To be sure, it would be convenient for Blavatsky's followers if the Mahatmas were proven to exist, or further, materialized before the public together with their most precious posessions, "the sum total of sacred and philosophical works in MSS. and in type [throughout history]."[48] Alas, they have not chosen to do so. However, this paper will assume that the personages "KH" (or "Koothoomi Lal Singh") and "M" ("Morya") were indeed individuals distinct from HPB's famous creative faculties. Not only are these initials convenient monikers, but the content of the letters themselves betray a foreign author. They demonstrate an unfamiliarity with English and make simple mistakes that would be difficult to fake. For example, in one exchange, Mr. Sinnett complains that Colonel Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society, is a bumbler and out of touch with the social world of Anglo-India. KH responds that "Colonel Olcott is doubtless 'out of time with the feelings of English people' of both classes; but nevertheless more in time with us than either."[49] The next letter from the Mahatma makes it clear that KH has misunderstood both Sinnett's handwriting and English idiom:
…Did you write "tune"? Well, well; I must ask you to buy me a pair of spectacles in London. And yet - out of "time" or out of "tune" is all one, as it seems. But you ought to adopt my old fashioned habit of "little lines" over the "m's." Those bars are useful, even though "out of tune and time" with modern calligraphy.[50]
Blavatsky was neither in the habit of drawing bars over her "m's" nor so out of touch with English usage as to imagine that "out of time" and "out of tune" were "all one, as it seems." This is but one example among many, to say nothing of handwriting, style, or the fact that the Mahatma Letters routinely criticize HPB for her able–brain, her emotional outbursts, and her unfamiliarity with the doctrines of those "beyond the Himalaya."[51] In reading the letters, one gains an ambivalent image of Blavatsky, one which is certainly not hagiographic. It is difficult to understand why HPB would forge private letters which made her look worse, not better, before her inmost admirers.[52] But acknowledging that the letters were (usually) written by other persons than Blavatsky, however, does nothing to prop up her claim that such authors were in fact "great souls… men of great learning, whom we term Initiates, and still greater holiness of life."[53] Max Muller gave full credence to the idea that HPB had been duped by unscrupulous Asians posing as perfected beings, and this only added to the calamity that was the Theosophical Society.[54]
But again, it matters not whether HPB was such a clever schemer as to forge not one but several sets of consistent handwriting, and arrange (through co-conspirators, no doubt) to have the letters of her Mahatmas delivered phenomenally to correspondents even while dwelling in the opposite hemisphere. Whoever may have written the letters, their contents will be treated as part of the corpus of Blavatsky's "Buddhistic" work, and judged accordingly, even though we attach different names for their authors.
Chapter Two: Blavatsky and "Esoteric Buddhism"
Despite Max Muller's protest that "Whatever was esoteric was ipso facto not Buddha's teaching; whatever was Buddha's teaching was ipso facto not esoteric…" it has become clear to any student of Buddhism (who does not rely entirely on the Pali Canon) that most traditions of Buddhism do indeed have texts, rituals, transmissions and/or insights which are reserved from the profane. Nowhere is this more true, however, than in Tibet. The slough of books in the last decades with titles like The Buddhist Tantras: Light on Indo-Tibetan Esotericism; Hidden Teachings of Tibet; and Highest Yoga Tantra: An Introduction to the Esoteric Buddhism of Tibet leave no room for argument on this point. Because of Blavatsky's character, she was drawn to Mahayana Buddhism and Tibet in particular. Because she was untrained by Western academies, she failed to harbor the rationalistic and positivist priorities of the scholars of her day. Thus Blavatsky was in a position to see what no other European of her time could: that the mysticism, mythology and obscure symbolism in the works of 'esoteric' Tibetan Buddhism held teachings of great depth and philosophical sophistication, a fact only now coming to be understood in the late 20th century by Western Buddhist scholars. That Blavatsky was a practising Mahayana Buddhist, in touch with a living textual and oral tradition, can be proven now that Western knowledge of 'esoteric' Buddhism has grown, and HPB's sectarian leanings and doctrinal references can be understood in context. First, however, it will be useful to contrast Blavatsky with her contemporaries, to see the great – and at times confusing – contrast HPB provides. Then, Blavatsky's relationship with Buddhism, and her use of technical Buddhist terms will be examined. Finally, in further chapters, Blavatsky's Theosophical doctrines on various topics are compared and contrasted with 'esoteric' Buddhist teachings now known to Western scholarship.
Nineteenth century scholars of Buddhism faced a great difficulty when they considered the mythological and mystical elements of the Buddhist tradition, particularly those surrounding the Buddha's life and person. While making a notable exception for Emile Senart and his "historical mythological" method (an essentially structuralist method), de Jong writes in his survey of Buddhist studies,
Earlier scholars [pre 1870s] had considered the legendary elements as an addition to a basis of historical facts; once freed from these legendary elements, the historical truth about the Buddha would become clear. It was usual to apply this method - called the subtraction method by La Vallee Poussin - before Senart's time and also after him. It was the same method of historical criticism that was developed by New Testament scholars for studying the life of Jesus.[55]
Scholars also relied very heavily on the texts of Buddhism (suitably de-mythologized), perhaps because these could be delimited and controlled better than a living tradition with its idiosyncratic leaders and widely varying praxis and emphases. Philip Almond ties this Western focus on text – bording on obsession – to the nature of colonialism in his study, The British Discovery of Buddhism:
Buddhism, by 1860, had come to exist, not in the Orient, but in the Oriental libraries and institutes of the West, in its texts and manuscripts, at the desks of the Western savants who interpreted it. It had become a textual object, defined, classified, and interpreted through its own textuality. By the middle of the century, the Buddhism that existed 'out there' was beginning to be judged by a West that alone knew what Buddhism was, is, and ought to be. The essence of Buddhism came to be seen as expressed not 'out there' in the Orient, but in the West through the control of Buddhism's own past.[56]
51
In but one typical example, KH explains Blavatsky's excess zeal in producing psychic phenomena, and claiming that such phenomena was all her guru's doing, while claiming she had nothing to do with it. "Was, or rather is it lack of intellectual perceptions in her? Certainly not. It is a psychological disease, over which she has little if any control at all. Her impulsive nature – as you have correctly inferred in your reply – is always ready to carry her beyond the boundaries of truth, into the regions of exaggeration; nevertheless without a shadow of a suspicion that she is thereby deceiving her friends, or abusing their great trust in her. The stereotyped phrase: 'It is not I; I can do nothing by myself… it is all they – the Brothers… I am but their humble and devoted slave and instrument' is a downright
52
However, see Appendix III, where HPB admits in a sworn statement that she at times wrote Mahatma Letters herself (not merely transcribing them but composing them