Helena Roerich’s diaries, written in Russian, begin in March 1920, during her stay in London. They represent the source of all the eighteen books of Agni Yoga, compiled from 1924 to 1938.
Agni Yoga is the term used to define the spiritual teaching received by the Roerich couple, in particular by Helena after the first two books. As Anton Malyguine writes in his book La fenice russa (The Russian Phoenix, published by Nuova Era, 2018), the Roerich family was in London in March 1920. During a walk in Hyde Park, Helena saw two particularly tall men, who wore the uniform of the British Indian colonial troops. They were unusually handsome and looked so long at Helena, she found it disconcerting. Later they revealed themselves to be members of the White Brotherhood. One of them being the Master who would transmit the teaching.
Initially, the transmission was by the method of mediumistic sessions, very popular at that time. After some time, this method was completely abandoned. In one paragraph of the book Agni Yoga, we can find the different ways and stages of transmission: “At first you were both shown how the basic laws of matter work … These were performed not for amusement, but for the purpose of seeking serious knowledge. After that you were shown the astral world … Having finished with the semi-material world, we then approached cosmic clairvoyance and clairaudience.” (AY 145)
Helena Roerich’s diaries, written in Russian, begin in March 1920, during her stay in London. They represent the source of all the eighteen books of Agni Yoga, compiled from 1924 to 1938. The first pages of the diaries are reported in the quoted book by A. Malyguine.
At the end of 1920, the Roerich family moved to New York, and from 1924 we find them in India, where Helena remained until her death in 1955. The four Roerichs (Helena, Nikolaj and their sons Yurij and Svetoslav), this Russian foursome of solid and strong humanity, travelled three continents and crossed two oceans, to receive and place the seeds of Agni Yoga. The first contact and transmission in London in 1920 continued first in New York and then in Naggar in the Himalayan valley of Kullu, and represents the starting point of the century that will be completed in the spring of 2020, when we shall celebrate this event in the International Agni Yoga Conference, dedicated to an important topic for the future of humanity: the relationship with the Cosmos.
Picture: roerich-museum.com