Blaming Blavatsky: Suspicions about Duleep Singh and Hidden Identities of Masters

What do the Letters of Blavatsky teach us about the Masters

Morya or K.H. had been suspected of being Thakur Singh, because of proximity to the Maharaja of Lahore (a region now in modern-day Pakistan). Morya appears to have been associated with Prince Duleep Singh, when H.P.B. writes, that he was “in the house of a stranger in England, where he had come in the company of a dethroned native prince” (Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. I, xli.). This is because Morya is a descendant of the old dynasty of the Mauryas. German professor Gustav Theodor Fechner replied to a query in 1883 that the man that went by the name K.H. was a student in Leipzig (Germany) and a member of a philosophical society who gave several lectures but went by the name Nisi Kanta Chattopadhyaya. The professor would have been able to identify him as Prince Duleep in disguise, but he was not.

Therefore, we can only conclude, while Morya was in the company of Duleep Singh, M. and K.H. are still unidentified persons, nonetheless colleagues. Lastly again, they are not Sikhs. There are many men associated with princes and masters to whom a minute of their existence is not written, nor cared for, or known in detail. I suspect it is the case with these various individuals. We can piece together a better picture by being thorough with the library of letters, or correspondences. What it also tells any thorough researcher is that, these letters of H.P. Blavatsky as well as those of these masters and their disciples (or chelas), known or not dismantles certain conjectural points, that have supported suspicions as conclusive. This is particularly in connection to discussions about John King, Serapis (accused of being Paolos Metamon, a Coptic magician), Tuitit Bey (supposedly Jamal al-Din) and an early Egyptian, or philosophical Hermetist focus of the initial formative Theosophical Society.

As has been believed in by certain writers, we can confidently also say, that the masters were not idealizations of Blavatsky’s mentors she met in life. Blavatsky tells you they are human, and use pseudonyms directly. One from this culture (Masonry and so forth) and researchers of it should know, initiates employ the use of pseudonyms, hence Hilarion and Serapis are not their real names, obviously. So, we could just as easily state with as much, or more confidence, that all the history of the letters actually demonstrate, are successive stages of learning through initiations of H.P.B., and furthering into the physical company of these brotherhoods and their initiates.

K. Paul Johnson seems to have influenced the mistaken notion that Blavatsky is most responsible for creating fanciful notions about unknown superiors. I do not entirely blame K. Paul Johnson, but the spurious and convoluted information by others on this subject adopting opinions with confidence, which does not stand against the evidence, such as the fact, the concept of Ascended Masters (and the Solar Angels before Ballard’s innovation) is not the same concept as Blavatsky’s masters. It seems, that Olcott, Sinnett and others are more responsible. Morya and K.H. are expressly in opposition to the practice of mediumship (which uses a passive subject), which they continuously warn against. Hence, we find Blavatsky, W.Q. Judge and other theosophists also taking this position, while others pay no heed. Both them and H.P.B. had to reiterate that these masters are mortals, not the departed, spirits or angels.

H.P.B. wrote to Franz Hartmann, that Olcott’s ideas of the masters were imaginary, and basically that Olcott’s love for spirits was replaced by his love for the masters. Blavatsky explains that she knows adepts everywhere — those silent, secret, or retiring, whether called Rosicrucians, Kabbalists, or Yogis. She then wrote, those persons would never divulge themselves to anyone, unless one passed years of probation and proved absolute devotion. That, he or she would keep silent, even at the prospect of death.

“I fulfilled the requirements and am what I am” she wrote, and “this no Hodgson, no Coulombs…can take away from me…” When she first arrived in Bombay, she said, Olcott became crazed after meeting a master physically. “He was like Balaam’s she ass…” The idea, she writes, “that the Masters were mortal men, limited even in their great powers” never crossed anyone’s minds. Therefore, is it ever right to spread the lie, that it is Blavatsky’s fault, theosophists and others created a laughable and monstrous angelogy out of the Rosicrucian concept of the “frater lucis” or Masonic and Illuminist “unknown superiors,” or chiefs. No man that can truly discern the serious discrepancies between Theosophy and the systems of the Leadbeater-Besant school, of Steiner, Agni Yoga, Ballard and The Lighthouse, the Arcane School of Bailey and Benjamin Creme’s International Share could blame this development chiefly on H.P.B. (see “I Dread the Appearance in Print of Our Philosophy,” The Mahatma Letter No. 56).