Shambhala & Agartha Part 3
During the year 1885, Saint-Yves was supposedly visited by a group of
“ascended masters” based in subterranean caverns of Agartha, who communicated with him
telepathically. From this studies with a certain “ Haji Sharif,” Saint-Yves supposedly mastered the art of
astral travel, by which he claims to have travelled to Agartha himself in a
state of “waking dream,” details of which he reported in Mission de l’Inde. Saint-Yves had begun to take lessons in
Sanskrit in Paris from Haji Sharif, who was believed to be an “Afghan prince”
from the hidden “Holy Land of Agartha”
below the earth in the mountains of Asia. Haji informed Saint-Yves that his school taught the
primordial language of Atlanteans called Vattan, or Vattanian, based on a
22-letter alphabet. Joscelyn Godwin speculates that Vattan is related to the language
and alphabet of “Senzar,” that Blavatsky
claimed was the original language of the
Stanzas of Dzyan. 63 Although
Haji Sharif presented himself as
“a high official
in the Hindu church,”
he had a
Muslim name, and was familiar with Hebrew and
Arabic. This Haji Sharif would most
certainly refer to Jamal ud Din al Afghani. In 1885, Afghani was in France, and with his disciple Muhammad Abduh, he began publishing an Arabic
newspaper in Paris entitled al-Urwah al-Wuthqa, “The Indissoluble Blond,” also
the name of a secret organization he founded two years earlier. Among the
members of Afghani’s circle in Paris
were Christian and Jewish Middle Easterners with connections to E. G. Browne and Wilfred Blunt, as well as the Egyptian-Jewish actor
and James Sanua, who was a travelling
companion of Blavatsky. 64
In 1873, Carl Kellner, an associate of P. B. Randolph, was another of the many occultists associated with Egyptian Freemasonry who had traveled to Cairo in the time of al Afghani’s activity. Kellner claims to have
been initiated into Indian sexual
techniques in the course of his own Oriental travels, citing three masters, one Sufi and two Indian yogis.65 Kellner
also claimed to have come into contact with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light,
which was purportedly descended from the Fratres Lucis. Although it is not
known what association it had with the
Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, the most immediate source of Kellner’s
rituals seems to have been a group of European followers of Randolph. Kellner and his associate
Theodor Reuss would then put together the ritual of Egyptian Rite
Freemasonry to convey the inner secret of the Hermetic Brotherhood of
Light.
In 1880 in Munich, Reuss had participated in an attempt to
revive Weishaupt’s Order of Illuminati. Reuss also had a long association
with German intelligence. In the 1880s, he worked for the Prussian police infiltrating the Socialist League in London, around the person of Karl Marx’s daughter
Eleavor Marx-Avelling, but he was eventually denounced as Bismarck’s agent. 66
In England in 1885, Ruess became friends
with William Wynn Westcott, the Supreme
Magus of the SRIA and one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, in reference to the Golden and Rosy Cross and the Nascent Dawn.
Known simply as the Golden Dawn, it
claimed to be a continuation of the
Kabbalistic school of Rabbi Samuel
Falk. 67 The order, founded in 1888, was inspired by the teachings of Blavatsky, and practiced theurgy and spiritual
development. The two other founders were William Robert Woodman and MacGregor
Mathers, who were Freemasons and also members of SRIA, and the rituals of
the Golden Dawn were also derived in
part from the Golden and Rosy Cross.
The “ Golden Dawn” was
the first of three
Orders, although all three are usually collectively referred to as the Golden Dawn. The First Order taught esoteric
philosophy based on the “ Hermetic
Qabalah,” and personal development through study and awareness of the
four Classical Elements, as well as astrology,
Tarot, and geomancy. The Second or “Inner” Order, the Rosae Rubeae et
Aureae Crucis(the Ruby Rose and Cross of Gold), taught magic, including
scrying, astral travel, and alchemy. The Third Order was that of the “Secret
Chiefs,” who were said to direct the activities of the lower two orders by
spirit communication with the Chiefs of the Second Order.
The foundational documents of the Golden Dawn, known as the Cipher Manuscripts,
are written in English using
Trithemius cipher, and give specific outlines
of the Grade Rituals of the Order. Westcott maintained they were found by
chance in a London bookstall, but scholars believe they were written by Kenneth Mackenzie. “Thus,” explains Joscelyn
Godwin, “we come back again to that offshoot of the Asiatic Brethren and the Fratres Lucisof the early nineteenth century,
in which Bulwer-Lytton is said to have been
initiated.” 68
The order included, among others, William
Butler Yeats, Maude Gonne, Constance Lloyd (the wife of Oscar Wilde), Arthur
Edward Waite and Bram Stoker, author of
Dracula. Other members included the actress Florence Farr, occult
novelist Dion Fortune, and writer on
magic Israel Regardie. The Golden Dawn was led at the time by
McGreggor Mathers, who traced the
spiritual ancestry of the order to the
Rosicrucians, and from there, through to the Kabbalah and to ancient Egypt , where Hermeticism was falsely believed to have
originated. Mathers later married Moina
Bergson, sister of the famous philosopher, Henri Bergson. Wescott provided Reuss with a charter in 1901 for the Swedenborgian Rite of Masonry, developed in
1877 by John Yarker and Francis George Irwin, and in 1902 a letter of
authorization to found a chapter of the
SRIA in Germany.
Peter Davidson’s close association with Papus brought Randolph’s sex magic to the
attention of Reuss and Kellner. Gérard
Encausse, also known as Papus,
the head of the Martinists, made Reuss
leader of that order in Germany, also in 1901. Although he claimed as his
“spiritual master” the mysterious magician and healer known as “le Maître Philippe” (Philippe Nizier), Papus was
heavily influenced by Fabre d’Olivet through Saint-Yves,
whom he described as his “intellectual master.”69 As a young man,
Encaussc studied Kabbalah, Tarot, magic, alchemy, and the writings of
Eliphas Lévi. He later joined the
French Theosophical Society of
Madame Blavatsky and was also a member
of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and the
Golden Dawn. In 1888, Papus
and Saint-Yves, along with celebrated
occultists Stanislas de Guaita and Joséphin Péladan , founded the Rosicrucian Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix ( OKR+C).
Another famous member was composer Claude Debussy. In 1891, Encausse claimed to have come into the
possession of the original papers of Martinez de Pasquales, and therefore founded, with the assistance
of de Guaita and Péladan, the modern Order of
Martinists, called l’Ordre des Supérieurs Inconnus(Order of the Unknown Superiors).
In 1895,
Reuss and Kellner began to
discuss the formation of the Ordo Templi Orientis (Order of the Temple of the
East), or OTO, named in obvious
reference to the Asiatic Brethren.
When Reuss and Kellner began seeking authorizations to work
the various rites of high-grade Masonry, Wescott assisted Reuss in contacting John Yarker. Along with his associates Franz
Hartmann and Henry Klein, Reuss
activated the Rites of Memphis and
Misraïm and a branch of the Scottish
Rite in Germany with charters from
Yarker. It was also Yarker who
provided the charter for the founding of the
OTO to Reuss, who then incorporated
all his other organizations under its banner, developing the three degrees of
the Academia Masonica, into a single initiatory system, available only to
Masons, but open to both men and women.
According to Liber LII: Manifesto of the OTO, created sometime between 1912 and 1919,
and published in Reuss’ Masonic journal The Orifl amme, the OTO “…embodies
the whole of the secret knowledge of all Oriental Orders; and its chiefs are
initiates of the highest rank, and recognized as such by all capable of such
recognition in every country in the world.” The
OTO claims to be a body of initiates in whom are concentrated the wisdom
and the knowledge of the Templars, the
Hospitallers, the Knights of Malta,
the Illuminati, the HBofL, Scottish Rite
Freemasonry, the Rites of Memphis
and Misraïm, Swedenborgian Freemasonry and the Martinists, among others. “The dispersion of
the original secret wisdom having led to confusion,” Liber LIIexplains, it was
determined by the Chiefs of all these Orders to recombine and centralize their
activities, even as white light, divided in a prism, may be recomposed.”
Reuss was succeeded as head of the OTO by the notorious Aleister Crowley, the
godfather of twentieth century Satanism.
Also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast 666, Aleister Crowley
had also been a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Richard B. Spence writes in his
2008 book Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the
Occult that Crowley could have been a lifelong agent for British Intelligence.
Crowley was likely working as a spy in his many travels to Tsarist Russia,
Switzerland, Asia, Mexico and North Africa that had started in his student
days. Because Crowley had extensive contacts with the European secret societies
his specialist knowledge was used by the
SIS, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, for “Black Propaganda”
purposes.
Under
Crowley, the OTO formalized the
deviant sexual practices of the Sabbateans as “sex magick,” which according to Reuss and
Kellner were, “… the key to all the secrets of the Universe and to all
the symbolism ever used by secret societies and religions.” 70 The OTO, it seems, was also connected to the Palladium
Rite. Crowley’s secretary, Israel Regardie, claims in his book The Eye in
the Triangleof having seen a Palladium
charter signed by Leo Taxil and his oracle,
Diana Vaughan and William Wynn Westcott,
the founder of the Golden Dawn.71 Domenico Margiotta, one of Taxil’s collaborators who claimed to expose
the Palladium Rite, wrote that the “Sovereign
Universal Administrative Directory,” which was headed by Mazzini, was transferred to Berlin after his death. Mazzini died in 1872, and it was around 1880
when Reuss recreated the Order of
the Illuminati (OI), and around 1893 that
Leopold Engel founded the World League of the
Illuminati. They joined forces and
Reuss became the sole authority entitled with founding and consecrating Masonic Lodges of the OI. With Kellner, it was in Berlin that Reuss established a German Grand Lodge of the
Rite of Memphis and Misraïm, the highest-ranking Orders of
central European Freemasonry at that
time. Effectively, as Craig Heimbichner has indicated in Blood on the Alter, there are
enough parallels between the OTO and
what was claimed about the Palladium
rite by Leo Taxil, to suggest that in truth,
they were one and the same. 72
It was while in Egypt in 1904 that Crowley and his wife Rose performed a magical
ritual referred to as the “Cairo Working,” as a result of which he came into
contact with an entity calling itself Aiwass. He regarded the being as one of
the Secret Chiefs, a group of discarnate entities who directed the HermeticOrder
of the Golden Dawn, and which could be
equated with the Christian idea of the Devil. 73 According to Crowley’s student, Kenneth Grant, Aiwass came from the planet
Sirius, which he described Sirius as being a powerful center of “magickal”
power, and as holding the key to unlocking the mysteries of the Egyptian and
Typhonian traditions. One of Grant’s most controversial theories was his
discovery of the “Sirius/Set current,” which is purportedly an extra-terrestrial
dimension connecting Sirius, the Earth and Set, the Egyptian god of Chaos, who
was later associated with Satan.
Over the course of three days, Aiwass dictated
what came to be his Book of the Law, which proclaimed the new Aeon of Horus, an
era of “force and fire,” global wars and universal
bloodshed, which had superseded the obsolete Christian religion. Crowley’s Book of the Lawfeatures his famous
dictum, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” to which he applies
a Nietzschean interpretation, where, in the Aeon of Horus, the strong, who have
realized their true will, will rule over the slaves whose weakness has brought about their self-enslavement. In it we find the seeds of a fascist occult ideology:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
law… Come forth, o children under the
stars and take your fill of love… These are the dead, these fellows; they feel not… the
lords of the earth are our kinfolk… We
havenothing with the outcast and
unfit: let them die in their misery…
Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched & the weak: this
is the law of the wrong… lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture… Pity not the
fallen… strike hard and low, and to hell with them… be strong, then canst thou
bear more joy. I am a god of War and of
Vengeance… smite the peoples and none shall stand before you… Conquer! That is
enough… Worship me with fire & blood;
worship me with swords &
with spears… let blood flow to my name. Trample down the heathen… I will give
you of their flesh to eat!… damn them who pity. Kill and torture… I am the
warrior Lord… I will bring you to victory and joy… ye shall delight to slay. 74
The Book of the Lawwould come to be the basis
of Crowley’s new philosophy of Thelema. And when Crowley joined the OTO in 1912, he and Reuss began to
incorporate teachings of the Book of the Lawinto its rituals. The OTO developed a system of nine degrees, the first
six of which were more conventional Masonic initiations. The seventh, eighth and
ninth, however, focused on the theory of sex
magic and on the techniques of auto- and heterosexual magic. Homosexual intercourse also appears to
have played a central role in the
rituals. 75 As historian Hugh B. Urban explains, through the magical act of
intercourse, by focusing all one’s will and imagination upon a desired goal in
the moment of orgasm, one is said to achieve success in any occult operation,
from the
invocation of a
god to the finding of
hidden treasure. One may, for example,
use these techniques to magically empower a talisman or other magical object.
This is achieved by focusing one’s entire will on the desired object during the
act of self-aroused or heterosexual orgasm, and then afterwards anointing that
object with the semen, one can use that empowered object to achieve virtually
any desired end. 76 Thus, Crowley
declared, “That all orthodox religions are rubbish, and that the sole true gods
are the sun and his vice-regent, the penis.” 77
During World War One, Crowley was in America
where, according to Richard B. Spence, he worked for the British intelligence
while residing in America from 1914-1918, and played a major role in the
sinking of the Lusitania, the false-flag operation
that offered the
US the
pretext to enter World War One. Spence reveals that
Crowley was also involved in a plot to overthrow the government of Spain, and
the thwarting of Irish and Indian nationalist conspiracies. Under a cover of being
a German propaganda agent and a supporter of Irish independence, Crowley’s
mission was to gather intelligence about the German intelligence network, the
Irish independent activists and produce exaggerated propaganda, aiming at
compromising the German and Irish ideals. As his supposed cover, Crowley wrote
for German fascist magazines The Fatherlandand The International.
After the war, Crowley founded a religious
commune in Palermo, Sicily, known as the Abbey of Thelema, which he led from
1920 through till 1923, when Mussolini deported Crowley and his followers from
Italy, after reports of human and animal
sacrifice and sexual perversions caused an international
scandal. The British Press labeled
Crowley, “the wickedest man in the world.” For a glimpse of the depravity
involved at the infamous Abbey, Crowley confessed:
I have exposed myself to every form of disease,
accident and violence. I have driven myself to delight in dirty and disgusting
debauches, and to devour human excrements and human
flesh. I have mastered every mode of my mind and made myself a morality more
severe than any other in the world. A thousand years from now the world will be
sitting in the sunset of Crowleyanity. 78 Jamal Afghani was in Russia in 1886,
“invited by the order of the Russian government” according to an Indian
informant, and according to Scawen Blunt,
“threw himself into the opposite camp, that of the advocates of a
Russo-Turkish alliance against England.” 79 Afghani joined up with Blavatsky’s publisher, Mikhail Katkoff, who
was interested in organizing anti-British agitation in Central Asia and India. These activities were in alignment
with the new political directions of the Great Game, that would feature actors
connected to the Theosophical Society and
Martinists. In establishing the
Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix ( OKR+C), which came to be regarded
as the “inner circle” of the Martinist Order,
Papus, Oswald Wirth and Stanislas De Guaita dreamed of uniting occultists
into a revived Rosicrucian brotherhood, as an international occult order, in
which they hoped the Russian Empire would play a leading role as the bridge
between East and West. 80 When the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and Tsaritsa visited France in 1896, it
was Papus who sent them a greeting
on behalf of “the French Spiritualists,”
hoping that the Tsar would “immortalize his
Empire by its total union with Divine Providence.” Papus believed that the vast Russian Empire
was the only power capable of thwarting the conspiracy of the “Shadow
Brothers,” and to prepare for the coming war with Germany.
Papus, during 1900-1905, under the cover of bringing Martinism to Russia, had been engaged
as a French agent in undermining the British influence of the SIS and German intrigue among the Russian
elite. 81 Papus promoted his Martinist Order to counter the Masonic lodges which, he thought, were
in the service of British imperialism
and the international financial
syndicates. From his papers it is known that he furnished documentation to the
Russian authorities about Masonic
activities in Russia and Europe. Papus
even recruited members among the Romanovs. In 1901, he was introduced to the
Tsar, who became president of the “Unknown Superiors” who controlled his
Martinist Order in St. Petersburg.
Papus served Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina
Alexandra both as physician and occult consultant. Through Papus the Imperial family became acquainted with
his friend and spiritual mentor, the mystic
Maître Philippe (Nizier Anthelme Philippe). While Rasputin is more popularly known as the
occultist who attended to the royal couple, before him, Maître Phillipe exercised an important
influence on them as well. He was believed to possess remarkable healing
powers, as well as the ability to control lightning, to travel invisibly.
In St. Petersburg in 1905, it was rumored
that, in the presence of the Tsar and his
wife, Papus evoked the spirit of the
Tsar’s father, Alexander III, who offered advise on how to handle a political
crisis. According to one account, Papus promised
the imperial family that the Romanov monarchy would be protected as long as he remained alive. When the news
of his death reached Alexandra in 1916, she sent a note to her husband, then
commanding the Russian armies at the front
in World War I, saying “ Papus is dead, we are doomed!”
Among these circles, the city of St. Petersburg
became a hotbed of plotting behind the Great Game, and of confused British and
Russian interests. One associate of
Papus later claimed that Martinism was the “germ of Sovietism.” 82 As reported by Richard B. Spence in Secret
Agent 666, in the summer of 1897, Aleister
Crowley had also travelled to St Petersburg in Russia, aiming to gain an
appointment to the court of Tsar Nichoals
II. Spence suggested that Crowley had
done so under the employ of the British secret service. A key actor in these
intrigues was the Lama Agvan Dorjieff (or Dorzhiev), chief tutor of the Dalai
Lama XIII, who became his ambassador to the court of the Tsar Nicholas II. In
1896, the Tsar had given Dorjieff a monogrammed watch for the services he had
rendered to Russian agents in Lhasa. In 1898, only a few months after Crowley’s
visit, Dorjieff himself travelled to St. Petersburg to meet the Tsar. Dorjieff
is also remembered for building the Buddhist temple of St. Petersburg, where interest in Buddhism
was flourishing due to widespread interest in Theosophy.
Dorjieff’s meeting with Nicholas II was arranged by the Tsar’s close
confidant, Prince Esper Ukhtomskii (1861 – 1921).
A Theosophist, Ukhtomskii’s closest ally
was Count Sergei Witte,
Russia’s Minister of Finance and
first cousin to Blavatsky. When Ukhtomskii accompanied Nicholas II while he was Tsesarevichon his
Grand tour to the East, he made contact with
Blavatsky and Olcott at the headquarters of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, India, and promised to use his influence to push forward their projects.
83 Hinting at the nature of the Russian ambitions he represented, Ukhtomskii wrote, “in our organic connection
with all these lands lies the pledge of our future, in which Asiatic Russia
will mean simply all Asia.”84 As he explained,
The bonds that unite our part of Europe with
Iran and Turan, and through them with
India and the Celestial Empire [China], are so ancient and lasting that,
as yet, we ourselves, as a nation and a state, do not fully comprehend their
full meaning and the duties they entail on us, both in our home and foreign
policy. 85
By the 1890s,
Dorjieff had begun to spread the story that Russia was the mythical land
of Shambhala to the north; that the Tsar
might be the one to save Buddhism and that the White Tsar was an emanation of
White Tara, raising hopes that he would support
Tibet and its religion. By 1903, both Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, and Francis Younghusband became
convinced that Russia and Tibet had
signed secret treaties threatening the British interests in India and suspected that Dorjieff was working for the Russian
government. The fear of Russia drawing
Tibet into the Great Game to
control the routes across Asia was therefore a reason for the British invasion
of Tibet during 1903-4. According to legend,
Dorjieff then fled to Mongolia with the Dalai Lama.
According to Rom Landau, a “spiritual journalist”
of the 1930s, George Gurdjieff, a charismatic hypnotist, carpet trader and spy,
who worked as a Russian secret agent in
Tibet during the early part of the twentieth century, went by the name
“Hambro Akuan Dorzhieff” (the Lama Agvan
Dorjieff ). Though James Webb, author of The Harmonious Circle, suggests
that Gurdjieff was an agent for the
Russian government as Ushe Narzunoff, an associate of Dorjieff. Nevertheless, the legend that Gurdieff and
Dorjieff were the same person was widely believed by Gurdieff’s disciples.
Gurdjieff (1866 –1949) was born to a Greek father and Armenian mother in Alexandropol (now
Gyumri, Armenia), then part of the
Russian Empire. Gurdjieff’s teaching claimed that human beings were helplessly
caught in a “waking sleep” unable to fully perceive reality, but that it is
possible for them to transcend to a higher state of consciousness and achieve
their full human potential. He developed a method for doing so called “The
Work” or “the Method.” Because his method for awakening one’s consciousness was
different from that of the fakir, monk or yogi, his discipline is also called
the “Fourth Way.” Gurdjieff explained, “The way of the development of hidden
possibilities is a way against nature and against God.”86 His deceptive and
tyrannical ways led to his reputation as a “rascal guru.” He said of his own
followers, “They are sheep fit only for the shearing.” He was widely referred to as a black magician, and
one French critic labeled him “a false prophet, a pretentious ignoramus.” Rasputin
was so fearful of Gurdjieff that he was
quoted to have said, “I had been especially careful not to look at Gurdjieff and not to allow him to look into
my eyes...” 87 He was criticized by many of his former students as being slovenly,
gluttonous and was notorious for seducing his female students and fathered
several illegitimate children. Louis Pauwels, a former pupil, referred to Gurdjieff as “scandalous.” P. D. Ouspensky,
his leading student,
finally broke with Gurdjieff, claiming that he was “a very
extraordinary man,” but that it was “dangerous to be near him.” 88 J. G. Bennett
warned that Gurdjieff “is far more of an enigma than you can
imagine. I am certain that he is deeply good, and that he is working for the
good of mankind. But his methods are often incomprehensible.” 89
There has often been the suggestion that Gurdjieff and Joseph Dzhugashvili, later
known as Stalin, met as young students
while attending the same seminary in Tiflis in the Caucasus. Gurdjieff’s family records contain information
that Stalin lived in his family’s house
for a while. 90 There are also suggestions that
Stalin belonged to an occult “eastern brotherhood,” which consisted
of Gurdjieff and his followers.91
Gurdjieff’s
thought is an amalgam of Theosophy,
Neopythagoreanism, Rosicrucianism and alchemy. Paschal Beverly Randolph’s theories are suggested as sources
of Gurdjieff’s system, but according to
James Webb, author of The Harmonious Circle: The Anatomy of a Myth, the first comprehensive book on Gurdjieff and his movement, Blavatsky’s
Theosophy was his single most important source. His friend Peter D. Ouspensky had been a highly visible Theosophical
member prior to
his first contact with
Gurdjieff. Additionally, as K. Paul
Johnson notes, “a comparison of the teachings of Blavatsky and Gurdjieff leads to the conclusion that both
are equally indebted to another source,
Ismaili Shi’ism.” 92 According to Johnson, Blavatsky’s likely source for this Ismaili infl uence would have been
Jamal Afghani.
Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way teachings mentioned a
“Universal Brotherhood” and also a mysterious group of monks called the Sarmoung (also: Sarman, Sarmouni). Both
groups were described as in possession of advanced knowledge and powers, and as
being open to suitable candidates from all creeds. In early adulthood, Gurdjieff claims to have travelled to many
parts of the world, including Central
Asia, Egypt and Rome. In 1885 he visited Constantinople where he studied with
Mevlevi and Bektashi dervishes. In the account of Gurdjieff’s wanderings, Meetings with
Remarkable Men, each chapter is named after a “remarkable man,” many of them
members of a society of “Seekers after truth.” He describes encounters with dervishes,
fakirs and the Essenes. The discovery of an of an ancient map of “pre-sand
Egypt” leads him to first to
Egypt, whose ancient traditions, to
Gurdjieff, reflecting the
claims of Egyptian Freemasonry, are
the source of “true” or Gnostic Christianity. Gurdjieff then ventures to
Central Asia to search out and locate the mysterious Sarmoung Brotherhood. The
chief monastery of the society was said to be located somewhere in the heart of
Asia, about twelve days’ journey by horse and donkey from Bukhara in
Uzbekistan.
James Webb proposed, and K. Paul Johnson
concurs, that Ukhtomskii was the model
for “Prince Lubovedsky,” whom Gurdjieff
describes as his “comrade and closest friend,” and a key member of the “Seekers
of the Truth,” who together pursued a series of explorations in Central Asia.
They separate for a while, and Lubovedsky spends time with the Aga Khan, where
he met a representative of the Sarmoung,
until they are finally reunited when
Gurdjieff discovers Lubovedsky among the Brotherhood himself. According to
Johnson, these accounts suggest
“…a possible channel for Isma’ili
influences in the Fourth Way teachings.” 93
From the
Sarmoung Gurdjieff learns the sacred
dances, much like those of the Whirling Dervishes, which constitute an integral
part of his “the work,” and he sometimes referred to himself as a “teacher of
dancing.” Ernest Scott, author of The People of the Secret, suggests that Gurdjieff ’s
Sarmoung Brotherhood is an offshoot of the Naqshbandi
Sufis. In Gurdjieff: Seekers of the Truth, authors Kathleen
Speeth and Ira Friedlander suggested that the
Sarmoung is distinct from the Naqshbandis, but closely related. Both books
assert that the Sarmoung are preservers
of pre-Christian Middle Eastern occultism, working within the context of Naqshbandi
Sufism. But according
to James Webb, Gurdjieff was more a self-taught innovator
than an emissary of any esoteric tradition.
According to
Gurdjieff’s leading student J.
G. Bennett, who was head of British Military Intelligence in Constantinople,
and Bennett’s friend Idries Shah, the popular
author of Sufism, Gurdjieff’s “Fourth
Way” originated with the Khwajagan,
a chain of Naqshbandi Sufi Masters
from the tenth to the
sixteenth century influenced by Central
Asian shamanism. Shah was a secretary and companion to Gerald
Gardner, the most important representative of Wicca, who formulated its rituals
with Aleister Crowley. When Shah met J.
G. Bennett he presented him with a document supporting his claim to represent
the “Guardians of the Tradition,” which Bennett
and others identified with what
Gurdjieff had called “The Inner Circle of Humanity.” Idries Shah, in Tales of the Dervishes, later
claimed some of his dervish tales originated from “Sarman Sufis.” In other books and articles Shah suggested that the Sarman Sufis were the esoteric core of the
Naqshbandi order.
According to
Bennett, the Sufis are the descendants and spiritual heirs of the old master magicians of Altai, where
Central Asia has been their heartland for forty thousand years or more.
At the height of the Sumerian civilization, Bennett related, the Sufi s were
to have founded a brotherhood called the Sarman or Sarmoun Society which, according to Gurdjieff, met in Babylon as far back as 2500 BC and was
responsible for preserving the inner teachings of the Aryan race. In Gurdjieff: Making a New World, Bennett
conjectures that around 500 BC the
Sarmoun Society migrated from ancient Chaldea to Mosul in Mesopotamia,
moving north into the upper valley of the Tigris, into the mountains of
Kurdistan and the Caucasus. According to
Gurdjieff, the Society later moved eastward to Central Asia.
As Bennett relates, the Sarmoun became active
in the rise of Zoroastrianism, and he
connects the influence of the Magi to the
Essenes.94 Gurdjieff believed that the true teachings of Jesus Christ were corrupted by the Christian
Church, but that a small group of initiates called the “Brotherhood of the Essenes” were able to secretly preserve them.
Bennett suggests that Gurdjieff’s
lifelong contact with the Eastern Orthodox Church, through his parents and later
through contact with orthodox monks, fostered
a strong sense of identification with
that tradition which lasted until he died. Likewise, Gurdjieff believed that Islam as well had
deviated from the original teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. Gurdjieff also believed that the esoteric
teachings of Islam were in Bokhara, in Central Asia, which Bennett believes was
associated with the Naqshbandi Sufis who
had preserved the true teachings of Islam, and
which represented a synthesis of the inner meaning of all religions.
In India, Blavatksy’s Theosophical Society evolved into a mixture
of Western occultism and Hindu mysticism, and also spread western ideas in the
east, aiding a modernization of eastern traditions, and contributing to a
growing nationalism in the Asian colonies. The
Theosophical Society had a major influence on
Buddhist modernism and Hindu
reform movements, and the spread
of those modernized versions in the west. During the nineteenth century, Hinduism developed a large number of new
religious movements, partly inspired by the European Romanticism, nationalism,
scientific racism and Theosophy.
With the rise of Hindu nationalism, several contemporary Indian movements,
collectively termed Hindu reform movements, strove to introduce regeneration
and reform to Hinduism.
The
Theosophical Society and the Arya Samaj were united from 1878 to 1882,
as the Theosophical Society of the Arya
Samaj. And, along with H. S. Olcott and Anagarika Dharmapala, Blavatsky was also instrumental in the Western
transmission and revival of Theravada Buddhism. Dharmapala (1864 –1933) was a pioneer in the revival of
Buddhism in India after it had been virtually
extinct there for several centuries. Along with Olcott and Blavatsky, Dharmapala was also a major
reformer and revivalist of Ceylonese Buddhism and very crucial figure in its Western transmission.
Dharmapala also believed that Sinhalese
of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) are a pure Aryan race, and advised that Sinhalese
women should avoid miscegenation by refraining from mixing with minority races
of the country.95
An important influence on western
spirituality was Neo- Vedanta, also called
neo- Hinduism, a modern religious movement inspired by the ecstatic visionary
experiences of Sri Ramakrishna (1836 – 1886)
and his beloved disciple Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902). It was Vivekananda
who coined the term “ Hinduism” to describe a faith of diverse and myriad
beliefs of Indian tradition. Also a Freemason,
Vivekananda was a key figure in
the introduction of Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the western world. Vivekananda taught the doctrine of the unity
of all religions, and is perhaps best known for a speech at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in
Chicago in 1893, the first attempt to
create a
global dialogue of faiths.
Vivekananda quoted two passages from the Shiva mahimna stotram: “As the different
streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the
sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take, through different
tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee!”
and “Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are
struggling through paths that in the end lead to Me.” 96
In addition to Vivekananda, the Parliament of the World’s Religions was dominated
by the Theosophists and their counterparts among the representatives of neo-
Vedanta and Buddhist Modernism. According to K. Paul Johnson, the Parliament
gave Theosophists “a breakthrough into public acceptance and awareness which
had hardly seemed possible a few years before.” 97 Colonel Olcott shared his
sentiments in Old Diary Leaves, “How great a success it was for us and how
powerfully it stimulated public interest in our views will be recollected by all
our older members.” Several of the World Parliament’s speakers on behalf of
internationsl religions had been Theosopphists, such as Dharmapala and Kinza
Hirai, who represented Buddhism, Mohammed Webb for Islam, and Chakravarti for
the Hindus. In his 1921 history of the
Theosophical movement, René Guénon wrote that after the 1893 Parliament,
“the Theosophists seemed very satisfied with the
excellent occasion for propaganda
afforded them in Chicago, and they even went so far as to
proclaim that “the true Parliament of Religions had been, in fact, the Theosophical Congress.”98
At the Parliament, Vivekananda’s speech also made a profound
impression on Annie Besant (1847 –1933), who
had assumed the leadership of
the worldwide theosophical movement when
Blavatsky had passed away in 1891. Born in London into a middle-class
family of Irish origin, Besant was
proud of her heritage, and became involved with Union organizers including the
Bloody Sunday demonstration, which she was widely credited for inciting. During
1884, Besant had developed a very close
friendship with Edward Aveling, who first translated the works of
Marx into English. He eventually went to live with Marx’s daughter Eleanor Marx, whose network was being spied on by
Theodor Reuss. Besant was a leading
speaker for the Fabian Society. The
Fabians were a group of socialists whose strategy differed from that of
Karl Marx in that they sought world
domination through what they called the “doctrine of inevitability of
gradualism.” This meant their goals would be achieved “without breach of
continuity or abrupt change of the
entire social issue,” and by infiltrating educational
institutions, government agencies, and political parties.
After a dispute, the American section of the Theosophical Society split into an
independent organization. The original Society, then led by Henry Steel Olcott
and Besant, based in Chennai, India,
came to be known as the Theosophical Society Adyar. Besant’s partner in running
the Theosophical Society was Charles Leadbeater, a known pedophile. In 1909, Leadbeater claimed to have “discovered” the
new Messiah in the person of the handsome young Indian boy named Jiddu Krishnamurti.
Krishnamurti gained international acceptance among followers of
Theosophy as the new Savior, but the boy’s father nearly ruined the scheme when
he accused Leadbeater of corrupting his son. Krishnamurti also eventually repudiated his designated
role, and spent the rest of his life travelling the world and becoming in the
process widely known as an unaffiliated speaker.
As President of the Theosophical Society, Besant became involved in politics in India, joining the Indian National Congress,
and during World War I helped launch the
Home Rule League, modeling demands for
India on Irish nationalist practices. This led to her election as
president of the India National Congress
in late 1917. As editor of the New Indianewspaper,
she attacked the colonial government of
India and called for clear and decisive moves towards self-rule. In June
1917 Besant was arrested, but the
National Congress and the Muslim League together threatened to launch protests
if she was not set free. The government was
forced to make significant concessions, and it was announced
that the ultimate aim of British rule was Indian self-government.
After the war, a new leadership emerged
around Mohandas K. Gandhi, who was
inspired by the ideals of Vivekananda,
and who was among those who had written to demand Besant’s release, and who had returned from
leading Asians in a non-violent struggle against racism in South Africa. In
1888, he had travelled to London, England, to study law at University College
London, when he met members of the
Theosophical Society. They encouraged him to join them in reading the
Bhagavad Gita. As a result, despite not having shown any interest in religion
before, Gandhi began his serious study
of the text, which was to become his acknowledged guide throughout his life.
According to Kathryn Tidrick, Gandhi’s
approach to the Gitawas theosophical.99 Gandhi later credited Theosophy with instilling in him the
principle of the equality among
religions. As he explained to his biographer, Louis Fischer, “ Theosophy… is Hinduism at its best. Theosophy is the
brotherhood of man.” The organization’s motto inspired Gandhi to develop one of his central principles,
that “all religions are true.” 100
Gandhi had met Blavatsky and Besant in 1889. 101 And when Gandhi set
up his office in Johannesburg, among the pictures he hung on his
walls were those of Tolstoy, Jesus
Christ and Annie Besant, and in a letter
he wrote to her in 1905 he expressed his “reverence” of her. 102 Besant
bestowed on him the title by which he became famous, Mahatma, a Hindu term for
“Great Soul,” and the same name by which
Theosophy called its own masters.
Besant’s distinctive influence on Gandhi was through her contribution to the
theory of the “Law Of Sacrifice,” which
was set out
most fully in Esoteric
Christianity . The Law Of Sacrifi ce
was derived from a Fabian reading of the Bhagavad Gita,
where Krishna’s selfless activity
brought the world into existence and
continues to sustain it.
Action performed in this “sacrificial” spirit, says Krishna, is
free from Karma. From this
Besant developed the notion of the Law of Sacrifice, a form of “spiritual alchemy,” through disinterested action, “cast
upon the altar of duty.” The man who acts in harmony with the divine selflessness animating the universe becomes:
…a force for evolution… an energy for
progress, and the whole race then
benefits by the action which otherwise
would only have brought to the
sacrifice a personal fruit, which in turn would have bound his Soul, and limited his potentialities. 103
Despite his popular image as holy man, Joseph
Lelyveld’sGreat Soul: Mahatma Gandhi And
His Strug gle With India, according to
his reviewer, reveals Gandhi was a “sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and
a fanatical faddist—one who was often downright cruel to those around him. Gandhi was therefore the archetypal
20th-century progressive intellectual, professing his love for mankind as a
concept while actually despising people as individuals.” 104
According to Lelyveld, Gandhi also encouraged his seventeen-year-old
greatniece to be naked during her “nightly cuddles,” and began sleeping with
her and other young women. He also engaged in a long-term homosexual affair with
German-Jewish architect and bodybuilder Hermann Kallenbach, for whom Gandhi at one point left his wife in 1908.105
Though Gandhi was concerned for the plight
of the Indians of South Africa, he shared the racist beliefs of the Theosophists. Of white Afrikaaners and Indians, he wrote: “We believe as much in
the purity of races as we think they do.”
Gandhi lent his support to the Zulu War of 1906, volunteering for military
service himself and raising a battalion of stretcher-bearers. Gandhi complained of Indians being marched
off to prison where they were placed alongside Blacks, “We could understand not
being classed with whites, but to be placed on the same level as the Natives seemed
too much to put up with. Kaffirs [Blacks] are as a rule uncivilized—the convicts even more so.
They are troublesome, very dirty and
live like animals.” 106
Gandhi and
Mussolini became friendly when they met in December 1931, with Gandhi praising the Duce’s “service to the
poor, his opposition to super urbanization, his efforts to bring about a coordination
between Capital and Labour, his passionate love for his people.”He also advised
the Czechs and Jews to adopt nonviolence
toward the Nazis, saying that “a single
Jew standing up and refusing to bow to
Hitler’s decrees” might be enough “to melt Hitler’s heart.”107
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