Welcome noble viewers to A Journey through Aesthetic Realms on Supreme Master Television. Today, we will introduce a brief history of the Theosophical Society through a presentation by the Theosophical Society in America and an interview with Mr. Daniel Noga, the Member Services Coordinator at the Theosophical Society in America.

All over the world, from ancient times until the present, a timeless wisdom has been given to humanity by such great teachers as Lao Tzu, Confucius, Zoroaster and Christ. Other teachers, followers of those great ones, have carried on their work. In modern times, one such follower was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

When she arrived on the shores of the United States in 1873, she had completed years of world travel and exploration. Her many years abroad had been nothing less than a spiritual pilgrimage. She had absorbed deeper ideas gleaned from such great Western thinkers as Pythagoras and Plato, and from such Eastern philosophers as the Buddha. A small band of like-minded seekers gathered around her. Among them was an attorney and gentleman correspondent from New York, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott. Together they would form the Theosophical Society.

Henry Olcott was a man of many accomplishments. By the time he met Madame Blavatsky, he was an attorney in New York City.

Helena Blavatsky was born in 1831 of a noble Russian family. As a child and teenager, she was strong willed and impulsive. Perhaps the crucial element of her character came from the model of independence offered by her mother. Married to the Russian official Nikifor Blavatsky when she was only 17 years old, Young Helena almost immediately left her husband to travel extensively through the Orient, Eastern and Western Europe and the Americas, seeking out those experienced in esoteric knowledge. On her 20th birthday, while in London, she met her spiritual teacher, Mahatma Morya, who would guide her in her later work with Theosophy.

She studied Buddhism and Hinduism first hand, and with the help of a Tartar shaman is reported to have crossed the border into Tibet. In the 1850s, her adventurous spirit even brought her to the United States where she traveled from New York to Chicago, continuing westward by covered wagon with a caravan of pioneers. Finally, in 1873, at the age of 42, Madame Blavatsky was ready to share with the world her insights gained from those marvelous adventures.

Mahatma Morya, the spiritual teacher whom Madame Blavatsky met in London, was a handsome Rajput prince who was part of an Indian delegation visiting Queen Victoria of England. Though there were no outward signs of him being a spiritual master, Madame Blavatsky recognized him immediately as the master of her dreams. A picture of Master Morya was drawn by German painter Hermann Schmiechen under the direction of Madame Blavatsky.

Apart from Mahatma Morya, Madame Blavatsky also received telepathic instructions from another Master by the name of Koot Hoomi, one of the Ascended Masters who is helping humankind reach higher levels of consciousness. These two masters helped her to write her important works, “Isis Unveiled” and “The Secret Doctrine.”

One of the first things that Blavatsky did in the United States was to investigate spiritualism, interest in which was sweeping America and Europe. She went to the Eddy farmstead in Chittenden, Vermont, where remarkable phenomena were taking place. It was there that she met Colonel Olcott, reporting the events for a New York newspaper. Soon, however, their interests would go in a different direction from that of spiritualism. Blavatsky eventually made her home in New York City where she and Olcott continued to meet regularly with others who shared their interests.

Mr. Daniel Noga is the Member Services Coordinator at the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in America in Wheaton, Illinois.

The Theosophical Society is an international membership organization that was originally founded in 1875 in the state of New York. The three main co-founders were Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott and William Quan Judge. William Quan Judge was one of the cofounders; he was originally from Dublin Ireland and he came here to the United States when he was 21 years old and got into commercial law, and he also helped to co-found the Society.

Many people joined the new Society, among them, the well-known inventor Thomas Edison, and the noted author and platonic scholar Dr. Alexander Wilder. A friend of Madame Blavatsky’s, Wilder helped her with the editing of her 1,300 page work, “Isis Unveiled.” After three years in New York, Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott decided to expand the Society’s efforts abroad, and in late December 1878, set sail for India.

The attitude with which they came is demonstrated by that account of how Olcott, when arriving on the soil of India, bent down to worship that soil. They felt that from India had gone out a great deal of wisdom, which is even now contained in the profound teachings not only of the Hindu tradition, but Buddhist, Jain, and so on. There was a spirit of tolerance as well here, of universality.

India gave a place of shelter to many different people. It was in the tradition of India to try to understand different points of view, different cultures, and to synthesize them into a whole. And this I think is central to the work of the Theosophical Society. Perhaps all this was in their mind, when they came to India, and they established their headquarters here.

One of Olcott’s greatest achievements, in keeping with the society’s second object, was his work to re-establish Buddhism in Southeast Asia, and Ceylon, the island now called Sri Lanka. He organized the first Buddhist schools in Ceylon and obtained government grants from England such as were given to Christian schools. Today there are over 400 Buddhist institutions in Sri Lanka and portraits of Colonel Olcott hang in many of them.

Working with the Buddhist High Priest Sumangala in 1889, he helped design the Buddhist flag, now flown in some 60 countries.

When we return, we will find out more about the noble goals of the Theosophical Society. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to our program on the history and teachings of the Theosophical Society.

After the passing of the two main founders of the Theosophical Society, Helena Blavatsky in 1891, and Henry Steel Olcott in 1907, two disciples of Helena Blavatsky, Annie Besant and William Quan Judge, emerged as the new leaders of the Theosophical Society.

Another prominent disciple of Helena Blavatsky was the English clergyman, clairvoyant and author Charles L. Leadbeater, who became a vegetarian upon meeting Madame Blavatsky and followed her to India. After Helena Blavatsky passed on, Charles L. Leadbeater became a close co-worker of Annie Besant. In 1895, one year after meeting Charles W. Leadbeater, Mrs. Annie Besant also became clairvoyant. Together, they explored the universe, matter, thought-forms, auras, and the history of humankind through the gift of their clairvoyance, and wrote several books together.

Charles W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant were also dedicated promoters of the vegetarian lifestyle. In his article, Vegetarianism and Occultism, Mr. Leadbeater listed many reasons for abstaining from meat, and concludes:

“Let us free ourselves from complicity in these awful crimes [of killing animals], let us set ourselves to try, each in our own small circle, to bring nearer that bright time of peace and love which is the dream and the earnest desire of every true-hearted and thinking man. At least we ought surely to be willing to do so small a thing as this to help the world onward towards that glorious future.”

Likewise, Dr. Annie Besant wrote about the importance of keeping a vegetarian diet for spiritual purification.

“As we carry on the purification of the physical body by feeding it on clean food and drink and by excluding from our diet the polluting blood and flesh of animals, alcohol and other things that are foul and degrading, we also begin to purify the astral vehicle and take from the astral world more delicate and fine materials for its construction.”

In 1909, during one of his walks on the beach of the river at the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in Adyar, India, Charles. W. Leadbeater met a young boy by the name of Jiddu Krishnamurti. Being clairvoyant, he was impressed with the pure aura of Krishnamurti which he described as the "most wonderful aura he had ever seen, without a particle of selfishness in it."

Charles W. Leadbeater and Mrs. Annie Besant believed that Krishnamurti was to become the World Teacher whom they expected to come. They started the Order of the Star in the East, to prepare members for the coming of a great spiritual message, which it was thought would come through Krishnamurti.

She adopted the boy as her son and he was educated in England. In 1929, however Jiddu Krishnamurti renounced the role as the World Teacher that he was expected to play and dissolved the Order of the Star in the East. From then on until his passing in 1986, Krishnamurti travelled worldwide to teach his message of self-reliance and self-knowledge and became a highly esteemed spiritual teacher.

In the constitution of the Theosophical Society, three main objects were declared. Mr. David J. Noga elaborated on them as follows:

The first object of the Society is to form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color, which is basically a way of saying that the organization is intended as a place for people to come together and put this ideal of brotherhood into practice. The Society recognizes the unity of all humankind, that which we all hold in common and brings us together. So, one, a purpose of the Society is this brotherhood and the practice of that, not just in functions of the Society but in our day-to-day lives.

The second object is to encourage the comparative study of religion, science and philosophy, to realize that there are many different valid paths towards truth and understanding and that it’s important to honor them all, and in fact to compare what each one says, to see what comes out at the end as being held in common by all three.

And then finally, the third object is to investigate hidden laws of nature, and the unexplained sort of powers latent in humanity, the higher faculty that unfolds through spiritual realization. It could be even argued that the practice of brotherhood is a power that’s latent in humanity. Once it’s unfolded, the power that it has is tremendous to change the world around us. Spiritual self-transformation and self-realization are also powers that unfold as we develop spiritually.

Thank you, esteemed viewers, for joining us today on A Journey through Aesthetic Realms. Please join us next Sunday, June 13 for the second and final part of our program on the Theosophical Society.

Coming up next is Our Noble Lineage, right after Noteworthy News. May Heaven’s love and light guide you always.