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The Masters Revealed: Madame Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White L (Suny Series, Western Esoteric Traditions)

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_The Masters Revealed: Madame Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge_ by K. Paul Johnson is a book which attempts to shed some light on the historical personages behind Madame Blavatsky's hidden masters. Madame Blavatsky's career is shrouded in mystery and the movement of Theosophy which grew from that career remains engimatic for many spiritual seekers as well as cultural historians. Blavatsky, who was investigated by the Society for Psychical Research, claimed at various times to be receiving messages from hidden masters, prime among these were individuals known as Morya and Koot Hoomi. While the society found her claims to be fraudulent, others involved in the Theosophical movement maintained their legitimacy to varying degrees. This book offers evidence that will meet the challenge of the skeptic as well as the true believer alike. The author notes how political intrigue came to play a central role in Blavatsky's hidden messengers. The book covers various individuals who the author regards to be "adepts" and "mahatmas", individuals who Blavatsky knew and who she incorporated into her myth of the hidden masters. Among the adepts are Prince Pavel Dolgorukii, Prince Aleksandr Golitsyn, Albert Rawson, Paolos Metamon, Agardi Metrovitch, Giuseppe Mazzini, Louis Maximilien Bimstein, Jamal ad-Din "al-Afghani", James Sanua, Lydia Pashkov, Ooton Liatto, Marie Countess of Caithness, Sir Richard Burton, Abdelkader, Raphael Borg, James Peebles, Charles Sotheran, and Mikhail Katkov. Among the mahatmas are Swami Dayananda Sarasvati, Shyamaji Krishnavarma, Maharaja Ranbir Singh of Kashmir, Thakar Singh Sandhanwalia, Maharaja Holkar of Indore, Bhai Gurmukh Singh, Baba Khem Singh Bedi, Surendranath Banerjea, Dayal Singh Majithia, Sumangala Unnanse, Sarat Chandra Das, Ugyen Gyatso, Sengchen Tulku, and Swami Sankaracharya of Mysore. Many of these individuals had special political connections or were linked to the religious movement of Sikhism. This book shows how all were involved to some extent in the life of Madame Blavatsky and how she incorporated these individuals into her hidden master myth. While this book is sure to be rejected by outright skeptics who deny any historical reality to the masters and by adherents to Theosophy who maintain allegiance to Blavatsky's teachings, it is sure to provide interesting material for those who come to this subject from a third viewpoint.

"The Masters Revealed" is a highly interesting book about Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, better known as Madame Blavatsky, who founded a curious religious group in 1875, known as the Theosophical Society. The message of the Theosophists was an eclectic blend of Hinduism, Buddhism and Western esotericism, with the legend of Atlantis thrown in for good measure. In many ways, the Theosophists were an early version of "New Age", and their society was quite successful until about 1930. Although founded in the United States, the Theosophical Society soon moved it's headquarters to Adyar in India.

Madame Blavatsky became notorious for claiming that her society was guided by Mahatmas or Masters, mysterious and semi-heavenly beings from Tibet. Only Blavatsky herself could communicate with the Masters, although other leaders of the society occasionally encountered them as well. Most people assume that the Masters were figments of Blavatsky's over-heated imagination, or that she simply made it all up. The author of "The Masters Revealed" offers a third and more intricate perspective: the Masters were real people of flesh and blood, real people who *did* teach a spiritual message to Blavatsky, who then distorted the true source of her teachings, claiming she got ít from heavenly beings! It should be noted that Johnson isn't entirely hostile to Blavatsky. He even affectionately calls her "HPB", the Theosophical designation. According to Wikipedia the author is a former member of the Theosophical Society, who later joined a similar group, the Church of Light. Interestingly, the book have also been re-published in India by something called Sri Satguru Publications (I actually have the Indian edition).

As already mentioned, the book is extremely interesting. It turns out that the Theosophical Society had contacts with Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and various Indian nationalists, who opposed British colonialism in India and often conspired with Russian agents (Blavatsky was Russian herself). The book often reads like a detective story, and actually gives you a certain insight into Indian 19th politics and history, which presumably explains why there is also an Indian edition of it. The Theosophists collaborated with both the Vedic fundamentalist Arya Samaj and the Sikh reform group Singh Sabha. They also had good contacts with the great Ranbir Singh, the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, a reform-minded and religiously tolerant ruler who opposed the British Raj. By mistake, Blavatsky and her entourage also established contacts with two Indian travellers to Tibet, who later turned out to be British spies!

So who were the Masters? The most important Masters within Theosophy are named "Master M" (or Morya) and "Master KH" (or Koot Hoomi). Johnson believes that Morya was based on the Maharaja Ranbir Singh, who was a follower of the Advaita Vedanta philosophy, and discussed it at length with Blavatsky and her "number two" Olcott during their stay in Kashmir. Koot Hoomi was based on Thakar Singh, a Sikh activist involved in attempts to restore the throne of Punjab to his cousin, the Maharaja Dalip Singh (or Duleep Singh).

More disturbingly, the book also claims that Madame Blavatsky later got cold feet, thinking that a Indian rebellion against the British would ultimately fail, and wrote a letter to the British foreign office, offering to expose the anti-British conspiracy of the Sikhs and their allies! The conspiracy was revealed anyway, without HPB's aid, and her letter might not even have been taken seriously. Paul Johnson believes that Blavatsky might not have offered to snitch on the conspirators had she known that the Russians were involved, since she was at bottom a Russian patriot, with pan-Slavists in her circle of friends. Instead, Johnson speculates, Blavatsky assumed that the nationalist conspiracies in India were French affairs, and apparently she had some kind of conflict with the French. I'm not sure whether this makes any sense, but even so, the episode still paints Blavatsky in a bad light. She seems to have been something of an adventurer and opportunist. Incidentally, she had offered her services to the Russian secret service at an earlier stage of her career, and was suspected of being a Russian spy during her visit to the United States!

Final point. "The Masters Revealed" says very little about the religious message of the Theosophical Society. It's primarily a book about Blavatsky's political entanglements. The book could therefore be a hard read to absolute beginners. Still, I recommend it. It gives a fascinating back-stage look at a New Religious Movement and their untractable founder, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

First, by way of disclosure, I am a friend of the author and admire his work greatly, so do not expect this review to be completely unbiased. Secondly, I am a Theosophist, albeit one who does not fall into the category of a "true believer", although that was so at one time.

The Theosophical Movement is plagued by a cultish atmosphere which (as mentioned in other reviews of this book) tends to breed those who consider every statement that paints HPB in an unfavorable light as being the agency of dark forces, those who sweetly accept the dictates of "those who know" without question. Opposite are those who consider HPB a worthless fraud and huckster of the worst kind. And yes, there is a another POV...those who recognize the merit of HPB's work while acknowledging her all-too-human frailties. In any case, this is a situation where truth is far stranger than any fiction. HPB and her cohorts on four continents were quite comfortable with using terminology such as "adept", "master", or "magus" to describe each other, something that seems to get lost in today's world among students of modern Western Esotericism. In many ways, the community that she moved in was very similar to the "digerati" of today. Many have questionable (interesting) pasts and are famous to each other, and they'll all have biographers in a 100 years, and a few will have their own cult following.

All in all, instead of denigrating the memory of Blavatsky and her peers, this book paints a picture of a diverse group of people who really did change the world...for better or worse. Well the determination of that is up to the reader.

I would suggest strongly for those who are interested further in Theosophical History, and that of Western Mysticism/Occultism, in general, to use this as a companion to the "Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett" (A. Trevor Barker) and "Old Diary Leaves" (H.S. Olcott).

I was expecting a different book when I bought this. It is not so much about meeting the masters, but more a factual book about the life of many of the masters described by Blavatsky. The masters themselves do not speak in this book. An in-depth analysis is made about Blavatsky, and the reader is left to decide for himself what to believe.
If you are looking for a critical book about Blavatsky and her supposed masters, you will not be disappointed, although I found the book to be bone-dry to read at times.
If, on the other hand, you want to get to know the masters better, there are much better books available, such as "Lords of the seven rays" by Mark L. Prophet, from The Summit Lighthouse, a later dispensation of the Ascended Host.