Olcott asked all the same of the origin of these statuettes and inquired about their placement. Muller answered that ''the statues of the Buddha'' standing on the floor near his fireplace were taken out of the ''the great temple of Rangoon (presumably the Shwedagon Pagoda).''[13] The professor was so imbued with the British imperialism, as Lopez noted, that he was not at all embarrassed to use the military trophies captured in the Buddhist temple. The ''more interesting'' was Muller's answer to the question why he put the Buddha statues on the floor: ''Because with the Greeks the hearth was the most sacred spot.'' According to Lopez, the answer ''sounds slightly disingenuous, but its implication is important.'' For Muller, the image of the Buddha, captured in Asia and taken to England, has ceased to be Asian, and therefore its owner was not obliged allegedly to follow the ''Asian custom.'' For him, the Buddha became part ''of European culture, like a Greek god,'' and therefore he should follow the customs of Western civilization. (Lopez 2009, p. 159)
Five years after the meeting with Olcott, professor Muller published an article ''Esoteric Buddhism,'' in which he tried again, in a different form, to prove that there is no esotericism in Buddhism and never was. All his indignation the professor directed against Blavatsky, believing that the Buddhist esotericism is only her invention. ''I love Buddha and admire Buddhist morality'', Muller wrote, ''that I cannot remain silent when I see his noble figure lowered to the level of religious charlatans, or his teaching misrepresented as esoteric twaddle.'' (Muller 1893, p. 784; Lopez 2009, p. 179)[14] The Theosophists often disagreed with the European Orientalists and ridiculed their limitation. In 1882, in his letter to Alfred Sinnett, mahatma Kuthumi offered, ''Since those gentlemen – the Orientalists – presume to give to the world their soi-disant translations and commentaries on our sacred books, let the Theosophists show the great ignorance of those 'world' pundits, by giving the public the right doctrines and explanations of what they would regard as an absurd, fancy theory.'' (Barker 1924, p. 185; Lopez 2009, pp. 184-185)
The Occultists and Sceptics
For Hindus, the supernatural powers of a person, who was specially trained, aren't something special. Professor Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan noted that in Indian psychology ''the psychic experiences, such as telepathy and clairvoyance, were considered to be neither abnormal nor miraculous.'' (Radhakrishnan 1948a, p. 28) Blavatsky wrote that to consider magic as a deception is to offend humanity:
To believe that for so many thousands of years, one-half of mankind practiced deception and fraud on the other half, is equivalent to saying that the human race was composed only of knaves and incurable idiots. (Blavatsky 1877, p. 18; Kuhn 1992, p. 132)
However, according to the Theosophical Masters, the ''recent persecutions'' for alleged witchcraft, magic, mediumship convincingly show that the ''only salvation'' of the genuine occultists lies in the public skepticism, because the attribution to the ''charlatans and the jugglers'' securely protects them. (Barker 1924, p. 4) A member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Eugene Alexandrov argued that the paranormal phenomena don't exist. He wrote, ''There is no telepathy (a transmission and reading of thoughts), there is no clairvoyance, levitation is impossible, there is no 'dowsing', there is no phenomena of a 'poltergeist', there is no psychokinesis.'' (Александров 2015, p. 21)[15] As Theosophist Edi Bilimoria wrote, a typical western scientist don't distinguish (or can't distinguish) two things: a ''map'' (the scientific model of the world) and ''territory'' (Nature). (Bilimoria 1997, p. 71)[16]
The Theosophical Psychophysiology
A few years after Blavatsky's death, the ''second generation'' of the Theosophists came to the leadership of the Theosophical Society Adyar. As Hammer wrote, during this period, the ''foci'' of the Theosophical scientism shifted from the theory of evolution to other areas of science. (Hammer 2003, p. 222) Charles Leadbeater, who became ''the chief ideologist'' of the Society, had involved with Annie Besant in the study of a functioning of the human mind. According their claim, the functioning of mind ''extrudes into the external world'' the thought-forms which can be observed using clairvoyance methods. (Tillett 1986, p. 224) In 1905, Besant and Leadbeater published a book named Thought-Forms: A Record of Clairvoyant Investigation contained a lot of color illustrations of the forms, ''created,'' according to its authors, by thoughts, emotions, and senses of men, as well by music. They argued that main source of the forms is the aura of man, the outer part of the cloud-like substance of his ''subtle bodies,'' interpenetrating each other, and extending beyond the confines of his physical body. (Hammer 2003, p. 55; Wessinger 2013, p. 36)[17]
The Theosophical Chemistry
In parallel with the ''psychophysiological'' researches, the Theosophists were busy an occult chemistry based on a ''greatly modified'' atomic theory. Leadbeater began ''the occult investigation'' of chemical elements as early as 1895, and Besant soon joined him. They argued that, using clairvoyance, can describe the intra-atomic structure of any element. In their words, each element composed of atoms containing a certain number of ''smaller particles.'' They published ''these and other results'' in 1908 in a book Occult Chemistry: Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements. Hammer wrote, ''Although Leadbeater was the principal clairvoyant, the enduring interest in… chemistry is probably due to Annie Besant's fascination with science, especially chemistry.'' (Hammer 2003, pp. 222-223; Wessinger 2013, p. 36)
Theosophy and Physics
In 1923, an astronomer and Theosophist G. E. Sutcliffe published a book Studies in Occult Chemistry and Physics which was a ''critical analysis'' of the theory of relativity. The author has pursued the goaclass="underline" to equalize the meaning of ''Eastern'' and ''Western science,'' describing their ''as two complementary 'schools'.'' In this book, the theory of relativity is regarded as the highest achievement of ''Western science,'' whereas the results of the Theosophical study ''of atoms and etheric structures'' known as ''occult chemistry'' are presented as the achievement of ''the 'Eastern' school''. (Sutcliffe 1923, pp. v-vi; Asprem 2013, p. 415) In an effort to show that the results of occult research can be compared with the theory of relativity, Sutcliffe ''proposes a wholly new theory of gravity,'' based on physics of ether. From his reasoning it can be seen that he is thoroughly erudite in the Theosophical literature, while also having a background in ''conventional physics from Britain'' in the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Sutcliffe tries to reinterpret the theory of Albert Einstein (1879-1955) in ''a tradition of British anti-relativism'', operating with the liberal ''concept of ether.''[18] The concept of Sutcliffe is based on ''contraction and expansion of the accompanying ether of bodies,'' so, according to him, gravitation ''is one of the effects of an expanding sphere of ether,'' and the electrical phenomena are a function of the ''contracting sphere.'' (Sutcliffe 1923, p. xv; Asprem 2013, p. 416)
13
''It is unclear whether they were pillaged during the First Anglo-Burmese War'', Lopez wrote, ''when British troops captured and held the temple for two years, or during the Second, when British troops captured the temple in 1852; it then remained under the control of the military until 1929.'' (Lopez 2009, p. 159)
14
Also a prominent Buddhist studies scholar Rhys-Davids believed that ''the original Buddhism was the very contrary of esoteric.'' (Rhys-Davids 1896, p. 210)
16
Thus, if he didn't want to mark any ''ravines'' or ''swamps'' (the paranormal phenomena) on his ''map,'' this don't mean that he will never ''find himself'' there. For participants in a hypothetical dialogue between an initiated occultist and a typical scientist, Bilimoria chose the appropriate abbreviations: OWL (
17
In Hammer's opinion, ''Leadbeater proposed a theory of the human aura'' based on some Blavatsky's ideas. (Hammer 2003, p. 223) Truly, according to Blavatsky, ''Every person emits a magnetic exhalation or aura.'' (Blavatsky 1877a, p. 610)
18
''Ether physics was a crucial component of physics in Britain, and was part of the curriculum at Trinity College, Cambridge, as late as 1910.'' (Asprem 2013, p. 416)