[Based on two of Pekka Ervast's talks on HPB on 8th 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.
Pekka Ervast at his desk
The Great White Brotherhood and Theosophical Work
There was some disagreement in the Great White Brotherhood about when the time was ripe for a public proclamation [of Theosophy]. The Great White Brotherhood has seven lodges around the world. One of those lodges is the one that we call the Rose Cross Lodge, and it oversees the Western world, Western culture, and its spiritual life – the development of the Western peoples. Everyone in the Great White Brotherhood agreed that the people's intellect had somewhat developed. However, it was impossible to proclaim the new way without the old one. All agreed, but the Great White Brotherhood disagreed on whether the time was close. In the early part of the nineteenth century, most Masters in the Great White Brotherhood thought the time was hardly ripe enough. Most feared that the Westerners were not yet mature. But amazingly enough, as we know, two high Masters of oriental origin, thought: “But sometimes you have to take the initiative. We must not wait too long; we have to reveal something.”
Saint Germain, in particular, who belonged to the Rose Cross Lodge, and an English Master who belonged to the same lodge, were very skeptical and said that we have seen everything fail. Saint Germain said, “I had to withdraw in the 1700s; how dare we now try to teach?” That English Master doubted and said, “I know the Westerners. They are so foolish that they treat their benefactor like pigs and dogs, bite those who do good.” Regardless of this, Morya and Koot Hoomi, the two Eastern Masters, said: “But let us try. We will take responsibility and at least try.” ─ And then, of course, the other Masters said: “We will not resist, we will help as much as we can, but the responsibility falls to Morya and Koot Hoomi.” ─ And that's how it was agreed, and the members of the Rose Cross Lodge said: “We feel that at the end of the 19th century, perhaps the best way to start the work is to start it in the spirit of Atlantean inspiration and Eastern occultism... If one begins in that way, then the cause may succeed. “
HPB as a Messenger of the Masters
As a small child, HPB did not know her mission in life, but she was quite different from the others: she socialized with the invisible world and talked to the elves. From her earliest years, she had a different conception from others; she did not know how to settle down to life naturally, like other people. She was like a rebel who asked: What is all this? What is it all for? She saw so much more than others; she saw a beautiful, tall being who sometimes appeared to her in a vision and helped her.
When, as a young girl, she met her Master [Morya ] in London, the being she had seen in a vision, she realized that life is something very different from what people think and live. She realized that life is a great school and that people are children who attend the school of life. They act and do foolish things and obstruct the course of life. HPB then realized the meaning of life, and at the same time, an inner desire awakened in her: can't this be improved, can't people be awakened? And she learned that there has always been an attempt to awaken people, pushing and prodding them to wake up, but people are so caught up in the matter, the flesh, that they can't wake up.
HPB felt inside that she wanted to try to wake them up. When she talked about it to her Master, he said, “I, too, wish you would try to wake people up, for these people in their ignorance cause far too much suffering to themselves and others.” And when she found out that people's selfishness and dissension would lead to great misfortunes and terrible wars, her soul glowed: it should be possible to prevent that by telling them what will happen to them if they do not dare to change their minds.
Then HPB was given the task of preparing herself in such a way that she must learn to know, if possible, all peoples and all religions and the best that peoples and religions have. She had to seek out the wise people on earth who were spiritually, intellectually, mentally, and psychologically more advanced than others. ”Look for these people,” the Master told her. She wandered around the world and found people who had thought more than others. So she prepared herself to speak to people and to awaken them.
She thought that humankind was like a great orphan, wandering towards an unknown goal, and in so doing committing so much sin and evil, and erring so greatly through ignorance. She wished that this fact might have been remedied, that humankind might not have plunged headlong into the terrible world war the Master had shown her. HPB didn't think about herself at all. She felt herself to be the mother of humanity. She was like a mother who had to go out into the world to gather all who would listen to her voice.
Theosophical Work in the Afterlife
If we now [in 1932], ask ourselves whether she achieved anything, what do we find? She could not prevent the war; humanity plunged headlong into the First World War. Did she not achieve anything? She achieved great things, not to mention the millions of people who have embraced the Theosophical message here on earth. However, she has achieved something else, which is even greater: she prepared for the coming of a new era and the coming of a new civilization, in which people will live on earth with at least some thought for each other, in which people will solve all these economic and economic questions on quite different principles than they do now. This will happen if people understand how to realize brotherhood, first in smaller circles, then in larger ones.
That is the time her work has aimed at, and that work is for the most part in the invisible world, among the deceased. We are only here for a little while, and then we pass into the spirit world, and there is a more self-conscious preparation for the time to come than before. We have now come to the point where a new culture is coming to Earth. Humankind cannot long live in a state of robbery, wars among themselves, and madness. We are moving into a new era, and it will not come by force, not by sudden changes, but it comes from within, in such a way that the seeds which have been sown in the inner soil ripen there, and after death, people are taught to prepare for a new era. People there receive a special education, they are given a special understanding in their minds that life is to gradually become a paradise, even here on earth. By paradise I mean a school that people consciously attend.
This life will become a school, and societies will be built on other principles. All we know yet is that little seeds of a new society will be born, and then those seeds will grow, and the light will spread. This is being prepared in the invisible world, and we have HPB to thank in a great measure. Although many other beings in the invisible world have done much work and prepared the new era, she was a gentle soul who dared to come into this world and throw a flame of fire. ─ Great, then, was HPB, we have to say.