Theos-Talk Archives (December 2001 Message tt00264)

Steve: "Blavatsky insisted there was something "secret" about
her movement, and it is likely this was the secret. (Reg. the 
botanical lapidation of HS Olcott.)

Brigitte: Although in later years she might also have said things to 
the contrary, ( she also said she was a virgin in spite of having 
been maried before.) most historical researchers that have done 
extensive research on this will agree that there is a connection 
between drugs, HPB, and the TS that time. 
More important it might have been incorporated in the inner 
teachings of the early TS regarding astral travel. If I find time I 
will do some more typing and research on this topic but up front I 
can mention following:

In the "World" interview (I presume Daniel has it ?) Blavatsky 
states that she first was projected out of the body (to a friend's 
house in Berlin) when the chief of gurus made her a drink a 
potion "the ingredients of which I know but will not tell."
Blavatsky writes; "The women of Thessaly and Epirus, the female 
heirophants of the rites of Sabazius, did not carry their secrets 
away with the downfall of their sanctuaries. They are still 
preserved, and those who are aware of the nature of soma (a plant 
whose juices induce a hypnotic trance-like state) know the properties 
of other plants as well." ( Isis Unveiled)

In "Erroneous Ideas Concerning the Doctrines of the 
Theosophists,"published in 1879, she declared that proof of doctrine 
of conditional immortality was only given the neophyte "durring the 
Great Mysteries, when a sacred beverage enabled him to leave his body 
and, soaring in the infinity of worlds, observe and look for 
himself." 

Related to this in Blavatsky's schema was the sacred "Sleep of *** " 
an obvious reference to the Sleep of Sialam, a term used by 
P.B.Randolph in his Rosicrucian novel Ravalette (1863) for the 
highest, drug induced vision state. It was taken up in Isis Unveiled 
where it relates to a drug- induced, prophetic "sublime lethargy" in 
wich the uncounscious subject is made the "temporary receptacle of 
the brightness of the immortal Augoeides."

P.Deveney in "Astral Projection or Liberating of the Double and the 
Work of the Theosophical Society"( wites: Later the "Sleep of 
Sialam" came to mean the soma-induced trance during wich the new 
initiate- both in the Orient and in the ancient Mysteries-comprhends 
the ultimate mysteries after undergoing the tests of Initiation. 
("The Esoteric Character of the Gospels, "Lucifer, November 1887)
Deveney ads that :"I do not think that drugs can be ruled out as a 
possibility in seeking practical techniques in the TS.- and would 
appear to be related to the degree structure or sections adopted by 
the Society at least as early as 1878 and which G.H.Felt , as we 
shall see, says were adopted from the verry beginning." (Deveney 
gives then more evidence as he goos on, and this is indeed one of the 
books that is recomended reading if one wants to study this subject 
further, see: Deveney, "Astral Projection and the early TS") 

In The SD (1888), Blavatsky specifically identifies the term as the 
one in use "to this day"among the Initiates in Asia Minor, in Syria 
and even in higher Egypt.

A.L. Rawson was one of a few life-long friends Blavatsky had, and she 
herself attested to the validity of his character. In Isis Unveiled 
Blavatsky makes the following comments concerning her good friend and 
associate A.L. Rawson: "Outside the East we have met one initiate 
(and one only), who, for some reasons best known to himself, does not 
make a secret of his initiation into the Brotherhood of Lebanon. It 
is the learned traveler and artist, Professor A.L. Rawson, of New 
York City. This gentleman has passed many years in the East, four 
times visited Palestine, and has traveled to Mecca. It is safe to 
say that he has a priceless store of facts about the beginnings of 
the Christian Church, which none but one who has had free access to 
repositories closed against the ordinary traveler could have 
collected." Blavatsky goes on to quote Rawson concerning his 
initiation into a sect claiming secret knowledge concerning the roots 
of Christianity, the Druzes of Mount Lebanon.

I therefore don't think Rawson's testimony about Blavatsky should be 
dismissed, he is certainly one of the few people that know of the 
more intimate aspects of Blavatsky's life. And his aquintance with 
Blavatsky goes further back then that of Olcott and Blavatsky.

Brigitte

PS. Rawson wrote knowing Blavatsky well: "She had tried hasheesh in 
Cairo with success, and she again indulged in it in this city under 
the care of myself and Dr. Edward Sutton Smith, who had a
large experience with the drug among his patients at
Mount Lebanon, Syria. She said, 'Hasheesh multiplies
ones life a thousandfold. My experiences are real
as if they wer ordinary events of actual life. Ah!
I have ean xplanation. It is a recollection of my former
existences, my previous incarnations. It is a wonderful
drug, and it clears up a profound mystery."