To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

152 / TO LIGHT A THOUSAND LAMPS
leged gurus, avatars, ascended masters, reincarnations of
HPB, swamis, and messengers. A number of people have
taken the Masters’ teachings and created from them a fantasy
of psychic imagination, a travesty of theosophy. Yet it
seems incredible, with the publication of the original letters
of the Mahatmas to A. P. Sinnett and others, now readily
available in libraries and bookstores, that so much notice is
taken of counterfeit mahatmas and messengers who trade
on the anxieties of the times and the vulnerability of the
innocent whose very sincerity makes them easy prey. It
would be farcical were it not so tragic, with lives scarred by
the betrayal.
At the same time, neither the Masters and their letters,
nor The Secret Doctrine or any of HPB’s writings, are the
basis of a creed or ‘‘bible.’’ The Theosophical Society has
no articles of belief, no dogmas; freedom of inquiry, of
aspiration, of self-evolution, is its watchword. HPB made
it clear over and over again that what she was bringing was a
portion only of the eternal wisdom-religion; that she was
a transmitter of that which she had received. Through her
titanic genius she gave it forth in the best way she could, but
she didn’t claim that every word was sacrosanct. She laid
these truths before us, saying, after Montaigne, ‘‘I have
...brought nothing of my own but the string that ties
them’’ — cut the string up, if you will, but you cannot
destroy truth.*
Inevitably HPB had many detractors. For example, in
1885 the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) published a
*Cf. The Secret Doctrine 1:xlvi.