Her frequent lack of precision and clearness seems only to enhance the effect of her affirmations and revelations. A prophet who could easily be understood by intelligences of all grades would soon come to grief, for religious teachers, like philosophers and metaphysicians, seem to be esteemed and admired largely in proportion to the vagueness of their doctrines. The works of Madame Blavatsky are worthy of being classed among the most obscure, and for that very reason have every chance of endurance.
In spite of the differences that arose among the principal Theosophists (who included Colonel Olcott, William Q. Judge, and Annie Besant) after their leader's death, Catherine Tingley succeeded in rallying large numbers of the American believers to her banner, and founded a colony at Point Loma, California, under the name of "the universal and theosophical brotherhood," which was approved by the Theosophical conferences held in New York and Chicago in 1898.
Theosophy is in fact a philosophy of altruism, whose main tenets are brotherly love and justice. By following truth the soul becomes purified, and after a life consecrated to others and guided by the laws of justice, the individual may hope to reincarnate in some higher form. As the poet of Sakuntala has said--"In other existences we all have loved and wept"--but the divine Kalidasa teaches that past lives should not be spoken of, "for the mystery of rebirth is sacred."
The duality of our being is shown, on the one hand, in our earthly sins and failures, and on the other in the spiritual aspirations which ever urge us on to greater heights. The law of Karma affirms the relationship between cause and effect, and teaches that "as a man sows, so shall he also reap"--and consequently, the better our thoughts and actions now, the greater our advancement in the next life.
It is in the teachings of the divine Krishna that we find the original source of the greater part of modern Theosophy. His precepts are full of consolation for restless minds, and have the power to reconcile us not only to death, but to life.
In the vast store-house of the world's legends there is none more beautiful than that of the immaculate maiden Devaki, who in a divine ecstasy, amid strains of celestial music, brought forth the child of Mahadeva, Sun of Suns, in perfect serenity and bliss; while the story of Krishna's life, his dangers and temptations, his virtues and his beauty, his wisdom and his final supreme initiation, has provided the Hindu world with conceptions of a grandeur, originality and depth rarely met with elsewhere. To this well of wisdom came Plato and Pythagoras, and drew from it the chief ingredients of their philosophies; and here, too, we receive from the lips of Krishna, thirty centuries before the birth of Christ, the first faint intimations of the immortality of the soul.