Madame Blavatsky Enlightens Her Readers

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 8 pages

Eight pages, and one of the most efficient introductions in the series, because it is cast entirely as question and answer. H.N. Vakil of Malabar Hill, Bombay, wrote to The Theosophist in April 1883 with eight numbered questions: what is a Yogi, can he be classed with a Mahatma, can Visvamitra and Valmiki and Vasishtha be classed with either, did the Yogis know occult science, is vegetarianism necessary to its study, and did the Rishis know it.

Her answer to the first is characteristically double-edged. Yogi in India is a very elastic word, now serving generally to designate a very dirty, dung-covered and naked individual who never cuts nor combs his hair, covers himself in wet ashes, performs pranayama without grasping its meaning, and lives on alms — and only occasionally applied to someone worthy of the name. Then comes the etymology that recovers the sense: the root is yug, to join, so that a real Yogi is one who has reunited his soul with the universal Soul. On that definition, and only on it, he may be classed with the Mahatmas, since Mahatma means simply a great soul — at which point, she notes, the third question answers itself and need not have been asked.

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