them. The professor expressed bewilderment that Mead, for all his education, wastes his time and energy on Theosophy instead of studying academic oriental studies, in which all areas could be open to him. Müller also wrote that he could not understand why such an educated person like Mead took Blavatsky so seriously, who, according to the professor, damaged the cause of true Oriental studies with her parodies of Buddhism and Vedanta, mixed in her writings with Western ideas. To this Mead replied that he served the truth, and if Müller was able to convince him that the theosophy of H.P. Blavatsky is just a compilation of already known sources, moreover, distorted by Blavatsky, then he - that is, Mead - will spare no effort to bring these facts to the attention of all theosophists.

Following these, J. Mead asked Professor Mueller to indicate to him what, in his opinion, the original texts in Sanskrit, Pali or any other language served as the basis for the Dzyan stanzas and commentaries to them in The Secret Doctrine or in the Voice of Silence. As Mead wrote, “For many years I myself have searched in vain for at least some trace of originals or fragments that would resemble them. If we could get hold of the primary sources, then we could not wish for the best; this is the material we need ”.

In response to the scientist's request, Professor Müller sent him a short note indicating two verses from "The Voice of Silence", which, in his words, are clearly Western in their way of thinking - which is what they give themselves out. Mead replied to the professor that he was very upset that M. Müller did not indicate the texts that served as the source of any statement from the "Book of Golden Rules" or any stanza from the "Book of Dzyan"; nevertheless, as Mead said, he would like to publish M. Mueller's critical remarks, leaving the right to comment on them. To this Professor Max Müller hastened to answer, asking Mead not to do this and immediately return his letter to him, since he intends to write something more worthwhile for the Theosophical Review. As Mead wrote, “of course I returned the letter to him, but I never got the promised evidence that these astonishing literary works were exposing H.P. Madame Blavatsky, a wretched literary day laborer who concocted a motley buffoonish outfit for fools out of scraps of misunderstood translations. I would like to add that this proposal remains valid for each and every Orientalist who wants to support the last Nestor from Orientalism in this ridiculous, in my opinion, statement. "

For those who do not fully understand the essence of the situation, let us explain: it is one thing to indiscriminately repeat slanderous accusations against Blavatsky, circulated in the press, but it is quite another thing to present scientific evidence that the texts that formed the basis of Theosophy were composed by Blavatsky herself and were a compilation from sources already known to science, moreover distorted, as its opponents argued. In the person of Mead, Max Muller met a serious opponent, the conduct of a scientific discussion with whom required the professor not to repeat idle fictions about Blavatsky, but to concrete facts and evidence that could only be obtained by familiarizing himself with her works.

After reading the works of Blavatsky, M. Müller, presumably, regretted that he so uncritically believed the reviews of her work, coming from the ignorant. In any case, the professor did not provide Mead with scientific evidence that the ideas of the "Secret Doctrine" were borrowed by Blavatsky from already known sources on Indian philosophy. Nevertheless, the professor did not want to directly admit his mistake and report that Blavatsky's works are based not on "distorted translations" of already known texts, but on completely new philosophical sources, hitherto unknown to Western science. Instead, M. Müller sent Meade a ridiculous reply in a letter. And in response to the statement of the scientific secretary of Blavatsky that he would publish his opinion in the journal, the professor, of course, hastened to ask him not to do this - after all, then it would become clear to everyone that Mueller's criticism of Theosophy was unfounded, and the judgments the famous orientalist about this teaching and about Blavatsky turned out to be, to put it mildly, inadequate. If made public, this fact would deal a significant blow to the reputation of the respected professor.

Thus ended this brief discussion in correspondence between two authoritative specialists.

Particular attention should be paid to the fact that further writes in his article J. Mead - an educated and critical-thinking scientist - directly about the sources underlying Blavatsky's works. “I didn't just call these fragments (...) amazing literary creations,” Mead noted. - This is not the opinion of an enthusiast, unfamiliar either with Eastern literature, or with the great cosmogonic systems of the past, or with the Theosophy of world religions, but the mature judgment of a person who has devoted about 20 years to the study of these very issues ...

The stanzas reveal to us a system of cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis, which in its scope and circumstances far surpasses any explanation of such objects known to us from the past; they cannot be called an elaborate mosaic composed of scattered archaic fragments preserved in sacred books and among classical authors; they are distinctive and at the same time bear the stamp of antiquity and that laconicism, which the Western world considers lost long ago. In addition, they are accompanied by comments (...), creating an overall impression of authenticity, convincing to any scientist who has overcome the original bias against their study. "

Such is the opinion of the erudite and critical-minded scientist about the sources of Theosophy! And what is in comparison with him the opinions of ignoramuses, picked up by tabloid hacks, about the "charlatan Blavatsky", who created the doctrine of Theosophy on the basis of allegedly incorrectly interpreted translations of sources already known to science?

As noted by the researcher of the life and work of Blavatsky S. Cranston, the Tibetan scholar David Reigl in 1983 established that the Book of Kew, which Blavatsky referred to in the "Secret Doctrine" as a source of Stanz Dzyan, turned out to be Ganjur, "Translation of the Word (Buddha)" - 108-volume collection of Buddhist works. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen. It should be noted that in addition to Ganjur, which is a translation of Sanskrit texts into Tibetan, the Tibetan Tripitaka (Buddhist canon) also includes Danjur (Tengyur), or "Deuteronomy", consisting of 224-225 volumes. The content of Danjur is translated Indian shastras, religious and philosophical works of Tibetan authors, Indian treatises on grammar, astronomy, astrology, mathematics, medicine, etc. As the famous orientalist E. Torchinov emphasized in his lecture course “Introduction to Buddhology”, “ Danjur is a completely original and therefore even more valuable collection of texts. "

However, today this philosophical source remains almost as little known to Western science as it was in the time of Blavatsky.

These are the main arguments in favor of the real existence in India and Tibet of an organization of spiritual Teachers of the East that is closed to the uninitiated. And these arguments cannot be refuted or deprived of their inherent weight, no matter how much the opponents of this idea would like it.

Shambhala as a myth

Let us now try to consider the idea of ​​Shambhala in another aspect, in the aspect of myth as a philosophical concept.

As already mentioned, almost all the outstanding philosophers of the world were engaged in the analysis of myth and mythology to one degree or another. Moreover, none of them considered the myths to be deliberate deceptions or ignorant ideas about anything. Some philosophers emphasized the ethical role of myth, others emphasized its symbolic side, still others considered the relationship between mythology and religion, others analyzed the dialectics of myth, etc. At the same time, all famous philosophers recognized the enormous role of mythology in world culture. Of course, there has been criticism of myth, and since ancient times, but such criticism had nothing to do with the "philosophy of myth" of Mr. Andreev.

The confused and contradictory arguments of A. Andreev about myths are generally difficult to understand. On the one hand, his myths are the “engines of human history”, and on the other hand, these engines turn out to be nothing more than “collective illusions” and “dreams”, which, moreover, “can influence the masses, inspire them with certain ideas, which means to manage people. " One gets the impression that A. Andreev deliberately mixes different meanings of the concept of "myth" - the philosophical meaning of myth as a cultural phenomenon and the everyday meaning of this word, and even in a negative context, implying ignorant inventions or lies.

We fully agree with the statement that myths are the engines of human history. But everyone knows that history can be “moved” (when it comes to progress) only by positive, evolutionary means, the main of which is culture, in which mythology really plays a big role.

If we are talking about how, as A. Andreev writes, to create "collective illusions, dreams" in order to use them "to influence the masses, to inspire them with certain ideas, and therefore to manage people" - then at what is there culture, philosophical ideas and historical progress? In this case, we are not talking at all about mythology (in the classical, philosophical meaning of this concept), but rather about ideological and political propaganda of a negative sense (or "brainwashing"), which was most clearly realized in the delusional ideology of the Third Reich.

But everyone understands that neither "collective illusions" nor attempts to "manage people" have anything to do with the true myths and legends that make up a part of world culture and in fact "move history", as A. Andreev writes.

Of course, A. Andreev's confused reasoning about the role of mythology in historical progress is not accidental and has a very definite purpose - to inspire the reader with the idea that the Roerichs, they say, composed bad myths, with the help of which they tried to influence the consciousness of people. Here is a brilliant example of how, with the help of deliberate lies (which have nothing to do with scientific research), real "collective illusions" are created, and they are not created by the Roerichs at all, but by their modern opponents!

However, what one doctor of historical sciences did a lot of wise, trying to cast a "shadow on the fence", folk wisdom expressed very simply. “The fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it, a lesson for good fellows” - this old Russian proverb, better than any pseudo-scientistic fogs, speaks about what the real meaning of folklore and mythology really is. Fairy tales, legends and myths were created by the peoples of the world not in order to "control people" with their help, imposing something on them, but in order to imprint in the minds of descendants genuine ethical values ​​and significant historical events, perpetuating them in certain images and plots.

This role of myths and legends was emphasized in the teaching of Agni Yoga: “Of all creative energies, thought remains the highest. What will be the crystal of this energy? Someone thinks that exact knowledge will be the crown of thought, but it would be more accurate to say that a legend will crown the thought. In the legend, the meaning of creative energy will be formed, and aspirations and achievements will be expressed in a concise formula. It is not true to think that the legend belongs to a ghostly antiquity. An open-minded mind will distinguish a legend that has been created throughout the days of the universe. Every national achievement, every leader, every discovery, every calamity, every feat is clothed in a winged legend. Therefore, let us not despise the legends of truth, but let us look vigilantly and take care of the words of reality. The will of the people is expressed in the legend, and we cannot name a single false legend.

The spiritual aspiration of a powerful collective captures the image of true meaning, and the shell of the symbol means a world sign, like a world language, which is inevitable in evolution. (...) ".

The image of Shambhala found in the mythology of many peoples of the world as a collective of selfless spiritual ascetics is that symbol, that “sign of the world language” that really helps the evolution of all mankind, saturating the consciousness of entire generations of people with the great idea of ​​a beautiful and perfect future, sooner or later destined for all mankind ... In other words, Shambhala (as well as the island of Utopia and the city of the Sun) is a prototype of the human community in the distant future, when, speaking in the Gospel language, there will be one flock and one shepherd. In Agni Yoga there is a concept of the New (sixth) race as an evolutionary type of people, more perfect than modern humanity. Accordingly, the authors of Agni Yoga saw the life of the future society as perfect and harmonious, free from the vices and flaws inherent in modern civilization.

And again we ask: what can be bad in a myth that has embodied the idea of ​​the existence of a free, just, morally elevated collective of workers?

Not "to manage people", as A. Andreev writes, but to inspire them - this is the evolutionary role and philosophical and ethical significance of these myths. And it is possible to accuse the "theosophical myth" of a bad influence on the mass consciousness with the same grounds as all folklore in general.

And not only folklore, by the way ...

Literary myths and propaganda myths

It is interesting to note that the idea of ​​the existence on the planet of a special group of individuals, exceeding the level of development of the rest of humanity and seeing the purpose of their life in selfless help to the world, is expressed not only in folklore and, in particular, in the myths of Shambhala. This idea has been reflected in many of the best works of fiction, including modern literature. You can think as much as you like on the topic where many writers got this idea - this question is interesting in itself. But besides this, the fact remains: the image of an insignificant society of passionaries-altruists, who set the goal of their life not for earthly goods, but for spiritual ideals and helping people around them, is reflected in many literary works.

In the novel by science fiction writer Jules Verne, the Indian prince Dakkar - a brilliant scientist and fighter for the rights of oppressed peoples - becomes Captain Nemo, creates a team of companions out of people from different countries, fences off from the world as a secret refuge in the form of the "Nautilus" that outstripped the science of its era and secretly helps people all over the world ... The same idea of ​​the existence of a small community of people who outstripped most of their contemporaries intellectually and morally and use their superiority in knowledge to help others.

The image of Castalia, created in the immortal novel by G. Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, also echoes the idea of ​​the Himalayan Brotherhood of Adepts of Higher Knowledge; Master of the Game Joseph Knecht is associated with the spiritual leader of the Himalayan Brotherhood of Adepts, and the glass bead game itself, born of Hesse's imagination, recalls the creative activity of the Teachers, which is called thought-creation in Agni Yoga.

Very close to the idea of ​​Shambhala as the evolutionary center of the entire planet and the plot of the famous novel by the Strugatskys "It is difficult to be a god"; echoes of this idea can be seen in their other novel, The Ugly Swans. Even S. Marshak's wonderful children's fairy tale "Twelve Months" reminds of the same idea!

Is it possible to assume that the purpose of these and many other literary works (representing the same myth, fiction!) Was to “manage people”? I'm afraid only one “science fiction writer” - A. Andreev can dream of this.

The same idea-myth can be seen not only in fiction, but also in music - from the heroes of Wagner's operas to the song of the bard A. Gorodnitsky about the Atlanteans who “hold the sky on stone hands” ... Both painting and sculpture are full of expressions of the same mythological image!

If we are guided by the point of view of A. Andreev, then we have to admit that the entire culture is permeated with similar ideas and myths, which in one way or another affect the consciousness of people. So why shouldn't A. Andreev declare the whole culture as a whole, and not just individual myths as a part of it, dangerous?

Then the process of educating the younger generation by means of culture - in particular, fiction - can be viewed differently. What if the process of upbringing is dangerous and capable of influencing the consciousness of people? And why, in general, do our youth need myths about heroic passionaries and spiritual Teachers? Let her highest ideals be, in the words of the hero of one comedy film, “jazz, box and sex” - and enough for her happiness! In fact ... A society with such "high" needs will be very easy for some people to manage in the right way.

Oddly enough, but there is a feeling that some forces in our country are really afraid of the influence of lofty philosophical ideas on the consciousness of people. And they are so much afraid that, in opposition to them, they are engaged in myth-making of a propaganda sense, directed, among other things, against the spiritual and philosophical heritage of Blavatsky and the Roerichs.

It is impossible not to notice that A. Andreev and other opponents of Blavatsky and the Roerichs created a whole chain of false statements, the purpose of which is to form in the public consciousness a perverted idea of ​​the philosophical heritage of our outstanding compatriots.

The first link in this chain of fables is the assertion that the Mahatmas do not exist. The second link consists in the desire to present the spiritual communication of the Roerichs with the Teachers exclusively in the form of spiritualistic seances. The third link is the assignment of Theosophy and Agni Yoga to some kind of marginal forms of religions: if the teaching of Living Ethics was received from otherworldly forces and, moreover, in the course of spiritualistic experiments, can this teaching be considered philosophical? Of course it's a religion !! - This is what the "logic" of the reasoning of such "researchers" invariably leads to.

In the work of Protodeacon A. Kuraev "Lessons of sectarian studies", which is in fact a "remake" of his "Satanism for the intelligentsia", there is a chapter with a characteristic title: "Spiritual origins of Agni Yoga." At the same time, neither A. Kuraev, nor A. Andreev are embarrassed by the fact that E.I. Roerich repeatedly warned the followers of Living Ethics about the harm and danger of spiritualism, calling it spiritual debauchery.

However, both Protodeacon A. Kuraev and the historian A. Andreev have long been famous for the characteristic techniques of their "documentary investigations", and few of the readers interested in the Roerichs' philosophical heritage consider their arguments seriously.

Notes:
1. This was the name of Blavatsky's demonstrations of paranormal abilities by her contemporaries. - Approx. ed.
2. Andreev A.I. The Himalayan Brotherhood: The Theosophical Myth and Its Creators. SPb, 2008.
3. "The Roerichs: Myths and Facts". SPb, 2011
4. Andreev A.I. The Himalayan Brotherhood: The Theosophical Myth and Its Creators. P. 392.
5. Roerich E.I. From a letter dated 09.09.37.
6. "Leaves of the Garden of Moria". Book 2, Illumination, 18.
7. In particular, the outstanding neurophysiologist N.P. Ankylosing spondylitis, drawing a conclusion about the real existence of the paranormal abilities of the human psyche. See N. Bekhtereva. The magic of the brain and the labyrinths of life. M., 2010.
8. Vernadsky V. I. Noosphere // Vernadsky V. I. Biosphere and noosphere. M., 2004, p. 264.
9. Andreev A.I. The Himalayan Brotherhood: The Theosophical Myth and Its Creators. SPb, 2008.S. 7.
10. "Letters Mahatmas", M., 2010.
11. Barborka J. Mahatma and their doctrine. M., 2005. Original: “Mahatmas and Their Letters”.
12. Hanson V. Mahatmas and Humanity. Magnitogorsk, 1995.
13. Sinnett A.P. The Occult World. L .: TPH, 1969.
14. This is what the British followers of Blavatsky called the Mahatmas. - Approx. ed.
15. Barborka J. Mahatma and their doctrine.
16. Boston Courier, July 18, 1886.
17. Barborka J. Mahatma and their doctrine. P. 325.
18. Letters from the Mahatmas. M., 2011.
19. The quotation marks are used here in connection with the fact that the sending of the letter was carried out by Blavatsky not in the usual, but in a paranormal way, which allowed the Adepts to instantly exchange messages over long distances. This method was based on their ability to dematerialize and materialize objects, including letters. - Approx. ed.
20. Blavatsky's opponents argued that the Mahatmas were her own invention, in fact they did not exist, and all the letters of the Mahatmas received by the British followers of Theosophy were also written by Blavatsky herself. - Approx. ed.
21. Barborka J. Mahatma and their doctrine. P. 225.
22. For example, Barborka J., Mahatmas and their teachings. S. 54-55, etc.
23. Letters to the Mahatmas, October 1882.
24. They are represented mainly by her epistolary legacy. - Approx. ed.
25. "Voice of Silence" - one of the small in volume, but deep in content, works published by E.P. Blavatsky. See H.P. Blavatsky. “Voice of Silence. Seven Gates, two paths. " M., 2011.
26. Quoted from: Cranston S. “E.P. Blavatsky. Life and work of the founder of the Theosophical movement. Moscow - Riga, 1996.S. 462-464.
27. The title of one of the treatises included in the "Voice of Silence". - Approx. ed.
28. The Book of Dzyan is a philosophical source, comments on which were taken by Blavatsky as the basis of the "Secret Doctrine". - Approx. ed.
29. Means M. Müller. - Approx. ed.
30. Quoted from: Cranston S. “E.P. Blavatsky. Life and work of the founder of the Theosophical movement. Moscow - Riga, 1996.S. 462-464.
31. This refers to the stanzas of Dzyan, the commentaries to which formed the basis of the "Secret Doctrine". - Approx. ed.
32. Quoted from: Cranston S. “E.P. Blavatsky. Life and Activities of the Founder of the Theosophical Movement ”. Moscow - Riga, 1996.S. 462-464.
33. In a different transcription - Gyu-de. - Approx. ed.
34. In the old transcription - Kanjur or Kangyur; the modern, correct transmission of the name of this source is Gandzhur. - Approx. ed.
35. Andreev. The Himalayan Brotherhood: The Theosophical Myth and Its Creators. P. 5.
36. "Signs of Agni Yoga", 19.
37. The follower of the Roerichs R. Rudzitis in his work "The Brotherhood of the Grail" convincingly showed that the image of Shambhala was reflected in the mythology and folklore of almost all peoples of the world. See Rudzitis R. The Brotherhood of the Grail. Riga, 1994. - Approx. ed.
38. Lessons of sectology. How to recognize a sect. On the example of the Roerich movement ”. SPb, 2002.

Mahatma Moriah(eng. Morya) - in Theosophy and Agni Yoga (also Lord Moriah, Moria, Moria, Lord M., Mahatma M., M. M.) - one of the "Teachers of Wisdom", in the Teaching of the Ascended Masters (under the name El Morya) - one from the "Ascended Masters".

Portrait of an imaginary Master Moriah
Hermann Schmiechen, 1884

The first mentions of Mahatma Moria belong to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. She claims that Kut Humi Lal Sing and Mahatma Moria helped her found the Theosophical Society. Mahatma Moriah's appearance and personal encounters with him have been described in detail by various Theosophists.

Modern historical science notes that there is not sufficient evidence for the existence of the Madame Blavatsky. Also, there are no reliable material evidence and certainty facts that, at least, could confirm the existence of people who served as prototypes of theosophical mahatmas.

• 1
  • 1.1 Letters from the Mahatmas
  • 1.2
• 2
  • 2.1 Agni Yoga
  • 2.2 Teaching of the Ascended Masters
• 3 Literature

Connection with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society

Helena Blavatsky wrote that the Mahatmas Moriah and Kut-Khumi worked closely with her in the work on her two works "The Secret Doctrine - the synthesis of science, philosophy and religion" and "Isis Unveiled."

Blavatsky claimed that Mahatma Moriah had appeared to her from childhood in dreams and visions, and that on August 12, 1851, on the day of her twentieth birthday, their first meeting took place in Hyde Park (London). Countess Constance Wachtmeister, widow of the Swedish ambassador in London, according to H.P. Blavatsky, gives the details of the conversation in which the Teacher said that to him “ her participation is required in the work that he is going to undertake", And also that" she will have to spend three years in Tibet to prepare for this important task» .

From 1852 to approx. Blavatsky spent 1854 in India. In her book "From the Caves and Wilds of Hindustan," Blavatsky described in literary form the travels across India with her Teacher, whom in the book she calls Takur Gulab Singh.

Mahatma letters

The Mahatma Letters are the correspondence of the two Mahatmas with AP Sinnett, editor of the Indian newspaper Pioneer, and AO Hume, an ornithologist, a high-ranking official of the British administration in India. The correspondence began in 1880 and lasted for about five years. Later, the letters were collected and published by Trevor Barker in 1923, after the death of Sinnett, who for certain reasons was against the publication of the correspondence.

Controversy about the existence of the Mahatmas

Although many members of the Theosophical Society in the nineteenth century described their encounters with Mahatma Moriah and other Mahatmas, their very existence was questioned by most individuals and organizations (including the London Society for Psychical Research) even at that time.

Critics point out that there is little evidence that Madame Blavatsky ever existed.

Esoteric historian Kenneth Paul Johnson argues that the "Masters" about whom Blavatsky wrote and whose letters she presented are in fact idealizations of the people who were her mentors. Johnson states that "Master Moriah" is Maharaja Ranbir Singh of Kashmir, who was the most influential royal patron of the Theosophical Society. Maharaja Singh died in 1885.

At the same time, Blavatsky's sister Vera Zhelikhovskaya, with reference to the Boston Courier dated July 18, 1886, cites the following opinion of seventy pundit scholars from Negapatam regarding the report of the London Society for Psychical Research, which questioned the existence of the Mahatmas:

“We, the undersigned, were indescribably surprised to read the Report of the Psychic Society of London on Theosophy. We dare to declare that the existence of the Mahatmas, otherwise Sadhu, was in no way invented by either Madame Blavatsky or anyone else. Our great-great-grandfathers, who lived and died long before the birth of Madame Blavatsky, had complete faith in their existence and psychic powers, knew and saw them. And at present there are many persons in India who have nothing to do with the Theosophical Society, who are in constant contact with these higher beings (Superior Beings). We have many means to prove these true facts; but we have neither the time nor the inclination to prove it to the Europeans ... "

Since the contacts with the Master Moriah during the life of Blavatsky were not only hers, after her death people involved in the Theosophical movement continued to declare that they met the Master or received messages from him. These included William Quan Judge, leader of the American section of the Theosophical Society, and Annie Besant, head of the European section.

Mahatma Moriah in Post-Theosophical Movements

Agni Yoga

Agni Yoga, or Living Ethics- a syncretic religious and philosophical doctrine that unites the Western occult and theosophical tradition and the esotericism of the East. The doctrine, authored by N. Roerich and Helena I. Roerich, was first published in a series of books published in 1924-38. The source base of the Living Ethics is the same as that of Blavatsky's "Secret Doctrine", whose translator into Russian was H. I. Roerich.

According to its creators, the teaching of Living Ethics arose in the process of communication between N.K. and Helena I. Roerich and the "Great Teacher" (known in theosophical circles as Mahatma Morya). This communication continued in 1920-1940. The question of the existence of a person who could be identified with Mahatma Moriya remains controversial to this day. From the diary entries of Helena I. Roerich it follows that at the first stages the so-called automatic writing was used for communication; further records were obtained by means of clairaudience, which, according to her own statement, was possessed by Helena I. Roerich. Subsequently, she assured that she herself did not use automatic writing to contact the Great Teacher. The basis of the teaching of Agni Yoga is made up of 14 books with texts described by Helena I. Roerich as recordings of these conversations. The last of these books, The Overground, was first published in 1990.

Helena Roerich's diaries are a chronicle of her communication with Mahatma Moriah, or the Great Lord: information obtained through clairaudience, answers to questions, visions and comments on what is happening. Roerich considered herself clairvoyant and clairaudient, however, she did not consider this a mediumship and wrote in her letters:

“From the books of the Teaching, you can see how Vladyka M. warns against all magic and in what strong expressions Vladyka speaks against mediumship and any violent mechanical methods for opening centers recommended by irresponsible pseudo-occult schools. Where Vladyka M. is, there are no mechanical devices or magic signs. "

The opinion of the admirers of Agni Yoga about the contacts of Helena Blavatsky with the Masters was reflected in some modern philosophical publications in Russia. So, Ph.D. V. V. Frolov, executive secretary of the International Center of the Roerichs, in his article "Brief Philosophical Dictionary" says:

Madame Blavatsky called herself not the creator of the system, but only the conductor of the Higher Forces, the keeper of the intimate knowledge of the Teachers, the Mahatmas, from whom she received all theosophical truths.

Dictionary "Russian Philosophy" in an article about H. P. Blavatsky authored by a supporter of the doctrine of "Living Ethics" Ph.D. L.I.Krashkina gives the following interpretation of the cooperation of Mahatma Moria with H.P. Blavatsky:

In 1851, B. [Lavatskaya] met in London with her Teacher Mahatma Moriah, a descendant of the rulers of the Punjab in India ...<…>On behalf of Mahatma B. [Lavatskaya] was the first messenger of secret knowledge in the West.

Teaching of the Ascended Masters

The teachings of the Ascended Masters have their roots in Theosophy, and the "Ascended Masters" are those whom Theosophists call "Teachers of Wisdom", believing in their existence. The doctrine originated in 1930, when Guy Ballard, according to him, unexpectedly met on Mount Shasta with a man who introduced himself to him as Count Saint-Germain, one of the Masters who were introduced to the world by Theosophy after the departure of Helena Blavatsky. According to Ballard, Saint Germain informed him that he belongs to the Brotherhood of the Ascended Masters, which also includes Jesus, Buddha, Maitreya and El Morya among others. The teachings transmitted by Saint Germain Ballard became the basis of the religious movement I AM... They were published by Ballard under a pseudonym Godfrey Ray King in works such as " Revealed secrets», « Magical presence" and " Conversations about I AM»

El Morya is believed to have played an important role in other organizations associated with the Teachings of the Ascended Masters (in which El Morya is also known as the "Chohan of the First Ray"), based on the work of Ballard. Geraldine Innocente, the founder of The Bridge to Freedom, claimed to have received messages from El Morya (originally published on behalf of Thomas Printz); Mark and Elizabeth Prophet claimed that El Morya encouraged them to found The Summit Lighthouse.

Literature

Theosophical tradition

• Letters from the Mahatmas. - Samara, 1993 .-- 720 p.
• Letters of the Masters of Wisdom (1870-88). Collection. Translated. from English - M., 1998 .-- 288 p.
• E. P. Blavatsky From the caves and wilds of Hindustan
• Colonel Henry Olcott's testimony of his encounters with Master Morya

  Johnston C."Helena Petrovna Blavatsky".

The Theosophical Forum, New York, vol. V, no. 12, April, 1900; vol. VI, No. 1-3, May, June, July, 1900.

• Chatterjee M.M. Himalayan Brothers - Do They Exist? // The Theosophist, Dec., 1883
• Hanson W. Mahatmas and humanity. The history of correspondence between A.P. Sinnett and the Teachers of the Himalayan Brotherhood. - Magnitogorsk, 1995 .-- 592 p.
• Besant A., Leadbeater C. W. Man: How, Whence, and Whither? - Adyar, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1913.
• Leadbeater C.W. Teachers and Path = Leadbeater C. W. The Masters and the Path - Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1925.

Roerichs' teachings

• Agni Yoga Book Cycle
• Roerich N.K. Moria flowers. - Berlin: Word, 1921. (Collection of poems)
• Roerich N.K. Shining Shambhala / ICR, 1994 .-- 104 p.
• Shaposhnikova L.V. Teachers / Wisdom of the Ages. - M .: MCR, 1996.
• Rudzitis R. Brotherhood of the Holy Grail. - Minsk, 2004 .-- 304 p.

Teaching of the Ascended Masters

• Prophet M.L., Prophet E.K. Lords and their abodes. - M-Aqua, 2006 .-- 592 p.
• El Morya Chela and the Way. - Longfellow, 2006 .-- 240 p.

Anonymous translation in the editorial office N. Kovaleva

Reconciliation and correction of the translation against the English original; translation of footnotes - by editors of English editions; chronological order of letters - S. Arutyunov

Foreword, text structuring, comments, dictionaries - N. Kovaleva

The editors are grateful to the administration of the site "Adamant" and K.A. Zaitsev for help in preparing the publication.

Foreword

This book is one of the most unusual in the world. Its content is the letters of the spiritual Masters of India and Tibet. It was They, the Adepts of esoteric wisdom, who in time immemorial founded a hidden abode in the Himalayas, called Shambhala in the East, and the White Brotherhood in Western countries. Even with the wide distribution in the world of the doctrine of Theosophy, set forth in the philosophical works of H.P. Blavatsky, few people in the West believed in the real existence of the Mahatmas, the Adepts of Shambhala, apart from the Theosophists themselves. Nevertheless, those in whom the skeptical Western world did not believe entered into correspondence with one of the best English journalists of the 19th century, Alfred Percy Sinnett, and, answering his questions, set out in their letters to him the foundations of their philosophical doctrines, thereby giving to the Western world a unique source of esoteric knowledge of India and Tibet unknown to him until then.

The book was first published in December 1923 and since then has been reprinted many times not only in England, but throughout the world. The significance of these letters cannot be overemphasized. They are a source of unique knowledge, comparable in scale even to such a fundamental work as The Secret Doctrine. But in addition to theoretical knowledge about man and the universe, the "Letters of the Mahatmas" also contain a lot of interesting information related to practical methods of self-improvement, with the history of the theosophical movement. These letters reveal the ideological foundations of the teachings of the Mahatmas and Their worldview, as well as certain aspects of Their life and work; talks about the age-old rules that govern the entire life of the mysterious Himalayan monastery. They also reflect the attitude of the Teachers to people, illustrated by concrete life examples, both to the followers of Theosophy and to its enemies. Perhaps, there is no such lively and convincing source based on real historical events in esoteric literature as "Letters of the Mahatmas".

Another meaning of these letters is that for unbiased thinking people they are, so to speak, physical evidence the real existence of the Himalayan Brotherhood of Adepts. The handwritten originals of these letters are preserved in the British Museum. Among the messages Sinnett received from Mahatma K.H., there is one that, thanks to the postal marks on the envelope, is rightly considered irrefutable proof of the existence of people with paranormal abilities, in particular, the ability to deliver letters to the addressee over a considerable distance almost instantly, in such a time , for which it could in no way be delivered in the usual way 1
See letter # 10 and comments to it. - Approx. ed.

The initiative for this correspondence came from A.P. Sinnett, then editor-in-chief of the Anglo-Indian government newspaper Pioneer 2
Here and below, the sign marks the words, the meaning of which is explained in the dictionary. - Approx. ed.

(“The Pioneer”). As a follower of Theosophy, personally acquainted with H.P. Blavatsky, Sinnett, through her mediation, turned to the Mahatmas with a proposal to start a correspondence, during which he could ask them questions about various aspects of their philosophical doctrine. The answers received in this way, Sinnett intended to use in his articles and books devoted to the basics of the esoteric teaching of the Mahatmas. This proposal was accepted by the Teachers, Mahatma Kut Humi entered into correspondence with Sinnett, who spoke French, Italian, German, English and was generally well acquainted with the culture of Western countries. This unusual correspondence began in 1880 in India, in Allahabad, where Sinnett was then living. Thanks to the letters received and saved by the British journalist, the world has received unique material covering a wide range of issues of Eastern esoteric philosophy.

To make it easier for the reader to understand the events referred to in the letters, we will make a short excursion into the history of the Theosophical movement.

The beginning of the theosophical movement

The XIV century was a turning point for the spiritual development of Tibet. At this time, the great reformer of Buddhism, Tszong-Ka-Pa, appeared in Tibet. He not only cleared Buddhist teachings of dogmas and remnants, creating a new school - Gelug-pa ("yellow hats"), known for the purity and high discipline of its spiritual life, but also reminded the Adepts of India and Tibet of the need to observe the ancient rule of esoteric wisdom: Truth must be kept secret, Truth must be proclaimed. This rule and the lofty principles of esoteric Buddhist teaching ordered the Arhats at the end of each century to make an attempt at spiritual enlightenment of the world, and not only of the eastern, but also of its western countries. The name Tszong-Ka-Pa will also appear in the letters of the Mahatmas. In esoteric Buddhism, this great ascetic of Tibet was assigned a special role, the secret of which was revealed in the works of H.P. Blavatsky. High lamas (clerics of Lamaism, or Tibetan Buddhism) have traditionally been considered incarnations of Bodhisattvas, the Buddha's disciples. But Tszong-Ka-Pa in the esoteric Buddhist tradition was revered not as a disciple of the Buddha, but as the embodiment of Himself. In the Theosophical Dictionary, Blavatsky writes that the keepers of the sacred traditions of Buddhism believed that the Buddha Himself incarnated in the image of Tsong-Ka-Pa in Tibet in order to purify and return to its original sources the teachings that He had once brought into the world.

In accordance with ancient covenants, an attempt at spiritual enlightenment of the world was undertaken by the followers of esoteric Buddhism in the 18th century. It was initiated by Mahatma Moriya and Mahatma Kut Humi, spiritual Masters of the legendary Himalayan Brotherhood of Adepts. The essence of this attempt was to open to the Western world a part of the esoteric philosophical doctrines of the East, the development of which could give the intellectual and spiritual development of modern civilization an evolutionary impulse and, in addition, to warn the people of the West against reckless enthusiasm for spiritualism, which is dangerous for true spiritual development. that era, like a mental epidemic, swept the United States, Europe and spread to Russia. For this, the Adepts had to find, prepare and send a messenger to the Western world who could bring him new knowledge. Our compatriot E.P. Blavatsky, associated with the Masters in her past incarnations. This collection contains short, but very interesting fragments from the letters of the Masters and of Madame Blavatsky herself, shedding light on the system of psychospiritual education, which was taught to Elena Petrovna in the secret Ashrams of Shambhala. Blavatsky was entrusted with the main mission of literary presentation of the foundations of the esoteric philosophy of India and Tibet, which was brilliantly accomplished by her in fundamental philosophical works - Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, as well as in a number of articles on various aspects of Eastern esotericism. In addition to literary and philosophical creativity, Blavatsky's mission included organizational tasks. Together with her associates, chief among whom was Henry Steele Olcott (formerly a colonel), Blavatsky became the founder of the Theosophical Society, the creation of which gave rise to the theosophical movement, international in scale. Officially, 17 people were registered as founders of the Theosophical Society, but Blavatsky and two or three of her closest associates were engaged in real organizational work. The Theosophical Society was formed in 1875 in New York, the official date of its foundation was November 17. Three years later, in 1878, obeying the instructions of their Master, Blavatsky and Olcott went to India and settled in Bombay.

It was here, in India, that Blavatsky met Alfred Percy Sinnett, a British journalist who became the main correspondent of Mahatma K.H. (the bulk of the letters were addressed to Sinnett).

A.P. Sinnett and E.P. Blavatsky

Who is Sinnett and how did he end up in India?

As the English theosophist Jeffrey Barborka reports in The Mahatmas and Their Letters, Alfred Percy Sinnett was born in England in 1840. Fate presented him with a difficult childhood. The boy had three sisters and a brother, and the father of the family died when Alfred was only five years old. The family was left virtually without a livelihood; the mother of the future journalist was exhausted to provide for her children and herself. She made a living by writing newspaper articles and translating. At school, the boy was not doing well, and his mother got him a job as an assistant draftsman. Thanks to this, Alfred mastered the basics of this profession and began to earn enough money to support himself and help his mother. Drawing was not very attractive to young Sinnett; he soon became interested in journalism, and as a result, instead of pursuing a career as a draftsman, he got a job as an assistant editor of a London evening newspaper "The Globe".

When Sinnett was twenty-five years old, he was offered the position of editor in a newspaper "The Hong Kong Daily Press", published on the territory of one of the British colonies, in Hong Kong. He accepted this offer and worked as an editor for the newspaper for about three years.

Shortly after returning to London, Sinnett met Patience Edensor, and they married in April 1870. At this time, Sinnett worked as a journalist in one of the London newspapers. Two years later, George Allen, owner of an Anglo-Indian newspaper "The Pioneer", published in India, offered him the position of editor-in-chief in this newspaper. Leaving London, the Sinnetts sailed to Allahabad, arriving in India at the end of 1872. There they were greeted by the English community of Allahabad.

Allahabad is 700 miles from Bombay; it was one of the main cities of British India, the capital of the combined provinces of Agra and Udh. There was an important railway center and a fort. The city was located at the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna rivers. The name Allahabad was given to the city by Emperor Akbar when he built his fort there. The emperor also erected a magnificent palace there, the ruins of which can be seen today, it was one of his most beloved residences. In the same city is one of the most famous pillars of the Buddhist king Ashoka. Local residents called the city by the ancient name "Prayag", which means "place of sacrifice."

The Pioneer newspaper, headed by Sinnett, was the most famous and influential newspaper in all of British India. From the moment of its foundation, the newspaper was published in Allahabad continuously until 1935, after which the editorial staff moved to Lucknow. Sinnett soon became a well-known and respected member of the English community of Allahabad; he was shown respect by senior officials of the Anglo-Indian administration.

The journalist had the opportunity to travel; so, in 1875, he went on a three-month vacation to England. While Sinnett was in England, a friend persuaded him to attend a seance held at the home of Madame Guppy, a renowned medium. At the time, spiritualism was a craze throughout Europe and the United States. About what he saw during the session, Sinnett wrote in his diary: “The phenomena demonstrated were overwhelming, they excluded any thought of any kind of scam. It was then that my conviction in the reality of spiritualistic phenomena was strengthened, and it was never shaken afterwards ”.

Sinnett's interest in the occult grew even further when he read the first book by H.P. Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled, which was published in New York in 1877. Sinnett decided to get to know H.P. Blavatsky to get closer to the source of that extraordinary knowledge that was set forth in her book. Two years later, this opportunity was given to him in full: as already mentioned, three and a half years after the founding of the Theosophical Society in the USA, on February 16, 1879, Blavatsky, along with Olcott and two other members of the Theosophical Society, arrived in Bombay, a large port city on the west coast of India. There they settled in a small house in the shade of palm trees and began their educational activities in the field of Theosophy. Together with her small group, Blavatsky remained in Bombay for two years, after which they moved to Adyar, a suburb of Madras, and established the headquarters of the Theosophical Society there.

Blavatsky's arrival in India was noted by the Anglo-Indian prints. As already stated, the most influential among them was the Pioneer newspaper, headed by Sinnett. Sinnett not only wrote in his newspaper about Blavatsky's arrival in India, but immediately set about fulfilling his long-standing desire - to get to know Blavatsky in person. He sent her a letter inviting her and Olcott to visit Allahabad and stay at his house. The invitation was accepted, and thus Sinnett's acquaintance with the founders of the Theosophical Society took place. The circumstances of this acquaintance are described in detail in the book by Jeffrey Barborki "The Mahatmas and Their Teachings", which is a valuable source for everyone who wants to get more detailed information about the history of the Theosophical movement and about the Mahatmas. In particular, Barborka cites in his book the memories that Sinnett left about his acquaintance with HPB 3
So, according to the name of the English letters that made up her initials - H.P.B. - Blavatsky was called her English-speaking followers. - Approx. ed.

In her book Episodes from the Life of Madame Blavatsky: “I will forever remember the morning of her arrival, that day I arrived at the railway station to meet her. Trains from Bombay then usually came to Allahabad early in the morning, and it was still time for Chota Khazri, or early breakfast, when I invited our guests home. She was very preoccupied with something, judging by her last letters; she wrote to us about everything frankly, so that we would not form an idealistic impression of her; she constantly spoke of herself as a rough old hippopotamus, completely unsuitable for being present in a civilized society; but all this was done with such humor that it somewhat extinguished the impression of a rather bad state of mind. Her rude demeanor, which we have been told so much about, was by no means so intimidating, although I remember how she was shaken by fits of laughter precisely after Colonel Olcott (by that time she had already been with us for one or two weeks) with the most serious he told us that Madame had "behaved in the highest degree with restraint up to now." I cannot say that my wife and I had an impression of her that corresponded to this definition, but on the other hand, we found our conversations with Madame Blavatsky more than interesting.

I would hesitate to say that our new friends made the most favorable impression on all our acquaintances in Allahabad. The English community was largely subject to certain conventions, and Madame Blavatsky in many ways went far beyond the standards established in that environment to be readily accepted there. At the same time, those friends whom she made herself among our acquaintances in our house were precisely those people who in the highest degree deserved the right to be called friends; and all those who knew her well and who had the ability to appreciate an interesting conversation on a wide variety of topics, brilliant humor and refined taste, spoke of her with great enthusiasm and called her a very socialite. However, speaking about her preferences at the dinner table, it should be said that they did not include everything that forms the basis of the buffoon's menu: she had an extremely negative attitude towards all types of alcohol, which sometimes took a very painful form, and sometimes she behaved extremely intolerant in relation to those who allowed even the most moderate use of wine " 4
Sinnett A.P. Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky. N.Y. 1976.

Beginning of correspondence with Mahatmas

Be that as it may, despite the very unusual character and manner of H.P. Blavatsky, communication with her made a great impression on Sinnett, and in 1879 he joined the Theosophical Society.

The stay of the founders of the Theosophical Society at the Sinnett house aroused a keen interest in the entire English community of Allahabad; the house of the Sinnetts began to be something like a salon, which everyone interested in esoteric philosophy and had heard about the "miracles" that surrounded Blavatsky sought to visit. It was in the Sinnett house that Blavatsky and Olcott, as well as the owners of the house, met another future correspondent of the Mahatmas - Allan Hume, then a government official who served in the department of taxes and fees in Allahabad. Hume, like Sinnett, became very interested in what Blavatsky was telling about the Mahatmas. Soon he, like Sinnett, entered the Theosophical Society and, out of his passion for Theosophical ideas, made friends with a journalist.

Sinnett was not content with the six weeks she and Olcott spent with Madame Blavatsky at his home in Allahabad. He wanted to continue communicating with her, and he invited Madame Blavatsky to stay with him again, now in his summer home, located in another city, Simla, located in the foothills of the Himalayas.

J. Borborka characterizes this beautiful city in the midst of a majestic, beautiful nature: “Simla was founded by the British as a summer residence of the government, where one could wait out the heat. The residence is located in the foothills of the Himalayas at an altitude of approximately 7000 feet. The mountains in that place form part of the gigantic central chain of the Eastern Himalayas. The hills and mountains there are covered with forests, where the Himalayan cedar grows in abundance. Rhododendron thickets cover the slopes of the mountains down to the areas of eternal snow, which add extra beauty to the landscape. Five rivers flow through the area where Simla is located, all this creates a magnificent panorama " 5
Barborka J. Mahatma and their doctrine. M., 2005.S. 56.

Blavatsky accepted Sinnett's invitation to be his guest once more and came to Simla. During her stay in the summer house of the Sinnetts, she, like in Allahabad, had to demonstrate various phenomenal manifestations at the request of the journalist and his friends. Sinnett was clearly more interested in precisely these phenomena than in the theoretical foundations of Theosophy, which Blavatsky wanted to interest him in the first place. It was there, in Simla, that Sinnett came up with the idea to write to one of the members of the mysterious Himalayan Brotherhood of Initiates, to which Blavatsky belonged, and ask her to deliver his letter to them. As Sinnett himself wrote in his book The Occult World: “Once I asked Madame Blavatsky: if I write a letter to one of the Brothers 6
At first it was customary to call the Himalayan Adepts Brothers. Only later, at the suggestion of one of the Theosophists-Indians, They began to be called Mahatmas (from Skt. Mahatma - "Great Soul"). In this edition, capital letters in the words "Brother" and "Brothers" are used only when referring to the Mahatmas. - Approx. ed.

With her views, can she convey it? I didn't really think that this was possible, for I knew how inaccessible the Brothers usually were; but since she said that she would try anyway, I wrote a letter addressed to 'Unknown Brother' and gave it to her to see if any of this would work. "

Blavatsky complied with Sinnett's request - she sent his letter to one of the Adepts, He wrote a response to his letter, and Blavatsky conveyed this message to the journalist. Sinnett was very inspired by the answer of the Adept, he decided with the help of this correspondence to find out as much as possible about the Brothers and their philosophical teachings and then set out the materials thus obtained in his books. When Sinnett's friend Allan Hume found out about the beginning of this unusual correspondence, he also wished to join it. As J. Barborka notes, the most detailed information about how this correspondence began is contained not so much in the memoirs of Sinnett himself, but in one of the letters of Mahatma K.H., written by A.O. Hume at the end of August 1881, that is, almost a year after the beginning of the correspondence.

Mahatma K.H. wrote: “It was Mr. Sinnett himself, on his own motivation, who addressed 'Brother' two long letters before Mrs B [Lavatskaya] received permission or some promise on our part to reply to him. She didn't even know which of us to hand this letter to. Her own mentor [Mahatma M.] for some unknown reason refused to correspond, so she contacted me. Driven by my concern for her, I agreed, even telling her that she could reveal my spiritual Tibetan name to you, and I replied to our friend's letter. Then yours came - just as unexpectedly. "

Subsequently, when during a certain period Mahatma K.H. could not correspond with both Theosophists, another, more influential member of the Himalayan Brotherhood of Adepts, Mahatma M.

Since the difference in the national-cultural traits and mentality of the Mahatmas and their British correspondents was great, various misunderstandings, frictions and disagreements inevitably arose in their correspondence, which follows from the letters. The Indian theosophist Jinarajadasa, president of the Theosophical Society, who at one time studied the history of the Theosophical movement, characterized Sinnett and Hume as follows: “Both of these Englishmen were aware of the scientific ideas prevailing at that time in England; none was particularly religious or had a penchant for mysticism. Both were "quite British", with a latent antipathy to the dark-skinned Aryans, to whom their ancestors date back. Mr. Sinnett was proud of his race, and Mr. Hume was incredibly proud of his outstanding intelligence. The former had no idea what metaphysics or esoteric philosophy was; he was extremely objectivist, he was fascinated by the results of scientific experiments; the second was an ornithologist 7
Hume was an official by profession, and ornithology was his hobby. - Approx. ed.

And his hobby was collecting stuffed rare birds; he, however, possessed some knowledge in the field of metaphysics. At some point, both of them began to take an interest in Theosophy; it is interesting to note that Mr. Sinnett had a strong attachment to Master K.H., whom he soon began to call his Patron, a attachment apparently rooted in his past lives. But none of them at that time realized what the Teachers really were, and the Teachers also did not reveal their true abilities to them, acting only as mentors in the field of philosophy, who from time to time could demonstrate some phenomenal abilities " 8
Jinaradjadasa. Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom. First Series. Adyar, Madras: TPH, 1919.