“We all drove to the retreat of Majji, a very well known female ascetic, learned in Vedanta, who occupied a guha (excavated cave) with buildings above ground, on the bank of the Ganges, a mile or two below the city of Benares . . . At that time Majji appeared about forty years of age, fair-skinned, with a calm dignity and grace of gesture that commanded respect. Her voice was tender in tone, face and body plump, eyes full of intelligence and fire . . . A return visit paid by Majji to H.P.B. the next morning caused surprise, as, we were told, it was a most unusual thing for her to call upon anybody save her Guru, and upon a European never . . . she freely told Mrs Gordon, Damodar, and myself, in H.P.B.’s absence, a marvellous tale about her. She said that H.P.B.’s body was occupied by a Yogi, who was working it so far as he could for the spread of Eastern philosophy.” – Col. Olcott, “Old Diary Leaves”

“ . . . that night [at Gooty] I was visited by my Guru [i.e. Master M.] and ‘Majji’.” – Col. Olcott, letter to Francesca Arundale

“About a month after I joined the Society I felt as it were a voice within myself whispering to me that Madam Blavatsky is not what she represents herself to be. It then assumed the form of a belief in me which grew so strong within a short time that four or five times I thought of throwing myself at her feet and beg her to reveal herself to me. But then I could not do so because I thought it would be useless, as I knew that I was quite impure and had led too bad a life to be trusted with that secret. I therefore remained silent with the consolation that she herself would confide the secret to me when she would find me worthy of it. I thought it must be some great Indian Adept that had assumed that illusionary form. But there a difficulty occurred to me. I knew that she received letters from her aunts and that she communicated with persons almost in every part of the globe. I could not therefore reconcile my belief, as I thought she would then have to practise the illusion all over the world. Various explanations suggested themselves to me except the right one. I was, however, right (as I have subsequently ascertained) in my original conception that she is some great Indian Adept.” – Damodar K. Mavalankar, letter to William Quan Judge

“[Damodar] was the only true, devoted friend I had in all India, the only one who having the Masters’ and my secret, knew the whole truth and therefore knew that whatever people thought being blinded by appearance I had never deceived anyone – though I was bound on my oath and pledge to conceal much from everyone, even Olcott.” – H. P. Blavatsky, letter to Khan Bahadur N. D. Khandalavala

“The next day came “Maji” (who never speaks of herself but as “This body”) to see Madam, and I alone was then with them . . . I then gathered from what she said that she had been first in the body of a Fakir who, upon having his hand disabled by a shot he received while he passed the Fortress of Bhurtpore, had to change his body and choose the one that was now “Maji.” A girl about seven years of age was dying at that time and so, before her death, this Fakir had entered her body and taken possession of it. “Maji” is not therefore a woman but a real Hindu Fakir in the body of a woman. It is but one by one that I gathered all these particulars.

“In his former body, this Fakir had studied the Yoga science for 65 years, but his study having been arrested and incomplete at the time his body was disabled and consequently unequal to the task he had to perform, he had to choose this other one. In his present body he is 53 years, and consequently the “Inner Maji” is 118 years old.

“She then asked Madam whether she knew that they had had the same man for their “Guru.” But Madam desiring her to give some proofs of what she said to me, she readily furnished them. She said that Madam’s Guru [i.e. the Master M.] was born in Punjab but generally lives in the Southern part of India, and especially in Ceylon. He is about 300 years old and has a companion of about the same age, though both do not appear even forty. In a few centuries he will enter the body of a “Kshatriya” (the Warrior caste among the Hindus) and do some great deeds for India, but the time had not yet come. – Damodar K. Mavalankar, letter to William Quan Judge

“ “Maji” then came for the second time and on this occasion all of us were present except Swamiji and Madam who came afterwards. Col. Olcott then asked “Maji” some questions about Madam. And “Maji” said that Madam was not what she seems to be. Her interior man had already been twice in a Hindu body . . . She also said that until that time she had never seen a European but, having got the information from her Guru, about Madam, she had come to see her. I then asked her if the real H.P.B. was still in the body [i.e. whether the original Helena Blavatsky had vacated her body at some point previously, with it then becoming solely occupied by an Indian yogi or initiate], but she refused to answer that question, and only added that she herself – “Maji” – was inferior to Madam.” – Damodar K. Mavalankar, letter to William Quan Judge

“A few days after Madame Blavatsky died, HPB awoke me at night. I raised myself, feeling no surprise, but only the sweet accustomed pleasure. She held my eyes with her leonine gaze. Then she grew thinner, taller, her shape became masculine; slowly then her features changed, until a man of height and rugged powers stood before me, the last vestige of her features melting into his, until the leonine gaze, the progressed radiance of her glance alone remained. The man lifted his head and said, “Bear witness!” He then walked from the room, laying his hand on the portrait of HPB as he passed. Since then, he has come to me several times, with instructions, in broad daylight while I was busily working, and once he stepped out from a large portrait of HPB.” – Julia Keightley

“I sit down with some awe to write to the Co-operative Society that are running the Blavatsky machine. . . . I verily believe that I have succeeded in understanding you! I seem to see that you mean me to gather that I have not been in correspondence with you – H.P.B. – but with a Brother who has used the B. shell as a vehicle of his lubrication . . . that I shall meet him in the future, but “know him not”; and that as to “the Blavatsky” I shall never know anything more.” – Stainton Moses, letter to H. P. Blavatsky

“I say Isis [i.e. HPB] is a man. Let me add that she is (in my opinion) a Hindu man. At any rate, this thing happened tonight after my sister and her husband had gone home: Isis was leaning back in her chair, fooling with her hair, and smoking a cigarette. She got one lock in her fingers and pulled it, and fingered it in an absent way—talking the while, when lo! the lock grew visibly darker and darker until, presto! it was as black as coal. I said nothing until the thing was done, when suddenly catching her hand I asked her to let me have this neat specimen of miracle making as a keepsake. You ought to have seen her face when she saw what she had done in her brown study. But she laughed good-naturedly, called me a sharp Yankee, and cut off the lock and gave it to me. I will send you a bit of it as a talisman. Mind you, this was cut off of Isis’s head in my sight and under the full blaze of the chandelier. This one lock showed against the blonde silky and crinkled hair of Blavatsky’s head like a skein of black sewing-silk upon a light-brown cloth. Now what this teaches me is just this—The Blavatsky shell is a shell tenanted by a copper-colored Hindu Solon or Pythagoras, and in this moment of abstraction his own hair—previously there only in its astral condition—became materialized and now stays so. Mind you these are my private speculations.” – Col. Olcott, letter to a friend (Col. Olcott wrote this particular letter during the time that Madame Blavatsky was busily engaged in writing “Isis Unveiled”, hence him referring to her under the nickname of Isis in this letter)

“Nevertheless, kind Brothers, once that you have learned the truth; once told, that this unbalanced mind, the seeming incongruity of her speeches and ideas, her nervous excitement, all that in short, which is so calculated to upset the feelings of sober minded people, whose notions of reserve and manners are shocked by such strange outbursts of what they regard as her temper, and which so revolt you, – once that you know that nothing of it is due to any fault of hers, you may, perchance, be led to regard her in quite a different light. Notwithstanding that the time is not quite ripe to let you entirely into the secret; and that you are hardly yet prepared to understand the great Mystery, even if told of it, I am empowered to allow you a glimpse behind the veil. This state of hers is intimately connected with her occult training in Tibet, and due to her being sent out alone into the world to gradually prepare the way for others. After nearly a century of fruitless search, our chiefs had to avail themselves of the only opportunity to send out a European body upon European soil to serve as a connecting link between that country and our own . . . Acting in accordance with my wishes, my brother M. made to you through her a certain offer, if you remember. You had but to accept it, and at any time you liked, you would have had for an hour or more, the real baitchooly to converse with, instead of the psychological cripple you generally have to deal with now.” – Master K.H., letter to A. P. Sinnett and others

“For the purpose of the theosophical work that body was an instrument used by one of the Masters, known as H.P.B.” – Archibald Keightley

“After having proved what I have to, I will bow myself out from the refined Western Society and – be no more. You may all whistle then for the Brothers. – GOSPEL. . . . No; you do not hate me; you only feel a friendly, indulgent, a kind of benevolent contempt for H.P.B. You are right there, so far as you know her the one who is ready to fall into pieces. Perchance you may find out yet your mistake concerning the other – the well hidden party. . . . Now, do you really think that you know ME my dear Mr Sinnett? Do you believe that, because you have fathomed – as you think – my physical crust and brain; that shrewd analyst of human nature though you be – you have ever penetrated even beneath the first cuticles of my Real Self? . . . What I say is this: you do not know me; for whatever there is inside it, is not what you think it is; and – to judge of me therefore, as of one untruthful is the greatest mistake in the world besides being a flagrant injustice. I, (the inner real “I”) am in prison and cannot show myself as I am with all the desire I may have to.” – H. P. Blavatsky, letter to A. P. Sinnett

“Whenever I was called by name [i.e. during a period of very serious and mysterious illness in the late 1860s, during which she appeared to physically die], I opened my eyes upon hearing it, and was myself, my own personality in every particular. As soon as I was left alone, however, I relapsed into my usual, half-dreamy condition, and became somebody else (who, namely, Mme. B. will not tell). I had simply a mild fever that consumed me slowly but surely, day after day, with entire loss of appetite, and finally of hunger, as I would feel none for days, and often went a week without touching any food whatever, except a little water, so that in four months I was reduced to a living skeleton. In cases when I was interrupted, when in my other self, by the sound of my present name being pronounced, and while I was conversing in my dream life – say at half a sentence either spoken by me or those who were with my second me at the time – and opened my eyes to answer the call, I used to answer very rationally, and understood all, for I was never delirious. But no sooner had I closed my eyes again than the sentence which had been interrupted was completed by my other self, continued from the word, or even half the word, it had stopped at. When awake, and myself, I remembered well who I was in my second capacity, and what I had been and was doing. When somebody else, i.e., the personage I had become, I know I had no idea of who was H. P. Blavatsky! I was in another far-off country, a totally different individuality from myself, and had no connection at all with my actual life.” – H. P. Blavatsky, letter to her sister Vera de Zhelihovsky

“One evening [i.e. in 1889] while I was thus meditating the face of H. P. B. flashed before me. I recognized it from her portrait in Isis, though it appeared much older. Thinking that the astral picture, as I took it to be, was due to some vagary of fancy, I tried to exclude it; but at that the face showed a look of impatience, and instantly I was drawn out of my body and immediately was standing “in the astral” beside H. P. B. in London. It was along toward morning there, but she was still seated at her writing desk. While she was speaking to me, very kindly, I could not help thinking how odd it was that an apparently fleshy old lady should be an Adept. I tried to put that impolite thought out of my mind, but she read it, and as if in answer to it her physical body became translucent, revealing a marvellous inner body that looked as if it were formed of molten gold. Then suddenly the Master M. appeared before us in his mayavi-rupa. To him I made profound obeisance, for he seemed to me more like a God than a man. Somehow I knew who he was, though this was the first time I had seen him. He spoke to me graciously and said, “I shall have work for you in six months.” He walked to the further side of the room, waved his hand in farewell and departed. Then H. P. B. dismissed me with the parting words, “God bless you,” and directly I saw the waves of the Atlantic beneath me; I floated down and dipped my feet in their crests. Then with a rush I crossed the continent till I saw the lights of Los Angles and returned to my body, seated in the chair where I had left it.” – James Morgan Pryse

“Your vision that when you looked at HPB and saw no old woman but a God is correct. You were privileged to see the Truth – For the Being in that old body called H. P. Blavatsky is a mighty Adept working on his own plan in the world. And thus we do not need to go to Tibet or S. America to find the sort of Being so many wish to see. Yet having seen the reality better keep silent and work with that in view. For even did you go and tell Him you knew He was there he would smile while he waited for you to do something such as you could in your limited sphere. For flattery counts not and professions are worse than useless. But it is a great thing to see as much as you have, and a greater thing it will be if you do not doubt – for you may never see it again.” – William Quan Judge, letter to a Theosophist

“As to HPB you cannot judge her by any rule. There is a great Adept there and he uses that body for His own purposes, both for use and trial of others.” – William Quan Judge

“Madame Blavatsky’s temper is bad enough, as you say, in some respects. However she happens to be the only agent that can be employed by the Mahatmas for the purposes of the Theosophical Society. . . . Please recollect also that the person inhabiting Madame Blavatsky’s body (who is a Hindu Chela) has tremendous difficulties to cope with, and is not always able to keep in check the influence of the auric impressions of that body left there by the former personality with which it was associated.” – T. Subba Row, letter to V. V. Sivavadhanulu

“The T.S. [i.e. Theosophical Society] lives, – I am killed. Killed in my honour, fame, name, in everything H.P.B. held near and dear, for this body is MINE and I feel acutely through it. . . . I have not worked and toiled for forty years, playing parts, risking my future reward, and taking karma upon this unfortunate appearance to serve Them without being permitted to have some voice in the matter. H.P.B. is not infallible. H.P.B. is an old, rotten, sick, worn-out body, but it is the best I can have in this cycle. . . . When I am dead and gone in this body, then will you know the whole truth. Then will you know that I have never, never, been false to any one, nor have I deceived anyone, but had many a time to allow them to deceive themselves, for I had no right to interfere with their Karma. . . . Oh ye foolish blind moles, all of you; who is able to offer himself in sacrifice as I did!” – H. P. Blavatsky, private letter published after her death in “She Being Dead Yet Speaketh”

“This is, indeed, the bare and exact truth, seen and realised by few; determinedly and even fiercely denied and opposed by most, viz. – that “H. P. B.” the Initiate was the real Messenger and Teacher, and that H. P. Blavatsky, His “vehicle,” was no medium (as the majority assert), but a specially prepared and chosen instrument, always and fully conscious, in her own brain. Truly she was indeed “the mystery of the Lodge,” as she told one of her pupils.” – Alice Leighton Cleather, “H. P. Blavatsky: Her Life and Work for Humanity”

“Most of us are subject to birth from necessity – Karma; that is, our thought and action in the past have been such as to bring us into a certain family, into a certain race, at a certain time and in a certain way under certain conditions and circumstances. Such births as ours are under Law; we are thus reaping what we have sown. But in the case of those Beings of whom we have been speaking, They do not always come to earth and enter into a body by our road of birth. Truly They come under Law, as do we all, but They know the Law and all its modes and processes, and They come by choice through that mode which best serves the occasion of Their coming. They may take a body which the Ego, or natural tenant, is leaving, and by agreement made on higher planes than those we know; such an abandoned body is used by that higher Entity for the purpose of His work in the world.

“There have been two such occasions within our time. H. P. Blavatsky was one. The tenant occupying that body really left it when it was wounded unto death on the field of battle [i.e. at Mentana in 1867], and another Entity by agreement took it. That incoming Entity was one of “Those who know,” one of Those who had reached perfection, and who used that body for the purposes of the work of the great Lodge of Masters in the world. William Q. Judge was another. In that case the body was that of a child of seven or eight who was dying, who was pronounced dead by the physician in attendance. After a time the body showed signs of returning life, and recovered, but the nature of the child was different from what it had been before. To the parents it was still the same child. They saw the same body and thought it was the same Identity or Entity, but they soon saw the great change in the character, in the nature, in the tendencies.

“Now these two cases point to something worth our utmost attention to try to understand: the occult laws governing Nature visible and invisible. They are all outlined in the last chapter of the second volume of Isis Unveiled, where this very mode of superhuman “birth” is broadly hinted at and illustrated: the Fact that a Being of higher knowledge and attainment can, by choice or by agreement enter a body, borrow a body, when the former tenant is leaving it.

“These two Beings did not come into human life through the door of birth as we all have; they entered in with knowledge, and immediately on entering began to train those borrowed bodies to respond to their own attainments and requirements.” – Robert Crosbie, “In Memory of H. P. Blavatsky” (White Lotus Day address)

[In the teachings of Theosophy, those Adepts and Initiates who are Bodhisattvas are also known as Nirmanakayas. HPB defines the Nirmanakayas as “those great Adepts of the past ages, who, renouncing their right to Nirvana, remain in our spheres of being, not as “spirits” but as complete spiritual human Beings. Save their corporeal, visible envelope, which they leave behind, they remain as they were, in order to help poor humanity, as far as can be done without sinning against Karmic law. This is the “Great Renunciation,” indeed; an incessant, conscious self-sacrifice throughout aeons and ages till that day when the eyes of blind mankind will open and, instead of the few, all will see the universal truth.” See more about Nirmanakayas here. They are at times in physical incarnation and at other times not. This is quoted in order to make the following two extracts more comprehensible for those who may be unfamiliar with the term.]

“I was sitting one afternoon with H. P. B. . . . She answered that W. Q. Judge was her favorite pupil and would worthily bear her mantle when she was gone. . . . she seemed to know that some serious disturbance would surely occur after her departure. In this connection I asked her if she meant to reincarnate immediately; she answered that she would not do so but would be able to help in the good work better as a Nirmanakaya.” – Roger Hall, letter to “The Irish Theosophist” magazine

“I will not be able to help it [i.e. the Theosophical Movement] on & stir its course [i.e. not from the start of her eventual new reincarnation], because I will have to act in a body which will have to be assimilated to the nirmanakaya.”- H. P. Blavatsky, letter to William Quan Judge

“Your revolt, good friend, against her [i.e. HPB’s] infallibility – as you once thought it – has gone too far and you have been unjust to her, for which I am sorry to say, you will have to suffer hereafter along with others. . . . You have never understood Upasika [i.e. HPB], nor the laws thro’ which her apparent life has been made to work since you knew her. You are ungrateful and unjust and even cruel. You take maya for reality and reality for illusion.” – Master K.H., Letter to Col. Olcott

~ * ~

Many people – whether they call themselves Theosophists or students of the Ageless Wisdom – don’t seem to be aware that H. P. Blavatsky wasn’t some sort of telepathic “channel” or distant psychic vehicle for the Masters but had spent a combined total of over seven years living with the Masters M. and K.H. in both Little Tibet and Tibet proper. This is no mere speculation but a fact which has become increasingly confirmed by various means from various sources and researchers. These two Masters, and also their disciple Djwhal Khul, are known and confirmed to have paid many visits to Blavatsky in the presence of other people, both in their actual physical bodies (arriving on horseback at Adyar on one occasion, for example) and in their astral form.

The being known as “HPB” was – judging from the evidence compiled above – inwardly a male Indian Initiate of the Trans-Himalayan Brotherhood who had taken up occupancy in the body and persona known as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky after the soul which had initially lived in that body had departed.

Hence the reason why, when one of her final books “The Voice of the Silence” was published, “she” wrote in her own personal copy by means of dedication: “From H.P.B. to Helena Blavatsky.”

Although this concept may be new to some, it is clear from the above that it has a firm and exact basis in the words from several different people who had direct knowledge and close connection with HPB, such as Damodar, William Q. Judge, T. Subba Row, and Robert Crosbie. Further, in letters exchanged between Mr Judge and Damodar, we find the former referring knowingly to HPB’s body as “that deserted home” and sometimes speaking of her as “she-or-he.”

Some Theosophists are of the opinion that there was no constant or fixed inner occupant of the “Blavatsky body” but that it was merely inhabited temporarily at different times by various different Adepts and chelas, without there ever being a real “Inner HPB.” This, however, is obviously highly contradictory to everything said above. It is contradicted even further by Mr Judge (HPB’s closest and most trusted colleague, who she called “my only friend,” and who therefore can be credited without knowing what he was talking about) writing in a letter about HPB in 1890, “The body is really worn out and only kept alive by extraordinary means. . . . I know that if that one should be away a moment you would see the body collapse before you.” (the italics are in the original)

In their letters the Masters referred to her as their “Direct Agent” and their “Brother.”

More can be read and discovered in such articles as The Masters and Madame Blavatsky, Words from The Masters about H. P. Blavatsky, Responding to Lies about H. P. Blavatsky, Who wrote “The Secret Doctrine”?, Praise for H. P. Blavatsky and Theosophy, Gandhi on Blavatsky and Theosophy, The Closing Cycle, Maji – The Yogini of Benares, Damodar and the Hall of Initiation, An Invitation to The Secret Doctrine, Who was William Quan Judge?, and How to successfully study the Teachings of H. P. Blavatsky.

It should become apparent that HPB’s teachings and writings deserve to be considered as far more representative of, and accurate regarding, the ACTUAL Ageless Wisdom teachings of the Masters and the Great White Lodge than any of her manifold “successors,” all of whose claims to have been connected with and representative of the Masters continue to remain entirely unproven and unconfirmed and whose teachings are often very different indeed. This is just simple logic. As someone once said, “With HPB we had a Master in our midst but we didn’t realise it and turned instead to those who really had no clue.”

The matters dealt with in this article are, it must be said, of a truly sacred and esoteric nature. The only reason for putting all this online is to help counteract the unfortunately all too prevalent tendency among many Theosophists to be depreciating and disparaging towards HPB when it suits them because, like the Mahatma K.H. remarked to Olcott, they “have never understood Upasika, nor the laws thro’ which her apparent life has been made to work . . . [they] are ungrateful and unjust and even cruel [and] take maya for reality and reality for illusion.”

~ BlavatskyTheosophy.com ~

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