Tim Boyd – India, USA

Tim Boyd, International President ...

... motivated, profound, heading a Movement in motion

The Mahatma Letters were not written with the intention that one day they would be published. In fact, it was the express desire of the Masters that they not be published. From their perspective, the letters were an incomplete attempt to address specific issues in the growth and unfoldment of A. P. Sinnett, and of the Theosophical Society (TS) at that time. The sense was that such a partial expression of the wisdom teachings would only serve to confuse. In the letters, it was suggested that H. P. Blavatsky’s (HPB) The Secret Doctrine (SD), when written, would provide a more complete view of their philosophy and point of view. The SD was published and, years later, so were the Letters of the Masters. Although many people objected to their publication at the time, they have become a treasure for those of us who have come after. A brief quote from one of those letters, written by the Master Koot Hoomi (KH), talks about spiritual unfoldment:

An Adept is the rare efflorescence of a generation of inquirers; and to become one he must obey the inward impulse of his soul irrespective of prudential considerations of worldly science and sagacity. (ML) Letter No.2, chron. ed.)

John Algeo – USA

Toward the end of her life, H. P. Blavatsky became a veritable fountain of wisdom. To be sure, she was a wise woman and a productive one. But she became quite phenomenal in her literary output between May 1, 1887, when she moved to London, and May 8, 1891, when she died. During those four years, she produced more than half of the material contained in the fourteen volumes of her Collected Writings.

In addition, during those four years, she was clearly thinking about her own coming departure from this world and feeling concern about the fate of Theosophy in the hands of the Theosophists she would leave behind. Because of that thinking and feeling, she made five bequests to her Theosophical children. First, she published The Secret Doctrine, a book of teaching for students who want to know about the cosmos and the place of human beings in it; this massive work supplemented and corrected the partial information contained in earlier books, like Esoteric Buddhism, by A. P. Sinnett. Second, she founded the Esoteric School of Theosophy to provide a discipline of life for those who wish to follow it. Third, she wrote The Key to Theosophy, an introductory catechism for inquirers. Fourth, she transcribed The Voice of the Silence, a guidebook to walking the mystical path. Those were four of the five remarkable bequests HPB produced during those four anni mirabiles, four marvelous years.

The author

Read more about John Algeo, click HERE

 Ananya Sri Ram – USA

Ananya is since January 2025 the director of the Krotona School of Theosophy 

Some twenty years before Louis Pasteur or Joseph Lister made their name in the field of germ theory and antiseptic practices made its way into our lives, there was a Hungarian doctor from Vienna named Ignaz Semmelweis. Having graduated from Vienna Medical School in 1844, he became an assistant to Johann Klein, a professor of obstetrics at the same medical school. At the time, many mothers were still delivering their babies at home with midwives assisting them despite the new practice of mothers delivering in hospitals. The hospitals however, routinely reported that as many as 25% to 100% of the mothers delivering were dying due to “childbed fever,” known today as postpartum infection. The number of mothers who died after delivering at home or at the hospital with a midwife was much lower. No one really understood why at the time but there were many theories.

[Based on two of Pekka Ervast's talks on HPB on 8^th May, 1932 (White Lotus Day)
Compiled and translated into English from Finnish by Antti Savinainen.] 

We are celebrating the commemoration of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (HPB), who started the Theosophical movement and died on May 8, 1891. HPB was a spiritual mother to many people. Many are the hearts that acknowledge that she has helped them in their spiritual life. I think she was the most incredible human being to have appeared on this earth in our times. Though I saw that Jesus Christ was a miraculous being and that Gautama Buddha was another ideal being, HPB was to me a living person who never wanted to appear as a saint or anything special. On the contrary, she wanted to conceal all that was great in her and preferred to appear imperfect since she abhorred all worship. I knew this in some mysterious way in my youth. I did not understand her as well as I did when I was older, but I admired and loved her.  I felt that if we lived in a knighthood, I would always wear her colors on my shoulder or helmet, and fight for her.