Theos-Talk Archives (July 2004 Message tt00437)

One of these apprentices was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky - a great soul who was sent out to offer knowledge to the world some forty years ago. With Colonel Henry Steele Olcott she founded the Theosophical Society for the spread of this knowledge which she had to give. Among those who came into contact with her in those early days was Mr. A. P. Sinnett, the editor of The Pioneer, and his keen intellect at once grasped the magnitude and the importance of the teaching which she put before him. Although Madame Blavatsky herself had previously written Isis Unveiled, it had attracted but little attention, and it was Mr. Sinnett who first made the teaching really available for western readers in his two books, The Occult World and Esoteric Buddhism. 

It was through these works that I myself first came to know their author, and afterwards Madame Blavatsky herself; from both of them I learned much. When I asked Madame Blavatsky how one could learn still more, how one could make definite progress along the Path which she pointed out to us, she told me of the possibility that other students might be accepted as apprentices by the great Masters, even as she herself had been accepted, and that the only way to gain such acceptance was to show oneself worthy of it by earnest and altruistic work. She told me that to reach that goal a man must be absolutely one-pointed in his determination; that no one who tried to serve both God and Mammon could ever hope to succeed. One of these Masters Himself has said: "In order to succeed, a pupil must leave his own world and come into ours." 

Andrew W. Smith, M.A.(English),F.T.S.
Master Sergeant, USA/USAF (Ret.)
www.theosociety.org<http://www.theosociety.org/>
God enters by a private door into every
individual. -- Emerson, "Intellect"

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