Correspondence by A.P. Sinnett (original) (raw)

To the Editor of THEOSOPHY: ---

Dear Sir, --- In your issue for April I observe an article entitled “H. P. B. was not deserted by the Masters,” in which certain statements are made concerning myself which it seems my plain duty to correct. I am represented as having said that “in the lifetime of H. P. B. and before the writing of the Secret Doctrine she was deserted by the Masters and was the prey of elementals and elemental forces.” Also that I told Mme. Blavatsky “to her face. . . that she was a fraud in other directions.”

I never said anything of the kind, and I never in my life called Mme. Blavatsky a “fraud.”

The accusation is doubly absurd because for many years past and since before the period referred to I have had means of my own for knowing that Mme. Blavatsky had not been deserted by the Masters, and I know that she was in their care up to the last day of her life. That condition of things should not, it is true, be held to imply that every word Mme. Blavatsky wrote was inspired and that every statement she made was correct. No impression connected with the Theosophical movement can be more erroneous than the notion that persons who may be in true psychic touch with the Masters are therefore guided by them in every act of their lives. Every one so circumstanced works under the law of individual responsibility and has abundant opportunity for making mistakes. Of this freedom Mme. Blavatsky availed herself largely, for example in connection with her unfortunate misapprehension of the teaching about the planetary chain. But I have dealt with that subject in other writings and do not seek to argue the quest[i]on in your pages afresh.

It is to be regretted when Theosophical students are misled about the teachings of occult science in reference to cosmology, but after all the bearings of those teachings on individual spiritual progress concern us much more immediately. I merely write now to dissipate the delusion on which Mr. Judge’s article is founded, and to express at the same time my great regret that his latest utterances concerning myself should have been colored by stories as to my sayings and mental attitude that were entirely untrue.

A. P. SINNETT.

London, May 6, 1896.

[I insert the above communication, in spite of the fact that Mr. Judge is no longer with us to answer Mr. Sinnett’s objections to statements made in the article “H. P. B. was not Deserted by the Masters.” I well know that if Mr. Judge had been alive he would have been most anxious to accept the statements made by Mr. Sinnett in the above letter, though I am also well aware that Mr. Judge’s authority for his original position was Mme. H. P. Blavatsky herself. --- ED.]