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Some years ago actor James Stewart played Elwood P. Dowd, a down-and-outer who kept company with his invisible rabbit friend Harvey. When the puppet Pinocchio was transformed from wood and coaxed into flesh, he too was coupled with a friend — a talking cricket (his conscience). In a Woody Allen film, the comedian humorously calls out to Plato when he finds himself at philosophical crossroads. As a Theosophist, I like to imagine GdeP as my invisible friend and companion.
GdeP left this plane of existence almost sixty years ago by our clock, but nonetheless we were actually introduced in late 1973 through his old friend, who later became my friend too, John P. Van Mater. With GdeP, it was brotherly love at first sight. There was something awfully familiar about him. It wasn't long before I realized this romance was the actual rekindling of the "Romantic Tradition" of antiquity. With unbridled enthusiasm I began to read every thought that was in print of this now invisible man. Right from the beginning he was not only a catalyst for my newborn philosophical and imaginative mind, but in the slightest of ways I noticed that my daily manners were beginning to sit up straight, and soon some of the simplest joys of family life were sporadically inflating into unexpected epiphanies balanced perfectly by a new and deeper comprehension of life in general — life that took in the whole family of Man and his place in the cosmic scheme.
G. de Purucker
For me his several books are like paper megaphones — you can easily hear his practiced cheer! He leads you with an assured cadence and precise counterpoint reasoning (he knowing that varied repetition and restatement are among the best teaching methods). As might be expected, but generally unnoticed, when you come to the commas in his writings, you take a breath with him and then continue in attentive unison as he rounds out his thought into your worldly ears — magically transforming invisible realities into tantalizing pictures of esoteric opportunity.
How he knows of what he speaks is not beyond us, but is within each and every person. All in all, but in particular, GdeP's theosophical Dialogues become a magic wand for your own quasi-magical processes and soliloquies with which you beget your own rabbit-companion, a talking cricket, a hovering hologram of Plato when needed, and a new manner of life for yourself.
Sometimes I look around and say aloud to my invisible friend: "Thank you, GdeP, thank you!"
(From Sunrise magazine, April/May 2000; copyright © 2000 Theosophical University Press)
On first reading G. de Purucker's books, one is immediately struck by a great erudition, an impressive understanding of the entire spectrum of esoteric knowledge. He appeared to be very intellectual on the surface, yet with all his encyclopedic knowledge I am more impressed by his profound wisdom, as though he had experienced what he speaks of firsthand. In his Four Sacred Seasons particularly I sense his compassion and perception of human nature and of the inner life, while at the same time as a teacher he delineates and clarifies the meanings of timeless esoteric truths. — John Van Mater, Jr.