Chelas and Lay Chelas

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Higher Ethics and Devotion Series · 33 pages

A thirty-three page compilation from Blavatsky and others, opened by an abstract and train of thoughts with page references. It is the fullest treatment of the subject in this section, and sits with “Mahatmas and Chelas,” “Chelaship rules from the Kiu-te” and “Warnings to would-be occultists,” which take the same question from other directions.

The opening is deliberately unwelcoming: a chela is described as an unfortunate man, one who has entered upon a path not manifest that is the most difficult path, in Krishna's phrase. The distinction between pledged chelas and lay chelas is then set out, followed by the practical question a candidate without private means would actually ask — how anyone with no independent income is to subsist on entering chelaship — with Blavatsky's reply given in full. The question whether chelas are mediums is taken next. The passage the whole compilation turns on is a statistical one, and it is quoted as evidence rather than warning: that during the eleven years of the Society's existence, out of seventy-two regularly accepted chelas on probation and hundreds of lay candidates, she had known only three who had not so far failed, and one only who had a full success. From there the argument moves outward — whether the Mahatmas can be selfish, answered by way of a definition of true knowledge as getting at the root of all phenomena and arriving at the Causeless Cause of both spirit and matter; and whether the desire to live is selfish, answered by the distinction that the occultist differs from the ordinary man only in adopting methods of training that quicken a process the ordinary man would take billions of years to complete. The closing section describes the Great White Lodge beyond the Hall of Learning, and states that every aspirant to chelaship has a guru.

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