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Also known as Adepts, Mahatmas, or simply "Brothers", the Masters are ...
#REDIRECT [[Masters of Wisdom]]
 
 
== Adepts and Masters ==
 
The word "adept" was used in a general way by HPB. There were high and low adepts. Sometimes she called "adept" people with occult knowledge, but not necessarily spiritually highly evolved. In fact, she mentions adepts who are black magicians. The word Master, however, seems to be reserved to high adepts, who work in line with the evolutionary movement. This idea is expressed to certain extent by [[Charles Johnston]] in his article:
 
<blockquote>Then she told me something about other Masters and adepts she had known -- for she made a difference, as though the adepts were the captains of the occult world, and the Masters were the generals. She had known adepts of many races, from Northern and Southern India, Tibet, Persia, China, Egypt; of various European nations, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, English; of certain races in South America, where she said there was a Lodge of adepts.<ref>Johnston, Charles, Collected Writings, VII(???????????) 400</ref></blockquote>
 
== Renouncing Nirvana ==
 
[[H. P. Blavatsky]] wrote about:
 
<blockquote>. . .the hitherto very esoteric doctrine of the Nirmanakayas was lately brought forward as a proof and explained in the treatise called The Voice of the Silence. These Nirmanakayas are the Bodhisattvas or late Adepts, who having reached Nirvana and liberation from rebirth, renounce it voluntarily in order to remain invisibly amidst the world to help poor ignorant Humanity within the lines permitted by Karma.<ref>Blavatsky, H. P., Collected Writings vol. XII (????????????) 31</ref></blockquote>
 
 
== Women Adepts ==
 
In June, 1889, C.S. Stockholm sent a few questions to the editors of the Theosophical Journal ''Lucifer''. One of them was about the existence of Women Adepts:
 
<blockquote>Has any woman ever attained to Adeptship proper? Will her intellectual and spiritual nature and gifts permit it, even while supposing that her physical nature might endure the hardships therefrom indispensable?</blockquote>
 
To this, [[H. P. Blavatsky]] answered:
 
<blockquote>Woman has as good a chance as any man has to reach high Adeptship. Why she does not succeed in this direction in Europe is simply due to her early education and the social prejudice which causes her to be regarded as inferior to man.<ref>Blavatsky, H. P., ''Collected Writings'' vol. XI (Wheaton, Ill: Theosophical Publishing House, 1973), 301.</ref></blockquote>
 
[[Subba Row|T. Subba Row]], considered by [[H. P. Blavatsky]] to be her equal in occultism, wrote:
 
<blockquote>There are instances of females becoming the greatest Adepts. Whether an individual is male or female depends upon temperament as much as anything else. . . . There is one woman who still stands in the list of the Mahachohans of one of the greatest Rays--that to which H ... belongs. She is not merely a great Adept of that Ray, but had made many original discoveries. . .
There is a Ray specially adapted to women; it is sometimes called "the body of love". Its Logos is rather a female than a male; it belongs to the magnetic pole of the universe. I do not think there will ever be a female Adept of the First Ray, because it belongs entirely to the positive pole.<ref>Subba Row, T., ''Esoteric Writings'' (Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1931), 570.</ref></blockquote>
 
In ''The Theosophist'', October, 1883, "An Inquirer" asked:
 
<blockquote>Will you kindly let me know whether females can attain to adeptship, and whether female adepts exist at all?</blockquote>
 
To this, [[Damodar K. Mavalankar]], a [[chela]] of Mahatma [[K.H.]] wrote:
 
<blockquote>It is difficult to see any good reason why females should not become Adepts. None of us, Chelas, are aware of any physical or other defect which might entirely incapacitate them from undertaking the dreary ordeal. It may be more difficult, more dangerous for them than it is for men, still not impossible. The Hindu sacred books and traditions mention such cases, and since the laws of Nature are immutable, what was possible some thousand years ago must be possible now. . . . In Nepaul, we all know, there is a high female Adept. And in Southern India, flourished at a recent date, another great female Initiate named Ouvaiyar. Her mysterious work in Tamil on Occultism is still extant. It is styled Kural, and is said to be very enigmatically written, and consequently inexplicable. In Benares too lives a certain lady, unsuspected and unknown but to the very few. . .<ref>Eek, Sven, ''Damodar and the Pioneers of the Theosophical Movement'' (Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1965), 320.</ref></blockquote>
 
== Notes ==
 
<references/>

Latest revision as of 17:56, 28 February 2012

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