Adepts and Politics: A Correspondent's Objection

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 8 pages

A letter to The Theosophist by Chhabigram Dolatram (Dikshita), published in December 1883 and reprinted in Blavatsky Collected Writings VI under the heading Adepts and Politics. It was written in response to an article headed The Adepts in America in 1776 which had appeared in the October number, and its author is careful to note that the article was written on its writer's own responsibility and stated that it was made without the knowledge and consent of the Adepts — while adding that the views advanced fall in entirely with those held generally in the Society, and that the editor of The Theosophist is the sole authority on such a subject.

The objection is to the impression the article creates: that the Adepts, out of universal sympathy for the well-being of the human race, participated in the American Revolution and brought about its results through Washington and others, so that Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and the rest acted as they did under the guiding inspiration of the Adepts — which would mean that the necessity of the revolution, and a rough plan of the operations that followed, were preconceived. Dolatram puts his doubts to the editor as the person best placed to resolve them, given the communication with the Adepts she appears to claim. The full exchange, including her reply and W.Q. Judge's, is gathered in The Role of Adepts in the Great American Revolution, also in this section.

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