Petrovna BLAVATSKY (1831–91) died. Previously,
she and the third co-founder, Henry Steel Olcott
(1832–1907), had moved to India, where each
had absorbed elements of the Indian spiritual
environment. Through the early 1890s, Judge
challenged the role of Besant, a relatively new
member of the society who emerged as head
of its important Esoteric Section, in which Bla-
vatsky had taught psychic development and
occult practices.
Judge’s challenge of Besant led the majority of
the American section to break with the interna-
tional society. Before he died in 1896 Judge desig-
nated Tingley, whom he had seen as a capable and
dedicated leader, as his successor. Tingley stepped
into her role immediately and traveled the globe
on a World Crusade for Theosophy. When she
returned to America, she set up headquarters at
Point Loma at San Diego, California, where she
founded the School for the Revival of the Lost
Mysteries of Antiquity.
Tingley led the Theosophical Society in an
interesting direction, mixing esoteric teach-
ings with an experiment in communal living at
Point Loma and developing a variety of outward-
directed programs in the community. Among the
more interesting programs was a relief work effort
in Cuba that included taking a group of Cuban
children to Point Loma.
Theosophy is basically a Western esoteric
teaching, but it resonated with Hinduism at
a variety of points. Most notably, it shared an
understanding of the individual as essentially
a substantial soul that reincarnated in different
bodies through time. The youth division of the
school at Point Loma was designated the Raja
Yoga College, a designation Tingley took from the
SANSKRIT sense of “royal union.” She saw true edu-
cation to consist in the harmonious development
and balancing of all human faculties. As taught at
the school, raja yoga was a system for developing
psychic, intellectual, and spiritual powers and
a union with one’s higher self (the inner divine
source of all).
The Tingley-led Theosophical Society opposed
the emphasis placed on the role of Jiddu KRISH-
NAMURTI (1895–1986). Besant’s designation of
Krishnamurti as the vehicle of the World Savior
in the 1920s attracted many new supporters to the
international Theosophical Society, though most
left when in 1929 Krishnamurti rejected his con-
nection with Theosophy. Tingley’s organization
was crippled by Tingley’s death in July 1929 in an
automobile accident in Germany, and by the col-
lapse of the stock market in October that year that
plunged the world into an economic depression.
Tingley led every activity at Point Loma, and
during her life the society flourished, though her
inability to delegate authority and her neglect
of the organization’s other centers became evi-
dent after her death. The society remained vital
through the 1930s but lost the land at Point Loma
during World War II. In the later half of the 20th
century, the International Theosophical Society
recovered the support of the majority of American
Theosophists.Further reading: Bruce F. Campbell, A History of the
Theosophical Movement (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1980); Emmet A. Greenwalt, California
Utopia: Point Loma, 1897–1942 (San Diego: Point Loma,
1978); Katherine Tingley, Theosophy: The Path of the
Mystic (Pasadena, Calif.: Theosophical University Press,
1977); ———, The Wine of Life (Point Loma, Calif.:
Woman’s International Theosophical League, 1925);
———, The Wisdom of the Heart: Katherine Tingley
Speaks. Compiled by Emmet Small (Point Loma, Calif.:
Point Loma, 1978).Tirthankara
The Tirthankaras (ford crossers), those who have
crossed the ocean of birth and rebirth and have
been released from the bonds of KARMA, are the
central objects of devotion for Jains (see JAINISM).
A Tirthankara is a karmically select being, not a
god, but a perfected YOGI who has reached enlight-
enment. At rare intervals, such people appear inK 448 Tirthankara