Kritik am Buch „The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama ... - Neues von Shi De

Yet, as the real pioneering deed in the spread of the Shambhala myth in the West we have to present
the life and work of a woman. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), the influential founder of
Theosophy, possibly contributed more to the globalization of a warlike Buddhism than she was aware
of. The noble-born Russian is supposed to have already been a gifted medium as a child. After an
adventurous life (among other things she worked as a rider in a circus) her spiritual career as such
began in the 1870s in the USA. At first she tried her hand at all kinds of spiritualist séances. Then she
wrote her first occult book, later world famous, Isis Unveiled (first published in 1875). As the title
reveals, at this stage she oriented herself to secret Egyptian teachings. There is almost no trace of
Buddhist thought to be found in this work. In 1879 together with her most loyal follower, Colonel
Henry Steele Olcott, Blavatsky made a journey to Bombay and to the teachings of Buddha Gautama.
There too, the doctrine of the “great White Brotherhood of Tibet” and the mysterious spiritual masters
who determine the fate of humanity was invented, or rather, in Blavatsky’s terms, “received” from the
higher realms.
Tibet, which, her own claims to the contrary, she had probably never visited, was a grand obsession
for the occultist. She liked to describe her own facial characteristics as “Kalmyk-Buddhist-Tatar”.
Even though her esoteric system is syncretized out of all religions, since her work on the Secret
Doctrine Tibetan/Tantric Buddhism takes pride of place among them.
A detailed comparison of the later work of the Theosophist with the Shambhala myth and the
Kalachakra Tantra would reveal astounding similarities. Admittedly she only knew the Time Tantra
from the brief comments of the first western Tibetologist, the Hungarian, Csoma de Körös, but her