The Aims and Mission of the Theosophical Society

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 29 pages

Twenty-nine pages with an abstract and train of thoughts. It is dated September 1889, written for the fifth volume of Lucifer, and *it is a progress report rather than a manifesto* — she goes through the Society's declared objects one at a time and says what has actually been achieved under each.

Under the first object, to establish a nucleus of universal brotherhood, she makes a claim that can be checked against the historical record and is worth knowing about: that the Indian National Congress was planned by Anglo-Indian and Hindu members of the Society, after its model and on its lines, and had from the first been directed by colleagues who were among the most influential men in the Indian Empire. She traces a second line of connection eastward — from Ceylon the religion of Gautama streamed out to Cambodia, Siam and Burma, and from there the message of brotherhood reached Japan. A third claim is more concrete still and is one of the movement's lasting legacies: the Buddhist flag, whose bands she describes as depicting the chromatic vibrations of the aura of Gautama — sapphire blue, golden yellow, crimson, white and scarlet. Under the second object, the promotion of oriental philosophy and literature, she calls the achievements in India magnificent and gives the revival of Buddhism in Ceylon its own section. The principle she draws from the whole review is the one that gives the file its interest beyond the movement's own history: that neither race, nor creed, nor colour, nor social class, nor old antipathies are irremovable obstacles to the grand ideals of altruism and brotherhood — a claim she is here treating as demonstrated by fourteen years of work rather than merely asserted.

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