The Adyar Theosophical Society Belittled the Masters

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 29 pages

Twenty-nine pages with a table of contents and abstract, revised in November 2024. It carries *two letters described as coming from Madame Blavatsky's long-suffering heart*, on the trials of the theosophical movement at Adyar — and it is the most personal document in this batch.

The first letter's heading states the charge: that the Adyar Society belittled the Masters and banished them from the headquarters. What follows is her account of the treatment she received, and the contents page does not soften it — that the ingrate and heartless Indian mob vilified, slandered, persecuted and thrashed her, forcing her to flee from what she calls her beloved Aryavarta. Set against the affection in that last phrase, the bitterness is easier to read as grief than as contempt. Her explanation of why she stayed away is the passage worth quoting, because it is a positive reason rather than a complaint. It is not solely on account of poor health that she decided not to return to India, she writes, but so that she could lead the movement in Europe — for it is there that she found what she had so far vainly sought in India: a great number of idealistic English and Americans who have the courage to avow their conviction of the existence of the Masters, and who are working for theosophy on their lines and under their guidance. Read beside the files in this section on the constitutional quarrels with Adyar, and beside her letters of resignation, the two letters here supply the personal side of the same crisis — the reasons a founder gives herself for leaving the place she had helped establish.

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