The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett from the Mahatmas M. & K. H. Transcribed, Compiled, and with an Introduction by A. T. Barker

Facsimile of the Second Edition, 1926; published by Theosophical University Press. Electronic version ISBN 1-55700-086-7. This edition may be downloaded for off-line viewing without charge. For ease of searching, no diacritical marks appear in this electronic version of the text.

 

 Contents

Compiler's Prefaces Introduction (22K) Table of Contents (81K) Mars and Mercury (12K) The Writing of the Mahatma Letters by A. T. Barker (9K) First Letter of KH to A. O. Hume (27K) The Views of the Chohan on the TS (18K)

  

Compiler's Preface

It will be seen, if reference is made to the "Contents" that the letters have been arranged in 7 Sections and an Appendix. The former contain nothing but Mahatma letters, while in the latter some letters have been added from three pupils of The Mahatmas M. and K.H. —: H. P. Blavatsky, T. Subba Row, and Damodar K. Mavalankar, not only for their intrinsic merit, but because they help to make clear questions arising in the main part of the book which would otherwise be left obscure.

The seven Sections suggest themselves as more or less natural divisions, but it should be remembered that as letters in one section often contain matter which also relates to the other Sections, considerable overlapping is unavoidable. However, an attempt has been made and that is the best that can be said.

The contents of each Section are arranged where possible chronologically, in the order of their receipt. The reader must bear in mind that with only one or two exceptions none of the letters were dated by the writers thereof. On many of them, however, the dates and places of receipt have been noted in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting, and these appear in small type immediately under the Letter Numbers.

It should be understood clearly that unless otherwise stated:

 Each letter has been transcribed direct from the original.

 Every letter was written to A. P. Sinnett.

 All footnotes are copies of notes which appear in and belong to the letters themselves, unless signed (Ed.) in which case they have been added by the compiler.

 

Throughout this volume there are a great many words used which belong to Buddhist, Hindu, and Theosophical terminology. Those who are unfamiliar with such terms are referred to the excellent glossary in

H. P. Blavatsky's "Key to Theosophy" and also to "The Theosophical Glossary," a separate publication by the same author. The reader is asked to believe that the greatest care has been taken in the work of transcription; the whole MS. has been checked word for word with the originals, and everything possible done to prevent errors. It is however probably too much to expect that the printed book will contain no mistakes, they are almost inevitable. In case any doubt should arise in the reader's mind as to whether any particular passage has been correctly copied from the original, the compiler wishes to intimate, that he will be happy to deal with any correspondence on the subject addressed to him care of the Publishers.

In conclusion the compiler's thanks are due and most gratefully acknowledged to those who by their assistance have made his task possible of accomplishment. — A. T. B.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

Some explanation is due to the reader as to why a revised edition of this book has been considered necessary, and also as to the nature and extent of the corrections made in the text of the original edition. The book was offered to the public in good faith as an accurate transcription of the original documents, verbatim and without omission. Having had occasion recently to check certain letters with the originals, the Compiler made the discovery that an unduly large number of errors had somehow crept in, so many in fact as to necessitate a complete and thorough revision of the whole work from beginning to end.

The result of rechecking the text with the originals has disclosed the following: —

I. The majority of the differences are petty and trifling, affecting in no way the sense of the passages concerned — i.e., a question of capitals, punctuation, etc. Abbreviations are sometimes written out in full, e.g., "through" instead of "thro'"; and words sometimes take the place of numerals, e.g., fourth instead of 4th. There are also five or six instances of mistakes in paragraphing.

II. On the other hand there is a long list of corrections which unfortunately do affect the meaning: — (a) words wrongly italicised; (b) words omitted or wrongly transcribed, and (c) most serious of all, Letter No. 13, in which one page of the original was transcribed out of its proper position, necessitating the rearrangement of Answers 4 and 6.

The original intention was to present the letters in print exactly as in the originals, and the present Edition is an attempt to realize the original intention as far as it is practically possible. But it must be borne in mind that the material has to be arranged for the Press, for which the originals were not written — and a minimum amount of editing is essential to make the volume readable. The corrections made in the Revised Edition as compared with the first edition are therefore as follows: —

(a) Punctuation. Where the printed text differs from the originals to the detriment of the latter, correction has been made in accordance with the originals. In a few sentences, otherwise devoid of it, punctuation has been added to make the passage more easily comprehensible.

Capitals have been altered in accordance with originals as far as possible, but it is frequently difficult to determine whether a capital was intended or not, and the Compiler has used his discretion in this particular.

Abbreviations. Where these have been written out in full they have not been changed.

Numerals. Where the text has the exact equivalent in words no change has been made.

Paragraphs have been altered in two or three places where it could be done without affecting the pagination.

Spelling. Where a word is correctly spelt in the text and obviously misspelt in the original no change has been made.

(b) Omissions and Italics. All words previously omitted have been inserted and all mistakes in italics and words wrongly transcribed have been corrected.

Occasionally a word will be found in small square brackets; this always indicates that the word is not in the Notes. Where a note on the envelope or cover of a letter has been omitted, this has been included either under the Letter No. or as a footnote. Sanskrit. In Letters No. 1, 4, 132, and 87, a phrase in Sanskrit or oriental characters occurs under the signatures.

In Letter No. 59, the Sanskrit equivalents of the words "Mahakasha" and "gunas" have been added as in the originals and also a word in Letter No. 85. Letter No. 13. Answers 4 and 6 have been re-arranged in accordance with the original. Appendix. Three fragments in K.H.'s writing inadvertently omitted in the first edition have been added, and the treatment of the Mars and Mercury controversy has been slightly changed. Index. This has been revised in accordance with the corrected text. It is with the greatest regret and concern that the Compiler has to confess that the inefficiency of his work has rendered the revised edition necessary, and in extenuation it can only be said that the difficulties of transcription were very great. He alone is to blame for the mistakes made, and considers that his action in revising the whole work is the only one consistent with his duty and responsibility. — A.T.B.

January, 1926.

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Introduction

By A. T. Barker

It is well known, among students of Theosophy and Occultism, that the philosophical doctrines and ethics which were given to the world through the Theosophical Society during the 16 years immediately following its foundation in 1875, emanated from certain Eastern Teachers said to belong to an Occult Brotherhood living in the trans-Himalayan fastnesses of Tibet. H. P. Blavatsky who, together with Colonel Olcott founded the Theosophical Society, acknowledged these Eastern Brothers as her Teachers, stating not only that They existed, but that she herself had received training and instruction at their hands during her sojourn in Tibet, and was therefore able to speak from her own knowledge and personal experience. It was not until 1880 that further testimony became available. In that year the late A. P. Sinnett, then living in India, was enabled through the agency of Madame Blavatsky, to enter into correspondence with her own Teachers, whom she referred to variously under the terms, "The Brothers," "The Mahatmas," and later "The Masters of Wisdom." During the course of this correspondence which extended over the years 1880 to 1884 Mr. Sinnett received many letters from The Mahatmas M. and K.H., the Teachers in question, and it is these original communications which are published in the present volume under the title of "The Mahatma Letters." The circumstances attending their receipt were fully dealt with by Mr. Sinnett in his "Occult World" and they need not therefore be restated here.

They are now published with the permission of the Executrix of the late A. P. Sinnett, to whom they were bequeathed solely and unconditionally; she, in her turn at the suggestion of the writer of this Introduction, allowed him the great privilege of undertaking the whole responsibility for the transcription, arrangement and publication of the Letters in book form.

The writer undertook the task with the fullest sense of the grave responsibility attending his action, convinced that the moment had come when the highest interests of The Theosophical Society demanded the full publication of The Teachings of The Masters given to Mr. Sinnett. He feels the responsibility the more keenly since there is a passage in one of the letters in this volume in which The Master K.H. says that neither he nor his brother M., would ever permit the publication thereof. Though there can be no doubt that these letters were not intended for publication at the time they were written, it may also be fairly assumed that the present impasse in the affairs of the Society was not anticipated either. At a time when there is so much controversy in regard to what was, and what was not the original Teaching of The Masters, the publication of the words of its own Teachers can do nothing less than serve the highest interests of the great movement which claims for its motto that "There is no religion higher than Truth." The Masters are what they are; what they have written

— they have written, and neither they nor their doctrines need the acclamation or apology of lesser minds.

It is almost impossible to arrive at the facts, or even to form a trustworthy opinion upon a subject so far reaching, by studying an edited book of extracts. Therefore, that the members of the Theosophical Society and the world at large, should be enabled to study the truth for themselves concerning The Masters and their doctrines as set forth in these letters signed by their own hands, has been the aim of the compiler. To this end, the whole of the Mahatma Letters left by Mr. Sinnett have been transcribed verbatim from the originals and without omission.

Mr. Sinnett's books The Occult World and Esoteric Buddhism were based almost entirely on the material contained in Sections I. and II. of this volume. A careful study of the exposition of the teaching given in those early works, as in that of more modern Theosophical writers, yields some interesting results when compared with the original teaching as contained in these letters. Many theories which have become the accepted dogmas of modern Theosophical doctrines, are clearly shown to be inaccurate and misleading, and it may therefore be profitable if the principal points of difference are indicated to the reader.

It must be admitted that there has been an increasing tendency in the Society during the last twelve years, to place an undue reliance on ceremonial, orders, Churches, creeds and their equivalent, thereby sacrificing the virility of individual effort and freedom of thought, which was so noticeable in the early days of the

movement. The Master K.H. writes in very clear terms on this subject, and it may be well to quote his own words. "And now after making due allowance for evils that are natural and cannot be avoided . . . I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two-thirds of the evils that pursue humanity ever since that cause became a power. It is religion under whatever form and in whatsoever nation. It is the sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the Churches; it is in those illusions that man looks upon as sacred, that he has to search out the source of that multitude of evils which is the great curse of humanity, and that almost overwhelms mankind. Ignorance created Gods, and cunning took advantage of the opportunity." (Letter No. 10.) And again "Far from our thoughts may it ever be to erect a new hierarchy for the future oppression of a priestridden world." (Letter No. 87) The inference and the message of these words in our own times is sufficiently clear.

There has been a noticeable tendency also for sections of the Society to drift towards what Master K.H. calls "that most insane and fatal of superstitions — Spiritualism." (Letter No. 49) In another letter he says "a psychic Society is being founded . . . , it will grow and develop and expand and finally the Theos. Soc. of London will be swamped in it, and lose first its influence then — its name — until Theosophy in its very name becomes a thing of the Past." It is regrettable that these words are as true to-day, as when they were written. The, whole question is thrashed out from every point of view in these letters, so that no misunderstanding is possible to the mind of the impartial student. The mischief lies, then as now, in the misunderstanding of the real nature of spiritualistic phenomena. Those who adhere to the methods of Spiritualism claim that communication can be established with the souls and spirits of the departed by means of properly qualified mediums. That communication of a kind between the living and the dead can be made, is accepted as a demonstrable fact in these letters, and is not challenged in any way. But communication with what? Here lies the crux of the whole matter. Master K.H. states not once, but over and over again, that communication with the souls and spirits of the dead is an impossibility. At death, consciousness which pertains to the seventh, sixth, and fifth principles of man, (and in these are included the soul, and spirit and all that makes man human) withdraws into an unconscious gestation period which precedes re-birth in the Deva Chan or heaven-world. It leaves behind it, the physical corpse, the etheric counterpart or double, and lastly the emotional and mental shell which is the correspondence in subtler matter of the physical body, and which may be termed the vehicle of consciousness on its own plane, just as the physical body is the vehicle of consciousness in the physical world. It must be understood clearly however, that each of these empty shells has a certain illusory awareness or consciousness of its own, which is the collective consciousness of the aggregation of atoms and molecules of which they are composed, and quite distinct from the consciousness of the individual, or real entity, which informed them in life. The physical body has a similar consciousness which is purely animal and instinctive in nature. At death the consciousness of even the shell leaves it for a time, and does not return to it until the withdrawal of 5th, 6th, and 7th principles is complete. Not until after that is accomplished, does a certain awareness of existence return to the empty shells. It is these disintegrating corpses which can be temporarily galvanized into activity by the efforts of a medium; these can and do communicate, but only as it were from memory of what has been, and not from consciousness of present facts. This is the reason for the often stupid, meaningless, unspiritual messages from the other side of death which so disgust the seeker for real knowledge. The brief analysis given above, is the rule for all humanity, with the exception of the victims of accident and suicide on the one hand, and on the other those rare individuals (only the trained occultist knows how rare they are) who have won for themselves immortality.

Those students of "occultism" who believe themselves guided, by disincarnate entities ranging in degree from departed Theosophists to "Adepts who have relinquished the use of physical bodies on earth," (Esoteric Buddhism, p. 133. Eighth Edition) by means of the methods of mediums, ouija boards and their equivalent, will do well to consider their position in the light of these letters. Communication with departed Theosophists

(i.e. the real entities) as already shown is an impossibility, for alas! they cannot be included among those who have achieved immortality, the exceptions to the general rule governing humanity being so very few; and with regard to the guidance of disembodied "Adept Spirits" it may be asked, how those who have not deserved individual instruction from Adepts in the flesh, can possibly expect to receive direct help from Their superiors — the Planetary Spirits, the Dhyan Chohanic Host? It cannot be too strongly emphasized that in thus externalizing the source from which he seeks inspiration, the student sacrifices all possibility of the grand realities of spiritual attainment and direct knowledge. "The ever unknowable and incognizable Karana alone, the Causeless Cause of all causes, should have its shrine and altar on the holy and untrodden ground of our heart — invisible, intangible, unmentioned, save through the 'still small voice' of our spiritual

The importance of the correct understanding of the doctrines relating to post mortem conditions, may be judged by the significant phrase of Master K.H. "that he who holds the keys to the Secrets of Death is possessed of the Keys of Life." The dual meaning and application of the theosophical doctrines relating to Death would seem to have been missed — passed by. The entrance to the Mysteries has ever been through the Gate of Death; and as in the Egyptian "Book of The Dead" — under the symbolism of the passage of the Soul from life through Death to Devachan, lies hid the precious teaching which rightly understood will bring to rebirth the aspirant who has passed through the agonies of Death in Life.

The letters in the Section entitled Probation and Chelaship make a profound appeal to the heart of both mystic, and occultist. The wisdom, the instruction, the many intimate details, all combine to throw a new light not only on The Masters themselves, but on the whole question of discipleship. As one reads these pages written 40 years ago, the conviction is reached that the way to The Masters is open to-day as it was then. But the possibility of achievement for the individual lies not in following and pledging loyalty to any personal leader, but by uncompromising devotion to the Idea, — to principles. Master K.H. writes on this subject: — "There is a hero-worshipping tendency clearly showing itself, and you my friend are not quite free from it yourself. . . . If you would go on with your occult studies and literary work, then learn to be loyal to the Idea rather than to my poor self. When something is to be done never think whether I wish it, before acting; . . . I am far from being perfect, hence infallible in all I do. . . . You have seen that even an Adept when acting in his body, is not beyond mistakes due to human carelessness." (Letter No. 55)

In extenuation of the many anomalies created by the unfortunate discrepancy which exists between the principles of the Theosophical Society and their practice by individual members, it must be remembered that as emphasized in these letters, the Masters neither guide nor control the actions of their disciples. By the rules of the Brotherhood, pupils must be given "the fullest liberty and freedom of action, the liberty of creating causes, even if those causes become in time their 'scourge and public pillory.'" "Our chelas are helped but when they are innocent of the Causes which led them into trouble." (Letter No. 54) The path of discipleship leads into the heart of Nature itself; the condition of entrance — an obedience to her laws — complete and absolute. Before those Immutable Laws even the highest Adept must bow in humility. To the candidate for discipleship all things are permitted which are natural to Man. No simple natural act can defile. But "Occult Science is a jealous mistress, which allows not even the shadow of self-indulgence," and if the higher levels of spiritual attainment are to be reached the disciple must be prepared to sacrifice and transcend the natural desires of the body, and lead a life which, in the Master K.H.'s own words "is fatal not only to the ordinary course of married life, but even to flesh and wine drinking." (Letter No. 18) Those who would hope to solve the problem of sex by means of formulae which controvert laws that are obvious and known, dig with their own hands the pit which must ultimately engulf all that is human in them. To dare to suggest that such doctrines could have the sanction of The Masters of Wisdom (who are one with Nature) is to utter not only a blasphemy, but a self-evident absurdity which only a fool or a madman could be guilty of. If this question admits of any doubt in the minds of students of occultism in general, the same cannot be said of those who know anything of the inner mysteries of Astrology. That ancient Science can and will prove that no such formulae exist in the book of Nature, and any theories that are based on them can only be regarded as Sorcery of the most vicious description. That such doctrines exist is one of the reasons for the lack of virility in the Society to-day. The consideration of the inner condition of The Theosophical Society, reminds one irresistibly of all that was written in the Secret Doctrine (vol.II, pp. 409-415) of the sublime allegory of Prometheus — the crucified Titan, gazing in his suffering towards his own "heaven appointed deliverer — Herakles," but so far alas! in vain. At this momentous epoch in the history of the Society, those pages of Madame Blavatsky's have a message full of the profoundest significance for all who are not too blind or too unwilling to see the truth contained in it.

It is remarkable, more than thirty years after her death, how Madame Blavatsky is justified at almost every point in these letters. Few people have been more unjustly reviled, and even some of those who knew her intimately preferred to believe that she had committed every kind of error rather than admit for an instant that

they themselves could be in the wrong. How far she was ever the deceiver depicted by Mr. Sinnett in his posthumous publication "The Early Days of Theosophy in Europe," may be judged by the reader if he will study the letter from Master K.H. (Letter No. 54) in which he gives his own opinion on her delinquencies. Those who love the memory of H. P. Blavatsky for her work and the gifts she gave them, cannot but feel after reading that letter that after all she was worthy of their high regard; and those who have tried to blacken that memory and minimise the value of the work she did, will rise to heights indeed if the prayer be granted — that they may never deserve worse condemnation.

In nothing is Madame Blavatsky more completely vindicated than in the explanation and refutation she gave in the Secret Doctrine, of the misconceived theory in regard to Mars and Mercury, which was originally published in Esoteric Buddhism. The details of that old controversy are well-known to Theosophists, and it is fortunate that the publication in this volume of the letter originally so misunderstood by Mr. Sinnett, refutes finally the amputations made against Madame Blavatsky in regard to it. It is indeed amazing that Theosophists have continued to permit the promulgation of the idea that Mars and Mercury belonged to the same planetary chain as The Earth, for the facts are evident that they do not. It is obvious to the eye of the Astrologer, if not to students of other branches of occult science, that such a theory must throw into confusion every system and scale of correspondence in the Solar System a fact which alone is enough to show that it must be false.

But the mere assertion of facts is not sufficient, and it is necessary to examine the whole controversy in detail from the beginning. Those who wish to go further into the matter are referred to the paper which has been included in the Appendix at the end of this volume. There, all the facts have been dealt with fully by the present writer, and he believes conclusively.

In the life of the Theosophical Society a cycle is closing, and ere the reader opens this volume it will have run to its inevitable conclusion. It leaves behind it a legacy of things done which had better have been left undone, and a record of mistaken zeal and wasted opportunity of which few can be proud. The vigorous new life of the dawning cycle which is beginning to course through the veins of the old body, has of necessity objectivised and made apparent, all that was contained in it of a nature subversive of true progress. If Master

K.H. has said that, "the Society can never perish, though Branches and individuals in it may," the words of that other Teacher must also be remembered, "that new wine cannot be poured into old bottles and that he who would find his life must first lose it. Be on your guard against hypocrisy, for nothing is hidden that shall not be revealed, and nothing concealed that shall not be made known; and all that has been uttered in darkness shall be heard in the light, and what has been whispered in chambers shall be proclaimed from the house-tops. There are days that are coming when one stone shall not be left upon another without being torn down. Take care that you are not deceived, for many shall come in My Name saying, "I am He, and the time is near" — but do not go after them. And when you hear of wars and disturbances, do not be scared; these have to come first, but the end is not yet. For these are the days of Divine vengeance. And there will be signs in the Sun and Moon and Stars, while on Earth there will be dismay and bewilderment at the roar of the sea and the waves, men's hearts failing them for fear and foreboding of what is to befall the universe. For the orbs of the heavens will be shaken, and then they will see the Son of Man coming with power and great glory. When these things begin to happen, look up — for your release is not far distant."

Out of the wreck that is inevitable a shape shall arise that may be worthy of immortality. Let those who have climbed the hill and seen the vision, and in that clean, sweet air have heard the key-note of the dawning cycle

 hold fast — and remember in the days that are coming — the sweetness, and the beauty, and the truth they have seen.

 A. TREVOR BARKER,

 

Fellow of the Theosophical Society.* London, September, 1923.

*The state of affairs in the Theosophical Society having become progressively worse, the writer

resigned his membership in April, 1925.

Mahatma Letters Homepage

 

Contents

Compiler's Prefaces Introduction by A. Trevor Barker How the Mahatma Letters Were Written by A. Trevor Barker Mars and Mercury by A. Trevor Barker First Letter of K. H. to A. O. Hume View of the Chohan on the T. S. Homepage

Detailed Contents of The Mahatma Letters

Quick Links to description of Sections

Section 1 — Occult World Series

Section 2 — Philosophical and Theoretical Teachings 1881-1883

Section 3 — Probation and Chelaship

Section 4 — The Phoenix Venture and the Condition of India

Section 5 — The London Lodge of The Theosophical Society

Section 6 — Spiritualism and Phenomena

Section 7 — Miscellaneous Letters

Appendix

 

Section I: The Occult World Series

Letter No. 1 — London newspaper test. Solomons of Science — experimental knowledge — vril of the coming age — skeletons of giants. Hooke — Newton — position of Science — Human nature the same for a million years — value of occult phenomena. Science and Copernicus — Robert Recorde — Wm. Gilbert — Galileo — Bacon — charlatans the shield of the "Adept" — the rewards of the Goddess Saraswati; the phenomenon of the Ascension.

Letter No. 2 — Methods of research in Occult Science — the mysteries not for the public — Conditions of communication with the Mahatmas — the mode of life demanded. Motives — the object of the Theos. Society — significance, of selfishness — the T.S. and Universal Brotherhood — the study of occultism — path of occultism — Schools — Teachers, etc. Beneficent powers of knowledge — seal of the mysteries; the life of the aspirant — Anglo-Indian Branch T.S. — conditions for good test phenomena.

Letter No. 3a — "Brooch" phenomenon

Letter No. 3b — Postal address in N.W.P.

Letter No. 3c — Pillow incidents.

Letter No. 4 — Crisis in Tibet — danger of invasion by Russia. Menacing destiny of T.S. — Avalanche in the Karakorum Mts. — H.P.B. demands assistance telepathically — her condition — the state of K.H.'s countrymen. Accelerated modes of delivery — Anglo-Indian world — agitation caused by the Bombay publications. Col. Olcott — the feelings of the English to the Mahatmas — O.'s devotion and self-sacrifice

unequalled — independent A.I. Branch an impossibility — mortal blow to T.S. — non-interference with Branches by Parent Society — Arbitrator when specially called upon — trust in word of honour. Different habits of Tibetans and Hindus — lack of understanding — national prejudices — learned in Yog-Vidya but unfit for drawing-rooms — essentials and non-essentials. Difficulties of the Mahatmas — prejudice — unwashed Christian Saints — responsibility for Sinnett and Hume — interference only by the Mahatmas — policy of A.I. Society to be submitted to Chief. Attitude of Mahatmas to the aspirant — marriage and Raja Yoga — different ways of acquiring occult knowledge — encouragement given to Sinnett — "Universal Brotherhood" — not an idle phrase — the paramount claim of Humanity; only secure foundation for universal morality — aspiration of the true Adept.

Letter No. 5 — Inaccuracies of H.P.B. — A.I. Branch — Hume's letter — haughtiness of English — race prejudice — personal habits. The test of the 27th — Jhelum despatch — impossibility of deception. The methods of Hume — his letter a monument of pride — further encouragement to Sinnett — necessity of Universal Brotherhood in Europe. Position of Olcott in relation to the T.S. — a professor of occultism — letter to Lord Lindsay — H.P.B. not to give practical instruction to A.I. Branch.

Letter No. 6 — Methods of correspondence — occultists copy nature — suggestions for group study. Analysis of Hume's character — truths and mysteries of occultism — phenomena will prove destructive of bigotry — but constructive for Brotherhood of Humanity. Planetary spirits — phenomenal manifestations — ideas rule the world — revolutions — creeds will be crushed — Man's position in the Universe — The Eternal Now — the choice — highest philosophy or phenomena — the wish of the Chiefs.

Letter No. 7 — Sinnett disappointed in expectations of training — appreciation of his efforts for T.S. — interest in him of one higher than K.H.

Letter No. 8 — Personal observations re Sinnett — reasons for K.H.'s actions. Lord Crawford — character and possibilities — direct communication refused. Methods of establishing communication — unscientific absurdity. Velocity of mechanical force — Sinnett's inability to understand explanations of phenomena — the only way — Past, Present and Future — grossness of western mind. The Colour rays beyond visible spectrum

— realities appear absurdities — insurmountable difficulties. Grades of intelligence — Superstition — the world repudiates what it cannot grasp — the novice in occult science must reach the goal or perish — to doubt is to risk insanity. The Mahatmas attitude to humanity and the world — not dried up mummies. K.H.'s personal attachments — erroneous ideas about Mahatmas — Yogis — difference between Hatha and Raja Yoga. Advice regarding Occult World — manner of dealing with letters. Problems of mystical phenomena — the Forlorn Hope — uses of spiritualism. Unity gives strength — importance of co-operation — Damodar's letter — value of concentration. Home, the medium.

Section 2: Philosophical and Theoretical Teachings 1881-1883

Letter No. 9 — Observations on The Occult World. Criticism of members of T.S. and others. Stainton Moses. Planetary spirits and the Earth — their mission — S.M. and occultism — abundant proof — new phase of Truth — explanations re experiences of S.M.; Imperator — mediumship — The "Dweller on the Threshold"; and conscious life in spirit — reply to Fechner. Psychic Communication with spirits an impossibility — universal laws — cycle of intelligent existences — cosmic matter — Anima mundi. The progress of man — The Great Cycle — evolution of the Ego — the circle of necessity. The world of Causes — and of Effects — Self Conscious Egos — hell and purgatory. The lower world of effects — a definition of Truth — Brothers not permitted to control the will of the neophyte — The Brethren of the Shadow. K.H.'s relations with Sinnett — observations on the Occult World — its effect on H.P.B. and others — Wallace and Crookes. Willingness of Adepts to enlighten mankind — their mission to reveal Truth.

Letter No. 10 — The philosophy of the Mahatmas with regard to "God" — the God of the theologians. Dyan Chohans — definition of "nothing" — logical conclusions — the Universal Mind. The belief in Planetary Spirits — matter is Eternal — no-one has ever seen God — cannot accept an extra-cosmic deity. Phlogiston

— belief in matter alone — its unceasing motion which is life — ideas on Evil. The cause of evil is in human intelligence and action — natural laws and necessary evils — the sacerdotal caste and churches — the chief

Letter No. 11 — K.H. has misgivings in role of instructor — the eternal Essence — Force — immutability non-existent in Solar System. Inappropriate terms used by Science — this teaching opposed to all accepted theories — observations on the fallacies and incompleteness of Science — energy indestructible — gravity — chemical attraction — electricity. Chelas are magnetised — only one element in Nature, Akasa — spirit and matter, one — the tetracktis — the sacred seven; the Greek Brother — necessity of serenity of mind for occult study. Psychical powers of hearing — our Zoophagous friend — questions of diet — transmission of letters. Schopenhauer and the "Arhat" doctrines.

Letter No. 12 — Explanations re Mahayuga — Pralaya — cyclic evolution — Manvantaras — dead worlds. An eternity of action — Ethnographical details — Esquimaux — Neolithic age — the Basks of Spain — the early traces of man — Geike, Dawkins, Fiske — five races — evolution of speech.

Letter No. 13 — Cosmological notes and queries — esoteric cosmogony. Nature works with positive and negative forces — the worlds of effects. Man's principles return to their source at death — the planet and man not created. The seven-headed serpent Ananda of Vishnu — the musical scale and the planetary chain — man has potentiality of all 7 principles as a germ. "Life" no responsibility except in man. 7th principle latent in all the principles — cause of pollution not in the body — the evolution of animal-man. Man's development follows that of planet — Biblical analogies — the anthropoids. Buddhas and Avatars. The object of initiations.

Letter No. 14 — 7 objective and 7 subjective globes. The 7 kingdoms — the descent of the monad — occult divisions of mineral kingdom — rounds and rings — divisions and classifications — the whole truth not permitted to be given. Numbers the key to knowledge — rounds, races, and the number of incarnations in each — the problem of the 777 incarnations — Plato and Confucius 5th Round men — Buddha a 6th rounder. Explanatory notes of the diagram "Man on a Planet" — ascending and descending arcs of evolution — the Dhyan Chohans — Devas — increasing intelligence as the Rounds proceed — what happens in each Round.

Letter No. 15 — Germ of future entity — history of the human foetus the key to the mysteries of nature — the cosmic atom — aggregations of atoms becoming man-bearing globes. Their indestructibility and growth

— Adi-Buddhi, Force, or Infinite Life in manifestation. One seven-fold element the permanent cause of all manifestation — examples — the five cognisable elements — the sixth principle. Observations on the "fire" element — primal igneous principle — 7 manifestations of fire — the Tree of Life. A mineral contains a spark of the One — the Law of formation, birth, etc. of a globe the same as for a child — the 3 kinds of Manvantaras and Pralayas. Life impulse and formation of Globe "A" — passage of Essence from one globe to another — and one kingdom to another. Further observations on the evolution of man — increased spirituality of the 5th Race man — kingdoms re-entering Globe "A". Law of equilibrium manifesting — 6th and 7th senses — the Lord Buddha a 6th Race man — his appearance a mystery — individuals can only outstrip humanity by one Round. Surya Manwantaras and Pralayas — the Cosmic night. Elementals — Flammarion a Theosophist — his splendid intuition. Pernicious influence of the Moon — the Sun is the first to disintegrate at the Solar Pralaya — the 6th principle of the Universe and man, the greatest of all mysteries.

Letter No. 16 — The Devachan Letter — Devachan allegorically described by Buddha — who goes to Devachan. The Ego enjoys perfect bliss — Karma stands aside — he is the dreamer and the dream — souls of the departed unable to descend to those on earth — pure, loving sensitives can become raised in consciousness to contact those in Devachan — some Subjective spiritual communications real — "rapport," identity of molecular vibration. Great varieties in the Devachan state — the Dhyan-Chohans do not commit mistakes. Degrees of spirituality — "the planet of Death" — when man dies his 2nd and 3rd principles die with him — the gestation state. Elementaries and "angel-guides" — Kama-Loka — a torn out page in the Book of Lives — the 6th and 7th principles, the unconscious and eternal Monad. The ethereal Ego — the Monad remains untainted by evil for ever — the karma of evil deeds accrues to the new personality — varying periods between Death and Devachan depending on spiritual stamina and karma. Devachan not solely for Adepts. A classification of Devas, elementals, sorcerers, etc. The territory of doubt — things acceptable and non-acceptable to Spiritualists. Post mortem conditions of Suicides and those killed by accident. Psychic

vampires — mediums create new and evil Karma and Skandhas for their victims — study deeply the doctrines of Karma and Nirvana. The Recording Angel — meaning of Skandhas — identity of the Ego. Justice of Karma — causes producing the new being — suicide and violent death. How mediums and Spiritualists multiply the causes of human misery — the reason why the Masters oppose Spiritualism — indiscriminate mediumship and materialisations especially objectionable. Individual and personal immortality

— divisions of the 7 principles and 7 elements. Hume and Sinnett receive more information than ever given before to non-initiates — the teaching to be regarded as a trust for the Society. The Chohan forbids H.P.B. to go further than the Black Rock — Damodar's foolish austerities — the body of Occultists in Egypt — K.H. sighs for Nirvana.

Letter No. 17 — Natural seers and clairvoyance — 5th round men — the Buddha a 6th round man — his future incarnations — Buddha overshadowed some chosen individuals — sex a mere accident of birth, guided by Karma. The superior classes — course of higher Nature's law — peoples of India belong to oldest branchlet of the 5th human race — "Ernests" and "Joeys" and soulless mediums. Subba Row's reverence for

H.P.B.

Letter No. 18 — The evolutionary journey of the monad — 7 ramifications of the 7 races — man passes through all 7 times — Manvantaric chains existing in and out of our Solar System. Man's earth cycle the counterpart of great cycle — mistakes of Anthropologists — Pritchard nearest the mark — the test of true progress. The present 5th human race began in Central Asia over one million years ago. Occult Science a jealous mistress — fatal to ordinary course of marriage.

Letter No. 19 — Post mortem conditions of suicides and victims of accidents.

Letter No. 20a — From A.O. Hume to K.H. Queries re spiritualistic phenomena — shells — suicides and accidents. Death by drink — over-study — diseases, etc — suggestion that phenomena of spiritualism may be produced by spirits, not by shells — some teach higher morality — Allan Kardec's books.

Letter No. 20b — From A.P.S. to H.P.B. Eliphas Levi's statements re annihilation — queries in regard to survival of spiritual monad — obscuration of planets and annihilation.

Letter No. 20c — Meaning of the terms God and Christ — candidates for Devachan — death and re-birth in Kama-Loka — love and hatred the only immortal feelings — only those we have loved exist for us in Devachan — the memories which only affect personality blotted out — duration of Devachan — no perception of time — Devachan and Avitchi created by ourselves during life. Importance of predominant feeling at moment of death — the events of whole life seen in vision at death — only adepts and sorcerers know they are dead — they only are immortal — co-workers with nature for good or evil — definition of Immortality — self-consciousness — memory regained by even good men only in Devachan — "soul" becomes unconscious at death in all cases — faculties of perception, cogitation and volition, become extinct for ever at death. Apparitions — no essential difference between doctrines of Eliphas Levi and those of K.H.

 what immortality signifies to initiates and occultists — several kinds of immortality — the full adept in relation to death. Chohans, Planetary spirits and immortality — E. Levi speaks of personal not spiritual Egos

 co-workers with nature — annihilation and the eighth sphere — potentiality for evil in man greater than for good — Sorcerers and immortality. Suicides separated from higher principles by a gulf — not so in victims of accidental death — Dhyan Chohans do not guide living human Egos but protect victims of accidental death — victims sleep but to awake at the hour of last judgment — the struggle between the 6th and 7th and 5th and 4th principles. Reborn on earth immediately if insufficient material for Devachan — only shells and suicides can be attracted to a Seance — suicide a question of motive and responsibility — effect of suicide during temporary insanity — Guiteau. Bulk of phenomena of spiritualists due to shells — unconscious 5th principle (soul) cannot communicate with a living organism — Allan Kardec not quite immaculate — even Dugpas capable of teaching the Highest morality — preaching with an end in view proves little. The time for the obscuration of a planet — a man must love or hate well to be in either Devachan or Avichi — "Nature spues the luke warm out of her mouth."

 

Letter No. 21 — From A.P.S. to K.H. Queries in regard to post mortem conditions of accidents and suicides. K.H.'s replies to same — the teaching given is the rule — exceptions enforce the rule — K.H. accused of

Letter No. 22 — To A. O. Hume. Dual attributes of Universal and human Mind — conscious and mechanical functions — the conscious attribute of Universal Mind a hypothesis only, but scientific fact in finite mind — the human brain — voluntary and involuntary nervous systems — man potentially more powerful than "God"

 contrary to finite, infinite mind exhibits only mechanical functions of Cerebellum. The extent of the knowledge of an adept and of a planetary spirit — laws of Nature mechanical — Motion the eternal and uncreated deity. "God" cannot be both intelligent and wholly material — a God with intelligence would be a fiend in view of the existence of evil. The Mosaic deity, "No Being" — Vedantic Acosmism — greatest adepts have not penetrated beyond the Solar System — but they know with certainty of other Solar Systems

Motion governs laws of Nature — no room for a moral Governor of the Universe — darkness does not comprehend light because it is annihilated by it — whence the Immutable Laws and their supposed Creator. Nepaulese Swabbhavikas — Swabbhavat is force — a force of limitless potentiality, but yet not "God" because man can use it — the multiform manifestations of life made perceptible by force. Man can become his own creator and ruler — Immutable Laws eternal and uncreated — only one law in the Universe — Nature disproves the theory of an all-loving, omniscient, omnipotent God — eternal progressions of cycles and evolution — spirit and matter are one — only distinct in manifestation — the Absolute the only reality. Ice, water, and vapour as an illustration of the Trinity — the Pyramids — matter indestructible and coeval with Spirit — matter, force, and motion the Trinity of physical Nature — Evil — mental attitude of the pupil

 must learn alphabet in order to read — the world of occultism is the world of force — only the initiate can know. The Chela becomes the Master — mystery and miracle vanish — occultism an exact science — its methods laid down in a code as old as humanity.

 

Letter No. 23a — Queries by A.P.S. in numbered paragraphs; (1) cause of rush of modern progress — (2) civilisation as great as our own — (3) what was the Fifth Race about for the 998,000 years preceding the last 2,000 — (4) to what epoch did the Continent of Atlantis belong — (5) the origin of evil; (6) the use of the whole cyclic process endured by the spirit — (8) scientific questions — cause of precipitation of rain — magnetic conditions — (9) the composition of the sun's corona — (10) photometric value of light — star magnitudes — (11) atmospheric disturbances in atmosphere of Jupiter — (12) the Siemen's theory of Solar combustion — (13) cause of magnetic variation — (14) the possibility of the discovery of more planets; (15) a moment of the highest bliss — (16) Devachan and Avitchi — (17) the effect of the last thought in the mind before death — (18) full remembrance of all our lives — (19 & 20) nature of the memory of the "shell" —

(21) the spiritual Ego — evolution of its personalities — the shell of A. P. Sinnett and the nature of its consciousness; (22) the Planet of Death — (23) Mars and Mercury — (24) is the sun the habitation of spiritualised beings — (25 & 26) the case of the Ego who has not sufficient material for rebirth in Devachan

— (27) the case of the murderer Guiteau — (28 & 29) planetary obscurations and the evolution of forms.

Letter No. 23b — K.H.'s replies to queries in 23a. End of an important cycle — cyclic law for race and sub-race — Cortez — sub-races of Peru and Mexico. Zodiacal records — civilization an inheritance — Europe rejects testimony of antiquity — the Western Cendrillon — Eocene Age — the sinking of Poseidonis — Lemuria — our present Continents have been submerged and will be again. Greek, Roman and Egyptian civilisations less than those of the 3rd race — history all at sea. Copernicus avails himself of a Pythagorean MSS. — the children of the "Fire Mist" — ancient civilizations; the Chinese — Ireland strewn with gigantic bones of mammoths and monsters — Malayans, Tibetans, Javanese, the Miocene times. Egyptian priests and Atlantis — the inhabitants of Shamballah — Baron d'Holbach. Atlantis connected with the origin of evil — obscurations heralded by cataclysms; the premises of Science wrong — the future Fate of British Isles, France, etc. Progress towards absolute evil arrested by cataclysmic changes — Tree of Knowledge in safe keeping of the Mahatmas — the Planetaries — every race has its Adepts. The cyclic process — Spirit an abstraction — in union with matter it is life — the mystery and problem of life. To solve the problem one must become an Occultist — all forms mask but one all-pervading Force — one life, one law, one element — the conclusions of greatest scientific minds — force can be infused into artificial man — Spirit, life and matter do not exist independently of each other. No phenomenon in Nature disconnected from magnetism and electricity — phenomena of earth currents due to Akasic magnetism — rain can be induced artificially — some calculations for physicists. Magnetic attraction — atmospheric changes — meteoric dust. Meteors — sun little to do with heat and nothing with rain — Reichenbach's crystals — the sun's corona — head of a man in ecstatic condition — aureoles — hydrogen. Sun spots — sun not the central planet of our Universe — the

difficulties confronting Scientists in studying Solar phenomena — atmospheric tremours — no obstacle to the Adept — sun full of iron vapours — the demonstration by the spectroscope — comets. "Store-house" of our system — its blood corpuscles — its electromagnetic aura — misconceptions of Science. Forces of which the sun is composed — it feeds the smallest atom as well as the greatest genius — the distance of the stars from us — no trustworthy basis for calculating magnitudes and distances — observations with Pickering Photometre — astronomical predictions of Chaldees and Rishis faultless. Light not an independent principle

 every phenomenon the effect of diversified Akasic motion — velocity of light — methods adopted by French experimenters. The condition of Jupiter — the whole Solar System moving in space — Jupiter hides a Raja-Sun — disturbances in its atmosphere. Siemen's statements — matter in all its 7 states — radiant energy

 absorption of Solar forces — chemical power lost in transit. Jenkins — Sir James Ross — the magnetic theory — planets not yet discovered — Edison's tasimeter — discoverer an F.T.S. The moment of death — influence of last thoughts and desires — the whole life seen in memory — no man dies insane or unconscious. Advice to those assisting at a death-bed — retributive justice — the eighth sphere — Avitchi — Nirvana — the consciousness of the "shell." That which becomes for ever extinct at death — Karma of the personality — immediate incarnation of children. Nature of remembrance of shell — animal's memory not perceptive faculty — shell in aura of medium — perception through borrowed organs — challenge to Spiritualists. The "Spirit" of Zollner knows no more than in life — the recollections of the "Shell" — complete insanity. The shell of A. P. Sinnett and the nature of its consciousness. Sorcerers — Mars and 4 other planets. Obscurations not Pralayas — their duration — the children 5th round men beget — questions pertaining to the highest initiations — men become Gods.

 

Letter No. 24a — The famous "Contradictions." Sinnett's questions in regard to supposed contradictions and inconsistencies in the teaching received.

Letter No. 24b — K.H. states what an Adept is — his Occult powers. Pleads guilty to an "omission" but not a "contradiction" — beware of trusting Isis Unveiled too implicitly — H.P.B. herself not permitted to understand all that is treated of in Isis — it conceals but does not distort — reincarnation as treated in Isis — Astral monad — personal Ego. Sinnett's chilly mental condition — G.K. produces a portrait of K.H. phenomenally — M. prefers to go to sleep. Replies to the contradictions. Accusations of inconsistency unjust

 

— due to the conditions under which he writes his letters — K.H. regarded by his colleagues and the Chohans as a lunatic. What happens to every being at death — the shell — no two states in Devachan alike. The Ego in Devachan — Avitcha — love and hatred the only immortal feelings. Wagner and musicians — K.H. pleads guilty to one sin. The impossibility of dealing with Hume — his remarks — a sentimental Becky Sharp.

 

Letter No. 25 — Devachan — additional explanations —Bacon — the fruition of all aspirations. Attempting to describe the indescribable — requires perceptions of a trained Chela. Time does not exist in Devachan — disapprobation of a lay Chela. Time sense created by ourselves — the bliss of Devachan — woes of Avitchi

 

— space and time according to Kant. Further explanations of Devachanic existence — pandering to prejudices of Western readers. Explanations of Devachanic states — weary round of birth and death — a colourless personality gets a colourless Devachan — Avitchi the antithesis of Devachan. Hell and Heaven — misconception of terms — Spirit and Soul — individuality — personality — all bliss in Devachan — no failure or disappointment. The Great Reward, Nirvana — Rupa-Loka — Arupa-Loka — Kama-Loka — the summer-land of the Spiritualists. From Kama-Loka to Devachan or Avitchi — infinite differentiation of those states — reviving consciousness. How to understand the doctrine fully — the reward of benevolent men — social status the result of Karma. Lillie's "Buddha and early Buddhism" — proposed scheme for personal intercourse impracticable. Selfishness of T.S. members — sacrifices made by H.P.B. and Olcott — money matters.

 

Section 3: Probation and Chelaship

Letter No. 26 — Observations regarding H.P.B. and her psychological condition — reasons causing it — one principle left behind. K.H. strongly disapproves of their cruelty to H.P.B.

Letter No. 27 — Necessity of frank speech — danger threatening Theosophical Society — Stainton Moses. The mediumship of S.M. — inspiration not required from disembodied Spirits — truth stands alone.

Letter No. 28 — Englishmen incapable of assimilating Hindu thought — K.H. speaks frankly to Hume. Erroneous ideas regarding T.S. — branches of T.S. as harbingers of Universal Brotherhood — Occult instruction by the Brothers. Attempt to establish secret school of magic in London — complete failure — Lord Lytton — British T.S., of the Universal Brotherhood in name only — gravitates at best towards Quietism. Observations on the attitude of Sinnett and Hume towards K.H. — His exposition of truth. Thorough criticisms of statements made in Hume's letter — distortion of K.H.'s motives — complete lack of understanding. Patience and courtesy of K.H. in dealing with subject — a quiet reproof — Hindus will always be the Masters of the West in Spiritual Sciences. That which they value most highly — the kind of men the Masters want and do not want — their characteristics. The keepers of the sacred Light — their knowledge the gift of the Gods — the Kantian note — Hume the type of the Spiritual failure and unconscious egotism of this Age. Observations on mesmerism — what conscience will and will not do. Imagination as well as will creates

 

— the monster of suspicion.

 

Letter No. 29 — M. condones Hume's attitude — gratitude a sacred debt. No quarrelling among the Adepts — the value of primary facts — thoughts before words. K.H. speaks to M. of his pupils before departure — M.'s promise — the love of M. for his Brother — he watches over the work. Hume's feelings — misunderstood words — but not by M. Further observations on Hume's statements — injustice of his treatment of H.P.B. The necessity of knowing oneself — need of a clear understanding — Hume the embodiment of pride. The standards of the Mahatmas — Hume's words to M. and K.H. — his constant attitude — will not be contradicted. Hume considers himself slighted and wronged — his defence of the weak

 

— M.'s generous estimate of his character — Mahatmas untouched by personal pain or pleasure — M.'s Rajput blood resents hurt to a woman's feelings. Hume makes further communication impossible by his attitude — cannot realise the motives or the actions of the Mahatmas — blinded by pride. No permission given for phenomena — their appreciation of both Sinnett and Hume — hopes for the T.S. — law is law — Mahatmas will do their duty. Phenomena will never shake the erroneous beliefs of Western mind — so long as men doubt there will be curiosity and enquiry — trying to read the things of the Spirit with the eyes of the flesh. The mark of the Adept.

 

Letter No. 30 — K.H. speaks out — criticism of Hume's letter re Fern. Hume mistaken from first to last — Hume's letter to K.H. quoted. Fern endeavours to "humbug" M. — the ordeals of a Chela — what probation means. The freedom of the Chela's choice — his freedom of expression — methods of training absolutely opposite to those of the Jesuits — the latter false to truth and to humanity. The searching of a Chela's weak points — how the Masters regard truth — examples given — M.'s method of expressing himself. K.H. makes some observations on Mahatma M. — also on Hume's faults. A temperate reproof to Hume. What is expected of a Chela — the true value of a man. The unworthiness of certain friends — underhand methods — the sincerity of those who protect Hume — how a Chela is tested — Damodar — H.P.B. — Olcott — tests applied to Fern — nobody humbugged — H.P.B.'s opinion of Fern — her advice to him. Words of appreciation to Hume — his dissatisfaction — his claims and demands; 2nd class minds — friendly truths — not to be resented — gratitude of the Mahatmas for all H. has done.

Letter No. 31— From Terich-Mir. The key to the phenomena of Occult Sciences — reason elevated to supersensuous wisdom — perfect comprehension of the Adept — his reward — the culmination of knowledge and wisdom; K.H.'s years of labour — the would-be disciple encouraged to pass on the truth to his fellow-creatures — H.P.B. ill.

Letter No. 32 — Hume puts his foot in a hornet's nest. Unsatisfactory relations between Europeans — Hume's insulting expressions towards even K.H.'s great Master. Hume's accusations — the Mahatmas' patience.

Letter No. 33 — Apparent contradiction between notes from M. and K.H. — approve of plan to form nucleus of honest scientific enquirers — no-one works in vain — requests Sinnett to work in sympathy with A. Besant.

Letter No. 34 — Mahatmas complain of being constantly misunderstood — impossibility of satisfying Hume

— the Society will never perish as an Institution.

Letter No. 35 — Observations on phenomena — Sinnett's disappointment — methods for development of Occult faculties — no culture will supply psychic idiosyncrasy if lacking; M. deals with some spooks.

Letter No. 36 — M. refuses to make puja to Hume.

Letter No. 37 — Written by the "Disinherited" at K.H.'s bidding — words of approval and encouragement to Sinnett — the power of projecting and feeling force. Observations on Hume's work and his unchanged state of selfishness — his professed love of humanity.

Letter No. 38 — Disappointment in store for K.H.— the libel law — reflections on female branch and females — the secret cause of events. The Brothers — Brotherhood — the love of humanity — essential qualifications of a Chela — selfishness and exclusiveness of all peoples.

Letter No. 39 — The Arhat vows — defence of H.P.B. — M. creates his dinner — the "Disinherited."

Letter No. 40 — Nothing can help T.S. while Founders are under a cloud. Incessant attacks — a devotee of error — forced psychic vision by Hathayog — general law of vision determined by grade of man's spirit and soul. A Society whose Guru was no initiate — idolators — permission to join them to study — remembering promise to K.H.

Letter No. 41 — H.P.B.'s condition — only a shell at times — encouragement to Sinnett.

Letter No. 42 — M. repeats that no regular instruction is possible — much that can be done with K.H.'s help

 

— Hume disinclined to disabuse public mind. A solitary pearl is soon out-shone in a heap of false diamonds

 

— the trials of earth life — their conquest — "fuller introduction into the mysteries depends on yourself."

 

Letter No. 43 — "My impatient friend" — M.'s attitude — an Adept's duty not controlled by social affections

 

— Sinnett forced himself on K.H. No right to influence one who is not a Chela — Sinnett the victim of Maya

 

— Hume's selfishness — the personality and the Ego. Bennett superior to many in spite of unpolished exterior — K.H.'s attitude to Bennett — Jesus and Magdalene — the inner man alone counts with the Mahatmas — friendly confidences. The dangers of phenomena — wisdom gives all things in time — food for the mind must be assimilated slowly.

 

Letter No. 44 — The Septenary trial of the T.S. — H.P.B. and Olcott begin their work — their qualifications. Only those who have proved themselves faithful to truth allowed further intercourse with the Mahatmas.

Letter No. 45 — K.H. returns from a journey. The "three poisons" — the five obscurities — try to cherish less lust and desire — "a psychic Society is being founded in our midst". One indiscretion ruins work of 7 years

— the danger of such action must be counteracted — drawing closer to the Masters by purified heart and developing will — advice and consolation — Sinnett belongs to the Masters — the imperishable record of the Master. "Your Karma is ours" — the man of the world — the soul searching for the Masters. The "Tathagata" light — kind advice — apprehensions must be set aside — regarding his co-worker's enmity.

Letter No. 46 — M. comments on Hume's behaviour — neither reverence or common sense in his head — abominable attitude towards Mahatmas and H.P.B. — what they desire of him and wish him to know. Further comments on Hume — M.'s ultimatum — H.P.B.'s illness caused by Hume's behaviour — M.'s displeasure.

Letter No. 47 — Work of T.S. secretly linked on to other work throughout the world — the Greek Brother. Crookes and "radiant matter" — H.P.B. wrongfully accused of being untruthful — frank opinions and some advice — cycles. Martyrdom pleasant to look at, hard to bear.

Letter No. 48 — Knowledge and the path — the Adamantine Rocks of Occult Laws — the heights to be reached before the whole truth can be seen — the keeping and the breaking of the Law — the man who would obtain all must be cold — Oxley has possibilities — his mistakes. The limitations of the ordinary seers —

incredible statements of Maitland and Mrs. K. Vegetarians and flesh eaters — the effects of wine on seers — effect of emanations on Mahatmas — seers and their revelations — no two agree — mediums and clairvoyance. We do not require a passive mind. The journal of the Society worth Sinnett's attention — its hidden beauties and values — our ways are the ways of madmen. Sinnett begins his studies at the wrong end

 

— key to the writing of the ancient Occultists.

 

Letter No. 49 — Correspondence established for the good of the many — Eliphas Levi's Haute Magie — St. Germain. Pythagorean doctrines — "the limit of the natural" — the "Spiritualist" — its fight against Theosophists — on Adepts. K.H. not annoyed by newspaper ribald notices — sacrilegious utterances of J.K.

 

— difficulty of accepting pledges — Occult Science communicated by degrees. Conditions governing the communication of secrets — illumination comes from within — means to this end known publicly for ages

 

— self sacrifice of Guru. Dangers of giving more knowledge than man is ready for — like an infernal machine in ignorant hands — time approaching for Triumph of Truth — Shammars active in Europe — Spiritualism — the Adepts delay progress to Eternal Rest. The price to be paid — the willingness of K.H. to pay it — pupils would be more thankful and patient if they knew the true facts — Lamaism — power of great Adepts — Sinnett gropes in the dark. Occult World discussed at Galaring-Tcho Lamasery.

 

Letter No. 50 — An unreasonable man — filled with pride — Mahatma K.H. expresses his mind — weariness and disheartened feelings.

Letter No. 51 — Phenomenon for Colonel Chesney. Further remarks on production of this phenomenon — probations hard all round — deception a test for those of unclean heart.

Letter No. 52 — Hume's jealousy and abusiveness. Remarks on his self-satisfaction — constant accusations

 

— H.P.B. and C.C.M. — explanation of teaching given in Isis — Christians and Spiritualists only mention body and soul. Two "souls" in man — H.P.B. obeyed orders — further remarks concerning Hume. Hume's reasons for writing offensive article in Theosophist — K.H.'s frank criticism of his real and alleged motives. Dishonest methods — refuses to recognise powers or knowledge of Brotherhood — the penalty of publicity. Facts to be transmitted to Hume — in what light he is considered by the Chelas — the protest of the Chelas — S. stands far higher in estimation of Mahatmas — M.'s opinion. Hume's punishment must be complete — anti-European rules — Dugpas wrote letters to Fern.

 

Letter No. 53 — An account of a doubtful story and incidents connected with Fern — his deceptions believed implicitly by Hume. Ways of communication with outer worlds — M.'s views do not agree with K.H.'s regarding Hume — refuses to satisfy his whims — M.'s arguments in detail. Manner in which letters have been transmitted — Dugpa methods — Fern's fall — deceptions practised on Hume. Mahatma K.H.'s likeness

 

— its delivery. Sinnett is advised not to judge by appearances — great crisis in November. K.H. never trusts women generally — his reason.

 

Letter No. 54 — Hume's deposition and abdication — subsequent events. "good old Swami" — his tirade against the Mahatmas — reasons for not wishing his severance from the Society — Tibetan proverb applied to Hume — Fern to be watched. Regarding C. C. Massey, his chief fault, weakness — K.H. objects to his letters being circulated — Hume disparages their sacred philosophy. The European standpoint — Western people cannot grasp wisdom — the wealth of the mind — Massey — readiness to learn — K.H. willing to help him — much information in S.'s hands, useful to all — C.C.M. prejudiced against H.P.B. St. Germain — Cagliostro — Dr. and Mrs. Hollis-Billing — traducers of innocent women. Exposure of dishonest enemies — their unworthy conduct — wish to ruin H.P.B. The Swami's attack on the Founders — S. Moses and his suspicions — H.P.B. and phenomena produced for C.C.M. H.P.B. believed to be arch-plotter — deceiver, etc.

 

— Swami was an initiated Yogi — H.C. a Chela — preferred left path — system of the Mahatmas. The experiences by which a Chela becomes efficient — H.P.B. and her one fault — C.C.M. shaken, suspicious and lacks self-confidence — H.P.B.'s phenomena. C.C.M. victim of wicked plot — how far H.P.B. is really guilty of deceit. H.P.B. over-zealous — her desire to give credit to the Mahatmas for all phenomena — her impulsive nature — creating causes — her real powers of a very high order. Self-abnegation cannot be called dishonesty — her generosity — terribly punished — her exalted friends traitors and impostors — true history of so-called deception — enthusiasm for those she loves — her description of M.'s beauty makes him swear and break his pipe — description of meeting between Mahatinas and H.P.B. — her passionate devotion —

 

their appreciation of all her splendid qualities. The subject of probation repulsive to Sinnett's mind — reasons why certain men failed when tested. H.P.B. a helpless, broken-hearted woman — the testing of Fern — every postulant thus tested — the conqueror crowns himself. Reform in which Sinnett's help is desired — impartiality towards all creeds Eastern and Western. Remodelling of branches — objects for lodge work — religious, educational, philosophical — paper for the Theosophist — solidarity of thought and action. Independent action in everything which does not clash with the principles of the Society — Hume condemns the faulty system of the Mahatmas. Theosophist should be made distinctive — cyclic crisis — a goat eats Sinnett's letter to K.H. — amusing incident. The Chohan repairs the letter.

Letter No. 55 — The ordeal of the aspirant to occult knowledge — the opposition of the Church and Anglo-Indian officials to the T.S. — Dugpas in Bhootan and the Vatican — personal opposition and ridicule — bogus letters of H.P.B.'s — the death struggle between Truth and Error — the light-bearers of preceding generations lost their lives — necessity for courage — ultimate success certain. Mediumistic sensitives — elementaries — unwholesome influences — wood and incense burning for fumigation and protection — clean living the best protection — talismans — H.P.B. takes a step — heavy responsibility of Olcott and Sinnett — Karma of the Occult World and Esot: Buddhism — advised to stand by the T.S. — original policy must be vindicated — the Society cannot stand based upon phenomena and Thibetan Brothers alone — the latter should be kept secret — loyalty to the Idea and not to a personal leader. What a Mahatma is — not beyond human mistakes — phenomena of thought transference and precipitations — Akasic libraries — the Kiddle case. Christian-mission — Coulomb conspiracy — correspondence with the "Inner Circle" — pledge themselves to K.H. — the Maha-Chohan — communication through Damodar — and H.P.B. — her phenomena must be disconnected from T.S.

Letter No. 56 — Condition of A. O. Hume — maddened by evil powers — a fakir. Evil effects of Pranayan

— produces mediumship — Hume's selfish vanity and combativeness — danger to the T.S. — Dayanand S.; "Mr. Isaacs" — K.H. and "Ram lal."

Letter No. 57 — Adepts and their methods not understood; C.C.M. on the list of failures — not a medium — the best of men but lacking in intuition; Europeans on probation — 3 fail — of societies — Anna Kingsford's inspirers — THE PERFECT WAY — A.K. a fifth rounder — her vanity — latent sense of Messiahship — Reincarnation a la Allan Kardec — A.K.'s allegiance to Brothers not expected — danger to the British T.S. — C.M.'s delusions in regard to K.H. and H.P.B.; Hume and Fern — probation brings out both virtues and vices — Fern's characteristics — western code of honour — Hume's characteristics. Criterion of a "gentleman" — vilification of M. and K.H. — a dangerous "friend" — the struggle for adeptship — the delusions of self and vanity. Adepts do nothing without a purpose; Hume opposed to the system of "The Brothers" — finds Them wicked selfish men — their message tainted by deception and sorcery — their chelas slaves and untrustworthy — their Society a whited sepulchre, etc.; Hume's cunning and diplomacy — accused of falsification. T. Subba Row — Hume claims added powers — practice of Pranayan makes of him a yogi — serious charge and evidence against Hume; A.P.S. advised to go to England.

Letter No. 58 — D.K.'s personal interest in A.P.S. Apathy of K.H.'s countrymen — K.H. asks two favours — is prepared to teach British T.S. through agency of A.P.S. — but not to give proofs of the existence of the Masters — ordered to sweep away every vestige of such proof.

Letter No. 59 — The altruist of Rothney. Change of "being" in A.P.S. — difficulty in understanding the doctrines re Devachan — the fickleness of "Society" — the Theosophist's duty. Chelas who demand more power — a necromantic Guru — the downfall and despair of a Chela — his condition — an "animated poison bag." Chelas and lay Chelas in July Theosophist — William Crookes joins the Society — his discoveries — three additional states of matter still to be found by Science — the word "impossible" not in occultist's vocabulary — no man living can make claims on Adepts — their attractions are spiritual not intellectual — Bacon and Aristotle. Spiritual development — the Adepts' standard of greatness — sincere hunger for the truth — the work of the S.P.R. — mesmeric cures — the purity of the psychopathist — his motives — a lock of the hair of an Adept. The Buddhistic speculations of Rhys Davids — unable to understand Esotericism — his definition of "Avalokiteshvara" an absurdity — K.H. explains the term fully — Kwan-shai-yin. The origin of the Christian Trinity, transubstantiation, Immaculate Conception — Buddhism and personal God — the meaning of the interlaced triangles — geometrical synthesis of whole occult doctrine — contains the squaring

of the circle — problems of Life and Death — mystery of Evil. The 6 pointed star is the perfect seven — the number 6 — the Macrocosm and Microcosm — the contre of a circle and its circumference — the three Gunas — Jivatma the 7th Principle — Avalokitesvara — THE GREAT ACTIVE and THE GREAT PASSIVE — Purusha and Prakriti — THE PERFECT WAY — Adonai. Pythagoras and the number 2 — the dual monad in manifestation — the perfect square — the WORD — The Great Deep — Maya — Mulaprakriti the one reality — Mr. Roden Noel — The Unmanifested Circle — Absolute Life non-existent outside the triangle and perfect square — a Gnostic treatise. No amateur can rival the proficient in occult research — the pseudo-Saviours of the world are legion — nothing was ever lost by trying.

Letter No. 60 — "Our doubts are traitors" Chelas of contrary magnetisms during development — partrait by Schmiechen — artist helped by "M."

Letter No. 61 — Mohini — a Chela not a free man — he suffered from the cold — his tour through European countries — Arundales — justice in the Kingsford row — personal spite.

Letter No. 62 — Unfit for practical occultism — immutable laws — an effort to open the intuition — duty, stronger than friendship or love to the Masters — the indestructable cement of the Brotherhood — the delusions of the intellect — cold spiritually blind reason — the path to the occult sciences surrounded with pitfalls. The furies to be conquered and destroyed by the aspirant — the qualities demanded in the disciple ­

 his freedom for the work — rigidity of the regulations never relaxed — the real reason of the failure of the "Phoenix" newspaper venture — the Ilbert Bill — the working of Karmic Law — contempt for the dark races

 no exhibition of psychic or occult powers permitted — the London Lodge and Anna Kingsford — A.P.S. finds H.S.O. unfit socially and intellectually for London — treats him and H.P.B. cruelly — M.'s natural brusqueness — carelessness — A.P.S. not unjustly treated — his spite against A.K. Unjust suspicion of

 

H.P.B. and H.S.O. — Mohini and Mrs. Gebhard; H.S.O. accused by A.P.S. of falsehood, slander, etc. — Olcott's work gives good results — suspicion — occult truth must be found in the soul — Mrs. H. an excellent but untrained clairvoyant; A.P.S. attempts to defy occult laws and gets hurt — intellect alone not all-powerful — A.P.S. asked to be present and speak at meeting.

Letter No. 63 — The publication of these letters — the questions involved — the real vital errors in Esoteric Buddhism and Man — much made purposely obscure in the letters — they were not written for publication or public comment — neither K.H. or M. would ever consent to the letters being published. Would-be Chelas and dangers of probation.

Letter No. 64 — The mysteries of Chelaship — the uncharted ocean of occultism — necessity of full confidence in the Adepts — beware of a prejudiced mind — occult laws often seem cruel amid unjust. Cataclysms are necessary — unselfishness physical and spiritual — vanity and conceit more serious when harboured in the higher principles — the shield of the disciple — the mass of human sin and frailty gathered into one period of the life of a Chela. Selfishness in inner aspirations — the Lord Buddha. The Chela must not judge on mere appearances.

Letter No. 65 — A. Gebhard's accusation — failure amid success — distressing incidents — the attempt to open the eyes of the world fails — the conspiracy of the Missionaries against theosophy — "Christ or the Founders" — the S.P.R. and Mr. Hodgson. Mr. Lane Fox and the T.S. — Chelas detest European Theosophists — the end of projected occult instructions — the refusal of Europeans to receive instruction through Damodar and Subba Row — Damodar goes to Thibet — Subba Row suspected — Count St. Germain and Cagliostro — current ideas of the Masters and laws of occultism inaccurate — K.H.'s western education — Sir C. Grandison — western etiquette and Thibetan customs. Accused of plagiarism — the dictionary of Pai-Wouen-Yen-Fu — works of reference — Kiddle incident — "Lal Singh" a nom de plume — not always infallible Mahatmas — knowledge of occult forces the fruit of generations of research — occultists risk their lives — magic and superstition. The teaching of Devachan criticised — the keys of Life and Death — crisis in T.S. a question of perdition or salvation to thousands — progress or retrogression of human race — doubts and foul suspicions beset the neophyte — the old Masonic Lodges — tests of courage, etc. — psychological and other tests — Raj-yog tests — develop every germ of good and bad. The rule inflexible, no-one escapes — few Europeans have stood the test — failure in Europe with few exceptions — henceforth neutrality of T.S. in occult teaching to be enforced — instruction will be given only to individuals

Letter No. 66 — Common post used instead of H.P.B. — Sinnett's relations with H.P.B. — necessary to watch himself — correspondence may have to be broken — uncharitable spirit — narrow sympathies — the crisis fanned from Tchigadze — A.P.S. laughs at probation — the guardians of occult knowledge — M. and

K.H. the only Brothers in favour of disseminating their knowledge. H.P.B. sometimes dangerous — the best agent available — letters will cease at her death — "our ways not your ways" — H.P.B. complains of A.P.S. to her Master — A.P.S. resents the personal wishes of the Masters. His pride must be protected at all costs — dugpas and psychic shocks — pride and egotism — A.P.S. denies applying to be accepted as a Chela; H.P.B. and H.S.O. not perfect — adversity discovers the real man — karma of the group — sinking the personality

— higher instruction only given to the true Theosophist.

Letter No. 67 — K.H. to H.S. Olcott. Ordered home — the state of India — agitations — Bishenlal's attempt to cross the Himalayas — the Kingsford Maitland party. Dugpas provoke his vanity — three cases of insanity among lay Chelas — few men know themselves — the ordeal of crude Chelaship.

Letter No. 68 — Discipline of family life — conquest of self — spiritual progress the most important.

Letter No. 69 — The terms Brahma — Pitri — Devalokas defined — Nirvana — Devachan — real knowledge a spiritual state — absolute light and darkness.

Letter No. 70 — The probation of A.P.S.

Letter No. 71 — M.'s "tobacco-machine" — clouds on the horizon.

Letter No. 72 — Chelas never guided. Taught by experience.

Letter No. 73 — Bad feeling against K.H.

Letter No. 74 — No-one cares for real objects of the Society — personal devotion only — "M." erases a part of one of his letters.

Letter No. 75 — A.P.S. accuses H.P.B. unjustly.

Letter No. 76 — Subba Row and Chela training — initiated Brahmin and Hume — the Genius of Pride.

Section 4: The Phoenix Venture and the Condition of India

Letter No. 77 — Colonel Gordon — a Howrah Branch — Eclectic — K.H. not born for diplomacy and intrigue. Funds for the "Phoenix" — K.H. loses some of his optimism — women as angels or furies.

Letter No. 78 — The Chohan's views on the "Phoenix" project — the journal desirable — effort must be made by outsiders — Masters not separated from the world of action as long as T.S. exists. May effect the destiny of a nation — questions of capital and finance — personal remuneration — control of the journal. Sir Ashley Eden — a Sinking Fund — the Nizam — Holkar — Benares — Baroda. Questions of management — Hume and dugpas.

Letter No. 79 — K.H. no business man — Mr. Dare — the Brotherhood will help the enterprise — the attractions of India to the mystic — A.P.S. wrong in acting for K.H.'s sake — good actions bring own reward

— a new cycle begins.

Letter No. 80 — Chance a squinting jade — Hume delineates the true character of the Brothers — A.P.S. advised to act on his own judgment.

Letter No. 81 — The condition of the people of India. Govindan Lal — Olcott sees Baroda and Holkar — little patriotism — rekindling the beacon of Aryan occultism — the task of the T.S. impeded by would-be

Letter No. 82 — Le quart d'heure de Rabelais — the crisis in the affairs of the "Phoenix" — Sinnett's choice

— asked to oppose the work of the Masters apparently — the Bengal Rent Bill — European notions of right and wrong receive a shock — occult antidotes — the Jesuitical "end justifies the means" — the words of the Lord Buddha — K.H. explains the situation — "Phoenix" to oppose the Bengal Rent Bill. In the event of refusal a new editor to be found — the Zemindars — Lord Cornwallis. The issues at stake — the future of the "Phoenix" and future relationship of A.P.S. with K.H. — bringing the national boil to a head — Lord Cornwallis's mistake — Mussulman ruler and East India Company. The Ryots — the Chohan in India — perpetual agreement — the real aim of Lord Ripon's reforms — not meant for India. Protestant England aimed at — the invisible coils of Rome — the pledges of the Government — Khirajee land — Mussulman laws — spirit of Khiraj and Ooshr. The brightest jewel in the crown of England — the Chohan and K.H. — the real Viceroy of India — not at Simla but at Rome — "Esoteric Buddhism" correct, if incomplete. Obscurations — inner and outer rounds — Massey concludes the Masters have no God — each man's God within himself.

Letter No. 83 — K.H. gives A.P.S. his freedom of choice — success of "Phoenix" doubtful — A.P.S. must take his own responsibility. Misunderstands law of Karma — the strong feelings in the national soul. The good of humanity the only consideration of the Chela — personal feelings and reputation not considered — the financial prospects of the "Phoenix." Black clouds on the political sky — further correspondence permitted to H.P.B. — the eighth sphere mystery.

Section 5: The London Lodge of The Theosophical Society

Letter No. 84 — Paralytic calm of the L.L. — C. C. Massey — Anma Kingsford — Olcott's visit; Mohini a Chela.

Letter No. 85 — Addressed to members of the L.L. A.K. to remain President of L.L. — the Chohan's wish — A.K.'s personal predilections of no consequence — dissemination of truth — Hermetic Philosophy. The boundless ocean of Truth — three centres of the occult Brotherhood — H.P.B. and Subba Row pupils of the same Master — the Chaldean Mage — West requires different presentation of occult sciences to the East — the amelioration of man's condition the object — Truth has no ear-mark; A. Kingsford and Sinnett opposite poles — both necessary for T.S. in England — A.K.'s presentation better adapted to Christian ears — her strife against anti-vivisection — the teaching of Northern Buddhist Schools. More caution necessary in exposition of secret teachings — wise toleration of differing opinions and beliefs in Indian T.S. — harmonious discord — the key note in Nature — A.K. loyal to Truth — "return good for good, for evil — justice"; A.K. and A.P.S. expectcd to work on parallel lines — agree to disagree in details.

Letter No. 86 — A.K.'s apologetic letter to H.P.B. — L.L. a tail for her to wag — her anti-vivisection and vegetarianism win over the Chohan — personal vanity — letter contains an occult influence — to be read at a General Meeting. Devachan — Nirvana — the Ego — space is infinity itself — the relation of the number of incarnations to the cleverness of an individual — Darwin's law of heredity. The condition of C.C.M. — Charles Bradlaugh not immoral — Mrs. Besant — the "Fruits of Philosophy" pernicious — the fruits of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Letter No. 87 — The postponement of L.L. election — the question of personal loyalty and authority of names. Gravest evil neutralised by hastening a crisis — oppression of a priest-ridden world — psychic growth accompanies individual effort — Massey — Ward — Kingsford — A.K.'s mistrust of appeals to authority. Too much talk of the Masters — disloyalty to principles of the Society would not be tolerated — usefulness of a Lodge — largely depends on President and Secretary.

Section 6: Spiritualism and Phenomena

Letter No. 88 — Magnetic conditions necessary for test phenomena.

Letter No. 89 — Objections to spiritualistic phenomena and mediums. Occult science the extinguisher of superstitions — K.H. arranges to appear to the medium Eglinton on the "Vega" — his reasons.

Letter No. 90 — From Stainton Moses to Sinnett. S.M. is puzzled — says Brothers are mistaken in regard to him. His guide Imperator — documentary evidence of communication, etc. — Imperator knows nothing of the Lodge or Brotherhood. S.M.'s guide his own sixth principle — finds spiritualism and occultism incompatible. Comment by K.H. What is a "Brother"? — can be ignorant of many things — not so with an omniscient Planetary Spirit — Russian child medium — Jesus and John the Baptist — Jesus a spiritual abstraction — Mrs. Kingsford converses with "God" — receives a written communication from a dog.

Letter No. 91a, Letter No. 91b — C. C. Massey — Mrs. Billing.

Letter No. 92 — Actions of Founders and Chelas not controlled by the Masters — Hurrychund — Wimbridge — Mrs. Billing a medium. Materialization phenomena — truth rarely wanted — a loyal Theosophist — phenomena the playthings of the tyro — the Masters offer their knowledge to be accepted or rejected on its merits — "Ski" used as a mouthpiece by the Brothers. H.P.B. asks an exception for C.C.M. — "Ski" a medium for 20 years — her phenomena pass the most crucial tests — several false "Skis." An occult forger.

Letter No. 93 — Mediums and Spooks permitted to personate the Brothers — and forge their hand-writing. K.H.'s explanation of the Kiddle incident — "M. A. Oxon" — K.H. accused of plagiarism — the Banner of Light. Woman a calamity in the fifth race. K.H. dictates a letter mentally — psychic chemistry — precipitation by a young Chela-American Spiritualists — experiments of S.P.R. in "mental telegraphy." The modus operandi of precipitation — psychic printing machine. The medium and the Chela diametrically dissimilar — discrepancy in "Occult World" — H.P.B. denies that K.H.'s first letter was written by himself.

K.H. born into a new and higher light — Oniniscience and infallible prevision exist but for the highest Chohans — the restored version of page 39 Occult World — Spiritualists and Spiritualism — the Rosetta Stone of the Kiddle incident. The Kiddlites and the Koothumites — an Adept does not cease to be a man — ignorant surmise and personal insult — distrust and prejudice contagious — A.K. invokes K.H. in trance. She takes a fruitless ramble through space — K.H. unaware of search — move in different astral circles — too haughty and imperious — Mrs. Gebhard a genuine sterling nature — K.H. en route for Madras, Singapore and Burma — H.P.B. not in disgrace. Subba Row's writings.

Letter No. 94 — Kiddle incident — poking fun at Occult Science.

Letter No. 95 — Preparation and training of Eglinton — the "Vega experiment" — bigotry and blindness of the Spiritualists — professional mediums — Hume has great possibilities in front of him — reviewing The Perfect Way — attracting the Chohan's attention and its significance.

Letter No. 96 — M. smokes his pipe — Piccadilly spooks — phenomena — Karma of the spiritualists — M. prefers Eglinton's clairvoyance to Mrs. Kingsford's.

Letter No. 97 — The defects of young disciples — few true to original programme.

Section 7: Miscellaneous Letters

Letter No. 98 — K.H.'s comments on a letter of Hume's — the people of Tibet untainted by vices of civilization — A.O.H. a friend of perishing humanity — General Schoolmaster for Tibet — the Adept the freest of men.

Letter No. 99 — From A. O. Hume to K.H. Says K.H. does not understand him — Russia and Tibet. Advocates repeated phenomena — H. S. Olcott — Jesuit organisation — blind obedience.

Letter No. 100 — Hume thinks of going to Tibet — insane plan — the Chohans against him — dangers of

every step. Letter No. 101 — "Blessed is he who knows and appreciates Koothoomi." Letter No. 102 — "Ou tout ou rien." Letter No. 103 — Chelas neglect orders — Maharajah of Kashmir. Letter No. 104 — Hume annoys K.H. — New Year Festivals in Tibet — K.H. goes a journey — M. takes his

place — "the Disinherited."

Letter No. 105 — Hume accuses the Masters of being liars — H.P.B. quarrels with D.K. — "K.H. no

gentleman"; Hume's infallibility.

Letter No. 106 — Measures for protecting Tibet — the priestly King.

Letter No. 107 — H.P.B.'s ill-health — mental anxiety.

Letter No. 108 — A Ladakee Chela.

Letter No. 109 — K.H. and a seance.

Letter No. 110 — Dharbagiri Nath — the best punishment for an accepted Chela — dodging the Masters' eye

— young Chelas — Hume's articles; H.P.B. not safe in Sikkim — a Chela's indiscretion. Letter No. 111 — K.H.'s two Chelas to A.P.S. Letter No. 112 — Colonel Chesney's letter to K.H. — Fern a humbug — endeavours to test the Masters —

lay Chelas — Hume alienates the Chohan and M.; W. Oxley. Letter No. 113 — Funny notions about honour — Fern hallucinated — Fern's trap for M. Letter No. 114 — Zenana women of India. Letter No. 115 — A.P.S. advised to act on his own judgment — Occult influences. Letter No. 116 — K.H.'s disgust with Hume. Letter No. 117 — Mohini. Letter No. 118 — Fraudulent intrusion. Children's diseases — K.H. sends a lock of his hair. Letter No. 119 — Newspaper cutting and K.H.'s comment. Letter No. 120 — Action of hatred. Letter No. 121 — The Occult World presented to the Chohan's notice. Letter No. 122 — Eglington at Calcutta. Letter No. 123 — K.H.'s difficulties. Letter No. 124 — A.P.S. asked to find three coloured pebbles in Venice. Letter No. 125 — K.H. issues a denial of the claims of W. Oxley medium. He never conversed with K.H. —

three secret words. Letter No. 126 — A Post Office address in N.W. Provinces.

Letter No. 127 — Extracts from letters to A.P.S. and A.O.H. — 6th and 7th principles never were within man

 Anaxagoras — the "Nous" — Pythagoras the permanent and impermanent — words of Buddha — lucidity

 too much sugar in diet — method of developing lucidity. Letter No. 128 — Telegram announcing Damodar's departure. Letter No. 129 — Telegram re Damodar.

 

Appendix

Letter No. 130 --From T. Subba Row. States the conditions on which he will give A.P.S. instruction in Occult Science — wavering state of mind fatal.

Letter No. 131 — From T. Subba Row. Sinnett gives qualified consent — impossible to give him practical instruction — rules inflexible — the sacrifices demanded by Occult Science — acquisition of psychic powers not the object of occult training — they alone will never secure immortality. The true aim of Occult Science

— prepared to give theoretical instruction only.

Letter No. 132 — T. Subba Row — the Rishi M.'s system of training — the first three initiations; K.H.'s comment.

Letter No. 133 — From H.P.B. Warns A.P.S. of self-deception — discusses his attitude to K.H.'s letter — "Olcott behaved like an ass" — why the Masters liked Olcott. The S.P.R. and its bugbear Theosophy.

Letter No. 134 — A dictated letter from M. All Theosophists endeavour to correspond with him — do not deserve such privilege. What is expected of them — thousands of Fakirs, Sannyasis, etc., have never seen or heard of them — they are on the path of error — bad physical magnetic emanations not insurmountable — faith in God and Gods attract the worst influences — the Chohans of darkness preside at Pralayas. All is contrast in the Universe — the Gods of the bigoted Hindus, Christians, and Mohammedans — the work of the Red-caps — Brothers can prolong life but cannot destroy death or evil — details about H.P.B.'s identity.

Letter No. 135 — From H.P.B. Explains what she said about seven objective planets and septenary chains.

Letter No. 136 — From H.P.B. Sinnett's invitation to her — reasons for refusing — what she endured —

K.H. and M. prepare to work — H.P.B.'s hour of triumph approaches — Sinnett does not know the real

H.P.B. Her inner real self imprisoned — prophecies that Sinnett will one day blaspheme against K.H. — their benevolent contempt for H.P.B.

Letter No. 137 — D.K. precipitates a letter phenomenally in H.P.B.'s cabin.

Letter No. 138 — From H.P.B. New battle to be fought — K.H.'s observations on the T.S. — H.P.B. now accused of fraud — Mahatmas dragged before the public — Hodgson's attitude — hopeless situation — happy Damodar — the land of Bliss; Hume wants to save the Society — meeting called — his plans — his suggestions rejected — phenomena must be prohibited. Her physical condition — transmission of letters — Arthur Gebhard — dying people do not tell lies — H.P.B. never a deceiver — explains the methods of occult transmission of letters; H.P.B. "a fraud with excellent qualities" — explains what happened to Gebhard's letter — no fraud; T.S. will live in India but seems doomed in Europe — Hodgson's investigation — the opposition of the Padris — her trials — cannot trust her friends. Propaganda against the Founders — Oakleys advise H.P.B. to resign — pledges herself not to mention the Masters' names — try to deserve personal communication with the Master. Probably her last letter.

Letter No. 139 — From H.P.B. She urges Sinnett to develop his intuition — explains about a letter of K.H. which Sinnett suspected. S. asked not to be ungrateful and not to misunderstand — what H.P.B. saw in K.H.'s aura — Prince's Hall meeting a failure. Chelas take the left-hand path — nearing the end — Gladstone — the Jesuits.

Letter No. 140 — From H.P.B. The Countess a great clairvoyant — H.P.B. describes a vision — K.H. teaches her English — M. sends her back to Europe — parting words of K.H. — she writes Isis Unveiled at K.H.'s dictation — her English. The writing of K.H.'s letters — did he write them himself? — precipitation — either H.P.B. invented the Mahatmas or she did not. The Secret Doctrine — truth will triumph — Hume's lies.

Letter No. 141 — H.P.B. in Sinnett's hands — Mrs. Leadbeater — Gladstone a Roman Catholic. The condition of the T.S. in Europe — India — America — the indestructibility of the Society — the efforts of the dugpas — the T.S. in need of quality and not quantity of members — the two courses before the London Lodge — by their fruits shall ye know them. Worldly society in the L.L. — A.P.S. incapable of perceiving the truth — no inner group consecrated to the truth — the last trial of a Chela. The necessity of spiritual discernment — nothing can kill the London Lodge except passivity — human dirt never sticks. Sinnett urged to develop his intuition.

Letter No. 142a — Memorandum by Damodar. The Theosophical Society considered a religious sect — if based upon universal Brotherhood the occult study should be secret — sacred knowledge should not be vulgarised — unconsciously misleading the public as to management of the Society — the Adepts do not control the Society — admission of members — fees — phenomena hunters.

Letter No. 142b — Comment by K.H. on Damodar's memorandum.

Letter No. 143 — Reply of K.H. to a query of A. P. Sinnett.

Letter No. 144 — A fragment from K.H.

Letter No. 145 — A fragment from K.H.

Mars and Mercury

Sinnett reopens the controversy — implications against H.P.B. — Mrs. Besant's statements in Lucifer on the subject — the facts in the light of K.H.'s letter — the misunderstood passage — Mrs. Besant's "categorical statement that Mars and Mercury belong to Earth Chain" — quotations "from the Secret Doctrine" — the whole theory proves false.

The Writing of the Mahatma Letters by A. T. Barker

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MARS AND MERCURY

Mr. Sinnett in his posthumous work "The Early Days of Theosophy in Europe" reopens this old controversy, and in the course of his remarks he makes many insinuations of a personal nature against Madame Blavatsky which are as untrue of her, as they are unworthy of her old colleague. In Chapter IX p. 92 of that work after saying that Madame Blavatsky had stated in The Secret Doctrine that he had made a great mistake in representing Mars, Mercury, and the Earth as belonging to the same planetary chain, he continues on the same page —: . . . . "The letter from the Master from which she (H.P.B.) professed to give extract was not what she represents it, an answer to enquiries of her own, but a garbled version of a letter originally addressed to me."

Two different letters are in reality here referred to — the first, addressed to Mr. Sinnett, was quoted from on

p. 163, Vol. I of The Secret Doctrine; the second, addressed to Mdme. Blavatsky is quoted on p. 165; the former is contained in the present volume, but the latter is not.

On page 94 of the same work appears the following: — "Eventually when Mrs. Besant by the expansion of her own knowledge had ascertained definitely that Mars and Mercury did belong to our chain with functions in evolution as I had originally described them, she did publish a statement to that effect in 'Lucifer' vol.

XVII. p. 271."

For the convenience of those not having access to the volumes of Lucifer the passage referred to is here quoted in full together with a former statement by Mrs. Besant on the same subject: —

Extract from Lucifer for November, 1893, Vol. XIII., p. 203.

Mars and the Earth.

"The apparent contradiction between the teaching of The Masters as put forward by their direct messenger H.

P. Blavatsky, and as understood by Mr. Sinnett is capable of very easy explanation. The solution turns on the words 'Solar System.' If that term be held to denote the Solar System known to Western Science, the sentence given by Mr. Sinnett is meaningless; but reference to the series of letters from which the isolated passage respecting Mars is quoted, at once shows the meaning attached to the 'Solar System' in the correspondence. I naturally turned to the letters themselves — copies of which I have — to solve the puzzle, and I found that Master K.H. used the term in a special and quite definite sense.

"He explains three kinds of Manvantaras, Pralayas etc., universal, solar, and minor. A minor Manvantara is composed of seven Rounds i.e. the circuit seven times of a Planetary Chain of

seven Globes. To such a chain, our Earth belongs. A Solar Period consists of seven of such sevenfold Rounds

i.e. forty-nine; seven such Planetary Chains compose a 'Solar System'; in three of such chains, our Earth, Mars, and Mercury, form the D. Globe. Globe D. of the Mars Chain, Globe D. of the Mercury Chain are visible to us, because those chains are sufficiently near our own in evolution, one behind us and one ahead of us, for their matter to affect our senses, while the remaining four chains are too far away in evolution to have enough in common with us for visibility.

"Mars and Mercury bear a special relation to our Earth in the whole evolution of the Solar System, though not part of the Earth Chain. The other four Planetary Chains belonging to our Solar System are too far behind us or in front of us for even their Globes D. to be seen.

"Other planets in the Solar System of Science as arranged in the West do not belong to the Solar System of the Esoteric Philosophy; and it is the ignoring of this which led to the confusion. A western reader naturally gives the term his own sense not knowing that in the teachings it was used in quite a different one. And so, once more we find the Masters' doctrines self-consistent.

ANNIE BESANT.

"The old Mars and Mercury discussion has been lately revived to some extent in Theosophical circles, and an appeal has been made to me to say if any further light has been thrown upon the subject. In Lucifer vol. XIII.

p. 206, I wrote an explanation which seemed satisfactory so far as the documents then in my hands were concerned. I was leaving for India when I wrote the paragraph and Mr. Sinnett kept silence, in his generous way, during my absence; but on my return he showed me the original letter on which the statement in Esoteric Buddhism was founded, the letter partially quoted in the Secret Doctrine vol. I p. 187; this letter was one of those received in the early days and was not among those of which I had copies. This original letter left no doubt as to the Master's statement on this point, for it said categorically, that Mars and Mercury made part of the chain of which our Earth is the fourth Globe. As the Society was then disturbed over Mr. Judge's affair, Mr. Sinnett did not wish the question to be revived merely to justify himself, but there is no reason now why the matter should not be put straight.

"The facts are these; the planetary chain consists of Globes A., B., Mars, Earth, Mercury, F., and G., and round these the great life-wave has swept three and a half times, reaching Earth for the fourth time; the mass of humanity passed from Mars to the Earth, and will pass from the Earth to Mercury. But the leading class of humanity — and here is a fact that throws some light on the opposing statements — did not share in this general evolution. It came directly to the Earth from another region at a much later period in evolution, and had never been on Mars at all. Another fact, which H.P.B. evidently had in mind, when writing on this question, is that Mars is also concerned in an entirely different evolution, as to which nothing can be publicly said. It is therefore impossible to clear the matter up to the satisfaction of exoteric students, but it is just that it should be publicly stated that Mr. Sinnett's statement is entirely borne out by the original letter."

It will be at once seen that in the first of the above statements Lucifer Vol. XIII, Mrs. Besant in the main supports the explanation given in the Secret Doctrine, while in the second, Vol. XVII she says, "that the letter partially quoted on page 163 of Secret Doctrine Vol. I., categorically states that Mars and Mercury made part of the chain of which our Earth is the fourth Globe."

The letter referred to was among those left by Mr. Sinnett and it is therefore possible to examine the facts in the light of the original document. The passage quoted will be found on page 176 of this volume in the paragraph numbered (23), and with due deference to Mrs. Besant, it must be pointed out that there is nothing in that paragraph or the remainder of the letter, which can be construed into a "categorical statement that Mars and Mercury made part of the chain of which our Earth is 4th Globe."

Attention has been drawn to the fact that Mdme. Blavatsky was not accurate in her quotation of the Master's letter to the extent that she added the word "etc." and omitted the word "yet" — and there are some who would like to convince themselves and others that this fact is sufficient to invalidate the whole of H.P.B.'s exposition of the teaching regarding the nature of the septenary planetary chains. It should be evident to every student that in reality, at the worst, this mis-quotation invalidates the hypothesis which Mdme. Blavatsky offered as a possible explanation of Mr. Sinnett's misunderstanding, and it leaves utterly untouched the doctrine of the septenary chain with one physical globe which is implied in every line of The Secret Doctrine and is in fact an integral part of the esoteric philosophy.

As stated over and over again and from every point of view in these pages of the Secret Doctrine (Vol. I., pp. 162-169) . . . "neither Mars nor Mercury belong to our chain. They are along with other planets, Septenary Units in the Great host of Chains of our System and all are as visible as their upper Globes are invisible." (p. 164.) And again "The one Eternal Law unfolds everything in the to be manifested Nature, on a sevenfold principle; among the rest, the countless circular chains of worlds composed of 7 globes, graduated on the 4 lower planes of the World of Formation, the 3 others belonging to the Archetypal Universe. Out of these 7 only one, the lowest and the most material of these Globes, is within our plane or means of perception, the 6 others lying outside it and being therefore invisible to the terrestrial eye. . . . To make it clearer; we are told that each of the planets, of which seven only were called sacred, as being ruled by the highest Regents or Gods, . . . is a septenary, as also is the chain to which the Earth belongs; . . . while the superior fellow globes

of these planets are on other planes quite outside that of our terrestrial senses. . . . These invisible companions correspond curiously to that which we call the "principles" in man. The seven are on three material planes and one spiritual plane" (Vol I., p. 152). . . and again . . . "but it may be stated that our satellite is only the gross body of its invisible principles. Seeing then that there are seven Earths, so there are seven Moons, the last alone being visible. The same for the Sun, whose visible body is called a Maya a reflection, just as man's body is. The real Sun and the real Moon are as invisible as the real man." (Vol I., p. 179) Says an occult axiom.

Could words be plainer? Hardly — and yet for over thirty years the Theosophical Society has permitted itself to spread this misleading superstition, preferring to assume that it was Madame Blavatsky who did not understand what she was writing about. The mystery is after all as clear as it well nigh can be. The septenary chains of Globes about which Theosophical Text Books talk so much, are seven principled Units, each having a physical body and six higher or subtler principles invisible to the ordinary senses, but co-existing and inter­penetrating each other.

Students of Astrology at least are able to prove for themselves that the correspondence between man and a planet is exact; for just as the six invisible principles of a planet correspond to the six invisible principles in man, so do the seven sacred Planets correspond to the whole of the seven principles of our Earth and therefore of man. How then is it possible that the theory, which credits the Earth Chain with three physical planets, can be correct from any point of view? It is manifestly ridiculous, because if it were true, it would mean by the occult law of correspondence, that man also must have three physical bodies which is an absurdity, and proves the whole theory false from beginning to end.

The publication of these letters gives to the student an opportunity to examine the whole range of Theosophic teaching in their light — while adding thereto the faculty of criticism — the highest and most discriminative of which he is capable. That faculty is an impersonal one; it is neither critic nor respecter of persons — for to it persons are without significance. But with ideas — with doctrines, it has everything to do, and if it is inevitable that the use of that faculty by students the world over will reveal many discrepancies in the accepted Theosophical doctrines of the day, it is equally certain that a large part of that teaching will receive a confirmation which cannot be gainsaid.

— A. T. B.

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PUBLISHER'S NOTE

The following article by A. Trevor Barker originally appeared in the January 1938 issue of The English Theosophical Forum, London, England. It is included herein because of its intrinsic value to students of The Mahatma Letters.

THE WRITING OF THE MAHATMA LETTERS

By A.Trevor Barker

I have received a number of requests to publish a reply to two questions that are asked by students over and over again, and these questions may be formulated as follows:

In your Introduction to The Mahatma Letters you refer to the letters as having been signed by the Masters with their own hands. You may or may not have intended this to be taken literally, but a careful study of the letters in the opinion of many intelligent people reveals that some of the letters seem to drop below the standard that one would attribute to a supramundane or Mahatmic intelligence. What is the explanation for this if the Mahatmas M. and K.H. were actually responsible for them?

The only satisfactory way of answering these very important questions is to see what H.P.B. and the Masters themselves had to say upon the subject. As a matter of fact the Mahatmas M. and K.H. did not use their high intelligence to supervise the whole process of transmitting quite a number of these letters. This H.P.B. states quite clearly on page 480 of The Mahatma Letters in these words:

Has Master K.H. written himself all His letters? How many chelas have been precipitating and

writing them — heaven only knows.

The Master himself writes on page 232:

In noticing M's opinion of yourself expressed in some of his letters — (you must not feel altogether so sure that because they are in his handwriting, they are written by him, though of course every word is sanctioned by him to serve certain ends) . . .

To understand the problem properly the whole of Letter 140 should be read carefully and in addition parts of Letters 138 and 92. In order to save space we only print the more important passages, and draw the reader's attention particularly to the following in Letter 92:

The letter in question was framed by me while on a journey and on horse-back. It was dictated mentally, in the direction of, and "precipitated" by, a young chela not yet expert at this branch of Psychic chemistry, and who had to transcribe it from the hardly visible imprint. Half of it, therefore, was omitted and the other half more or less distorted by the "artist." When asked by him at the time, whether I would look it over and correct I answered, imprudently, I confess — "anyhow will do, my boy — it is of no great importance if you skip a few words." I was physically very tired by a ride of 48 hours consecutively, and (physically again) — half asleep. Besides this I had very important business to attend to psychically and therefore little remained of me to devote to that letter. It was doomed, I suppose. When I woke I found it had already been sent on, and, as I was not then anticipating its publication, I never gave it from that time a thought.

Then:

Two factors are needed to produce a perfect and instantaneous mental telegraphy — close concentration in the operator, and complete receptive passivity in the "reader" — subject. Given a disturbance of either condition, and the result is proportionately imperfect. The "reader" does not see the image as in the "telegrapher's" brain, but as arising in his own. When the latter's thought

wanders, the psychic current becomes broken, the communication disjointed and incoherent. In a case such as mine, the chela had, as it were, to pick up what he could from the current I was sending him and, as above remarked, patch the broken bits together as best he might.

Well, as soon as I heard of the charge — the commotion among my defenders having reached me across the eternal snows — I ordered an investigation into the original scraps of the impression. At the first glance I saw that it was I, the only and most guilty party, — the poor little boy having done but that which he was told.

and later on the same page:

I transcribe them with my own hand this once, whereas the letter in your possession was written by the chela. I ask you also to compare this hand-writing with that of some of the earlier letters you received from me. Bear in mind, also the "O.L.'s" emphatic denial at Simla that my first letter had ever been written by myself. I felt annoyed at her gossip and remarks then; it may serve a good purpose now.

These passages from The Mahatma Letters prove and confirm H.P.B.'s statement in the letter quoted above from Letter 140.

In a letter to me on this subject Dr. de Purucker expressed himself as follows:

 stated specifically, and more than once, that it was the rarest thing in the world for any one of the Mahatmans, or even for a high chela, personally to write a letter, i.e. indite any communication with his own hand. There are very, very few, very rare exceptions, such as one or two, it may be three, cases of direct precipitation from the Master or from a high chela, and possibly one or two brief notes, maybe a telegram or two, written by the Master's own hand.

 states positively that not only was such writing in the Master's own hand the rarest thing, but that practically in every case, with the few exceptions named, the Master impressed mentally his chela or amanuensis, or chelas or amanuenses, to write thus or so, to such or another person. Then the chela, if the receptivity was good, would get the message clearly from the Master's mind along the etheric currents, and in writing it down, if the receptivity was perfect the resulting production would be practically the Master's own words, and actually his own handwriting, real or adopted — whichever Master it might be who was the source, K.H. or M. or some other. If receptivity on the part of the chela or amanuenses was less perfect, there would be the immediate entrance into the psychology of the receiving chela of more or less, usually less, of the chela's own mental idiosyncrasies, ways of phrasing, what Hodgson and the Hare brothers call Americanisms or Gallicisms, etc., etc.

 

The writing of these letters was a mystery and must remain so for all but the initiates. The last passage we quote however could hardly be more definite.

Another of our customs, when corresponding with the outside world, is to entrust a chela with the task of delivering the letter or any other message; and if not absolutely necessary — to never give it a thought. Very often our very letters — unless something very important and secret — are written in our handwritings by our chelas. Thus, last year, some of my letters to you were precipitated, and when sweet and easy precipitation was stopped — well I had but to compose my mind, assume an easy position, and — think, and my faithful "Disinherited" had but to copy my thoughts, making only occasioally a blunder. — p. 296

In conclusion if it is contended that it would have been better if I had not stated in the Introduction that the letters were written by the Masters in their own hands, I agree. When I wrote that sentence I had not had time to assimilate fully the whole content of the letters, and therefore this particular aspect of the matter had not clearly taken shape in my consciousness. One of these days, when a new issue is being printed, it can be corrected.

The above explanation should be sufficient to clear up this problem, for any serious student who will take the

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FIRST LETTER OF K. H. TO A. O. HUME

The original of this letter is not extant, although the major portion of it did appear in The Occult World. Why it was omitted in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett is not known. We can only suppose that the copy that Patience Sinnett had made of it was not to hand when Trevor Barker was transcribing the Mahatma letters, otherwise he undoubtedly would have included it in his published volume. It follows K. H.'s letter of October 29 (1880) to Mr. Sinnett (ML 4).

We reproduce the letter in its entirety, checked against Mrs. Sinnett's handwritten copy in the British Museum (Mahatma Papers, Vol. VII, Additional MS. 45289 B). The copy is liberally blue pencilled, indicating A.P.S.'s editing prior to publication, and in three places several sentences deleted — appropriately so at the time. As stated, the text used here is verbatim with Patience Sinnett's copy.

It is of note that despite later difficulties which ended in the final breach between Mr. Hume and the Brothers, his "first letter was so sincere, its spirit so promising, the possibilities it opened for doing general good seemed so great, that . . . I carried it to our venerable Chief" (K. H. to A.O.H., ML 28). — G.F.K.

Amritsur Nov. 1st [1880]

Dear Sir,

Availing of the first moments of leisure to formally answer your letter of the 17th ultimo, I will now report the result of my conference with our chiefs upon the proposition therein contained; trying at the same time to answer all your questions.

I am first to thank you on behalf of the whole section of our fraternity that is especially interested in the welfare of India for an offer of help whose importance and sincerity no one can doubt. Tracing our lineage through the vicissitudes of Indian civilization to a remote past, we have a love for our motherland so deep and passionate, that it has survived even the broadening and cosmopolitanizing (pardon me if this is not an English word) effect of our studies in the hidden laws of nature. And so I and every other Indian patriot feel the strongest gratitude for every kind word or deed that is given in her behalf.

Imagine then, that since we are convinced that the degradation of India is largely due to the suffocation of her ancient spirituality; and that, whatever helps restore that higher standard of thought and morals must be a regenerating national force; every one of us would naturally and without urging be disposed to push forward a Society whose proposed formation is under debate; especially if it really is meant to become a society untainted by selfish motive, and whose object is the revival of ancient science and tendency to rehabilitate our country in the world's estimation. Take this for granted, without further asseverations. But you know, as any man who has read history, that patriots may burst their hearts in vain if circumstances are against them. Sometimes, it has happened that no human power, not even the fury and force of the loftiest patriotism, has been able to bend an iron destiny aside from its fixed course, and nations have gone out like torches dropped into water in the engulfing blackness of ruin. Thus, we who have the sense of our country's fall though not the power to lift her up at once, can not do as we would either as to general affairs or this particular one. And with the readiness but not the right to meet your advances more than half way we are forced to say that the idea entertained by Mr. Sinnett and yourself is impracticable in part. It is in a word impossible for myself or any Brother or even an advanced neophyte, to be specially assigned and set apart as the guiding Spirit or Chief of the Anglo-Indian Branch. We know it would be a good thing to have you and a few of your selected colleagues regularly instructed and shown the phenomena and their rationale. For though none but you few would be convinced, still it would be a decided gain to have even a few Englishmen of first-class ability enlisted as students of Asiatic Psychology. We are aware of all this and much more; hence we do not refuse to correspond with and otherwise help you in various ways. But what we do refuse is to take any other responsibility upon ourselves than this periodical correspondence and assistance with our advice; and, as occasion favours, such tangible, possibly visible proofs as would satisfy you of our presence and interest. To "guide" you we will not consent. However much we may be able to do, yet we can promise only to give you the full measure of your deserts. Deserve much and we will prove honest debtors; little and you need only expect a compensating return. This is not a mere text taken from a school boy's copybook, though it sounds so, but only the clumsy statement of the law of our order; and we can not transcend it. Utterly unacquainted with Western, especially English modes of thought and action, were we to meddle in an organization of such a kind you would find all your fixed habits and traditions incessantly clashing, if not with the new aspirations themselves, at least with their modes of realisation as suggested by us. You could not get unanimous consent to go even the length you might yourself. I have asked Mr. Sinnett to draft a plan embodying your joint ideas for submission to our chiefs, this seeming the shortest way to a mutual agreement. Under our "guidance" your Branch could not live, you not being men to be guided at all in that sense. Hence the Society would be a premature birth and a failure, looking as incongruous as a Paris Daumont drawn by a team of Indian yaks or camels. You ask us to teach you true Science, the occult aspect of the known side of nature: and this you think can be as easily done as asked. You do not seem to realize the tremendous difficulties in the way of imparting even the rudiments of our Science to those who have been trained in the familiar methods of yours. You do not see that the more you have of the one the less capable you are of intuitively comprehending the other, for a man can only think in his worn grooves, and unless he has the courage to fill up these and make new ones for himself he must perforce travel on the old lines. Allow me a few instances.

In conformity with exact modern Science you would define but one cosmic energy, and see no difference between the energy expended by the traveller who pushes aside the bush that obstructs his path, and the scientific experimenter who expends an equal amount of energy in setting a pendulum in motion! We do. For we know there is a world of difference between the two. The one uselessly dissipates or scatters force, the other concentrates and stores it. And here please understand that I do not refer to the relative utility of the two as one might imagine; but only to the fact, that in the one case, there is but brute force flung out without any transmutation of that brute energy into the higher potential form of spiritual dynamics, and, in the other there is just that. Please do not consider me vaguely metaphysical. The idea I wish to convey is, that the result of the highest intellection in the scientifically occupied brain is the evolution of a sublimated form of spiritual energy, which, in the cosmic action, is productive of illimitable results, while the automatically acting brain holds or stores up in itself only a certain quantum of brute force that is unfruitful of benefit for the individual or humanity. The human brain is an exhaustless generator of the most refined quality of cosmic force, out of the low, brute energy of nature; and the complete adept has made himself a centre from which irradiate potentialities that beget correlations upon correlations through Aeons to come. This is the key to the mystery of his being able to project into and materialise in the visible world the forms that his imagination has constructed out of inert cosmic matter in the invisible world. The adept does not create anything new, but only utilises and manipulates materials which nature has in store around him; a material which throughout eternities has passed through all the forms; he has but to choose the one he wants and recall it into objective existence. Would not this sound to one of your "learned" biologists like a madman's dream?

You say there are few branches of science with which you do not possess more or less acquaintance, and that you believe you are doing a certain amount of good, having acquired the position to do this by long years of study. Doubtless you do. But will you permit me to sketch for you still more clearly the difference between the modes of — physical called exact — often out of mere politeness — and metaphysical sciences? The latter, as you know, being incapable of verification before mixed audiences, is classed by Mr. Tyndall with the fictions of poetry. The realistic science of fact, on the other hand, is utterly prosaic. Now for us poor and unknown philanthropists, no fact of either of these sciences is interesting except in the degree of its potentiality of moral results, and in the ratio of its usefulness to mankind. And what, in its proud isolation, can be more utterly indifferent to every one and everything, or more bound to nothing, but the selfish requisites for its advancement than this materialistic and realistic science of fact? May I not ask then without being taxed with a vain "display of science" what have the laws of Faraday, Tyndall, or others to do with philanthropy in their abstract relations with humanity viewed as an integral whole? What care they for MAN as an isolated atom of this great and harmonious Whole, even though they may sometimes be of practical use to him? Cosmic energy is something eternal and incessant, matter is indestructible, and there stand the scientific facts. Doubt them and you are an ignoramus; deny them, a dangerous lunatic, a bigot; pretend to improve upon the theories — an impertinent charlatan. And yet even these scientific facts never suggested any proof to the world of experimenters, that nature consciously prefers that matter should be indestructible under organic rather than under inorganic forms; and that she works slowly but incessantly towards the realisation of this object — the evolution of conscious life out of inert material. Hence their ignorance about the scattering and concretion of cosmic energy in its metaphysical aspects; their division about Darwin's theories; their uncertainty about the degree of conscious life in separate elements; and, as a necessity, the scornful rejection of every phenomenon outside their own stated conditions and the very idea of worlds of semi-intelligent if not intellectual forces at work in hidden corners of nature. To give you another practical illustration. We see a vast difference between the qualities of two equal amounts of energy expended by two men, of whom one, let us suppose, is on his way to his daily quiet work, and another on his way to denounce a fellow creature at the police station, while the men of science see none. And we — not they — see a specific difference between the energy in the motion of the wind and that of a revolving wheel. And why? Because every thought of man upon being evolved passes into the inner world and becomes an active entity by associating itself — coalescing, we might term it — with an elemental; that is to say with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the kingdoms. It survives as an active intelligence, a creature of the mind's begetting, for a longer or shorter period proportionate with the original intensity of the cerebral action which generated it. Thus, a good thought is perpetuated as an active beneficent power; an evil one as a maleficent demon. And so man is continually peopling his current in space with a world of his own, crowded with the offsprings of his fancies, desires, impulses, and passions, a current which reacts upon any sensitive or and nervous organisation which comes in contact with it in proportion to its dynamic intensity. The Buddhist calls this his "Skandha," the Hindu gives it the name of "Karma"; the Adept evolves these shapes consciously, other men throw them off unconsciously.

The adept to be successful and preserve his power must dwell in solitude and more or less within his own soul. Still less does exact science perceive that while the building ant, the busy bee, the nidifacient bird accumulate, each in their own humble way as much cosmic energy in its potential form as a Haydn, a Plato, or a ploughman turning his furrow, in theirs; the hunter who kills game for his pleasure or profit, or the positivist who applies his intellect to proving that + x + = -, are wasting and scattering energy no less than the tiger which springs upon its prey. They all rob nature instead of enriching her, and will all in the degree of their intelligence find themselves accountable.

Exact experimental Science has nothing to do with morality, virtue, philanthropy, therefore can make no claim upon our help, until it blends itself with the metaphysics. Being but a cold classification of facts outside man, and existing before and after him, her domain of usefulness ceases for us at the outer boundary of these facts; and whatever the inferences and results for humanity from the materials acquired by her methods, she little cares. Therefore as our sphere lies entirely outside hers — as far as the path of Uranus is outside the earth's — we distinctly refuse to be broken on any wheel of her construction. Heat is but a mode of motion to her, and motion developes heat; but why the mechanical motion of the revolving wheel should be metaphysically of a higher value than the heat into which it is gradually transformed — she has yet to discover. The philosophical but transcendental (hence absurd?) notion of the mediaeval theosophists that the final progress of human labour aided by the incessant discoveries of man, must one day culminate in a process, which in imitation of the sun's energy — in its capacity of a direct motor — shall result in the evolution of nutritious food out of inorganic matter — is unthinkable for men of science. Were the sun, the great nourishing father of our planetary System, to hatch granite chickens out of a boulder "under test conditions" tomorrow, they (the men of Science) would accept it as a scientific fact, without wasting a regret that the fowls were not alive so as to feed the hungry and the starving. But let a Shaberon cross the Himalayas in a time of famine, and multiply sacks of rice for the perishing multitudes — as he could — and your magistrates and collectors would probably lodge him in jail, to make him confess what granary he had robbed. This is exact science and your realistic world. And though as you say you are impressed by the vast extent of the world's ignorance on every subject, which you pertinently designate as "a few palpable facts collected and roughly generalized and a technical jargon invented to hide man's ignorance of all that lies behind these facts"; and though you speak of your faith in the infinite possibilities of nature — yet you are content to spend your life in a work which aids only that same exact science. You cause a waste of cosmic energy by tons, to accumulate hardly a few ounces in your volumes — to speak figuratively. And despite your intuitive perceptions of the boundless reaches of nature, you take up the position that unless a proficient in arcane knowledge will waste upon your embryonic Society an energy which without moving from his place he can usefully distribute among millions, you, with your great natural powers will refuse to give a helping hand to humanity by beginning the work single handed, and trusting to time and the great Law to reward your labour. (1)

Of your several questions we will first discuss, if you please, the one relating to the presumed failure of the "Fraternity" to "leave any mark upon the history of the world." They ought, you think, to have been able with their extraordinary advantages to have "gathered into their schools a considerable portion of the more enlightened minds of every race." How do you know they have made no such mark? Are you acquainted with their efforts, successes, and failures? Have you any dock upon which to arraign them? How could your world collect proofs of the doings of men who have sedulously kept closed every possible door of approach by which the inquisitive could spy upon them. The prime condition of their success was, that they should never be supervised or obstructed. What they have done they know; all those outside their circle could perceive was results, the causes of which were masked from view. To account for these results, men have in different ages invented theories of the interposition of "Gods," Special providences, fates, and the benign or hostile influences of the stars. There never was a time within or before the so-called historical period when our predecessors were not moulding events and "making history," the facts of which were subsequently and invariably distorted by "historians" to suit contemporary prejudices. Are you quite sure that the visible heroic figures in the successive dramas were not often but their puppets? We never pretended to be able to draw nations in the mass to this or that crisis in spite of the general drift of the world's cosmic relations. The cycles must run their rounds. Periods of mental and moral light and darkness succeed each other, as day does night. The major and minor yugas must be accomplished according to the established order of things. And we, borne along on the mighty tide, can only modify and direct some of its minor currents. If we had the powers of the imaginary Personal God, and the universal and immutable laws were but toys to play with, then indeed might we have created conditions that would have turned this earth into an Arcadia for lofty souls. But having to deal with an immutable Law, being ourselves its creatures, we have had to do what we could and rest thankful. There have been times when "a considerable portion of enlightened minds" were taught in our schools. Such times there were in India, Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome. But, as I remarked in a letter to Mr. Sinnett, the adept is the efflorescence of his age, and comparatively few ever appear in a single century. Earth is the battle ground of moral no less than of physical forces; and the boisterousness of animal passions under the stimulus of the rude energies of the lower group of etheric agents, always tends to quench spirituality.

What else could one expect of men so nearly related to the lower kingdom from which they evolved? True also, our numbers are just now diminishing but this is because, as I have said, we are of the human race, subject to its cyclic impulse and powerless to turn that back upon itself. Can you turn the Gunga or the Brahmaputra, back to its sources; can you even dam it so that its piled up waters will not overflow the banks? No, but you may draw the stream partly into canals and utilize its hydraulic power for the good of mankind. So we, who can not stop the world from going in its destined direction, are yet able to divert some part of its energy into useful channels. Think of us as demi-gods and my explanation will not satisfy you; view us as simple men — perhaps a little wiser as the result of special study — and it ought to answer your objection.

"What good," say you, "is to be attained for my fellows and myself (the two are inseparable) by these occult sciences?" When the natives see that an interest is taken by the English and even by some high officials in India in their ancestral science and philosophies, they will themselves take openly to their study. And when they come to realise that the old "divine" phenomena were not miracles, but scientific effects, superstition will abate. Thus the greatest evil that now oppresses and retards the revival of Indian civilisation will in time disappear. The present tendency of education is to make them materialistic and root out spirituality. With a proper understanding of what their ancestors meant by their writings and teachings, education would become a blessing whereas now it is often a curse. At present the non-educated as much as the learned natives regard the English as too prejudiced, because of their Christian religion and modern science, to care to understand them or their traditions. They mutually hate and mistrust each other. This changed attitude toward the older philosophy would influence the native Princes and wealthy men to endow normal schools for the education of pundits; and old MSS. hitherto buried out of the reach of the Europeans would again come to light, and with them the key to much of that which was hidden for ages from the popular understanding; for which your skeptical Sanscritists do not care, which your religious missionaries do not dare, to understand. Science would gain much — humanity every thing. Under the stimulus of the Anglo Indian Theosophical Society, we might in time see another golden age of Sanscrit literature. Such a movement would have the entire approbation of the Home Government as it would act as a preventive against discontent; and the sympathy of European Sanscritists who, in their divisions of opinion need the help of native pundits, now beyond their

reach in the present state of mutual misunderstanding. They are even now bidding for such help. At this moment two educated Hindus of Bombay are assisting Max Muller; and a young Pundit of Guzerat a Fellow of the T.S. is aiding Prof. Monier Williams at Oxford and living in his house. The first two are materialists and do harm; the latter single handed can do little, because the man whom he is serving is a prejudiced Christian. (2)

If we look to Ceylon we shall see the most scholarly priests combining under the lead of the Theos. Society in a new exegesis of Buddhistic philosophy and — at Galle on the 15th of September, a secular Theosophical school for the teaching of Singhalese youth opened, with an attendance of over 300 scholars: an example about to be imitated at three other points in that island. If the T.S. "as at present constituted," has indeed no "real vitality" and yet in its modest way has done so much of practical good, how much greater results might not be anticipated from a body organized upon the better plan you could suggest!

The same causes that are materialising the Hindu mind are equally affecting all Western thought. Education enthrones skepticism but imprisons spiritualism. You can do immense good by helping to give the Western nations a secure basis upon which to reconstruct their crumbling faith. What they need is the evidence that Asiatic psychology alone supplies. Give this and you will confer happiness of mind on thousands. The era of blind faith is gone; that of enquiry is here. Enquiry that only unmasks error, without discovering anything upon which the soul can build, will but make iconoclasts. Iconoclasm from its very destructiveness can give nothing, it can only raze. But man can not rest satisfied with bare negation. Agnosticism is but a temporary halt.

This is the moment to guide the recurrent impulse which must soon come, and which will push the age toward extreme atheism, or drag it back to extreme sacerdotalism, if it is not led to the primitive and soul-satisfying philosophy of the Aryans. He who observes what is going on today, on the one hand among the Catholics, who are breeding miracles as fast as the white ants do their young, on the other, among the free thinkers, who are converting by masses into agnostics — will see the drift of things. The age is revelling at a debauch of phenomena. The same marvels that the spiritualists quote in opposition to the dogmas of eternal perdition and atonement, the catholics swarm to witness as the strongest proof of their faith in miracles. The skeptics make game of both. All are blind and there is no one to lead them! You and your colleagues may help furnish the materials for a needed universal religious philosophy; one impregnable to scientific assault because itself the finality of absolute science; and, a religion, that is indeed worthy of the name, since it includes the relations of man physical to man psychical, and of the two to all that is above and below them. Is not this worth a slight sacrifice? And if after reflection you should decide to enter this new career, let it be known that your Society is no miracle-mongering or banqueting club, nor specially given to the study of phenomenalism. Its chief aim is to extirpate current superstitions and skepticism, and, from long sealed ancient fountains to draw the proof that man may shape his own future destiny, and know for a certainty that he can live hereafter, if he only wills; and that all "phenomena" are but manifestations of natural law, to try to comprehend which is the duty of every intelligent being. (3) You have personally devoted many years to a labour benevolently conceived and conscientiously carried out. Give to your fellow creatures half the attention you have bestowed on your 'little birds," and you will round off a useful life with a grand and noble work.

Sincerely your friend

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FOOTNOTES:

 The last several lines of this paragraph [from "You cause a waste . . ."] were omitted in The Occult World. (return to text)

 The last several lines of this paragraph [from "Such a movement would have . . ."] were omitted in The Occult World. (return to text)

 In The Occult World, the letter ends here. (return to text)

 

 

View of the Chohan on the T.S. (1)

 

Several good reasons given to K. H. by the Chohan why the T. S. should be a Brotherhood of Humanity.

****

for the Simla Eclectic T. S. {1880 or 1881}

The doctrine we promulgate being the only true one, must, — supported by such evidence as we are preparing to give become ultimately triumphant as every other truth. Yet it is absolutely necessary to inculcate it gradually enforcing its theories, unimpeachable facts for those who know, with direct inferences deducted from and corroborated by the evidence furnished by modern exact science. That is why Col H.S.O. who works but to revive Buddhism may be regarded as one who labours in the true path of Theosophy, far more than any other man who chooses as his goal the gratification of his own ardent aspirations for occult knowledge. Buddhism stripped of its superstitions is eternal truth, and he who strives for the latter is striving for Theos-sophia, Divine Wisdom, which is a synonym of truth.

For our doctrines to practically react on the so called moral code or the ideas of truthfulness, purity, self-denial, charity, etc., we have to preach and popularise a knowledge of theosophy. It is not the individual and determined purpose of attaining oneself Nirvana (the culmination of all knowledge and absolute wisdom) which is, after all only an exalted and glorious selfishness, but the self-sacrificing pursuit of the best means to lead on the right path our neighbour, to cause as many of our fellow creatures as we possibly can to benefit by it, which constitutes the true Theosophist.

The intellectual portions of mankind seem to be fast dividing into two classes, the one unconsciously preparing for itself long periods of temporary annihilation or states of non-consciousness owing to the deliberate surrender of their intellect, its imprisonment in the narrow grooves of bigotry and superstition, a process which cannot fail to lead to the utter deformation of the intellectual principle; the other unrestrainedly indulging its animal propensities with the deliberate intention of submitting to annihilation pure and simple in cases of failure, to millenniums of degradation after physical dissolution. Those "intellectual classes," reacting upon the ignorant masses which they attract and which look up to them as noble and fit examples to follow, degrade and morally ruin those they ought to protect and guide. Between degrading superstition and still more degrading brutal materialism the white dove of truth has hardly room where to rest her weary unwelcome foot. . . .

It's time that Theosophy should enter the arena. The sons of Theosophists are more likely to become in their turn Theosophists than anything else. No messenger of truth, no prophet has ever achieved during his life time a complete triumph, not even Buddha; the Theosophical Society was chosen as the corner stone, the foundation of the future religion of humanity. To achieve the proposed object a greater, wiser, and especially a more benevolent intermingling of the high and the low, of the alpha and the omega of society, was determined upon. The white race must be the first to stretch out the hand of fellowship to the dark nations, to call the poor despised "nigger" brothers. This prospect may not smile to all. He is no Theosophist who objects to this principle. . . .

In view of the ever increasing triumph and at the same time misuse of free-thought and liberty (the Universal reign of Satan, Eliphas Levi would have called it), how is the combative natural instinct of man to be restrained from inflicting hitherto unheard of cruelties and enormities, tyranny, injustice, etc., if not through the soothing influence of a brotherhood and of the practical application of Buddha's esoteric doctrines. For as everyone knows, total emancipation from authority of the one all pervading power or law called God by the Theists — Buddha, Divine Wisdom and Enlightenment or Theosophy by the philosophers of all ages — means also the emancipation from that of human law. Once unfettered [and] delivered from their dead weight of dogmatic interpretations, personal names, anthropomorphic conceptions and salaried priests, the fundamental doctrines of all religions will be proved identical in their esoteric meaning. Osiris, Chrishna, Buddha, Christ, will be shown as different means for one and [the] same royal highway to final bliss Nirvana.

Mystical christianity, that is to say that christianity which teaches self redemption through one's own seventh principle — the liberated Para-atma (Augoeides) called by the one Christ, by others Buddha, and equivalent to regeneration or rebirth in spirit — will be found just the same truth as the Nirvana of mystical Buddhism. All of us have to get rid of our own Ego, the illusory apparent self, to recognise our true self in a transcendental divine life. But if we would not be selfish we must strive to make other people see that truth, to recognise the reality of that transcendental self, the Buddh, the Christ or God of every preacher. This is why even exoteric Buddhism is the surest path to lead men toward the one esoteric truth. As we find the world now, whether Christian, Mussalman or Pagan, justice is disregarded and honour and mercy both flung to the winds.

In a word, how, once that the main objects of the T. S. are misinterpreted by those who are most willing to serve us personally, are we to deal with the rest of mankind, with that curse known as the "struggle for life," which is the real and most prolific parent of most woes and sorrows and of all the crimes? Why has that struggle become the almost universal scheme of the universe? We answer, because no religion with the exception of Buddhism has hitherto taught a practical contempt for this earthly life, while each of them, always with that one solitary exception, has through its hells and damnations inculcated the greatest dread of death. Therefore do we find that struggle for life raging most fiercely in Christian countries, most prevalent in Europe and America. It weakens in the Pagan lands and is nearly unknown among Buddhist populations. (In China during famine and where the masses are most ignorant of their own or any religion, it was remarked that those mothers who devoured their children belonged to localities where there were the most of Christian missionaries to be found. Where there were none and the Bonzes alone had the field the population died with the utmost indifference.) Teach the people to see that life on this earth even the happiest is but a burden and an illusion, that it is but our own Karma, the cause producing the effect, that is our own judge, our Saviour in future lives, and the great struggle for life will soon lose its intensity. There are no penitentiaries in Buddhist lands and crime is nearly unknown among the Buddhist Tibetans. (The above is not addressed to you, and has nought to do with the work of the Simla Eclectic Society. It is meant only as an answer to the erroneous impression in Mr. Hume's mind of the "Ceylon work" as no theosophy.)

The world in general and Christendom especially, left for two thousand years to the regime of a personal God as well as its political and social systems based on that idea, has now proved a failure. If the Theosophists say, we have nothing to do with all this, the lower classes and the inferior races (those of India for instance in the conception of the British) cannot concern us and must manage as they can, what becomes of our fine professions of benevolence, philanthropy, reform, etc. Are these professions a mockery? And if a mockery, can ours be the true path. Shall we devote our selves to teaching a few Europeans fed on the fat of the land, many of them loaded with the gifts of blind fortune, the rationale of bell ringing, cup growing, of the spiritual telephone and astral body formation, and leave the teeming millions of the ignorant, of the poor and despised, the lowly and the oppressed, to take care of themselves and of their hereafter the best they know how. Never. Rather perish the Theosophical Society with both its hapless founders than that we should permit it to become no better than an academy of magic and a hall of occultism. That we, the devoted followers of that spirit incarnate of absolute self sacrifice, of philanthropy, divine kindness, as of all the highest virtues attainable on this earth of sorrow, the man of men, Gautama Buddha, should ever allow the Theosophical Society to represent the embodiment of selfishness, the refuge of the few with no thought in them for the many, is a strange idea, my brothers.

Among the few glimpses obtained by Europeans of Tibet and its mystical hierarchy of "perfect lamas," there is one which was correctly understood and described. "The incarnations of the Boddisatwa Padma Pani or Avalo-Kiteswara and of Tsong Kapa, that of Amitabha, relinquish at their death the attainment of Buddhahood — i.e. the summum bonum of bliss, and of individual personal felicity — that they might be born again and again for the benefit of mankind." (Rhys Davids) In other words, that they might be again and again subjected to misery, imprisonment in flesh and all the sorrows of life, provided that by such a self sacrifice repeated throughout long and dreary centuries they might become the means of securing salvation and bliss in the hereafter for a handful of men chosen among but one of the many races of mankind. And it is we, the humble disciples of these perfect lamas, who are expected to allow the T. S. to drop its noblest title, that of the Brotherhood of Humanity to become a simple school of psychology? No, no, good brothers, you have been labouring under the mistake too long already. Let us understand each other. He who does not feel competent enough to grasp the noble idea sufficiently to work for it, need not undertake a task too heavy for him. But there is hardly a theosophist in the whole society unable to effectually help it by correcting the erroneous impressions of the outsiders, if not by actually propagating himself the idea. Oh, for the noble and unselfish man to help us effectually in India in that divine task. All our knowledge past and present would not be sufficient to repay him. . . . Having explained our views and aspirations I have but a few words more to add.

To be true, religion and philosophy must offer the solution of every problem. That the world is in such a bad condition morally is a conclusive evidence that none of its religions and philosophies, those of the civilised races less than any other, have ever possessed the truth. The right and logical explanations on the subject of the problems of the great dual principles — right and wrong, good and evil, liberty and despotism, pain and pleasure, egotism and altruism — are as impossible to them now as they were 1881 years ago. They are as far from the solution as they ever were but, —

To these there must be somewhere a consistent solution, and if our doctrines will show their competence to offer it, then the world will be the first one to confess that must be the true philosophy, the true religion, the true light, which gives truth and nothing but the truth.

An abridged version of the view of the Chohan on the T. S. from his own words as given last night. My own letter, the answer to your last will shortly follow.

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1. Editorial Note: An aura of mystery has surrounded this letter, as the original has never been found. As early as the middle 80s of last century, it was circulated privately, in whole or in part, but not published openly until 1886 when John C. Bundy, F.T.S., editor of the Religio-Philosophical Journal and Weekly Occult News, Chicago, Illinois, inserted it in his June 26 issue (vol. xl, No. 18). It is also known as the "Letter from the Maha-chohan" or "The Great Master's Letter."

The text we are using follows what we believe to be the earliest copy of the letter, that made by A. P. Sinnett to whom it had been addressed, and included by him along with other Mahatma letters (such as No. 11 to Hume) in a notebook now preserved in the British Museum (Mahatma Papers, Vol. VI, Additional MS. 45289 A). Our title is taken from the subscription at the close; the dots of omission are Sinnett's.

The several versions of the letter disclose some variations in wording, also in the deletion (or retention) of certain phrases or sentences. The chief difference lies in the year given in the penultimate paragraph — 1880, 1881, or 1886. H. P. B. gives it as 1880, both in editorial comment and in the quoted portion from the letter (Lucifer, August 15, 1888); A.P.S. has 1881, as does the published version of C. Jinarajadasa in his first series of Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom (4th and subsequent editions), recopied, he says, from the two manuscripts before him: the one, a 'cyclostyled' handwritten copy found among C. W. Leadbeater's papers, and the other, discovered in the Archives of the T. S. at Adyar, Madras in 1945, a copy made by Francesca Arundale, treasurer of the London Lodge during H. P. B.'s lifetime. This later copy is substantially the same as the Sinnett copy with only minor differences, although a few of them are of interest. But we are not concerned with these here.

In the Archives of the T. S., Pasadena, California, are three versions of the letter: a 'cyclostyled' handwritten copy in William Q. Judge's possession, which also has 1881 — he effectively drew upon the letter in his article "What the Masters Have Said" (The Path, Feb. 1893); two copies in the Notebooks of General Abner Doubleday, who was appointed president pro tem. of the American work of the T. S., with W. Q. Judge secretary, on January 17, 1879, the day before H. P. B. and Olcott with their two British companions set sail from Liverpool for India. The earliest of these is a typed copy pasted in Notebook No. 7 between letters dated 1884 and 1885; its heading reads ". . . given to Mahatma K. H. . . . for the Simla Eclectic Society" and ends "K. H. (signed)." His other copy in Notebook K-26 bears quite a different heading: "A Chohan's counsel to the T. S. — Given through R. H. and sent for publication in the Religio-Phil. Journal by a member of the T.

Doubleday's handwritten copy also perpetuates the "R.H." The closing subscription in the Journal is of interest:

"[NOTE: The above is an abridged version of the views of the Chohan on the Theosophical

Society from his own words, as given last night through an accepted chela, and now published for the benefit of those whom it may concern. F.T.S]"

The phrase, through an accepted chela, is not found in any other copy. In both the Doubleday handwritten copy and that of the Journal, the year is given as 1886. This is surely a misreading of a carelessly written 0 — or 1? as is the R. H. a misreading of a handwritten K. H.

It is likewise possible that H. P. B., quoting from the letter some seven or eight years after its receipt, mistook a 1 for an 0. Yet there seems to be some justification in the letters of K. H. and M. for not immediately abandoning the 1880 date. On the other hand, the Anglo-Indian Branch was not called the "Simla Eclectic Society" much before October 1881.

The question remains: when did the Chohan impart his vision of the T. S. and its mission and role in the world? In 1880, when K. H. brought up with him Sinnett's and Hume's first letters? Or in 1881, around the time when the Anglo-Indian Branch actually came into being, on August 21? To read letter no. 4 and the first letter of K. H. to Hume of 1880, in conjunction with K. H.'s and M.'s letters (28 and 29) written in the fall of 1881, is to see, in their insistence on the formation of a Branch of Universal Brotherhood and not of a "school of magic," a clear reflection of the same powerful current of universalism that characterizes the Chohan's stated directives.

There is no need to labor the issue. The matter of the year is of small consequence compared to the awesome truth that even today earnest students everywhere honor the lines here traced by the master-hand as the inner charter of the theosophical movement. — G.F.K. (return to text)

Letter No. 1

Received Simla about October 15th, 1880.

Esteemed Brother and Friend,

Precisely because the test of the London newspaper would close the mouths of the skeptics — it is unthinkable. See it in what light you will — the world is yet in its first stage of disenthralment if not development, hence — unprepared. Very true, we work by natural not supernatural means and laws. But, as on the one hand Science would find itself unable (in its present state) to account for the wonders given in its name, and on the other the ignorant masses would still be left to view the phenomenon in the light of a miracle; everyone who would thus be made a witness to the occurrence would be thrown off his balance and the results would be deplorable. Believe me, it would be so — especially for yourself who originated the idea, and the devoted woman who so foolishly rushes into the wide open door leading to notoriety. This door, though opened by so friendly a hand as yours, would prove very soon a trap — and a fatal one indeed for her. And such is not surely your object?

Madmen are they, who, speculating but upon the present, wilfully shut their eyes to the past when made already to remain naturally blind to the future! Far be it from me, to number you with the latter — therefore will I endeavour to explain. Were we to accede to your desires know you really what consequences would follow in the trail of success? The inexorable shadow which follows all human innovations moves on, yet few are they, who are ever conscious of its approach and dangers. What are then to expect they, who would offer the world an innovation which, owing to human ignorance, if believed in, will surely be attributed to those dark agencies the two-thirds of humanity believe in and dread as yet? You say — half London would be converted if you could deliver them a Pioneer on its day of publication. I beg to say that if the people believed the thing true they would kill you before you could make the round of Hyde Park; if it were not believed true, — the least that could happen would be the loss of your reputation and good name, — for propagating such ideas.

The success of an attempt of such a kind as the one you propose, must be calculated and based upon a thorough knowledge of the people around you. It depends entirely upon the social and moral conditions of the people in their bearing on these deepest and most mysterious questions which can stir the human mind — the deific powers in man and the possibilities contained in nature. How many, even of your best friends, of those who surround you, who are more than superficially interested in these abstruse problems? You could count them upon the fingers of your right hand. Your race boasts of having liberated in their century, the genius so long imprisoned in the narrow vase of dogmatism and intolerance — the genius of knowledge, wisdom and freethought. It says that in their turn ignorant prejudice and religious bigotry, bottled up like the wicked Jin of old, and sealed by the Solomons of Science rests at the bottom of the sea and can never, escaping to the surface again, reign over the world as it did in days of old; that the public mind is quite free, in short, and ready to accept any demonstrated truth. Aye; but is it verily so, my respected friend? Experimental knowledge does not quite date from 1662, when Bacon, Robert Boyle and the Bishop of Chester transformed under the royal charter their "Invisible College" into a Society for the promotion of Experimental Science. Ages before the Royal Society found itself becoming a reality upon the plan of the "Prophetic Scheme" an innate longing for the hidden, a passionate love for and the study of nature had led men in every generation to try and fathom her secrets deeper than their neighbours did. Roma ante Romulum fuit — is an axiom taught to us in your English schools. Abstract enquiries into the most puzzling problems did not arise in the brain of Archimedes as a spontaneous and hitherto untouched subject, but rather as a reflection of prior enquiries in the same direction and by men separated from his days by as long a period — and far longer — than the one which separates you from the great Syracusian. The vril of the "Coming Race" was the common property of races now extinct. And, as the very existence of those gigantic ancestors of ours is now questioned — though in the Himavats, on the very territory belonging to you we have a cave full of the skeletons of these giants — and their huge frames when found are invariably regarded as isolated freaks of nature, so the vril or Akas — as we call it — is looked upon as an impossibility, a myth. And, without a thorough knowledge of Akas, its combinations and properties, how can Science hope to account for such phenomena? We doubt not but the men of your Science are open to conviction; yet facts must be first demonstrated to them, they must first have become their own property, have proved amenable to their own modes of investigation, before you find them ready to admit them as facts. If you but look into the Preface to the "Micrographia" you will find in Hooke's suggestions that the intimate relations of objects were of less account in his eyes than their external operation on the senses — and Newton's fine discoveries found in him their greatest opponent. The modern Hookeses are many. Like this learned but ignorant man of old your modern men of science are less anxious to suggest a physical connexion of facts which might unlock for them many an occult force in nature, as to provide a convenient "classification of scientific experiments"; so that the most essential quality of an hypothesis is not that it should be true but only plausible — in their opinion.

So far for Science — as much as we know of it. As for human nature in general, it is the same now as it was a million of years ago: Prejudice based upon selfishness; a general unwillingness to give up an established order of things for new modes of life and thought — and occult study requires all that and much more —; pride and stubborn resistance to Truth if it but upsets their previous notions of things, — such are the characteristics of your age, and especially of the middle and lower classes. What then would be the results of the most astounding phenomena, supposing we consented to have them produced? However successful, danger would be growing proportionately with success. No choice would soon remain but to go on, ever crescendo, or to fall in this endless struggle with prejudice and ignorance killed by your own weapons. Test after test would be required and would have to be furnished; every subsequent phenomenon expected to be more marvellous than the preceding one. Your daily remark is, that one cannot be expected to believe unless he becomes an eye-witness. Would the lifetime of a man suffice to satisfy the whole world of skeptics? It may be an easy matter to increase the original number of believers at Simla to hundreds and thousands. But what of the hundreds of millions of those who could not be made eye-witnesses? The ignorant — unable to grapple with the invisible operators — might some day vent their rage on the visible agents at work; the higher and educated classes would go on disbelieving as ever, tearing you to shreds as before. In common with many, you blame us for our great secrecy. Yet we know something of human nature for the experience of long centuries — aye, ages — has taught us. And, we know, that so long as Science has anything to learn, and a shadow of religious dogmatism lingers in the hearts of the multitudes, the world's prejudices have to be conquered step by step, not at a rush. As hoary antiquity had more than one Socrates so the dim Future will give birth to more than one martyr. Enfranchised Science contemptuously turned away her face from the Copernican opinion renewing the theories of Aristarchus Samius — who "affirmeth that the Earth moveth circularly about her own centre" years before the Church sought to sacrifice Galileo as a holocaust to the Bible. The ablest mathematician at the Court of Edward VI — Robert Recorde — was left to starve in jail by his colleagues, who laughed at his Castle of Knowledge, declaring his discoveries "vain phantasies." Wm. Gilbert of Colchester — Queen Elisabeth's physician — died poisoned, only because — this real founder of Experimental Science in England — has had the audacity of anticipating Galileo; of pointing out Copernican's fallacy as to the "third movement," which was gravely alleged to account for the parallelism of the Earth's axis of rotation! The enormous learning of the Paracelsi, of the Agrippas and the De[e]s was ever doubted. It was science which laid her sacrilegious hand upon the great work "De Magnete" — "The Heavenly White Virgin" (Akas) and others. And it was the illustrious "Chancellor of England and of Nature"

 

— Lord Verulam-Bacon — who having won the name of the Father of Inductive Philosophy, permitted himself to speak of such men as the above-named as the "Alchemicians of the Fantastic philosophy."

 

All this is old history, you will think. Verily so; but the chronicles of our modern days do not differ very essentially from their predecessors. And we have but to bear in mind the recent persecutions of mediums in England, the burning of supposed witches, and sorcerers in South America, Russia and the frontiers of Spain — to assure ourselves that the only salvation of the genuine proficients in occult sciences lies in the skepticism of the public: the charlatans and the jugglers are the natural shields of the "adepts." The public safety is only ensured by our keeping secret the terrible weapons which might otherwise be used against it, and which, as you have been told became deadly in the hands of the wicked and selfish.

 

I conclude by reminding you that such phenomena as you crave, have ever been reserved as a reward for those who have devoted their lives to serve the goddess Saraswati — our Aryan Isis. Were they given to the profanes what would remain for our faithful ones? Many of your suggestions are highly reasonable and will be attended to. I listened attentively to the conversation which took place at Mr. Hume's. His arguments are

perfect from the standpoint of exoteric wisdom. But, when the time comes and he is allowed to have a full glimpse into the world of esoterism, with its laws based upon mathematically correct calculations of the future — the necessary results of the causes which we are always at liberty to create and shape at our will but are as unable to control their consequences which thus become our masters — then only will, both you and he understand why to the uninitiated our acts must seem often unwise, if not actually foolish.

Your forthcoming letter I will not be able to fully answer without taking the advice of those who generally deal with the European mystics. Moreover the present letter must satisfy you on many points you have better defined in your last; but it will no doubt disappoint you as well. In regard to the production of newly devised and still more startling phenomena demanded of her with our help, as a man well acquainted with the strategy, you must remain satisfied with the reflection that there is little use in acquiring new positions until those that you have already reached are secured, and your Enemies full aware of your right to their possession. In other words, you had a greater variety of phenomena produced for yourself and friends than many a regular neophyte has seen in several years. First, notify the public of the production of the note, the cup and the sundry experiments with the cigarette papers, and let them digest these. Get them to work for an explanation. And as except upon the direct and absurd accusation of deceit they will never be able to account for some of these, while the skeptics are quite satisfied with their present hypothesis for the production of the brooch — you will then have done real good to the cause of truth and justice to the woman who is made to suffer for it. Isolated as it is, the case under notice in the Pioneer becomes less than worthless — it is positively injurious for all of you — for yourself as the Editor of that paper as much as for anyone else, if you pardon me for offering you that which looks like advice. It is neither fair to yourself nor to her, that, because the number of eye-witnesses does not seem sufficient to warrant the public attention, your and your lady's testimony should go for nothing. Several cases combining to fortify your position as truthful and intelligent witness to the various occurrences, each of these gives you an additional right to assert what you know. It imposes upon you the sacred duty to instruct the public and prepare them for future possibilities by gradually opening their eyes to the truth. The opportunity should not be lost through a lack of as great confidence in your own individual right of assertion as that of Sir Donald Stewart. One witness of well known character outweighs the evidence of ten strangers; and if, there is anyone in India who is respected for his trustworthiness it is — the Editor of the Pioneer. Remember that there was but one hysterical woman alleged to have been present at the pretended ascension, and that the phenomenon has never been corroborated by repetition. Yet for nearly 2,000 years countless milliards have pinned their faith upon the testimony of that one woman — and she not over trustworthy.

TRY — and first work upon the material you have and then we will be the first to help you to get further evidence. Until then, believe me, always your sincere friend,

KOOT' HOOMI LAL SINGH.

Letter 2 Table of Contents

Letter No. 2

Received Simla, October 19th, 1880.

Much Esteemed Sir and Brother,

We will be at cross purposes in our correspondence until it has been made entirely plain that occult science has its own methods of research as fixed and arbitrary as the methods of its antithesis physical science are in their way. If the latter has its dicta so also has the former; and he who would cross the boundary of the unseen world can no more prescribe how he will proceed than the traveller who tries to penetrate to the inner subterranean recesses of L'Hassa — the blessed, could show the way to his guide. The mysteries never were, never can be, put within the reach of the general public, not, at least, until that longed for day when our religious philosophy becomes universal. At no time have more than a scarcely appreciable minority of men possessed nature's secret, though multitudes have witnessed the practical evidences of the possibility of their possession. The adept is the rare efflorescence of a generation of enquirers; and to become one, he must obey the inward impulse of his soul irrespective of the prudential considerations of worldly science or sagacity. Your desire is to be brought to communicate with one of us directly, without the agency of either Mad. B. or any medium. Your idea would be, as I understand it, to obtain such communications either by letters — as the present one — or by audible words so as to be guided by one of us in the management and principally in the instruction of the society. You seek all this, and yet, as you say yourself, hitherto you have not found "sufficient reasons" to even give up your "modes of life" — directly hostile to such modes of communications. This is hardly reasonable. He who would lift up high the banner of mysticism and proclaim its reign near at hand, must give the example to others. He must be the first to change his modes of life; and, regarding the study of the occult mysteries as the upper step in the ladder of Knowledge must loudly proclaim it such despite exact Science and the opposition of society. "The Kingdom of Heaven is obtained by force" say the Christian mystics. It is but with armed hand, and ready to either conquer or perish that the modern mystic can hope to achieve his object.

My first answer covered, I believed, most of the questions contained in your second and even third letter. Having then expressed therein my opinion that the world in general was unripe for any too staggering proof of occult power, there but remains to deal with the isolated individuals, who seek like yourself to penetrate behind the veil of matter into the world of primal causes, i.e., we need only consider now the cases of yourself and Mr. Hume. This gentleman also, has done me the great honour to address me by name, offering to me a few questions and stating the conditions upon which he would be willing to work for us seriously. But your motives and aspirations being of diametrically opposite character, and hence — leading to different results I must reply to each of you separately.

The first and chief consideration in determining us to accept or reject your offer lies in the inner motive which propels you to seek our instructions, and in a certain sense — our guidance. The latter in all cases under reserve — as I understand it, and therefore remaining a question independent of aught else. Now, what are your motives? I may try to define them in their general aspect, leaving details for further consideration. They are: (1) The desire to receive positive and unimpeachable proofs that there really are forces in nature of which science knows nothing; (2) The hope to appropriate them some day — the sooner the better, for you do not like to wait — so as to enable yourself — (a) to demonstrate their existence to a few chosen western minds;

(b) to contemplate future life as an objective reality built upon the rock of Knowledge — not of faith; and (c) to finally learn — most important this, among all your motives, perhaps, though the most occult and the best guarded — the whole truth about our Lodges and ourselves; to get, in short, the positive assurance that the "Brothers" — of whom everyone hears so much and sees so little — are real entities — not fictions of a disordered hallucinated brain. Such, viewed in their best light appear to us your "motives" for addressing me. And in the same spirit do I answer them, hoping that my sincerity will not be interpreted in a wrong way or attributed to anything like an unfriendly spirit.

To our minds then, these motives, sincere and worthy of every serious consideration from the worldly standpoint, appear — selfish. (You have to pardon me what you might view as crudeness of language, if your desire really is, that which you profess — to learn truth and get instruction from us — who belong to quite a different world from the one you move in.) They are selfish because you must be aware that the chief object of the T.S. is not so much to gratify individual aspirations as to serve our fellow men: and the real value of this term "selfish," which may jar upon your ear, has a peculiar significance with us which it cannot have with you; therefore, and to begin with, you must not accept it otherwise, than in the former sense. Perhaps you will better appreciate our meaning when told that in our view the highest aspirations for the welfare of humanity become tainted with selfishness if, in the mind of the philanthropist there lurks the shadow of desire for self benefit or a tendency to do injustice, even when these exist unconsciously to himself. Yet, you have ever discussed but to put down the idea of a universal Brotherhood, questioned its usefulness, and advised to remodel the T.S. on the principle of a college for the special study of occultism. This, my respected and esteemed friend and Brother — will never do!

Having disposed of "personal motives," let us analyze your "terms" for helping us to do public good. Broadly stated these terms are — first: that an independent Anglo-Indian Theosophical Society shall be founded through your kind services, in the management of which neither of our present representatives shall have any voice; and second, that one of us shall take the new body "under his patronage," — be — "in free and direct communication with its leaders," and afford them "direct proof that he really possessed that superior Knowledge of the forces of nature and the attributes of the human soul which would inspire them with proper confidence in his leadership." I have copied your own words, so as to avoid inaccuracy in defining the position.

From your point of view then, those terms may seem so very reasonable as to provoke no dissent; and, indeed, a majority of your countrymen — if not of Europeans — might share that opinion. What, will you say, can be more reasonable than to ask that teacher — anxious to disseminate his knowledge, and pupil — offering him to do so should be brought face to face and the one give the experimental proofs to the other that his instructions were correct? Man of the world, living in, and in fulI sympathy with it — you are undoubtedly right. But the men of this other world of ours, untutored in your modes of thought, and who find very hard at times to follow and appreciate the latter, can hardly be blamed for not responding as heartily to your suggestions as in your opinion they deserve. The first and most important of our objections is to be found in our Rules. True, we have our schools and teachers, our neophytes and shaberons (superior adepts), and the door is always opened to the right man who knocks. And, we invariably welcome the new comer; — only, instead of going over to him he has to come to us. More than that: unless he has reached that point in the path of occultism from which return is impossible, by his having irrevocably pledged himself to our association, we never — except in cases of utmost moment — visit him or even cross the threshold of his door in visible appearance.

Is any of you so eager for knowledge and the beneficent powers it confers as to be ready to leave your world and come into ours? Then let him come; but he must not think to return until the seal of the mysteries has locked his lips even against the chances of his own weakness or indiscretion. Let him come by all means, as the pupil to the master, and without conditions; or let him wait, as so many others have, and be satisfied with such crumbs of knowledge as may fall in his way.

And supposing you were thus to come — as two of your own countrymen have already — as Mad. B. did, and Mr. O. will; supposing you were to abandon all for the truth; to toil wearily for years up the hard steep road, not daunted by obstacles, firm under every temptation; were to faithfully keep within your heart the Secrets entrusted to you as a trial; had worked with all your energy and unselfishly to spread the truth and provoke men to correct thinking and a correct life — would you consider it just, if, after all your efforts, we were to grant to Mad. B. or Mr. O. as "outsiders" the terms you now ask for yourselves? Of these two persons one has already given three-fourths of a life, the other six years of manhood's prime to us, and both will so labour to the close of their days. Though ever working for their merited reward, yet never demanding it, nor murmuring when disappointed. Even though they respectively could accomplish far less than they do, would it not be a palpable injustice to ignore them as proposed in an important field of Theosophical effort? Ingratitude is not among our vices, nor do we imagine you would wish to advise it. . . .

Neither of them has the least inclination to interfere with the management of the contemplated Anglo-Indian Badly as the phenomena may have been shown, there have still been — as yourself admit — certain ones that are unimpeachable. The "raps on the table when no one touches it," and the "bell sounds in the air" have, you say, "always been regarded as satisfactory," etc., etc. From this, you reason that good "test phenomena" may easily be multiplied ad infinitum." So they can — in any place where our magnetic and other conditions are constantly offered; and where we do not have to act with and through an enfeebled female body in which, as we might say, a vital cyclone is raging much of the time. But, imperfect as may be our visible agent — and often most unsatisfactory and imperfect she is — yet, she is the best available at present, and her phenomena have for about half a century astounded and baffled some of the cleverest minds of the age. If ignorant of "journalistic etiquette" and the requirements of physical science, we still have an intuition of the effects of causes. Since you have written nothing about the very phenomena you properly regard as so convincing we have the right to infer that much precious power may be wasted without better results. By itself the "brooch" affair is — in the eyes of the world — completely useless, and time will prove me right. Your kind intention has entirely failed.

To conclude: we are ready to continue this correspondence if the view given of occult study as above suits you. Through the ordeal described, each of us, whatever his country, or race, has passed. Meanwhile, hoping in the best — yours faithfully as ever

KOOT' HOOMI LAL SING.

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Letter No. 3a

{October 20, 1880}

I saw K.H. in astral form on the night of 19th of October, 1880, — waking up for a moment but immediately afterwards being rendered unconscious again (in the body and conscious out of the body in the adjacent dressing-room where I saw another of the Brothers afterwards identified with one called "Serapis" by Olcott, — "the youngest of the chohans."

The note about the vision came the following morning, and during that day, the 20th, we went for a picnic to Prospect Hill, when the "pillow incident" occurred.

My Good "Brother,"

In dreams and visions at least, when rightly interpreted there can hardly be an "element of doubt." . . . . I hope to prove to you my presence near you last night by something I took away with me. Your lady will receive it back on the Hill. I keep no pink paper to write upon, but I trust modest white will do as well for what I have to say.

Koot' Hoomi Lal Sing.

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Letter No. 3b

{October 20, 1880}

My "Dear Brother,"

This brooch No. 2 — is placed in this very strange place simply to show to you how very easily a real phenomenon is produced and how still easier it is to suspect its genuineness. Make of it what you like even to classing me with confederates.

The difficulty you spoke of last night with respect to the interchange of our letters I will try to remove. One of our pupils will shortly visit Lahore and the N.W.P. and an address will be sent to you which you can always use; unless, indeed, you really would prefer corresponding through — pillows. Please to remark that the present is not dated from a "Lodge" but from a Kashmir valley.

Yours, more than ever,

Koot' Hoomi Lal Sing.

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Letter No. 3c

{October 20, 1880}

A few words more: why should you have felt disappointed at not receiving a direct reply to your last note? It was received in my room about half a minute after the currents for the production of the pillow dak had been set ready and in full play. And — unless I had assured you that a man of your disposition need have little fear of being "fooled" — there was no necessity for an answer. One favour I will certainly ask of you, and that is, that now that you — the only party to whom anything was ever promised — are satisfied that you should endeavour to disabuse the mind of the amorous Major and show to him his great folly and injustice.

Yours faithfully,

Koot' Hoomi Lal Singh.

Letter 4 Table of Contents

Letter No. 4

Apparently received 5th November {1880}.

Madam and Colonel O. arrived at our house, Allahabad, on December the 1st, 1880. Col. O. went to Benares on the 3rd — Madam joined him on the 11th. Both returned to Allahabad on 20th and stayed until 28th.

Amrita Saras, Oct. 29.

My Dear Brother,

I could assuredly make no objection to the style which you have kindly adopted, in addressing me by name, since it is, as you say, the outcome of a personal regard even greater than I have as yet deserved at your hands. The conventionalities of the weary world, outside our secluded "Ashrums," trouble us but little at any time; least of all now, when it is men not ceremony-masters, we seek, devotion, not mere observances. More and more a dead formalism is gaining ground, and I am truly happy to find so unexpected an ally in a quarter where, hitherto there have not been too many — among the highly educated classes of English Society. A crisis, in a certain sense, is upon us now, and must be met. I might say two crises — one, the Society's, the other for Tibet. For, I may tell you in confidence, that Russia is gradually massing her forces for a future invasion of that country under the pretext of a Chinese War. If she does not succeed it will be due to us; and herein, at least we will deserve your gratitude. You see then, that we have weightier matters than small societies to think about; yet, the T.S. must not be neglected. The affair has taken an impulse, which, if not well guided, might beget very evil issues. Recall to mind the avalanches of your admired Alps, that you have often thought about, and remember that at first their mass is small and their momentum little. A trite comparison you may say, but I cannot think of a better illustration, when viewing the gradual aggregation of trifling events, growing into a menacing destiny for the Theos. Soc. It came quite forcibly upon me the other day as I was coming down the defiles of Kouenlun — Karakorum you call them — and saw an avalanche tumble. I had gone personally to our chief to submit Mr. Hume's important offer, and was crossing over to Lhadak on my way home. What other speculations might have followed I cannot say. But just as I was taking advantage of the awful stillness which usually follows such cataclysm, to get a clearer view of the present situation and the disposition of the "mystics" at Simla, I was rudely recalled to my senses. A familiar voice, as shrill as the one attributed to Saraswati's peacock — which, if we may credit tradition, frightened off the King of the Nagas — shouted along the currents "Olcott has raised the very devil again! . . . The Englishmen are going crazy. . . . Koot Hoomi, come quicker and help me!" — and in her excitement forgot she was speaking English. I must say, that the "Old Lady's" telegrams do strike one like stones from a catapult!

What could I do but come? Argument through space with one who was in cold despair, and in a state of moral chaos was useless. So I determined to emerge from the seclusion of many years and spend some time with her to comfort her as well as I could. But our friend is not one to cause her mind to reflect the philosophical resignation of Marcus Aurelius. The fates never wrote that she could say: "It is a royal thing, when one is doing good to hear evil spoken of himself." . . . I had come for a few days, but now find that I myself cannot endure for any length of time the stifling magnetism even of my own countrymen. I have seen some of our proud old Sikhs drunk and staggering over the marble pavement of their sacred Temple. I have heard an English-speaking Vakil declaim against Yog Vidya and Theosophy, as a delusion and a lie, declaring that English Science had emancipated them from such "degrading superstitions," and saying that it was an insult to India to maintain that the dirty Yogees and Sunnyasis knew anything about the mysteries of nature; or that any living man can or ever could perform any phenomena! I turn my face homeward to-morrow.

The delivery of this letter may very possibly be delayed for a few days, owing to causes which it will not interest you for me to specify. Meanwhile, however, I have telegraphed you my thanks for your obliging compliance with my wishes in the matters you allude to in your letter of the 24th inst. I see with pleasure, that you have not failed to usher me before the world as a possible "confederate." That makes our number ten, I believe? But I must say, that your promise was well and loyally fulfilled. Received at Umritsur on the 27th inst., at 2 p.m., I got your letter about thirty miles beyond Rawul Pindee, five minutes later, and had an acknowledgment wired to you from Jhelum at 4 p.m. on the same afternoon. Our modes of accelerated delivery and quick communications are not then, as you will see, to be despised by the Western world, or even the Aryan, English-speaking and skeptical Vakils.

I could not ask a more judicial frame of mind in an ally than that in which you are beginning to find yourself. My Brother, you have already changed your attitude toward us in a distinct degree: what is to prevent a perfect mutual understanding one day!

Mr. Hume's proposition has been duly and carefully considered. He will, no doubt, advise you of the results as expressed in my letter, to him. Whether he will give our "modes of action" as fair a trial as yourself — is another question. Our Maha (the "Chief") has allowed me to correspond with both of you, and even — in case an Anglo-Indian Branch is formed — to come some day in personal contact with it. It now depends entirely on you. I cannot tell you more. You are quite right as to the standing of our friends in the Anglo-Indian world having been materially improved by the Simla visit; and, it is also true, though you modestly refrain from saying so, that we are mainly indebted to you for this. But quite apart from the unlucky incidents of the Bombay publications, it is not possible that there should be much more at best than a benevolent neutrality shown by your people toward ours. There is so very minute a point of contact between the two civilisations they respectively represent, that one might almost say they could not touch at all. Nor would they but for the few — shall I say eccentrics? — who, like you, dream better and bolder dreams than the rest; and provoking thought, bring the two together by their own admirable audacity. Has it occurred to you that the two Bombay publications, if not influenced, may at least have not been prevented, by those who might have done so, because they saw the necessity for that much agitation to effect the double result of making a needed diversion after the Brooch Grenade, and, perhaps, of trying the strength of your personal interest in occultism and theosophy? I do not say it was so; I but enquire whether the contingency ever presented itself to your mind. I have already caused it to be intimated to you that if the details given in the stolen letter had been anticipated in the Pioneer — a much more appropriate place, and where they would have been handled to better advantage — that document would not have been worth anyone's while to purloin for the Times of India, and therefore no names would have appeared.

Colonel Olcott is doubtless "out of time with the feelings of English people" of both classes; but nevertheless more in time with us than either. Him we can trust under all circumstances, and his faithful service is pledged to us come well, come ill. My dear Brother, my voice is the echo of impartial justice. Where can we find an equal devotion? He is one who never questions, but obeys; who may make innumerable mistakes out of excessive zeal but never is unwilling to repair his fault even at the cost of the greatest self-humiliation; who esteems the sacrifice of comfort and even life something to be cheerfully risked whenever necessary; who will eat any food, or even go without; sleep on any bed, work in any place, fraternise with any outcast, endure any privation for the cause. . . . I admit that his connection with an A. I. Branch would be "an evil" — hence, he will have no more to do with it than he has with the British, (London Branch). His connection will be purely nominal, and may be made more so, by framing your Rules more carefully than theirs; and giving your organization such a self-acting system of Government as would seldom if ever require any outside interference. But to make an independent A.I.B. with the self-same objects, either in whole or a part, as the Parent Society and with the same directors behind the scenes would be not only to deal a mortal blow at the Theos. Soc. but also put upon us a double labour and anxiety without the slightest compensating advantage that any of us can perceive. The Parent S. has never interfered in the slightest degree with the British T.S., nor indeed with any other Branch, whether religious or philosophical. Having formed, or caused to be formed a new branch, the Parent S. charters it (which it cannot now do without our Sanction and signatures), and then usually retires behind the scenes, as you would say. Its further connection with the subject branches is limited to receiving quarterly accounts of their doings and lists of the new Fellows, ratifying expulsions — only when specially called upon as an arbitrator to interfere on account of the Founders' direct connection with us — etc., etc.; it never meddles otherwise in their affairs except when appealed to as a sort of appelate court. And the latter depending on you, what is there to prevent your Society from remaining virtually independent? We are, even more generous than you British are to us. We will not force upon, nor even ask you to sanction a Hindu "Resident" in your Society, to watch the interests of the Parent Paramount Power when we have once declared you independent; but will implicitly trust to your loyalty and word of honour. But if you now so dislike the idea of a purely nominal executive supervision by Col. Olcott — an American of your own race —

you would surely rebel against dictation from a Hindu, whose habits and methods are those of his own people, and whose race, despite your natural benevolence, you have not yet learnt to tolerate, let alone to love or respect. Think well before you ask for our guidance. Our best, most learned. and highest adepts are of the races of the "greasy Tibetans"; and the Penjabi Singhs — you know the lion is proverbially a dirty and offensive beast, despite his strength and courage. Is it certain that your good compatriots would more easily forgive our Hindu solecisms in manners than those of their own kinsmen of America? If my observations have not misled I should say this was doubtful. National prejudices are not apt to leave one's spectacles undimmed. You say "how glad we should be, if that one (to guide you) were yourself," meaning your unworthy correspondent. My good Brother, are you certain, that the pleasant impression you now may have from our correspondence, would not instantly be destroyed upon seeing me? And which of our holy Shaberons has had the benefit of even the little university education and inkling of European manners that has fallen to my share? An instance: I desired Mad. B. to select among the two or three Aryan Punjabees who study Yog Vidya, and our natural mystics, one, whom — without disclosing myself to him too much I could designate as an agent between yourself and us, and whom I was anxious to dispatch to you, with a letter of introduction, and have him speak to you of Yoga and its practical effects. This young gentleman who is as pure as purity itself, whose aspirations and thoughts are of the most spiritual ennobling kind, and who merely through self-exertion is able to penetrate into the regions of the formless worlds — this young man is not fit for — a drawing-room. Having explained to him that the greatest good might result for his country if he helped you to organize a Branch of English mystics by proving to them practically to what wonderful results led the study of Yog, Mad. B. asked him in guarded and very delicate terms to change his dress and turban before starting for Allahabad — for, though she did not give him this reason, they were very dirty and slovenly. You are to tell Mr. Sinnett — she said — that you bring him a letter from our Brother K., with whom he corresponds. But, if he asks you anything either of him or the other Brothers answer him simply and truthfully that you are not allowed to expatiate upon the subject. Speak of Yog and prove to him what powers you have attained. This young man who had consented wrote later on the following curious letter: "Madam," he said, "you who preach the highest standards of morality, of truthfulness, etc., you would have me play the part of an imposter. You ask me to change my clothes at the risk of giving a false idea of my personality and mystifying the gentleman you send me to. And what if he asks me if I personally know Koot'hoomi, am I to keep silent and allow him to think I do? This would be a tacit falsehood, and guilty of that, I would be thrown back into the awful whirl of transmigration!" Here is an illustration of the difficulties under which we have to labour. Powerless to send to you a neophyte before you have pledged yourself to us — we have to either keep back or despatch to you one who at best would shock if not inspire you at once with disgust! The letter would have been given him by my own hand; he had but to promise to hold his tongue upon matters he knows nothing about and could give but a false idea of, and to make himself look cleaner. Prejudice and dead letter again. For over a thousand years, — says Michelet, — the Christian Saints never washed themselves! For how long will our Saints dread to change their clothes for fear of being taken for Marmaliks and the neophytes of rival and cleaner sects!

But these, our difficulties, ought not to prevent you from beginning your work. Colonel O. and Mad. B. seeming willing to become personally responsible for both yourself and Mr. Hume, if you yourself are ready to answer for the fidelity of any man your party may choose as the leader of the A.I.T.S., we are content that the trial shall be made. The field is yours and no one will be allowed to interfere with you except myself on behalf of our Chiefs when you once do me the honour to prefer me to the others. But before one builds the house he makes the plan. Suppose you draft a memorandum as to the constitution and policy of management of the A.I. Society you have in mind and submit it for consideration? If our Chiefs agree to it — and it is not surely they who would show themselves obstructive in the universal onward march, or retard this movement to a higher goal — then you will at once be chartered. But they must first see the plan; and I must ask you to remember that the new Society shall not be allowed to disconnect itself with the Parent Body, though you are at liberty to manage your affairs in your own way without fearing the slightest interference from its President so long as you do not violate the general Rules. And upon this point I refer you to Rule 9. This is the first practical suggestion coming from a Cis and Trans-Himalayan "cave-dweller" whom you have honoured with your confidence.

And now about yourself personally. Far be it from me to discourage one so willing as yourself by setting up impossible barriers to your progress. We never whine over the inevitable but try to make the best of the worst. And though we neither push nor draw into the mysterious domain of occult nature those who are unwilling;

never shrink from expressing our opinions freely and fearlessly, yet we are ever as ready to assist those who come to us; even to — agnostics who assume the negative position of "knowing nothing but phenomena and refuse to believe in anything else." It is true that the married man cannot be an adept, yet without striving to become "a Raja Yogi" he can acquire certain powers and do as much good to mankind and often more, by remaining within the precincts of this world of his. Therefore, shall we not ask you to precipitately change fixed habits of life, before the full conviction of its necessity and advantage has possessed you. You are a man to be left to lead himself, and may be so left with safety. Your resolution is taken to deserve much: time will effect the rest. There are more ways than one for acquiring occult knowledge. "Many are the grains of incense destined for one and the same altar: one falls sooner into the fire, the other later — the difference of time is nothing," remarked a great man when he was refused admission and supreme initiation into the mysteries. There is a tone of complaint in your question whether there ever will be a renewal of the vision you had, the night before the picnic day. Methinks, were you to have a vision nightly, you would soon cease to "treasure" them at all. But there is a far weightier reason why you should not have a surfeit — it would be a waste of our strength. As often as I, or any of us can communicate with you, whether by dreams, waking impressions, letters (in or out of pillows) or personal visits in astral form — it will be done. But remember that Simla is 7,000 feet higher than Allahabad, and the difficulties to be surmounted at the latter are tremendous. I abstain from encouraging you to expect too much, for, like yourself, I am loathe to promise what, for various reasons, I may not be able to perform.

The term "Universal Brotherhood" is no idle phrase. Humanity in the mass has a paramount claim upon us, as I try to explain in my letter to Mr. Hume, which you had better ask the loan of. It is the only secure foundation for universal morality. If it be a dream, it is at least a noble one for mankind and it is the aspiration of the true adept.

Yours faithfully,

Koot' Hoomi Lal Singh.

Letter 5 Table of Contents

Letter No. 5

{Received November 1880}

My Dear Friend,

I have your letter of November 19th, abstracted by our special osmosis from the envelope at Meerut, and yours to our "old lady" in its half empty registered shell safely sent on to Cawnpore, to make her swear at me. . . . . But she is too weak to play at the astral postman just now. I am sorry to see that she has once more proved inaccurate and led you into error; but this is chiefly my own fault, as I often neglect to give her an extra rub over her poor sick head, now, when she forgets and mixes up things more than usual. I did not ask her to tell you "to give up the idea of the A.I. Branch as nothing would come of it," but — "to give up the idea of the Anglo-Indian Branch in cooperation with Mr. Hume, as nothing would come of it." I will send you his answer to my letter and my final epistle and you will judge for yourself. After reading the latter, you will please seal and send it to him, simply stating that you do so on my behalf. Unless he asks the question you better not let him know you have read his letter. He may be proud of it, but — should not.

My dear, good friend, you must not bear me a grudge for what I say to him of the English in general. They are haughty. To us especially, so that we regard it as a national feature. And, you must not confound your own private views — especially those you have now — with those of your countrymen in general. Few, if any — (of course with such exceptions as yourself, where intensity of aspirations makes one disregard all other considerations) — would ever consent to have "a nigger" for a guide or leader, no more than a modern Desdemona would choose an Indian Othello nowadays. The prejudice of race is intense, and even in free England we are regarded as an "inferior race." And this same tone vibrates in your own remark about "a man of the people unused to refined ways" and "a foreigner but a gentleman," the latter being the man to be preferred. Nor would a Hindu be likely to have such a lack of "refined ways" disregarded in him were he "an adept" twenty times over again; and this very same trait appears prominent in Viscount Amberley's criticism on the "underbred Jesus." Had you paraphrased your sentence and said: — "a foreigner but no gentleman" (according to English notions) you could not have added as you did, that he would be thought the fittest. Hence, I say it again, that the majority of our Anglo-Indians, among whom the terms "Hindu" or "Asiatic" is generally coupled with a vague yet actual idea of one who uses his fingers instead of a bit of cambric, and who abjures soap — would most certainly prefer an American to a "greasy Thibetan." But you need not tremble for me. Whenever I make my appearance — whether astrally or physically — before my friend A. P. Sinnett, I will not forget to invest a certain sum in a square of the finest Chinese silk to carry in my Chogga pocket, nor to create an atmosphere of sandal-wood and Kashmir roses. This is the least I could do in atonement for my countrymen. But then, you see, I am but a slave of my masters; and if, allowed to gratify my own friendly feeling for you, and attend to you individually, I may not be permitted to do as much for others. Nay, to tell truth, I know I am not permitted to do so, and Mr. Hume's unfortunate letter has contributed much to it. There is a distinct group or section in our fraternity who attend to our casual and very rare accessions of another race and blood, and who brought across the threshold Captain Remington and two other Englishmen during this century. And these "Brothers" — do not habitually use floral essences.

So the test of the 27th was no test phenomenon? Of course, of course. But did you try to get, as you said you would, the original MSS. of the Jhelum dispatch? Though our hollow but plethoric friend, Mrs. B., were even proved to be my multum in parvo, my letter-writer, and to manufacture my epistles, yet, unless she were ubiquitous or had the gift of flying from Amritsur to Jhelum — a distance over 200 miles — in two minutes, how could she have written for me the dispatch in my own handwriting at Jhelum hardly two hours after your letter was received by her at Amritsur? This is why I was not sorry that you said you would send for it, for, with this dispatch in your possession, no "detractors" would be very strong, nor even the skeptical logic of Mr. Hume prevail.

Naturally you imagine that the "nameless revelation" — which now reechoes in England — would have been pounced upon far more eagerly than even it was, by the Times of India, if it revealed the names. But here again, I will prove you wrong. Had you first printed the account, the T. of I. could never have published "A Day with Madame B.," since that nice bit of American "sensationalism" would not have been written by Olcott at all. It would not have had its raison d'etre. Anxious to collect for his Society every proof corroborative of the occult powers of what he terms the 1st Section, and seeing that you remained silent, our gallant Colonel felt his hand itch until it brought everything to light, and — plunged everything into darkness and consternation! . . . "Et voici pourquoi nous n'irons plus au bois," as the French song goes.

Did you write "tune"? Well, well; I must ask you to buy me a pair of spectacles in London. And yet — out of "time" or out of "tune" is all one, as it seems. But you ought to adopt my old fashioned habit of "little lines" over the "m's." Those bars are useful, even though "out of tune and time" with modern caligraphy. Besides, bear in mind, that these my letters, are not written but impressed or precipitated and then all mistakes corrected.

We will not discuss, at present, whether your aims and objects are so widely different from those of Mr. Hume's; but if he may be actuated by "a purer and broader philanthropy," the way he sets to work to achieve these aims will never carry him beyond pure theoretical disquisitions upon the subject. No use now in trying to represent him in any other light. His letter that you will soon read — is, as I say to himself, "a monument of pride and unconscious selfishness." He is too just and superior a man to be guilty of petty vanities; but his pride climbs like that of the mythical Lucifer; and, you may believe me — if I have any experience in human nature — when I say, that this is Hume — au naturel. It is no hasty conclusion of mine based upon any personal feeling, but the decision of the greatest of our living adepts — the Shaberon of Than–La. Of whatever question he touches his treatment is the same: a stubborn determination to make everything either fit his own foregone conclusions or — sweep it away by a rush of ironical and adverse criticism. Mr. Hume is a very able man and — Hume to the core. Such a state of mind offers little attraction, as you will understand, to any of us who might be willing to come and help him.

No; I do not and never will "despise" any "feeling" however it may clash with my own principles, when it is expressed as frankly and openly as yours. You may be, and undoubtedly are, moved by more egotism than broad benevolence for mankind. Yet as you confess it without mounting any philanthropical stilts, I tell you candidly that you have far more chances than Mr. Hume to learn a good bit of occultism. I, for one, will do all I can for you, under the circumstances and restrained as I am by fresh orders. I will not tell you to give up this or that, for, unless you exhibit beyond any doubt the presence in you of the necessary germs it would be as useless as it would be cruel. But I say — TRY. Do not despair. Unite to yourself several determined men and women and make experiments in mesmerism and the usual so-called "spiritual" phenomena. If you act in accordance with prescribed methods you are sure to ultimately obtain results. Apart from this, I will do my best and — who knows! — Strong will creates and sympathy attracts even adepts, whose laws are antagonistic to their mixing with the uninitiated. If you are willing I will send you an Essay showing why in Europe more than anywhere else a Universal Brotherhood, i.e., an association of "affinities" of strong magnetic yet dissimilar forces and polarities centred around one dominant idea, is necessary for successful achievements in occult Sciences. What one will fail to do — the combined many will achieve. Of course you will have — in case you organize — to put up with Olcott at the head of the Parent Society, hence — nominally the President of all the existing Branches. But he will be no more your "leader " than he is the leader of the British Theos. Society, which has its own President, its own Rules and Bylaws. You will be chartered by him, and that's all. In some cases he will have to sign a paper or two — 4 times a year the accounts sent in by your Secretary; yet he has no right to interfere either with your administration or modes of action, so long as these do not clash with the general Rules, and he certainly has neither the ability nor the desire of being your leader. And, of course, you (meaning the whole Society) will have besides your own President chosen by yourselves, "a qualified professor of occultism" to instruct you. But, my good friend, abandon all notion that this "Professor" can bodily appear and instruct you for years to come. I may come to you personally — unless you drive me off, as Mr. Hume did — I cannot come to ALL. You may get phenomena and proofs, but even were you to fall into the old error and attribute them to "Spirits" we could but show you your mistake by philosophical and logical explanations; no adept would be allowed to attend your meetings.

Of course you ought to write your book. I do not see, why in any case it should be impracticable. Do so, by all means, and any help I can give you I will. You ought to put yourself immediately in correspondence with Lord Lindsay, and take the Simla phenomena and your correspondence with me as the subject. He is intensely interested in all such experiments, and being a theosophist and upon the General Council is sure to welcome your overtures. Take the ground that you belong to the T.S., that you are the widely known Editor of the Pioneer, and that, knowing how great an interest he takes in the "spiritual" phenomena you submit to his consideration the very extraordinary things which took place at Simla, with such additional details as have not been published. The best of the British Spiritualists could, with proper management, be converted into Theosophists. But neither Dr. Wyld, nor Mr. Massey, seem to have the requisite force. I advise you to confer personally with Lord Lindsay upon the theosophical situation at home and in India. Perhaps you two might work together: the correspondence I now suggest will pave the way.

Even if Madame B. might "be induced" to give the A.I. Society any "practical instruction" I am afraid she has remained too long a time outside the adytum to be of much use for practical explanations. However, though it does not depend upon me, I will see what I can do in this direction. But I fear she is sadly in need of a few months of recuperative villagiatura, on the glaciers, with her old Master before she can be entrusted with such a difficult task. Be very cautious with her in case she stops with you on her way down home. Her nervous system is terribly shaken, and she requires every care. Will you please spare me needless trouble by informing me of the year, date, and hour of Mrs. Sinnett's birth?

Ever yours sincerely,

KOOT' HOOMI.

Letter 6 Table of Contents

Letter No. 6

Received at Allahabad about December 10th, 1880.

No — you do not "write too much." I am only sorry to have so little time at my disposal; hence — to find myself unable to answer you as speedily as I otherwise would. Of course I have to read every word you write: otherwise I would make a fine mess of it. And whether it be through my physical or spiritual eyes the time required for it is practically the same. As much may be said of my replies. For, whether I "precipitate" or dictate them or write my answers myself, the difference in time saved is very minute. I have to think it over, to photograph every word and sentence carefully in my brain before it can be repeated by "precipitation." As the fixing on chemically prepared surfaes of the images formed by the camera requires a previous arrangement within the focus of the object to be represented, for otherwise — as often found in bad photographs — the legs of the sitter might appear out of all proportion with the head, and so on, so we have to first arrange our sentences and impress every letter to appear on paper in our minds before it becomes fit to be read. For the present, it is all I can tell you. When science will have learned more about the mystery of the lithophyl (or lithobiblion) and how the impress of leaves comes originally to take place on stones, then will I be able to make you better understand the process. But you must know and remember one thing: we but follow and servilely copy nature in her works.

No; we need argue no longer upon the unfortunate question of a "Day with Mad. B." It is the more useless, since you say, you have no right to crush and grind your uncivil and often blackguardly opponents in the Pioneer — even in your own defence — your proprietors objecting to the mention of occultism altogether. As they are Christians it is no matter of great wonder. Let us be charitable and hope they will get their own reward: die and become angels of right and Truth — winged paupers of the Christian heaven.

Unless you join several, and organize somehow or other, I am afraid I will prove but of little help to you practically. My dear friend, I have my "proprietors" also. For reasons best known to themselves they have set their foot upon the idea of teaching isolated individuals. I will correspond with you and give you proofs from time to time of my existence and presence. To teach or instruct you — is altogether another question. Hence to sit with your lady is more than useless. Your magnetisms are too similar and — you will get nothing.

I will translate my Essay and send it to you as soon as I can. Your idea of corresponding with your friends and fellows is the next best thing to do. But do not fail to write to Lord Lindsay.

I am a little "too hard" upon Hume, you say. Am I? His is a highly intellectual and, I confess, a spiritual nature too. Yet, he is every bit of him "Sir Oracle." It may be that it is the very exuberance of that great intellect which seeks issue through every chink, and never loses an opportunity to relieve the fullness of the brain, which overflows with thought. Finding in his quiet daily life too meagre a field with but "Moggy" and Davison to sow upon — his intellect bursts the dam and pounces upon every imagined event, every possible though improbable fact his imagination can suggest, to interpret it in his own conjectural way. Nor do I wonder that such a skilled workman in intellectual mosaic as he, finding suddenly, the most fertile of quarries, the most precious of colour-stores in this idea of our Fraternity and the T.S. — should pick out ingredients from it to daub our faces with. Placing us before a mirror which reflects us as he finds us in his own fertile imagination he says: "Now, you mouldy relics of a mouldy Past, look at yourselves how you really are!" A very, very excellent man our friend Mr. Hume, but utterly unfit for moulding into an adept.

As little, and far less than yourself does he seem to realize our real object in the formation of an A.I. Branch. The truths and mysteries of occultism constitute, indeed, a body of the highest spiritual importance, at once profound and practical for the world at large. Yet, it is not as a mere addition to the tangled mass of theory or speculation in the world of science that they are being given to you, but for their practical bearing on the interests of mankind. The terms "unscientific," "impossible," "hallucination," "impostor," have hitherto been used in a very loose, careless way, as implying in the occult phenomena something either mysterious and abnormal, or a premeditated imposture. And this is why our chiefs have determined to shed upon a few recipient minds more light upon the subject, and to prove to them that such manifestations are as reducible to law as the simplest phenomena of the physical universe. The wiseacres say: "The age of miracles is past," but we answer, it never existed! While not unparalleled, or without their counterpart in universal history, these phenomena must and WILL come with an overpowering influence upon the world of skeptics and bigots. They have to prove both destructive and constructive — destructive in the pernicious errors of the past, in the old creeds and superstitions which suffocate in their poisonous embrace like the Mexican weed nigh all mankind; but constructive of new institutions of a genuine, practical Brotherhood of Humanity where all will become co-workers of nature, will work for the good of mankind with and through the higher planetary Spirits — the only "Spirits" we believe in. Phenomenal elements, previously unthought of — undreamt of — will soon begin manifesting themselves day by day with constantly augmented force, and disclose at last the secrets of their mysterious workings. Plato was right: ideas rule the world; and, as men's minds will receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete, the world will advance: mighty revolutions will spring from them; creeds and even powers will crumble before their onward march crushed by the irresistible force. It will be just as impossible to resist their influx, when the time comes, as to stay the progress of the tide. But all this will come gradually on, and before it comes we have a duty set before us: that of sweeping away as much as possible the dross left to us by our pious forefathers. New ideas have to be planted on clean places, for these ideas touch upon the most momentous subjects. It is not physical phenomena but these universal ideas that we study, as to comprehend the former, we have to first understand the latter. They touch man's true position in the universe, in relation to his previous and future births; his origin and ultimate destiny; the relation of the mortal to the immortal; of the temporary to the eternal; of the finite to the Infinite; ideas larger, grander, more comprehensive, recognizing the universal reign of Immutable Law, unchanging and unchangeable in regard to which there is only an ETERNAL NOW, while to uninitiated mortals time is past or future as related to their finite existence on this material speck of dirt. This is what we study and what many have solved.

And now it is your province to decide which will you have: the highest philosophy or simple exhibitions of occult powers. Of course this is by far not the last word between us and — you will have time to think it over. The Chiefs want a "Brotherhood of Humanity," a real Universal Fraternity started; an institution which would make itself known throughout the world and arrest the attention of the highest minds. I will send you my Essay. Will you be my co-worker and patiently wait for minor phenomena? I think I foresee the answer. At all events the holy lamp of spiritual light burning in you (however dimly) there is hope for you, and — for me, also. Yes; put yourself in search after natives if there are no English people to be had. But think you, the spirit and power of persecution gone from this enlightened age? Time will prove. Meanwhile, being human I have to rest. I took no sleep for over 60 hours.

Ever yours truly,

KOOT' HOOMI.

{see Letter 93 for explanation of how this letter was written}

Table of Contents

Letter No. 7

Enclosed in Mad. B.'s from Bombay. Received January 30th, 1881.

There is no fault on your part in the whole matter. I am sorry you should think I am imputing any fault to you. If anything, you might almost feel you had to blame me for giving you hopes without having the shadow of such a right. I ought to have been less optimistic and then you would have been less sanguine in your expectations. I really feel as if I had wronged you! Happy, thrice happy and blessed are they, who have never consented to visit the world beyond their snow-capped mountains; whose physical eyes have never lost sight of for one day of the endless ranges of hills, and the long unbroken line of eternal snows! Verily and indeed, do they live in, and have found their Ultima Thule. . . .

Why say, you are a victim of circumstances, since nothing is yet seriously changed and that much, if not all, depends upon future developments? You were not asked or expected to revolutionise your life habits, but at the same time you were warned not to expect too much as you are. If you read between the lines you must have remarked what I said about the very narrow margin left to me for doing as I choose in the matter. But despond not, for it is all but a matter of time. The world was not evolved between two monsoons, my good friend. If you had come to me as a boy of 17, before the world had put its heavy hand upon you, your task would have been twenty-fold easier. And now, we must take you, and you must see yourself as you are, not as the ideal human image which our emotional fancy always projects for us upon the glass. Be patient, friend and brother; and I must repeat again — be our helpful co-worker; but in your own sphere, and according to your ripest judgment. Since our venerable Hobilgan has decreed in his wise prevision that I had no right to encourage you to enter a path, where you would have to roll the stone of Sisyphus, held back as you surely would be by your previous and most sacred duties — we really must wait. I know your motives are sincere and true, and that a real change, and in the right direction, has come over you, though even to yourself that change is imperceptible. And — the chiefs know it too. But, say they — motives are vapours, as attenuated as the atmospheric moisture: and, as the latter develops its dynamic energy for man's use only when concentrated and applied as steam or hydraulic power, so the practical value of good motives is best seen when they take the form of deeds. . . . "Yes, we will wait and see" — they say. And now I have told you as much as I ever had the right to say. You have more than once already helped this Society, even though you did not care for it yourself, and these deeds are upon record. Nay — they are even more meritorious in you, than they would [be] in anyone else, considering your well grounded ideas of that poor organization at present. And, you have thereby won a friend — one, far higher and better than myself — and one who will in future help me to defend your cause, able as he is, to do it far more effectually than I can, for he belongs to the "foreign Section."

I believe I have laid down for you the general lines on which we wish the work of organizing — if possible — the Anglo-Indian Branch to proceed: the details must be left to you — if you are still willing to help me.

If you have anything to say or ask any questions, you better write to me and I will always answer your letters. But, ask for no phenomena for a while, as it is but such paltry manifestations which now stand in your way.

Yours ever truly,

K. H.

Letter 8 Table of Contents

Letter No. 8

Received through Mad. B. About February 20th, 1881.

{Mr. and Mrs. Sinnett and their young son were on their way to England. During the trip Sinnett

wrote and published The Occult World. he returned alone July 5, Mrs. Sinnett being too ill to

travel.}

My dear friend, you are certainly on the right path: the path of deeds and actions, not mere words — may you live long and keep on!. . . I hope this will not be regarded by you as an encouragement to be "goody goody" — a happy expression which made me laugh — but you indeed step in as a kind of Kalka Avatar dispelling the shadows of "Kali-yug" — the black night of the perishing T.S. and driving away before you the fata morgana of its Rules. I must cause the word fecit to appear after your name in invisible but indelible characters on the list of the General Council, as it may prove some day a secret door to the heart of the sternest of Hobilgans. . . .

Though a good deal occupied — alas, as usual — I must contrive to send you a somewhat lengthy farewell epistle before you take up a journey that may have most important results — and not alone for our cause. . . . You understand, do you not, that it is no fault of mine if I cannot meet you as I would? Nor is it yours, but rather that of your life-long environment and a special delicate task I have been entrusted with since I knew you. Do not blame me then, if I do not show myself in more tangible shape, as not you alone, but I myself might desire! When I am not permitted to do so for Olcott — who has toiled for us these five years, how could I be for others who have undergone none of his training as yet? This applies equally to the case of the Lord Crawford and Balcarres, an excellent gentleman — imprisoned by the world. His is a sincere and noble, though may be a little too repressed nature. He asks what hope he may have? I say — every hope. For he has that within himself that so very few possess: an exhaustless source of magnetic fluid which, if he only had the time, he could call out in torrents and need no other master than himself. His own powers would do the work and his own great experience be a sure guide for him. But, he would have to guard against, and avoid every foreign influence — especially those antagonistic to the nobler study of MAN as an integral Brahm, the microcosm free and entirely independent of either the help or control of the invisible agencies the "new dispensation" (bombastic word!) calls "Spirits." His Lordship will understand my meaning without any further explanation: he is welcome to read this if he chooses, if the opinions of an obscure Hindu interest him. Were he a poor man, he might have become an English Dupotet, with the addition of great scientific attainments in exact science. But alas —! what the peerage has gained psychology has lost. . . . And yet it is not too late. But see, even after mastering magnetic science and giving his powerful mind to the study of the noblest branches of exact science, how even he has failed to lift more than a small corner of the veil of mystery. Ah! that whirling, showy, glittering world, full of insatiable ambition, where family and the State parcel out between them a man's nobler nature, as two tigers a carcase, and leave him without hope or light! How many recruits could we not have from it, if no sacrifice were exacted! His Lordship's letter to you exhales an influence of sincerity tinged with regret. This is a good man at heart with latent capacity for being a far better and a happier one. Had his lot not been cast as it has, and had his intellectual power all been turned upon Soul-culture, he would have achieved much more than he ever dreamt. Out of such material were adepts made in the days of Aryan glory. But I must dwell no longer upon this case; and I crave his Lordship's pardon if, in the bitterness of my regret I overstepped in any way the bounds of propriety, in this too free "psychometrical delineation of character" as the American mediums would express it . . . full measure only bounds excess" but — I dare go no farther. Ah, my too positive and yet impatient friend, if you but had such latent capacities!

The "direct communication" with me of which you write in your supplement note, and the "enormous advantage" that it would bring "to the book itself, if it can be conceded," would be so conceded at once, did it depend but of me alone. Though it is not often judicious to repeat oneself, yet I am so anxious that you should realize the present impracticability of such an arrangement, were it even conceded by our Superiors, that I will indulge in a brief retrospect of principles stated.

We might leave out of the question the most vital point — one, you would hesitate perhaps to believe — that the refusal concerns as much your own salvation (from the standpoint of your worldly material considerations) as my enforced compliance with our time honoured Rules. Again I might cite the case of Olcott (who, had he not been permitted to communicate face to face — and without any intermediary — with us, might have subsequently shown less zeal and devotion but more discretion) and his fate up to the present. But, the comparison would doubtless appear to you strained. Olcott — would you say — is an enthusiast, a stubborn, unreasoning mystic, who goes headlong before him, blindfold, and who will not allow himself to look forward with his own eyes. While you are a sober, matter-of-fact man of the world, the son of your generation of cool thinkers; ever keeping fancy under the curb, and saying to enthusiasm: "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." . . . Perhaps you are right — perhaps not. "No lama knows where the ber-chhen will hurt him until he puts it on," says a Thibetan proverb. However, let that pass, for I must tell you now that for opening "direct communication" the only possible means would be: (1) For each of us to meet in our own physical bodies. I being where I am, and you in your own quarters, there is a material impediment for me. (2) For both to meet in our astral form — which would necessitate your "getting out" of yours, as well as my leaving my body. The spiritual impediment to this is on your part. (3) To make you hear my voice either within you or near you as "the old lady" does. This would be feasible in either of two ways: (a) My chiefs have but to give me permission to set up the conditions — and this for the present they refuse; or (b) for you to hear my voice, i.e., my natural voice without any psycho-physiological tamasha being employed by me (again as we often do among ourselves). But then, to do this, not only have one's spiritual senses to be abnormally opened, but one must himself have mastered the great secret — yet undiscovered by science — of, so to say abolishing all the impediments of space; of neutralizing for the time being the natural obstacle of intermediary particles of air and forcing the waves to strike your ear in reflected sounds or echo. Of the latter you know as yet only enough to regard this as an unscientific absurdity. Your physicists, not having until recently mastered acoustics in this direction, any further than to acquire a perfect (?) knowledge of the vibration of sonorous bodies and of reverberations through tubes, may sneeringly ask: "Where are your indefinitely continued sonorous bodies, to conduct through space the vibrations of the voice?" We answer that our tubes, though invisible, are indestructible and far more perfect than those of modern physicists, by whom the velocity of the transmission of mechanical force through the air is represented as at the rate of 1,100 feet a second and no more — if I mistake not. But then, may there not be people who have found more perfect and rapid means of transmission, from being somewhat better acquainted with the occult powers of air (akas) and having plus a more cultivated judgment of sounds? But of this we will argue later on.

There is still more serious inconvenience; an almost insurmountable obstacle — for the present, and one, under which I myself am labouring, while even I do no more than correspond with you, a simple thing that any other mortal could do. It is my utter inability to make you understand my meaning in my explanation of even physical phenomena, let alone the spiritual rationale. This is not the first time I mention it. It is, as though a child should ask me to teach him the highest problems of Euclid before he had even begun studying the elementary rules of arithmetic. Only the progress one makes in the study of arcane knowledge from its rudimental elements, brings him gradually to understand our meaning. Only thus, and not otherwise, does it, strengthening and refining those mysterious links of sympathy between intelligent men — the temporarily isolated fragments of the universal Soul and the Cosmic Soul itself — bring them into full rapport. Once this established, then only will these awakened sympathies serve, indeed, to connect MAN with — what for the want of a European scientific word more competent to express the idea, I am again compelled to describe as that energetic chain which binds together the material and Immaterial Kosmos, — Past, Present, and Future — and quicken his perceptions so as to clearly grasp, not merely all things of matter, but of Spirit also. I feel even irritated at having to use these three clumsy words — past, present and future! Miserable concepts of the objective phases of the Subjective Whole, they are about as ill adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine carving. Oh, my poor, disappointed friend, that you were already so far advanced on THE PATH, that this simple transmission of ideas should not be encumbered by the conditions of matter, the union of your mind with ours — prevented by its induced incapabilities! Such is unfortunately the inherited and self-acquired grossness of the Western mind; and so greatly have the very phrases expressive of modern thoughts been developed in the line of practical materialism, that it is now next to impossible either for them to comprehend or for us to express in their own languages anything of that delicate seemingly ideal machinery of the Occult Kosmos. To some little extent that faculty can be acquired by the Europeans through study and meditation but — that's all. And here is the bar which has hitherto prevented a conviction of the theosophical truths from gaining wider currency among Western nations; caused theosophical study to be cast aside as useless and

fantastic by Western philosophers. How shall I teach you to read and write or even comprehend a language of which no alphabet palpable, or words audible to you have yet been invented! How could the phenomena of our modern electrical science be explained to — say, a Greek philosopher of the days of Ptolemy were he suddenly recalled to life — with such an unbridged hiatus in discovery as would exist between his and our age? Would not the very technical terms be to him an unintelligible jargon, an abracadabra of meaningless sounds, and the very instruments and apparatuses used, but "miraculous" monstrosities? And suppose, for one instant, I were to describe to you the hues of those colour rays that lie beyond the so-called "visible spectrum"

— rays invisible to all but a very few even among us; to explain, how we can fix in space any one of the so-called subjective or accidental colors — the complement, (to speak mathematically) moreover, of any other given colour of a dichromatic body (which alone sounds like an absurdity), could you comprehend, do you think, their optical effect or even my meaning? And, since you see them not, such rays, nor can know them, nor have you any names for them as yet in Science, if I were to tell you: — "My good friend Sinnett, if you please, without moving from your writing desk, try search for, and produce before your eyes the whole solar spectrum decomposed into fourteen prismatic colors (seven being complementary), as it is but with the help of that occult light that you can see me from a distance as I see you" . . . . what think you, would be your answer? What would you have to reply? Would you not be likely enough to retort by telling me in your own quiet, polite way, that as there never were but seven (now three) primary colours, which, moreover, have never yet by any known physical process been seen decomposed further than the seven prismatic hues — my invitation was as "unscientific" as it was "absurd"? Adding that my offer to search for an imaginary solar "complement" being no compliment to your knowledge of physical science — I had better, perhaps, go and search for my mythical "dichromatic" and solar "pairs" in Thibet, for modern Science has hitherto been unable to bring under any theory even so simple a phenomenon as the colors of all such dichromatic bodies. And yet — truth knows — these colors are objective enough!

 

So you see, the insurmountable difficulties in the way of attaining not only Absolute but even primary knowledge in Occult Science, for one situated as you are. How could you make your self understood — command in fact, those semi-intelligent Forces, whose means of communicating with us are not through spoken words but through sounds and colours, in correlations between the vibrations of the two? For sound, light and colours are the main factors in forming these grades of Intelligences, these beings, of whose very existence you have no conception, nor are you allowed to believe in them — Atheists and Christians, materialists and Spiritualists, all bringing forward their respective arguments against such a belief — Science objecting stronger than either of these to such a "degrading superstition"!

Thus, because they cannot with one leap over the boundary walls attain to the pinnacles of Eternity; because we cannot take a savage from the centre of Africa and make him comprehend at once the Principia of Newton or the "Sociology" of Herbert Spencer; or make an unlettered child write a new Iliad in old Achaian Greek; or an ordinary painter depict scenes in Saturn or sketch the inhabitants of Arcturus — because of all this our very existence is denied! Yes; for this reason are believers in us pronounced impostors and fools, and the very science which leads to the highest goal of the highest knowledge, to the real tasting of the Tree of Life and Wisdom — is scouted as a wild flight of Imagination!

Most earnestly do I ask you not to see in the above a mere ventilation of personal feeling. My time is precious and I have none to lose. Still less ought you to see in this an effort to disgust or dissuade you from the noble work you have just begun. Nothing of the kind; for what I now say may avail for as much as it can and no more; but — vera pro gratis — I WARN you, and will say no more, apart from reminding you in a general way, that the task you are so bravely undertaking, that Missio in partis infidelium — is the most ungrateful, perhaps, of all tasks! But, if you believe in my friendship for you, if you value the word of honour of one who never — never during his whole life polluted his lips with an untruth, then do not forget the words I once wrote to you (see my last letter) of those who engaged themselves in the occult sciences: he who does it "must either reach the goal or perish. Once fairly started on the way to the great Knowledge, to doubt is to risk insanity; to come to a dead stop is to fall; to recede is to tumble backward, headlong into an abyss." Fear not, — if you are sincere, and that you are — now. Are you as sure of yourself, as to future?

But I believe it quite time to turn to less transcendental and what you would call less gloomy and more mundane matters. Here, no doubt, you will be much more at home. Your experience, your training, your intellect, your knowledge of the exterior world, in short, all combine to aid you in the accomplishment of the task you have undertaken. For, they place you on an infinitely higher level than myself as regards the consideration of writing a book, after your Society's "own heart." Though the interest I take in it may amaze some who are likely to retort on me and my colleagues with our own arguments, and to remark that our "boasted elevation over the common herd" (our friend Mr. Hume's words) — above the interests and passions of ordinary humanity, must militate against our having any conception of the ordinary affairs of life — yet I confess that I do take an interest in this book and its success, as great as in the success in life of its future author.

I hope that at least you will understand that we (or most of us) are far from being the heartless, morally dried up mummies some would fancy us to be. "Mejnoor" is very well, where he is — as an ideal character of a thrilling — in many respects truthful story. Yet, believe me, few of us would care to play the part in life of a dessicated pansy between the leaves of a volume of solemn poetry. We may not be quite the "boys" — to quote Olcott's irreverent expression when speaking of us — yet none of our degree are like the stern hero of Bulwer's romance. While the facilities of observation secured to some of us by our condition certainly give a greater breadth of view, a more pronounced and impartial, as a more widely spread humaneness — for answering Addison, we might justly maintain that it is . . . "the business of 'magic' to humanize our natures with compassion" for the whole mankind as all living beings, instead of concentrating and limiting our affections to one predilected race — yet few of us (except such as have attained the negation of Moksha) can so far enfranchise ourselves from the influence of our earthly connection as to be insusceptible in various degrees to the higher pleasures, emotions, and interests of the common run of humanity. Until final emancipation reabsorbs the Ego, it must be conscious of the purer sympathies called out by the esthetic effects of high art, its tenderest cords respond to the call of the holier and nobler human attachments. Of course, the greater the progress towards deliverance, the less this will be the case, until, to crown all, human and purely individual personal feelings — blood-ties and friendship, patriotism and race predilection — all will give away, to become blended into one universal feeling, the only true and holy, the only unselfish and Eternal one — Love, an Immense Love for humanity — as a Whole! For it is "Humanity" which is the great orphan, the only disinherited one upon this Earth, my friend. And it is the duty of every man who is capable of an unselfish impulse, to do something, however little, for its welfare. Poor, poor humanity! It reminds me of the old fable of the war between the Body and its members: here too, each limb of this huge "Orphan" — fatherless and motherless — selfishly cares but for itself. The body uncared for suffers eternally, whether the limbs are at war or at rest. Its suffering and agony never cease. . . . And who can blame it — as your materialistic philosophers do — if, in this everlasting isolation and neglect it has evolved gods, unto whom "it ever cries for help, but is not heard!" . . . Thus — "Since there is hope for man only in man I would not let one cry whom I could save! . . ."

Yet I confess that I, individually, am not yet exempt from some of the terrestrial attachments. I am still attracted toward some men more than toward others, and philanthropy as preached by our Great Patron — "the Saviour of the World — The Teacher of Nirvana and the Law . . . ." has never killed in me either individual preferences of friendship, love — for my next of kin, or the ardent feeling of patriotism for the country — in which I was last materially individualized. And, in this connection, I may some day, unasked, offer a bit of advice to my friend Mr. Sinnett, to whisper into the ear of the Editor of the PIONEER En attendant — may I beg the former to inform Dr. Wyld, the Prest. of the British T.S., of the few truths concerning us as shown above? Will you kindly undertake to persuade this excellent gentleman, that not one of the humble "dew drops" which, assuming under various pretexts the form of vapour, have at various periods disappeared in the space to congeal in the white Himalayan clouds, have ever tried to slip back into the shining Sea of Nirvana through the unhealthy process of hanging by the legs or by making unto themselves another "coat of Skin" out of the Sacred cow-dung of the "thrice holy" cow! The British President labours under the most original ideas about us, whom he persists in calling "Yogis," without allowing the slightest margin to the enormous differences which exist even between "Hatha and Raj Yog." This mistake must be laid at the door of Mrs. B. — the able editor of the Theosophist; who fills up her volumes with the practices of divers Sannyasis and other "blessed ones" from the plains, without ever troubling herself with a few additional lines of explanation.

And now, to still more important matters. Time is precious and material (I mean writing material) is still more so. "Precipitation" — in your case having become unlawful; lack of — whether ink or paper — standing no better chance for "tamasha," and I, being far away from home, and at a place where a stationer's shop is less needed than breathing air, our correspondence threatens to break very abruptly, unless I manage my stock in hand judiciously. A friend promises to supply me in case of great need with a few stray sheets, memento relics of his grandfather's will, by which he disinherited him and thus made his "fortune." But, as he never wrote one line but once, he says — for the last eleven years, except on such "double superfin glace" made at Thibet as you might irreverently mistake for blotting paper in its primitive days, and that the will is drawn upon a like material — we might as well turn to your book at once. Since you do me the favour of asking my opinion, I may tell you that the idea is an excellent one. Theosophy needs such help, and the results will be what you anticipate in England as well. It may also help our friends in Europe — generally.

I lay no restrictions upon your making use of anything I may have written to you or Mr. Hume, having full confidence in your tact and judgment as to what should be printed and how it should be presented. I must only ask you for reasons upon which I must be silent (and I am sure you will respect that silence) not to use one single word or passage from my last letter to you — the one written after my long silence, no date, and the first one forwarded to you by our "old lady." I just quoted from it at page 4. Do me the favour, if my poor epistles are worth preserving, to lay it by in a separate and sealed envelope. You may have to unseal it only after a certain period of time has elapsed. As to the rest — I relinquish it to the mangling tooth of criticism. Nor would I interfere with the plan you have roughly sketched out in your mind. But I would strongly recommend you in its execution to lay the greatest stress upon small circumstances — (could you oblige me with some receipt for blue ink?!) which tend to show the impossibility of fraud or conspiracy. Reflect well, how bold a thing it is to endorse phenomena as adeptic which the Spiritsts have already stamped as proofs of mediumship and skeptics as legerdemain. You should not omit one jot or tittle of collateral evidence that supports your position, something you have neglected doing in your "A" letter in the Pioneer. For instance, my friend tells me that it was a thirteenth cup (1) and the pattern unmatchable, in Simla at least. The pillow was chosen by yourself — and yet the word "pillow" occurs in my note to you, just as the word "tree" or anything else would have been substituted, had you chosen another depository, instead of the pillow. You will find all such trifles serving you as the most powerful shield for yourself against ridicule and sneers. Then you will of course, aim to show that this Theosophy is no new candidate for the world's attention, but only the restatement of principles which have been recognised from the very infancy of mankind. The historic sequence ought to be succinctly yet graphically traced through the successive evolutions of philosophical schools, and illustrated with accounts of the experimental demonstrations of occult power ascribed to various thaumaturgists. The alternate breakings-out and subsidences of mystical phenomena, as well as their shiftings from one centre to another of population, show the conflicting play of the opposing forces of spirituality and animalism. And lastly it will appear that the present tidal-wave of phenomena, with its varied effects upon human thought and feeling, made the revival of Theosophical enquiry an indispensable necessity. The only problem to solve is the practical one, of how best to promote the necessary study, and give to the spiritualistic movement a needed upward impulse. It is a good beginning to make the inherent capabilities of the inner, living man better comprehended. To lay down the scientific proposition that since akrshu (attraction) and Prshu (repulsion) are the law of nature, there can be no intercourse or relations between clean and unclean Souls — embodied or disembodied; and hence, ninety-nine hundredths of supposed spiritual communications, are, prima facie false. Here is as great a fact to work upon as you can find, and it cannot be made too plain. So, while a better selection might have been made for the Theosophist in the way of illustrative anecdotes, as, for instance, well authenticated historical cases, yet the theory of turning the minds of phenomenalists into useful and suggestive channels away from mere mediumistic dogmatism was the correct one.

What I meant by the "Forlorn Hope" was that when one regards the magnitude of the task to be undertaken by our theosophical volunteers, and especially the multitudinous agencies arrayed, and to be arrayed, in opposition, we may well compare it, to one of those desperate efforts against overwhelming odds that the true soldier glories to attempt. You have done well to see the "large purpose" in the small beginnings of the T.S. Of course, if we had undertaken to found and direct it inpropria persona very likely it would have accomplished more and made fewer mistakes, but we could not do this, nor was it the plan: our two agents are given the task and left — as you now are — to do the best they could under the circumstances. And much has been wrought. Under the surface of Spiritualism, runs a current that is wearing a broad channel for itself. When it reappears above ground its effects will be apparent. Already many minds like yours are pondering It is not quite accurate that by having such minds in the Society they would be "under conditions more favourable for observation" for us. Rather put it, that by the act of joining other sympathisers in this organization they are stimulated to effort and incite each other to investigate. Unity always gives strength: and since Occultism in our days resembles a "Forlorn Hope," union and co-operation are indispensable. Union does indeed imply a concentration of vital and magnetic force against the hostile currents of prejudice and fanaticism.

I wrote a few words in the Maratha boy's letter, only to show you that he was obeying orders in submitting his views to you. Apart from his exaggerated idea about huge fees, his letter is in a way worth considering. For Damodar is a Hindu — and knows the mind of his people at Bombay; though the Bombay Hindus are about as unspiritual a group as can be found in all India. But, like the devoted enthusiastic lad he is, he jumped after the misty form of his own ideas even before I could give them the right direction. All quick thinkers are hard to impress — in a flash they are out and away in "full cry," before half understanding what one wants to have them think. This is our trouble with both Mrs. B. and O. The frequent failure of the latter to carry out the suggestions he sometimes receives — even when written, is almost wholly due to his own active mentality preventing his distinguishing our impressions from his own conceptions. And Missus B.'s trouble is (apart from physical ailment) that she sometimes listens to two or more of our voices at once; e.g., this morning while the "Disinherited," whom I have accommodated with space for a footnote — was talking with her on an important matter, she lent an ear to one of ours, who is passing through Bombay from Cyprus, on his way to Thibet — and so got both in an inextricable confusion. Women do lack the power of concentration.

And now, my good friend and co-worker — an irremediable paperless condition obliges me to close. Farewell, until your return, unless you will be content, as hitherto, to pass our correspondence through the accustomed channel. Neither of us would prefer this. But until authority is given to change it must be even so. Were she to die to-day — and she is really sick — you would not receive more than two, or at most three more letters from me (through Damodar or Olcott, or through already established emergent agencies), and then, that reservoir of force being exhausted — our parting would be FINAL. However, I will not anticipate; events might bring us together somewhere in Europe. But whether we meet or not, during your trip, be assured that my personal good wishes will attend you. Should you actually need now and again the help of a happy thought as your work progresses, it may, very likely be, osmosed into your head — if sherry bars not the way, as it has already done at Allahabad.

May the "deep Sea" deal gently with you and your house.

Ever yours,

K. H.

P.S. — The "friend" of whom the Lord Lindsay speaks in his letter to you, is, I am sorry to say, a true skunk mephitis, who managed to perfume himself with ess-bouquet in his presence during their palmy days of friendship, and so avoided being recognised by his natural stench. It is Home — the medium, a convert to Roman Catholicism, then to Protestantism, and finally to the Greek Church. He is the bitterest and most cruel enemy O. and Mad. B. have, though he has never met either of them. For a certain time he succeeded in poisoning the Lord's mind, and prejudiced him against them. I do not like saying anything behind a man's back, for it looks like back-biting. Yet in view of some future events I feel it my duty to warn you, for this one is an exceptionally bad man — hated by the Spiritualists and mediums as much as he is despised by those  who have learned to know him. Yours is a work which clashes directly with his. Though a poor sickly cripple, a paralysed wretch, his mental faculties are as fresh and as alive as ever to mischief. He is no man to stop before a slanderous accusation — however vile and lying. So — beware.

 H.

 

Letter 9

Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. So, at least, Mrs. S. says; I myself did not search the crockery shops; so too, the bottle filled with water I filled with my own hand — was one of the four only that the servants had in the baskets, and these four bottles had but just been brought back empty by these peons from their fruitless search after water, when you sent them to the little brewery with a note. Hoping to be excused for the interference and with my most respectful regards to the lady.

Yours, etc.

THE "DISINHERITED" (return to text)

Letter No. 9

From K.H., first letter received on return to India, July 8th, 1881, while staying with Madame B. at

Bombay for a few days.

Welcome good friend and brilliant author, welcome back! Your letter at hand, and I am happy to see your personal experience with the "Elect" of London proved so successful. But, I foresee, that more than ever now, you will become an incarnate note of interrogation. Beware! If your questions are found premature by the powers that be, instead of receiving my answers in their pristine purity you may find them transformed into yards of drivel. I am too far gone to feel a hand on my throat whenever trenching on the limits of forbidden topics; not enough to avoid feeling myself — uncomfortably so — like a worm of yesterday before our "Rock of Ages," my Cho-Khan. We must all be blindfolded before we can pass onward; or else, we have to remain outside.

And now, what about the book? Le quart d'heure de Rabelais is striking, and finds me, if not quite insolvent, yet quasi-trembling at the idea that the first instalment offered may be found below the mark; the price claimed — inadequate with my poor resources; myself led pro bono publico to trespass beyond the terrible — "hitherto shalt thou go, and no further," and the angry wave of the Cho-Khan's wrath swamping me blue ink and all! I fondly hope you will not make me lose "my situation."

Quite so. For, I have a dim notion that you will be very impatient with me. I have a very clear notion that you need not be. It is one of the unfortunate necessities of life that imperial needs do sometimes force one apparently to ignore the claims of friendship, not to violate one's word, but to put off and lay aside for a while the too impatient expectations of neophytes as of inferior importance. One such need that I call imperial is the need of your future welfare; the realization of the dream dreamt by you in company with S.M. That dream — shall we call it a vision? — was, that you, and Mrs. K. — why forget the Theos. Soc.? — "are all parts of a large plan for the manifestations of occult philosophy to the world." Yes; the time must come, and it is not far — when all of you will comprehend aright the apparently contradictory phases of such manifestations; forced by the evidence to reconcile them. The case not being so at present, meanwhile — remember: it is because we are playing a risky game and the stakes are human souls that I ask you to possess yours in patience. Bearing in mind that I have to look after your "soul" and mine too, I propose to do so at whatever cost, even at the risk of being misunderstood by you as I was by Mr. Hume. The work is made the more difficult by my being a lonely labourer in the field, and that, as long as I fail to prove to my superiors that you, at least — mean business; that you — are in right good earnest. As I am refused higher help, so will you fail to easily find help in that Society in which you move, and which you try to move. Nor will you find, for a certain time much joy in those directly concerned. Our old lady is weak and her nerves are worked to a fiddle string; so is her jaded brain. H.S.O. is far away — in exile — fighting his way back to salvation — compromised more than you imagine by his Simla indiscretions — and establishing theosoph. schools. Mr. Hume — who once promised to become a champion fighter in that Battle of Light against Darkness — now preserves a kind of armed neutrality wondrous to behold. Having made the mirific discovery that we are a body of antidiluvian Jesuits of fossiles — self-crowned with oratorial flourishes, he rested but to accuse us of intercepting his letters to H.P.B.! However, he finds some comfort by thinking "what a jolly argument he shall have elsewhere (Angel Linnean ornithological Society, perhaps) with the entity which is represented by the name "Koothoomi." Verily has our very intellectual, once mutual friend, a flood of words at his command which would suffice to float a troop-ship of oratorious fallacies. Nevertheless — I respect him. . . . But who next? C. C. Massey? But then he is the hapless parent of about half a dozen of illegitimate brats. He is a most charming, devoted friend; a profound mystic; a generous, noble minded man, a gentleman — as they say — every inch of him; true as gold; every requisite for a student of occultism, but none for an adept, my good friend. Be it as it may, his secret is his own, and I have no right to divulge it. Dr. Wyld? — a christian to the back bone. Hood? — a sweet nature, as you say; a dreamer, and an idealist in mystic matters, yet — no worker. S. Moses? Ah! here we are. S.M. has nearly upset the theosoph. ark set afloat three years back: and, he will do his level best to do it over again -— our Imperator notwithstanding. You doubt? Listen.

His is a weird, rare nature. His occult psychical energies are tremendous; but they have lain dormant, folded up within him and unknown to himself, when, some eight years or so, Imperator threw his eye upon him and bid his spirit soar. Since then, a new life has been in him, a dual existence, but his nature could not be changed. Brought up as a theological student, his mind was devoured by doubts. Earlier, he betook himself to Mount Athos, where, immuring himself in a monastery, he studied Greek Eastern religion, and it is there that he was first noticed by his "Spirit guide" (!!) Of course, Greek casuistry failed to solve his doubts, and he hurried on to Rome, — popery satisfying him as little. From thence he wandered to Germany with the same negative results. Giving up dry christian theology he did not give up its presumable founder with all that. He needed an ideal and he found it in the latter. For him Jesus is a reality, a once embodied, now a disembodied Spirit, who, "furnished him with an evidence of his personal identity" — he thinks, — in no less a degree than other "Spirits" — Imperator among the rest — have. Nevertheless, neither the religions of Jesus nor yet his words, as recorded in the Bible and believed by S.M. authentic — are fully accepted by that restless Spirit of his. Imperator, on whom the same fate devolved later on, fares no better. His mind is too positive. Once impressed it becomes easier to efface characters engraved upon titanium than impressions made upon his brain.

Whenever under the influence of Imperator — he is all alive to the realities of Occultism, and the superiority of our Science over Spiritualism. As soon as left alone and under the pernicious guidance of those he firmly believes having identified with disembodied Souls — all becomes confusion again! His mind will yield to no suggestions, no reasonings but his own, and those are all for Spiritualistic theories. When the old theological fetters had dropped off, he imagined himself a free man. Some months later, he became the humble slave and tool of the "Spirits"! It is but when standing face to face with his inner Self that he realizes the truth that there is something higher and nobler than the prittle-prattle of pseudo Spirits. It was at such a moment that he heard for the first the voice of Imperator, and it was, as he himself puts it: "as the voice of God speaking to his inner Self." That voice has made itself familiar to him for years, and yet he very often heeds it not. A simple query: Were Imper. what he believes, nay — knows him to be, he thinks, — would not he have made S.M.'s will completely subservient to his own by this time? Alone the adepts, i.e. the embodied Spirits — are forbidden by our wise and intransgressible laws to completely subject to themselves another and a weaker will, — that of free born man. The latter mode of proceeding is the favourite one resorted to by the "Brothers of the Shadow," the Sorcerers, the Elementary Spooks, and, as an isolated exception — by the highest Planetary Spirits, those, who can no longer err. But these appear on Earth but at the origin of every new humankind; at the junction of, and close of the two ends of the great cycle. And, they remain with man no longer than the time required for the eternal truths they teach to impress themselves so forcibly upon the plastic minds of the new races as to warrant them from being lost or entirely forgotten in ages hereafter, by the forthcoming generations. The mission of the planetary Spirit is but to strike the KEY NOTE OF TRUTH. Once he has directed the vibration of the latter to run its course uninterruptedly along the catenation of that race and to the end of the cycle — the denizen of the highest inhabited sphere disappears from the surface of our planet — till the following "resurrection of flesh." The vibrations of the Primitive Truth are what your philosophers name "innate ideas."

Imperator, then, had repeatedly told him that "in occultism alone he should seek for, and will find a phase of truth not yet known to him." But that did not prevent S.M. at all from turning his back upon occultism whenever a theory of it clashed with one of his own preconceived Spiritualistic ideas. To him mediumship appeared as the Charter of his Soul's freedom, as resurrection from Spiritual death. He had been allowed to enjoy it only so far as it was necessary for the confirmation of his faith; promised that the abnormal would yield to the normal; ordered to prepare for the time when the Self within him will become conscious of its spiritual, independent existence, will act and talk face to face with its Instructor, and will lead its life in Spiritual Spheres normally and without external or internal mediumship at all. And yet once conscious of what he terms "external Spirit action" he recognized no more hallucination from truth, the false from the real: confounding at times Elementals and Elementaries, embodied from disembodied Spirit, though he had been oft enough told of, and warned against "those spirits that hover about the Earth's sphere" — by his "Voice of God." With all that he firmly believes to have invariably acted under Imper.'s direction, and that such spirits as have come to him came by his "guide's" permission. In such a case H.P.B. was there by Imper.'s consent? And how do you reconcile the following contradictions. Ever since 1876, acting under direct orders, she tried to awake him to the reality of what was going on around and in him. That she must have acted either according to or against Imper.'s will — he must know, as in the latter case she might boast of being stronger, more powerful than his "guide" who never yet protested against the intrusion. Now what happens? Writing to her from Isle of Wight, in 1876, of a vision lasting for over 48 consecutive hours he had, and during which he walked about, talked as usual, but did not preserve the slightest remembrance of anything external, he asks her to tell him whether it was a vision or a hallucination. Why did he not ask + I-r? "You can tell me for you were there," he says. . . . "You — changed, yet yourself — if you have a Self. . . . I suppose you have, but into that I do not pry." . . . At another time he saw her in his own library looking at him, approaching and giving him some masonic signs of the Lodge he knows. He admits that he "saw her as clearly as he saw Massey — who was there." He saw her on several other occasions, and sometimes knowing it was H.P.B. he could not recognize her. "You seem to me from your appearance as from your letters so different at times, the mental attitudes so various, that it is quite conceivable to me, as I am authoritatively told, that you are a bundle of Entities. . . . I have absolute faith in you." In every letter of his he clamoured for a "living Brother" to her unequivocal statement that there was one already having charge of him, he strongly objected. When helped to get free from his too material body, absent from it for hours and days sometimes his empty machine run during that period from afar and by external, living influence, — as soon as back, he would begin labouring under the irradicable impression of having been all that time the vehicle for another intelligence, a disembodied not embodied Spirit, truth never once flashing across his mind. "Imperator," he wrote to her, "traverses your idea about mediumship. He says there should be no real antagonism between the medium and the adept." Had he used the word "Seer" instead of "medium" the idea would have been rendered more correctly, for a man becomes rarely an adept without being born a natural Seer. Then again. In September, 1875, he knew nothing of the Brothers of the Shadow — our greatest, most cruel, and — why not confess — our most potential Enemies. In that year he actually asked the old lady whether Bulwer had been eating underdone pork chops and dreaming when he described "that hideous Dweller of the Threshold." "Make yourself ready," she answered — "in about twelve months more you will have to face and fight with them." In October, 1876, they had begun their work upon him. "I am fighting" — he wrote — "a hand to hand battle with all the legions of the Fiend for the past three weeks. My nights are made hideous with their torments, temptations and foul suggestions. I see them all around, glaring at me, gabbling, howling, grinning! Every form of filthy suggestion, of bewildering doubt, of mad and shuddering fear is upon me . . . I can understand Zanoni's Dweller now . . . I have not wavered yet . . . and their temptations are fainter, the presence less near, the horror less. . . ."

One night she had prostrated herself before her Superior, one of the few they fear, praying him to wave his hand across the ocean, lest S.M. should die, and the Theos. Soc. lose its best subject. "He must be tried" was the answer. He imagines that + Imper. had sent the tempters because he S.M. was one of those Thomases who must see; he would not believe that + could not help their coming. Watch over him he did — he could not drive them away unless the victim, the neophyte himself, proved the strongest. But did these human fiends in league with the Elementaries prepare him for a new life as be thought they would? Embodiments of those adverse influences which beset the inner Self struggling to be free and to progress, they would never have returned had he successfully conquered them by asserting his own independent WILL, by giving up his mediumship, his passive will. Yet they did.

You say of + — "Imperator — is certainly not his (S.M.'s) astral soul, and assuredly, also, he is not from a lower World than our own — not an earth-bound Spirit." No one ever said he was anything of the kind.

H.P.B. never told you he was S.M.'s astral soul, but that what he often mistook for + was his own higher Self, his divine atman — not linga Sarira or astral Soul, or the Kama rupa the independent doppelganger — again.

+ cannot contradict himself; + cannot be ignorant of the truth, so often misrepresented by S.M.; + cannot preach the occult Sciences and then defend mediumship, not even in that highest form described by his pupil. Mediumship is abnormal. When in further development the abnormal has given way to the natural, the controls are shaken off, and passive obedience is no longer required, then the medium learns to use his will, to exercise his own power, and becomes an adept. The process is one of development and the neophyte has to go to the end. As long as he is subject to occasional trance — he cannot be an adept. S.M. passes the two-thirds of his life in Trance.

To your question — Is Imperator "a Planetary Spirit" and "may a Planetary Spirit have been humanly incarnated," I will first say that there can be no planetary Spirit that was not once material or what you call human. When our great Buddha — the patron of all the adepts, the reformer and the codifier of the occult system, reached first Nirvana on earth, he became a Planetary Spirit; i.e. — his spirit could at one and the same time rove the interstellar spaces in full consciousness, and continue at will on Earth in his original and individual body. For the divine Self had so completely disfranchised itself from matter that it could create at will an inner substitute for itself, and leaving it in the human form for days, weeks, sometimes years, affect in no wise by the change either the vital principle or the physical mind of its body. By the way, that is the highest form of adeptship man can hope for on our planet. But it is as rare as the Buddhas themselves, the last Khobilgan who reached it being Sang-Ko-Pa of Kokonor (XIV Century), the reformer of esoteric as well as of vulgar Lamaism. Many are those who "break through the egg-shell," few who, once out are able to exercise their Nirira namastaka fully, when completely out of the body. Conscious life in Spirit is as difficult for some natures as swimming is for some bodies. Though the human frame is lighter in its bulk than water, and that every person is born with the faculty, so few develop in themselves the art of treading water that death by drowning is the most frequent of accidents. The planetary Spirit of that kind (the Buddha like) can pass at will into other bodies — of more or less etherialized matter, inhabiting other regions of the Universe. There are many other grades and orders, but there is no separate and eternally constituted order of Planetary Spirits. Whether Imperator is a "planetary" embodied or disembodied, whether he is an adept in flesh or out of it, I am not at liberty to say, any more than he would himself to tell S.M. who I am, or may be, or even who H.P.B. is. If he himself chooses to be silent on that subject S.M. has no right to ask me. But then our friend, S.M. ought to know. Nay: he firmly believes he does. For in his intercourse with that personage there came a time when not satisfied with + assurances, or content to respect his wishes that he, Imperator & Co. should remain impersonal and unknown save by their assumed titles, S.M. wrestled with him, Jacob-like, for months on the point of that spirit's identity. It was the Biblical flim-flam all over again. "I pray thee tell me thy name" — and though answered: "Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?" — what's in a name? — he allowed S.M. to label him like a portmanteau. And so, he is at rest now, for he has "seen God face to face"; who, after wrestling, and seeing that he prevailed not, said "Let me go" and was forced to come to the terms offered by Jacob S. Moses. I strongly advise you for your own information to put that question to your friend. Why should he be "anxiously awaiting" my reply, since he knows all about + ? Did not that "Spirit" tell him a story one day, — a queer story, something what he may not divulge about himself and forbid him ever mentioning it? What more does he want? That fact, that he seeks to learn through me the true nature of +, is a pretty good proof in itself that he is not as sure of his identity as he believes he is, or rather would make believe he is. Or is the question a blind? — which?

I may answer you, what I said to G. {T}. Fechner one day, when he wanted to know the Hindu view on what he had written — "You are right; . . . 'every diamond, every crystal, every plant and star has its own individual soul, besides man and animal . . .' and, 'there is a hierarchy of souls from the lowest forms of matter up to the World-Soul' . . .; but, you are mistaken when adding to the above the assurance that 'the spirits of the departed hold direct psychic communication with Souls that are still connected with a human body' — for, they do not." The relative position of the inhabited worlds in our Solar System would alone preclude such a possibility. For I trust you have given up the queer idea — a natural result of early Xtian training — that there can possibly be human intelligences inhabiting purely Spiritual regions? You will then as readily understand the fallacy of the christians — who would burn immaterial Souls in a material physical hell — as the mistake of the more educated Spiritualists, who lullaby themselves with the thought that any other but the denizens of the two worlds immediately interlinked with our own can possibly communicate with them? However etherial and purified of gross matter they may be, the pure Spirits are still subject to the physical and universal laws of matter. They cannot if even they would span the abyss that separates their worlds from ours. They can be visited in Spirit, their Spirit cannot descend and reach us. They attract, they cannot be attracted, their Spiritual polarity being an insuperable difficulty in the way. (By-the-bye you must not trust Isis literally. The book is but a tentative effort to divert the attention of the Spiritualists from their preconceptions to the true state of things. The author was made to hint and point out in the true direction, to say what things are not, not what they are. Proof reader helping, a few real mistakes have crept in as on page 1, chapter 1, volume 1, where divine Essence is made emanating from Adam instead of the reverse.)

Once fairly started upon that subject, I will endeavour to explain to you still clearer where lies the impossibility. You will thus be answered in regard to both Planetary Spirits and — seance room "Spirits."

The cycle of intelligent existences commences at the highest worlds or planets — the term "highest" meaning here the most spiritually perfect. Evoluting from cosmic matter — which is akasa, the primeval not the secondary plastic medium, or Ether of Science instinctively suspected, unproven as the rest — man first evolutes from this matter in its most sublimated state, appearing at the threshold of Eternity as a perfectly Etherial — not Spiritual Entity, say — a Planetary Spirit. He is but one remove from the universal and Spiritual World Essence — the Anima Mundi of the Greeks, or that which humanity in its spiritual decadence has degraded into a mythical personal God. Hence, at that stage, the Spirit — man is at best an active Power, an immutable, therefore an unthinking Principle (the term "immutable" being again used here but to denote that state for the time being, the immutability applying here but to the inner principle which will vanish and disappear as soon as the speck of the material in him will start on its cyclic work of Evolution and transformation). In his subsequent descent, and in proportion of the increase of matter he will assert more and more his activity. Now, the congeries of the star-worlds (including our own planet) inhabited by intelligent beings may be likened to an orb or rather an epicycloid formed of rings like a chain — worlds inter-linked together, the totality representing an imaginary endless ring, or circle. The progress of man throughout the whole — from its starting to its closing points meeting on the highest point of its circumference — is what we call the Maha Yug or Great Cycle, the Kuklos, whose head is lost in a crown of absolute Spirit, and its lowest point of circumference in absolute matter — to viz.: the point of cessation of action of the active principle. If using a more familiar term we call the great cycle the Macrokosm and its component parts or the interlinked star worlds Microkosms, the occultists' meaning in representing each of the latter as perfect copies of the former will become evident. The great is the Prototype of the smaller cycles: and as such, each star world has in its turn its own cycle of Evolution which starts with a purer and ends with a grosser or more material nature. As they descend, each world presents itself naturally more and more shadowy, becoming at the "antipodes" absolute matter. Propelled by the irresistible cyclic impulse the Planetary Spirit has to descend before he can reascend. On his way he has to pass through the whole ladder of Evolution, missing no rung, to halt at every star world as he would at a station; and, besides the unavoidable cycle of that particular and every respective star world to perform in it his own "life-cycle" to, viz.: returning and reincarnating as many times as he fails to complete his round of life in it, as he dies on it before reaching the age of reason as correctly stated in Isis. Thus far Mrs. Kingsford's idea that the human Ego is being reincarnated in several successive human bodies is the true one. As to its being reborn in animal forms after human incarnation it is the result of her loose way of expressing things and ideas. Another, WOMAN — all over again. Why, she confounds "Soul and Spirit," refuses to discriminate between the animal and the Spiritual Egos the Jiv-atma (or Linga-Sharir) and the Kama-Rupa (or Atma-rupa), two as different things as body and mind, and — mind and thought are! That is what happens. After circling, so to say, along the arc of the cycle, circling along and within it (the daily and yearly rotation of the Earth is as good an illustration as any) when the Spirit-man reaches our planet, which is one of the lowest, having lost at every station some of the etherial and acquired an increase of material nature, both spirit and matter have become pretty much equilibrized in him. But then, he has the Earth's cycle to perform; and, as in the process of involution and evolution downward, matter is ever striving to stifle Spirit, when arrived to the lowest point of his pilgrimage, the once pure Planetary Spirit will be found dwindled to — what Science agrees to call a primitive or Primordial man — amidst a nature as primordial — speaking geologically, for physical nature keeps pace with the physiological as well as the Spiritual man, in her cyclic career. At that point the great Law begins its work of selection. Matter found entirely divorced from Spirit is thrown over into the still lower worlds — into the sixth "GATE" or "way of rebirth" of the vegetable and mineral worlds, and of the primitive animal forms. From thence, matter ground over in the work-shop of nature proceeds soulless back to its Mother-Fount; while the Egos purified of their dross are enabled to resume their progress once more onward. It is here, then, that the laggard Egos perish by the millions. It is the solemn moment of the "survival of the fittest," the annihilation of those unfit. It is but matter (or material man) which is compelled by its own weight to descend to the very bottom of the "circle of necessity" to there assume animal form; as to the winner of that race throughout the worlds — the Spiritual Ego, he will ascend from star to star, from one world to another, circling onward to rebecome the once pure planetary Spirit, then higher still, to finally reach its first starting point, and from thence — to merge into MYSTERY. No adept has ever penetrated beyond the veil of primitive Kosmic matter. The highest, the most perfect vision is limited to the universe of Form and Matter.

But my explanation does not end here. You want to know why it is deemed supremely difficult if not utterly impossible for pure disembodied Spirits to communicate with men through mediums or Phantomosophy. I say, because

(a) On account of the antagonistic atmospheres respectively surrounding these worlds;

(b) Of the entire dissimilarity of physiological and spiritual conditions; and

(c) Because that chain of worlds I have just been telling you about, is not only an epicycloid but an elliptical orbit of existences, having, as every ellipse, not one but two points — two foci, which can never approach each other; man being at one focus of it and pure Spirit at the other.

To this you might object. I can neither help it, nor change the fact, but there is still another and far mightier impediment. Like a rosary composed of white and black beads alternating with each other, so that concatenation of worlds is made up of worlds of CAUSES and worlds of EFFECTS, the latter — the direct result produced by the former. Thus it becomes evident that every sphere of Causes — and our Earth is one — is not only interlinked with, and surrounded by, but actually separated from its nearest neighbor — the higher sphere of Causality — by an impenetrable atmosphere (in its spiritual sense) of effects bordering on, and even interlinking — never mixing with the next sphere: for one is active, the other — passive, the world of causes positive, that of effects — negative. This passive resistance can be overcome but under conditions, of which your most learned Spiritualists have not the faintest idea. All movement is, so to say polar. It is very difficult to convey my meaning to you at this point; but I will go to the end. I am aware of my failure to bring before you these — to us — axiomatical truths — in any other form but that of a simple logical postulate — if so much — they being capable of absolute and unequivocal demonstration, but to the highest Seers. But, I'll give you food for thinking if nothing else.

The intermediary spheres, being but the projected shadows of the Worlds of Causes — are negatived by the last. They are the great halting places, the stations in which the new Self-conscious Egos to be — the self-begotten progeny of the old and disembodied Egos of our planet — are gestated. Before the new phoenix, reborn of the ashes of its parents can soar higher, to a better, more spiritual, and perfect world — still a world of matter — it has to pass through the process of a new birth, so to say; and, as on our earth, where the two-thirds of infants are either stillborn or die in infancy, so in our "world of effects." On earth it is the physiological and mental defects, the sins of the progenitors which are visited upon the issue: in that land of shadows, the new and yet unconscious Ego-foetus becomes the just victim of the transgressions of its old Self, whose Karma — merit and demerit — will alone weave out its future destiny. In that world, my good friend, we find but unconscious, self-acting, ex-human machines, souls in their transition state, whose dormant faculties and individuality lie as a butterfly in its chrysalis; and Spiritualists would yet have them talk sense! Caught at times, into the vortex of the abnormal "mediumistic" current, they become the unconscious echoes of thoughts and ideas crystallized around those present. Every positive, well-directed mind is capable of neutralizing such secondary effects in a seance room. The world below ours is worse yet. The former is harmless at least; it is more sinned against by being disturbed, than sinning; the latter allowing the retention of full consciousness as being a hundred-fold more material is positively dangerous. The notions of hells and purgatory, of paradises and resurrections are all caricatured, distorted echoes of the primeval, one Truth taught humanity in the infancy of its races by every First Messenger — the Planetary Spirit mentioned on the reverse of page the third — and whose remembrance lingered in the memory of man as Elu of the Chaldees, Osiris the Egyptian, Vishnu, the first Buddhas and so on.

The lower world of effects is the sphere of such distorted Thoughts; of the most sensual conceptions, and pictures; of anthropomorphic deities, the out-creations of their creators, the sensual human minds of people who have never outgrown their brutehood on earth. Remembering thoughts are things — have tenacity, coherence, and life, — that they are real entities — the rest will become plain. Disembodied — the creator is attracted naturally to its creation and creatures; sucked in — by the Maelstrom dug out by his own hands. . . . But I must pause, for volumes would hardly suffice to explain all that was said by me in this letter.

In reference to your wonder that the views of the three mystics "are far from being identical," what does the fact prove? Were they instructed by disembodied, pure, and wise Spirits — even by those of one remove from our earth on the higher plane — would not the teachings be identical? The question arising: "May not Spirits as well as men differ in ideas?" Well, then their teaching — aye, of the highest of them since they are the "guides" of the three great London Seers — will not be more authoritative than those of mortal men. "But, they may belong to different spheres?" Well; if in the different spheres contradictory doctrines are propounded, these doctrines cannot contain the Truth, for Truth is One, and cannot admit of diametrically opposite views; and pure Spirits who see it as it is, with the veil of matter entirely withdrawn from it — cannot err. Now, if we allow of different aspects or portions of the Whole Truth being visible to different agencies or intelligences, each under various conditions, as for example various portions of the one landscape develope themselves to various persons, at various distances and from various standpoints — if we admit the fact of various or different agencies (individual Brothers for instance) endeavouring to develope the Egos of different individuals, without subjecting entirely their wills to their own (as it is forbidden) but by availing themselves of their physical, moral, and intellectual idiosyncracies; if we add to this the countless kosmical influences which distort and deflect all efforts to achieve definite purposes: if we remember, moreover, the direct hostility of the Brethren of the Shadow always on the watch to perplex and haze the neophyte's brain, I think we shall have no difficulty in understanding how even a definite spiritual advance may to a certain extent lead different individuals to apparently different conclusions and theories.

Having confessed to you that I had no right to interfere with Imperator's secrets and plans, I must say that so far, however, he has proved the wisest of us. Had our policy been the same, had I, for instance allowed you to infer and then believe (without stating anything positive myself) that I was a "disembodied angel" — a Spirit of pellucid electroidal essence, from the Superstellar phantasmatical zone — we would both be happier. You

— you would not have worried your head as to "whether agencies of that sort will always remain necessary" and I — would not find myself under the disagreeable necessity of having to refuse a friend a "personal interview and direct communication." You might have implicitly believed anything coming from me; and I would have felt less responsible for you before my "GUIDES." However, time will show what may or may not be done in that direction. The book is out, and we have to patiently wait for the results of that first serious shot at the enemy. Art Magic and Isis emanating from women, and as it was believed, Spiritualists — could never hope for a serious hearing. Its effects will at first be disastrous enough, for the gun will recoil and the shot rebounding will strike the author and his humble hero, who are not likely to flinch. But it will also graze the old lady, reviving in the Anglo-Indian press last year's outcry. The Thersites and literary Philistines will go hard to work, the flings, squibs and coups de bec falling thick upon her — though aimed at you alone, as the Editor of the Pioneer is far from being beloved by his colleagues of India. Spiritualistic papers have already opened the campaign in London and the Yankee editors of the organs of "Angels" will follow suit, the heavenly "controls" ejaculating their choicest scandalum magnatum. Some men of science — least of all their admirers — the parasites who bask in the sun and dream they are themselves that sun — are not likely to forgive you the sentence — really much too flattering — which ranges the comprehension of a poor, unknown Hindoo "so far beyond the science and philosophy of Europe, that only the broadest-minded representatives of either will be able to realise the existence of such powers in man, etc." But what of that? It was all foreseen and was to be expected. When the first hum and ding-dong of adverse criticism is hushed, thoughtful men will read and ponder over the book, as they have never pondered over the most scientific efforts of Wallace and Crookes to reconcile modern science with Spirits, and — the little seed will grow and thrive.

 

In the meantime I do not forget my promises to you. As soon as installed in your sleeping chamber I will try and. . . . [Here three lines in the original letter have been completely erased apparently by the writer thereof.

 

— ED]. I hope to be permitted to do so much for you. If, for generations we have "shut out the world from the Knowledge of our Knowledge," it is on account of its absolute unfitness; and if, notwithstanding proofs given, it still refuses yielding to evidence, then will we at the End of this cycle retire into solitude and our kingdom of silence once more. . . . We have offered to exhume the primeval strata of man's being, his basic nature, and lay bare the wonderful complications of his inner Self — something never to be achieved by physiology or even psychology in its ultimate expression — and demonstrate it scientifically. It matters not to them, if the excavations be so deep, the rocks so rough and sharp, that in diving into that, to them, fathomless ocean, most of us perish in the dangerous exploration; for it is we who were the divers and the pioneers and the men of science have but to reap where we have sown. It is our mission to plunge and bring the pearls of Truth to the surface; theirs — to clean and set them into scientific jewels. And, if they refuse to touch the ill­shapen, oyster shell, insisting that there is, nor cannot be any precious pearl inside it, then shall we once more wash our hands of any responsibility before humankind. For countless generations hath the adept builded a fane of imperishable rocks, a giant's Tower of INFINITE THOUGHT, wherein the Titan dwelt, and will yet, if need be, dwell alone, emerging from it but at the end of every cycle, to invite the elect of mankind to cooperate with him and help in his turn enlighten superstitious man. And we will go on in that periodical work of ours; we will not allow ourselves to be baffled in our philanthropic attempts until that day when the foundations of a new continent of thought are so firmly built that no amount of opposition and ignorant malice guided by the Brethren of the Shadow will be found to prevail.

 

But until that day of final triumph someone has to be sacrificed — though we accept but voluntary victims. The ungrateful task did lay her low and desolate in the ruins of misery, misapprehension, and isolation: but she will have her reward in the hereafter for we never were ungrateful. As regards the Adept — not one of my kind, good friend, but far higher — you might have closed your book with those lines of Tennyson's "Wakeful Dreamer" — you knew him not —

"How could ye know him? Ye were yet within The narrower circle; he had well-nigh reached The last, which, with a region of white flame, Pure, without heat, into a larger air Up-burning, and an ether of black blue, Investeth and ingirds all other lives. . . ."

I'll close. Remember then on the 17th of July and. . . . [Here again seven lines in the original have been deleted. — ED.] . . . ., to you will become the sublimest of realities. Farewell.

Sincerely yours,

K. H.

Letter 10 Table of Contents

Letter No. 10

(Transcribed from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. — Ed)

NOTES BY K.H. ON A "PRELIMINARY CHAPTER" HEADED "GOD" BY HUME, INTENDED TO PREFACE AND EXPOSITION OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY (ABRIDGED)

Received at Simla, 1881-? '82 {Aug-Sep ’82}.

{Hume's article appeared in the November Theosophist.}

Neither our philosophy nor ourselves believe in a God, least of all in one whose pronoun necessitates a capital H. Our philosophy falls under the definition of Hobbes. It is preeminently the science of effects by their causes, and of causes by their effects, and since it is also the science of things deduced from first principle, as Bacon defines it, before we admit any such principle we must know it, and have no right to admit even its possibility. Your whole explanation is based upon one solitary admission made simply for argument's sake in October last. You were told that our knowledge was limited to this our solar system: ergo as philosophers who desired to remain worthy of the name we could not either deny or affirm the existence of what you termed a supreme, omnipotent, intelligent being of some sort beyond the limits of that solar system. But if such an existence is not absolutely impossible, yet unless the uniformity of Nnature's law breaks at those limits we maintain that it is highly improbable. Nevertheless we deny most emphatically the position of agnosticism in this direction, and as regards the solar system. Our doctrine knows no compromises. It either affirms or denies, for it never teaches but that which it knows to be the truth. Therefore, we deny God both as philosophers and as Buddhists. We know there are planetary and other spiritual lives, and we know there is in our system no such thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm is not a God, but absolute immutable law, and Iswar is the effect of Avidya and Maya, ignorance based upon the great delusion. The word God was invented to designate the unknown cause of those effects which man has either admired or dreaded without understanding them, and since we claim and that we are able to prove what we claim — i.e. the knowledge of that cause and causes we are in a position to maintain there is no God or Gods behind them.

The idea of God is not an innate but an acquired notion, and we have but one thing in common with theologies — we reveal the infinite. But while we assign to all the phenomena that proceed from the infinite and limitless Space, Duration and motion, material, natural, sensible and known (to us at least) causes, the theists assign them spiritual, super-natural and unintelligible an unknown causes. The God of the Theologians is simply and imaginary power, un loup garou as d'Holbach expressed it — a power which has never yet manifested itself. Our chief aim is to deliver humanity of this nightmare, to teach man virtue for its own sake, and to walk in life relying on himself instead of leaning on a theological crutch, that for countless ages was the direct cause of nearly all human misery. Pantheistic we may be called — agnostic NEVER. If people are willing to accept and to regard as God our ONE LIFE immutable and unconscious in its eternity they may do so and thus keep to one more gigantic misnomer. But then they will have to say with Spinoza that there is not and that we cannot conceive any other substance than God; or as that famous and unfortunate philosopher says in his fourteenth proposition, "Praeter Deum nulla dari neque concipi potest substantia" — and thus become Pantheists . . . . who but a Theologian nursed on mystery and the most absurd supernaturalism can imagine a self existent being of necessity infinite and omnipresent outside the manifested boundless universe. The word infinite is but a negative which excludes the idea of bounds. It is evident that a being independent and omnipresent cannot be limited by anything which is outside of himself; that there can be nothing exterior to himself — not even vacuum, then where is there room for matter? for that manifested universe even though the latter limited. If we ask the theist is your God vacuum, space or matter, they will reply no. And yet they hold that their God penetrates matter though he is not himself matter. When we speak of our One Life we also say that it penetrates, nay is the essence of every atom of matter; and that therefore it not only has correspondence with matter but has all its properties likewise, etc. — hence is material, is matter itself. How can intelligence proceed or emanate from non-intelligence — you kept asking last year. How could a highly intelligent humanity, man the crown of reason, be evolved out of blind unintelligent law or force! But once we reason on that line, I may ask in my turn, how could congenital idiots, non-reasoning animals, and the rest of "creation" have been created by or evoluted from, absolute Wisdom, if the latter is a thinking intelligent being, the author and ruler of the Universe? How? says Dr. Clarke in his examination of the proof of the existence of the Divinity. "God who hath made the eye, shall he not see? God who hath made the ear shall he not hear?" But according to this mode of reasoning they would have to admit that in creating an idiot God is an idiot; that he who made so many irrational beings, so many physical and moral monsters, must be an irrational being. . . .

. . . We are not Adwaitees, but our teaching respecting the one life is identical with that of the Adwaitee with regard to Parabrahm. And no true philosophically trained Adwaitee will ever call himself an agnostic, for he knows that he is Parabrahm and identical in every respect with the universal life and soul — the macrocosm is the microcosm and he knows that there is no God apart from himself, no creator as no being. Having found Gnosis we cannot turn our backs on it and become agnostics.

. . . . Were we to admit that even the highest Dyan Chohans are liable to err under a delusion, then there would be no reality for us indeed and the occult sciences would be as great a chimera as that God. If there is an absurdity in denying that which we do not know it is still more extravagant to assign to it unknown laws.

According to logic "nothing" is that of which everything can truly be denied and nothing can truly be affirmed. The idea therefore either of a finite or infinite nothing is a contradiction in terms. And yet according to theologians "God, the self existent being, is a most simple, unchangeable, incorruptible being; without parts, figure, motion, divisibility, or any other such properties as we find in matter. For all such things do plainly and necessarily imply finiteness in their very notion and are utterly inconsistent with complete infinity." Therefore the God here offered to the adoration of the XIXth century lacks every quality upon which man's mind is capable of fixing any judgment. What is this in fact but a being of whom they can affirm nothing that is not instantly contradicted. Their own Bible their Revelation destroys all the moral perceptions they heap upon him, unless indeed they call those qualities perfections that every other man's reason and common sense call imperfections, odious vices and brutal wickedness. Nay more he who reads our Buddhist scriptures written for the superstitious masses will fail to find in them a demon so vindictive, unjust, so cruel and so stupid as the celestial tyrant upon whom the Christians prodigally lavish their servile worship and on whom their theologians heap those perfections that are contradicted on every page of their bible. Truly and veritably your theology has created her God but to destroy him piecemeal. Your church is the fabulous Saturn, who begets children but to devour them.

(THE UNIVERSAL MIND) — A few reflections and arguments ought to support every new idea. For instance we are sure to be taken to task for the following apparent contradictions. (1) We deny the existence of a thinking conscious God, on the grounds that such a God must either be conditioned, limited and subject to change, therefore not infinite, or (2) if he is represented to us as an eternal unchangeable and independent being, with not a particle of matter in him, then we answer that it is no being but an immutable blind principle, a law. And yet, they will say, we believe in Dyans, or Planetaries ("spirits" also), and endow them with a universal mind, and this must be explained.

Our reasons may be briefly summed up thus:

 

(1) We deny the absurd proposition that there can be, even in a boundless and eternal universe — two infinite eternal and omni-present existences.

 

(2) Matter we know to be eternal, i.e., having had no beginning (a) because matter is Nature herself (b) because that which cannot annihilate itself and is indestructible exists necessarily — and therefore it could not begin to be, nor can it cease to be (c) because the accumulated experience of countless ages, and that of exact science show to us matter (or nature) acting by her own peculiar energy, of which not an atom is ever in an absolute state of rest, and therefore it must have always existed, i.e., its materials ever changing form, combinations and properties, but its principles or elements being absolutely indestructible.

 

(3) As to God — since no one has ever or at any time seen him or it — unless he or it is the very essence and nature of this boundless eternal matter, its energy and motion, we cannot regard him as either eternal or infinite or yet self existing. We refuse to admit a being or an existence of which we know absolutely nothing; because (a) there is no room for him in the presence of that matter whose undeniable properties and qualities we know thoroughly well (b) because if he or it is but a part of that matter it is ridiculous to maintain that he is the mover and ruler of that of which he is but a dependent part and (c) because if they tell us that God is a self existent pure spirit independent of matter — an extra-cosmic deity, we answer that admitting even the possibility of such an impossibility, i.e., his existence, we yet hold that a purely immaterial spirit cannot be an intelligent conscious ruler nor can he have any of the attributes bestowed upon him by theology and thus such a God becomes again but a blind force. Intelligence as found in our Dyan Chohans, is a faculty that can appertain but to organized or animated being — however imponderable or rather invisible the materials of their organizations. Intelligence requires the necessity of thinking; to think one must have ideas; ideas suppose senses which are physical material, and how can anything material belong to pure spirit? If it be objected that thought cannot be a property of matter, we will ask the reason why? We must have an unanswerable proof of this assumption, before we can accept it. Of the theologian we would enquire what was there to prevent his God, since he is the alleged creator of all — to endow matter with the faculty of thought; and when answered that evidently it has not pleased Him to do so, that it is a mystery as well as an impossibility, we would insist upon being told why it is more impossible that matter should produce spirit and thought, than that spirit or the thought of God should produce and create matter.

We do not bow our heads in the dust before the mystery of mind — for we have solved it ages ago. Rejecting with contempt the theistic theory we reject as much the automaton theory, teaching that states of consciousness are produced by the marshalling of the molecules of the brain; and we feel as little respect for that other hypothesis — the production of molecular motion by consciousness. Then what do we believe in? Well, we believe in the much laughed at phlogiston (see article "What is force and what is matter?" Theosophist, September), and in what some natural philosophers would call nisus the incessant though perfectly imperceptible (to the ordinary senses) motion or efforts one body is making on another — the pulsations of inert matter — its life. The bodies of the Planetary spirits are formed of that which Priestley and others called phlogiston and for which we have another name — this essence in its highest seventh state forming that matter of which the organisms of the highest and purest Dyans are composed, and in its lowest or densest form (so impalpable yet that science calls it energy and force) serving as a cover to the Planetaries of the 1st or lowest degree. In other words we believe in MATTER alone, in matter as visible nature and matter in its invisibility as the invisible omnipresent omnipotent Proteus with its unceasing motion which is its life, and which Nature draws from herself since she is the great whole outside of which nothing can exist. For as Bellinger truly asserts "motion is a manner of existence that flows necessarily out of the essence of matter; that matter moves by its own peculiar energies; that its motion is due to the force which is inherent in itself; that the variety of motion and the phenomena that result proceed from the diversity of the properties of the qualities and of the combinations which are originally found in the primitive matter" of which nature is the assemblage and of which your science knows less than one of our Tibetan Yak-drivers of Kant's metaphysics.

The existence of matter then is a fact; the existence of motion is another fact, their self existence and eternity or indestructibility is a third fact. And the idea of pure spirit as a Being or an Existence — give it whatever name you will — is a chimera, a gigantic absurdity.

OUR IDEAS ON EVIL — Evil has no existence per se and is but the absence of good and exists but for him who is made its victim. It proceeds from two causes, and no more than good is it an independent cause in Nature. Nature is destitute of goodness or malice; she follows only immutable laws when she either gives life and joy, or sends suffering [and] death, and destroys what she has created. Nature has an antidote for every poison and her

laws a reward for every suffering. The butterfly devoured by a bird becomes that bird, and the little bird killed by an animal goes into a higher form. It is the blind law of necessity and the eternal fitness of things, and hence cannot be called Evil in Nature. The real evil proceeds from human intelligence and its origin rests entirely with reasoning man who dissociates himself from Nature. Humanity then alone is the true source of evil. Evil is the exaggeration of good, the progeny of human selfishness and greediness. Think profoundly and you will find that save death — which is no evil but a necessary law, and accidents which will always find their reward in a future life — the origin of every evil whether small or great is in human action, in man whose intelligence makes him the one free agent in Nature. It is not nature that creates diseases, but man. The latter's mission and destiny in the economy of nature is to die his natural death brought by old age. Save accident, neither a savage nor a wild (free) animal die of disease. Food, sexual relations, drink, are all natural necessities of life; yet excess in them brings on disease, misery, suffering, mental and physical, and the latter are transmitted as the greatest evils to future generations, the progeny of the culprits. Ambition, the desire of securing happiness and comfort for those we love, by obtaining honours and riches, are praiseworthy natural feelings but when they transform man into an ambitious cruel tyrant, a miser, a selfish egotist they bring untold misery on those around him, on nations as well as on individuals. All this then — food, wealth, ambition, and a thousand other things we have to leave unmentioned — becomes the source and cause of evil whether in its abundance or through its absence. Become a glutton, a debauchee, a tyrant, and you become the originator of diseases, of human suffering and misery. Lack all this and you starve, you are despised as a nobody and the majority of the herd, your fellow men, make of you a sufferer your whole life. Therefore it is neither nature nor an imaginary Deity that has to be blamed, but human nature made vile by selfishness.

Think well over these few words; work out every cause of evil you can think of and trace it to its origin and you will have solved one-third of the problem of evil. And now, after making due allowance for evils that are natural and cannot be avoided, — and so few are they that I challenge the whole host of Western metaphysicians to call them evils or to trace them directly to an independent cause — I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two thirds of the evils that pursue humanity — ever since that cause became a power. It is religion under whatever form and in whatsoever nation. It is the sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the churches; it is in those illusions that man looks upon as sacred, that he has to search out the source of that multitude of evils which is the great curse of humanity and that almost overwhelms mankind. Ignorance created gods and cunning took advantage of the opportunity. Look at India and look at Christendom and Islam, at Judaism and Fetichism. It is priestly imposture that rendered these gods so terrible to man; it is religion that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates all mankind out of his own sect without rendering him any better or more moral for it. It is belief in God and gods that makes two-thirds of humanity the slaves of a handful of those who deceive them under the false pretence of saving them. Is not man ever ready to commit any kind of evil if told that his god or gods demand the crime?, voluntary victim of an illusionary god, the abject slave of his crafty ministers. The Irish, Italian and Slavonian peasant will starve himself and see his family starving and naked to feed and clothe his padre and pope. For two thousand years India groaned under the weight of caste, Brahmins alone feeding on the fat of the land, and today the followers of Christ and those of Mahomet are cutting each other's throats in the names of and for the greater glory of their respective myths. Remember the sum of human misery will never be diminished unto that day when the better portion of humanity destroys in the name of Truth, morality, and universal charity, the altars of their false gods.

If it is objected that we too have temples, we too have priests and that our lamas also live on charity . . . let them know that the objects above named have in common with their Western equivalents, but the name. Thus in our temples there is neither a god nor gods worshipped, only the thrice sacred memory of the greatest as the holiest man that ever lived. If our lamas to honour the fraternity of the Bhikkhus established by our blessed master himself, go out to be fed by the laity, the latter often to the number of 5 to 25,000 is fed and taken care of by the Samgha (the fraternity of lamaic monks) the lamasery providing for the wants of the poor, the sick, the afflicted. Our lamas accept food, never money, and it is in those temples that the origin of evil is preached and impressed upon the people. There they are taught the four noble truths — ariya sakka, and the chain of causation (the 12 nidanas) gives them a solution of the problem of the origin and destruction of suffering.

Read the Mahavagga and try to understand not with the prejudiced Western mind but the spirit of intuition and truth what the Fully Enlightened one says in the 1st Khandhaka. Allow me to translate it for you.

"At the time the Blessed Buddha was at Uruvella on the shores of the river Nerovigara as he rested under the Boddhi tree of wisdom after he had become Sambuddha, at the end of the seventh day having his mind fixed on the chain of causation he spake thus: 'from ignorance spring the

Samkharas of threefold nature — productions of body, of speech, of thought. From the samkharas springs consciousness, from consciousness spring name and form, from this spring the six regions (of the six senses the seventh being the property of but the enlightened); from these springs contact

from this sensation; from this springs thirst (or desire, Kama, Tanha) from thirst attachment, existence, birth, old age and death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejection and despair. Again by the destruction of ignorance, the samkharas are destroyed, and their consciousness name and form, the six regions, contact, sensation, thirst, attachment (selfishness), existence, birth, old age, death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejection, and despair are destroyed. Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering."

Knowing this the Blessed One uttered this solemn utterance. "When the real nature of things becomes clear to the meditating Bikshu, then all his doubts fade away since he has learned what is that nature and what its cause. From ignorance spring all the evils. From knowledge comes the cessation of this mass of misery . . . and then the meditating Brahmana stands dispelling the hosts of Mara like the sun that illuminates the sky."

Meditation here means the superhuman (not supernatural) qualities, or arhatship in its highest of spiritual powers.

Copied out Simla, Sept. 28, 1882.

Letter 11 Table of Contents

Letter No. 11

Transcribed from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. — ED.

Received by A.O.H., June 30th, 1882.

Simple prudence misgives me at the thought of entering upon my new role of an "instructor." If M. satisfied you but little I am afraid of giving you still less satisfaction since besides being restrained in my explanations, — for there are a thousand things I will have to leave unrevealed — by my vow of silence I have far less time at my disposal than he has. However, I'll try my best. Let it not be said that I failed to recognise your present sincere desire to become useful to the Society, hence to Humanity, for I am deeply alive to the fact that none better than yourself in India is calculated to disperse the mists of superstition and popular error by throwing light on the darkest problems. But before I answer your questions and explain our doctrine any further, I'll have to preface my replies with a long introduction. First of all and again I will draw your attention to the tremendous difficulty of finding appropriate terms in English which would convey to the educated European mind even an approximately correct notion about the various subjects we will have to treat upon. To illustrate my meaning I'll underline in red the technical words adopted and used by your men of Science and which withal are absolutely misleading not only when applied to such transcendental subjects as on hand but even when used by themselves in their own system of thought.

To comprehend my answers you will have first of all to view the eternal Essence, the Swabavat not as a compound element you call spirit-matter, but as the one element for which the English has no name. It is both passive and active, pure Spirit Essence in its absoluteness, and repose, pure matter in its finite and conditioned state, — even as an unponderable gas or that great unknown which science has pleased to call Force. When poets talk of the "shoreless ocean of immutability" we must regard the term but as a jocular parodox, since we maintain that there is no such thing as immutability — not in our Solar system at least. Immutability say the theists and Christians "is an attribute of God" and forthwith they endow that God with every mutable and variable quality and attribute, knowable as unknowable, and believe that they have solved the unsolvable and squared the circle. To this we reply if that which the theists call God, and science "Force" and "Potential Energy," were to become immutable but for one instant even during the Maha-Pralaya a period when even Brahm the creative architect of the world is said to have merged into non-being, then there could be no manwantara, and space alone would reign unconscious and supreme in the eternity of time. Nevertheless, Theism when speaking of mutable immutability is no more absurd than materialistic science talking of "latent potential energy," and the indestructibility of matter and force. What are we to believe as indestructible? Is it the invisible something that moves matter or the energy of moving bodies! What does modern science know of force proper, or say the forces, — the cause or causes of motion. How can there be such a thing as potential energy, i.e., an energy having latent inactive power since it is energy only while it is moving matter, and that if it ever ceased to move matter it would cease to be, and with it matter itself would disappear. Is force any happier term? Some thirty-five years back a Dr. Mayer offered the hypothesis now accepted as an axiom that force in the sense given it by modern science, like matter is indestructible namely when it ceases to be manifest in one form it still exists and has only passed into some other form. And yet your men of science have not found a single instance where one force is transformed into another, and Mr. Tyndall tells his opponents that "in no case is the force producing the motion annihilated or changed into anything else." Moreover we are indebted to modern science for the novel discovery that there exists a quantitative relation between the dynamic energy producing something and the "something" produced. Undoubtedly there exists a quantitive relation between cause and effect, between the amount of energy used in breaking one's neighbour's nose, and the damage done to that nose, but this does not solve one bit more the mystery of what they are pleased to call correlations, since it can be easily proved (and that on the authority of that same science) that neither motion nor energy is indestructible and that the physical forces are in no way or manner convertible one into another. I will cross-examine them in their own phraseology and we will see whether their theories are calculated to serve as a barrier to our "astounding doctrines." Preparing as I do to propound a teaching diametrically opposed to their own it is but just that I should clear the ground of scientific rubbish lest what I have to say should fall on a too encumbered soil and only bring forth weeds.

"This potential and imaginary materia prima cannot exist without form," says Raleigh, and he is right in so far that the materia prima of science exists but in their imagination. Can they say the same quantity of energy has always been moving the matter of the Universe? Certainly not so long as they teach that when the elements of the material cosmos, elements which had first to manifest themselves in their uncombined gaseous state, were uniting the quantity of matter — moving energy was a million times greater than it is now when our globe is cooling off. For where did the heat that was generated by this tremendous process of building up a universe go to? To the unoccupied chambers of space they say. Very well, but if it is gone for ever from the material universe and the energy operative on earth has never and at no time been the same, then how can they try to maintain the "unchangeable quantity of energy," that potential energy which a body may sometimes exert, the FORCE which passes from one body to another producing motion and which is not yet "annihilated or changed into anything else." Aye, we are answered, "but we still hold to its indestructibility; while it remains connected with matter, it can never cease to be, or less or more." Let us see whether it is so. I throw a brick up to a mason who is busy building the roof of a temple. He catches it and cements it in the roof. Gravity overcame the propelling energy which started the upward motion of the brick, and the dynamic energy of the ascending brick until it ceased to ascend. At that moment it was caught and fastened to the roof. No natural force could now move it, therefore it possesses no longer potential energy. The motion and the dynamic energy of the ascending brick are absolutely annihilated. Another example from their own text books. You fire a gun upward from the foot of a hill and the ball lodges in a crevice of the rock on that hill. No natural force can, for an indefinite period move it, so the ball as much as the brick has lost its potential energy. "All the motion and energy which was taken from the ascending ball by gravity is absolutely annihilated, no other motion or energy succeeds and gravity has received no increase of energy." Is it not true then that energy is indestructible! How then is it that your great authority teaches the world that "in no case is the force producing the motion annihilated or changed into anything else"?

I am perfectly aware of your answer and give you these illustrations but to show how misleading are the terms used by scientists, how vacillating and uncertain their theories and finally how incomplete all their teachings. One more objection and I have done. They teach that all the physical forces rejoicing in specific names such as gravity, inertia, cohesion, light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, are convertible one into another? If so the force producing must cease to be as the force produced becomes manifest. "A flying cannon ball moves only from its own inherent force of inertia." When it strikes it produces heat and other effects but its force of inertia is not the least diminished. It will require as much energy to start it again at the same velocity as it did at first. We may repeat the process a thousand times and as long as the quantity of matter remains the same its force of inertia will remain the same in quantity. The same in the case of gravity. A meteor falls and produces heat. Gravity is to be held to account for this, but the force of gravity upon the fallen body is not diminished. Chemical attraction draws and holds the particles of matter together, their collision producing heat. Has the former passed into the latter? Not in the least, since drawing the particles again together whenever these are separated it proves that it, the chemical affinity is not decreased, for it will hold them as strongly as ever together. Heat they say generates and produces electricity yet they find no decrease in the heat in the process. Electricity produces heat we are told? Electrometers show that the electrical current passes through some poor conductor, a platinum wire say and heats the latter. Precisely the same quantity of electricity, there being no loss of electricity, no decrease. What then has been converted into heat? Again electricity is said to produce magnetism.

I have on the table before me primitive electrometers in whose vicinity chelas come the whole day to recuperate their nascent powers. I do not find the slightest decrease in the electricity stored. The chelas are magnetized, but their magnetism or rather that of their rods is not that electricity under a new mask. No more than the flame of a thousand tapers lit at the flame of the Fo lamp is the flame of the latter. Therefore if by the uncertain twilight of modern science it is an axiomatic truth "that during vital processes the conversion only and never the creation of matter or force occurs" (Dr. J. R. Mayer's organic motion in its connection with nutrition) — it is for us but half a truth. It is neither conversion nor creation, but something for which science has yet no name.

Perhaps now you will be prepared to better understand the difficulty with which we will have to contend. Modern science is our best ally. Yet it is generally that same science which is made the weapon to break our heads with. However you will have to bear in mind (a) that we recognise but one element in Nature (whether spiritual or physical) outside which there can be no Nature since it is Nature itself (1), and which as the Akasa

pervades our solar system every atom being part of itself pervades throughout space and is space in fact, which pulsates as in profound sleep during the pralayas and the universal Proteus, the ever active Nature during the Manwantaras; (b) that consequently spirit and matter are one, being but a differentiation of states not essences, and that the Greek philosopher who maintained that the Universe was a huge animal penetrated the symbolical significance of the Pythagorean monad (which becomes two, then three and finally having become the tetracktis or the perfect square (thus evolving out of itself four and involuting three forms the sacred seven) — and thus was far in advance of all the scientific men of the present time; (c) that our notions of "cosmic matter" are diametrically opposed to those of western science. Perchance if you remember all this we will succeed in imparting to you at least the elementary axioms of our esoteric philosophy more correctly than heretofore. Fear not my kind brother; your life is not ebbing away and it will not be extinct before you have completed your mission. I can sayno more except that the Chohan has permitted me to devote my spare time to instruct those who are willing to learn, and you will have work enough to "drop" your Fragments at intervals of two or three months. My time is very limited yet I will do what I can. But I can promise nothing beyond this. I will have to remain silent as to the Dyan Chohans nor can I impart to you the secrets concerning the men of the seventh round. The recognition of the higher phases of man's being on this planet is not to be attained by mere acquirement of knowledge. Volumes of the most perfectly constructed information cannot reveal to man life in the higher regions. One has to get a knowledge of spiritual facts by personal experience and from actual observation, for as Tyndall puts it "facts looked directly at are vital, when they pass into words half the sap is taken out of them." And because you recognise this great principle of personal observation, and are not slow to put into practice what you have acquired in the way of useful information, is perhaps the reason why the hitherto implacable Chohan my Master has finally permitted me to devote to a certain extent a portion of my time to the progress of the Eclectic. But I am but one and you are many, and none of my Fellow Brothers with the exception of M. will help me in this work, not even our semi-European Greek Brother who but a few days back remarked that when "every one of the Eclectics on the Hill will have become a Zetetic then will he see what he can do for them." And as you are aware there is very little hope for this. Men seek after knowledge until they weary themselves to death, but even they do not feel very impatient to help their neighbour with their knowledge; hence there arises a coldness, a mutual indifference which renders him who knows inconsistent with himself and inharmonious with his surroundings. Viewed from our standpoint the evil is far greater on the spiritual than on the material side of man: hence my sincere thanks to you and desire to urge your attention to such a course as shall aid a true progression and achieve wider results by turning your knowledge into a permanent teaching in the form of articles and pamphlets.

But for the attainment of your proposed object, viz. — for a clearer comprehension of the extremely abstruse and at first incomprehensible theories of our occult doctrine never allow the serenity of your mind to be disturbed during your hours of literary labour, nor before you set to work. It is upon the serene and placid surface of the unruffled mind that the visions gathered from the invisible find a representation in the visible world. Otherwise you would vainly seek those visions, those flashes of sudden light which have already helped to solve so many of the minor problems and which alone can bring the truth before the eye of the soul. It is with jealous care that we have to guard our mind-plane from all the adverse influences which daily arise in our passage through earth-life.

Many are the questions you ask me in your several letters, I can answer but few. Concerning Eglinton I will beg you to wait for developments. In regard to your kind lady the question is more serious and I cannot undertake the responsibility of making her change her diet as ABRUPTLY as you suggest. Flesh and meat she can give up at any time as it can never hurt; as for liquor with which Mrs. H. has long been sustaining her system, you yourself know the fatal effects it may produce in an enfeebled constitution were the latter to be suddenly deprived of its stimulant. Her physical life is not a real existence backed by a reserve of vital force, but a factitious one fed upon the spirit of liquor however small the quantity. While a strong constitution might rally after the first shock of such a change as proposed, the chances are that she would fall into a decline. So would she if opium or arsenic were her chief sustenance. Again I promise nothing yet will do in this direction what I can. "Converse with you and teach you through astral light?" Such a development of your psychical powers of hearing, as you name, — the Siddhi of hearing occult sounds would not be at all the easy matter you imagine. It was never done to any one of us, for the iron rule is that what powers one gets he must himself acquire. And when acquired and ready for use the powers lie dumb and dormant in their potentiality like the wheels and clockwork inside a musical box; and only then does it become easy to wind up the key and set them in motion. Of course you have now more chances before you than my zoophagous friend Mr. Sinnett, who were he even to give up feeding on animals would still feel a craving for such a food, a craving over which he would have no control and, — the impediment would be the same in that case. Yet every earnestly disposed man may acquire such powers practically. That is the finality of it; there are no more distinctions of persons in this than there are as to whom the sun shall shine upon or the air give vitality to. There are the powers of all nature before you; take what you can.

Your suggestion as to the box I will think over. There would have to be some contrivance to prevent the discharge of power when once the box was charged, whether during transit or subsequently: I will consider and take advice or rather permission. But I must say the idea is utterly repugnant to us as everything else smacking of spirits and mediumship. We would prefer by far using natural means as in the last transmission of my letter to you. It was one of M's chelas who left it for you in the flower-shed, where he entered invisible to all yet in his natural body, just as he had entered many a time your museum and other rooms, unknown to you all, during and after the "Old Lady's" stay. But unless he is told to do so by M. he will never do it, and that is why your letter to me was left unnoticed. You have an unjust feeling towards my Brother, kind sir, for he is better and more powerful than I — at least he is not as bound and restricted as I am — I have asked H.

P. B. to send you a number of philosophical letters from a Dutch Theosophist at Penang — one in whom I take an interest: you ask for more work and her — one is some. They are translations, originals of those portions of Schoppenhauer which are most in affinity with our Arhat doctrines. The English is not idiomatic but the material is valuable. Should you be disposed to utilise any portion of it, I would recommend your opening a direct correspondence with Mr. Sanders, F.T.S. — the translator. Schoppenhauer's philosophical value is so well known in the western countries that a comparison or connotation of his teachings upon will, etc., with those you have received from ourselves might be instructive. Yes I am quite ready to look over your 50 or 60 pages and make notes on the margins: have them set up by all means and send them to me either through little "Deb" or Damodar and Djual Kul will transmit them. In a very few days, perhaps to-morrow, your two questions will be amply answered by me.

Meanwhile

Yours sincerely,

K. H.

P.S. — The Tibetan translation is not quite ready yet.

Letter 12 Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. Not in the sense of Natus "born" but Nature as the sum total of everything visible and invisible, of forms and minds, the aggregate of the known (and unknown), causes and effects, the universe in short infinite and uncreated and endless, as it is without a beginning. (return to text)

Letter No. 12

Your hypothesis is far nearer the truth than Mr. Hume's. Two factors must be kept in view — (a) a fixed period, and (b) a fixed rate of development nicely adjusted to it. Almost unthinkably long as is a Mahayug, it is still a definite term, and within it must be accomplished the whole order of development, or to state it in occult phraseology: the descent of Spirit into matter and its return to the re-emergence. A chain of beads, and each bead a world — is an illustration already made familiar to you. You have already pondered over the life impulse beginning with each Manvantara to evolve the first of these worlds; to perfect it; to people it successively with all the aerial forms of life. And after completing on this first world seven cycles — or revolutions of development — in each kingdom as you know — passing forward down the arc — to similarly evolve the next world in the chain, perfect it, and abandon it. Then to the next and next and next — until the sevenfold round of world-evolutions along the chain is run through and the Mahayug comes to its end. Then chaos again — the Pralaya. As this life-impulse (at the seventh and last round from planet to planet) moves on it leaves behind it dying and — very soon — "dead planets."

The last seventh round man having passed on to a subsequent world, the precedent one with all its mineral, vegetable and animal life (except man) begins to gradually die out, when with the exit of the last animalcule it is extinguished, or as H.P.B. has it — snuffed out (minor or partial pralaya). When the Spirit-man reaches the last bead of the chain and passes into final Nirvana, this last world also disappears or passes into subjectivity. Thus are there among the stellar galaxies births and deaths of worlds ever following each other in the orderly procession of natural Law. And — as said already — the last bead is strung upon the thread of the "Mahayuga."

When the last cycle of man-bearing has been completed by that last fecund earth; and humanity has reached in a mass the stage of Buddhahood and passed out of the objective existence into the mystery of Nirvana — then "strikes the hour"; the seen becomes the unseen, the concrete resumes its pre-cyclic state of atomic distribution.

But the dead worlds left behind the on-sweeping impulse do not continue dead. Motion is the eternal order of things and affinity or attraction its handmaid of all works. The thrill of life will again reunite the atoms, and it will stir again in the inert planet when the time comes. Though all its forces have remained statu quo and are now asleep, yet little by little it will — when the hour re-strikes — gather for a new cycle of man-bearing maternity, and give birth to something still higher as moral and physical types than during the preceding manvantara. And its "cosmic atoms already in a differentiated state" (differing — in the producing force, in the mechanical sense — of motions and effects) remain statu quo as well as globes and everything else in the process of formation." Such is the "hypothesis fully in accordance with (your) (my) note." For, as planetary development is as progressive as human or race evolution, the hour of the Pralaya's coming catches the series of worlds at successive stages of evolution; (i.e.) each has attained to some one of the periods of evolutionary progress — each stops there, until the outward impulse of the next manvantara sets it going from that very point — like a stopped timepiece rewound. Therefore, have I used the word "differentiated."

At the coming of the Pralaya no human, animal, or even vegetable entity will be alive to see it, but there will be the earth or globes with their mineral kingdoms; and all these planets will be physically disintegrated in the pralaya, yet not destroyed; for they have their places in the sequence of evolution and their "privations" coming again out of the subjective, they will find the exact point from which they have to move on around the chain of "manifested forms." This as we know is repeated endlessly throughout ETERNITY. Each man of us has gone this ceaseless round, and will repeat it for ever and ever. The deviation of each one's course, and his rate of progress from Nirvana to Nirvana is governed by causes which he himself creates out of the exigencies in which he finds himself entangled.

This picture of an eternity of action may appal the mind that has been accustomed to look forward to an existence of ceaseless repose. But their concept is not supported by the analogies of nature, nor — and ignorant though I may be thought of your Western Science, may I not say? — by the teachings of that Science. We know that periods of action and rest follow each other in everything in nature from the macrocosm with its Solar Systems down to man and its parent-earth, which has its seasons of activity followed by those of sleep; and that in short all nature, like her begotten living forms has her time for recuperation. So with the spiritual individuality, the Monad which starts on its downward and upward cyclic rotation. The periods which intervene between each great manvantarian "round" are proportionately long to reward for the thousands of existences passed on various globes; while the time given between each "race birth" — or rings as you call them — is sufficiently lengthy to compensate for any life of strife and misery during that lapse of time passed in conscious bliss after the rebirth of the Ego. To conceive of an eternity oaf bliss or woe, and to offset it to any conceivable deeds of merit or demerit of a being who may have lived a century or even a millenium in the flesh, can only be proposed by one who has never yet grasped the awful reality of the word Eternity, nor pondered upon the law of perfect justice and equilibrium which pervades nature. Further instructions may be given you, which will show how nicely justice is done not to man only but also his subordinates, and throw some light, I hope, upon the vexed question of Good and Evil.

And now to crown this effort of mine (of writing) I may as well pay an old debt, and answer an old question of yours concerning earth incarnations. Koot'humi answers some of your queries — at least began writing yesterday but was called off by duty — but I may help him anyhow. I trust you will not find much difficulty — not as much as hitherto — in making out my letter. I have become a very plain writer since he reproached me with making you lose your valuable time over my scrawlings. His rebuke struck home, and as you see I have amended my evil ways.

Let us see what your Science has to tell us about ethnography and other matters. The latest conclusions to which your wise men of the West seem to have arrived briefly stated are the following. The theories even approximately correct I venture to underline with blue. [These passages appear in bold type. — ED.]

(1) The earliest traces of man they can find disappear beyond the close of a period of which the rock-fossils furnish the only clue they possess.

((2) Starting thence they find four races of men who have successively inhabited Europe (a) The race of the river Drift — mighty hunters (perchance Nimrod?) who dwelt in the then sub-tropical climate of Western Europe, who used chipped stone implements of the most primitive kind and were contemporary with the rhinoceros and the mammoth; (b) the so-called cave-men, a race developed during the glacial period (the Esquimaux being now, they say, its only type) and which possessed finer weapons and tools of chipped stone since they made with wondrous accuracy pictures of various animals they were familiar with, simply with the aid of sharp pointed flints on the antlers of reindeer and on bones and stones; (c) the third race — the men of the Neolithic age are found already grinding their stone implements, building houses and boats and making pottery, in short — the lake dwellers of Switzerland; and finally (d) appears the fourth race, coming from Central Asia. These are the fair-complexioned Aryans who intermarry with the remnants of the dark Iberians — now represented by the swarthy Basks of Spain. This is the race which they consider as the progenitors of you modern peoples of Europe.

(3) They add moreover, that the men of the river Drift, preceded the glacial period known in geology as the Pleistocene and originated some 240,000 years ago, while human beings generally (see Geikie, Dawkins, Fiske and others) inhabited Europe at least 100,000 years earlier.

With one solitary exception they are all wrong. They come near enough yet miss the mark in every case. There were not four but five races; and we are that fifth with remnants of the fourth. (A more perfect evolution or race with each mahacyclic round); while the first race appeared on earth not half a million of years ago (Fiske's theory) — but several millions. The latest scientific theory is that of the German and American professors who say through Fiske: "we see man living on the earth for perhaps half a million years to all intents and purposes dumb."

He is both right and wrong. Right about the race having been "dumb," for long ages of silence were required, for the evolution and mutual comprehension of speech, from the moans and mutterings of the first remove of man above the highest anthropoid (a race now extinct since "nature shuts the door behind her" as she advances, in more than one sense) — up to the first monosyllable uttering man. But he is wrong in saying all

By the bye, you ought to come to some agreement as to the terms used when discussing upon cyclic evolutions. Our terms are untranslateable; and without a good knowledge of our complete system (which cannot be given but to regular initiates) would suggest nothing definite to your perceptions but only be a source of confusion as in the case of the terms "Soul" and "Spirit" with all your metaphysical writers — especially the Spiritualists.

You must have patience with Subba Row. Give him time. He is now at his tapas and will not be disturbed. I'll tell him not to neglect you but he is very jealous and regards teaching an Englishman as a sacrilege.

Yours M.

P.S. My writing is good but the paper rather thin for penmanship. Cannot write English with a brush, though; would be worse.

Letter 13 Table of Contents

Letter No. 13

[Mr. Sinnett's Queries in ordinary type with M.'s Replies in bold type. — Ed.]

Cosmological Notes and Queries and M.'s Replies. Received January, 1882. Allahabad.

 

(1) I conceive that at the close of a pralaya the impulse given by the Dhyan Chohans does not develop from chaos, a succession of worlds simultaneously, but seriatim. The comprehension of the manner in which each in succession ensues from its predecessor as the impact of the original impulse might perhaps be better postponed till after I am enabled to realize the working of the whole machine — the cycle of worlds — after all its parts have come into existence.

 

(1) Correctly conceived. Nothing in nature springs into existence suddenly all being subjected to thesame law of gradual evolution. Realize but once the process of the maha cycle, of one sphere and you have realized them all. One man is born like another man, one race evolves, develops, and declines likeanother and all other races. Nature follows the same groove from the "creation" of a universe down to that of a moskito. In studying esoteric cosmogony, keep a spiritual eye upon the physiological process ofhuman birth; proceed from cause to effect establishing a [The original letter has a small portion missing at this point, hence the incompleteness of the following lines. — ED.] . . . go along, analogies between the be . . . man and that of a world. In our doctri . . . will find necessary the synthetic me . . . you will have to embrace the whole . . .

 

 that is to say to blend the macrocosm . . .

 cosm together — before you are ena . . .to study the parts separately or analyze them with profit to your understanding. Cosmology is the physiology of the universe spiritualized, for there is but one law.

 

 

(2) Taking the middle of a period of activity between two pralayas, i.e., of a manvantara — what I understand to happen is this. Atoms are polarized in the highest region of spiritual efflux from behind the veil of primitive cosmic matter. The magnetic impulse which has accomplished this result flits from one mineral form to another within the first sphere till having run the round of existence in that kingdom of the first sphere it descends in a current of attraction to the second sphere.

 

(2) Polarize themselves during the process of motion and propelled by the irresistible Force at work. InCosmogony and the work of nature the positive and the negative or the active and passive forces correspond to the male and female principles. Your spiritual efflux comes not from "behind the veil"but is the male seed falling into the veil of cosmic matter. The active is attracted by the passive principle and the Great Nag, the serpent emblem of the eternity, attracts its tail to its mouth forming thereby acircle (cycles in the eternity) in that incessant pursuit of the negative by the positive. Hence the emblem of the lingam the phallus and the {k}teis. The one and chief attribute of the universal spiritual principle

 

— the unconscious but ever active life-giver — is to expand and shed; that of the universal material principle to gather in and fecundate. Unconscious and non-existing when separated, they becomeconsciousness and life when brought together. Hence again — Brahma, from the root "brih" the Sanskrit for "to expand, grow or to fructify. Brahma being but the vivifying expansive force of nature in its eternal evolution.

 

(3) Do worlds of effects intervene between the worlds of activity in the series of descent?

 

(3) The worlds of effects are not lokas or localities. They are the shadow of the world of causes their souls— worlds having like men their seven principles which develop and grow simultaneously with thebody. Thus the body of man is wedded to and remains for ever within the body of his planet; his individual jivatma life principle that which is called in physiology animal spirits returns after death to its source — Fohat; his linga shariram will be drawn into Akasa; his Kamarupa will recommingle with the Universal Sakti— the Will-Force, or universal energy; his "animal soul" borrowed from the breath of Universal Mind will return to the Dhyan Chohans; his sixth principle — whether drawn into orejected from the matrix of the Great Passive Principle must remain in its own sphere — either as part of the crude material or as an individualized entity to be reborn in a higher world of causes. Theseventh will carry it from the Devachan and follow the new Ego to its place of re-birth. . . .

(4) The magnetic impulse which cannot yet be conceived of as an individuality — enters the second sphere in the same (the mineral) kingdom as that to which it belonged in sphere I and runs the round of mineral incarnations there passing on to sphere III. Our earth is still a sphere of necessity for it. Hence it passes into the upward series — and from the highest of these passes into the vegetable kingdom of sphere I.

Without any new impulse of creative force from above, its career round the cycle of worlds as a mineral principle has developed some new attractions or polarization which cause it to assume the lowest vegetable form — in vegetable forms it passes successively through the cycle of worlds, the whole being still a circle of necessity (as no responsibility can yet have accrued to an unconscious individuality, and therefore it cannot at any stage of its progress do anything to select one or other of divergent paths). Or is there something in the life even of a vegetable which, though not responsibility, may lead it up or down at this critical stage of its progress?

Having completed the whole cycle as a vegetable the growing individuality expands on the next circuit into an animal form.

(4) The evolution of the worlds cannot be considered apart from the evolution of everything created or having being on these worlds. Your accepted conceptions of cosmogony — whether from thetheological or scientific standpoints — do not enable you to solve a single anthropological, or even ethnical problem and they stand in your way whenever you attempt to solve the problem of the raceson this planet. When a man begins to talk about creation and the origin of man, he is butting against the facts incessantly. Go on saying: "Our planet and man were created — and you will be fightingagainst hard facts for ever, analyzing and losing time over trifling details — unable to ever grasp the whole. But once admit that our planet and ourselves are no more creations than the iceberg now beforeme (in our K.H.'s home) but that both planet and man are — states for a given time; that their present appearance — geological and anthropological — is transitory and but a condition concomitant of thatstage of evolution at which they have arrived in the descending cycle — and all will become plain. You will easily understand what is meant by the "one and only" element or principle in the universe andthat androgynous; the seven-headed serpent Ananda of Vishnu, the Nag around Buddha — the great dragon eternity biting with its active head its passive tail, from the emanations of which spring worlds,beings and things. You will comprehend the reason why the first philosopher proclaimed ALL — Maya — but that one principle, which rests during the maha-pralayas only — the "nights of Brahm." . . .

Now think: the Nag awakes. He heaves a heavy breath and the latter is sent like an electric shock all along the wire encircling Space. Go to your fortepiano and execute upon the lower register of keys the seven notes of the lower octave — up and down. Begin pianissimo; crescendo from the first key and having struck fortissimo on the last lower note go back diminuendo getting out of your last note a hardlyperceptible sound — "morendo pianissimo" (as I luckily for my illustration find it printed in one of the musick pieces in K.H.'s old portmanteau). The first and the last notes will represent to you the first andlast spheres in the cycle of evolution — the highest! the one you strike once is our planet. Remember you have to reverse the order on the fortepiano: begin with the seventh note, not with the first. Theseven vowels chanted by the Egyptian priests to the seven rays of the rising sun to which Memnon responded, meant but that. The one Life-principle when in action runs in circuits even as known in physical science. It runs the round in human body, where the head represents, and is to the Microcosmos (the physical world of matter) what the summit of the cycle is to the Macrocosmos (theworld of universal spiritual Forces); and so with the formation of worlds and the great descending and ascending "circle of necessity." All is one Law. Man has his seven principles, the germs of which hebrings with him at his birth. So has a planet or a world. From first to last every sphere has its world of effects, the passing through which will afford a place of final rest to each of the human principles — theseventh principle excepted. The world No. A is born; and with it, clinging like barnacles to the bottom of a ship in motion — evolute from its first breath of life, the living beings of its atmosphere, from the germs hitherto inert, now awakening to life with the first motion of the sphere. With sphere A, beginsthe mineral kingdom and runs the round of mineral evolution. By the time it is completed sphere B comes into objectivity and draws to itself the life which has completed its round on sphere A, and hasbecome a surplus. (The fount of life being inexhaustible, for it is the true Arachnea doomed to spin out its web eternally — save the periods of pralaya)). Then comes vegetable life on sphere A, and the sameprocess takes place. On its downward course "life" becomes with every state coarser, more material; on its upward more shadowy. No — there is, nor can there be any responsibility until the time whenmatter and spirit are properly equilibrized. Up to man "life" has no responsibility in whatever form; no more than has the foetus who in his mother's womb passes through all the forms of life — as amineral, a vegetable, an animal to become finally Man.

 

(5) Where does it get the animal soul, its fifth principle, from? Has the potentiality of this resided from the first in the original magnetic impulse which constituted the mineral, or at every transition from the last world on the ascending side to sphere I does it, so to speak, pass through an ocean of spirit and assimilate some new principle?

 

(5) Thus you see his fifth principle is evolved from within himself, man having as you well say "thepotentiality" of all the seven principles as a germ, from the very instant he appears in the first world of causes as a shadowy breath, which coagulates with, and is hardened together with the parent sphere.

 

Spirit or LIFE is indivisible. And when we speak of the seventh principle it is neither quality nor quantity nor yet form that are meant, but rather the space occupied in that ocean of spirit by theresults or effects — (beneficent as are all those of a co-worker with nature) — impressed thereon.

(6) From the highest animal (non-human) form in sphere I — how does it get to sphere II? It is inconceivable that it can descend to the lowest animal form there, but otherwise how can it go through the whole circle of life on each planet in turn?

If it runs its cycle in a spiral (i.e., from form 1 of sphere I to form 1 of sphere II, etc. — then to form 2 of sphere I, II, III, etc., and then to form 3 of sphere I. . . . nth) then it seems to me that the same rule must apply to the mineral and vegetable individualities if they have such, and yet some things I have been told seem to militate against that. (State them and they will be answered and explained.)

For the moment I must work on that hypothesis however.

(Having swept through the cycle in the highest animal form the animal soul in its next plunge into the ocean of spirit acquires the seventh principle which endows it with a sixth. This determines its future on Earth, and at the close of the earth life has sufficient vitality to keep an attraction of its own for the seventh principle, or loses this and ceases to exist as a separate entity. All this misconceived.)

Seventh principle always there as a latent force in every one of the principles — even body. As themacrocosmic Whole it is present even in the lower sphere, but there is nothing there to assimilate it to itself.

(6) Why, "inconceivable?" The highest animal form in sphere I or A being irresponsible, there is no degradation for it to merge into sphere II or B as the most infinitesimal of that sphere. While on itsupward course, as you were told, man finds even the lowest animal form there— higher than he was himself on earth. How do you know that men and animals and even life in its incipient stage is not athousand times higher there, than it is here? Besides which, every kingdom (and we have seven — while you have but three) is subdivided into seven degrees or classes. Man (physically) is a compound ofall the kingdoms, and spiritually — his individuality is no worse for being shut up within the casing of an ant than it is for being inside a king. It is not the outward or physical shape that dishonours andpollutes the five principles — but the mental perversity. Then it is but at his fourth round when arrived at the full possession of his Kama-energy and is completely matured, that man becomes fully responsible, as at the sixth he may become a Buddha and at the seventh before the Pralaya — a "Dyan Chohan." Mineral, vegetable, animal-man, all of these have to run their seven rounds during the period of earth's activity — the Maha Yug. I will not enter here on the details of mineral and vegetable evolution, but I will notice only man — or — animal-man. He starts downward as a simply spiritualentity — an unconscious seventh principle (a Parabrahm in contradistinction to Para-parabrahm) — with the germs of the other six principles lying latent and dormant in him. Gathering solidity at everysphere — his six pr. when passing through the worlds of effects, and his outward form in the worlds of causes (for these worlds or stages on the descending side we have other names) when he touches ourplanet he is but a glorious bunch of light upon a sphere itself yet pure and undefiled (for mankind and every living thing on it increase in their materiality with the planet). At that stage our globe is like thehead of a newly born babe — soft, and with undefined features, and man — an Adam before the breath of life was breathed into his nostrils (to quote your own bungled up Scriptures for your bettercomprehension). For man and (our planets) nature — it is day — the first (see distorted tradition in your Bible). Man No. 1 makes his appearance at the apex of the circle of the spheres on sphere No. 1,after the completion of the seven rounds or periods of the two kingdoms (known to you) and thus he is said to be created on the eighth day (see Bible Chapter 11; note verses 5 and 6 and think what is meantthere by "mist" — and verse 7 wherein LAW the Universal great fashioner is termed "God" by Christians and Jews, and understood as Evolution by Kabalists). During this first round "animal-man"runs, as you say, his cycle in a spiral. On the descending arc — whence he starts after the completion of the seventh round of animal life on his own individual seven rounds — he has to enter every sphere not as a lower animal as you understand it but as a lower man. Since during the cycle which preceded his round as a man he performed it as the highest type of animal. Your "Lord God," says Bible, chapter I,verses 25 and 26 — after having made all said: "Let us make man in our image," etc., and creates man — an androgyne ape! (extinct on our planet) the highest in intelligence in the animal kingdom andwhose descendants you find in the anthropoids of to-day. Will you deny the possibility of the highest anthropoid in the next sphere being higher in intelligence than some men down here — savages forinstance, the African dwarf-race and our own Veddahs of Ceylon. But man has no such "degradation" to go through as soon as he has reached the fourth stage of his cyclic rounds. Like the lower lives and beings during his first, second and third round and while he is an irresponsible compound of pure matter and pure spirit (none of them as yet defiled by the consciousness of their possible purposes andapplications) from sphere I, where he has performed his local sevenfold round of evolutionary process from the lowest class of the highest species of — say — anthropoids up to rudimentary man certainlyenters No. 2 as an ape (the last word being used for your better comprehension). At this round or stage his individuality is as dormant in him as that of a foetus during his period of gestation. He has noconsciousness, no sense, for he begins as a rudimentary astral man and lands on our planet as a primitive physical man. So far it is a mere passing on of mechanical motion. Volition and consciousnessare at the same time self-determining and determined by causes, and the volition of man his intelligence and consciousness will awake but when his fourth principle Kama is matured and completed by its (seriatim) contact with the Kamas or energizing forces of all the forms man has passed through in his previous three rounds. The present mankind is at its fourth round (mankind as a genus or a kind not a RACE nota bene) of the post-pralayan cycle of evolution; and as its various races, so the individual entities in them are unconsciously to themselves performing their local earthly sevenfold cycles — hence thevast difference in the degrees of their intelligence, energy and so on. Now every individuality will be followed on its ascending arc by the Law of retribution — Karma and death accordingly. The perfectman or the entity which reached full perfection, (each of his seven principles being matured) will not be reborn here. His local terrestrial cycle is completed and he has to either proceed onward or — beannihilated as an individuality. (The incomplete entities have to be reborn or reincarnated). (1)On their fifth round after a partial Nirvana when the zenith of the grand cycle is reached, they will be heldresponsible henceforth in their descents from sphere to sphere, as they will have to appear on this earth as a still more perfect and intellectual race. This downward course has not yet begun but will soon.Only how many — oh, how many will be destroyed on their way!

The above said is the rule. The Buddhas and Avatars form the exception as verily we have yet some Avatars left to us on earth.

(7) The animal soul having in successive passages round the cycle lost, so to speak, the momentum which previously carried it past the divergent path downward which strikes off here, falls into the lower world, in the relatively brief cycle in which its individuality is dissipated.

But this would only be the case with the animal soul which had not, in its union with spirit, developed a durable sixth principle. If it had done this, and if the sixth principle drawing to itself the individuality of the complete man, had withered the interior fifth principle by so doing — as the aloe's flower, when thrown up, withers its leaves — then the animal soul would not have cohesion enough to enter on another existence in a lower world and would be soon dissipated in the sphere of this earth's attraction.

(7) Reforming your conceptions on what I gave you above you will understand now better.

The whole individuality is centred in the three middle or 3rd, 4th and 5th principles. During earthly life it is all in the fourth the centre of energy, volition — will. Mr. Hume has perfectly defined thedifference between personality and individuality. The former hardly survives — the latter, to run successfully its seven-fold downward and upward course has to assimilate to itself the eternal life-power residing but in the seventh and then blend the three (fourth, fifth and seventh) into one — the sixth. Those who succeed in doing so become Buddhs, Dyan Chohans, etc. The chief object of ourstruggles and initiations is to achieve this union while yet on this earth. Those who will be successful have nothing to fear of during the fifth, sixth and seventh rounds. But this is a mystery. Our beloved K.H. is on his way to the goal — the highest of all beyond as on this sphere.

I have to thank you for all you have done for our two friends. It is a debt of gratitude we owe you.

M.

For some short time you will not hear of, or from me — PREPARE.

Letter 144 Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. By-the-bye, I'll re-write for you pages 345 to 357, Vol. I., of Isis — much jumbled, and confused by Olcott, who thought he was improving it! (return to text)

Letter No. 14

[Transcribed from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting — ED.]

Letter from K.H. Answering Queries. Received by A.O.H., July 9th, 1882.

 

(1) We understand that the man-bearing cycle of necessity of our solar system consists of thirteen objective globes, of which ours is the lowest, six above it in the ascending, and six in the descending cycle with a fourteenth world lower still than ours. Is this correct?

 

(1) The number is not quite correct. There are seven objective and seven subjective globes (I have beenjust permitted for the first time to give you the right figure), the worlds of causes and of effects. The former have our earth occupying the lower turning point where spirit-matter equilibrates. But do nottrouble yourself to go into calculations even on this correct basis for it will only puzzle you, since the infinite ramifications of the number seven (which is one of our greatest mysteries) being so closelyallied and interdependent with the seven principles of Nature and man — this figure is the only one I am permitted (so far) to give you. What I can reveal I do so in a letter I am just finishing.

 

(2) We understand that below man you reckon not three kingdoms as we do (mineral, vegetable and animal) but seven. Please enumerate and explain these.

 

(2) Below man there are three in the objective and three in the subjective region, with man a septenary. Two of the three former none but an initiate could conceive of; the third is the Inner kingdom — belowthe crust of the earth which we could name but would feel embarrassed to describe. These seven kingdoms are preceded by other and numerous septenary stages and combinations.

 

(3) We understand that the monad, starting in the highest world of the descending series, appears there in a mineral encasement, and there goes through a series of seven encasements representing the seven classes into which the mineral kingdom is divided, and that this done it passes to the next planet and does likewise (I purposely say nothing of the worlds of results, where it takes on the development the result of what it has gone through in the last world and the necessary preparation for the next) and so on right through the thirteen spheres, making altogether 91 mineral existences. (a) Is this correct? (b) If so, what are the classes we are to reckon in the mineral kingdom? Also (c) How does the monad get out of one encasement into another; in the case of inherbations and incarnations, the plant and animal dies, but so far as we know the mineral does not die, so how does the monad in the first round get out of one into another inmetalliation? (d) And has every separate molecule of the mineral a monad or only those groups of molecules where definite structure is observable such as crystals?

 

(3) Yes; in our string of worlds it starts at globe "A" of the descending series and passing through allthe preliminary evolutions and combinations of the first three kingdoms it finds itself encased in its first mineral form (in what I call race when speaking of man and what we may call class in general) —of class 1 — there. Only it passes through seveninstead of "through the thirteen spheres" even omitting the intermediate "worlds of results." Having passed through its seven great classes of inmetalliation (agood word this) with their septenary ramifications — the monad gives birth to the vegetable kingdom and moves on to the next planet "B."

 

(a) As you now see, except as to the numbers. (b) Your geologists divide, I believe, stones into three great groups — of Sandstone, granite and chalk; or the sedimentary, organic, and igneous, followingtheir physical characteristics just as the psychologists and spiritualists divide man into the trinity of body, soul, and spirit. Our method is totally different. We divide minerals (also the other kingdoms)according to their occult properties, i.e., according to the relative proportion of the seven universal principles which they contain. I am sorry to refuse you, but I cannot, am not permitted to answer yourquestion. To facilitate for you a question of simple nomenclature, however, I would advise you to study perfectly the seven principles in man, and thus to divide the seven great classes of the minerals

 

correspondentially. For instance, the group of the sedimentary would answer to the compound (chemically speaking) body of man or his first principle; the organic to the second (some call it third)principle or jiva, etc., etc. You must exercise your own intuitions in that. Thus you might also intuite certain truths even as to their properties. I am more than willing to help you but things have to bedivulged gradually.(c) By occult osmosis.The plant and animal leave their carcases behind when life is extinct. So does the mineral only at longer intervals, as its rocky body is more lasting. It dies at the endof every manwantariccycle, or at the close of one "Round" as you would call it. It is explained in the letter I am preparing for you. (d) Every molecule is part of the Universal Life. Man's soul (his fourthand fifth principle) is but a compound of the progressed entities of the lower kingdom. The superabundance or preponderance of one over another compound will often determine the instinctsand passions of a man, unless these are checked by the soothing and spiritualizing influence of his sixth principle.

 

(4) Please note, we call the Grand Cycle that the monad has performed in the mineral kingdom a "round" which we understand to contain thirteen (seven) stations, or objective, more or less material worlds. At each of these stations it performs what we call a "world ring," which includes seven inmetalliations, one in each of the seven classes of that kingdom. Is this accepted for nomenclature and correct?

 

(4) I believe it will lead to a further confusion. A Round we are agreed to call the passage of a monad from globe "A" to globe "Z" (or "G") through the encasement in all and each of the four kingdoms,viz., as a mineral, a vegetable, an animal and man or the Deva kingdom. The "world ring" is correct.

 

M. advised Mr. Sinnett strongly to agree upon a nomenclature before going any further. A few strayfacts were given to you par contrebande and on the smuggling principle hitherto. But now since you seem really and seriously determined to study and utilize our philosophy — it is time we should beginto work seriously. Because we are constrained to deny to our friends an insight into the higher Mathematics it is no reason why we should refuse to teach them arithmetic. The monad performs notonly "world rings" or seven major inmetalliations, inherbations, zoonisations (?) and incarnations — but an infinitude of sub-rings or subordinate whirls all in series of sevens. As the geologist divides thecrust of the earth into great divisions, sub-divisions, minor compartments and zones; and the botanist his plants into orders, classes and species, and the zoologist his subjects into classes, orders andfamilies, so we have our arbitrary classifications and our nomenclature. But besides all this being incomprehensible to you, volumes upon volumes out of the Books of Kiu-te and others would have to bewritten. Their commentaries are worse still. They are filled with the most abstruse mathematical calculations the key to most of which are in the hands of our highest adepts only, since showing as theydo the infinitude of the phenomenal manifestations in the side projections of the one Force they are again secret. Therefore I doubt whether I will be allowed to give you for the present anything beyondthe mere unitary or root idea. Anyhow I will do my best.

 

(5) We understand that in each of your other six kingdoms, a monad similarly performs a complete round, in each round stopping in each of the thirteen stations, and there performing in each a world ring of seven lives, one in each of the seven classes into which each of the 6 said kingdoms are divided. Is this correct, and, if so, will you give us the seven classes of these six kingdoms?

 

(5) If by kingdoms the seven kingdoms or regions of the earth are meant — and I do not see how it canmean anything else — then the query is answered in my reply to your Question (2) and if so then the five out of the seven are already enumerated. The first two are related as well as the third, to theevolution of the elementals and of the Inner kingdom.

 

(6) If we are right then the total existences prior to the man-period is 637. Is this correct? Or are there seven existences in each class of each kingdom, 4,459? Or what are the total numbers and how divided? One point more. In these lower kingdoms is the number of lives, so to speak, invariable, or does it vary, and, if so, how, why, and within what limits?

 

(6) Not being permitted to give you the whole truth, or divulge the number of isolated fractions, I amunable to satisfy you by giving you the total number. Rest assured my dear Brother, that to one who does not seek to become a practical occultist these numbers are immaterial. Even our high chelas are

 

refused these particulars to the moment of their initiation into adeptship. These figures as I have already said are so interwoven with the profoundest psychological mysteries that to divulge the key tosuch figures, would be to put the rod of power within the reach of all the clever men who would read your book. All that I can tell you is that within the Solar Manwantara the number of existences or vitalactivities of the monad is fixed, but there are local variations in number in minorsystems, individual worlds, rounds, and world rings, according to circumstances. And in this connexion remember alsothat human personalities are often blotted out, while the entities whether single or compound complete all the minor and major circles of necessities under whatsoever form.

 

(7) So far we hope we are tolerably correct, but when we come to Man we have got muddled.

 

(7) And no wonder, since you were not given the correct information.

 

(7a) Does the monad as Man (ape-man and upwards) make one or seven rounds as above defined? We gathered the latter.

(7a) As a man-ape he performs just as many rounds and rings as every other race or class; i.e., he performs one Round and in every planet from "A" to "Z" has to go through seven chief races of ape­like man, as many sub-races, etc., etc. (See Supplementary Notes) as the above described race.

(7b) At each round does his world circle consist of seven lives in seven races (49) or of only seven lives in one race? We are not certain how you use the word race, whether there is only one race to each station of each round, i.e., one race to each world circle or whether there are seven races (with their seven branchlets and a life in each in either case) in each world circle? Nay, from your use of the words "and through each of these Man has to evolute before he passes on to the next higher race and that seven times," we are not sure that there are not seven lives in each branchlet as you call it, sub-race we will, if you like, say. So now there may be seven rounds each with seven races, each with seven sub-races, each with seven incarnations = 13 x 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 = 31, = 313 lives, or one round with seven races and seven sub-races and a life in each = 13 x 7 x 7 = 637 lives or again 4,459 lives. Please set us right here stating the normal number of lives (the exact numbers will vary owing to idiots, children, etc., not counting) and how divided.

(7b) As the above described race: i.e., at each planet — our earth included — he has to perform sevenrings through seven races (one in each) and seven multiplied by seven offshoots. There are seven root-races, and seven sub-races or offshoots. Our doctrine treats anthropology as an absurd empty dream ofthe religionists and confines itself to ethnology. It is possible that my nomenclature is faulty: you are at liberty in such a case to change it. What I call "race" you would perhaps term "stock" though sub-raceexpresses better what we mean than the word family or division of the genus homo. However, to set you right so far I will say — one life in each of the seven root-races; seven lives in each of the 49 sub-races— or 7 x 7 x 7 = 343 and add 7 more. And then a series of lives in offshoot and branchlet races; making the total incarnations of man in each station or planet 777. The principle of acceleration andretardation applies itself in such a way, as to eliminate all the inferior stocks and leave but a single superior one to make the last ring. Not much to divide over some millions of years that man passes onone planet. Let us take but one million of years — suspected and now accepted by your science — to represent man's entire term upon our earth in this Round; and allowing an average of a century foreach life, we find that whereas he has passed in all his lives upon our planet (in this Round) but 77,700 years he has been in the subjective spheres 922,300 years. Not much encouragement for the extrememodern re-incarnationists who remember their several previous existences!

Should you indulge in any calculations do not forget that we have computed above only full averagelives of consciousness and responsibility. Nothing has been said as to the failures of Nature in abortions, congenital idiots, death of children in their first septenary cycles, nor of the exceptionsof which I cannot speak. No less have you to remember that average human life varies greatly according to the Rounds. Though I am obliged to withhold information about many points yet if you should work out any of theproblems by yourself it will be my duty to tell you so. Try to solve the problem of the 777 incarnations.

(8) "M" said all mankind is in the fourth round, the fifth has not yet commenced but soon will. Was this a slip? If not, then collating this with your present remarks we gather that all mankind is on the fourth round (though in another place you seemed to say we are on the fifth round). That the highest people now on earth belong to the first sub-race of the fifth race, the majority to the seventh sub-race of the fourth race but with remnants of the other sub-races of the fourth race and the seventh sub-race of the third race. Pray set us quite right on this.

(8) "M "knows very little English and hates writing. But even I might have used very well the sameexpression. A few drops of rain do not make a monsoon though they presage it. The fifth round has not commenced on our earth and the races and sub-races of one round must not be confounded with those of another round. The fifth round mankind may be said to have "commenced" when there shall not be left on the planet which precedes ours a single man of that round and on our earth not one of the fourthround. You should know also that the casual fifth round men (and very few and scarce they are) who come in upon us as avant couriers do not beget on earth fifth round progeny. Plato and Confucius werefifth round men and our Lord a sixth round man (the mystery of his avatar is spoken of in my forthcoming letter) and not even Gautama Buddha's son was anything but a fourth round man.

Our mystic terms in their clumsy re-translation from the Sanskrit into English are as confusing to us as they are to you — especially to "M" unless in writing to you one of us takes his pen as an adept and uses it from the first word to the last, in this capacity he is quite as liable to "slips" as any other man. No, we are not in the fifth round, but fifth round men have been coming in for the last few thousand years. Butwhat is such a petty stretch of time in comparison with even one million of the several millions of years embraced in man's occupancy of earth in a single round.

K.H.

Please examine carefully the few additional things I give you on the fly-leaves. Damodar has receivedorders to send you No. 3 of Terry's letters — a good material for pamphlet No. 3 of Fragments of Occult Truth.

This figure roughly represents the development of humanity on a planet — say our earth. Man evolves in seven major or root-races; 49 minor races; and the subordinate races or offshoots, the branchletraces coming from the latter are not shown.

The arrow indicates the direction taken by the evolutionary impulse.

I, II, III, IV, etc., are the seven major or root-races.

1, 2, 3, etc., are the minor races.

a, a, a, are the subordinate or offshoot races.

N, the initial and terminal point of evolution on the planet.

S, the axial point where the development equilibrates or adjusts itself in each race evolution.

E, the equatorial points where in the descending arc intellect overcomes spirituality and in theascending arc spirituality outstrips intellect.

 

(N.B. — The above in D.K.'s hand — the rest in K.H.'s. — A.P.S.)

P.S. — In his hurry D.J.K. has made his figure incline somewhat out of the perpendicular but it will serve as a rough memorandum. He drew it to represent development on a single planet; but I haveadded a word or two to make it apply as well (which it does) to a whole manwantaric chain of worlds.

K.H.

Supplementary Notes.

Whenever any question of evolution or development in any Kingdom presents itself to you bearconstantly in mind that everything comes under the Septenary rule of series in their correspondences and mutual relation throughout nature.

In the evolution of man there is a topmost point, a bottom point, a descending arc, and an ascending arc. As it is "Spirit" which transforms itself into "matter" and (not "matter" which ascends — but)matter which resolves once more into spirit, of course the first race evolution and the last on a planet (as in each round) must be more etherial, more spiritual, the fourth or lowermost one most physical(progressively of course in each round) and at the same time — as physical intelligence is the masked manifestation of spiritual intelligence — each evoluted race in the downward arc must be more physically intelligent than its predecessor, and each in the upward arc have a more refined form of mentality commingled with spiritual intuitiveness.

The first race (or stock) of the first round after a solarmanwantara (kindly wait for my forthcoming letter before you allow yourself to be repuzzled or remuddled. It will explain a good deal) would thenbe a god man race of an almost impalpable shape, and so it is; but then comes the difficulty to the student to reconcile this fact with the evolution of man from the animal-- however high his form amongthe anthropoids. And yet it is reconcilable, for whomsoever will hold religiously to a strict analogy between the works of the two worlds, the visible and the invisible — one world, in fact, as one is working within itself so to say. Now there are — there must be "failures" in the etherial races of the many classes of Dyan Chohans or Devas as well as among men. But still as these failures are too farprogressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from their Dyan Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower kingdoms — this then happens. When a new solarsystem is to be evolved these Dyan Chohans are (remember the Hindu allegory of the Fallen Devas hurled by Siva into Andarah who are allowed by Parabrahm to consider it as an intermediate statewhere they may prepare themselves by a series of rebirths in that sphere for a higher state — a new regeneration) born in by the influx "ahead" of the elementals and remain as a latent or inactivespiritual force in the aura of the nascent world of a new system until the stage of human evolution is reached. Then Karma has reached them and they will have to accept to the last drop in the bitter cupof retribution. Then they become an activeForce, and commingle with the Elementals, or progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom to develope little by little the full type of humanity. In thiscommingling they lose their high intelligence and spirituality of Devaship to regain them in the end of the seventh ring in the seventh round.

Thus we have:

1st Round. — An ethereal being — non-intelligent, but super-spiritual. In each of the subsequent racesand sub-races and minor races of evolution he grows more and more into an encased or incarnate being, but still preponderatingly etherial. And like the animal and vegetable he develops monstrousbodies correspondential with his coarse surroundings.

2nd Round. — He is still gigantic and etherial, but growing firmer and more condensed in body — amore physical man, yet still less intelligent than spiritual; for mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than the physical frame and the mind would not develop as rapidly as the body.

3rd Round. — He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body; at first the form of a giant ape, and more intelligent (or rather cunning) than spiritual. For in the downward arc he has now reached thepoint where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed or over-shadowed by nascent mentality. In the last half of this third round his gigantic stature decreases, his body improves in texture (perhaps themicroscope might help to demonstrate this) and he becomes a more rational being — though still more an ape than a Deva man.

4th round. — Intellect has an enormous development in this round. The dumb races will acquire our human speech, on our globe, on which from the 4th race language is perfected and knowledge inphysical things increases. At this half-way point of the fourth round, Humanity passes the axial point of the minor manwantaric circle. (Moreover, at the middle point of every major or root race evolution of each round, man passes the equator of his course on that planet, the same rule applying to the whole evolution or the seven rounds of the minor Manwantara — 7 rounds divided by 2 = 3 1/2 rounds). Atthis point then the world teems with the results of intellectual activity and spiritual decrease. In the first half of the fourth race, sciences, arts, literature and philosophy were born, eclipsed in one nation,

5th Round. — The same relative development, and the same struggle continues.

6th Round.

7th Round.

Of these we need not speak.

Table of Contents

Letter No. 15

[Transcribed from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. K.H.'s replies are in bold type. — ED.]

From K.H. to A.O.H. Received July 10th, 1882.

 

(1) Does every mineral form, vegetable, plant, animal, always contain within it that entity which involves the potentiality of development into a planetary spirit? At this present day in this present earth is there such an essence or spirit or soul — the name is immaterial in every mineral, etc.

 

(1) Invariably; only rather call it the germ of a future entity, which it has been for ages. Take thehuman foetus. From the moment of its first planting until it completes its seventh month of gestation it repeats in miniature the mineral, vegetable, and animal cycles it passed through in its previousencasements, and only during the last two, develops its future human entity. It is completed but towards the child's seventh year. Yet it existed without any increase or decrease aeons on aeons before it worked its way onward, through and in the womb of mother nature as it works now in its earthly mother's bosom. Truly said a learned philosopher who trusts more to his intuitions than the dicta ofmodern science. "The stages of man's intra-uterine existence embody a condensed record of some of the missing pages in Earth's history." Thus you must look back at the animal, vegetable and mineralentities. You must take each entity at its starting point in the manvantaric course as the primordial cosmic atom already differentiated by the first flutter of the manvantaric life breath. For thepotentiality which develops finally in a perfected planetary spirit lurks in, is in fact that primordial cosmic atom. Drawn by its "chemical affinity" (?) to coalesce with other like atoms the aggregate sumof such united atoms will in time become a man-bearing globe after the stages of the cloud, the spiral and sphere of fire-mist and of the condensation, consolidation, shrinkage and cooling of the planet havebeen successively passed through. But mind, not every globe becomes a "man bearer." I simply state the fact without dwelling further upon it in this connection. The great difficulty in grasping the idea inthe above process lies in the liability to form more or less incomplete mental conceptions of the working of the oneelement, of its inevitable presence in every imponderable atom, and its subsequent ceaselessand almost illimitable multiplication of new centres of activity without affecting in the least its own original quantity. Let us take such an aggregation of atoms destined to form our globe and then follow,throwing a cursory look at the whole, the special work of such atoms. We will call the primordial atom A. This being not a circumscribed centre of activity but the initial point of a manwantaric whirl ofevolution, gives birth to new centres which we may term B, C, D, etc., incomputably. Each of these capital points gives birth to minor centres, a, b, c, etc. And the latter in the course of evolution andinvolution in time develops into A's, B's, C's, etc., and so form the roots or are the developing causes of new genera, species, classes, etc., ad infinitum. Now neither the primordial A and its companion atoms,nor their derived a's, b's, c's, have lost one tittle of their original force or life-essence by the evolution of their derivatives. The force there, is not transformed into something else as I have already shown in myletter, but with each development of a new centre of activity from withinitself multiplies ad infinitum without ever losing a particle of its nature in quantity or quality. Yet acquiring as it progressessomething plus in its differentiation. This "force" so-called, shows itself truly indestructible but does not correlate and is not convertible in the sense accepted by the Fellows of the R.S., but rather may besaid to grow and expand into "something else" while neither its own potentiality nor being are in the least affected by the transformation. Nor can it well be called force since the latter is but the attribute of Yin Sin (Yin Sin or the one "Form of existence" also Adi-Buddhi or Dharmakaya the mystic, universally diffused essence) when manifesting in the phenomenal world of senses namely only your oldacquaintance Fohat. See in this connexion Subba Row's article "Aryan Arhat Esoteric Doctrines" on the seven-fold principles in man; his review of your Fragments, pp. 94 and 95. The initiated Brahmincalls it (Yin Sin and Fohat) Brahman and Sakti when manifesting as that force. We will perhaps be nearer correct to call it infinite life and the source of all life visible and invisible, an essence inexhaustible ever present, in short Swabhavat. (S. in its universal application, Fohat when manifesting throughout our phenomenal world or rather the visible universe hence in its limitations). It is pravritti when active, nirvritti when passive. Call it the Sakti of Parabrahma, if you like, and say with the Adwaitees (Subba Row is one) that Parabrahm plus Maya becomes Iswar the creative principle — apower commonly called God which disappears and dies with the rest when pralaya comes. Or you may hold with the northern Buddhist philosophers and call it Adi-Buddhi the all-pervading supreme andabsolute intelligence with its periodically manifesting Divinity — "Avalokiteshvara" (a manwantaric intelligent nature crowned with humanity) — the mystic name given by us to the hosts of the DyanChohans (N.B., the solar Dyan Chohans or the host of only our solar system) taken collectively, which host represents the mother source, the aggregate amount of all the intelligences that were are or everwill be whether on our string of man-bearing planets or on any part or portion of our solar system. And this will bring you by analogy to see that in its turn Adi-Buddhi (as its very name translatedliterally implies) is the aggregate intelligence of the universal intelligences including that of the Dyan Chohans even of the highest order. That is all I dare now to tell you on this special subject, as I fear Ihave already transcended the limit. Therefore whenever I speak of humanity without specifying it you must understand that I mean not humanity of our fourth round as we see it on this speck of mud inspace but the whole host already evoluted.

Yes as described in my letter — there is but one element and it is impossible to comprehend our systembefore a correct conception of it is firmly fixed in one's mind. You must therefore pardon me if I dwell on the subject longer than really seems necessary. But unless this great primary fact is firmly graspedthe rest will appear unintelligible. This element then is the — to speak metaphysically — one sub­stratum or permanent cause of all manifestations in the phenomenal universe. The ancients speak ofthe five cognizable elements of ether, air, water, fire, earth, and of the one incognizable element (to the uninitiates) the 6th principle of the universe — call it Purush Sakti, while to speak of the seventhoutside the sanctuary was punishable with death. But these five are but the differentiated aspects of the one. As man is a seven-fold being so is the universe — the septenary microcosm being to the septenarymacrocosm but as the drop of rainwater is to the cloud from whence it dropped and whither in the course of time it will return. In that one are embraced or included so many tendencies for the evolutionof air, water, fire, etc. (from the purely abstract down to their concrete condition) and when those latter are called elements it is to indicate their productive potentialities for numberless form changes orevolution of being. Let us represent the unknown quantity as X; that quantity is the one eternal immutable principle — and A, B, C, D, E, five of the six minor principles or components of the same;viz., the principles of earth, water, air, fire and ether (akasa) following the order of their spirituality and beginning with the lowest. There is a sixth principle answering to the sixth principle Buddhi, in man (to avoid confusion remember that in viewing the question from the side of the descending scale the abstract All or eternal principle would be numerically designated as the first, and the phenomenaluniverse as the seventh, and whether belonging to man or to the universe — viewed from the other side the numerical order would be exactly reversed) but we are not permitted to name it except among theinitiates. I may however hint that it is connected with the process of the highest intellection. Let us call it N. And besides these, there is under all the activities of the phenomenal universe an energizingimpulse from X, call this Y. Algebraically stated, our equation would therefore read A+B+C+D+E+N+Y=X. Each of these six letters represents, so to speak, the spirit or abstraction of whatyou call elements (your meagre English gives me no other word). This spirit controls the entire line of evolution, around the whole manwantaric cycle in its own department. The informing, vivifying,impelling, evolving cause,behind the countless phenomenal manifestations in that department of Nature. Let us work out the idea with a single example. Take fire. D — the primal igneous principleresident in X — is the ultimate cause of every phenomenal manifestation of fire on all the globes of the chain. The proximate causes are the evoluted secondary igneous agencies which severally control the sevendescents of fire on each planet. (Every element having its seven principles and every principle its seven sub-principles and these secondary agencies before doing so, have in turn become primarycauses.) D is a septenary compound of which the highest fraction is pure spirit. As we see it on our globe it is in its coarsest, most material condition, as gross in its way as is man in his physicalencasement. In the next preceding globe to ours fire was less gross than here: on the one before that less still. And so the body of flame was more and more pure and spiritual less and less gross and materialon each antecedent planet. On the first of all in the manwantaric chain, it appeared as an almost pure objective shining — the Maha Buddhi, sixth principle of the eternal light. Our globe being at the bottomof the arc where matter exhibits itself in its grossest form along with spirit — when the fire element manifests itself on the globe next succeeding ours in the ascending arc it will be less dense than as we see it. Its spiritual quality will be identical with that which fire had on the globe preceding ours in thedescending scale; the second globe of the ascending scale will correspond in quality with that of the second anterior globe to ours in the descending scale, etc. On each globe of the chain there are sevenmanifestations of fire of which the first in order will compare as to spiritual quality with the last manifestation on the next preceding planet: the process being reversed, as you will infer, with theopposite arc. The myriad specific manifestations of these six universal elements are in their turn but the offshoots, branches or branchlets of the one single primordial "Tree of Life."

Take Darwin's genealogical tree of life of the human race and others and bearing ever in mind the wise old adage, "As below so above" — that is the universal system of correspondences — try to understandby analogy. Thus will you see that in this day on this present earth in every mineral, etc., there is such a spirit. I will say more. Every grain of sand, every boulder or crag of granite, is that spirit crystallizedor petrified. You hesitate. Take a primer of geology and see what science affirms there about the formation and growth of minerals. What is the origin of all the rocks, whether sedimentary or igneous.Take a piece of granite or sandstone and you find one composed of crystals, the other of grains of various stones (organic rocks or stones formed out of the remains of once living plants and animals, willnot serve our present purpose: they are the relics of subsequent evolutions while we are concerned but with the primordial ones). Now sedimentary and igneous rocks are composed, the former of sandgravel and mud, the latter of lava. We have then but to trace the origin of the two. What do we find? We find that one was compounded of three elements or more accurately three several manifestations ofthe one element, — earth, water and fire, and that the other was similarly compounded (though under different physical conditions) out of cosmic matter — the imaginary materia prima itself one of the manifestations (6th principle) of the one element. How then can we doubt that a mineral contains in it a spark of the One as everything else in this objective nature does?

 

(2) When the pralaya commences what becomes of the Spirit that has not worked its way up to man?

 

(2) . . . The period necessary for the completion of the seven local or earthly — or shall we call it —globe-rings (not to speak of the seven Rounds in the minor manwantaras followed by their seven minor pralayas) — the completion of the so-called mineral cycle is immeasurably longer than that of anyother kingdom. As you may infer by analogy every globe before it reaches its adult period, has to pass through a formation period — also septenary. Law in Nature is uniform and the conception, formation,birth, progress and development of the child differs from those of the globe only in magnitude. The globe has two periods of teething and of capillature — its first rocks which it also sheds to make roomfor new — and its ferns and mosses before it gets forest. As the atoms in the body change [every] seven years so does the globe renew its strata every seven cycles. A section of a part of Cape Breton coalfieldsshows seven ancient soils with remains of as many forests, and could one dig as deep once more seven other sections would be found following. . . .

 

There are three kinds of pralayas and manwantara: —

 The universal or Maha pralaya and manwantara.

 The solar pralaya and manwantara.

 The minor pralaya and manwantara.

 

When the pralaya No. 1 is finished the universal manwantara begins. Then the whole universe must be re-evoluted de novo. When the pralaya of a solar system comes it affects that solar system only. A solarpralaya = 7 minor pralayas. The minor pralayas of No. 3 concern but our little string of globes, whether man-bearing or not. To such a string our Earth belongs.

Besides this within a minor pralaya there is a condition of planetary rest or as the astronomers say "death," like that of our present moon — in which the rocky body of the planet survives but the lifeimpulse has passed out. For example. Let us imagine that our earth is one of a group of seven planets or man-bearing worlds more or less eliptically arranged. Our earth being at the exact lower central point Now the life impulse reaches "A" or rather that which is destined to become "A" and which so far isbut cosmic dust. A centre is formed in the nebulous matter of the condensation of the solar dust disseminated through space and a series of three evolutions invisible to the eye of flesh occur insuccession, viz., three kingdoms of elementals or nature forces are evoluted: in other words the animal soul of the future globe is formed; or as a Kabalist will express it, the gnomes, the salamanders, and theundines are created. The correspondence between a mother-globe and her child-man may be thus worked out. Both have their seven principles. In the Globe, the elementals (of which there are in allseven species) form (a) a gross body, (b) her fluidic double (linga sariram), (c) her life principle (jiva);

(d) her fourth principle kama rupa is formed by her creative impulse working from centre tocircumference; (e) her fifth principle (animal soul or Manas, physical intelligence) is embodied in the vegetable (in germ) and animal kingdoms; (f) her sixth principle (or spiritual soul, Buddhi) is man (g)and her seventh principle (atma) is in a film of spiritualized akasa that surrounds her. The three evolutions completed: palpable globe begins to form. The mineral kingdom fourth in the whole series,but first in this stage leads the way. Its deposits are at first vaporous soft and plastic, only becoming hard and concrete in the seventh ring. When this ring is completed it projects its essence to globe B —which is already passing through the preliminary stages of formation and mineral evolution begins on that globe. At this juncture the evolution of the vegetable kingdom commences on globe A. When thelatter has made its seventh ring its essence passes on to globe B. At that time the mineral essence moves to globe C and the germs of the animal kingdom enter A. When the animal has seven rings there, its lifeprinciple goes to globe B, and the essences of vegetable and mineral move on. Then comes man on A, an ethereal foreshadowing of the compact being he is destined to become on our earth. Evolving sevenparent races with many offshoots of sub-races, he, like the preceding kingdoms completes his seven rings and is then transferred successively to each of the globes onward to Z. From the first man has allthe seven principles included in him in germ but none are developed. If we compare him to a baby we will be right; no one has ever, in the thousands of ghost stories current, seen the ghost of an infant,though the imagination of a loving mother may have suggested to her the picture of her lost babe in dreams. And this is very suggestive. In each of the rounds he makes one of the principles develop fully.In the first round his consciousness on our earth is dull and but feeble and shadowy, something like that of an infant. When he reaches our earth in the second round he has become responsible in adegree, in the third he becomes so entirely. At every stage and every round his development keeps pace, with the globe on which he is. The descending arc from A to our earth is called the shadowy, theascending to Z the "luminous" . . . We men of the fourth round are already reaching the latter half of the fifth race of our fourth round humanity, while the men (the few earlier comers) of the fifth round,though only in their first race (or rather class), are yet immeasurably higher than we are — spiritually if not intellectually; since with the completion or full development of this fifth principle (intellectualsoul) they have come nearer than we have, are closer in contact with their sixth principle Buddhi. Of course many are the differentiated individuals even in the fourth r. as germs of principles are notequally developed in all, but such is the rule.

. . . Man comes on globe "A" after the other kingdoms have gone on. (Dividing our kingdoms intoseven, the last four are what exoteric science divides into three. To this we add the kingdom of man or the Deva kingdom. The respective entities of these we divide into germinal, instinctive, semi-conscious,and fully conscious). . . . When all kingdoms have reached globe Z they will not move forward to re­enter A in precedence of man, but under a law of retardation operative from the central point — orearth — to Z and which equilibrates a principle of acceleration in the descending arc — they will have just finished their respective evolution of genera and species, when man reaches his highestdevelopment on globe Z — in this or any round. The reason for it is found in the enormously greater time required by them to develop their infinite varieties as compared with man; the relative speed ofdevelopment in the rings therefore naturally increases as we go up the scale from the mineral. But these different rates are so adjusted by man stopping longer in the inter-planetary spheres of rest, for weal orwoe — that all kingdoms finish their work simultaneously on the planet Z. For example, on our globe we see the equilibrating law manifesting. From the first appearance of man whether speechless or not to his present one as a fourth and the coming fifth round being the structural intention of his organization has not radically changed. Ethnological characteristics however varied, affecting in no way man as a human being. The fossil of man or his skeleton whether of the period of that mammalian branch of which he forms the crown, whether cyclop or dwarf can be still recognised at a glance as arelic of man. Plants and animals meanwhile have become more and more unlike what they were. . . . The scheme with its septenary details would be incomprehensible to man had he not the power as thehigher Adepts have proved of prematurely developing his 6th and 7th senses — those which will be the natural endowment of all in the corresponding rounds. Our Lord Buddha — a 6th r. man — would nothave appeared in our epoch, great as were his accumulated merits in previous rebirths but for a mystery. . . . Individuals cannot outstrip the humanity of their round any further than by one remove,for it is mathematically impossible — you say (in effect): if the fountain of life flows ceaselessly there should be men of all rounds on the earth at all times, etc. The hint about planetary rest may dispel the misconception on this head.

When man is perfected qua a given round on Globe A he disappears thence (as had certain vegetablesand animals). By degrees this Globe loses its vitality and finally reaches the moon stage, i.e., death, and so remains while man is making his seven rings on Z and passing his inter-cyclic period before startingon his next round. So with each Globe in turn.

And now as man when completing his seventh ring upon A has but begun his first on Z and as A dieswhen he leaves it for B, etc., and as he must also remain in the inter-cyclic sphere after Z, as he has between every two planets, until the impulse again thrills the chain, clearly no one can be more thanone round ahead of his kind. And Buddha only forms an exception by virtue of the mystery. We have fifth round men among us because we are in the latter half of our septenary earth ring. In the first halfthis could not have happened. The countless myriads of our fourth round humanity who have outrun us and completed their seven rings on Z, have had time to pass their inter-cyclic period begin their newround and work on to globe D (ours). But how can there be men of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th rounds? We represent the first three and the sixth can only come at rare intervals and prematurely likeBuddhas (only under prepared conditions) and that the last-named the seventh are not yet evolved! We have traced man out of a round into the Nirvanic state between Z and A. A was left in the last round dead. As the new round begins it catches the new influx of life, reawakens to vitality and begets all its kingdoms of a superior order to the last. After this has been repeated seven times comes a minorpralaya; the chain of globes are not destroyed by disintegration and dispersion of their particles but pass in abscondito. From this they will re-emerge in their turn during the next septenary period. Withinone solar period (of a p. and m.) occur seven such minor periods, in an ascending scale of progressive development. To recapitulate there are in the round seven planetary or earth rings for each kingdomand one obscuration of each planet. The minor manwantara is composed of seven rounds, 49 rings and 7 obscurations, the solar period of 49 rounds, etc.

The periods with pralaya and manwantara are called by Dikshita "Surya manwantaras and pralayas." Thought is baffled in speculating how many of our solar pralayas must come before the great Cosmicnight — but that will come.

. . . In the minor pralayas there is no starting de novo — only resumption of arrested activity. Thevegetable and animal kingdoms which at the end of the minor manwantara had reached only a partial development are not destroyed. Their life or vital entities, call some of them nati if you will — find alsotheir corresponding night and rest — they also have a Nirvana of their own. And why should they not, these foetal and infant entities. They are all like ourselves begotten of the one element. . . . As we haveour Dyan Chohans so have they in their several kingdoms elemental guardians and are as well taken care of in the mass as is humanity in the mass. The one element not only fills space and isspace, butinterpenetrates every atom of cosmic matter.

When strikes the hour of the solar pralaya — though the process of man's advance on his last seventhround is precisely the same, each planet instead of merely passing out of the visible into the invisible as he quits it in turn is annihilated. With the beginning of the seventh Round of the seventh minormanwantara, every kingdom having now reached its last cycle, there remains on each planet after the exit of man but the maya of once living and existing forms. With every step he takes on the descending and ascending arcs as he moves on from Globe to Globe the planet left behind becomes an emptychrysaloidal case. At his departure there is an outflow from every kingdom of its entities. Waiting to pass into higher forms in due time they are nevertheless liberated: for to the day of that evolution theywill rest in their lethargic sleep in space until again energized into life in the new solar manwantara. The old elementals — will rest until they are called to become in their turn the bodies of mineral,vegetable and animal entities (on another and a higher string of globes) on their way to become human entities (see Isis) while the germinal entities of the lowest forms, and in that time of general perfectionthere will remain but few of such — will hang in space like drops of water suddenly turned to icicles. They will thaw at the first hot breath of a solar manwantara and form the soul of the future globes. . . .The slow development of the vegetable kingdom provided for by the longer inter-planetary rest of man. . . . When the solar pralaya comes the whole purified humanity merges into Nirvana and from thatinter-solar Nirvana will be reborn in higher systems. The string of worlds is destroyed and vanishes like a shadow from the wall in the extinguishment of light. We have every indication that at this verymoment such a solar pralaya is taking place while there are two minor ones ending somewhere.

At the beginning of the solar manwantara the hitherto subjective elements of the material world nowscattered in cosmic dust — receiving their impulse from the new Dyan Chohans of the new solar system (the highest of the old ones having gone higher) — will form into primordial ripples of life andseparating into differentiating centres of activity combine in a graduated scale of seven stages of evolution. Like every other orb of space our Earth has before obtaining its ultimate materiality — andnothing now in this world can give you an idea of what this state of matter is — to pass through a gamut of seven stages of density. I say gamut advisedly since the diatonic scale best affords anillustration of the perpetual rythmic motion of the descending and ascending cycle of Swabhavat — graduated as it is by tones and semi-tones.

You have among the learned members of your society one Theosophist who without familiarity with our occult doctrine, has yet intuitively grasped from scientific data the idea of a solar pralaya and itsmanwantara in their beginnings. I mean the celebrated French astronomer Flammarion — "La Resurrection et la Fin des Mondes" (Chapter 4 res.). He speaks like a true seer. The facts are as hesurmises with slight modifications. In consequence of the secular refrigeration (old age rather and loss of vital power), solidification and desiccation of the globes, the earth arrives at a point when it begins tobe a relaxed conglomerate. The period of child-bearing is gone by. The progeny are all nurtured, its term of life is finished. Hence "its constituent masses cease to obey those laws of cohesion andaggregation which held them together." And becoming like a cadaver which abandoned to the work of destruction would leave each molecule composing it free to separate itself from the body for ever toobey in future the sway of new influences. The attraction of the moon (would that he could know the full extent of its pernicious influence) would itself undertake the task of demolition by producing a tidalwave of earth particles instead of an aqueous tide.

His mistake is that he believes a long time must be devoted to the ruin of the solar system: we are toldthat it occurs in the twinkling of an eye but not without many preliminary warnings. Another error is the supposition that the earth will fall into the sun. The sun itself is first to disintegrate at the solarpralaya.

. . . Fathom the nature and essence of the sixth principle of the universe and man and you will havefathomed the greatest mystery in this our world — and why not — are you not surrounded by it? What are its familiar manifestations, mesmerism, Od force, etc. — all different aspects of one force capable ofgood and evil applications.

The degrees of an Adept's initiation mark the seven stages at which he discovers the secret of thesevenfold principles in nature and man and awakens his dormant powers.

Table of Contents

Letter No. 16

[Mr. Sinnett's queries to which K.H. replies in this letter are printed in bold type. — ED.]

(1) The remarks appended to a letter in the last Theosophist,page 226, Col. 1, strike me as veryimportant and as qualifying — I do not say contradicting — a good deal of what we have hitherto been told in re Spiritualism.

We had heard already of a spiritual condition of life in which the redeveloped Ego enjoyed a conscious existence for a time before reincarnation in another world; but that branch of the subject has hithertobeen slurred over. Now some explicit statements are made about it; and these suggest further enquiries.

In the Deva Chan (I have lent my Theosophist to a friend; and have not got it at hand to refer to but thatif I remember rightly is the name given to the state of spiritual beatitude described) the new Ego retains complete recollection of his life on earth apparently. Is that so or is there any misunderstandingon that point on my part?

(1) The Deva-Chan, or land of "Sukhavati," is allegorically described by our Lord Buddha himself. What he said may be found in the Shan-Mun-yi-Tung. Says Tathagata: —

"Many thousand myriads of systems of worlds beyond this (ours) there is a region of Bliss called Sukhavati . . . . This region is encircled with seven rows of railings, seven rows of vast curtains, seven rows of waving trees; this holy abode of Arahats is governed by the Tathagatas (Dhyan Chohans) and is possessed by the Bodhisatwas. It hath seven precious lakes, in the midst of which flow crystaline waters having 'seven and one' properties, or distinctive qualities (the 7 principles emanating from the ONE). This, O, Sariputra is the 'Deva Chan.' Its divine Udarnbara flower casts a root in the shadow of every earth, and blossoms for all those who reach it. Those born in the blessed region are truly felicitous, there are no more griefs or sorrows in that cycle for them. . . . Myriads of Spirits (Lha) resort there for rest and then return to their own regions. (1) Again, O, Sariputra, in that land of joy many who are born in it are Avaivartyas . . .(2) etc., etc.

 

(2) Now except in the fact that the duration of existence in the Deva Chan is limited, there is a very close resemblance between that condition and the Heaven of ordinary religion (omitting anthropomorphicideas of God).

 

(2) Certainly the new Ego once that it is reborn, retains for a certain time — proportionate to its Earth-life, a "complete recollection of his life on earth." (3) (See your preceding query.) But it can never return on earth, from the Deva Chan, nor has the latter — even omitting all "anthropomorphic ideas of God" — any resemblance to the paradise or heaven of any religion, and it is H.P.B.'s literary fancy that suggested to her the wonderful comparison.

 

(3) Now the question of importance — is who goes to Heaven — or Deva Chan? Is this condition only attained by the few who are very good, or by the many who are not very bad, — after the lapse in theircase of a longer unconscious incubation or gestation.

 

(3) "Who goes to Deva Chan?" The personal Ego of course, but beatified, purified, holy. Every Ego — the combination of the sixth and seventh principles — which, after the period of unconscious gestation is reborn into the Deva-Chan, is of necessity as innocent and pure as a new-born babe. The fact of his being reborn at all, shows the preponderance of good over evil in his old personality. And while the Karma (of evil) steps aside for the time being to follow him in his future earth-reincamation, he brings along with him but the Karma of his good deeds, words, and thoughts into this Deva-Chan. "Bad" is a relative term for us — as you were told more than once before, — and the Law of Retribution is the only law that never errs. Hence all those who have not slipped down into the mire of unredeemable sin and bestiality — go to the Deva Chan. They will have to pay for their sins, voluntary and involuntary, later on. Meanwhile, they are rewarded; receive the effects of the causes produced by them.

 

Of course it is a state, one, so to say, of intense selfishness, during which an Ego reaps the reward of his unselfishness on earth. He is completely engrossed in the bliss of all his personal earthly affections, preferences and thoughts, and gathers in the fruit of his meritorious actions. No pain, no grief nor even the shadow of a sorrow comes to darken the bright horizon of his unalloyed happiness: for, it is a state of perpetual "Maya" . . . Since the conscious perception of one's personality on earth is but an evanescent dream that sense will be equally that of a dream in the Deva-Chan — only a hundred fold intensified. So much so, indeed, that the happy Ego is unable to see through the veil, the evils, sorrows and woes to which those it loved on earth may be subjected to. It lives in that sweet dream with its loved ones — whether gone before, or yet remaining on earth; it has them near itself, as happy, as blissful and as innocent as the disembodied dreamer himself; and yet, apart from rare visions, the denizens of our gross planet feel it not. It is in this, during such a condition of complete Maya that the Souls or astral Egos of pure, loving sensitives, labouring under the same illusion, think their loved ones come down to them on earth, while it is their own Spirits that are raised towards those in the Deva-Chan. Many of the subjective spiritual communications — most of them when the sensitives are pure minded — are real; but it is most difficult for the uninitiated medium to fix in his mind the true and correct pictures of what he sees and hears. Some of the phenomena called psychography (though more rarely) are also real. The spirit of the sensitive getting odylised, so to say, by the aura of the Spirit in the Deva-Chan, becomes for a few minutes that departed personality, and writes in the hand writing of the latter, in his language and in his thoughts, as they were during his life time. The two spirits become blended in one; and, the preponderance of one over the other during such phenomena determines the preponderance of personality in the characteristics exhibited in such writings, and "trance speaking." What you call "rapport" is in plain fact an identity of molecular vibration between the astral part of the incarnate medium and the astral part of the disincarnate personality. I have just noticed an article on smell by some English Professor (which I will cause to be reviewed in the Theosophist and say a few words), and find in it something that applies to our case. As, in music, two different sounds may be in accord and separately distinguishable, and this harmony or discord depends upon the synchronous vibrations and complementary periods; so there is rapport between medium and "control" when their astral molecules move in accord. And the question whether the communication shall reflect more of the one personal idiosyncracy, or the other, is determined by the relative intensity of the two sets of vibrations in the compound wave of Akasa. The less identical the vibratory impulses the more mediumistic and less spiritual will be the message. So then, measure your medium's moral state by that of the alleged "controlling" Intelligence, and your tests of genuineness leave nothing to be desired.

 

(4) Or are there great varieties of condition within the limits, so to speak, of Deva Chan, so that an appropriate state is dropped into by all, from which they will be born into lower or higher conditions inthe next world of causes. It is no use multiplying hypotheses. We want some information to go upon.

 

(4) Yes; there are great varieties in the Deva-Chan states, and, it is all as you say. As many varieties of bliss, as on earth there are shades of perception and of capability to appreciate such reward. It is an ideated paradise, in each case of the Ego's own making, and by him filled with the scenery, crowded with the incidents, and thronged with the people he would expect to find in such a sphere of compensative bliss. And it is that variety which guides the temporary personal Ego into the current which will lead him to be reborn in a lower or higher condition in the next world of causes. Everything is so harmoniously adjusted in nature — especially in the subjective world, that no mistake can be ever committed by the Tathagatas — or Dhyan Chohans — who guide the impulses.

 

(5) On the face of the idea, a purely spiritual state would only be enjoyable to the entities highlyspiritualized in this life. But there are myriads of very good people (morally) who are not spiritualized at all. How can they be fitted to pass, with their recollections of this life from a material to a spiritualcondition of existence.

 

(5) It is "a spiritual condition" only as contrasted with our own grossly "material condition," and, as already stated — it is such degrees of spirituality that constitute and determine the great "varieties" of conditions within the limits of Deva-Chan. A mother from a savage tribe is not less happy than a mother from a regal palace, with her lost child in her arms; and although as actual Egos, children prematurely dying before the perfection of their septenary Entity do not find their way to Deva-Chan, yet all the same the mother's loving fancy finds her children there, without one missing that her heart yearns for. Say — it is but a dream, but after all what is objective life itself but a panorama of vivid unrealities? The pleasures realized by a Red Indian in his "happy hunting grounds" in that Land of Dreams is not less intense than the ecstasy felt by a connoisseur who passes aeons in the wrapt delight of listening to divine Symphonies by imaginary angelic choirs and orchestras. As it is no fault of the former, if born a "savage" with an instinct to kill — though it caused the death of many an innocent animal — why, if with it all, he was a loving father, son, husband, why should he not also enjoy his share of reward? The case would be quite different if the same cruel acts had been done by an educated and civilized person, from a mere love of sport. The savage in being reborn would simply take a low place in the scale, by reason of his imperfect moral development; while the Karma of the other would be tainted with moral delinquency. . . .

Every one but that ego which, attracted by its gross magnetism, falls into the current that will draw it into the "planet of Death" — the mental as well as physical satellite of our earth — is fitted to pass into a relative "spiritual" condition adjusted to his previous condition in life and mode of thought. To my knowledge and recollection H.P.B. explained to Mr. Hume that man's sixth principle, as something purely spiritual could not exist, or have conscious being in the Deva-Chan, unless it assimilated some of the more abstract and pure of the mental attributes of the fifth principle or animal Soul: its manas (mind) and memory. When man dies his second and third principles die with him; the lower triad disappears, and the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh principles form the surviving Quaternary. (Read again page 6 in Fragments of O.T.) (4) Thenceforth it is a "death" struggle between the Upper and Lower dualities. If the upper wins, the sixth, having attracted to itself the quintessence of Good from the fifth — its nobler affections, its saintly (though they be earthly) aspirations, and the most Spiritualised portions of its mind — follows its divine elder (the 7th) into the "Gestation" State; and the fifth and fourth remain in association as an empty shell — (the expression is quite correct) — to roam in the earth's atmosphere, with half the personal memory gone, and the more brutal instincts fully alive for a certain period — an "Elementary" in short. This is the "angel guide" of the average medium. If, on the other hand, it is the Upper Duality which is defeated, there, it is the fifth principle that assimilates all that there may be left of personal recollection and perceptions of its personal individuality in the sixth. But, with all this additional stock, it will not remain in Kama-Loka — "the world of Desire" or our Earth's atmosphere. In a very short time like a straw floating within the attraction of the vortices and pits of the Maelstrom, it is caught up and drawn into the great whirlpool of human Egos; while the sixth and seventh — now a purely Spiritual, individual MONAD, with nothing left in it of the late personality, having no regular "gestation" period to pass through: (since there is no purified personal Ego to be reborn), after a more or less prolonged period of unconscious Rest in the boundless Space — will find itself reborn in another personality on the next planet. When arrives the period of "Full Individual Consciousness" — which precedes that of Absolute Consciousness in the Pari-Nirvana — this lost personal life becomes as a torn out page in the great Book of Lives, without even a disconnected word left to mark its absence. The purified monad will neither perceive nor remember it in the series of its past rebirths — which it would had it gone to the "World of Forms" (rupa-loka) — and its retrospective glance will not perceive even the slightest sign to indicate that it had been. The light of Samma-Sambuddh — ". . . that light which shines beyond our mortal ken

The line of all the lives in all the worlds " —

throws no ray upon that personal life in the series of lives foregone.

To the credit of mankind, I must say, that such an utter obliteration of an existence from the tablets of Universal Being does not occur often enough to make a great percentage. In fact, like the much mentioned "congenital idiot" such a thing is a lusus naturae — an exception, not the rule.

 

(6) And how is a spiritual existence in which everything has merged into the sixth principle, compatible with that consciousness of individual and personal material life which must be attributed to the Ego inDeva-Chan if he retains his earthly consciousness as stated in the Theosophist Note.

 

(6) The question is now sufficiently explained, I believe: the sixth and seventh principles apart from the rest constitute the eternal imperishable, but also unconscious "Monad." To awaken in it to life the latent consciousness, especially that of personal individuality, requires the monad plus the highest attributes of the fifth — the "animal Soul"; and it is that which makes the ethereal Ego that lives and enjoys bliss in the Deva-Chan. Spirit, or the unalloyed emanations of the ONE — the latter forming with the seventh and sixth principles the highest triad — neither of the two emanations are capable of assimilating but that which is good, pure and holy; hence, no sensual, material or unholy recollection can follow the purified memory of the Ego to the region of Bliss. The Karma for these recollections of evil deeds and thought will reach the Ego when it changes its personality in the following world of causes. The Monad, or the "Spiritual Individuality," remains untainted in all cases. "No sorrow or Pain for those born there (in the Rupa-Loka of Deva-Chan); for this is the Pure-land. All the regions in Space possess such lands (Sakwala), but this land of Bliss is the most pure." In the Djnana Prasthana Shaster, it is said: "by personal purity and earnest meditation, we overleap the limits of the World of Desire, and enter in the World of Forms."

 

(7) The period of gestation between Death and Deva-Chan has hitherto been conceived by me at allevents as very long. Now it is said to be in some cases only a few days, in no cases (it is implied) more than a few years. This seems plainly stated, but I ask if it can be explicitly confirmed because it is apoint on which so much turns.

 

(7) Another fine example of the habitual disorder in which Mrs. H.P.B.'s mental furniture is kept. She talks of "Bardo" and does not even say to her readers what it means! As in her writing room confusion is ten times confounded, so in her mind are crowded ideas piled in such a chaos that when she wants to express them the tail peeps out before the head. "Bardo" has nothing to do with the duration of time in the case you are referring to. "Bardo" is the period between death and rebirth — and may last from a few years to a kalpa. It is divided into three sub-periods (1) when the Ego delivered of its mortal coil enters into Kama-Loka (5) (the abode of Elementaries); (2) when it enters into its "Gestation State"; (3) when it is reborn in the Rupa-Loka of Deva-Chan. Sub-period (1) may last from a few minutes to a number of years — the phrase "a few years" becoming puzzling and utterly worthless without a more complete explanation; Sub-period (2) is "very long"; as you say, longer sometimes than you may even imagine, yet proportionate to the Ego's spiritual stamina; Sub-period (3) lasts in proportion to the good KARMA, after which the monad is again reincarnated. TheAgama Sutra saying: — "in all these Rupa-Lokas, the Devas (Spirits) are equally subjected to birth, decay, old age, and death," means only that an Ego is borne thither then begins fading out and finally "dies," i.e., falls into that unconscious condition which precedes rebirth; and ends the Sloka with these words — "As the devas emerge from these heavens, they enter the lower world again:" i.e, they leave a world of bliss to be reborn in a world of causes.

 

(8) In that case, and assuming that Deva-Chan is not solely the heritage of adepts and persons almost aselevated, there is a condition of existence tantamount to Heaven actually going on, from which the life of Earth may be watched by an immense number of those who have gone before! (9) And for how long?Does this state of spiritual beatitude endure for years? for decades? for centuries?

 

(8) Most emphatically "the Deva-Chan is not solely the heritage of adepts," and most decidedly there is a "heaven" — if you must use this astro-geographical Christian term — for "an immense number of those who have gone before." But "the life of Earth" can be watched by none of these, for reasons of the Law of Bliss plus Maya, already given.

 

(9) For years, decades, centuries and milleniums, oftentimes — multiplied by something more. It all depends upon the duration of Karma. Fill with oil Den's little cup, and a city Reservoir of water, and lighting both see which burns the longer. The Ego is the wick and Karma the oil: the difference in the quantity of the latter (in the cup and the reservoir) suggesting to you the great difference in the duration of various Karmas. Every effect must be proportionate to the cause. And, as man's terms of incarnate existence bear but a small proportion to his periods of inter-natal existence in the manvantaric cycle, so the good thoughts, words, and deeds of any one of these "lives" on a globe are causative of effects, the working out of which requires far more time than the evolution of the causes occupied. Therefore, when you read in the Jats and other fabulous stories of the Buddhist Scriptures that this or the other good action was rewarded by Kalpas of several figures of bliss, do not smile at the absurd exaggeration, but bear in mind what I have said. From a small seed, you know, sprung a tree whose life endures now for 22 centuries; I mean the Anuradha-pura Bo tree. Nor must you laugh, if ever you come across Pindha-Dhana or any other Buddhist Sutra and read: "Between the Kama­Loka and the Rupa-Loka there is a locality, the dwelling of 'Mara' (Death). This Mara filled with passion and lust, destroys all virtuous principles, as a stone grinds corn. (6) His palace is 7000 yojanas square, and is surrounded by a seven-fold wall," for you will feel now more prepared to understand the allegory. Also, when Beal, or Burnouf, or Rhys Davids in the innocence of their Christian and materialistic souls indulge in such translations as they generally do, we do not bear them malice for their commentaries, since they cannot know any better. But what can the following mean: — "The names of the Heavens" (a mistranslation; lokas are not heavens but localities or abodes) of Desire, Kama-Loka — so called, because the beings who occupy them are subject to desires of eating, drinking, sleeping and love. They are otherwise called the abodes of the five (?) orders of sentient creatures — Devas, men, asuras, beasts, demons" (Lantan Sutra, trans. by S. Beal). They mean simply that, had the reverend translator been acquainted with the true doctrine a little better — he would have (1) divided the Devas into two classes — and called them the "Rupa-devas" and the "Arupa-devas" (the "form" — or objective, and the "formless" or subjective Dhyan Chohans; and (2) — would have done the same for his class of "men," since there are shells, and "Mara-rupas" — i.e. bodies doomed to annihilation. All these are:

 

(1) "Rupa-devas" — Dhyan Chohans (7) having forms;

 (2) "Arupa-devas"[— Dhyan Chohans] having no forms

 {[above are] Ex-men.  

(3) "Pisachas" — (two-principled) ghosts.  

(4) "Mara-rupa" — Doomed to death (3 principled).  

(5) Asuras — Elementals — having human form  

(6) Beasts — [Elementals] 2nd class — animal Elementals  

{[Asuras and Beasts are] Future men.  

(7) Rakshasas (Demons) Souls or Astral Forms of sorcerers; men who have reached the apex of knowledge in the forbidden art. Dead or alive they have, so to say cheated nature; but it is only temporary — until our planet goes into obscuration, after which they have nolens volens to be annihilated.

 

It is these seven groups that form the principal divisions of the Dwellers of the subjective world around us. It is in stock No. 1, that are the intelligent Rulers of this world of Matter, and who, with all this intelligence are but the blindly obedient instruments of the ONE; the active agents of a Passive Principle.

And thus are misinterpreted and mistranslated nearly all our Sutras; yet even under that confused jumble of doctrines and words, for one who knows even superficially the true doctrine, there is firm ground to stand upon. Thus, for instance in enumerating the seven lokas of the "Kama-Loka" the Avatamsaka Sutra, gives as the seventh, the "Territory of Doubt." I will ask you to remember the name as we will have to speak of it hereafter. Every such "world" within the Sphere of Effects has a Tathagata, or "Dhyan Chohan" — to protect and watch over, not to interfere with it. Of course, of all men, spiritualists will be the first to reject and throw off our doctrines to "the limbo of exploded superstitions." Were we to assure them that every one of their "Summerlands" had seven boarding houses in it, with the same number of "Spirit Guides" to "boss" in them, and call these "angels," Saint Peters, Johns, and St. Ernests, they would welcome us with open arms. But whoever heard of Tathagats and Dhyan Chohans, Asuras and Elementals? Preposterous! Still, we are happily allowed — by our friends (Mr. Eglinton, at least) — to be possessed "of a certain knowledge of Occult Sciences" (Vide "Light"). And thus, even this mite of "Knowledge" is at your service, and is now helping me to answer your following question:

Is there any intermediate condition between the spiritual beatitude of Deva-Chan, and the forlornshadow life of the only half conscious elementary reliquiaeof human beings who have lost their sixth principle. Because if so that might give a locus standi in imagination to the Earnests and Joeys of thespiritual mediums — the better sort of controlling "spirits." If so surely that must be a very populous

Alas, no; my friend; not that I know of. From "Sukhavati" down to the "Territory of Doubt" there is a variety of Spiritual States; but I am not aware of any such "intermediate condition." I have told you of the Sakwalas (though I cannot be enumerating them since it would be useless); and even of Avitchi — the "Hell" from which there is no return (7a), and I have no more to tell about. "The forlorn shadow" has to do the best it can. As soon as it has stepped outside the Kama-Loka, and crossed the "Golden Bridge" leading to the "Seven Golden Mountains" the Ego can confabulate no more, with easy-going mediums. No "Earnest" or "Joey" has ever returned from the Rupa Loka — let alone the Arupa-Loka — to hold sweet intercourse with mortals.

Of course there is a "better sort" of reliquiae; and the "shells" or the "earth-walkers" as they are here called, are not necessarily all bad. But even those that are good, are made bad for the time being by mediums. The "shells" may well not care, since they have nothing to lose, anyhow. But there is another kind of "Spirits," we have lost sight of: the suicides and those killed by accident. Both kinds can communicate, and both have to pay dearly for such visits. And now I have again to explain what I mean. Well, this class is the one that the French Spiritists call — "les Esprits Souffrants." They are an exception to the rule, as they have to remain within the earth's attraction, and in its atmosphere — the Kama-Loka -- till the very last moment of what would have been the natural duration of their lives. In other words, that particular wave of life-evolution must run on to its shore. But it is a sin and cruelty to revive their memory and intensify their suffering by giving them a chance of living an artificial life; a chance to overload their Karma, by tempting them into opened doors, viz., mediums and sensitives, for they will have to pay roundly for every such pleasure. I will explain. The suicides, who, foolishly hoping to escape life, found themselves still alive, — have suffering enough in store for them from that very life. Their punishment is in the intensity of the latter. Having lost by the rash act their seventh and sixth principles, though not for ever, as they can regain both — instead of accepting their punishment, and taking their chances of redemption, they are often made to regret life and tempted to regain a hold upon it by sinful means. In the Kama-Loka, the land of intense desires, they can gratify their earthly yearnings but through a living proxy; and by so doing, at the expiration of the natural term, they generally lose their monad for ever. As to the victims of accident — these fare still worse. Unless they were so good and pure, as to be drawn immediately within the Akasic Samadhi, i.e. to fall into a state of quiet slumber, a sleep full of rosy dreams, during which, they have no recollection of the accident, but move and live among their familiar friends and scenes, until their natural life-term is finished, when they find themselves born in the Deva-Chan — a gloomy fate is theirs. Unhappy shades, if sinful and sensual they wander about — (not shells, for their connection with their two higher principles is not quite broken) — until their death-hour comes. Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which bind them to familiar scenes, they are enticed by the opportunities which mediums afford, to gratify them vicariously. They are the Pisachas, the Incubi, and Succubi of mediaeval times. The demons of thirst, gluttony, lust and avarice, — elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness and cruelty; provoking their victims to horrid crimes, and revelling in their commission! They not only ruin their victims, but these psychic vampires, borne along by the torrent of their hellish impulses, at last, at the fixed close of their natural period of life — they are carried out of the earth's aura into regions where for ages they endure exquisite suffering and end with entire destruction.

But if the victim of accident or violence, be neither very good, nor very bad — an average person — then this may happen to him. A medium who attracts him, will create for him the most undesirable of things: a new combination of Skandhas and a new and evil Karma. But let me give you a clearer idea of what I mean by Karma in this case.

In connection with this, let me tell you before, that since you seem so interested with the subject, you can do nothing better than to study the two doctrines — of Karma and Nirvana — as profoundly as you can. Unless you are thoroughly well acquainted with the two tenets — the double key to the metaphysics of Abidharma — you will always find yourself at sea in trying to comprehend the rest. We have several sorts of Karma and Nirvana in their various applications — to the Universe, the world, Devas, Buddhas, Bodhisatwas, men and animals — the second including its seven kingdoms. Karma and Nirvana are but two of the seven great MYSTERIES of Buddhist metaphysics; and but four of the seven are known to the best orientalists, and that very imperfectly.

If you ask a learned Buddhist priest what is Karma? — he will tell you that Karma is what a Christian might call Providence (in a certain sense only) and a Mahomedan — Kismet, fate or destiny (again in one sense). That it is that cardinal tenet which teaches that, as soon as any conscious or sentient being, whether man, deva, or animal dies, a new being is produced and he or it reappears in another birth, on the same or another planet, under conditions of his or its own antecedent making. Or, in other words that Karma is the guiding power, and Trishna (in Pali Tanha) the thirst or desire to sentiently live — the proximate force or energy, the resultant of human (or animal) action, which, out of the old Skandhas (8) produce the new group that form the new being and control the nature of the birth itself. Or to make it still clearer, the new being, is rewarded and punished for the meritorious acts and misdeeds of the old one; Karma representing an Entry Book, in which all the acts of man, good, bad, or indifferent, are carefully recorded to his debit and credit — by himself, so to say, or rather by these very actions of his. There, where Christian poetical fiction created, and sees a "Recording" Guardian Angel, stern and realistic Buddhist logic, perceiving the necessity that every cause should have its effect — shows its real presence. The opponents of Buddhism have laid great stress upon the alleged injustice that the doer should escape and an innocent victim be made to suffer, — since the doer and the sufferer are different beings. The fact is, that while in one sense they may be so considered, yet in another they are identical. The "old being" is the sole parent — father and mother at once — of the "new being." It is the former who is the creator and fashioner, of the latter, in reality; and far more so in plain truth, than any father in flesh. And once that you have well mastered the meaning of Skandhas you will see what I mean.

It is the group of Skandhas, that form and constitute the physical and mental individuality we call man (or any being). This group consists (in the exoteric teaching) of five Skandhas, namely: Rupa — the material properties or attributes; Vedana — sensations; Sanna — abstract ideas; Sankhara — tendencies both physical and mental; and Vinnana — mental powers, an amplification of the fourth — meaning the mental, physical and moral predispositions. We add to them two more, the nature and names of which you may learn hereafter. Suffice for the present to let you know that they are connected with, and productive of Sakkayaditthi, the "heresy or delusion of individuality" and of Attavada "the doctrine of Self," both of which (in the case of the fifth principle the soul) lead to the maya of heresy and belief in the efficacy of vain rites and ceremonies; in prayers and intercession.

Now, returning to the question of identity between the old and the new "Ego." I may remind you once more, that even your Science has accepted the old, very old fact distinctly taught by our Lord (9), viz. — that a man of any given age, while sentiently the same, is yet physically not the same as he was a few years earlier (we say seven years and are prepared to maintain and prove it): buddhistically speaking, his Skandhas have changed. At the same time they are ever and ceaselessly at work in preparing the abstract mould, the "privation" of the future new being. Well then, if it is just that a man of 40 should enjoy or suffer for the actions of the man of 20, so it is equally just that the being of the new birth, who is essentially identical with the previous being — since he is its outcome and creation — should feel the consequences of that begetting Self or personality. Your Western law which punishes the innocent son of a guilty father by depriving him of his parent, rights and property; your civilized Society which brands with infamy the guileless daughter of an immoral, criminal mother; your Christian Church and Scriptures which teach that the "Lord God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation" are not all these far more unjust and cruel than anything done by Karma? Instead of punishing the innocent together with the culprit, the Karma avenges and rewards the former, which neither of your three western potentates above mentioned ever thought of doing. But perhaps, to our physiological remark the objectors may reply that it is only the body that changes, there is only a molecular transformation, which has nothing to do with the mental evolution; and that the Skandhas represent not only a material but also a set of mental and moral qualities. But is there, I ask, either a sensation, an abstract idea, a tendency of mind, or a mental power, that one could call an absolutely non-molecular phenomenon? Can even a sensation or the most abstractive thoughts which is something, come out of nothing, or be nothing?

Now, the causes producing the "new being" and determining the nature of Karma are, as already said — Trishna (or "Tanha") — thirst, desire for sentient existence and Upadana — which is the realization or consummation of Trishna or that desire. And both of these the medium helps to awaken and to develop nec plus ultra in an Elementary, be he a suicide or a victim. (10) The rule is, that a person who dies a natural death, will remain from "a few hours to several short years," within the earth's attraction, i.e., in the Kama-Loka. But exceptions are, in the case of suicides and those who die a violent death in general. Hence, one of such Egos, for instance, who was destined to live — say 80 or 90 years, but who either killed himself or was

killed by some accident, let us suppose at the age of 20 — would have to pass in the Kama Loka not "a few years," but in his case 60 or 70 years, as an Elementary, or rather an "earth-walker"; since he is not, unfortunately for him, even a "shell." Happy, thrice happy, in comparison, are those disembodied entities, who sleep their long slumber and live in dream in the bosom of Space! And woe to those whose Trishna will attract them to mediums, and woe to the latter, who tempt them with such an easy Upadana. For in grasping them, and satisfying their thirst for life, the medium helps to develop in them — is in fact the cause of — a new set of Skandhas, a new body, with far worse tendencies and passions than was the one they lost. All the future of this new body will be determined thus, not only by the Karma of demerit of the previous set or group but also by that of the new set of the future being. Were the mediums and Spiritualists but to know, as I said, that with every new "angel guide" they welcome with rapture, they entice the latter into an Upadana which will be productive of a series of untold evils for the new Ego that will be born under its nefarious shadow, and that with every seance — especially for materialization — they multiply the causes for misery, causes that will make the unfortunate Ego fail in his spiritual birth, or be reborn into a worse existence than ever — they would, perhaps, be less lavishing their hospitality.

And now, you may understand why we oppose so strongly Spiritualism and mediumship. And, you will also see, why, to satisfy Mr. Hume, — at least in one direction, — I got myself into a scrape with the Chohan, and mirabile dictu! — with both the sahibs, "the young men by the name of" — Scott and Banon. To amuse you I will ask H.P.B. to send you with this a page of the "Banon papyrus," an article of his that he winds up with a severe literary thrashing of my humble self. Shadows of the Asuras, in what a passion she flew upon reading this rather disrespectful criticism! I am sorry she does not print it, upon considerations of "family honour" as the "Disinherited" expressed it. As to the Chohan, the matter is more serious; and, he was far from satisfied that I should have allowed Eglinton to believe it was myself. He had permitted this proof of the power in living man to be given to the Spiritualists through a medium of theirs, but had left the programme and its details to ourselves; hence his displeasure at some trifling consequences. I tell you, my dear friend, that I am far less free to do as I like than you are in the matter of the Pioneer. None of us but the highest Chutuktus are their full masters. But I digress.

And now that you have been told much and had explained a good deal, you may as well read this letter to our irrepressible friend — Mrs. Gordon. The reasons given may throw some cold water on her Spiritualistic zeal, though I have my reasons to doubt it. Anyhow it may show her that it is not against true Spiritualism that we set ourselves, but only against indiscriminate mediumship and — physical manifestations, — materializations and trance-possessions especially. Could the Spiritualists be only made to understand the difference between individuality and personality, between individual and personal immortality and some other truths, they would be more easily persuaded that Occultists may be fully convinced of the monad's immortality, and yet deny that of the soul — the vehicle of the personal Ego; that they can firmly believe in, and themselves practice spiritual communications and intercourse with the disembodied Egos of the Rupa-Loka, and yet laugh at the insane idea of "shaking hands" with a "Spirit"!; that finally, that as the matter stands, it is the Occultists and the Theosophists who are true Spiritualists, while the modern sect of that name is composed simply of materialistic phenomenalists.

And once that we are discussing "individuality" and "personality," it is curious that H.P.B. when subjecting poor Mr. Hume's brain to torture with her muddled explanations, never thought — until receiving the explanation from himself, of the difference that exists between individuality and personality — that it was the very same doctrine she had been taught: that of Paccika-Yana, and of Amita-Yana. The two terms as above given by him are the correct and literal translation of the Pali, Sanskrit, and even of the Chino-Tibetan technical names for the many personal entities blended in one Individuality — the long string of lives emanating from the same Immortal MONAD. You will have to remember them: —

 

(I) The Paccika Yana — (in Sanskrit "Pratyeka") means literally — the "personal vehicle" or personal Ego, a combination of the five lower principles. While —

 

(2) The Amita-Yana — (in Sanskrit "Amrita") is translated: "The immortal vehicle," or the Individuality, the Spiritual Soul, or the Immortal monad — a combination of the fifth, sixth and seventh. (11)

 

It appears to me that one of our great difficulties in trying to understand the progress of affairs turns

Quite right. But I must be permitted to doubt whether with the desired explanations the difficulty will be removed, and you will become able to penetrate "the secret of psychic phenomena." You, my good friend, whom I had once or twice the pleasure of hearing playing on your piano in the quiet intervals between dress-coating and a beef-and-claret dinner — tell me, could you favour me as readily, as with one of your easy waltzes — with one of Beethoven's Grand Sonatas? Pray, pray have patience! Yet, I would not refuse you by any means. You will find the fourth and the fifth principles, divided into roots and Branches on a fly-sheet herein enclosed, if I find time. (12) And now, how long do you propose to abstain from interrogation marks?

Faithfully,

K. H.

P.S. — I hope I have now removed all cause for reproaches — my delay in answering your queries notwithstanding, — and that my character is re-established. Yourself and Mr. Hume have received now more information about the A.E. Philosophy than was ever given out to non-initiates within my knowledge. Your sagacity, my kind friend, will have suggested long ago, that it is not so much because of your combined personal virtues — though Mr. Hume I must confess, has run up a large claim since his conversion — or my personal preferences for either of you, as for other and very apparent reasons. Of all our semi-chelas you two are the most likely to utilise for the general good the facts given you. You must regard them received in trust for the benefit of the whole Society; to be turned over, and employed and re-employed in many ways and in all ways that are good. If you (Mr. Sinnett) would give pleasure to your trans-Himalayan friend, do not suffer any month to pass without writing a Fragment, long or short for the magazine, and then, issuing it as a pamphlet — since you so call it. You may sign them as "A Lay-Chela of K.H.," or in any way you choose. I dare not ask the same favour of Mr. Hume, who has already done more than his share in another direction.

I will not answer your query about your Pioneer connection just now: something may be said on both sides. But at least take no rash decision. We are at the end of the cycle, and you are connected with the T.S.

Under favour of my Karma — I mean to answer to-morrow Mr. Hume's long and kind personal letter. The abundance of MSS. from me of late shows that I have found a little leisure, their blotched, patchy and mended appearance also proves that my leisure has come by snatches, with constant interruptions, and that my writing has been done in odd places here and there, with such materials as I could pick up. But for the RULE that forbids our using one minim of power until every ordinary means has been tried and failed, I might, of course, have given you a lovely "precipitation" as regards chirography and composition. I console myself for the miserable appearance of my letters with the thought that perhaps, you may not value them the less, for these marks of my personal subjection to the way-side annoyances which you English so ingeniously reduce to a minimum with your appliances of sorts. As your lady once kindly remarked, they take away most effectually the flavour of miracle, and make us as human beings, more thinkable entities, — a wise reflection for which I thank her.

H.P.B. is in despair: the Chohan refused permission to M. to let her come this year further than the Black Rock, and M. very coolly made her unpack her trunks. Try to console her, if you can. Besides, she is really wanted more at Bombay than Penlor. Olcott is on his way to Lanka and Damodar packed up to Poona for a month, his foolish austerities and hard work having broken down his physical constitution. I will have to look after him, and perhaps, to take him away, if it comes to the worst.

Just now I am able to give you a bit of information, which bears upon the so often discussed question of our allowing phenomena. The Egyptian operations of your blessed countrymen involve such local consequences to the body of Occultists still remaining there and to what they are guarding, that two of our adepts are already there, having joined some Druze brethren and three more on their way. I was offered the agreeable privilege of becoming an eye-witness to the human butchery, but — declined with thanks. For such great emergency is our Force stored up, and hence — we dare not waste it on fashionable tamasha. In about a week — new religious ceremonies, new glittering bubbles to amuse the babes with, and once more I will be busy night and day, morning, noon, and evening. At times I feel a passing regret that the Chohans should not evolute the happy idea of allowing us also a "sumptuary allowance" in the shape of a little spare time. Oh, for the final Rest! for that Nirvana where — "to be one with Life, yet — to live not." Alas, alas!

having personally realized that: — ". . . the Soul of Things is sweet, The Heart of Being is celestial Rest,"

one does long for — eternal REST! Yours,

K. H.

Letter 17 Table of Contents

FOOTNOTES:

 Those who have not ended their earth rings. (return to text)

 Literally — those who will never return — the seventh round men, etc. (return to text)

 See back — (1) of your questions. (return to text)

 O.T. stands for Occult Truth. — ED. (return to text)

 Tibetan: Yuh-Kai. (return to text)

 This Mara, as you may well think, is the allegorical image of the sphere called the "Planet of Death" — the whirlpool whither disappear the lives doomed to destruction. It is between Kama and Rupa-Lokas that the struggle takes place. (return to text)

 The Planetary Spirits of our Earth are not of the highest, as you may well imagine — since, as Subba Row says in his criticism upon Oxley's work that no Eastern Adept would like to be compared with an angel or a Deva.

See May Theosophist. (return to text)

7a. In Abidharma Shastra (Metaphysics) we read: — "Buddha taught that on the outskirts of all the Sakwalas, there is a black interval, without Sun or moonlight for him who falls into it. There is no re-birth from it. It is the cold Hell, the great Naraka." This is Avitchi. (return to text)

 

8. I remark that in the second as well as in the first edition of your Occult World the same misprint appears, and that the word Skandha is spelt Shandba — on page 130. As it now stands I am made to express myself in a very original way for a supposed Adept. (return to text)

 

9. See the Abhidharma Kosha Vyakhya, the Sutta Pitaka, any Northern Buddhist book, all of which show Gautama Buddha saying that none of these Skandhas is the soul; since the body is constantly changing, and that neither man, animal, nor plant is ever the same for two consecutive days or even minutes. "Mendicants! remember that there is within man no abiding principle whatever, and that only the learned disciple who acquires wisdom, in saying 'I am' — knows what he is saying." (return to text)

10. Alone the Shells and the Elementals are left unhurt, though the morality of the sensitives can by no means be improved by the intercourse. (return to text)

 

11. To avoid a fresh surprise and confusion at the news of the fifth keeping company with the sixth and seventh, please turn to page 3, et sec. [answer to question 5] (return to text)

 

12. I did not find time. Will send it a day or two later. (return to text)

 

Letter No. 17

[K.H.'s Replies to Mr. Sinnett's queries are printed in bold type. — ED.]

Received Simla, June, 1882

 

(1) Some fifth round men have already begun to appear on earth. In what way are they distinguishable from fourth round men of the seventh earthly incarnation? I suppose they are in the first incarnation of the fifth round that that a tremendous advance will be achieved when the fifth round people get to their seventh incarnation.

 

(1) The natural-born Seers and clairvoyants of Mrs. A. Kingsford's and Mr. Maitland's types; the great adepts of whatsoever country; the geniuses — whether in arts, politics or religious reform. No greatphysical distinction yet: too early and will come later on.

 

Quite so. If you turn to Appendix No. I (1) you will find it explained.

(2) But if a 1st-5th round man devoted himself to occultism and became an adept, would he escape further earthly incarnations?

(2)No; if we except Buddha — a sixth round being, as he had run so successfully the race in his previous incarnations as to outrun even his predecessors. But then such a man is to be found one in a billion of human creatures. He differed from other men as much in his physical appearance as in spirituality and knowledge. Yet even he escaped further reincarnations but on this earth; and, whenthe last of the sixth round men of the third ring is gone out of this earth, the Great Teacher will have to get reincarnated on the next planet. Only, and since He sacrificed Nirvanic bliss and Rest for thesalvation of his fellow creatures He will be re-born in the highest — the seventh ring of the upper planet. Till then He will overshadow every decimillenium (let us rather say and add "hasovershadowed already" a chosen individual who generally overturned the destinies of nations. See Isis, Vol. I, pp. 34 and 35 last and first para. on the pages).

 

(3) Is there any essential spiritual difference between a man and a woman, or is sex a mere accident of each birth — the ultimate future of the individual furnishing the same opportunities?

 

(3) A mere accident — as you say. Generally a chance work yet guided by individual Karma, — moral aptitudes, characteristics and deeds of the previous birth.

 

(4) The majority of the superior classes of civilized countries on earth now, I understand to be seventh "ring" people (i.e. of the seventh earthly incarnation) of the fourth round. The Australian aborigines I understand to be of a low ring? which? and are the lower and inferior classes of civilized countries of various rings or of the ring just below the seventh. And are all seventh ring people born in the superior classes or may not some be found among the poor?

 

(4) Not necessarily. Refinement, polishedness, and brilliant education, in your sense of these words have very little to do with the course of higher Nature's Law. Take a seventh ring African or a fifth ring Mongolian and you can educate him — if taken from the cradle — save his physical appearance, andtransform him into the most brilliant and accomplished English lord. Yet, he will still remain, but an outwardly intellectual parrot. (See Appendix No. 11).

 

(5) The Old Lady told me that the bulk of the inhabitants of this country are in some respects less advanced than Europeans though more spiritual. Are they on a lower ring of the same round — or does the difference refer to some principle of national cycles which has nothing to do with individual progress?

 

(5) Most of the peoples of India belong to the oldest or the earliest branchlet of the fifth human Race. I

 

What is the explanation of "Ernest" and Eglinton's other guide? Are they elementaries drawing their conscious vitality from him or elementals masquerading? When "Ernest" took that sheet of "Pioneer" notepaper how did he contrive to get it without mediumship at this end?

I can assure you it is not worth your while nowto study the true natures of the "Ernests" and "Joeys" and "other guides" as unless you become acquainted with the evolution of the corruptions of elemental dross, and those of the seven principles in man — you would ever find yourself at a loss to understand — what they really are; there are no written statutes for them, and they can hardly be expected to paytheir friends and admirers the compliment of truth, silence or forbearing. If some are related to them as some soullessphysical mediums are — they shall meet. If not — better leave them alone. Theygravitate but to their likes — the mediums; and their relation is not made but forced by foolish and sinful phenomena-mongers. They are both elementaries and elementals — at best a low, mischievous,degrading jangle. You want to embrace too much knowledge at once, my dear friend; you cannot attain at a bound all the mysteries. See however Appendix — which is in reality a letter.

I do not know Subba Rao — who is a pupil of M. At least — he knows very little of me. Yet I know, he will neverconsent to come to Simla. But if ordered by Morya will teach from Madras, i.e., correct theMSS. as M. did, comment upon them, answer questions, and be very, very useful. He has a perfect reverence and adoration for — H.P.B.

K. H.

Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. See Letter No. 18. — ED. (return to text)

Letter No. 18

Received Simla, June, 1882.

APPENDIX

(I) Every Spiritual Individuality has a gigantic evolutionary journey to perform a tremendous gyratory progress to accomplish. First — at the very beginning of the great Mahamanvantaric rotation, from first to last of the man-bearing planets, as on each of them, the monad has to pass through seven successive races of man. From the dumb offshoot of the ape (the latter strongly differentiating from the now known specimens) up to the present fifth race, or rather variety, and through two more races, before he has done with this earth only; and then on to the next, higher and higher still. . . . But we will confine our attention but to this one. Each of the seven races send seven ramifying branchlets from the Parent Branch: and through each of these in turn man has to evolute before he passes on to the next higher race; and that — seven times. Well may you open wide your eyes, good friend, and feel puzzled — it is so. The branchlets typify varying specimens of humanity — physically and spiritually — and no one of us can miss one single rung of the ladder. With all that there is no reincarnation as taught by the London Seeress — Mrs. A.K., as the intervals between the re­births are too immeasurably long to permit of any such fantastic ideas. Please, bear in mind, that when I say "man," I mean a human being of our type. There are other and innumerable manvantaric chains of globes bearing intelligent beings — both in and out of our solar system — the crowns or apexes of evolutionary being in their respective chains, some — physically and intellectually — lower, others immeasurably higher than the man of our chain. But beyond mentioning them we will not speak of these at present.

Through every race then, man has to pass making seven successive entrances and exits and developing intellect to degrees from the lowest to the highest in succession. In short, his earth-cycle with its rings and sub-rings is the exact counterpart of the Great Cycle — only in miniature. Bear in mind again, that the intervals even between these special "race re-incarnations" are enormous, as even the dullest of the African Bushmen has to reap the reward of his Karma, equally with his brother Bushman who may be six times more intelligent.

Your Ethnographers and anthropologists would do well to ever keep in their minds this, unvarying septenary law which runs throughout the works of nature. From Cuvier — the late grand master of Protestant Theology — whose Bible-stuffed brain made him divide mankind into but three distinct varieties of races — down to Blumenbach who divided them into five — they were all wrong. Alone Pritchard, who prophetically suggested seven comes near the right mark. I read in the Pioneer of June 12th forwarded to me by H.P.B. a letter on the Ape Theory by A.P.W. which contains a most excellent exposition of the Darwinian hypothesis. The last paragraph page 6 column 1 would be regarded — barring a few errors — as a revelation in a millenium or so, were it to be preserved. Reading the nine lines from line 21 (counting from the bottom) you have a fact of which few naturalists are yet prepared to accept the proof. The fifth, sixth and seventh races of the Fifth Round — each succeeding race evoluting with and keeping pace, so to say with the "Great Cycle" rounds — and the fifth race of the fifth round, having to exhibit a perceptible physical and intellectual as well as moral differentiation towards its fourth "race" or "earthly incarnation" you are right in saying that a "tremendous advance will be achieved when the fifth round people get to their seventh incarnation."

(II) Nor has wealth nor poverty, high or low birth any influence upon it, for this is all a result of their Karma. Neither has — what you call — civilization much to do with the progress. It is the inner man, the spirituality, the illumination of the physical brain by the light of the spiritual or divine intelligence that is the test. The Australian, the Esquimaux, the Bushmen, the Veddahs, etc., are all side-shooting branchlets of that Branch which you call "cave-men" — the third race (according to your Science — the second)that evoluted on the globe. They are the remnants of the seventh ring cave-men, remnants "that have ceased to grow and are the arrested forms of life doomed to eventual decay in the struggle of existence" in the words of your correspondent?

See "Isis" Chapter 1, — " . . . . . the Divine Essence (Purusha) like a luminous arc" proceeds to form a circle — the mahamanvantaric chain; and having attained the highest (or its first starting point) bends back again and returns to earth (the first globe) bringing a higher type of humanity in its vortex — "thus seven times. Approaching our earth it grows more and more shadowy until upon touching ground it becomes as black as night —" i.e. it is matter outwardly, the Spirit or Purusha being concealed under a quintuple armour of the first five principles. Now see underlined three lines on page 5 for the word "mankind" read human races, and for that of "civilization" read Spiritual evolution of that particular race and you have the truth which had to be concealed at that incipient tentative stage of the Theosophical Society.

See again pp. 13 last paragraph and 14 first paragraph, and note the underlined lines about Plato. Then see p. 32 remembering the difference between the Manvantaras as therein calculated and the MAHAMANVANTARAS (complete seven round between two Pralayas, — the four Yugs returning seven times, once for each race. Having done so far take your pen and calculate. This will make you swear — but this will not hurt your Karma much: lip-profanity finds it deaf. Read attentively in this connection (not with the swearing process but with that of evolution) pp. 301 last line "and now comes a mystery . . ." and continue on to p. 304. "Isis" was not unveiled but rents sufficiently large were made to afford flitting glances to be completed by the student's own intuition. In this curry of quotations from various philosophic and esoteric truths purposely veiled, behold our doctrine, which is now being partially taught to Europeans for the first time.

(III) As said in my answer on your notes, most of the peoples of India — with the exception of the Semitic (?) Moguls — belong to the oldest branchlet of the present fifth Human race, which was evoluted in Central Asia more than one million of years ago. Western Science finding good reasons for the theory of human beings having inhabited Europe 400,000 years before your era — this cannot so shock you as to prevent your drinking wine to-night at your dinner. Yet Asia, has as well as Australia, Africa, America and the most northward regions — its remnants — of the fourth — even of the third race (cave-men and Iberians). At the same time, we have more of the seventh ring men of the fourth race than Europe and more of the first ring of the fifth round, as, older than the European branchlets, our men have naturally come in earlier. Their being "less advanced" in civilization and refinement trouble their spirituality but very little, Karma being an animal which remains indifferent to pumps and white kid gloves. Neither your knives nor forks, operas and drawing-rooms will any more follow you in your onward progress than will the dead-leaf coloured robes of the British Esthetics prevent the proprietors thereof and wearers from having been born among the ranks of those, who will be regarded — do what they may — by the forthcoming sixth and seventh round men as flesh-eating and liquor-drinking "savages" of the "Royal Society Period." It depends on you, to so immortalize your name, as to force the future higher races to divide our age and call the sub-division — the "Pleisto-Sinnettic Period" but this can never be so long as you labour under the impression that "the purposes we have now in view would be met by reasonable temperance and self-restraint." Occult Science is a jealous mistress and allows not a shadow of self-indulgence; and it is "fatal" not only to the ordinary course of married life but even to flesh and wine drinking. I am afraid that the archaeologists of the seventh round, when digging out and unearthing the future Pompeii of Punjab — Simla, one day, instead of finding the precious relics of the Theosophical "Eclectic," will fish out but some petrified or vitreous remains of the "Sumptuary allowance." Such is the latest prophecy current at Tzigadze.

And now to the last question. Well, as I say, the "guides" are both elementals and elementaries and not even a decent "half and half" but the very froth in the mug of the mediumistic beer. The several "privations" of such sheets of notepaper were evoluted during E's stay in Calcutta in Mrs. G's atmosphere — since she frequently received letters from you. It was then an easy matter for the creatures in following E's unconscious desire to attract other disintegrated particles from your box, so as to form a double. He is a strong medium, and were it not for an inherent good nature and other good qualities, strongly counteracted by vanity, sloth, selfishness, greediness for money and with other qualities of modern civilization a total absence of will, be would make a superb Dugpa yet, as I said he is "a good fellow" every inch of him; naturally truthful, under control — the reverse. I would if I could save him from. . . .

NOTE. — See Letter 95 for the continuation of Letter 18. — ED.

Letter 19 Table of Contents

Letter No. 19

[Fragments in K.H.'s writing. — ED.]

Attached to Proofs of Letter on Theosophy. Received August 12th, 1882.

Yes; verily known and as confidently affirmed by the adepts from whom —

"No curtain hides the spheres Elysian,

Nor these poor shells of half transparent dust;

For all that blinds the spirit's vision

Is pride and hate and lust."

(Not for publication)

Exceptional cases, my friend. Suicides can and generally do, but not so with the others. The good and pure sleep a quiet blissful sleep, full of happy visions of earth-life and have no consciousness of being already for ever beyond that life. Those who were neither good nor bad, will sleep a dreamless, still a quiet sleep; while the wicked will in proportion to their grossness suffer the pangs of a nightmare lasting years: their thoughts become living things, their wicked passions — real substance, and they receive back on their heads all the misery they have heaped upon others. Reality and fact if described would yield a far more terrible Inferno than even Dante had imagined!

Letter 20a Table of Contents

Letter No. 20a

[The original letter of A.O.H. to K.H. has some passages numbered and underlined with blue pencil by K.H. These are printed in bold type. The numbers refer to K.H.'s replies, for which see post Letter No. 20c. — ED.]

Received August, 1882.

10[X]

My dear Master,

In speaking of Fragments No. III of which you will receive proofs soon, I said it was far from satisfactory though I had done my best.

It was necessary to advance the doctrine of the Society another stage, so as gradually to open the eyes of the spiritualists — so I introduced as the most pressing matter the Suicide etc. view given in your last letter to S.

Well it is this that seems to me most unsatisfactory and it will lead to anumber of questions that I shall feel puzzled to reply to.

Our first doctrine is that the majority of objective phenomena were due to shells. 1½ and 2½ principled shells, i.e. principles entirely separated from their sixth and seventh principles.

But as a further (1) development we admit that there are some spirits, i.e. 5th and 4th principles not wholly dissevered from their sixth and seventh which also may be potent in the seance room. These are the spirits of suicides and the victims of accident or violence. Here the doctrine is that each particular wave of life must run on to its appointed shore and with the exception of the very good, that all spirits prematurely divorced from the lower principles, must remain on earth, until the foredestined hour of what would have been the natural death strikes.

Now this is all very well but this being so, it is clear that in opposition to our former doctrine, shells will be few and spirits many (2).

For what difference can there be to take the case of suicides, whether these be conscious or unconscious, whether the man blows his brains out, or only drinks or womanizes himself to death, or kills himself by over-study? In each case equally the normal natural hour of death is anticipated and a spirit and not a shell the result — or again what difference does it make whether a man is hung for murder, killed in battle, in a railway train or a powder explosion, or drowned or burnt to death, or knocked over by cholera or plague, or jungle fever or any of the other thousand and one epidemic diseases of which the seeds were not ab initio, in his constitution, but were introduced therein in consequence of his happening to visit a particular locality or undergo a given experience, both of which he might have avoided? Equally in all cases the normal death hour is anticipated and a spirit instead of a shell the result.

In England it is calculated that not 15% of the population reach their normal death period — and what with fevers and famines and their sequeloe, I fear the percentage is not much larger here even — where the people are mostly vegetarian and as a rule live under less unfavourable sanitary conditions.

So then the great bulk of all the physical phenomena of spiritualists ought apparently to be due to these spirits and not to shells. I should be glad to have further information on this point.

There is a second point (3) very often as I understand the spirits of very fair average good people dying natural deaths, remain some time in the earth's atmosphere — from a few days to a few years — why cannot such as these communicate? And if they can this is a most important point that should not have been

(4) And thirdly it is a fact that thousands of spirits do appear in pure circles and teach the highest morality and moreover tell very closely the truths as to the unseen world (witness Alan Kardec's books pages on pages of which are identical with what you yourself teach) and it is unreasonable to suppose that such are either shells or bad spirits. But you have not given us any opening for any large number of pure high spirits — and until the whole theory is properly set forth and due place made for these which seem to me a thoroughly well established fact, you will never win over the spiritualists. I dare say it is the old story — only part of the truth being told to us and the rest reserved — if so it is merely cutting the Society's throat. Better to tell the outside world nothing — than to tell them half truths the incompleteness of which they detect at once, the result being a contemptuous rejection of what is truth and though they cannot accept it in this fragmentary state.

Yours affectionately,

A. O. Hume.

Table of Contents

Letter No. 20b

[Letter from Mr. Sinnett to H.P.B. on the backs of the pages of which is part of a long letter from  (No. 20c) re queries of Hume's. The passages in bold type have been underlined in blue by  — ED.]

 

Received August 1882.

Simla, July 25th.

My Dear Old Lady,

I began to try to answer N.D.K.'s letter at once so that if K.H. really meant the note to appear in this immediately "next" appearing Theosophist for August it might just be in time. But I soon got into a tangle. Of course we have received no information that distinctly covers the question now raised, though I suppose we ought to be able to combine bits into an answer. The difficulty turns on giving the real explanation of Eliphas Levi's enigma in your note in the October Theosophist.

If he refers to the fate of this, at present existing race of mankind his statement that the intermediate majority of Egos are ejected from nature or annihilated, would be in direct conflict with K.H.'s teaching. ** They do not die without remembrance, if they retain remembrance in Devachan and again recover remembrance (even of past personalities as of a book's pages) at the period of full individual consciousness preceding that of absolute consciousness in Pari-Nirvana.

But it occurred to me that E.L. may have been dealing with humanity as a whole, not merely with the fourth round men. Great numbers of fifth round personalities are destined to perish I understand, and thesemight be his intermediate useless portion of mankind. But then the individual spiritual monads, as I understand the matter, do not perish whatever happens, and if a monad reaches the fifth round with all his previous personalities preserved in the pages of his book awaiting future perusal, he would not be ejected and annihilated because some of his fifthround pages were "unfit for publication." So again there is a difficulty in reconciling the two statements.

X. But again is it conceivable that a spiritual monad though surviving the rejection of its third and fourth round pages, cannot survive the rejection of fifth and sixth round pages. That failure to lead good lives in these rounds means the annihilation of the whole individual who will never then get to the seventh round at all.

But on the other hand if that were so the Eliphas Levi case would not be met by such a hypothesis, for long before then the individuals who had become co-workers with nature for evil would have been themselves annihilated by the obscuration of the planet X. between the fifth and sixth rounds — if not by the obscuration between the fourth and the fifth, for to every round there is one obscuration we are told. (5) There is another difficulty here because some fifth rounders being here already it is not clear when the obscuration comes on. Will it be behind the avant couriers of the fifth round, who will not count as commencing the fifth, that epoch only really beginning after the existing race has totally decayed out — but this idea will not work.

Having got so far in my reflections yesterday, I went up to Hume to see if he could make out the puzzle and so enable me to write what was wanted for this post. But on looking into it and looking back to the October Theosophist we came to the conclusion that the only possible explanation was that the October Theosophist note was utterly wrong and totally at variance with all our later teaching. Is that really the solution? I do not think so or K.H. would not have set me to reconcile the two.

But you will see that at present, with the best will in the world I am utterly unable to do the job set me, and if my dear Guardian and Master will kindly look at these remarks he will see the dilemma in which I am placed.

We all feel so sorry for you, over-worked amid the heat and the flies. When you have got the August number off your hands you might perhaps be able to take flight for here, and get a little rest amongst us. You know how glad at any time we should be to see you. Meanwhile my own individual plans are a little uncertain. I may have to return to Allahabad, in order to leave Hensman free to go as special correspondent to Egypt. I am fighting my proprietors tooth and nail to avert this result — but for a few days still the issue of the struggle will be uncertain.

Ever Yours,

A. P. S.

P.S. — As you may want to print the letter in this number, I return it herewith, but hope that this may not be the case and that you will send it me back again so that I may duly perform my little task with the help of a few words as to the line to be followed.

{The articles mentioned were published in the September Theosophist.}

Table of Contents

Letter No. 20c

Received August, 1882.

**Except in so far, that he constantly uses the terms "God" and "Christ" which taken in their esoteric sense simply mean "Good" — in its dual aspect of the abstract and the concrete and nothing more dogmatic, Eliphas Levi is not in any direct conflict with our teachings. It is again a straw blown out of a hay-stack and accused by the wind to belong to a hay-rick. Most of those, whom you may call, if you like, candidates for Deva Chan — die and are reborn in the Kama-Loka "without remembrance"; though (and just because) they do get some of it back in the Deva-Chan. Nor can we call it a full, but only a partial remembrance. You would hardly call "remembrance" a dream of yours; some particular scene or scenes, within whose narrow limits you would find enclosed a few persons — those whom you loved best, with an undying love, that holy feeling that alone survives, and — not the slightest recollection of any other events or scenes? Love and Hatred are the only immortal feelings, the only survivors from the wreck of Ye-damma, or the phenomenal world. Imagine yourself then, in Deva-Chan with those you may have loved with such immortal love; with the familiar, shadowy scenes connected with them for a background and — a perfect blank for everything else relating to your interior, social, political, literary and social life. And then, in the face of that spiritual, purely cogitative existence, of that unalloyed felicity which, in proportion with the intensity of the feelings that created it, last from a few to several thousand years, — call it the "personal remembrance of A. P. Sinnett" — if you can. Dreadfully monotonous! — you may think. — Not in the least — I answer. Have you experienced monotony during — say — that moment which you considered then and now so consider it — as the moment of the highest bliss you have ever felt? — Of course not. — Well no more will you experience it there, in that passage through the Eternity in which a million of years is no longer than a second. There, where there is no consciousness of an external world there can be no discernment to mark differences, hence, — no perception of contrasts of monotony or variety; nothing in short, outside that immortal feeling of love and sympathetic attraction whose seeds are planted in the fifth, whose plants blossom luxuriantly in and around the fourth, but whose roots have to penetrate deep into the sixth principle, if it would survive the lower groups. (And now I propose to kill two birds with one stone — to answer your and Mr. Hume's questions at the same time) — remember, both, that we create ourselves our devachan as our avitchi while yet on earth, and mostly during the latter days and even moments of our intellectual, sentient lives. That feeling which is the strongest in us at that supreme hour; when, as in a dream, the events of a long life, to their minutest details, are marshalled in the greatest order in a few seconds in our vision (1) — that feeling will become the fashioner of our bliss or woe, the life principle of our future existence. In the latter we have no substantial being, but only a present and momentary existence, — whose duration has no bearing upon, as no effect, or relation to its being — which as every other effect of a transitory cause will be as fleeting, and in its turn will vanish and cease to be. The real full remembrance of our lives will come but at the end of the minor cycle — not before. In Kama Loka those who retain their remembrance, will not enjoy it at the supreme hour of recollection. — Those who know they are dead in their physical body — can only be either adepts or — sorcerers; and these two are the exceptions to the general rule. Both having been "co-workers with nature," the former for good, the latter — for bad, in her work of creation and in that of destruction, they are the only ones who may be called immortal — in the Kabalistic and the esoteric sense of course. Complete or true immortality, — which means an unlimited sentient existence, can have no breaks and stoppages, no arrest of Self-consciousness. And even the shells of those good men whose page will not be found missing in the great Book of Lives at the threshold of the Great Nirvana, even they will regain their remembrance and an appearance of Self-consciousness, only after the sixth and seventh principles with the essence of the 5th (the latter having to furnish the material for even that partial recollection of personality which is necessary for the object in Deva Chan) — have gone to their gestation period, not before. Even in the case of suicides and those who have perished by violent death, even in their case, consciousness requires a certain time to establish its new centre of gravity, and evolve, as Sir W. Hamilton would have it — its "perception proper" henceforth to remain distinct from "sensation proper." Thus, when man dies, his "Soul" (fifth prin.) becomes unconscious and loses all remembrance of things internal as well as external. Whether his stay in Kama Loka has to last but a few moments, hours, days, weeks, months or years; whether he died a natural or a violent death; whether it occurred in his young or old age, and, whether the Ego was good, bad, or indifferent, — his consciousness leaves him as suddenly as the flame leaves the wick, when blown out. When life has retired from the last particle in the brain matter, his perceptive faculties become extinct forever, his spiritual powers of cogitation and volition — (all those faculties in short, which are neither inherent in, nor acquirable by organic matter) — for the time being. His Mayavi rupa may be often thrown into objectivity, as in the cases of apparitions after death; but, unless it is projected with the knowledge of (whether latent or potential), or, owing to the intensity of the desire to see or appear to someone, shooting through the dying brain, the apparition will be simply — automatical; it will not be due to any sympathetic attraction, or to any act of volition, and no more than the reflection of a person passing unconsciously near a mirror, is due to the desire of the latter.

Having thus explained the position, I will sum up and ask again why it should be maintained that what is given by Eliphas Levi and expounded by H.P.B., is "in direct conflict" with my teaching? E.L. is an Occultist, and a Kabalist, and writing for those who are supposed to know the rudiments of the Kabalistic tenets, uses the peculiar phraseology of his doctrine, and H.P.B. follows suit. The only omission she was guilty of, was not to add the word "Western" between the two words "Occult" and doctrine (see third line of Editor's note).She is a fanatic in her way, and is unable to write with anything like system and calmness, or to remember that the general public needs all the lucid explanations that to her may seem superfluous. And, as you are sure to remark — "but this is also our case; and you too seem to forget it," — I will give you a few more explanations. As remarked on the margin of the October Theosophist — the word "immortality" has for the initiates and occultists quite a different meaning. We call "immortal" but the one Life in its universal collectivity and entire or Absolute Abstraction; that which has neither beginning nor end, nor any break in its continuity. Does the term apply to anything else? Certainly it does not. Therefore the earliest Chaldeans had several prefixes to the word "immortality," one of which is the Greek, rarely-used term — panaeonic immortality, i.e. beginning with the manvantara and ending with the pralaya of our Solar Universe. It lasts the aeon, or "period" of our pan or "all nature." Immortal then is he, in the panaeonic immortality whose distinct consciousness and perception of Self under whatever form — undergoes no disjunction at any time not for one second, during the period of his Egoship. Those periods are several in number, each having its distinct name in the secret doctrines of the Chaldeans, Greeks, Egyptians and Aryans, and, were they but amenable to translation, — which they are not, at least so long as the idea involved remains inconceivable to the Western mind — I could give them to you. Suffice for you, for the present to know, that a man, an Ego like yours or mine, may be immortal from one to the other Round. Let us say I begin my immortality at the present fourth Round, i.e., having become a full adept (which unhappily I am not) I arrest the hand of Death at will, and when finally obliged to submit to it, my knowledge of the secrets of nature puts me in a position to retain my consciousness and distinct perception of Self as an object to my own reflective consciousness and cognition; and thus avoiding all such dismemberments of principles, that as a rule take place after the physical death of average humanity, I remain as Koothoomi in my Ego throughout the whole series of births and lives across the seven worlds and Arupa-lokas until finally I land again on this earth among the fifth race men of the full fifth Round beings. I would have been, in such a case — "immortal" for an inconceivable (to you) long period, embracing many milliards of years. And yet am "I" truly immortal for all that? Unless I make the same efforts as I do now, to secure for myself another such furlough from Nature's Law, Koothoomi will vanish and may become a Mr. Smith or an innocent Babu, when his leave expires. There are men who become such mighty beings, there are men among us who may become immortal during the remainder of the Rounds, and then take their appointed place among the highest Chohans, the Planetary conscious "Ego-Spirits." Of course the Monad "never perishes whatever happens," but Eliphas speaks of the personal not of the Spiritual Egos, and you have fallen into the same mistake (and very naturally too) as C.C.M.; though I must confess the passage in Isis was very clumsily expressed, as I had already remarked to you, about this same paragraph in one of my letters long ago. I had to "exercise my ingenuity" over it — as the Yankees express it, but, succeeded in mending the hole, I believe, — as I will have to many times more, I am afraid, before we have done with Isis. It really ought to be re-written for the sake of the family honour.

X It is certainly inconceivable, therefore, there is no mortal use to discuss the subject.

X You misconceived the teaching, because you were not aware of what you are now told: (a) who are the true co-workers with nature; and (b) that it is by no means all the evil co-workers, who drop into the eighth sphere and are annihilated. (2)

The potency for evil is as great in man — aye — greater — than the potentiality for good. An exception to the rule of nature, that exception, which in the case of adepts and sorcerers becomes in its turn a rule, has again its own exceptions. Read carefully the passage that C.C.M. left unquoted — on pp. 352-353, Isis Volume I, Para. 3. Again she omits to distinctly state that the case mentioned relates but to those powerful sorcerers whose co-partnership with nature for evil affords to them the means of forcing her hand, and thus accord them also panaeonic immortality. But oh, what kind of immortality, and how preferable is annihilation to their lives! Don't you see that everything you find in Isis is delineated, hardly sketched — nothing completed or fully revealed. Well the time has come, but where are the workers for such a tremendous task?

Says Mr. Hume (see affixed letter (3) marked passages — 10 [X] and 1, 2, 3). And now when you have read the objections to that most unsatisfactory doctrine — as Mr. Hume calls it — a doctrine which you had to learn first as a whole, before proceeding to study it in parts, — at the risk of satisfying you no better, I will proceed to explain the latter.

 

(1) Although not "wholly dissevered from their sixth and seventh principles" and quite "potent" in the seance room, nevertheless to the day when they would have died a natural death, they are separated from the higher principles by a gulf. The sixth and seventh remain passive and negative, whereas, in cases of accidental death the higher and the lower groups mutually attract each other. In cases of good and innocent Egos, moreover, the latter gravitates irresistibly toward the sixth and seventh, and thus — either slumbers surrounded by happy dreams, or, sleeps a dreamless profound sleep until the hour strikes. With a little reflection, and an eye to eternal justice and fitness of things, you will see why. The victim whether good or bad is irresponsible for his death, even if his death were due to some action in a previous life or an antecedent birth; was an act, in short, of the Law of Retribution, still, it was not the direct result of an act deliberately committed by the personal Ego of that life during which he happened to be killed. Had he been allowed to live longer he may have atoned for his antecedent sins still more effectually: and even now, the Ego having been made to pay off the debt of his maker (the previous Ego) is free from the blows of retributive justice. The Dhyan Chohans who have no hand in the guidance of the living human Ego, protect the helpless victim when it is violently thrust out of its element into a new one, before it is matured and made fit and ready for it. We tell you what we know, for we are made to learn it through personal experience. You know what I mean and I CAN SAY NO MORE! Yes; the victims whether good or bad sleep, to awake but at the hour of the last Judgment, which is that hour of the supreme struggle between the sixth and seventh, and the fifth and fourth at the threshold of the gestation state. And even after that, when the sixth and seventh carrying off a portion of the fifth have gone into their Akasic Samadhi, even then it may happen that the spiritual spoil from the fifth will prove too weak to be reborn in Deva-Chan; in which case it will there and then reclothe itself in a new body, the subjective "Being" created from the Karma of the victim (or no-victim, as the case may be) and enter upon a new earth-existence whether upon this or any other planet. In no case then, — with the exception of suicides and shells, is there any possibility for any other to be attracted to a seance room. And it is clear that "this teaching is not in opposition to our former doctrine" and that while "shells" will be many, — Spirits very few.

 

(2) There is a great difference in our humble opinion. We, who look at it from a stand-point which would prove very unacceptable to Life Insurance Companies, say, that there are very few if any of the men who indulge in the above enumerated vices, who feel perfectly sure that such a course of action will lead them eventually to premature death. Such is the penalty of Maya. The "vices" will not escape their punishment; but it is the cause not the effect that will be punished, especially an unforeseen though probable effect. As well call a suicide a man who meets his death in a storm at sea, as one who kills himself with "over-study." Water is liable to drown a man, and too much brain-work to produce a softening of the brain which may carry him away. In such a case no one ought to cross the Kalapani nor even to take a bath for fear of getting faint in it and drowned (for we all know of such cases;) nor should a man do his duty, least of all sacrifice himself for even a laudable and highly-beneficent cause, as many of us — (H.P.B. for one) — do. Would Mr. Hume call her a suicide were she to drop down dead over her present work? Motive is everything and man is punished in a case of direct responsibility, never otherwise. In the victim's case the natural hour of death was anticipated accidentally, while in that of the suicide, death is brought on voluntarily and with a full and deliberate knowledge of its immediate consequences. Thus a man who causes his death in a fit of temporary insanity is not a felo de se to the great grief and often trouble of the Life Insurance Companies. Nor is he left a prey to the temptations of the Kama Loka but falls asleep like any other victim. A Guiteau will not remain in the earth's atmosphere with his higher principles over him — inactive and paralysed, still there. Guiteau is gone into a state during the period of which, he will be ever firing at his President, thereby tossing into confusion

and shuffling the destinies of millions of persons; where he will be ever tried and ever hung. Bathing in the reflections of his deeds and thoughts — especially those he indulged in on the scaffold, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [Two lines in original have been deleted here. — ED.] his fate. As for those who were "knoched over by cholera, or plague, or jungle fever" they could not have succumbed had they not the germs for the development of such diseases in them from birth.

"So then, the great bulk of the physical phenomena of Spiritualists" my dear brother, are not "due to these Spirits" but indeed — to "shells."

 

(3) "The Spirits of very fair average good people dying natural deaths remain . . . in the earth's atmosphere from a few days to a few years," the period depending on their readiness to meet their — creature not their creator; a very abstruse subject you will learn later on, when you too are more prepared. But why should they "communicate"? Do those you love communicate with you during their sleep objectively? Your Spirits, in hours of danger, or intense sympathy, vibrating on the same current of thought — which in such cases, creates a kind of telegraphic spiritual wires between your two bodies — may meet and mutually impress your memories; but then you are living, not dead bodies. But how can an unconscious 5th principle (see supra) impress or communicate with a living organism, unless it has already become a shell? If, for certain reasons they remain in such a state of lethargy for several years, the spirits of the living may ascend to them, as you were already told; and this may take place still easier than in Deva Chan, where the Spirit is too much engrossed in his personal bliss to pay much attention to an intruding element. I say — they cannot.

 

(4) I am sorry to contradict your statement. I know of no "thousands of spirits" who do appear in circles — and moreover positively do not know of one "perfectly pure circle" — and "teach the highest morality." I hope I may not be classed with slanderers in addition to other names lately bestowed upon me, but truth compels me to declare that Allan Kardec was not quite immaculate during his lifetime, nor has become a very pure Spirit since. As to teaching the "highest morality," we have a Dugpa-Shammar not far from where I am residing. Quite a remarkable man. Not very powerful as a sorcerer but excessively so, as a drunkard, a thief, a liar, and — an orator. In this latter role he could give points to and beat Messrs. Gladstone, Bradlaugh, and even the Rev. H. W. Beacher — than whom, there is no more eloquent preacher of morality, and no greater breaker of his Lord's Commandments in the U.S.A. This Shapa-tung Lama, when thirsty, can make an enormous audience of "yellow-cap" laymen weep all their yearly supply of tears, with the narrative of his repentance and suffering in the morning, and then get drunk in the evening and rob the whole village by mesmerising them into a dead sleep. Preaching and teaching morality with an end in view proves very little. Read "J.P.T.'s" article in Light and what I say will be corroborated.

 

(To A.P.S. (5).) The "obscuration" comes on only when the last man of whatever Round has passed into the sphere of effects. Nature is too well, too mathematically adjusted to cause mistakes to happen in the exercise of her functions. The obscuration of the planet on which are now evoluting the races of the fifth Round men — will, of course "be behind the few avant couriers" who are now here. But before that time comes we will have to part, to meet no more, as the Editor of the Pioneer and his humble correspondent.

And now having shewn that the October Number of the Theosophist was not utterly wrong, nor was it at "variance with the later teaching," may K.H. set you to "reconcile the two"?

To reconcile you still more with Eliphas, I will send you a number of his MSS. — that have never been published, in a large, clear, beautiful handwriting with my comments all through. Nothing better than that can give you a key to Kabalistic puzzles.

I have to write to Mr. Hume this week; to give him consolation, and to show, that unless he has a strong desire to live, he need not trouble himself about Deva-Chan. Unless a man loves well or hates as well, he will be neither in Deva-Chan nor in Avitchi. "Nature spews the luke-warm out of her mouth" means only that she annihilates their personal Egos (not the shells, nor yet the sixth principle) in the Kama Loka and the Deva-Chan. This does not prevent them from being immediately reborn — and, if their lives were not very very bad, — there is no reason why the eternal Monad should not find the page of that life intact in the Book of Life.

K. H.

Letter 21 Table of Contents

FOOTNOTES:

 That vision takes place when a person is already proclaimed dead. The brain is the last organ that dies. (return to text)

 Annihilated suddenly as human Egos and personalities, lasting in that world of pure matter under various material forms an inconceivable length of time before they can return to primeval matter. (return to text)

 See ante Letter No. 20a. — ED. (return to text)

 

Letter No. 21

[Letter from Mr. Sinnett to K.H. With K.H.'s Comments printed in bold type. — ED.]

Received back 22.8.82. August 12th. My dear Guardian, I am afraid the present letters on Theosophy are not worth much, for I have worked on too literal an acceptance of some passages in your long letter about Deva-Chan. The bearing of that seemed to be that the "accidents" as well as the suicides, were in danger from the attraction of the seance room. You wrote: — "But there is another kind of spirit we have lost sight of, — the suicides and those killed by accidents. Both kinds can communicate and both have to pay dearly for such visits. . . ." Correct.

And later on after speaking of the case of the suicides in detail you say: — "As to the victims of accident these fare still worse . . . unhappy shades . . . cut off in the full flush of earthly passions . . . they are the pisachas etc. . . ." They not only ruin their victims etc. . . ."

Again correct. Bear in mind that the exceptions enforce the rule.

And if they are neither very good nor very bad the "victims of accident or violence," derive a new set of skandhas from the medium who attracts them. I have explained the situation on the margin of proofs. See note.

It was on this text that I have been working.

If this is not to be maintained or if in some way that as yet I cannot understand the words bear a different signification from that which seems to belong to them, it might be better to cancel these two letters altogether or hold them over for complete alteration. The warning is delivered in too solemn a tone and the danger is made too much of if it is merely to apply to suicides, and in the last slip of the proof the elimination of "the accidents and" makes the rest rather ridiculous because then we are dividing suicides only into the very pure and elevated! and the medium people etc.

It seems to me that it would hardly do to let even letter (1) stand alone, — though it does not include the mistake, for it would have no raison d'etre unless followed up by letter (2).

Both letters have gone home to Stainton Moses for transmission to Light — the first by the mail from here of July 21, the second by last mail — yesterday. Now if you decide that it is better to stop and cancel them I shall just be in time to telegraph home to Stainton Moses to that effect, and will do this directly I receive a telegram from you or from the Old Lady to that effect.

If nothing is done they Will appear in Light as written — i.e. as the MS. sent with the present proof stood barring a few little mistakes which I see my wife has made in copying them out.

It is altogether a very awkward tangle. I was precipitate apparently in sending them home, but I thought I had followed the statements of your long devachan letter so faithfully. Awaiting orders,

Ever your devoted

A. P. S.

On margin I said "rarely" but I have not pronounced the word "never." Accidents occur under the most various circumstances; and men are not only killed accidentally, or die as suicides but are also murdered— something we have not even touched upon. I can well understand your perplexity but canhardly help you. Bear always in mind that there are exceptions to every rule, and to these again and other side exceptions, and be always prepared to learn something new. I can easily understand we areaccused of contradictionsand inconsistencies — aye, even to writing one thing to-day and denying it to­morrow. What you were taught is the RULE. Good and pure "accidents" sleep in the Akasa, ignorant oftheir change; very wicked and impure — suffer all the tortures of a horrible nightmare. The majority — neither very good nor very bad, the victims of accident or violence (including murder) — some sleep, others become Nature pisachas, and while a small minority may fall victims to mediums and derive a new set of skandhas from the medium who attracts them. Small as their number may be, their fate is tobe the most deplored. What I said in my notes on your MSS. was in reply to Mr. Hume's statistical calculations which led him to infer that "there were more Spirits than shells in the seance rooms" insuch a case.

You have much to learn — and we have much to teach nor do we refuse to go to the very end. But wemust really beg that you should not jump at hasty conclusions. I do not blame you, my dear faithful friend, I would rather blame myself, were anyone here to be blamed except our respective modes ofthought and habits so diametrically opposed to each other. Accustomed as we are to teach chelas who know enough to find themselves beyond the necessity of "if's " and "but's" during the lessons — I ambut too apt to forget that I am doing the work with you generally entrusted to these chelas. Henceforth, I will take more time when answering your questions. Your letters to London can do no harm, and aresure, on the contrary to do good. They are admirably written and the exceptionsmay be mentioned and the whole ground covered in one of the future letters.

I have no objection to your making extracts for Colonel Chesney — except one — he is not a Theosophist. Only be careful, and do not forget your details and exceptions whenever you explain yourrules. Remember still: even in the case of suicides there are many who will never allow themselves to be drawn into the vortex of mediumship, and pray do not accuse me of "inconsistency" or contradiction when we come to that point. Could you but know how I write my letters and the time I am enabled to give to them, perchance you would feel less critical if not exacting. Well, and how do you like DjualKhool's ideaand art? I have not caught a glimpse of Simla for the last ten days.

Affectionately yours,

K.H.

Letter 22 Table of Contents

Letter No. 22

[Transcribed from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. — ED.]

Extract from Letter by K.H. to Hume. Received for my perusal towards the end of season 1882.

(A.P.S.)

Did it ever strike you, — and now from the standpoint of your Western science and the suggestion of your own Ego which has already seized up the essentials of every truth, prepare to deride the erroneous idea — did you ever suspect that Universal, like finite, human mind might have two attributes, or a dual power — one the voluntary and conscious, and the other the involuntary and unconscious or the mechanical power. To reconcile the difficulty of many theistic and anti-theistic propositions, both these powers are a philosophical necessity. The possibility of the first or the voluntary and conscious attribute in reference to the infinite mind, notwithstanding the assertions of all the Egos throughout the living world — will remain for ever a mere hypothesis, whereas in the finite mind it is a scientific and demonstrated fact. The highest Planetary Spirit is as ignorant of the first as we are, and the hypothesis will remain one even in Nirvana, as it is a mere inferential possibility, whether there or here.

Take the human mind in connexion with the body. Man has two distinct physical brains; the cerebrum with its two hemispheres at the frontal part of the head — the source of the voluntary nerves; and the cerebellum, situated at the back portion of the skull — the fountain of the involuntary nerves which are the agents of the unconscious or mechanical powers of the mind to act through. And weak and uncertain as may be the control of man over his involuntary, such as the blood circulation, the throbbings of the heart and respiration, especially during sleep — yet how far more powerful, how much more potential appears man as master and ruler over the blind molecular motion — the laws which govern his body (a proof of this being afforded by the phenomenal powers of the Adept and even the common Yogi) than that which you will call God, shows over the immutable laws of Nature. Contrary in that to the finite, the "infinite mind," which we name so but for argument's sake, for we call it the infinite FORCE — exhibits but the functions of its cerebellum, the existence of its supposed cerebrum being admitted as above stated, but on the inferential hypothesis deduced from the Kabalistic theory (correct in every other relation) of the Macrocosm being the prototype of the Microcosm. So far as we know the corroboration of it by modern science receiving but little consideration — so far as the highest Planetary Spirits have ascertained (who remember well have the same relations with the trans-cosmical world, penetrating behind the primitive veil of cosmic matter as we have to go behind the veil of this, our gross physical world —) the infinite mind displays to them as to us no more than the regular unconscious throbbings of the eternal and universal pulse of Nature, throughout the myriads of worlds within as without the primitive veil of our solar system.

So far — WE KNOW. Within and to the utmost limit, to the very edge of the cosmic veil we know the fact to be correct — owing to personal experience; for the information gathered as to what takes place beyond — we are indebted to the Planetary Spirits, to our blessed Lord Buddha. This of course may be regarded as second­hand information. There are those who rather than to yield to the evidence of fact will prefer regarding even the planetary gods as "erring" disembodied philosophers if not actually liars. Be it so. Everyone is master of his own wisdom — says a Tibetan proverb and he is at liberty either to honour or degrade his slave —. However I will go on for the benefit of those who may yet seize my explanation of the problem and understand the nature of the solution.

It is the peculiar faculty of the involuntary power of the infinite mind — which no one could ever think of calling God, — to be eternally evolving subjective matter into objective atoms (you will please remember that these two adjectives are used but in a relative sense) or cosmic matter to be later on developed into form. And it is likewise that same involuntary mechanical power that we see so intensely active in all the fixed laws of nature — which governs and controls what is called the Universe or the Cosmos. There are some modern philosophers who would prove the existence of a Creator from motion. We say and affirm that that motion — the universal perpetual motion which never ceases never slackens nor increases its speed not even during the interludes between the pralayas, or "nights of Brahma" but goes on like a mill set in motion, whether it has anything to grind or not (for the pralaya means the temporary loss of every form, but by no means the destruction of cosmic matter which is eternal) — we say this perpetual motion is the only eternal and uncreated Deity we are able to recognise. To regard God as an intelligent spirit, and accept at the same time his absolute immateriality is to conceive of a nonentity, a blank void; to regard God as a Being, an Ego and to place his intelligence under a bushel for some mysterious reasons — is a most consummate nonsense; to endow him with intelligence in the face of blind brutal Evil is to make of him a fiend — a most rascally God. A Being however gigantic, occupying space and having length breadth and thickness is most certainly the Mosaic deity; "No-being" and a mere principle lands you directly in the Buddhistic atheism, or the Vedantic primitive Acosmism. What lies beyond and outside the worlds of form, and being, in worlds and spheres in their most spiritualized state — (and you will perhaps oblige us by telling us where that beyond can be, since the Universe is infinite and limitless) is useless for anyone to search after since even Planetary Spirits have no knowledge or perception of it. If our greatest adepts and Bodhisatvas have never penetrated themselves beyond our solar system, — and the idea seems to suit your preconceived theistic theory wonderfully, my respected Brother — they still know of the existence of other such solar systems, with as mathematical a certainty as any western astronomer knows of the existence of invisible stars which he can never approach or explore. But of that which lies within the worlds and systems, not in the trans-infinitude — (a queer expression to use) — but in the cis-infinitude rather, in the state of the purest and inconceivable immateriality, no one ever knew or will ever tell, hence it is something non-existent for the universe. You are at liberty to place in this eternal vacuum the intellectual or voluntary powers of your deity — if you can conceive of such a thing.

Meanwhile we may say that it is motion that governs the laws of nature; and that it governs them as the mechanical impulse given to running water which will propel them either in a direct line or along hundreds of side furrows they may happen to meet on their way and whether those furrows are natural grooves or channels prepared artificially by the hand of man. And we maintain that wherever there is life and being, and in however much spiritualized a form, there is no room for moral government, much less for a moral Governor — a Being which at the same time has no form nor occupies space! Verily if light shineth in darkness, and darkness comprehends it not, it is because such is the natural law, but how more suggestive and pregnant with meaning for one who knows, to say that light can still less comprehend darkness, nor ever know it since it kills wherever it penetrates and annihilates it instantly. Pure yet a volitional Spirit is an absurdity for volitional mind. The result of organism cannot exist independently of an organized brain, and an organized brain made out of nihil is a still greater fallacy. If you ask me "Whence then the immutable laws? — laws cannot make themselves" — then in my turn I will ask you — and whence their supposed Creator? — a creator cannot create or make himself. If the brain did not make itself, for this would be affirming that brain acted before it existed, how could intelligence, the result of an organized brain, act before its creator was made.

All this reminds one of wrangling for seniorship. If our doctrines clash too much with your theories then we can easily give up the subject and talk of something else. Study the laws and doctrines of the Nepaulese Swabhavikas, the principal Buddhist philosophical school in India, and you will find them the most learned as the most scientifically logical wranglers in the world. Their plastic, invisible, eternal, omnipresent and unconscious Swabhavat is Force or Motion ever generating its electricity which is life.

Yes: there is a force as limitless as thought, as potent as boundless will, as subtile as the essence of life so inconceivably awful in its rending force as to convulse the universe to its centre would it but be used as a lever, but this Force is not God, since there are men who have learned the secret of subjecting it to their will when necessary. Look around you and see the myriad manifestations of life, so infinitely multiform; of life, of motion, of change. What caused these? From what inexhaustible source came they, by what agency? Out of the invisible and subjective they have entered our little area of the visible and objective. Children of Akasa, concrete evolutions from the ether, it was force which brought them into perceptibility and Force will in time remove them from the sight of man. Why should this plant in your garden to the right, have been produced with such a shape and that other one to the left with one totally dissimilar? Are these not the result of varying action of Force — unlike correlations? Given a perfect monotony of activities throughout the world, and we would have a complete identity of forms, colours, shapes and properties throughout all the kingdoms of nature. It is the motion with its resulting conflict, neutralization, equilibration, correlation, to which is due the infinite variety which prevails. You speak of an intelligent and good — (the attribute is rather unfortunately chosen) — Father, a moral guide and governor of the universe and man. A certain condition of things exists around us which we call normal. Under this nothing can occur which transcends our every-day experience "God's immutable laws." But suppose we change this condition and have the best of him without whom even a hair of your head will not fall, as they tell you in the West. A current of air brings to me from the lake near which, with my fingers half frozen I now write to you this letter — I change by a certain combination of electrical magnetic odyllic or other influences the current of air which benumbs my fingers into a warmer breeze; I have thwarted the intention of the Almighty, and dethroned him at my will! I can do that, or when I do not want Nature to produce strange and too visible phenomena, I force my nature-seeing, nature-influencing self within me, to suddenly awake to new perceptions and feelings and thus am my own Creator and ruler.

But do you think that you are right when saying that "the laws arise." Immutable laws cannot arise, since they are eternal and uncreated, propelled in the Eternity and that God himself if such a thing existed, could never have the power of stopping them. And when did I say that these laws were fortuitous per se. I meant their blind correlations, never the laws, or rather the law — since we recognise but one law in the Universe, the law of harmony, of perfect EQUILIBRIUM. Then for a man endowed with so subtle a logic, and such a fine comprehension of the value of ideas in general and that of words especially — for a man so accurate as you generally are to make tirades upon an "all wise, powerful and love-ful God" seems to say at least strange. I do not protest at all as you seem to think against your theism, or a belief in an abstract ideal of some kind, but I cannot help asking you, how do you or how can you know that your God is all wise, omnipotent and love-ful, when everything in nature, physical and moral, proves such a being, if he does exist to be quite the reverse of all you say of him? Strange delusion and one which seems to overpower your very intellect.

The difficulty of explaining the fact that "unintelligent Forces can give rise to highly intelligent beings like ourselves," is covered by the eternal progression of cycles, and the process of evolution ever perfecting its work as it goes along. Not believing in cycles, it is unnecessary for you to learn that which will create but a new pretext for you, my dear Brother, to combat the theory and argue upon it ad infinitum. Nor did I ever become guilty of the heresy I am accused of — in reference to spirit and matter. The conception of matter and spirit as entirely distinct, and both eternal could certainly never have entered my head, however little I may know of them, for it is one of the elementary and fundamental doctrines of Occultism that the two are one, and are distinct but in their respective manifestations, and only in the limited perceptions of the world of senses. Far from "lacking philosophical breadth" then, our doctrines show, but one principle in nature, — spirit-matter or matter-spirit, the third the ultimate Absolute or the quintessence of the two, — if I may be allowed to use an erroneous term in the present application — losing itself beyond the view and spiritual perceptions of even the "Gods" or Planetary Spirits. This third principle say the Vedantic Philosophers — is the only reality, everything else being Maya, as none of the Protean manifestations of spirit-matter or Purusha and Prakriti have ever been regarded in any other light than that of temporary delusions of the senses. Even in the hardly outlined philosophy of Isis this idea is clearly carried out. In the book of Kiu-te, Spirit is called the ultimate sublimation of matter, and matter the crystallization of spirit. And no better illustration could be afforded than in the very simple phenomenon of ice, water, vapour and the final dispersion of the latter, the phenomenon being reversed in its consecutive manifestations and called the Spirit falling into generation or matter. This trinity resolving itself into unity, — a doctrine as old as the world of thought — was seized upon by some early Christians, who had it in the schools of Alexandria, and made up into the Father, or generative spirit; the Son or matter, — man; and into the Holy Ghost, the immaterial essence, or the apex of the equilateral triangle, an idea found to this day in the pyramids of Egypt. Thus once more it is proved that you misunderstand my meaning entirely, whenever for the sake of brevity I use a phraseology habitual with the Western people. But in my turn I have to remark that your idea that matter is but the temporary allotropic form of spirit differing from it as charcoal does from diamond is as unphilosophical as it is unscientific from both the Eastern and the Western points of view, charcoal being but a form of residue of matter, while matter per se is indestructible, and as I maintain coeval with spirit — that spirit which we know and can conceive of. Bereaved of Prakriti, Purusha (Spirit) is unable to manifest itself, hence ceases to exist — becomes nihil. Without spirit or Force, even that which Science styles as "not living" matter, the so-called mineral ingredients which feed plants, could never have been called into form. There is a moment in the existence of every molecule and atom of matter when, for one cause or another, the last spark of spirit or motion or life (call it by whatever name) is withdrawn, and in the same instant with the swiftness which surpasses that of the lightning glance of thought the atom or molecule or an aggregation of molecules is annihilated to return to its pristine purity of intra-cosmic matter. It is drawn to the mother fount with the velocity of a globule of quicksilver to the central mass. Matter, force, and motion are the trinity of physical objective nature, as the trinitarian unity of spirit-matter is that of the spiritual or subjective nature. Motion is eternal because spirit is eternal. But no modes of motion can ever be conceived unless they be in connection with matter.

And now to your extraordinary hypothesis that Evil with its attendant train of sin and suffering is not the result of matter, but may be perchance the wise scheme of the moral Governor of the Universe. Conceivable as the idea may seem to you trained in the pernicious fallacy of the Christian, — "the ways of the Lord are inscrutable" — it is utterly inconceivable for me. Must I repeat again that the best Adepts have searched the Universe during milleniums and found nowhere the slightest trace of such a Machiavellian schemer — but throughout, the same immutable, inexorable law. You must excuse me therefore if I positively decline to lose my time over such childish speculations. It is not "the ways of the Lord" but rather those of some extremely intelligent men in everything but some particular hobby, that are to me incomprehensible.

As you say this need "make no difference between us" — personally. But it does make a world of difference if you propose to learn and offer me to teach. For the life of me I cannot make out how I could ever impart to you that which I know since the very A.B.C. of what I know, the rock upon which the secrets of the occult universe, whether on this or that side of the veil, are encrusted, is contradicted by you invariably and a priori. My very dear Brother, either we know something or we do not know anything. In the first case what is the use of your learning, since you think you know better? In the second case why should you lose your time? You say it matters nothing whether these laws are the expression of the will of an intelligent conscious God, as you think, or constitute the inevitable attributes of an unintelligent, unconscious "God," as I hold. I say, it matters everything, and since you earnestly believe that these fundamental questions (of spirit and matter — of God or no God) "are admittedly beyond both of us" — in other words that neither I nor yet our greatest adepts can know no more than you do, then what is there on earth that I could teach you? You know that in order to enable you to read you have first to learn your letters — yet you want to know the course of events before and after the Pralayas, of every event here on this globe on the opening of a new cycle, namely a mystery imparted at one of the last initiations, as Mr. Sinnett was told, — for my letter to him upon the Planetary Spirits was simply incidental — brought out by a question of his. And now you will say I am evading the direct issue. I have discoursed upon collateral points, but have not explained to you all you want to know and asked me to tell you. I "dodge" as I always do. Pardon me for contradicting you, but it is nothing of the kind. There are a thousand questions I will never be permitted to answer, and it would be dodging were I to answer you otherwise than I do. I tell you plainly you are unfit to learn, for your mind is too full and there is not a corner vacant from whence a previous occupant would not arise, to struggle with and drive away the newcomer. Therefore I do not evade, I only give you time to reflect and deduce and first learn well what was already given you before you seize on something else. The world of force, is the world of Occultism and the only one whither the highest initiate goes to probe the secrets of being. Hence no-one but such an initiate can know anything of these secrets. Guided by his Guru the chela first discovers this world, then its laws, then their centrifugal evolutions into the world of matter. To become a perfect adept takes him long years, but at last he becomes the master. The hidden things have become patent, and mystery and miracle have fled from his sight forever. He sees how to guide force in this direction or that — to produce desirable effects. The secret chemical, electric or odic properties of plants, herbs, roots, minerals, animal tissue, are as familiar to him as the feathers of your birds are to you. No change in the etheric vibrations can escape him. He applies his knowledge, and behold a miracle! And he who started with the repudiation of the very idea that miracle is possible, is straightway classed as a miracle worker and either worshipped by the fools as a demi-god or repudiated by still greater fools as a charlatan! And to show you how exact a science is occultism let me tell you that the means we avail ourselves of are all laid down for us in a code as old as humanity to the minutest detail, but everyone of us has to begin from the beginning, not from the end. Our laws are as immutable as those of Nature, and they were known to man and eternity before this strutting game cock, modern science, was hatched. If I have not given you the modus operandi or begun by the wrong end, I have at least shown you that we build our philosophy upon experiment and deduction — unless you choose to question and dispute this fact equally with all others. Learn first our laws and educate your perceptions, dear Brother. Control your involuntary powers and develop in the right direction your will and you will become a teacher instead of a learner. I would not refuse what I have a right to teach. Only I had to study for fifteen years before I came to the doctrines of cycles and had to learn simpler things at first.

Letter 23a Table of Contents

Letter No. 23a

[K.H.'s Comments etc. appear in bold type. — ED.] Received at Simla: Oct. 1882.

Herewith — apologizing for their number, I send a few notes of interrogation. Perhaps you will be so kind as to take them up from time to time and answer them by ones and twos as leisure and time allow. Memo — At convenience to send A.P.S. those unpublished notes of Eliphas Levi's with annotations by K.H.

Sent long ago to our "Jacko" friend.

I

 

(1) There is a very interesting allusion in your last, when speaking of Hume you speak of certain characteristics he brought back with him from his last incarnation.

 

(2) Have you the power of looking back to the former lives of persons now living, and identifying them?

 

(3) In that case would it be improper personal curiosity — to ask for any particulars of my own?

 

I

 

(1) All of us, we bring some characteristics from our previous incarnations. It is unavoidable.

 

(2) Unfortunately, some of us have. I, for one do not like to exercise it.

 

(3) "Man know thyself," saith the Delphian oracle. There is nothing "improper" — certainly in such a curiosity. Only would it not be still more proper to study our own present personality beforeattempting to learn anything of its creator, — predecessor, and fashioner, — the man that was?Well, some day I may treat you to a little story — no time now — only I promise no details; a simple sketch,and a hint or two to test your intuitional powers.

 

II

[For K.H.'s replies to these queries see post Letter 23b. — ED.]

 

(1) Is there any way of accounting for what seems the curious rush of human progress within the last two thousand years, as compared with the relatively stagnant condition of the fourth round people up to the beginning of modern progress?

(2) Or has there been at any former period during the habitation of the earth by fourth round men, civilizations as great as our own in regard to intellectual development that have utterly passed away?

(3) Even the fifth race (own) of the fourth round began in Asia a million years ago. What was it about for the 998,000 years preceding the last 2,000? During that period have greater civilizations than our own risen and decayed?

(4) To what epoch did the existence of the Continent of Atlantis belong, and did the cataclysmical change which produced its extinction come into any appointed place in the evolution of the round, — corresponding to the place occupied in the whole manvantaric evolution by obscurations?

(5) I find that the most common question asked about occult philosophy by fairly intelligent people who begin to enquire about it is "Does it give any explanation of the origin of evil?" That is a point on which you (6) Closely allied to this question would be another often put. "What is the good of the whole cyclic process if spirit only emerges at the end of all things pure and impersonal as it was at first before its descent into matter?" (And the portions taken away from the fifth?) My answer is that I am not at present engaged in excusing, but in investigating the operations of Nature. But perhaps there may be a better answer available.

(7) Can you, i.e., is it permitted ever to answer any questions relating to matters of physical science? If so — here are some points, that I should greatly like dealt with.

(8) Have magnetic conditions anything to do with the precipitation of rain, or is that due entirely to atmospheric currents at different temperatures encountering other currents of different humidities, the whole set of motions being established by pressures, expansions, etc., due in the first instance to solar energy? If magnetic conditions are engaged, how do they operate and how could they be tested?

(9) Is the sun's corona, an atmosphere? of any known gases? and why does it assume the rayed shape always observed in eclipses?

(10) Is the photometric value of light emitted by stars a safe guide to their magnitude, (1) and is it true as astronomy assumes faute de mieux in the way of a theory, that per square mile the sun's surface emits as much light as can be emitted from any body?

(11) Is Jupiter a hot and still partially luminous body and to what cause, as solar energy has probably nothing to do with the matter, are the violent disturbances of Jupiter's atmosphere due?

(12) Is there any truth in the new Siemens theory of solar combustion, — i.e., that the sun in its passage through space gathers in at the poles combustible gas (which is diffused through all space in a highly attenuated condition), and throws it off again at the equator after the intense heat of that region has again dispersed the elements which combustion temporarily united?

(13) Could any clue be given to the causes of magnetic variations, — the daily changes at given places, and the apparently capricious curvature of the isogonic lines which show equal declinations? For example — why is there a region in Eastern Asia where the needle shows no variation from the true north, though variations are recorded all round that space? (Have your Lordships anything to do with this peculiar condition of things?)

(14) Could any other planets besides those known to modern astronomy (I do not mean mere planetoids) be discovered by physical instruments if properly directed?

(15) When you wrote "Have you experienced monotony during that moment which you considered then and now so consider it, — as the moment of the highest bliss you have ever felt?"

 

Did you refer to any specific moment and any specific event in my life, or were you merely referring to an X quantity — the happiest moment whatever it might have been?

 

(16) You say: — "Remember we create ourselves, our Deva Chan, and our Avitchi and mostly during the latter days and even moments of our sentient lives."

(17) But do the thoughts on which the mind may be engaged at the last moment necessarily hinge on to the predominant character of its past life? Otherwise it would seem as if the character of a person's Deva Chan or Avitchi might be capriciously and unjustly determined by the chance which brought some special thought uppermost at last?

(18) "The full remembrance of our lives will come but at the end of the "minor cycle."

Does "minor cycle" here mean one round, or the whole Manvantara of our planetary chain?

(I9) You say "And even the shells of those good men whose pages will not be found missing in the great book of lives: — even they will regain their remembrance and an appearance of self consciousness only after the sixth and seventh principles with the essence of the fifth have gone to their gestation period."

 

(20) A little later on: — "Whether the personal Ego was good, bad or indifferent, his consciousness leaves him as suddenly as the flame leaves the wick — his perceptive faculties become extinct for ever." (Well? can a physical brain once dead retain its perceptive faculties: that which will perceive in the shell issomething that perceives with a borrowed or reflected light. See notes.)

 

Then what is the nature of the remembrance and self-consciousness of the shell? This touches on a matter I have often thought about — wishing for further explanation — the extent of personal identity in elementaries.

 

(21) The spiritual Ego goes circling through the worlds, retaining what it possesses of identity and self-consciousness, always neither more nor less (a) But it is continually evolving personalities, in which at all events the sense of identity while it remains united with them is very complete. (b) Now these personalities I understand to be absolutely new evolutions in each case. A. P. Sinnett is, for what it is worth, — absolutely a new invention. Now it will leave a shell behind which will survive for a time (c) assuming that the spiritual monad temporarily engaged in this incarnation will find enough decent material in the fifth to lay hold of. (d) That shell will have no consciousness directly after death, because "it requires a certain time to establish its new centre of gravity and evolve its perception proper." (e) But how much consciousness will it have when it has done this? (f) Will it still be A. P. Sinnett of which the spiritual Ego, will think, even at the last, as of a person it had known — or will it be conscious that the individuality is gone? Will it be able to reason about itself at all, and to remember anything of its once higher interests. Will it remember the name it bore? (g) or is it only inflated with recollections of this sort in mediumistic presence, remaining asleep at other times? (h) And is it conscious of losing anything that feels like life as it gradually disintegrates?

 

(22) What is the nature of the life that goes on in the "Planet of Death?" Is it a physical reincarnation with remembrance of past personality, or an astral existence as in Kama Loka? Is it an existence with birth, maturity and decay, or a uniform prolongation of the old personality of this earth under penal conditions?

 

(23) What other planets of those known to ordinary science, besides Mercury, belong to our system of worlds?

 

Are the more spiritual planets — (A, B & Y, Z) — visible bodies in the sky or are all those known to astronomy of the more material sort?

 

(24) Is the Sun (a) as Allan Kardec says: — a habitation of highly spiritualized beings? (b) Is it the vertex of our Manvantaric chain? and of all the other chains in this solar system also?

 

(25) You say: — it may happen — "that the spiritual spoil from the fifth will prove too weak to be reborn in Deva Chan, in which case it's sixth will then and there reclothe itself in a new body — and enter upon a new earth existence, whether upon this or any other planet."

 

(26) This seems to want further elucidation. Are these exceptional cases in which two earth lives of the same spiritual monad may occur closer together than the thousand years indicated by some previous letters as the almost inevitable limit of such successive lives?

 

(27) The reference to the case of Guiteau is puzzling. I can understand his being in a state in which the crime he committed is ever present to his imagination, but how does he "toss into confusion and shuffle the destinies of millions of persons?"

 

(28) Obscurations are a subject at present wrapped in obscurity.

 

They take place after the last man of any given round has passed on to the next planet. But I want to make out how the next superior round forms are evolved. When the fifth round spiritual monads arrive what fleshly habitations are ready for them? Going back to the only former letter in which you have dealt with obscurations I find: — (a) "We have traced man out of a round into the Nirvanic state between Z and A. "A" was left in the last round dead. (See note.) As the new round begins it catches the new influx of life, reawakens to vitality, and begets all its kingdoms of a superior order to the last."

(29) But has it to begin at the beginning again between each round, and evolve human forms from animal, these last from vegetable, etc. If so to what round do the first imperfectly evolved men belong? Ex hypothesi to the fifth; but the fifth should be a more perfect race in all respects.

Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. Considered of course in connection with distance as guessed by parallax. (return to text)

Letter No. 23b

[K.H.'s Replies to the Queries in Letter 23a II. — ED.]

(I) The latter end of a very important cycle. Each Round, each ring, as every race has its great and its smaller cycles, on every planet that mankind passes through.

Our fourth Round Humanity has its one great cycle, and so have her races and sub-races. The "curious rush" is due to the double effect of the former — the beginning of its downward course; — and of the latter (the small cycle of your "sub-race") running on to its apex. Remember, you belong to the fifth Race, yet you are but a Western sub-race. Notwithstanding your efforts, what you call civilization is confined only to the latter and its off-shoots in America. Radiating around, its deceptive light may seem to throw its rays on a greater distance than it does in reality. — There is no "rush" in China, and of Japan you make but a caricature.

A student of occultism ought not to speak of the "stagnant condition of the fourth Race people" since history knows next to nothing of that condition "up to the beginning of modern progress" of other nations but the Western. What do you know of America, for instance, before the invasion of that country by the Spaniards? Less than two centuries prior to the arrival of Cortez there was as great a "rush" towards progress among the sub-races of Peru and Mexico as there is now in Europe and the U.S.A. Their sub-race ended in nearly total annihilation through causes generated by itself; so will yours at the end of its cycle. We may speak only of the "stagnant conditions" into which, following the law of development, growth, maturity and decline every race and sub-race falls into during its transition periods. It is that latter condition your Universal History is acquainted with, while it remains superbly ignorant of the condition even India was in, some ten centuries back. Your sub-races are now running toward the apex of their respective cycles, and that History goes no further back than the periods of decline of a few other sub-races belonging most of them to the preceding fourth Race. And what is the area and the period of time embraced by its Universal eye? — At the utmost stretch — a few, miserable dozens of centuries. A mighty horizon, indeed! Beyond — all is darkness for it, nothing but hypotheses. . . . .

 

(2) No doubt there was. Egyptian and Aryan records and especially our Zodiacal tables furnish us with every proof of it besides our inner knowledge. Civilization is an inheritance, a patrimony that passes from race to race along the ascending and descending paths of cycles. During the minority of a sub-race, it is preserved for it by its predecessor, which disappears, dies out generally, when the former "comes to age." At first, most of them squander and mismanage their property, or leave it untouched in the ancestral coffers. They reject contemptuously the advices of their elders and prefer, boy-like, playing in the streets to studying and making the most of the untouched wealth stored up for them in the records of the Past. Thus during your transition period — the middle ages — Europe rejected the testimony of Antiquity, calling such sages as Herodotus and other learned Greeks — the Father of Lies, until she knew better and changed the appellation into that of "Father of History." Instead of neglecting, you now accumulate and add to your wealth. As every other race you had your ups and downs, your periods of honour and dishonour, your dark midnight and — you are now approaching your brilliant noon. The youngest of the fifth race family you were for long ages the unloved and the uncared for, the Cendrillon in your home. And now, when so many of your sisters have died; and others still are dying, while the few of the old survivors, now in their second infancy, wait but for their Messiah — the sixth race — to resurrect to a new life and start anew with the coming stronger along the path of a new cycle — now that the Western Cendrillon has suddenly developed into a proud wealthy Princess, the beauty we all see and admire — how does she act? Less kind hearted than the Princess in the tale, instead of offering to her elder and less favoured sister, the oldest now, in fact since she is nearly "a million years old" and the only one who has never treated her unkindly, though she may have ignored her, — instead of offering her, I say, the "Kiss of peace" she applies to her the lex talionis with a vengeance that does not enhance her natural beauty. This, my good friend, and brother, is not a far stretched allegory but — history.

 

(3) Yes; the fifth race — ours — began in Asia a million years ago. What was it about for the 998,000 years preceding the last 2,000? A pertinent question; offered moreover in quite a Christian spirit that refuses to believe that any good could ever have come out from anywhere before and save Nazareth. What was it about? Well, it was occupying itself pretty well in the same way as it does now — craving Mr. Grant Allen's pardon, who would place our primitive ancestor the "hedgehoggy" man, in the early part of the Eocene Age! Forsooth, your scientific writers bestride their hypothesis most fearlessly, I see. It will really be pity to find their fiery steed kicking and breaking their heads some day; something that is unavoidably in store for them. In the Eocene Age — even in its "very first part," the great cycle of the fourth Race men, the Atlanteans — had already reached its highest point, and the great continent, the father of nearly all the present continents — showed the first symptoms of sinking — a process that occupied it down to 11,446 years ago, when its last island, that, translating its vernacular name, we may call with propriety Poseidonis — went down with a crash. By the bye, whoever wrote the Review of Donnelly's Atlantis is right: Lemuria can no more be confounded with the Atlantic Continent than Europe with America. Both sunk and were drowned with their high civilizations and "gods," yet between the two catastrophes, a short period of about 700,000 years elapsed; "Lemuria" flourishing and ending her career just at about that trifling lapse of time before the early part of the Eocene Age, since its race was the third. Behold, the relics of that once great nation in some of the flat headed aborigines of your Australia! No less right is the review in rejecting the kind attempt of the author to people India and Egypt with the refuse of Atlantis. No doubt your geologists are very learned; but why not bear in mind that, under the continents explored and fathomed by them, in the bowels of which they have found the "Eocene Age" and forced it to deliver them its secrets, there may be, hidden deep in the fathomless, or rather unfathomed ocean beds, other, and far older continents whose stratums have never been geologically explored; and that they may some (lay upset entirely their present theories, thus illustrating the simplicity and sublimity of truth as connected with inductive "generalization" in opposition to their visionary conjectures. Why not admit — true no one of them has ever thought of it — that our present continents, have — like "Lemuria" and "Atlantis" — been several times already, submerged and had the time to reappear again, and bear their new groups of mankind and civilization; and that, at the first great geological upheaval, at the next cataclysm — in the series of periodical cataclysms that occur from the beginning to the end of every Round, — our already autopsized continents will go down, and the Lemurias and Atlantises come up again. Think of the future geologists of the sixth and seventh races. Imagine them digging deep in the bowels of what was Ceylon and Simla, and finding implements of the Veddahs, or of the remote ancestor of the civilized Pahari — every object of the civilized portions of humanity that inhabited those regions having been pulverized to dust by the great masses of travelling glaciers, — during the next glacial period — imagine him finding only such rude implements as now found among those savage tribes; and forthwith declaring that during that period primitive man climbed and slept on the trees, and sucked the marrow out of animal bones after breaking them — as civilized Europeans no less than the Veddahs will often do — hence jumping to the conclusion that in the year 1882 A.D., mankind was composed of "man-like animals," black-faced, and whiskered, "with prominent prognathous and large pointed canine teeth." True, a Grant Allen of the sixth race, may be not so far from fact and truth in his conjecture that during the "Simla period" — these teeth were used in the combats of the "males" for grass widows — but then metaphors has very little to do with anthropology and geology. Such is your Science. To return to your questions.

Of course the 4th race had its periods of the highest civilization. Greek and Roman and even Egyptian civilization are nothing compared to the civilizations that began with the 3rd race. Those of the second were not savages but they could not be called civilized. And now, reading one of my first letters on the races (a question first touched by M.) pray, do not accuse either him or myself of some new contradiction. Read it over and see, that it leaves out the question of civilizations altogether and mentions but the degenerate remnants of the fourth and third races, and gives you as a corroboration the latest conclusions of your own Science. Do not regard an unavoidable incompleteness as inconsistency. You now ask me a direct question, and, I answer it. Greeks and Romans were small sub-races, and Egyptians part and parcel of our own "Caucasian" stock. Look at the latter and at India. Having reached the highest civilization and what is more: learning — both went down. Egypt as a distinct sub-race disappearing entirely (her Copts are a hybrid remnant). India — as one of the first and most powerful off-shoots of the mother Race, and composed of a number of sub-races — lasting to these times, and struggling to take once more her place in history some day. That History catches but a few stray, hazy glimpses of Egypt, some 12,000 years back; when, having already reached the apex of its cycle thousands of years before, the latter had begun going down. What does, or can it know of India 5,000 years ago, or of the Chaldees — whom it confounds most charmingly with the Assyrians, making of them one day "Akkadians," at another Turanians and what not? We say then, that your We are refused by the Journal of Science — words repeated and quoted by M.A. (Oxon) with a rapture worthy of a great medium — any claim whatever for "higher knowledge." Says the reviewer: "Suppose the Brothers were to say 'point your telescope to such and such a spot in heavens, and you will find a planet yet unknown to you; or dig into the earth.' . . . etc., and you will find a mineral,' etc." Very fine, indeed, and suppose that was done, what would be the result? Why a charge of plagiarism — since everything of that kind, every "planet and mineral" that exists in space or inside the earth, are known and recorded in our books thousands of years ago; more; many a true hypothesis was timidly brought forward by their own scientific men and as constantly rejected by the majority with whose preconceptions it interfered. Your intention is laudable but nothing that I may give you in answer will ever be accepted from us. Whenever discovered that "it is verily so," the discovery will be attributed to him who corroborated the evidence — as in the case of Copernicus and Galileo, the latter having availed himself but of the Pythagorean MSS.

But to return to "civilizations." Do you know that the Chaldees were at the apex of their Occult fame before what you term as the "bronze Age"? That the "Sons of Ad" or the children of the Fire Mist preceded by hundreds of centuries the Age of Iron, which was an old age already, when what you now call the Historical Period — probably because what is known of it is generally no history but fiction — had hardly begun. We hold — but then what warrant can you give the world that we are right? — that far "greater civilizations than our own have risen and decayed." It is not enough to say as some of your modern writers do — that an extinct civilization existed before Rome and Athens were founded. We affirm that a series of civilizations existed before, as well as after the Glacial Period, that they existed upon various points, of the globe, reached the apex of glory and — died. Every trace and memory had been lost of the Assyrian and Phoenikean civilizations until discoveries began to be made a few years ago. And now they open a new, though not by far one of the earliest pages in the history of mankind. And yet how far back do those civilizations go in comparison with the oldest? — and even them, history is shy to accept. Archeo-geology has sufficiently demonstrated that the memory of man runs back vastly further than history has been willing to accept, and the sacred records of once mighty nations preserved by their heirs are still more worthy of trust. We speak of civilizations of the anteglacial period; and (not only in the minds of the vulgar and the profane but even in the opinion of the highly learned geologist) the claim sounds preposterous. What would you say then to our affirmation that the Chinese — I now speak of the inland, the true Chinaman, not of the hybrid mixture between the fourth and the fifth Races now occupying the throne — the aborigines, who belong in their unallied nationality wholly to the highest and last branch of the fourth Race, reached their highest civilization when the fifth had hardly appeared in Asia, and that its first off-shoot was yet a thing of the future. When was it? Calculate. You cannot think that we, who have such tremendous odds against the acceptance of our doctrine would deliberately go on inventing Races and sub-races (in the opinion of Mr. Hume) were not they a matter of undeniable fact. The group of islands off the Siberian coast discovered by Nordeneskjol of the "Vega" was found strewn with fossils of horses, sheep, oxen, etc., among gigantic bones of elephants, mammoths, rhinoceroses and other monsters belonging to periods when man — says your science — had not yet made his appearance on earth. How came horses and sheep to be found in company with the huge "ante­diluvians"? The horse, we are taught in schools — is quite a modern invention of nature, and no man ever saw its pedactyl ancestor. The group of the Siberian islands may give the lie to the comfortable theory. The region now locked in the fetters of eternal winter uninhabited by man — that most fragile of animals, — will be very soon proved to have had not only a tropical climate — something your science knows and does not dispute, — but having been likewise the seat of one of the most ancient civilisations of that fourth race, whose highest relics now we find in the degenerated Chinaman, and whose lowest are hopelessly (for the profane scientist) intermixed with the remnants of the third. I told you before now, that the highest people now on earth (spiritually) belong to the first sub-race of the fifth root Race; and those are the Aryan Asiatics; the highest race (physical intellectuality) is the last sub-race of the fifth — yourselves the white conquerors. The majority of mankind belongs to the seventh sub-race of the fourth Root race, — the above mentioned Chinamen and their off-shoots and branchlets (Malayans, Mongolians, Tibetans, Javanese, etc., etc., etc.) and remnants of other sub-races of the fourth — and the seventh sub-race of the third race. All these, fallen, degraded semblances of humanity are the direct lineal descendants of highly civilized nations neither the names nor memory of which have survived except in such books as Popalvul and a few others unknown to Science.

 

(4) To the Miocene times. Everything comes in its appointed time and place in the evolution of Rounds, otherwise it would be impossible for the best seer to calculate the exact hour and year when such cataclysms great and small have to occur. All an adept could do would be to predict an approximate time; whereas now events that result in great geological changes may be predicted with as mathematical a certainty as eclipses and other revolutions in space. The sinking of Atlantis (the group of continents and isles) begun during the Miocene period — as certain of your continents are now observed to be gradually sinking — and it culminated — first, in the final disappearance of the largest continent an event coincident with the elevation of the Alps; and second with that of the last of the fair Islands mentioned by Plato. The Egyptian priests of Sais told his ancestor Solon, that Atlantis (i.e. the only remaining large island) had perished 9,000 years before their time. This was not a fancy date, since they had for milleniums preserved most carefully their records. But then, as I say, they spoke but of the "Poseidonis" and would not reveal even to the great Greek legislator their secret chronology. As there are no geological reasons for doubting, but on the contrary, a mass of evidence for accepting the tradition, Science has finally accepted the existence of the great continent and Archipelago and thus vindicated the truth of one more "fable." It now teaches, as you know that Atlantis, or the remnants of it lingered down to post-tertiary times, its final submergence occurring within the palaeozoic ages of American history! Well, truth and fact ought to feel thankful even for such small favours in the previous absence of any, for so many centuries. The deep sea explorations — especially those of the Challenger have fully confirmed the reports of geology and palaeontology. The great event — the triumph of our "Sons of the Fire Mist" the inhabitants of "Shambullah" (when yet an island in the Central Asian Sea) over the selfish but not entirely wicked magicians of Poseidonis occurred just 11,446 ago. Read in this connection the incomplete and partially veiled tradition, in Isis, Volume I, p. 588-94, and some things may become still plainer to you. The corroboration of tradition and history, brought forward by Donnelly I find in the main correct; but you will find all this and much more in Isis.

(5) It certainly does, and I have touched upon the subject long ago. In my notes on Mr. Hume's MSS., "On God" — that he kindly adds to our Philosophy, something the latter had never contemplated before — the subject is mentioned abundantly. Has he refused you a look into it? For you — I may enlarge my explanations, but not before you have read what I say of the origin of good and evil on those margins. Quite enough was said by me for our present purposes. Strangely enough I found a European author — the greatest materialist of his times, Baron d'Holbach — whose views coincide entirely with the views of our philosophy. When reading his Essais sur la Nature, I might have imagined I had our book of Kiu-ti before me. As a matter of course and of temperament our Universal Pundit will try to catch at those views and pull every argument to pieces. So far he only threatens me to alter his Preface and not to publish the philosophy under his own name. Cuneus cuneum, tradit: I begged him not to publish his essays at all.

 

M. thinks that for your purposes I better give you a few more details upon Atlantis since it is greatly connected with evil if not with its origin. In the forthcoming Theosophist you will find a note or two appended to Hume's translation of Eliphas Levi's Preface in connection with the lost continent. And now, since I am determined to make of the present answers a volume — bear your cross with Christian fortitude and then, perhaps, after reading the whole you will ask for no more for some time to come. But what can I add to that already told? I am unable to give you purely scientific information since we can never agree entirely with Western conclusions; and that ours will be rejected as "unscientific." Yet both geology and palaeontology bear witness to much we have to say. Of course your Science is right in many of her generalities, but her premises are wrong, or at any rate — very faulty. For instance she is right in saying that while the new America was forming the ancient Atlantis was sinking, and gradually washing away; but she is neither right in her given epochs nor in the calculations of the duration of that sinking. The latter — is the future fate of your British Islands the first on the list of victims that have to be destroyed by fire (submarine volcanos) and water, France and other lands will follow suit. When they reappear again, the last seventh Sub-race of the sixth Root race of present mankind will be flourishing on "Lemuria" and "Atlantis" both of which will have reappeared also (their reappearance following immediately the disappearance of the present isles and continents), and very few seas and great waters will be found then on our globe, waters as well as land appearing and disappearing and shifting periodically and each in turn.

 

Trembling at the prospect of fresh charges of "contradictions" at some future incomplete statement I rather explain what I mean by this. The approach of every new "obscuration" is always signalled by cataclysms — of either fire or water. But, apart from this, every "Ring" or Root Race has to be cut in two, so to say, by either one or the other. Thus, having reached the apex of its development and glory the fourth Race — the Atlanteans were destroyed by water; you find now but their degenerated, fallen remnants, whose sub-races, nevertheless, aye — each of them, had its palmy days of glory and relative greatness. What they are now — you will be some day the law of cycles being one and immutable. When your race — the fifth — will have reached at its zenith of physical intellectuality, and developed the highest civilization (remember the difference we make between material and spiritual civilizations); unable to go any higher in its own cycle — its progress towards absolute evil will be arrested (as its predecessors the Lemurians and Atlanteans, the men of the third and fourth races were arrested in their progress toward the same) by one of such cataclysmic changes; its great civilization destroyed, and all the sub-races of that race will be found going down their respective cycles, after a short period of glory and learning. See the remnants of the Atlanteans, — the old Greeks and Romans (the modern belong all to the fifth Race); see how great and how short, how evanescent were their days of fame and glory! For, they were but sub-races of the seven off-shoots of the "root race." No mother Race, any more than her sub-races and off-shoots, is allowed by the one Reigning Law to trespass upon the prerogatives of the Race or Sub-race that will follow it; least of all — to encroach upon the knowledge and powers in store for its successor. "Thou shalt not eat of the fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil of the tree that is growing for thy heirs" we may say with more right than would be willingly conceded us by the Humes of your Sub-race. This "tree" is in our safe-keeping, entrusted to us by the Dhyan Chohans, the protectors of our Race and the Trustees for those that are coming. Try to understand the allegory, and to never lose sight of the hint given you in my letter upon the Planetaries. (1) At the beginning of each Round, when humanity reappears under quite different conditions than those afforded for the birth of each new race and its sub-races, a "Planetary" has to mix with these primitive men, and to refresh their memories, and reveal to them the truths they knew during the preceding Round. Hence the confused traditions about Jehovahs, Ormazds, Osirises, Brahms, and the tutti quanti. But that happens only for the benefit of the first Race. It is the duty of the latter to choose the fit recipients among its sons, who are "set apart" to use a Biblical phrase — as the vessels to contain the whole stock of knowledge, to be divided among the future races and generations until the close of that Round. Why should I say more since you must understand my whole meaning; and that I dare not reveal it in full. Every race had its adepts; and with every new race, we are allowed to give them out as much of our knowledge as the men of that race deserve it. The last seventh Race will have its Buddha as every one of its predecessors had; but, its adepts will be far higher than any of the present race, for among them will abide the future Planetary, the Dhyan Chohan whose duty it will be to instruct or "refresh the memory" of the first race of the fifth Round men after this planet's future obscuration.

En Passant, to show to you that not only were not the "races" invented by us, but that they are a cardinal dogma with the Lama Buddhists and with all who study our esoteric doctrine, I send you an explanation on a page or two in Rhys Davids "Buddhism," — otherwise incomprehensible, meaningless and absurd. It is written with the special permission of the Chohan (my Master) and — for your benefit. No Orientalist has ever suspected the truths contained in it, and — you are the first Western man (outside Tibet) to whom it is now explained.

(6) What emerges at the end of all things is not only "pure and impersonal spirit," but the collective "personal" remembrances skimmed off every new fifth principle in the long series of being. And, if at the end of all things — say in some million of millions years hence, Spirit will have to rest in its pure, impersonal non-existence, as the ONE or the absolute, still there must be "some good" in the cyclic process, since every purified Ego has the chance in the long interims between objective being upon the planets to exist as a Dhyan Chohan — from the lowest "Deva-Chanee" to the highest Planetary, enjoying the fruits of its collective lives.

But what is "Spirit" pure and impersonal per se? Is it possible that you should not have realized yet our meaning? why, such a Spirit is a nonentity, a pure abstraction, an absolute blank to our senses — even to the most spiritual. It becomes something only in union with matter — hence it is always something since matter is infinite and indestructible and non-existent without Spirit which, in matter is Life. Separated from matter it becomes the absolute negation of life and being, whereas matter is inseparable from it. Ask those who offer the objection, whether they know anything of "life" and "consciousness" beyond what they now feel on earth. What conception can they have — unless natural born seers — of the state and consciousness of one's individuality after it has separated itself from gross earthly body? What is the good of the whole process of life on earth — you may ask them, in your turn — if, we are as good as "pure" unconscious entities before birth, during sleep, and, at the end of our career? Is not death, according to the teachings of Science, followed by the same state of unconsciousness as the one before birth? Does not life when it quits our body become as

impersonal as it was before it animated the foetus? Life, after all, — the greatest problem within the ken of human conception is a mystery that the greatest of your men of Science will never solve. In order to be correctly comprehended, it has to be studied in the entire series of its manifestations, otherwise it can never be, not only fathomed, but even comprehended in its easiest form — life, as a state of being on this earth. It can never be grasped so long as it is studied separately and apart from universal life. To solve the great problem one has to become an occultist; to analyze and experience with it personally, in all its phases, as life on earth, life beyond the limit of physical death, mineral, vegetable, animal and spiritual life; life in conjunction with concrete matter as well as life present in the imponderable atom. Let them try and examine, or analyze life apart from organism, and what remains of it? Simply a mode of motion; which, unless our doctrine of the all-Pervading, infinite, omnipresent Life is accepted — though it be accepted on no better terms than a hypothesis only a little more reasonable than their scientific hypotheses which are all absurd — has to remain unsolved.

Shall they object? Well, we will answer them by using their own weapons. We will say that it is, and will remain for ever demonstrated that since motion is all-pervading and absolute rest inconceivable, that under whatever form or mask motion may appear, whether as light, heat, magnetism, chemical affinity or electricity — all these must be but phases of One and the same universal omnipotent Force, a Proteus they bow to, as the Great "Unknown" — (See Herbert Spencer) and we, simply call the "One Life" the "One Law" and the "One Element." The greatest, the most scientific minds on earth, have been keenly pressing forward toward a solution of the mystery, leaving no bye-path unexplored, no thread loose or weak in this darkest of labyrinths for them, and all had to come to the same conclusion — that of the Occultists when given only partially — namely, that life in its concrete manifestations is the legitimate result and consequence of chemical affinity; as to life in its abstract sense, life pure and simple — well, they know no more of it to-day, than they knew in the incipient stage of their Royal Society. They only know that organisms in certain solutions previously free from life will spring up spontaneously (Pasteur and his biblical piety notwithstanding) — owing to certain chemical compositions of such substances. If, as I hope, in a few years, I am entirely my own master — I may have the pleasure of demonstrating to you on your own writing table that life as life is not only transformable into other aspects or phases of the all-pervading Force, but that, it can be actually infused into an artificial man. Frankenstein is a myth only so far as he is the hero of a mystic tale; in nature — he is a possibility; and the physicists and physicians of the last sub-race of the sixth Race will inoculate life and revive corpses, as they now inoculate small-pox, and often less comely diseases. Spirit, life and matter, are not natural principles existing independently of each other, but the effects of combinations produced by eternal motion in Space; and they better learn it.

 

(7) Most undoubtedly I am so permitted. But then comes the most important point: how far satisfactory will my answers appear — even to you? That not every new law brought to light is regarded as adding a link to the chain of human knowledge is shown by the ill-grace with which every fact unwelcome for some reasons to science, is received by its professors. Nevertheless, whenever I can answer you — I will try to do so, only hoping that you will not send it as a contribution from my pen to the Journal of Science.

 

(8) Most assuredly they have. Rain can be brought on in a small area of space — artificially and without any claim to miracle or superhuman powers, though its secret is no property of mine that I should divulge it. I am now trying to obtain permission to do so. We know of no phenomenon in nature entirely unconnected with either magnetism or electricity — since, where there are motion, heat, friction, light, there magnetism and its alter ego (according to our humble opinion) — electricity will always appear, as either cause or effect — or rather both if we but fathom the manifestation to its origin. All the phenomena of earth currents, terrestrial magnetism and atmospheric electricity, are due to the fact that the earth is an electrified conductor, whose potential is ever changing owing to its rotation and its annual orbital motion, the successive cooling and heating of the air, the formation of clouds and rain, storms and winds, etc. This you may perhaps, find in some text book. But then Science would be unwilling to admit that all these changes are due to akasic magnetism incessantly generating electric currents which tend to restore the disturbed equilibrium. By directing the most powerful of electric batteries, — human frame electrified by a certain process, you can stop rain on some given point by making "a hole in the rain cloud," as the occultists term it. By using other strongly magnetized implements within, so to say, an insulated area — rain can be produced artificially. I regret my inability to explain to you the process more clearly. You know the effects produced by trees and plants on rain clouds; and how their strong magnetic nature attracts and even feeds those clouds over the tops of the trees. Science explains it otherwise, maybe. Well, I cannot help it, for such is our knowledge and the fruits of milleniums of observations and experience. Were the present to fall into the hands of Hume, he would be sure to remark that I am vindicating the charge publicly brought by him against us: "Whenever unable to answer your arguments (?) they (we) calmly reply that their (our) rules do not admit of this or that."

— Charge notwithstanding, I am compelled to answer that since the secret is not mine I cannot make of it a marketable commodity. Let some physicists calculate the amount of heat required to vaporize a certain quantity of water. Then, let them compute the quantity of rain needed to cover an area — say, of one square mile to a depth of one inch. For this amount of vaporization they will require, of course, an amount of heat that would be equal to at least five million tons of coal. Now the amount of energy of heat that would be equal to at least five million tons of coal. Now the amount of energy of which this consumption of heat would be the equivalent corresponds (as any mathematician could tell you) — to that which would be required to raise a weight of upwards of ten million tons, one mile high. How can one man generate such amount of heat and energy? Preposterous, absurd! — we are all lunatics, and you who listen to us will be placed in the same category if you ever venture to repeat this proposition. Yet I say, that one man alone can do it, and very easily if he is but acquainted with a certain "physico-spiritual" lever in himself, far more powerful than that of Archimedes. Even simple muscular contraction is always accompanied with electric and magnetic phenomena, and there is the strongest connection between the magnetism of the earth, the changes of weather and man, who is the best barometer living, if he but knew to decipher it properly; again, the state of the sky can always be ascertained by the variations shown by magnetic instruments. It is now several years that I had an opportunity of reading the deductions of science upon this subject; therefore, unless I go to the trouble of catching up what I may have remained ignorant of, I do not know the latest conclusions of Science. But with us, it is an established fact that it is the earth's magnetism that produces wind, storms, and rain. What science seems to know of it, is but secondary symptoms always induced by that magnetism and she may very soon find out her present errors. Earth's magnetic attraction of meteoric dust, and the direct influence of the latter upon the sudden changes of temperature especially in the matter of heat and cold, is not a settled question to the present day, I believe. (2) It was doubted whether the fact of our earth passing through a region of space in which there are more or less of meteoric masses has any bearing upon the height of our atmosphere being increased or decreased, or even upon the state of weather. But we think we could easily prove it; and since they accept the fact that the relative distribution and proportion of land and water on our globe may be due to the great accumulation upon it of meteoric dust; snow — especially in our northern regions — being full of meteoric iron and magnetic particles; and deposits of the latter being found even at the bottom of seas and oceans, I wonder how Science has not hitherto understood that every atmospheric change and disturbance was due to the combined magnetism of the two great masses between which our atmosphere is compressed! I call this meteoric dust a "mass" for it is really one. High above our earth's surface the air is impregnated and space filled with magnetic, or meteoric dust, which does not even belong to our solar system. Science having luckily discovered, that, as our earth with all the other planets is carried along through space, it receives a greater proportion of that dust matter on its northern than on its southern hemisphere, knows that to this are due the preponderating number of the continents in the former hemisphere, and the greater abundance of snow and moisture. Millions of such meteors and even of the finest particles reach us yearly and daily and all our temple knives are made of this "heavenly" iron, which reaches us without having undergone any change — the magnetism of the earth keeping them in cohesion. Gaseous matter is continually added to our atmosphere from the never ceasing fall of meteoric strongly magnetic matter, and yet it seems with them still an open question whether magnetic conditions have anything to do with the precipitation of rain or not! I do not know of any "set of motions established by pressures, expansions, etc., due in the first instance to solar energy." Science makes too much and too little at the same time of "solar energy" and even of the Sun itself; and the Sun has nothing to do whatever with rain and very little with heat. I was under the impression that science was aware that the glacial periods as well as those periods when temperature is "like that of the carboniferous age" — are due to the decrease and increase or rather to the expansion of our atmosphere, which expansion is itself due to the same meteoric presence? At any rate, we all know, that the heat that the earth receives by radiation from the sun is at the utmost one third if not less of the amount received by her directly from the meteors.

 

(9) Call it a chromosphere or atmosphere, it can be called neither; for it is simply the magnetic and ever present aura of the sun, seen by astronomers only for a brief few moments during the eclipse and by some of our chelas — whenever they like — of course while in a certain induced state. A counterpart of what the astronomers call the red flames in the "corona" may be seen in Reichenbach's crystals or in any other strongly

magnetic body. The head of a man — in a strong ecstatic condition, when all the electricity of his system is centred around the brain, will represent — especially in darkness — a perfect simile of the Sun during such periods. The first artist who drew the aureoles about the heads of his Gods and Saints, was not inspired, but represented it on the authority of temple pictures and traditions of the sanctuary and the chambers of initiation where such phenomena took place. The closer to the head or to the aura-emitting body — the stronger and the more effulgent the emanation (due to hydrogen science tells us, in the case of the flames); hence — the irregular red flames around the Sun or the "inner corona." The fact that these are not always present in equal quantity shows only the constant fluctuation of the magnetic matter and its energy, upon which also depend the variety and number of spots. During periods of magnetic inertia the spots disappear, or rather remain invisible. The further the emanation shoots out the more it loses in intensity, until gradually subsiding it fades out; hence — the "outer corona," its rayed shape being due entirely to the latter phenomenon whose effulgence proceeds from the magnetic nature of the matter and the electric energy and not at all from intensely hot particles as asserted by some astronomers. All this is terribly unscientific, nevertheless a fact, to which, I may add another by reminding you that the Sun we see is not at all the central planet of our little Universe, but only its veil or it's reflection. Science has tremendous odds against studying that planet which luckily for us we have not: foremost of all — the constant tremours of our atmosphere which prevent them from judging correctly the little they do see. This impediment was never in the way of the ancient Chaldee and Egyptian astronomers; nor is it an obstacle to us, for we have means of arresting, or counteracting such tremours — acquainted as we are with all the akasic conditions. No more than the rain secret, would this secret — supposing we do divulge it — be of any practical use to your men of Science unless they become Occultists and sacrifice long years to the acquirement of powers. Only fancy a Huxley or a Tyndall studying Yog-vidya! hence the many mistakes into which they fall and the conflicting hypotheses of your best authorities. For instance: the Sun is full of iron vapours — a fact that was demonstrated by the spectroscope showing that the light of the corona consisted largely of a line in the green part of the spectrum, very nearly coinciding with an iron line. Yet Professors Young and Lockyer rejected that, under the witty pretext, if I remember, that, if the corona were composed of minute particles like a dust cloud (and it is this that we call "magnetic matter") these particles would (1) fall upon the sun's body, (2) comets were known to pass through this vapour without any visible effect on them; (3) Professor Young's spectroscope showed that the coronal line was not identical with the iron one, etc. Why they should call those objections "scientific" is more than we can tell.

(1) The reason why the particles — since they call them so — do not fall upon the sun's body, is self-evident. There are forces co-existent with gravitation of which they know nothing; besides that other fact that there is no gravitation properly speaking; only attraction and repulsion. (2) How could comets be affected by the said passage since their "passing through" is simply an optical illusion; they could not pass within the area of attraction without being immediately annihilated by that force, of which no vril can give an adequate idea, since there can be nothing on earth that could be compared with it. Passing as the comets do through a "reflection" no wonder that the said vapour has "no visible effect on these light bodies." (3) The coronal line may not seem identical through the best "grating spectroscope," nevertheless, the corona contains iron as well as other vapours. To tell you of what it does consist is idle, since I am unable to translate the words we use for it, and that no such matter exists (not in our planetary system, at any rate) — but in the sun. The fact is, that what you call the Sun is simply the reflection of the huge "store-house" of our System wherein ALL its forces are generated and preserved; the Sun being the heart and brain of our pigmy Universe, we might compare its faculae — those millions of small, intensely brilliant bodies of which the Sun's surface away from the spots is made up — with the blood corpuscles of that luminary — though some of them as correctly conjectured by science are as large as Europe. Those blood corpuscles are the electric and magnetic matter in its sixth and seventh state. What are those long white filaments twisted like so many ropes, of which the penumbra of the Sun is made up? What — the central part that is seen like a huge flame ending in fiery spires, and the transparent clouds, or rather vapours formed of delicate threads of silvery light, that hangs over those flames — what — but magneto-electric aura — the phlogiston of the Sun? Science may go on speculating for ever, yet so long as she does not renounce two or three of her cardinal errors she will find herself groping for ever in the dark. Some of her greatest misconceptions are found in her limited notions on the law of gravitation; her denial that matter may be imponderable; her newly invented term "force" and the absurd and tacitly accepted idea, that force is capable of existing per se, or of acting any more than life, outside, independent of, or in any other wise than through matter: in other words that force is anything but matter in one of her highest states, — the last three on the ascending scale being denied because only science knows nothing of them; and her utter ignorance of the universal Proteus, its functions and importance in the economy of nature — magnetism and electricity. Tell Science that even in those days of the decline of the Roman Empire, when the tatooed Britisher used to offer to the Emperor Claudius his nazzur of "electron" in the shape of a string of amber beads that even then, there were yet men remaining aloof from the immoral masses, who knew more of electricity and magnetism than they, the men of science, do now, and science will laugh at you as bitterly as she now does over your kind dedication to me. Verily, when your astronomers speaking of sun-matter, term those lights and flames as "clouds of vapour" and "gases unknown to science" (rather!) — chased by mighty whirlwinds and cyclones — whereas we know it to be simply magnetic matter in its usual state of activity — we feel inclined to smile at the expressions. Can one imagine the "Sun's fires fed with purely mineral matter" — with meteorites highly charged with hydrogen giving the "Sun a far-reaching atmosphere of ignited gas"? We know that the invisible Sun is composed of that which has neither name, nor can it be compared to anything known by your science — on earth; and that its "reflection" contains still less of anything like "gases," mineral matter, or fire, though even we when treating of it in your civilized tongue are compelled to use such expressions as "vapour" and "magnetic matter." To close the subject, the coronal changes have no effect upon the earth's climate, though spots have — and Professor N. Lockyer is mostly wrong in his deductions. The Sun is neither a solid nor a liquid, nor yet a gaseous globe; but a gigantic ball of electro­magnetic Forces, the store-house of universal life and motion, from which the latter pulsate in all directions, feeding the smallest atom as the greatest genius with the same material unto the end of the Maha Yug.

 

(10) I believe not. The stars are distant from us, at least 500,000 times as far as the Sun and some as many times more. The strong accumulation of meteoric matter and the atmospheric tremours are always in the way. If your astronomers could climb on the height of that meteoric dust, with their telescopes and havanas they might trust more than they can now in their photometers. How can they? Neither the real degree of intensity of that light can be known on earth — hence no trustworthy basis for calculating magnitudes and distances can be had, — nor have they hitherto made sure in a single instance (except in the matter of one star in Cassiopeia) which stars shine by reflected and which by their own light. The working of the best double star photometers is deceptive. Of this I have made sure, so far back as in the spring of 1878 while watching the observations made through a Pickering photometer. The discrepancy in the observations upon a star (near Gamma Ceti) amounted at times to half a magnitude. No planets but one have hitherto been discovered outside of the solar system, with all their photometers, while we know with the sole help of our spiritual naked eye a number of them; every completely matured Sun-star having like in our own system several companion planets in fact. The famous "polarization of light" test is as about trustworthy as all others. Of course, the mere fact of their starting from a false premise cannot vitiate either their conclusions or astronomical prophecies, since both are mathematically correct in their mutual relations, and that it answers the given object. The Chaldees nor yet our old Rishis had either your telescopes or photometers; and yet their astronomical predictions were faultless, the mistakes, very slight ones in truth — fathered upon them by their modern rivals — proceeding from the mistakes of the latter.

You must not complain of my too long answers to your very short questions, since I answer you for your instruction as a student of occultism, my "lay" chela, and not at all with a view of answering the Journal of Science. I am no man of science with regard to, or in connection with modern leraning. My knowledge of your Western Sciences is very limited in fact; and you will please bear in mind that all my answers are based upon, and derived from, our Eastern occult doctrines regardless of their agreement or disagreement with those of exact science. Hence, I say: — "The sun's surface emits per square mile, as much light (in proportion) as can be emitted from any body." But what can you mean in this case by "light"? The latter is not an independent principle; and, I rejoiced at the introduction, with a view to facilitate means of observation — of the "diffraction spectrum;" since by abolishing all these imaginary independent existences, such as — heat, actinism, light, etc., it rendered to Occult Science the greatest service, by vindicating in the eyes of her modern sister our very ancient theory that every phenomenon being but the effect of the diversified motions of what we call Akasha (not your ether) there was in fact, but one element, the causative Principle of all. But since your question is asked with a view to settling a disputed point in modern science I will try to answer it in the clearest way I can. I say then, no, and will give you my reasons why. They cannot know it, for the simple reason that heretofore they have in reality found no sure means of measuring the velocity of light. The experiments made by Fizeau and Cornu known as the two best investigators of light in the world of science, notwithstanding the general satisfaction at the results obtained, are not a trustworthy data neither in respect to the velocity with which sunlight travels nor to its quantity. The methods adopted by both these Frenchmen are yielding correct results (at any rate approximately correct, since there is a variation of 227 miles per second between the result of the observations of both experimenters albeit made with the same apparatus) — only as regards the velocity of light between our earth and the upper regions of its atmosphere. Their toothed wheel, revolving at a known velocity records, of course, the strong ray of light which passes through one of the niches of the wheel, and then has its point of light obscured whenever a tooth passes — accurately enough. The instrument is very ingenious and can hardly fail to give splendid results on a journey of a few thousand metres there and back; there being between the Paris observatory and its fortifications no atmosphere, no meteoric masses to impede the ray's progress; and that ray finding quite a different quality of a medium to travel upon than the ether of Space, the ether between the Sun and the meteoric continent above our heads, the velocity of light will of course show some 185,000 and odd miles per second, and your physicists shout "Eureka"! Nor do any of the other devices contrived by science to measure that velocity since 1887 answer any better. All they can say is that their calculations are so far correct. Could they measure light above our atmosphere they would soon find that they were wrong.

 

(11) It is — so far; but is fast changing. Your science has a theory, I believe, that if the earth were suddenly placed in extremely cold regions — for instance where it would exchange places with Jupiter — all our seas and rivers would be suddenly transformed into solid mountains; the air, — or rather a portion of the aeriform substances which compose it — would be metamorphosed from their state of invisible fluid owing to the absence of heat into liquids (which now exist on Jupiter, but of which men have no idea on earth). Realize, or try to imagine the — reverse condition, and it will be that of Jupiter at the present moment.

 

The whole of our system is imperceptibly shifting its position in space. The relative distance between planets remaining ever the same, and being in no wise affected by the displacement of the whole system; and the distance between the latter and the stars and other suns being so incommensurable as to produce but little if any perceptible change for centuries and milleniums to come; — no astronomer will perceive it telescopically, until Jupiter and some other planets, whose little luminous points hide now from our sight millions upon millions of stars (all but some 5000 or 6000) — will suddenly let us have a peep at a few of the Raja-Suns they are now hiding. There is such a king-star right behind Jupiter, that no mortal physical eye has ever seen during this, our Round. Could it be so perceived it would appear, through the best telescope with a power of multiplying its diameter ten thousand times, — still a small dimensionless point, thrown into the shadow by the brightness of any planet; nevertheless — this world is thousands of times larger than Jupiter. The violent disturbance of its atmosphere and even its red spot that so intrigues science lately, are due — (1) to that shifting and (2) to the influence of that Raja-Star. In its present position in space imperceptibly small though it be — the metallic substances of which it is mainly composed are expanding and gradually transforming themselves into aeriform fluids — the state of our own earth and its six sister globes before the first Round — and becoming part of its atmosphere. Draw your inferences and deductions from this, my dear "lay" chela, but beware lest in doing so you sacrifice your humble instructor and the occult doctrine itself, on the altar of your wrathful Goddess — modern science.

 

(12) I am afraid not much, since our Sun is but a reflection. The only great truth uttered by Siemens is that inter-stellar space is filled with highly attenuated matter, such as may be put in air vacuum tubes, and which stretches from planet to planet and from star to star. But this truth has no bearing upon his main facts. The sun gives all and takes back nothing from its system. The sun gathers nothing "at the poles" — which are always free even from the famous "red flames" at all times, not only during the eclipses. How is it that with their powerful telescopes they have failed to perceive any such "gathering" since their glasses show them even the "superlatively fleecy clouds" on the photosphere? Nothing can reach the sun from without the boundaries of its own system in the shape of such gross matter as "attenuated gases." Every bit of matter in all its seven states is necessary to the vitality of the various and numberless systems — worlds in formation, suns awakening anew to life, etc., and they have none to spare even for their best neighbours and next of kin. They are mothers, not stepmothers, and would not take away one crumb from the nutrition of their children. The latest theory of radiant energy which shows that there is no such thing in nature, properly speaking, as chemical light, or heat ray is the only approximately correct one. For indeed, there is but one thing — radiant energy which is inexhaustible and knows neither increase nor decrease and will go on with its self-generating work to the end of the Solar manvantara. The absorption of Solar Forces by the earth is tremendous; yet it is, or may be demonstrated that the latter receives hardly 25 per cent. of the chemical power of its rays, for these are despoiled of 75 per cent. during their vertical passage through the atmosphere at the moment they reach the outer boundary "of the aerial ocean." And even those rays lose about 20 per cent. in illuminating and caloric power — we are told. What with such a waste must then be the recuperative power of our Father-Mother Sun? Yes; call it "Radiant Energy" if you will: we call it Life — all-pervading, omnipresent life, ever at work in its great laboratory — the SUN.

(13) None can ever be given by your men of Science, whose "bumptiousness" makes them declare that only to those for whom the word magnetism is a mysterious agent the supposition that the Sun is a huge magnet can account for the production by that body of light, heat and the causes of magnetic variations as perceived on our earth. They are determined to ignore and thus reject the theory suggested to them by Jenkins of the

 

R.A.S. of the existence of strong magnetic poles above the surface of the earth. But the theory, is the correct one nevertheless, and one of these poles revolves around the north pole in a periodical cycle of several hundred years. Halley and Handsteen — besides Jenkins — were the only scientific men that ever suspected it. Your question is again answered by reminding you of another exploded supposition. Jenkins did his best some three years ago to prove that it is the north end of the compass needle that is the true north pole, and not the reverse as the current scientific theory maintains. He was informed that the locality in Boothia where Sir James Ross located the earth's north magnetic pole, was purely imaginary: it is not there. If he (and we) are wrong, then the magnetic theory that like poles repel and unlike poles attract, must also be declared a fallacy; since if the north end of the dipping needle is a south pole then its pointing to the ground in Boothia — as you call it — must be due to attraction? And if there is anything there to attract it, why is it that the needle in London is attracted neither to the ground in Boothia nor to the earth's centre? As very correctly argued, if the north pole of the needle pointed almost perpendicularly to the ground in Boothia, it is simply because it was repelled by the true north magnetic pole when Sir J. Ross was there about half a century ago.

No; our "Lordships" have nothing to do with the inertia of the needle. It is due to the presence of certain metals in fusion in that locality. Increase of temperature diminishes magnetic attraction, and a sufficiently high temperature destroys it often altogether. The temperature I am speaking of is, in the present case rather an aura, an emanation than anything science knows of. Of course, this explanation will never hold water with the present knowledge of science. But we can wait and see. Study magnetism with the help of occult doctrines, and then that which now will appear incomprehensible, absurd in the light of physical science, will become all clear.

 

(14) They must be. Not all of the Intra-Mercurial planets, nor yet those in the orbit of Neptune are yet discovered, though they are strongly suspected. We know that such exist and where they exist; and that there are innumerable planets "burnt out" they say, — in obscuration we say; — planets in formation and not yet luminous, etc. But then "we know" is of little use to science, when the Spiritualists will not admit our knowledge. Edison's tasimeter adjusted to its utmost degree of sensitiveness and attached to a large telescope may be of great use when perfected. When so attached the "tasimeter" will afford the possibility not only to measure the heat of the remotest of visible stars, but to detect by their invisible radiations stars that are unseen and otherwise undetectable, hence planets also. The discoverer, an F.T.S., a good deal protected by M. thinks that if, at any point in a blank space of heavens — a space that appears blank even through a telescope of the highest power — the tasimeter indicates an accesion of temperature and does so invariably, this will be a regular proof that the instrument is in range with the stellar body either non-luminous or so distant as to be beyond the reach of telescopic vision. His tasimeter, he says, "is affected by a wider range of etheric undulations than the eye can take cognizance of." Science will hear sounds from certain planets before she sees them. This is a prophecy. Unfortunately I am not a Planet, — not even a "planetary." Otherwise I would advise you to get a tasimeter from him and thus avoid me the trouble of writing to you. I would manage then to find myself "in range" with you.

 

(15) No, good friend; I am not as indiscreet as all that, I left you simply to your own reminiscences. Every mortal creature, even the less favoured by Fortune, has such moments of relative happiness at some time of his life. Why shouldn't you?  

Yes, it was an X quantity I referred to.

 

(16) It is a widely spread belief among all the Hindus that a person's future pre-natal state and birth are moulded by the last desire he may have at the time of death. But this last desire, they say, necessarily hinges on to the shape which the person may have given to his desires, passions, etc., during his past life. It is for this very reason, viz. — that our last desire may not be unfavourable to our future progress — that we have to watch our actions and control our passions and desires throughout our whole earthly career.

 

(17) It cannot be otherwise. The experience of dying men — by drowning and other accidents — brought back to life, has corroborated our doctrine in almost every case. Such thoughts are involuntary and we have no more control over them than we would over the eye's retina to prevent it perceiving that colour which affects it most. At the last moment, the whole life is reflected in our memory and emerges from all the forgotten nooks and corners picture after picture, one event after the other. The dying brain dislodges memory with a strong supreme impulse, and memory restores faithfully every impression entrusted to it during the period of the brain's activity. That impression and thought which was the strongest naturally becomes the most vivid and survives so to say all the rest which now vanish and disappear for ever, to reappear but in Deva Chan. (3) No man dies insane or unconscious — as some physiologists assert. Even a madman, or one in a fit of delirium, tremens will have his instant of perfect lucidity at the moment of death, though unable to say so to those present. The man may often appear dead. Yet from the last pulsation, from and between the last throbbing of his heart and the moment when the last spark of animal heat leaves the body — the brain thinks and the Ego lives over in those few brief seconds his whole life over again. Speak in whispers, ye, who assist at a death-bed and find yourselves in the solemn presence of Death. Especially have you to keep quiet just after Death has laid her clammy hand upon the body. Speak in whispers, I say, lest you disturb the quiet ripple of thought, and hinder the busy work of the Past casting on its reflection upon the Veil of the Future.

 

(18) Yes; the "full" remembrance of our lives (collective lives) will return back at the end of all the seven Rounds, at the threshold of the long, long Nirvana that awaits us after we leave Globe Z. At the end of isolated Rounds, we remember but the sum total of our last impressions, those we had selected, or that have rather forced themselves upon us and followed us in Deva Chan. Those are all "probationary" lives with large indulgences and new trials afforded us with every new life. But at the close of the minor cycle, after the completion of all the seven Rounds, there awaits us no other mercy but the cup of good deeds, of merit, outweighing that of evil deeds and demerit in the scales of Retributive Justice. Bad, irretrievably bad must be that Ego that yields no mite from its fifth Principle, and has to be annihilated, to disappear in the Eighth Sphere. A mite, as I say, collected from the Personal Ego suffices to save him from the dreary Fate. Not so after the completion of the great cycle: either a long Nirvana of Bliss (unconscious though it be in the, and according to, your crude conceptions); after which — life as a Dhyan Chohan for a whole Manvantara, or else "Avitchi Nirvana" and a Manvantara of misery and Horror as a —— you must not hear the word nor I — pronounce or write it. But "those" have nought to do with the mortals who pass through the seven spheres. The collective Karma of a future Planetary is as lovely as the collective Karma of a —— is terrible. Enough. I have said too much already.

 

(19) Verily so. Until the struggle between the higher and middle duad begins — (with the exception of suicides who are not dead but have only killed their physical triad, and whose Elemental parasites, therefore, are not naturally separated from the Ego as in real death) — until that struggle, I say, has not begun and ended, no shell can realize its position. When the sixth and seventh principles are gone, carrying off with them the finer, spiritual portions of that, which once was the personal consciousness of the fifth, then only does the shell gradually develop a kind of hazy consciousness of its own from what remains in the shadow of personality. No contradiction here, my dear friend, — only haziness in your own perceptions.

 

(20) All that which pertains to the materio-psychological attributes and sensations of the five lower skandhas; all that which will be thrown off as a refuse by the newly born Ego in the Deva Chan, as unworthy of, and not sufficiently related to the purely spiritual perceptions, emotions and feelings of the sixth, strengthened, and so to say, cemented by a portion of the fifth, that portion which is necessary in the devachan for the retention of a divine spiritualized notion of the "I" in the Monad — which would otherwise, have no consciousness in relation to object and subject at all — all this "becomes extinct for ever": namely at the moment of physical death, to return once more, marshalling before the eye of the new Ego at the threshold of Deva Chan and to be rejected by It. It will return for the third time fully at the end of the minor cycle, after the completion of the seven Rounds when the sum total of collective existences is weighed — "merit" — in one cup, "demerit" in the other cup of the scales. But in that individual, in the Ego — "good, bad, or indifferent" in the isolated personality, — consciousness leaves as suddenly as "the flame leaves the wick." Blow out your candle, good friend. The flame has left that candle "for ever"; but are the particles that moved, their motion producing the objective flame annihilated or dispersed for all that? Never. Relight the candle and the same particles drawn by mutual affinity will return to the wick. Place a long row of candles on your table. Light one and blow it out; then light the other and do the same; a third and fourth, and so on. The same matter, the same gaseous particles — representing in our case the Karma of the personality — will be called forth by the conditions given them by your match, to produce a new luminosity; but can we say that candle No. 1 has not had its flame extinct for ever? Not even in the case of the "failures of nature," of the immediate reincarnation of children and congenital idiots, etc., that so provoked the wrath of C.C.M., can we call them the identical ex-personalities; though the whole of the same life-principle and identically the same MANAS (fifth principle) re-enters a new body and may be truly called a "reincarnation of the personality" — whereas, in the rebirth of the Egos from devachans and avitchis into Karmic life it is only the spiritual attributes of the Monad and its Buddhi that are reborn. All we can say of the reincarnated "failures" is, that they are the reincarnated Manas, the fifth principle of Mr. Smith or Miss Grey, but not certainly that these are the reincarnations of Mr. S. and Miss G. Therefore, the explanation, clear and concise (though perhaps less literary than you might make it) given to C.C.M. in the Theosophist in answer to his spiteful hit in Light, is not only correct but candid also; and both yourself and C.C.M. were unjust to Upasika and even to myself who told her what to write; since even you mistook my wail and lament at the confused and tortured explanations in Isis (for its incompleteness no one but we, her inspirers are responsible) and my complaint of having had to exercise all my "ingenuity" to make the thing plain, for an avowal of ingeniousness in the sense of cunning and craft, whereas ingenuousness — a sincere desire (though very difficult of realization) to mend and clear up the misconception — was meant by me. I do not know of anything since the very beginning of our correspondence that displeased the Chohan so much as that. But we must not return to the subject again.

But what is then "the nature of the remembrance and self-consciousness of the shell?" you ask. As I said in your note — no better than a reflected or borrowed light. "Memory" is one thing, and "perceptive faculties" quite another. A madman may remember very clearly some portions of his past life; yet he is unable to perceive anything in its true light for the higher portion of his Manas and his Buddhi are paralysed in him, have left him. Could an animal — a dog, for instance — speak, he would prove you that his memory in direct relation to his canine personality, is as fresh as yours; nevertheless his memory and instinct cannot be called "perceptive faculties." A dog remembers that his master thrashed him when the latter gets hold of his stick — at all other times he has no remembrance of it. Thus with a shell; once in the aura of a medium, all he perceives through the borrowed organs of the medium and of those in magnetic sympathy with the latter, he will perceive very clearly — but not further than what the shell can find in the perceptive faculties and memories of circle and medium — hence often the rational and at times highly intelligent answers; hence also a complete oblivion of things known to all but that medium and circle. The shell of a highly intelligent, learned, but utterly unspiritual man who died natural death, will last longer and the shadow of his own memory helping — that shadow which is the refuse of the sixth principle left in the fifth — he may deliver discourses through trance speakers and repeat parrot-like that which he knew of and thought much over it, during his life-time. But find me one single instance in the annals of Spiritualism where a returning shell of a Faraday or a Brewster (for even they were made to fall into the trap of mediumistic attraction) said one word more than it knew during its life-time. Where is that scientific shell, that ever gave evidence of that, which is claimed on behalf of the "disembodied Spirit" — namely, that a free Soul, the Spirit disenthralled from its body's fetters perceives and sees that which is concealed from living mortal eyes? Challenge the Spiritualists fearlessly, I say! Defy the best, the most reliable of mediums — Stainton Moses for one — to give you through that high disembodied shell, that he mistakes for the "Imperator" of the early days of his mediumship, to tell you what you will have hidden in your box, if S.M. does not know it; or to repeat to you a line from a Sanskrit manuscript unknown to his medium, or anything of that kind. Prohpudor! Spirits they call them? Spirits with personal remembrances? As well call personal remembrances the sentences screeched out by a parrot. Why don't you ask C.C.M. to test +? Why not settle his and your mind at rest by suggesting to him to ask a friend or an acquaintance unknown to S.M. — to select an object the nature of which will remain in its turn unknown to C.C.M., and then see whether + will be able to name that object — something possible even to a good clairvoyant. Let the "Spirit" of Zollner — now that he is in the "fourth dimension of space," and has put up an appearance already with several mediums — tell them the last word of his discovery, complete his astro-physical philosophy. No; Zollner when lecturing through an intelligent medium, surrounded with persons who read his works, are interested in them — will repeat on various tones that which is known to others (not even that which he alone knew, most probably), the credulous, ignorant public confounding the post-hoc with the propter-hoc and firmly convinced of the Spirit's identity. Indeed, it will be worth your while to stimulate investigation in this direction. Yes; personal consciousness does leave everyone at death; and when even the centre of memory is re-established in the shell, it will remember and speak out its recollections but through the brain of some living human being. Hence —  

(21) — A more or less complete, still dim recollection of its personality, and of its purely physical life. As in the cases of complete insanity the final severance of the two higher duads (7th 6th and 5th 4th) at the moment of the former going into gestation, digs an impassable gulf between the two. It is not even a portion of the fifth that is carried away — least of all 2 1/2 principles as Mr. Hume crudely puts it in his Fragments that go into Deva Chan leaving but l 1/2 principles behind. The Manas shorn of its finest attributes, becomes like a flower from which all the aroma has suddenly departed, a rose crushed, and having been made to yield all its oil for the attar manufacture purposes; what is left behind is but the smell of decaying grass, earth and rottenness.

 

(a) Question the second is sufficiently answered, I believe. (Your second para.) The Spiritual Ego goes on evolving personalities, in which "the sense of identity" is very complete while living. After their separation from the physical Ego, that sense returns very dim, and belongs wholly to the recollections of the physical man. The shell may be a perfect Sinnett when wholly engrossed in a game of cards at his club, and when either losing or winning a large sum of money — or a Babu Smut Murky Dass trying to cheat his principal out of a sum of rupees. In both cases — ex-editor and Babu will — as shells, remind anyone who will have the privilege of enjoying an hour's chat with the illustrious dis-embodied angels, more of the inmates of a lunatic asylum made to play parts in private theatricals as means of hygienic recreation, than of the Caesars and Hamlets they would represent. The slightest shock will throw them off the track and send them off raving.

 

(b) An error. A. P. Sinnett is not "an absolutely new invention." He is the child and creation of his antecedent personal self; the Karmic progeny for all he knows, of Nonius Asprena, Consul of the Emperor Domitian — (94 A.D.) together with Arricinius Clementus, and friend of the Flamen Dealis of that day (the high priest of Jupiter and chief of the Flamenes) or of that Flamens himself — which would account for A.P. Sinnett's suddenly developed love for mysticism. A.P.S. — the friend and brother of K.H. will go to Deva Chan; and A.P.S., the Editor and the lawn-tennis man; the Don Juan, in a mild way, in the palmy days of "Saints, Sinners and Sceneries," identifying himself by mentioning a usually covered mole or scar, — will, perhaps, be abusing the Babus through a medium to some old friend in California or London.

 

(c) It will find "enough decent material" and to spare. A few years of Theosophy will furnish it.

 (d) Perfectly correctly defined.  

(e) As much as there is of the personality — in A.P.S.'s reflection in the looking glass — of the real, living

 

A.P.S.

 

(f) The Spiritual Ego will not think of the A.P.S. the shell, any more than it will think of the last suit of clothes it wore; nor will it be conscious that the individuality is gone, since that only individuality and Spiritual personality it will then behold in itself alone. Nosce te ipsum is a direct command of the oracle to the Spiritual monad in Deva Chan; and the "heresy of Individuality" is a doctrine propounded by Tathagatha with an eye to the Shell. The latter whose bumptiousness is as proverbial as that of the medium when reminded that it is A.P.S. — will echo out: "Of course, no doubt, hand me over some preserved peaches I devoured with such an appetite for breakfast, and a glass of claret!" — and who after this who knew A.P.S. at Allahabad, will dare doubt his identity? And, when left alone for one short instant by some disturbance in the circle, or the thought of the medium wandering for a moment to some other person — that shell will begin to hesitate in its thoughts whether it is A.P.S., S. Wheeler, or Ratigan; and end by assuring itself it is Julius Caesar. (g) — and by finally "remaining asleep."

 

(h) No; it is not conscious of this loss of cohesion. Besides, such a feeling in a shell being quite useless for nature's purposes, it could hardly realize something that could be never even dreamed by a medium or its affinities. It is dimly conscious of its own physical death — after a prolonged period of time though — that's all. The few exceptions to this rule — cases of half successful sorcerers, of very wicked persons passionately attached to Self — offer a real danger to the living. These very material shells, whose last dying thought was Self, — Self, — Self — and to live, to live! will often feel it instinctively. So do some suicides — though not all. What happens then is terrible for it becomes a case of post mortem licanthropy. The shell will cling so tenaciously to its semblance of life that it will seek refuge in a new organism in any beast — in a dog, a hyæna, a bird when no human organism is close at hand — rather than submit to annihilation.

(22) A question I have no right to answer.

 

(23) Mars and four other planets of which astronomy knows yet nothing. Neither A, B, nor Y, Z, are known; nor can they be seen through physical means however perfected.

 

(24) Most decidedly not. Not even a Dhyan Chohan of the lower orders could approach it without having its body consumed, or rather annihilated. Only the highest "Planetary" can scan it. (b) Not unless we call it the vertex of an angle. But it is the vertex of all the "chains" collectively. All of us dwellers of the chains — we will have to evolute, live and run the up and down scale in that highest and last of the septenaries chains (on the scale of perfection) before the Solar Pralaya snuffs out our little system.

 

(25 & 26) . . . "in which case it" — the "it" relates to the sixth and seventh principles, not to the fifth, for the manas will have to remain a shell in each case; only in the one in hand it will have no time to visit mediums: for it begins sinking down to the eighth sphere almost immediately. "Then and there" in the eternity may be a mighty long period. It means only that the monad having no Karmic body to guide its rebirth falls into non-being for a certain period and then reincarnates — certainly not earlier than a thousand or two thousand years. No, it is not an "exceptional case." Save a few exceptional cases in the case of the initiated such as our Teshu-Lamas and the Boddhisatwas and a few others, no monad gets ever reincarnated before its appointed cycle.

 

(27) "How does he toss into confusion." . . . If instead of doing to-day something you have to do you put it off till the next day — does not even this — invisibly and imperceptibly at first, yet as forcibly — throw into confusion many a thing, and in some cases even shuffle the destinies of millions of persons, for good, for evil, or simply in connection with a change, — may be unimportant in itself — still a change? And do you mean to say that such an unexpected, horrid murder has not influenced the destinies of millions?

 

(28) Here we are, again. Verily ever since I had the folly of touching upon this subject — i.e. of harnessing the cart before the horse — my nights are bereft of their hitherto innocent sleep! For Heaven's sake take into consideration the following facts and put them together, if you can. (1) The individual units of mankind remain 100 times longer in the transitory spheres of effects than on the globes; (2) The few men of the fifth Round do not beget children of the fifth but of your fourth Round. (3) That the "obscurations" are not Pralayas, and that they last in a proportion of 1 to 10, i.e., if a Ring or whatever we call it, the period during which the seven Root races have to develop and reach their last appearance upon a globe during that Round  lasts say 10 millions of years, (of course it lasts far longer) then the "obscuration" will last no longer than one million. When our globe having got rid of its last fourth Round men and a few, very few of the fifth, goes to sleep, during the period of its rest the fifth Round men will be resting in their devachans and Spiritual lokas  far longer at any rate than the fourth Round "angels" in theirs since they are far more perfect. A contradiction, and a "lapsus calami of M." — says Hume; because M. wrote something quite correct though he is no more infallible than I am and might have expressed himself, more than once, very carelessly.

 

"I want to make out how the next superior Round forms are evolved." My friend, try to understand that you are putting me questions pertaining to the highest initiations. That I can give you a general view, but that I dare not nor will I enter upon details — though I would if I could satisfy you. Do not you feel that it is one of the highest mysteries than which there is no higher one?

 

(a) "Dead" but to resurrect in greater glory. Is not what I say, plain?

 

(29) Of course not, since it is not destroyed, but remains crystallized, so to say — statu quo. At each Round there are less and less animals — the latter themselves evoluting into higher forms. During the first Round it is they that were the "kings of creation." During the seventh men will have become Gods and animals — intelligent beings. Draw your inferences. Beginning with the second Round, already evolution proceeds on quite a different plan. Everything is evolved and has but to proceed on its cyclic journey and get perfected. It is only the first Round that man becomes from a human being on Globe B. a mineral, a plant, an animal on Planet C. The method changes entirely from the second Round; but — I have learned prudence with you; and will say nothing before the time for saying it has come. And now, you had a volume; when will you digest it? Of how many contradictions will I have to be suspected before you understand the whole correctly?

Yours nevertheless, and very sincerely,

K. H.

Letter 24a Table of Contents

FOOTNOTES:

 The letter in answer to yours, I believe, where you question me about C.C.M., S.M. and Mrs. K. (return to text)

 Dr. Phipson in 1867 and Cowper Ranyard in 1879 both urged the theory but it was rejected then. (return to text)

 Good gracious! had I forgotten in my hurry to add the last five words, would not I have caught it as a charge of flat contradiction! (return to text)

 

Letter 24a

THE FAMOUS "CONTRADICTIONS"

[The numbers in brackets refer to K.H.'s replies, for which see Letter XXIVb. page 185 et seq. — Ed.]

Received Autumn 1882.

I hope you will give me great credit for obedience in having laboriously and against my inclination endeavoured to compile a case for the plaintiff in re the alleged contradictions. As I have said elsewhere these appear to me not much worth worrying about; though for the present they leave me cloudy in my ideas about Deva Chan and the victims of accident. It is because they do not fret me that I have never hitherto acted on your suggestion that I should make notes of them.

(1)

Hume has been inclined to trace contradictions in some letters referring to the evolution of man, but in conversation with him I have always contended that these are not contradictions at all, — merely due to a confusion about rounds and races — a matter of language. Then he has pretended to think that you have built up the philosophy as you have gone on, and got out of the difficulty by inventing a great many more races than were contemplated at first, which hypothesis I have always ridiculed as absurd.

(2)

I have not re-copied here the passages about victims of accident quoted in my letter of the 12th August and in apparent conflict with the corrections on the proof of my Letter on Theosophy. You have already said apropos to these quotations, on back of mine dated August 12th: —

(3)

I can easily understand we are accused of contradictions and inconsistencies aye even to writing one thing to­day and denying it to-morrow. Could you but know how I write my letters and the time I am enabled to give to them perchance you would feel less critical if not exacting ----"

(4)

This passage it was which led me to think it might be that some of the earlier letters had been perhaps the "victim of accident" itself.

But to go on with the case for the plainfiff: —

(5)

Most of those whom you may call, if you like, candidates for Deva Chan die and are reborn in the Kama loka without remembrance. . . . You can hardly call remembrance a dream of yours, some particular scene or scenes within whose narrow limits you would find enclosed a few persons. . . etc., call it the personal remembrance of A. P. Sinnett if you can." Notes on back of mine to Old Lady.

(6)

"Certainly, the new Ego, once that it is reborn in the Deva Chan retains for a certain time proportionate to its Earth life, a 'complete recollection of his spiritual life on Earth.' Long Devachan letter.

(7)

All those who have not slipped down into the mire of unredeemable sin and bestiality — go to the Deva chan,

ibid.

(8)

It (Devachan) is an idealed paradise in each case of the Ego's own making and by him filled with the scenery crowded with the incidents and thronged with the people he would expect to find in such a sphere of compensative bliss. Ibid.

(9)

Nor can we call it a full but only a partial remembrance. X. Love and hatred are the only immortal feelings, the only survivors from the wreck of the Ye-damma or phenomenal world. Imagine yourself in Devachan then, with those you may have loved with such immortal love, with the familiar shadowy scenes connected with them for a background, and a perfect blank for everything else relating to your interior social political and literary life — Former letter: i.e. Notes.

(10)

Since the conscious perception of one's personality on Earth is but an evanescent dream, that sense will be equally that of a dream in the Devachan — only a hundred fold intensified." Long Devachan letter.

(11)

". . . . a connoisseur who passes aeons in the rapt delight of listening to divine symphonies by imaginary angelic choirs and orchestras." Long letter. See (9) X ante. See my notes 10 and 11 about Wagner etc.

You say:

(12A)

"In no case then, with the exception of suicides and shells is there any possibility for any other to be attracted to a seance room." Notes.

(12B)

"On margin I said rarely but I have not pronounced the word never." Appended to mine of 12th Aug.

Table of Contents

Letter No. 24b

[A]

At this stage of our correspondence, misunderstood as we generally seem to be, even by yourself, my faithful friend, it may be worth our while and useful for both, that you should be posted on certain facts — and very important facts — connected with adept-ship. Bear in mind then, the following points.

 

(1) An adept — the highest as the lowest — is one only during the exercise of his occult powers.

 

(2) Whenever these powers are needed, the sovereign will unlocks the door to the inner man (the adept,) who can emerge and act freely but on condition that his jailor — the outer man will be either completely or partially paralyzed — as the case may require; viz: either (a) mentally and physically; (b) mentally, — but not physically; (c) physically but not entirely mentally; (d) neither, — but with an akasic film interposed between the outer and the inner man.

 

(3) The smallest exercise of occult powers then, as you will now see, requires an effort. We may compare it to the inner muscular effort of an athlete preparing to use his physical strength. As no athlete is likely to be always amusing himself at swelling his veins in anticipation of having to lift a weight, so no adept can be supposed to keep his will in constant tension and the inner man in full function, when there is no immediate necessity for it. When the inner man rests the adept becomes an ordinary man, limited to his physical senses and the functions of his physical brain. Habit sharpens the intuitions of the latter, yet is unable to make them supersensuous. The inner adept is ever ready, ever on the alert, and that suffices for our purposes. At moments of rest then, his faculties are at rest also. When I sit at my meals, or when I am dressing, reading or otherwise occupied I am not thinking even of those near me; and, Djual Khool can easily break his nose to blood, by running in the dark against a beam, as he did the other night — (just because instead of throwing a "film" he had foolishly paralyzed all his outer senses while talking to and with a distant friend) — and I remained placidly ignorant of the fact. I was not thinking of him — hence my ignorance.

 

From the aforesaid, you may well infer, that an adept is an ordinary mortal, at all the moments of his daily life but those — when the inner man is acting.

Couple this with the unpleasant fact that we are forbidden to use one particle of our powers in connexion with the Eclectics (for which you have to thank your President and him alone — ) and that the little that is done, is, so to say, smuggled in — and then syllogize thusly: — K.H. when writing to us is not an adept.

A non-adept — is fallible.

Therefore, K.H. may very easily commit mistakes; —

 

Mistakes of punctuation — that will often change entirely the whole sense of a sentence; idiomatic mistakes — very likely to occur especially when writing as hurriedly as I do; mistakes arising from occasional confusion of terms that I had to learn from you — since it is you who are the author of "rounds" — "rings" — "earthly rings" — etc. etc. Now with all this, I beg leave to say, that after having carefully read over and over our "Famous Contradictions" myself; after giving them to be read to M.; and then to a high adept whose powers are not in the Chohan's chancery sequestered by Him to prevent him from squandering them upon the unworthy objects of his personal predilections; after doing all this I was told by the latter the following: "It is all perfectly correct. Knowing what you mean, no more than any other person acquainted with the doctrine, can I find in these detached fragments anything that would really conflict with each other. But, since many sentences are incomplete, and the subjects scattered about without any order, I do not wonder that your "lay chelas" should find fault with them. Yes; they do require a more explicit and clear exposition."

Such is the decree of an adept — and I abide by it; I will try to complete the information for your sake.

In one and only case — marked on your pages and my answers (I2A) and (12B), the last — is the "plaintiff" entitled to a hearing, but not to a farthing even — for damages; since, as in law, no one — either plaintiff or defendant — has a right to plead ignorance of that law, so in Occult Sciences, the lay chelas ought to be forced to give the benefit of the doubt to their gurus in cases, in which, owing to their great ignorance of that science they are likely to misinterpret the meaning — instead of accusing them point blank of contradiction! Now I beg to state, that, with regard to the two sentences — marked respectively 12A and 12B — there is a plain contradiction but for those who are not acquainted with that tenet; you were not, and therefore I plead "guilty" of an omission, but "not guilty" of a contradiction. And even as regards the former, that omission is so small that, like the girl accused of infanticide, who when brought before the Judge said in her excuse that the baby was so very very little that it was not worth his while calling it a "baby" at all — I could plead the same for my omission, had I not before my eyes your terrible definition of my "exercising ingenuity." Well, read the explanation given in my "Notes and Answers" and judge.

By the bye, my good Brother, I have not hitherto suspected in you such a capacity for defending and excusing the inexcusable as exhibited by you in my defence, of the now famous "exercise of ingenuity." If the article (reply to C. C. Massey) has been written in the spirit you attribute to me in your letter; and if I, or any one of us has "an inclination to tolerate subtler and more tricksy ways of pursuing an end" than generally admitted as honourable by the truth-loving, straight-forward European (is Mr. Hume included in this category?) — indeed you have no right to excuse such a mode of dealing, even in me; nor to view it "merely in the nature of spots in the sun," since a spot is a spot whether found in the bright luminary or upon a brass candlestick. But you are mistaken, my dear friend. There was no subtle, no tricky mode of dealing, to get her out of the difficulty created by her ambiguous style and ignorance of English, not her ignorance of the subject — which is not the same thing and alters entirely the question. Nor was I ignorant of the fact that M. had written to you previously upon the subject since it was in one of his letters (the last but one before I took the business off his hands) in which he touched upon the subject of "races" for the first and spoke of reincarnations. If M. told you to beware trusting Isis too implicitly, it was because he was teaching you truth and fact — and that at the time the passage was written we had not yet decided upon teaching the public indiscriminately. He gave you several such instances — if you will but re-read his letter — adding that were such and such sentences written in such a way they would explain facts now merely hinted upon, far better.

Of course "to C.C.M." the passage must seem wrong and contradictory for it is "misleading" as M. said. Many are the subjects treated upon in Isis that even H.P.B. was not allowed to become thoroughly acquainted with; yet they are not contradictory if — "misleading." To make her say — as she was made by me to say — that the passage criticized was "incomplete, chaotic, vague . . . clumsy as many more passages in that work" was a sufficiently "frank admission" I should think, to satisfy the most crotchetty critic. To admit "that the passage was wrong," on the other hand, would have mounted to a timeless falsehood, for I maintain that it is not wrong; since if it conceals the whole truth, it does not distort it in the fragments of that truth as given in Isis. The point in C.C.M.'s complaining criticism was not that the whole truth had not been given, but that the truth and facts of 1877 were represented as errors and contradicted in 1882 and it was that point — damaging for the whole Society, its "lay" and inner chelas, and for our doctrine — that had to be shown under its true colours; namely that of an entire misconception due to the fact that the "septenary" doctrine had not yet been divulged to the world at the time when Isis was written. And thus it was shown. I am sorry you do not find her answer written under my direct inspiration "very satisfactory," for it proves to me only that up to this you have not yet grasped very firmly the difference between the sixth and seventh and the fifth, or the immortal and the astral or personal "Monads — Egos." The suspicion is corroborated by what H — X gives in his criticism of my explanation at the end of his "letter" in the September number; your letter before me completing the evidence thereupon. No doubt the "real Ego inheres in the higher principles which are reincarnated" periodically every one, two, or three or more thousands of years. But the immortal Ego the "Individual Monad," is not the personal monad which is the 5th; and the passage in Isis did not answer Eastern reincarnationists — who maintain in that same Isis — had you but read the whole of it — that the individuality or the immortal "Ego" has to re-appear in every cycle — but the Western especially the French reincarnationists, who teach that it is the personal, or astral monad, the "moi fluidique" the manas, or the intellectual mind, the 5th principle in short, that is reincarnated each time. Thus, if you read once more C.C.M.'s quoted passage from Isis against the "Reviewer of the Perfect Way," you will perhaps find that H.P.B. and myself were perfectly right in maintaining that in the above passage only the "astral monad" was meant. And, there is a far more "unsatisfactory shock" to my mind, upon finding that you refuse to recognise The "astral monad" is the "personal Ego," and therefore, it never reincarnates, as the French Spirites, will have it, but under "exceptional circumstances;" in which case, reincarnating, it does not become a shell but, if successful in its second reincarnation will become one, and then gradually lose its personality, after being so to say emptied of its best and highest spiritual attributes by the immortal monad or the "Spiritual Ego," during the last and supreme struggle. The "jar of feeling" then ought to be on my side, as indeed it only "seemed to be another illustration of the difference between eastern and western methods," but was not — not in this case at any rate. I can readily understand, my dear friend, that in the chilly condition you find yourself (mentally) in, you are prepared to bask even in the rays of a funereal pile upon which a living sutti is being performed; but why, why call it a — Sun, and excuse its spot — the corpse?

The letter addressed to me, which your delicacy would not permit you to read, was for your perusal and sent for that purpose. I wanted you to read it.

Your suggestion concerning G.K.'s next trial in art — is clever, but not sufficiently, as to conceal the white threads of the Jesuitically black insinuation. G.K. was however caught at it: Nous verrons, nous verrons! says the French song.

G. Khool says — presenting his most humble salaams — that you have "incorrectly described the course of events as regards the first portrait." What he says is this: (1) the day she came" she did not ask you "to give her a piece of" etc. (page 300) but after you had begun speaking to her of my portrait, which she doubted much whether you could have. It is but after half-an-hour's talk over it in the front drawing room — you two forming the two upper points of the triangle, near your office door, and your lady the lower one (he was there he says) that she told you she would try. It was then that she asked you for "a piece of thick white paper" and that you gave her a piece of a thin letter paper, which had been touched by some very anti-magnetic person. However he did, he says, the best he could. On the day following, as Mrs. S. had looked at it just 27 minutes before he did it, he accomplished his task. It was not "an hour or two before" as you say for he had told the "O.L." to let her see it just before breakfast. After breakfast, she asked you for a piece of Bristol board, and you gave her two pieces, both marked and not one as you say. The first time she brought it out it was a failure, he says, "with the eyebrow like a leech," and it was finished only during the evening, while you were at the Club, at a dinner at which the old Upasika would not go. And it was he again G.K. "great artist" who had to make away with the "leech," and to correct cap and features, and who made it "look like Master" (he will insist giving me that name though he is no longer my chela in reality), since M. after spoiling it would not go to the trouble of correcting it but preferred going to sleep instead. And finally, he tells me, my making fun of the portrait notwithstanding, the likeness is good but would have been better had M. sahib not interfered with it, and he, G.K. allowed to have his own "artistic" ways. Such is his tale, and he therefore, is not satisfied with your description and so he said to Upasika who told you something quite different. Now to my notes.

(1) (1)

Nor do they fret me — particularly. But as they furnish our mutual friend with a good handle against us, which he is likely to use any day in that nasty way, so pre-eminently his own, I rather explain them once more — with your kind permission.

(2)

Of course, of course; it is our usual way of getting out of difficulties. Having been "invented" ourselves, we repay the inventors by inventing imaginary races. There are a good many things more we are charged with having invented. Well, well, well; there's one thing, at any rate, we can never be accused of inventing; and that is Mr. Hume himself. To invent his like transcends the highest Siddhi powers we know of.

And now good friend, before we proceed any further, pray read the appended No. [A]. It is time you should know us as we are. Only, to prove to you, if not to him, that we have not invented those races, I will give out for your benefit that which has never been given out before. I will explain to you a whole chapter out of Rhys Davids work on Buddhism, or rather on Lamaism, which, in his natural ignorance he regards as a corruption of Buddhism! 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.

 (3)

And because I admit the superficial or apparent inconsistency — and even that in the case only of one who is so thoroughly unacquainted with our doctrines as you are — is that a reason why they should be regarded as conflicting in reality? Suppose I had written in a previous letter — "the moon has no atmosphere" and then went on talking of other things; and told you in another letter "for the moon has an atmosphere of its own "etc.: no doubt but that I should stand under the charge of saying to-day black and to-morrow white. But where could a Kabalist see in the two sentences a contradiction? I can assure you that he would not. For, a Kabalist who knows that the moon has no atmosphere answering in any respect to that of our earth, but one of its own, entirely different from that your men of science would call one, knows also that like the Westerns we Easterns, and Occultists especially, have our own ways of expressing thought as plain to us in their implied meaning as yours are to yourselves. Take for instance into your head to teach your Bearer astronomy. Tell him to-day — "see, how gloriously the sun is setting — see how rapidly it moves, how it rises and sets etc.;" and to-morrow try to impress him with the fact that the sun is comparatively motionless and that it is but our earth that loses and then again catches sight of the sun in her diurnal motion; and ten to one, if your pupil has any brains in his head, he will accuse you of flatly contradicting yourself. Would this be a proof of your ignorance of the heliocentric system? And could you be accused with anything like justice of "writing one thing to-day and denying it to-morrow," though your sense of fairness should prompt you to admit that you "can easily understand" the accusation.

Writing my letters, then, as I do, a few lines now and a few words two hours later; having to catch up the thread of the same subject, perhaps with a dozen or more interruptions between the beginning and the end, I cannot promise you anything like western accuracy. Ergo — the only "victim of accident" in this case is myself. The innocent cross examination to which I am subjected by you — and that I do not object to — and the positively pre-determined purpose of catching me tripping whenever he can, on Mr. Hume's part, — a proceeding regarded as highly legal and honest in western law, but to which we, Asiatic savages, object most emphatically — has given my colleagues and Brothers a high opinion of my proclivities to martyrdom. In their sight I have become a kind of Indo-Tibetan Simon Stylites. Caught by the lower hook of the Simla interrogation mark and impaled on it, I see myself doomed to equilibrize upon the apex of the semicircle for fear of slipping down at every uncertain motion either backward or forward. — Such is the present position of your humble friend. Ever since I undertook the extraordinary task of teaching two grown up pupils with brains in which the methods of western science had crystallized for years; one of whom is willing enough to make room for the new iconoclastic teaching, but who, nevertheless, requires a careful handling while the other will receive nothing but on condition of grouping the subjects as he wants them to group, not in their natural order — I have been regarded by all our Chohans as a lunatic. I am seriously asked whether my early association with Western "Pelings" had not made of me a half-Peling and turned me also into a "dzing-dzing" visionary. All this had been expected. I do not complain; I narrate a fact, and humbly demand credit for the same, only hoping it will not be mistaken again for a subtle and tricky way of getting out of a new difficulty.

(5)

Every just disembodied four-fold entity — whether it died a natural or violent death, from suicide or accident, mentally sane or insane, young or old, good, bad, or indifferent — loses at the instant of death all recollection, it is mentally — annihilated; it sleeps it's akasic sleep in the Kama-loka. This state lasts from a few hours, (rarely less) days, weeks, months — sometimes to several years. All this according to the entity, to its mental status at the moment of death, to the character of its death, etc. That remembrance will return slowly and gradually toward the end of the gestation (to the entity or Ego), still more slowly but far more imperfectly and incompletely to the shell, and fully to the Ego at the moment of its entrance into the Devachan. And now the latter being a state determined and brought by its past life, the Ego does not fall headlong but sinks into it gradually and by easy stages. With the first dawn of that state appears that life (or rather is once more lived over by the Ego) from its first day of consciousness to its last. From the most important down to the most trifling event, all are marshalled before the spiritual eye of the Ego; only, unlike the events of real life, those of them remain only that are chosen by the new liver (pardon the word) clinging to certain scenes and actors, these remain permanently — while all the others fade away to disappear for ever, or to return to their creator — the shell. Now try to understand this highly important, because so highly just and retributive law, in its effects. Out of the resurrected Past nothing remains but what the Ego has felt spiritually — that was evolved by and through, and lived over by his spiritual faculties — they be love or hatred. All that I am now trying to describe is in truth — indescribable. As no two men, not even two photographs of the same person, nor yet two leaves resemble line for line each other, so no two states in Deva-Chan are like. Unless he be an adept, who can realize such a state in his periodical Deva-chan — how can one be expected to form a correct picture of the same?

 

(6)

 

Therefore, there is no contradiction in saying, that the ego once reborn in the Devachan, "retains for a certain time proportionate to its earth life a complete recollection of his (Spiritual) life on earth." Here again the omission of the word "Spiritual" alone, produced a misunderstanding!

 

(7)

 

All those that do not slip down into the 8th sphere — go to the Devachan. Where's the point made or the contradiction?

 

(8)

 

The Devachan State, I repeat, can be as little described or explained, by giving a however minute and graphic description of the state of one ego taken at random, as all the human lives collectively could be described by the "Life of Napoleon" or that of any other man. There are millions of various states of happiness and misery, emotional states having their source in the physical as well as the spiritual faculties and senses, and only the latter surviving. An honest labourer will feel differently from an honest millionaire. Miss Nightingale's state will differ considerably from that of a young bride who dies before the consummation of what she regards as happiness. The two former love their families; the philanthropist — humanity; the girl centres the whole world in her future husband; the melomanic knows of no higher state of bliss and happiness than music — the most divine and spiritual of arts. The devachan merges from its highest into its lowest degree — by insensible gradations; while from the last step of devachan, the Ego will often find itself in Avitcha's faintest state, which, towards the end of the "spiritual selection" of events may become a bona fide "Avitcha." Remember, every feeling is relative. There is neither good nor evil, happiness nor misery per se. The transcendent, evanescent bliss of an adulterer, who by his act murders the happiness of a husband, is no less spiritually born for its criminal nature. If a remorse of conscience (the latter proceeding always from the Sixth Principle) has only once been felt during the period of bliss and really spiritual love, born in the sixth and fifth, however polluted by the desires of the fourth, or Kamarupa, — then this remorse must survive and will accompany incessantly the scenes of pure love. I need not enter into details, since a physiological expert, as I take you to be, need hardly have his imagination and intuitions prompted by a psychological observer of my sort. Search in the depths of your conscience and memory, and try to see what are the scenes that are likely to take their firm hold upon you; when once more in their presence you find yourself living them over again; and that, ensnared, you will have forgotten all the rest — this letter among other things, since in the course of events it will come far later on in the panorama of your resurrected life. I have no right to look into your past life.

Whenever I may have caught glimpses of it, I have invariably turned my eyes away, for I have to deal with the present A. P. Sinnett — (also and by far more "a new invention" than the ex A.P.S.) — not with the ancient man.

Yes; Love and Hatred are the only immortal feelings; but the gradations of tones along the seven by seven scales of the whole key-board of life, are numberless. And, since it is those two feelings — (or, to be correct, shall I risk being misunderstood again and say those two poles of man's "Soul" which is a unity?) — that

(9)

— for, having eliminated from your past life the Ratigans and Reeds who with you have never transcended beyond the boundaries of the lower portion of your fifth principle with its vehicle — the kama — what is it but the "partial remembrance" of a life? The lines marked with your reddest pencil are also disposed of. For how can you dispute the fact that music and harmony are for a Wagner, a Paganini, the King of Bavaria and so many other true artists and melomans, an object of the profoundest spiritual love and veneration? With your permission I will not change one word in clause 9.

 

(10)

 

Pity you have not followed your quotations with personal commentaries. I fail to comprehend in what respect you object to the word "dream"? Of course both bliss and misery are but a dream; and as they are purely spiritual they are "intensified."

 

(11)

 

Answered.

(12A & 12B)

Had I but written, — when answering Mr. Hume's objections, who after statistical calculations made with the evident intention of crushing our teaching, maintained that after all spiritualists were right and the majority of seance rooms spooks were "Spirits" — "In no case then, with the exception of suicides and shells" — and those accidents who die full of some engrossing earthly passion — is there any possibility for any other, etc., etc." I would have been perfectly right and pucka as a "professor"? To think that, eager as you are to accept doctrines that contradict in some most important points physical science from first to last — you should have consented at Mr. Hume's suggestion to split hairs over a simple omission! My dear friend, permit me to remark that simple common sense ought to have whispered you that one who says one day: "in no case then etc.:" and a few days later denies having ever pronounced the word never — is not only no adept but must be either suffering from softening of the brain or some other "accident." "On margin I said rarely but I have not pronounced the word never — refers to the margin of the proof of your letter N. II; that margin — or rather to avoid a fresh accusation — the piece of paper I had written upon some remarks referring to the subject and glued to the margin of your proof — you have cut out as well as the four lines of poetry. Why you have done so is known better to yourself. But the word never refers to that margin.

To one sin though I do, plead "guilty." That sin, was a very acute feeling of irritation against Mr. Hume upon receiving his triumphant statistical letter; the answer to which you found incorporated in yours when I wrote for you the materials for your answer to Mr. Khandallawala's letter that you had sent back to H.P.B. Had I not been irritated I would not have become guilty of the omission, perhaps. This now is my Karma. I had no business to feel irritated, or lose my temper; but that letter of his was I believe the seventh or the eighth of that kind received by me during that fortnight. And I must say, that our friend has the most knavish way of using his intellect in raising the most unexpected sophisms to tickle people's nerves with, that I have ever known! Under the pretext of strict logical reasoning, he will perform feigned thrusts at his antagonist — whenever unable to find a vulnerable spot, and then, caught and exposed, he will answer in the most innocent way: "Why, it is for your own good, and you ought to feel grateful! If I were an adept I would always know what my correspondent really meant," etc. etc. Being an "adept" in some small matters I do know what he really means; and that his meaning amounts to this: were we to divulge to him the whole of our philosophy leaving no inconsistency unexplained, it would still do no good, whatever. For, as in the observation embodied in the Hudibrasian couplet:

"These fleas have other fleas to bite 'em,

And these — their fleas ad infinitum . . . ."

— so with his objections and arguments. Explain him one, and he will find a flaw in the explanation; satisfy him by showing that the latter was after all correct, and he will fly at the opponent for speaking too slow or too rapidly. It is an IMPOSSIBLE task — and I give it up. Let it last until the whole breaks under its own weight. He says "I can kiss no Pope's toe," forgetting that no one has ever asked him to do so; "I can love, but I cannot worship" he tells me. Gush — he can love no one, and nobody but A. O. Hume, and never has. And that really, one could almost exclaim "Oh Hume, — gush is thy name!" — is shown in the following that I transcribe from one of his letters: "If for no other reason, I should love M. for his entire devotion to you — and you I have always loved (!). Even when most cross with you — as one always is most sensitive with those one cares most about — even when I was fully persuaded you were a myth, for even then my heart yearned to you as it often does to an avowedly fictitious character." A sentimental Becky Sharp writing to an imaginary lover, could hardly express her feelings better!

I will see to your scientific questions next week. I am not at home at present, but quite near to Darjeeling, in the Lamasery, the object of poor H.P.B.'s longings. I thought of leaving by the end of September but find it rather difficult on account of Nobin's boy. Most probably, also I will have to interview in my own skin the Old Lady if M. brings her here. And — he has to bring her — or lose her for ever — at least, as far as the physical triad is concerned. And now good-bye, I ask you again — do not frighten my little man; he may prove useful to you some day — only do not forget — he is but an appearance.

Yours,

K. H.

Letter 25 Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. K.H.'s replies to the "Famous Contradictions"; the numbers correspond to those which appear in the text of Mr. Sinnett's Queries. See ante Letter 24a. — ED. (return to text)

Letter No. 25

Devachan Notes Latest Additions. Received Feb. 2nd, 1883.

ANSWERS TO QUERIES

(1) Why should it be supposed that devachan is a monotonous condition only because some one moment of earthly sensation is indefinitely perpetuated — stretched, so to say, throughout aeons? It is not, it cannot be so. This would be contrary to all analogies and antagonistic to the law of effects under which results are proportioned to antecedent energies. To make it clear you must keep in mind that there are two fields of causal manifestation, to wit: the objective and subjective. So the grosser energies, those which operate in the heavier or denser conditions of matter manifest objectively in physical life, their outcome being the new personality of each birth included within the grand cycle of the evoluting individuality. The moral and spiritual activities find their sphere of effects in "devachan." For example: the vices, physical attractions, etc.

— say, of a philosopher may result in the birth of a new philosopher, a king, a merchant, a rich Epicurean, or any other personality whose make-up was inevitable from the preponderating proclivities of the being in the next preceding birth. Bacon, for inst: whom a poet called —

"The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind" — might reappear in his next incarnation as a greedy money-getter, with extraordinary intellectual capacities. But the moral and spiritual qualities of the previous Bacon would also have to find a field in which their energies could expand themselves. Devachan is such field. Hence — all the great plans of moral reform of intellectual and spiritual research into abstract principles of nature, all the divine aspirations, would, in devachan come to fruition, and the abstract entity previously known as the great Chancellor would occupy itself in this inner world of its own preparation, living, if not quite what one would call a conscious existence, at least a dream of such realistic vividness that none of the life-realities could ever match it. And this "dream" lasts — until Karma is satisfied in that direction, the ripple of force reaches the edge of its cyclic basin, and the being moves into the next area of causes. This, it may find in the same world as before, or another, according to his or her stage of progression through the necessary rings and rounds of human development.

Then — how can you think that "but one moment of earthly sensation only is selected for perpetuation"? Very true, that "moment" lasts from the first to last; but then it lasts but as the key-note of the whole harmony, a definite tone of appreciable pitch, around which cluster and develop in progressive variations of melody and as endless variations on a theme, all the aspirations, desires, hopes, dreams, which, in connection with that particular "moment" had ever crossed the dreamer's brain during his life-time, without having ever found their realization on earth, and which he now finds fully realized in all their vividness in devachan, without ever suspecting that all that blissful reality is but the progeny begotten by his own fancy, the effects of the mental causes produced by himself. That particular one moment which will be most intense and uppermost in the thoughts of his dying brain at the time of dissolution will of course regulate all the other "moments"; still the latter — minor and less vivid though they be — will be there also, having their appointed plan in this phantasmagoric marshalling of past dreams, and must give variety to the whole. No man on earth, but has some decided predilection if not a domineering passion; no person, however humble and poor — and often because of all that — but indulges in dreams and desires unsatisfied though these be. Is this monotony? Would you call such variations ad infinitum on the one theme, and that theme modelling itself, on, and taking colour and its definite shape from, that group of desires which was the most intense during life "a blank destitution of all knowledge in the devachanic mind" — seeming "in a measure ignoble"? Then verily, either you have failed, as you say, to take in my meaning, or it is I who am to blame. I must have sorely failed to convey the right meaning, and have to confess my inability to describe the — indescribable. The latter is a difficult task, good friend. Unless the intuitive perceptions of a trained chela come to the rescue, no amount of description — however graphic — will help. Indeed, — no adequate words to express the difference between a state of mind on earth, and one outside of its sphere of action; no English terms in existence, equivalent to ours; nothing — but unavoidable (as due to early Western education) preconceptions, hence — lines of thought in a wrong direction in the learner's mind to help us in this inoculation of entirely new thoughts! You are right. Not only "ordinary people" — your readers — but even such idealists and highly intellectual units as Mr. C. C. M. will fail, I am afraid, to seize the true idea, will never fathom it to its very depths. Perhaps, you may some day, realize better than you do now, one of the chief reasons for our unwillingness to impart our Knowledge to European candidates. Only read Mr. Roden Noel's disquisitions and diatribes in Light! Indeed, indeed, you ought to have answered them as advised by me through H.P.B. Your silence is a brief triumph to the pious gentleman, and seems like a desertion of poor Mr. Massey.

"A man in the way to learn something of the mysteries of nature seems in a higher state of existence to begin with on earth than that which nature apparently provides for him as a reward for his best deeds."

Perhaps "apparently" — not so in reality. When the modus operandus of nature is correctly understood. Then that other misconception: "The more merit, the longer period of devachan. But then in Devachan . . . all sense of the lapse of time is lost: a minute is as a thousand years . . . a quoi bon then, etc."

This remark and such ways of looking at things might as well apply to the whole of Eternity, to Nirvana, Pralaya, and what not. Say, at once that the whole system of being, of existence separate and collective, of nature objective and subjective are but idiotic, aimless facts, a gigantic fraud of that nature, which meeting with little sympathy with Western philosophy, has, moreover, the cruel disapprobation of the best "lay-chela." A quoi bon, in such a case, this preaching of our doctrines, all this uphill work and swimming in adversum flumen? Why should the West be so anxious then to learn anything from the East, since it is evidently unable to digest that which can never meet the requirements of the special tastes of its Esthetics. Sorry outlook for us, since even you fail to take in the whole magnitude of our philosophy, or to even embrace at one scope a small corner — the devachan — of those sublime and infinite horizons of "after life." I do not want to discourage you. I would only draw your attention to the formidable difficulties encountered by us in every attempt we make to explain our metaphysics to Western minds, even among the most intelligent. Alas, my friend, you seem as unable to assimilate our mode of thinking, as to digest our food, or enjoy our melodies!

No; there are no clocks, no timepieces in devachan, my esteemed chela, though the whole Cosmos is a gigantic chronometer in one sense. Nor do we, mortals, — ici bas meme — take much, if any, cognizance of time during periods of happiness and bliss, and find them ever too short; a fact that does not in the least prevent us from enjoying that happiness all the same — when it does come. Have you ever given a thought to this little possibility that, perhaps, it is because their cup of bliss is full to its brim, that the "devachanee" loses "all sense of the lapse of time" and that it is something that those who land in Avitchi do not, though as much as the devachanee, the Avitchee has no cognizance of time — i.e., of our earthly calculations of periods of time? I may also remind you in this connection that time is something created entirely by ourselves; that while one short second of intense agony may appear, even on earth, as an eternity to one man, to another, more fortunate, hours, days, and sometimes whole years may seem to flit like one brief moment; and that finally, of all the sentient and conscious beings on earth, man is the only animal that takes any cognizance of time, although it makes him neither happier nor wiser. How then, can I explain to you that which you cannot feel, since you seem unable to comprehend it? Finite similes are unfit to express the abstract and the infinite; nor can the objective ever mirror the subjective. To realize the bliss in devachan, or the woes in Avitchi, you have to assimilate them — as we do. Western critical idealism (as shown in Mr. Roden Noel's attacks) has still to learn the difference that exists between the real being of super-sensible objects, and the shadowy subjectivity of the ideas it has reduced them to. Time is not a predicate conception and can, therefore, neither be proved nor analysed, according to the methods of superficial philosophy. And, unless we learn to counteract the negative results of that method of drawing our conclusions agreeably to the teachings of the so-called "system of pure reason," and to distinguish between the matter and the form of our knowledge of sensible objects, we can never arrive at correct, definite conclusions. The case in hand, as defended by me against your (very natural) misconception is a good proof of the shallowness and even fallacy of that "system of pure (materialistic) reason." Space and time may be — as Kant has it — not the product but the regulators of the sensations, but only so far, as our sensations on earth are concerned, not those in devachan. There we do not find the a priori ideas of those "space and time" controlling the perceptions of the denizen of devachan in respect to the objects of his sense; but, on the contrary, we discover that it is the devachanee himself who absolutely creates both and annihilates them at the same time. Thus, the "after states" so called, can never be correctly judged by practical reason since the latter can have active being only in the sphere of final causes or In a plainer language, I will now tell you the following, and, it will be no fault of mine if you still fail to comprehend its full meaning. As physical existence has its cumulative intensity from infancy to prime, and its diminishing energy thenceforward to dotage and death, so the dream-life of devachan is lived correspondentially. Hence you are right in saying that the "Soul" can never awake to its mistake and find itself "cheated by nature" — the more so, as strictly speaking, the whole of the human life and its boasted realities, are no better than such "cheating." But you are wrong in pandering to the prejudices and preconceptions of the Western readers (no Asiatic will ever agree with you upon this point) when you add that "there is a sense of unreality about the whole affair which is painful to the mind," since you are the first one to feel that, it is no doubt due much more to "an imperfect grasp of the nature of the existence" in devachan — than to any defect in our system. Hence — my orders to a chela to reproduce in an Appendix to your article extracts from this letter and explanations calculated to disabuse the reader, and to obliterate, as far as possible, the painful impression this confession of yours is sure to produce on him. The whole paragraph is dangerous. I do not feel myself justified in crossing it out, since it is evidently the expression of your real feelings, kindly, though — pardon me for saying so — a little clumsily white-washed with an apparent defence of this (to your mind) weak point of the system. But it is not so, believe me. Nature cheats no more the devachanee than she does the living, physical man. Nature provides for him far more real bliss and happiness there, than she does here, where all the conditions of evil and chance are against him, and his inherent helplessness — that of a straw violently blown hither and thither by every remorseless wind — has made unalloyed happiness on this earth an utter impossibility for the human being, whatever his chances and condition may be. Rather call this life an ugly, horrid nightmare, and you will be right. To call the devachan existence a "dream" in any other sense but that of a conventional term, well suited to our languages all full of misnomers — is to renounce for ever the knowledge of the esoteric doctrine — the sole custodian of truth. Let me then try once more to explain to you a few of the many states in Devachan and — Avitchi.

As in actual earth-life, so there is for the Ego in devachan — the first flutter of psychic life, the attainment of prime, the gradual exhaustion of force passing into semi-unconsciousness, gradual oblivion and lethargy, total oblivion and — not death but birth: birth into another personality, and the resumption of action which daily begets new congeries of causes, that must be worked out in another term of Devachan, and still another physical rebirth as a new personality. What the lives in devachan and upon Earth shall be respectively in each instance is determined by Karma. And this weary round of birth upon birth must be ever and ever run through, until the being reaches the end of the seventh round, or — attains in the interim the wisdom of an Arhat, then that of a Buddha and thus gets relieved for a round or two, — having learned how to burst through the vicious circles — and to pass periodically into the Paranirvana.

But suppose it is not a question of a Bacon, a Goethe, a Shelley, a Howard, but of some hum-drum person, some colourless, flaxless personality, who never impinged upon the world enough to make himself felt: what then? Simply that his devachanic state is as colourless and feeble as was his personality. How could it be otherwise since cause and effect are equal. But suppose a case of a monster of wickedness, sensuality, ambition, avarice, pride, deceit, etc.: but who nevertheless has a germ or germs of something better, flashes of a more divine nature — where is he to go? The said spark smouldering under a heap of dirt will counteract, nevertheless, the attraction of the eighth sphere, whither fall but absolute nonentities; "failures of nature" to be remodelled entirely, whose divine monad separated itself from the five principles during their life-time, (whether in the next preceding or several preceding births, since such cases are also on our records), and who have lived as soulless human beings. (1) These persons whose sixth principle has left them (while the seventh having lost its vahan (or vehicle) can exist independently no longer) their fifth or animal Soul of course goes down "the bottomless pit." This will perhaps make Eliphas Levi's hints still more clear to you, if you read over what he says, and my remarks on the margin thereon (see Theosophist, October, 1881, Article "Death") and reflect upon the words used: such as drones, etc. Well, the first named entity then, cannot, with all its wickedness go to the eighth sphere — since his wickedness is of a too spiritual, refined nature. He is a monster — not a mere Soulless brute. He must not be simply annihilated but PUNISHED; for, annihilation, i.e. total oblivion, and the fact of being snuffed out of conscious existence, constitutes per se no punishment, and as Voltaire expressed it: "le neant ne laisse pas d'avoir du bon." Here is no taper-glimmer to be puffed out by a zephyr, but a strong, positive, maleficent energy, fed and developed by circumstances, some of which may have really been beyond his control. There must be for such a nature a state corresponding to Devachan, and this is found in Avitchi — the perfect antithesis of devachan — vulgarized by the Western nations into Hell and Heaven, and which you have entirely lost sight of in your "Fragment." Remember: "To be immortal in good one must identify himself with Good (or God); to be immortal in evil — with evil (or Satan)." Misconceptions of the true value of such terms as "Spirit," "Soul," "individuality," "personality," and "immortality" (especially) — provoke wordy wars between a great number of idealistic debaters, besides Messrs. C.C.M. and Roden Noel. And, to complete your Fragment without risking to fall again under the mangling tooth of the latter honourable gentleman's criticism — I found it necessary to add to devachan — Avitchi as its complement and applying to it the same laws as to the former. This is done, with your permission, in the Appendix.

Having explained the situation sufficiently I may now answer your query No. 1 directly. Yes, certainly there is "a change of occupation," a continual change in Devachan, just as much — and far more — as there is in the life of any man or woman who happens to follow his or her whole life one sole occupation whatever it may be; with that difference, that to the Devachanee his special occupation is always pleasant and fills his life with rapture. Change then there must be, for that dream-life is but the fruition, the harvest-time of those psychic seed-germs dropped from the tree of physical existence in our moments of dreams and hopes, fancy-glimpses of bliss and happiness stifled in an ungrateful social soil, blooming in the rosy dawn of Devachan, and ripening under its ever fructifying sky. No failures there, no disappointments! If man had but one single moment of ideal happiness and experience during his life — as you think — even then, if Devachan exists, — it could not be as you erroneously suppose, the indefinite prolongation of that "single moment," but the infinite developments, the various incidents and events, based upon, and outflowing from, that one "single moment" or moments, as the case may be; all in short that would suggest itself to the "dreamer's" fancy. That one note, as I said, struck from the lyre of life, would form but the Key-note of the being's subjective state, and work out into numberless harmonic tones and semi-tones of psychic phantasmagoria. There — all unrealized hopes, aspirations, dreams, become fully realized, and the dreams of the objective become the realities of the subjective existence. And there behind the curtain of Maya its vapours and deceptive appearances are perceived by the adept, who has learnt the great secret how to penetrate thus deeply into the Arcana of being.

Doubtless my question whether you had experienced monotony during what you consider the happiest moment of your life has entirely misled you. This letter thus, is the just penance for my laziness to amplify the explanation.

Query (2) What cycle is meant?

The "minor cycle" meant is, of course, the completion of the seventh Round, as decided upon and explained. Besides that at the end of each of the seven rounds come a less "full" remembrance; only of the devachanic experiences taking place between the numerous births at the end of each personal life. But the complete recollection of all the lives — (earthly and devachanic) omniscience — in short — comes but at the great end of the full seven Rounds (unless one had become in the interim a Bodhisatwa, an Arhat) — the "threshold" of Nirvana meaning an indefinite period. Naturally a man, a Seventh-rounder (who completes his earthly migrations at the beginning of the last race and ring) will have to wait longer at that threshold than one of the very last of those Rounds. That Life of the Elect between the minor Pralaya and Nirvana — or rather before the Pralaya is the Great Reward, the grandest, in fact, since it makes of the Ego (though he may never have been an adept, but simply a worthy virtuous man in most of his existences) — virtually a God, an omniscient, conscious being, a candidate — for eternities of aeons — for a Dhyan Chohan . . . Enough — I am betraying the mysteries of initiation. But what has NIRVANA to do with the recollections of objective existences? That is a state still higher and in which all things objective are forgotten. It is a State of absolute Rest and assimilation with Parabrahm — it is Parabrahm itself. Oh, for the sad ignorance of our philosophical truths in the West, and for the inability of your greatest intellects to seize the true spirit of those teachings. What shall we — what can we do!

Query (3) You postulate an intercourse of entities in devachan which applies only to the mutual relationship

Query 4. Deva Chan is a state, not a locality. Rupa Loka, Arupa-Loka, and Kama-Loka are the three spheres of ascending spirituality in which the several groups of subjective entities find their attractions. In the Kama-Loka (semi-physical sphere) dwell the shells, the victims and suicides; and this sphere is divided into innumerable regions and sub-regions corresponding to the mental states of the comers at their hour of death. This is the glorious "Summer-land" of the Spiritualists, to whose horizons is limited the vision of their best seers — vision imperfect and deceptive because untrained and non-guided by Alaya Vynyana (hidden knowledge). Who in the West knows anything of true Sahalo-Kadhatu, the mysterious Chiliocosm out of the many regions of which but three can be given out to the outside world, the Tribuvana (three worlds) namely: Kama, Rupa, and Arupa-Lokas. Yet see the sadness produced in the Western minds by the mention of even those three! See "Light" of January 6th!

Behold your friend (M. A. Oxon) notifying the world of his readers that on your assumption in your "Secret doctrine" — "no graver indictment could be brought against any man by his bitterest foe" than the one you bring against us — "these mysterious unknown." It is not such bitter criticisms that are likely to draw out more of our knowledge, or to make the "unknown" more known. And then, the pleasure of teaching a public one of whose great authorities (Roden Noel) says a few pages further on, that, theosophists are endowing "shells" with simulated consciousness. See the difference one word will make. If the word "assimilated" instead of "simulated" had been written the true idea would have been conveyed that the shells' consciousness is assimilated from the medium and living persons present, whereas now ----! But of course, it is not our European critics, but our Asiatic chelas' expositions that "seem absolutely Protean in their ever shifting variety." The man has to be answered and set right anyhow, whether by yourself or Mr. Massey. But alas! the latter knows but little, and you, — you look at our conception of devachan with more than "discomfort"! But to resume.

From Kama Loka then in the great Chiliocosm, — once awakened from their post-mortem torpor, the newly translated "Souls" go all (but the shells) according to their attractions, either to Devachan or Avitchi. And those two states are again differentiating ad infinitum -- their ascending degrees of spirituality deriving their names from the lokas in which they are induced. For instance: the sensations, perceptions and ideation of a devachanee in Rupa-Loka, will, of course, be of a less subjective nature than they would be in Arupa-Loka, in both of which the devachanic experiences will vary in their presentation to the subject-entity, not only as regards form, colour, and substance, but also in their formative potentialities. But not even the most exalted experience of a monad in the highest devachanic state in Arupa-Loka (the last of the seven states) — is comparable to that perfectly subjective condition of pure spirituality from which the monad emerged to "descend into matter," and to which at the completion of the grand cycle it must return. Nor is Nirvana itself comparable to Para Nirvana.

Query 5. Reviving consciousness begins after the struggle in Kama-Loka at the door of devachan, and only after the "gestation period." Please turn to my responses upon the subject in your "Famous contradictions."

Query 6. Your deductions as to the indefinite prolongation in Devachan of some one moment of earthly bliss having been unwarranted, your question in the last paragraph of this interrogatory need not be considered. The stay in Devachan is proportioned to the unfinished psychic impulses originating in earth-life: those persons whose attractions were preponderatingly material will sooner be drawn back into rebirth by the force of Tanha. As our London opponent truly remarks: these subjects (metaphysical) are only partly for understanding. A higher faculty belonging to the higher life must see, — and it is truly impossible to force it upon one's understanding — merely in words. One must see with his spiritual eye, hear with his Dharmakayic ear, feel with the sensations of his Ashta-vijnytana (spiritual "I") before he can comprehend this doctrine fully; otherwise it may but increase one's "discomfort," and add to his knowledge very little.

Query 7. The "reward provided by nature for men who are benevolent in a large, systematic way" and who have not focussed their affections upon an individual or speciality, is that — if pure — they pass the quicker for that through the Kama and Rupa Lokas into the higher sphere of Tribuvana, since it is one where the formulation of abstract ideas and the consideration of general principles fill the thought of its occupants. Personality is the synonym for limitation, and the more contracted the person's ideas, the closer will he cling to the lower spheres of being, the longer loiter on the plane of selfish social intercourse. The social status of a being is, of course, a result of Karma; the law being that "like attracts like." The renascent being is drawn into the gestative current with which the preponderating attractions coming over from the last birth make him assimilate. Thus one who died a ryot may be reborn a king, and the dead sovereign may next see the light in a coolie's tent. This law of attraction asserts itself in a thousand "accidents of birth" — than which there could be no more flagrant misnomer. When you, realize, at least, the following — that the skandas are the elements of limited existence then will you have realized also one of the conditions of Devachan which has now such a profoundly unsatisfactory outlook for you. Nor are your inferences (as regards the well-being and enjoyment of the upper classes being due to a better Karma) quite correct in their general application. They have a eud[[ae together]]aemonistic ring about them which is hardly reconcilable with Karmic Law, since those "well-being and enjoyment" are oftener the causes of a new and overloaded Karma than the production or effects of the latter. Even as a "broad rule" poverty and humble condition in life are less a cause of sorrow than wealth and high birth, but of that — later on. My answers are once more assuming the shape of a volume rather than the decent aspect of a letter. "Writing a new book, or for the Theosophist?" Well do you not think that (since your desire is to reach not merely the most but also the most receptive minds) you had better write the former, as well as for the latter? You might put into Esoteric Buddhism — an excellent title by the bye — such matter as would be a sequel to, or amplification of what has appeared in the Theosophist, a systematic, thoughtful exposition of what was and will be given in the Journal in snatched out brief Fragments. I am specially anxious — on M's account — that the Journal should be made as much as possible a success; should be circulated more than it is now in England. Your new book drawing as it is sure to — the attention of the most educated, thoughtful portion of the Western public to the organ of "Esoteric Buddhism" par excellence — would thus do it a world of good, and both would prove of mutual assistance. Do not lose sight of Lillie's "Buddha and Early Buddhism" when you write it. With its host of fallacies, unwarranted assumptions and distortion of facts and even Sanskrit and Pali words, this snobbish volume had nevertheless the greatest success with Spiritualists and even mystically inclined Christians. I will have it slightly reviewed by Subba Row or H.P.B. furnishing them with notes myself, but of this more in some future letter. You have ample materials to work upon in my notes and papers. You have given but a few of the many points touched by me and amplified and re-amplified in heaps of letters, as I do now. You could work out of them any number of new articles and Fragments for the magazine, and have enough and to spare — left over for the book. And these in their turn may be followed up in a third volume later on. It may be well to always keep this plan in mind.

Your "wild scheme" with Darjeeling, good friend, as its objective point, is not wild, but simply impracticable. The time has not yet come. But the drift of your energies is carrying you slowly yet steadily in the direction of personal intercourse. I will not say that I desire it as much as you do, for seeing you nearly every day of my life I care very little for objective intercourse; but for your sake I would if I could, precipitate that interview. However ----? Meanwhile, be happy in knowing that you have done more real good to your kind within the two past years than in many previous years. And — to yourself also.

I am quite sure that you do not sympathize with the selfish feeling that prompts the London Branch to wish to withhold even their small proportion of pecuniary support — amounting to a few guineas a year — from the Parent Society. Who of the members would ever think of refusing, or trying to avoid payment of fees to any other Society, Club, or Scientific Association he may happen to belong to? It is this indifference and selfishness that have permitted them to stand by idle and calm from the first, and see the two in India giving their last rupee (and the Upasika actually selling her jewellery — for the honour of the Society) — though many of the British members are far better able to afford the necessary sacrifices than they. Mr. Olcott's sister is actually starving in America, and the poor man, loving her dearly as he does, would not nevertheless spare Rs. 100 from the Society's, or rather the Theosophist's fund to relieve her with six small children had not H.P.B. insisted upon, and M. given a small sum for it.

However, I have told Mr. Olcott to send you the necessary official authority to compound the fees or make any other business agreement at London that you may think best. But remember, my very valued brother, that if poor Hindu clerks on Rs. 20 or 30 salaries are expected to help pay the Society's expenses with that fee, it is sheer injustice to totally exempt the far richer London members. Do justice, "though the heavens fall." Yet, if concessions are required to local prejudices, you are certainly better qualified than we, to see, and hence to negotiate according to the fitness of things. By all means put "the money relations on a better footing" than at present, if the financial wind has to be tempered for the shorn Peling-lamb. I have faith in your wisdom my friend, though you would have a certain right to be fast losing yours in mine, considering how tight the negotiations for the Phoenix-capital prove. You must have understood that I am still, and notwithstanding the Chohan's approval of my "Lay-Chela" — under last year's restrictions, and cannot bring to bear on the parties concerned all the psychic powers that I otherwise could. Besides, our laws and restrictions with regard to money or any financial operations whether within or outside our Association, are extremely severe — inexorable on some points. We have to proceed very cautiously; hence — the delay. But I do hope that you yourself think, that something has already been done in that direction.

Yes; "K.H. did" mean that the review of "Mr. Isaacs should appear in the Theosophist," and "By the Author of the Occult World," so do send it before you go. And, for the sake of old "Sam Ward" I would like to see it noticed in the "Pioneer." But that does not matter much, now that you leave it.

Thereupon — Salam, and best wishes. I am extremely busy with preparations of initiation. Several of my chelas — Gjual-khool among others — are striving to reach "the other shore."

Yours faithfully,

K. H.

{The "Review" asked for appeared in the February Theosophist. The T.S. Headquarters and the

Magazine had been moved to Madras December 17.}

Letter 26 Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. See Isis Vol. 2, pp. 368 and 369 — the word Soul standing there for "Spiritual" Soul, of course, which, whenever it leaves a person "Soulless" becomes the cause of the fifth principle (Animal Soul) sliding down into the eighth sphere. (return to text)

Letter No. 26

K.H.'s Confidential Memo about Old Lady. Received Simla, Autumn, 1881.

I am painfully aware of the fact that the habitual incoherence of her statements — especially when excited — and her strange ways make her in your opinion a very undesirable transmitter of our messages. Nevertheless, kind Brothers, once that you have learned the truth; once told, that this unbalanced mind, the seeming incongruity of her speeches and ideas, her nervous excitement, all that in short, which is so calculated to upset the feelings of sober minded people, whose notions of reserve and manners are shocked by such strange outbursts of what they regard as her temper, and which so revolt you, — once that you know that nothing of it is due to any fault of hers, you may, perchance, be led to regard her in quite a different light. Notwithstanding that the time is not quite ripe to let you entirely into the secret; and that you are hardly yet prepared to understand the great Mystery, even if told of it, owing to the great injustice and wrong done, I am empowered to allow you a glimpse behind the veil. This state of hers is intimately connected with her occult training in Tibet, and due to her being sent out alone into the world to gradually prepare the way for others. After nearly a century of fruitless search, our chiefs had to avail themselves of the only opportunity to send out a European body upon European soil to serve as a connecting link between that country and our own. You do not understand? Of course not. Please then, remember, what she tried to explain, and what you gathered tolerably well from her, namely the fact of the seven principles in the complete human being. Now, no man or woman, unless he be an initiate of the "fifth circle," can leave the precincts of Bod-Las and return back into the world in his integral whole — if I may use the expression. One, at least of his seven satellites has to remain behind for two reasons: the first to form the necessary connecting link, the wire of transmission — the second as the safest warranter that certain things will never be divulged. She is no exception to the rule, and you have seen another exemplar — a highly intellectual man — who had to leave one of his skins behind; hence, is considered highly eccentric. The bearing and status of the remaining six depend upon the inherent qualities, the psycho-physiological peculiarities of the person, especially upon the idiosyncracies transmitted by what modern science calls "atavism." Acting in accordance with my wishes, my brother M. made to you through her a certain offer, if you remember. You had but to accept it, and at any time you liked, you would have had for an hour or more, the real baitchooly to converse with, instead of the psychological cripple you generally have to deal with now. Yesterday it was his mistake. He ought not to have sent her to deliver the message to Mr. Sinnett in the state she was in. But to hold her responsible for her purely physiological excitement, and to let her see your contemptuous smiles — was positively sinful. Pardon me, my Brothers and good Sirs, my plain talk. I act but in accord with what was asked from me by yourself in your letter. I took the trouble to "ascertain the spirit and meaning" with which everything in Mr. Sinnett's room was said and done; and though having no right to "condemn" you — since you were ignorant of the true state of things — I cannot otherwise but strongly disapprove of that, which, however much polished outwardly would have been even under quite ordinary circumstances — CRUELTY still. Buss!

Letter 27 Table of Contents

Letter No. 27

Received Simla, Autumn, 1881.

I foresaw that which now happens. In my Bombay letter I advised you to be prudent as to what you allowed S.M. to learn of + and his own mediumship, suggesting that he should be told merely the substance of what I said. When, watching you at Allahabad I saw you making instead copious extracts for him from my letter, I again saw the danger but did not interfere for several reasons. One of them is, that I believe the time fully come when social and moral safety demands that someone of the Theos. Soc. should speak the truth though the Himalaya fall on him. The unveiling of the ugly truth has to be done with the greatest discretion and caution though; and I see that instead of getting friends and supporters in the camp of the Philistines — whether on that or this side of the Oceans — many of you — yourself with the rest — breed but enemies by making too much of me and my personal opinions. On that side, the irritation is great and you will soon find flashes of it in the Light and elsewhere; and, you "shall lose S.M." The copious extracts have done their work for they were — much too copious. No powers whether human or super-human can ever open the eyes of S.M. — it was useless to tear them open. On this side — it is still worse. The good people at Simla are not very metaphorically inclined and allegory will no more stick to their epidermis than would water to the feathers of a goose. Besides, — no one likes to be told that he "smells bad" and the joke extracted from a remark but too full of deep psychological meaning has produced incalculable harm in quarters where otherwise, the S.E.T.S. might have recruited more than one convert. . . . I must return once more to the letter.

 

The strongest basis of complaint against me is the fact that my statement implies (a) a kind of challenge to S.M. to prove + a "Spirit" — (b) I am severely denounced by our friend for making out + — a liar. Now, I mean to be explanatory but not apologetic. I most certainly meant both; only I meant it for you, who had asked me for the information, by no means for him. He has not proved his case, nor did I expect he would, even if he thought he could, as the claim rests entirely upon his own personal assertion due to his unwavering faith in his own impressions. It would be easy for me, on the other hand, to prove + no disembodied Spirit at all, had I not very good reasons for not doing so at present. I had worded my letter very carefully, so, that, while letting you have a glimpse of the truth, I showed you most clearly that I had no right to divulge the "secret of a Brother." But, my very good friend, I had never told you in so many words who and what he was. I might, perhaps, have advised you to judge + by his alleged writings, for more fortunate in that than Job, our "enemies" "all write books." They are very fond of dictating inspirational gospels and so — get caught at the glue of their own rhetorics. And who of the most intellectual Spirit[ualis]ts who have read the complete works fathered upon + would dare maintain that with the exception of a few extremely remarkable pages the rest is not below what S.M. could have himself written, and far better? Rest assured that no intelligent, clever and truthful medium needs "inspiration" from a disembodied "Spirit." Truth will stand without inspiration from Gods or Spirits, and better still — will stand in spite of them all; "angels" whispering generally but falsehoods and adding to the stock of superstition.

 

It is in view of such little unpleasantnesses that I have to abstain from satisfying C.C.Massey. I will not avail myself of his "authority," nor fulfil his "desire," and I refuse most decidedly to "communicate his secret" as it is of a nature which stands in his way for the attainment of adeptship, but has nothing whatever to do with his private character. This information again was meant for you, as an answer to your surprised query whether there could be any impediments for my communicating with him and guiding him to the Light, but it was never intended for his ears. He may have a page or two in his life's history which he would rather see obliterated; but, his loyal and faithful instincts will always give him precedence and place him far above many a man who remained chaste and virtuous only because he never knew what temptation was. I will abstain, then, with your kind permission. In the future, my very dear friend, we will have to limit ourselves entirely to philosophy and avoid — family gossip. Skeletons in family closets, are at times, more dangerous to meddle with, than even — dirty turbans, my illustrious and dear friend. And let not your too sensitive heart be troubled, or your imagination lead you to suppose that one single word of what I have now said is meant to convey a reproach. We, half savage Asiatics judge a man by his motives, and yours were all that is sincere and good. But you have to remember that you are at a hard school, and dealing now with a world entirely

distinct from your own. Especially have you to bear in mind that the slightest cause produced, however unconsciously, and with whatever motive, cannot be unmade, or its effects crossed in their progress — by millions of gods, demons, and men combined. Therefore, you must not think me too hypercritical when I say, that all of you have been more or less imprudent, when not indiscreet — the latter word applying — so far — but to one of the members. Hence — you will perhaps see, that the mistakes and blunders of H. Steel Olcott, are of a lighter hue than they at first appear, since even Englishmen, far more intelligent and versed in the world's ways than he is, are as liable to err. For you have erred, individually and collectively, as will be made apparent in a very near future; and the management and success of the Society will prove as a result far more difficult in your case, since none of you is as ready to admit that he has done so, nor are you as prepared as he is, to follow any advice offered you, though in each case, it is based on foresight of impending events, even when foretold in a phraseology which may not always come "up to the mark" of the adept — as he should be in accordance with your own views.

You may tell Massey what I now say of him, and the reasons given. You may — though I would not advise you — read this letter to Mr. Hume. But I would strongly urge upon you the necessity of a greater caution than ever. Notwithstanding the purity of motives, the Chohan might one day consider but the results, and these may threaten to become too disastrous for him to overlook. There should be a constant pressure brought to bear upon the members of the S.E.S. to keep their tongues and enthusiasm at bay. And yet there is an increasing concern in the public mind, in regard to your Society and you may soon be called upon to define your position more clearly. Very soon I will have to leave you to yourselves for the period of three months. Whether it will begin in October or January will depend on the impulse given to the Society and its progress.

I would feel personally obliged to you were you to kindly consent to examine a poem written by Padshah, and give your opinion on its merits. I believe it too long for the Theosophical Journal, nor do its literary merits warrant exactly or justify the claim. However, I leave it to your better judgment. I am anxious that the Journal should be more successful this year than it has heretofore been. The suggestion to translate the Grand Inquisitor is mine; for its author, on whom the hand of Death was already pressing when writing it, gave the most forcible and true description of the Society of Jesus than was ever given before. There is a mighty lesson contained in it for many and even you may profit by it.

My dear friend, you must not feel surprised if I tell you, that I really feel weary and disheartened at the prospect I have before me. I am afraid you never will have the patience to wait for the day when I am permitted to satisfy you. Ages ago our people began to make certain rules, according to which they intended to live. All these rules have now become LAW. Our predecessors had to learn everything they know by themselves, only the foundation was laid for them. We offer to lay for you such a foundation but you will accept nothing short of the complete edifice, ready for you to take possession of. Do not accuse me of indifference or neglect when not receiving for days any reply from me. Very often I have nothing to say, for you ask questions which I have no right to answer.

But I must conclude here, as my time is limited and I have some other work to do.

Yours sincerely,

K. H.

The brandy atmosphere in the house is dreadful.

Letter 28 Table of Contents

Letter No. 28

K.H. to A.O. Hume written towards final break-off. (1881 ?)

{The first not the final break. Hume resumed his studies as predicted by Mahatma M. in Blavatsky

Letters to A.P.S. No. 4 and did good work for a year after.}

My dear Sir,

If no other good ever came of our correspondence than that of showing us once more how essentially opposed are our two antagonistic elements — the English and the Hindu, our few letters will not have been exchanged in vain. Sooner can oil and water mingle their particles than an Englishman — however intelligent, noble-minded and sincere to be made to assimilate even the exoteric Hindu thought, let alone its esoteric spirit. This will, of course provoke you to a smile. You will say — "I expected this." So be it. But if so, it shows no more than the perspicacity of a man of thought and observation who intuitively anticipated an event which his own attitude must precipitate. . . .

You will pardon me if I have to speak frankly and sincerely of your long letter. However cogent its logic, noble some of its ideas, ardent its aspiration, it yet lies here before me a very mirror of that spirit of this age, against which we have fought during our whole lives! At best it is the unsuccessful endeavour of an acute intellect trained in the ways of an exoteric world, to throw light on, and judge of the modes of life and thought in which it is unversed, for they belong to quite a different world from that it deals with. You are no man of petty vanities. To you it is safe to say: "My dear friend, apart from all this, study your letter impartially; weigh some of its sentences, and on the whole you will not feel proud of it." Whether or not you will ever fully appreciate my motives, or misconceive the true causes which make me decline for the present any further correspondence, I yet am confident that some day you will confess that this last letter of yours under the garb of a noble humility, of confessions of "weaknesses and failings, shortcomings and follies" was yet — no doubt quite unconsciously to yourself — a monument of pride, the loud echo of that haughty and imperative spirit which lurks at the bottom of every Englishman's heart. In your present state of mind, very likely even after reading this answer, you will hardly perceive, that not only have you entirely failed to understand the spirit in which my last letter was written to you, but even, in some instances to catch its evident sense. You were preoccupied by one single, all-absorbing idea: and, failing to detect any direct reply to it in my answer, before taking time to think it over, and see its general not personal applicability, you sat down and accused me right away of giving you a stone when you asked for bread! No need of being "a lawyer" in this or any previous existence to state simple facts. No need to "make the bad appear the better cause" when truth is so very simple and so easily told. My remark — "you take up the position that unless a proficient in arcane knowledge will waste upon your embryonic Society an energy . . ." etc: — you applied to yourself, whereas it was never so meant. It related to the expectations of all those who might desire to join the Society under certain conditions exacted before-hand and that were firmly insisted upon, by yourself and Mr. Sinnett. The letter as a whole was meant for you two, and this special sentence applied to all in general.

You say that I have "to a certain extent mistaken" your "position," and that I "clearly misunderstand" you. This is so evidently incorrect that it will suffice for me to quote a single paragraph from your letter to show that it is you who have entirely "mistaken my position" and "clearly misunderstood me." What else do you do but labour under an erroneous impression, when, in your eagerness to repudiate the idea of having ever dreamt of originating a "school" you say of the proposed "Anglo-Indian Branch" — "it is no Society of mine. . . . I understood it to be the wish of yourself and chiefs that the Society should be started and that I should assume a leading position in it." To this I replied that if it has been constantly our wish to spread on the Western Continent among the foremost educated classes "Branches" of the T.S. as the harbingers of a Universal Brotherhood it was not so in your case. We (the Chiefs and I) entirely repudiate the idea that such was our hope (however we might wish it) in regard to the projected A.I. Society. The aspiration for brotherhood between our races met no response — nay, it was pooh-poohed from the first — and so, was abandoned even before I had received Mr. Sinnett's first letter. On his part and from the start, the idea was solely to promote the formation of a kind of club or "school of magic." It was then no "proposal" of ours, nor were we the "designers of the scheme." Why then such efforts to show us in the wrong? It was Mad. B. — not we, who originated the idea; and it was Mr. Sinnett who took it up. Notwithstanding his frank and honest admission to the effect that being unable to grasp the basic idea of Universal Brotherhood of the Parent Society, his aim was but to cultivate the study of occult Sciences, an admission which ought to have stopped at once every further importunity on her part, she first succeeded in getting the consent — a very reluctant one I must say — of her own direct chief, and then my promise of co-operation — as far as I could go. Finally, through my mediation, she got that of our highest CHIEF, to whom I submitted the first letter you honoured me with. But, this consent, you will please bear in mind, was obtained solely under the express and unalterable condition that the new Society should be founded as a Branch of the Universal Brotherhood, and among its members, a few elect men would — if they chose to submit to our conditions, instead of dictating theirs — be allowed to BEGIN the study of the occult sciences under the written directions of a "Brother." But a "hot-bed of magick" we never dreamt of. Such an organization as mapped out by Mr. Sinnett and yourself is unthinkable among Europeans; and, it has become next to impossible even in India — unless you are prepared to climb to a height of 18,000 to 20,000 amidst the glaciers of the Himalayas. The greatest as well as most promising of such schools in Europe, the last attempt in this direction, — failed most signally some 20 years ago in London. It was the secret school for the practical teaching of magick, founded under the name of a club, by a dozen of enthusiasts under the leadership of Lord Lytton's father. He had collected together for the purpose, the most ardent and enterprising as well as some of the most advanced scholars in mesmerism and "ceremonial magick," such as Eliphas Levi, Regazzoni, and the Kopt Zergvan-Bey. And yet in the pestilent London atmosphere the "Club" came to an untimely end. I visited it about half a dozen of times, and perceived from the first that there was and could be nothing in it. And this is also the reason why, the British T.S. does not progress one step practically. They are of the Universal Brotherhood but in name, and gravitate at best towards Quietism — that utter paralysis of the Soul. They are intensely selfish in their aspirations and will get but the reward of their selfishness.

Nor did we begin the correspondence upon this subject. It was Mr. Sinnett who, of his own motion addressed to a "Brother" two long letters, even before Mad. B. had obtained either permission or promise from any of us to answer him, or knew to whom of us to deliver his letter. Her own chief having refused point blank to correspond, it was to me that she applied. Moved by regard for her, I consented even telling her she might give you all my Thibetan mystic name, and — I answered our friend's letter. Then came yours — as unexpectedly. You did not even know my name! But your first letter was so sincere, its spirit so promising, the possibilities it opened for doing general good seemed so great, that if, I did not shout Eureka after reading it, and thrown my Diogenes' lantern into the bushes at once, it was only because I knew too well human and — you must excuse me — Western nature. Unable, nevertheless, to undervalue the importance of this letter I carried it to our venerable Chief. All I could obtain from Him, though, was the permission to temporarily correspond, and let you speak your whole mind, before giving any definite promise. We are not gods, and even they, our chiefs — they hope. Human nature is unfathomable, and yours is perhaps, more intensely so than any other man I know of. Your last favour was certainly if not quite a world of revelation, at least, a very profitable addition to my store of observation of the Western character, especially that of the modern, highly intellectual Anglo-Saxon. But it would be a revelation, indeed, to Mad. B. who did not see it, (and for various reasons had better not) for it might knock off much of her presumption and faith in her own powers of observation. It might prove to her among other things that she was as much mistaken in relation to Mr. Sinnett's attitude in this matter as your own; and that I, who had never had the privilege of your personal acquaintance as she had, knew you far better than she did. I had positively foretold to her your letter. Rather than have no Society at all, she was willing to have it upon any terms at first, and then take her chances afterwards. I had warned her that you were not a man to submit to any conditions but your own; or even take one step towards the foundation of an organization — however noble and great — unless you received first such proofs as we generally give but to those, who by a trial of years have proved themselves thoroughly trustworthy. She rebelled against the notion and assured that were I but to give you one unimpeachable test of occult powers you would be satisfied, whereas Mr. Sinnett never would. And now, that both of you have had such proofs what are the results? While Mr. Sinnett believes — and will never repent of it, you have allowed your mind to become gradually filled with odious doubts and most insulting suspicions. If you will kindly remember my first short note from Jhelum you will see to what I then referred in saying that you would find your mind poisoned. You misunderstood me then as you have ever since; for in it, I did not refer to C. Olcott's letter in the Bombay Gazette but to your own state of mind. Was I wrong? You not only doubt the "broach phenomenon" — you positively disbelieve it. You say to Mad. B. — that she may be one of those who believe that bad means are justified by good ends and — instead of crushing her with all the scorn such an action is sure to awaken in a man of your high principles — you assure her of your unalterable friendship. Even your letter to me is full of the same suspicious spirit, and that which you would never forgive in yourself — the crime of deception — you try to make yourself believe you can forgive in another person. My dear Sir, these are strange contradictions! Having favoured me with such a series of priceless moral reflexions, advice, and truly noble sentiments, you may perhaps, allow me in my turn, to give you the ideas of an humble apostle of Truth, an obscure Hindu, upon that point. As man is a creature born with a free will and endowed with reason, whence spring all his notions of right and wrong, he does not per se represent any definite moral ideal. The conception of morality in general relates first of all to the object or motive, and only then to the means or modes of action. Hence, if we do not and would never call a moral man him, who following the rule of a famous religious schemer uses bad means for a good object, how much less would we call him moral who uses seemingly good and noble means to achieve a decidedly wicked or contemptible object? And according to your logic, and once that you confess to such suspicions, Mad. B. would have to be placed in the first of these categories, and I in the second. For, while giving her to a certain extent the benefit of the doubt, with myself you use no such superfluous precautions and, you accuse me unequivocally of setting up a system of deceit. The argument used in my letter, in regard to "the approbation of the Home Government" you term as "such very low motives"; and you add to it the following crushing and direct accusation: "You do not want this Branch (the Anglo-Indian) for work. . . . You merely want it as a lure to your native brethren. You know it will be a sham, but it will look sufficiently like the real thing," etc., etc. This is a direct and positive accusation. I am shown guilty of the pursuit of a wicked, mean object through low and contemptible means, i.e., false pretences. . . .

In penning these accusations did you stop to think, that as the projected organization had something grander, nobler and far more important in view than the mere gratification of the desires of one solitary person — however worthy — namely in case of success to promote the security and welfare of a whole conquered nation — it is just barely possible that that which to your individual pride may appear a "low motive" is after all but the anxious search for means which would be the salvation of a whole country ever distrusted and suspected, the protection by the conqueror of the conquered! You pride yourself upon not being a "patriot" — I do not; for, in learning to love one's country one but learns to love humanity the more. The lack of that you term "low motives" in 1857 caused my country-men to be blown by yours from the mouths of their guns. Why then should I not fancy that a real philanthropist would regard the aspiration for a better understanding between the Govt. and people of India as a most commendable instead of an ignoble one? "A fig" say you "for the knowledge and the philosophy on which it is based," if — "it would not be of any good to mankind," would not "enable me to be more useful to my generation," etc. etc. But when you are offered the means of doing such good you turn away in scorn and taunt us with a "lure" and a "sham"! Truly wonderful are the contradictions contained in your remarkable letter. . . . And then, you laugh so heartily at the idea of a "reward" or the approval "of your fellow-creatures." The reward to which I shall look will be," you say — "in earning my own self-approval." "Self-approval" which cares so little for the corroborative verdict of the better part of the world at large, to which the good and noble deeds of one serve as high ideals and the most powerful stimulants to emulation, is little else than proud and arrogant egotism. It is HIMSELF against all criticsm; "apres moi — le deluge"! — exclaims the Frenchman with his usual flippancy. "Before Jehovah was, I AM"! says Man — the ideal of every modern intellectual Englishman. Gratified as I feel at the idea of being the means of affording you so much merriment, namely in asking you to draft a general plan for the formation of the A.I. Branch, I yet am bound to say again that your laugh was premature in as much you once more misunderstood entirely my meaning. Had I asked for your help in the organization of a system for teaching the occult sciences, or a plan for a "school of magick" the instance brought by you of an ignorant boy asked to work out "an abstruse problem regarding the motion of a fluid inside another fluid" might be a happy one. As it is, your comparison falls short of the mark and the bit of irony hits no one; for my mentioning the subject related merely to the general plan and outward administration of the projected Society and not in the least to its esoteric studies; to the Branch of the Universal Brotherhood not to the "School of Magick" — the formation of the former being the sine qua non for the latter. Most assuredly in such matter as this one — the organization of an A.I. Branch, to be composed of Englishmen and meant to serve as a link between the British and the natives — (the condition being that they who want to share in the secret knowledge, the inheritance of the children of the soil, must be prepared to accord at least some privileges hitherto refused to these natives) — you English people are far more competent than we to draft a general

Again you seem to show an unfamiliarity with the Hindu mind when you say: "not one in ten thousand native minds is as well prepared to realize and assimilate transcendental truths as mine." However much you may be right in thinking that "amongst English men of Science there are not half a dozen even whose minds are more capable of receiving these rudiments (of occult knowledge) than mine" (yours) — you are mistaken as to the natives. The Hindu mind is pre-eminently open to the quick and clear perception of the most transcendental, the most abstruse metaphysical truths. Some of the most unlettered ones will seize at a glance that which would often escape the best Western metaphysician. You may be, and most assuredly are our superiors in every branch of physical knowledge; in spiritual sciences we were, are and always will be your — MASTERS.

But let me ask you, what can I, a half civilized native, — think of the charity, modesty and kindness of one belonging to a superior race; one, whom I know as a noble minded, just, and kind hearted man in most circumstances, of his life, when, with all ill-disguised scorn he exclaims: "if you want men to rush on blind­fold, heedless of ulterior results (1) — stick to your Olcotts — if you want men of a HIGHER CLASS, whose brains are to work effectually in your cause, remember . . ." etc. My dear Sir, we neither want men to rush on blind-fold, nor are we prepared to abandon tried friends — who rather pass for fools, than reveal what they may have learnt under a solemn pledge of never revealing it unless permitted — even for the chance of getting men of the very highest class, — nor are we especially anxious to have anyone work for us except with entire spontaneity. We want true and unselfish hearts; fearless and confiding souls, and are quite willing to leave the men of the "higher class" and far higher intellects to grope their own way to the light. Such will only look upon us as subordinates.

I believe that these few quotations from your letter and the frank answers they have called forth, are sufficient to show how far we are from anything like an entente cordiale. You show a spirit of fierce combativeness and a desire — pardon me — to fight shadows evoked by your own imagination. I had the honour of receiving three long letters from you even before I had barely time to answer in general terms your first one. I had never positively refused to comply with your wishes, never had answered as yet one single question of yours. How did you know what Future held in store for you, had you but waited one week? You invite me to a conference only, as it would seem, that you may show me the defects and weaknesses in our modes of action, and the causes for our supposed failure to convert humanity from their evil ways. And in your letter you show plainly that you are the beginning, the middle and the end of the law to yourself. Then why trouble yourself to write to me at all? Even that, which you call a "Parthian arrow" was never meant as such. It is not I, who, unable to get the absolute will depreciate or undervalue the relative good. Your "little birds" have, no doubt, since you so believe, done much good in their way and I certainly never dreamt of giving offence by my remark that the human race and its welfare, were at least as noble a study, and the latter as desirable an occupation as ornithology. But, I am not quite sure that your parting remark as to our not being invulnerable as a body is quite free of that spirit which animated the retreating Parthians. Be it as it may, we are content to live as we do — unknown and undisturbed by a civilization which rests so exclusively upon intellect. Nor do we feel in any way concerned about the revival of our ancient arts and high civilization, for these are as sure to come back in their time, and in a higher form as the Plesiosaurus and the Megatherium in theirs. We have the weakness to believe in ever recurrent cycles and hope to quicken the resurrection of what is past and gone. We could not impede it even if we would. The "new civilization" will be but the child of the old one, and we have but to leave the eternal law to take its own course to have our dead ones come out of their graves; yet, we are certainly anxious to hasten the welcome event. Fear not; although we do "cling superstitiously to the relics of the Past" our knowledge will not pass away from the sight of man. It is the "gift of the gods" and the most precious relic of all. The keepers of the sacred Light did not safely cross so many ages but to find themselves wrecked on the rocks of modern scepticism. Our pilots are too experienced sailors to allow us [to] fear any such disaster. We will always find volunteers to replace the tired sentries, and the world, bad as it is in its present state of transitory period, can yet furnish us with a few men now and then. You "do not propose moving further in the matter" unless we make "some further sign"? My dear sir, we have done our duty: we have responded to your appeal, and now propose to take no further step. We, who have studied a little Kant's moral teachings, analyzed them somewhat carefully, have come to the conclusion that even this great thinker's views on that form of duty (das Sollen) which defines the methods of moral action — notwithstanding his one-sided affirmation to the contrary — falls short of a full definition of an unconditional absolute principle of morality — as we understand it. And this Kantian note sounds throughout your letter. You so love mankind, you say, that were not your generation to benefit by it, you would reject "Knowledge" itself. And yet, this philanthropic feeling does not even seem to inspire you with charity towards those you regard as of an inferior intelligence. Why? Simply because the philanthropy you Western thinkers boast of, having no character of universality; i.e. never having been established on the firm footing of a moral, universal principle; never having risen higher than theoretical talk; and that chiefly among the ubiquitous Protestant preachers, it is but a mere accidental manifestation but no recognised LAW. The most superficial analysis will show, that, no more than any other empirical phenomenon in human nature, can it be taken as an absolute standard of moral activity; i.e. one productive of efficient action. Since, in its empirical nature this kind of philanthropy is like love, but something accidental, exceptional, and like that has its selfish preferences and affinities; it necessarily is unable to warm all mankind with its beneficent rays. This, I think is, the secret of the spiritual failure and unconscious egotism of this age. And you, otherwise a good and a wise man, being unconsciously to yourself the type of its spirit, are unable to understand our ideas upon the Society as a Universal Brotherhood, and hence — turn away your face from it.

Your conscience revolts you say to be made "a stalking horse; the puppet of a score or more of hidden wire­pullers." What do you know of us since you cannot see us; what do you know of our aims and objects; of us, of whom you cannot judge? . . . you ask. Strange arguments. And do you really suppose you would "know" us, or penetrate any better our "aims and objects" were you to see me personally? I am afraid, that with no past experience of this kind, even your natural powers of observation — however acute — would have to be confessed more than useless. Why, my dear Sir, even our Baharoopias can prove a match any day for the acutest political Resident; and never yet one was detected or even recognised; and their mesmeric powers are not of the highest order. However suspicious you might ever feel about the details of the "brooch" there is one prime feature in the case which your astuteness has already told you can only be accounted for on the theory of a stronger will influencing Mrs. Hume to think after that particular object and no other. And if Mad. B., a sickly woman, must be credited with such powers, are you quite sure that you yourself would not also be made to succumb to a trained will, ten times stronger than hers? I could come to you to-morrow, and installing myself in your house — as invited — get an entire domination over your whole mind and body in 24 hours, and you never aware of it for one moment. I may be a good man, but so I may, for all you know, as easily be a wicked, plotting schemer, hating profoundly your white race which subjugated and daily humiliates mine, and — take revenge on you — one of the best representatives of that race. If the power of exoteric mesmerism alone were employed — a power acquired with equal ease by the bad as by the good man — even then you could hardly escape the snares laid out for you, were the man you invited but a good mesmeriser, for — you are a remarkably easy subject — from the physical stand-point. "But my conscience my intuition!" you may argue. Poor help in such a case as mine. Your intuition would make you feel but that which really was — for the time being; and as to your conscience — you then accept Kant's definition of it? You, perhaps, believe with him that under all circumstances, and even with the full absence of definite religious notions, and occasionally even with no firm notions about right and wrong at all, MAN has ever a sure guide in his own inner moral perceptions or — conscience? The greatest of mistakes! With all the formidable importance of this moral factor, it has one radical defect. Conscience as it was already remarked may be well compared to that demon, whose dictates were so zealously listened to and so promptly obeyed by Socrates. Like that demon, conscience, may perchance, tell us what we must not do; yet, it never guides us as to what we ought to perform, nor gives any definite object to our activity. And — nothing can be more easily lulled to sleep and even completely paralyzed, as this same conscience by a trained will stronger than that of its possessor. Your conscience will NEVER show you whether the mesmeriser is a true adept or a very clever juggler, if he once has passed your threshold and got control of the aura surrounding your person. You speak of abstaining from any but an innocent work like bird-collecting, lest there be danger of creating another Frankenstein's monster. . . . Imagination as well as will — creates. Suspicion is the most powerful provocative agent of imagination. . . . Beware! You have already begotten in you the germ of a future hideous monster, and instead of the realization of your purest and highest ideals you may one day evoke a phantom, which, barring every passage of light will leave you in worse darkness than before, and, will harass you to the end of your days.

Again expressing the hope that my candour may not give offence, I am, dear Sir, as ever,

Your most obedient Servant, Koot' Hoomi Lal Sing

A. O. Hume, Esq.

Letter 29 Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. I never said — I did! (return to text)

Letter No. 29

In answer to yours I will have to reply by a rather lengthy letter. To begin with I can say the following: Mr. Hume thinks and speaks of me in a way which need only be noticed so far as it affects the frame of mind in which he proposes to apply to me for philosophical instruction. For his respect I care as little as he for my displeasure. But passing over his superficial disagreeableness I recognize fully his goodness of motive, his abilities, his potential usefulness. We had better get to work again without further parley, and while he perseveres, he will find me ready to help — but not to flatter, nor to dispute.

So utterly has he misunderstood the spirit in which both the Memo and P.S. were written, that had he not placed me during the three last days under a debt of profound gratitude for what he is doing for my poor old chela, I would have never gone to the trouble of doing what might seem as an excuse, or an explanation, or both. However that may be, that debt of gratitude is so sacred, that I now do for her sake, what I might have refused doing even for the Society: I crave the Sahibs' permission to acquaint them with some facts. With our Indo-Tibetan ways the most sagacious English official is not yet acquainted. The information now offered may be found useful in our future transactions. I will have to be sincere and out-spoken and Mr. Hume will have to excuse me. If I once am forced to speak I must say ALL, or say — nothing.

I am not a fine scholar, Sahibs, like my blessed Brother; but nevertheless, I believe, I understand the value of words. And if I do, then am I at a loss to understand, what in my P.S. could have so provoked the ironical displeasure against me of Mr. Hume? We of the Indo-Tibetan hovels never quarrel (this in answer to some expressed thoughts in relation to the subject). Quarrels and even discussions we leave to those, who unable to take in a situation at a glance are thereby forced before making up their final decision to anything to analyse and weigh one by one, and over and over again every detail. Whenever we — at least those of us who are dikshita — seem, therefore to an European not "quite sure of our facts" it may be often due to the following peculiarity. That which is regarded by most men as a "fact" to us may seem but a simple RESULT, an after thought unworthy of our attention, generally attracted but to primary facts. Life, esteemed Sahibs, when even indefinitely prolonged, is too short to burden our brains with flitting details — mere shadows. When watching the progress of a storm we fix our gaze upon the producing Cause and leave the clouds to the whims of the breaze which shapes them. Having always the means on hand — whenever absolutely needed — of bringing to our knowledge minor details we concern ourselves but with the main facts. Hence we can hardly be absolutely wrong — as we are often accused by you, for our conclusions are never drawn from secondary data but from the situation as a whole.

On the other hand, the average man — even among the most intellectual — giving all their attention to the testimony of appearance and outward form, and disabled as they are from penetrating a priori to the core of things are but too apt to misjudge of the whole situation left to find out their mistake but when too late. Owing to complicated politics, to debates and what you term, if I mistake not, — social talk and drawing-room controversies and discussions, sophistry has now become in Europe (hence among the Anglo-Indians) "the logical exercise of the intellectual faculties," while with us it has never outgrown its pristine stage of "fallacious reasoning," the shaky, insecure premises from which most of the conclusions and opinions are drawn, formed and forthwith jumped at. Again, we ignorant Asiatics of Tibet, accustomed to rather follow the thought of our interlocutor or correspondent than the words he clothes it in — concern ourselves generally but little with the accuracy of his expressions. Now this preface will seem as unintelligible as useless to you, and you may well ask: what is he driving at. Patience, pray, for I have something more to say before our final explanation.

A few days before leaving us, Koot'hoomi speaking of you said to me as follows: "I feel tired and weary of these never ending disputations. The more I try to explain to both of them the circumstances that control us and that interpose between us so many obstacles to free intercourse, the less they understand me! Under the most favourable aspects this correspondence must always be unsatisfactory, even exasperatingly so, at times; for nothing short of personal interviews, at which there could be discussion and the instant solution of intellectual difficulties as they arise, would satisfy them fully. It is as though we were hallooing to each other across an impassable ravine and only one of us seeing his interlocutor. In point of fact, there is nowhere in physical nature a mountain abyss so hopelessly impassable and obstructive to the traveller as that spiritual one, which keeps them back from me."

Two days later when his "retreat" was decided upon in parting he asked me: "Will you watch over my work, will you see it falls not into ruins?" I promised. What is there I would not have promised him at that hour! At a certain spot not to be mentioned to outsiders, there is a chasm spanned by a frail bridge of woven grasses and with a raging torrent beneath. The bravest member of your Alpine clubs would scarcely dare to venture the passage, for it hangs like a spider's web and seems to be rotten and impassable. Yet it is not; and he who dares the trial and succeeds — as he will if it is right that he should be permitted — comes into a gorge of surpassing beauty of scenery — to one of our places and to some of our people, of which and whom there is no note or minute among European geographers. At a stone's throw from the old Lamasery stands the old tower, within whose bosom have gestated generations of Bodhisatwas. It is there, where now rests your lifeless friend — my brother, the light of my soul, to whom I made a faithful promise to watch during his absence over his work. And is it likely, I ask you, that but two days after his retirement I, his faithful friend and brother would have gratuitously shown disrespect to his European friends? What reason was there, and what could have caused such an idea in Mr. Hume's and even in your mind? Why a word or two entirely misunderstood and misapplied by him. I'll prove it.

Don't you think that had the expression used "coming to hate the sut-phana" been changed into and made to read "coming to feel again flashes of dislike" or of temporary irritation this sentence alone would have wonderfully changed the results? Had it been so phrased Mr. Hume would hardly have found an opportunity for denying the fact as vigorously as he did. For there he is right and the WORD is wrong. It is a perfectly correct statement when saying that such a feeling as hatred has never existed in him. Whether he will be as able to protest against the statement in general remains to be seen. He confessed to the fact that he was "irritated," and to a "feeling of distrust" created by H.P.B. That "irritation", as he will no longer deny, lasted for several days? Where does he then find the misstatement? Let us moreover admit, that the word to use was an incorrect one. Then, since he is so particular in the choice of words, so desirous that they should always convey the correct meaning, why not apply the same rule of action to himself? What might be well excused in an Asiatic ignorant of English and one, moreover, who never was in the habit of choosing his expressions, for reasons given above, and because among his people he cannot be misunderstood ought to — become inexcusable in an educated, highly literary Englishman. In his letter to Olcott he writes: "He (I) or she (H.P.B.), or both between them, so muddled and misunderstood a letter written by Sinnett and myself as to lead to our receiving a message wholly inapplicable to the circumstances and such as necessarily to create distrust." Humbly soliciting permission to put a question — when did either I, or she or both of us, see, read and hence "muddled and misunderstood" the letter in question? How could she, or I, have muddled that, which she had never seen, and I, having neither inclination nor right to look into and mix myself in an affair concerning but the Chohan and K.H. — never paid the slightest attention to? Did she inform you on the day in question, that it was in consequence of that letter of yours that I had sent her into Mr. Sinnett's room with the message? I was there respected Sahibs, and can repeat to you every word she said: "What is it?. . . What have you been doing, or saying to K.H." — she shouted in her usual excited nervous way to Mr. Sinnett who was alone in the room — "that M., (naming me) that he should be so angry — should tell me to prepare to go and settle our headquarters at Ceylon?" were the first words she said, thus showing that she knew nothing certain, was told still less, and simply surmised from what I had told her. And what I had told her, was simply that she had better prepare for the worse and depart to settle in Ceylon than make a fool of herself, trembling so over every letter given to her to forward to K.H.; that unless she learned to control herself better than she did, I would put a stop to that dak business. These words were said by me to her not because I had anything to do with your or any letter, nor in consequence of any letter sent, but because I happened to see the aura all around the new Eclectic and herself, black and pregnant with future mischief, and I sent her to say so to Mr. Sinnett not to Mr. Hume. My remark and message upsetting her (owing to that unfortunate disposition and shattered nerves) in the most ridiculous way, the well known scene ensued. Is it because of the phantoms of theosophical ruin evoked by her unbalanced brain that she is now accused — in my company — to have muddled and misunderstood a letter she had never seen? Whether there is in Mr. Hume's statement one single word that might be called correct — the term "correct" being now applied by me to the actual meaning of the whole sentence, not merely to isolated words — I leave to the judgment of minds superior to those of Asiatics. And if I am permitted to question the correctness of opinion in one, so vastly superior to myself in education, intelligence and acuteness in the perception of the eternal fitness of things — in view of the above explanation, why should I be held as "absolutely wrong" for the following statement: "I have also seen the growing up of a sudden dislike (say irritation) begotten of distrust (Mr. Hume confessing to, and using the identical expression in his answer to Olcott — please compare quotation from his letter as given above) on the day I sent her with a message to Mr. Sinnett's room." Is this incorrect? And further: "they know how excitable and ill balanced she is, and this hostile feeling on his part was almost cruel. For days he barely looked at her let alone speaking to her — and inflicted upon her supersensitive nature severe and unnecessary pain! And when told of it by Mr. Sinnett he denied the fact! . . ." This last sentence, continued on page 7 with many other like truths, I tore out with the rest (as upon enquiry you can ascertain from Olcott, who will tell you that originally there were 12 pages, not 10, and that he had sent the letter with far more details than you now find in it, for he is unaware of what I have done, and why it was done. Unwilling to remind Mr. Hume of details long forgotten by him and irrelevant to the case in hand, I tore out the page and obliterated much of the rest. His feelings had already changed and I was satisfied.)

Now the question is not whether Mr. Hume "cares a twopence" if his feelings are pleasing to me or not, but rather whether he was warranted by facts to write to Olcott as he did, i.e., that I had entirely misunderstood his real feelings. I say he was not. He can no more prevent me from being "displeased," than I can go to the trouble of making him feel otherwise than what he now feels, namely, that he does "not care a twopence whether his feelings are pleasing to me or not." All this is childishness; and he who is desirous to learn how to benefit humanity, and believes himself able to read the characters of other people, must begin first of all, to learn to know himself, to appreciate his own character at its true value. And this, I venture to say, he has never learned yet. And he has also to learn in what particular cases results may in their turn become important and primary causes, when the result becomes a Kyen. Had he hated her with the most bitter hatred, he could not have tortured her foolishly sensitive nerves more effectually than he has, while "still loving the dear old woman." He has done so with those he loved best, and, unconsciously to himself, he will do so more than once in the hereafter; and yet his first impulse will be always to deny it, for he is indeed fully unconscious of the fact, the extreme kindness of his heart, being in such cases entirely blinded and paralyzed by another feeling, which, if told of, he will also deny. Undismayed by his epithets of "goose" and "Don Quichote," true to my promise to my Blessed Brother, I will tell him of it whether he likes it or not; for now that he has openly given expression to his feelings, we have either to understand each other or break off. This is "no half veiled threat" as he expresses it for "a threat in a man is like the bark in a dog" — it means nothing. I say, that unless he understands how utterly inapplicable to us is the standard according to which he is accustomed to judge Western people of his own society, it would simply be a loss of time for me or K.H. to teach and for him to learn. We never regard a friendly warning as a "threat," nor do we feel irritated when it is offered to us. He says that personally he does not care in the least, "were the Brothers to break with him to-morrow," the more reason then that we should come to an understanding. Mr. Hume prides himself in the thought that he never had "a spirit of veneration" for anything but his own abstract ideals. We are perfectly aware of it. Nor could he possibly have any veneration for anyone or anything, as all the veneration his nature is capable of is concentrated upon himself. This is a fact and the cause of all his life-troubles. When his numerous official "friends" and his own family say that it is conceit — they misstate and say a very foolish thing. He is too highly intellectual to be conceited: he is simply and unconsciously to himself the embodiment of pride. He would have no veneration for even his God, were not that God — of his own creation and making; and that is why he could neither be made amenable to any established doctrine, nor would he ever submit to a philosophy that did not come all armed, like the Grecian Saraswati or Minerva, out of his own — her father's  brain. This may throw light upon the fact why I refused giving him during the short period of my instruction — anything but half problems, hints and puzzles to solve for himself. For only then would he believe, when his own extraordinary capacity for grasping at the nature of things, would clearly show him that it must be so, since it dovetails with what HE conceives to be mathematically correct. If he accused — and so unjustly! — K.H. whom he really affections — of feeling "huffish" at his lack of reverence for him — it is because he built his ideal of my brother in his own image — Mr. Hume accuses us of treating him de haut en bas! If he but knew that in our sight an honest boot-black was as good as an honest king, and an immoral sweeper far higher and more excusable than an immoral Emperor — he would have never uttered such a fallacy. Mr. Hume complains (thousand pardons — "laughs" is the correct term) that we show a desire of sitting upon him. I venture to suggest most respectfully that it is absolutely vice versa. It is Mr. Hume who (again unconsciously and yielding but to a life-long habit) tried that most uncomfortable posture with my brother in every letter he wrote to Koothoomi. And when certain expressions denoting a fierce spirit of self­approbation and confidence which reached the apex of human pride, were noticed and mildly contradicted by my brother, Mr. Hume forthwith gave them another meaning and accusing K.H. of having misunderstood them, called him to himself puffed up and "huffish." Do I accuse him then, of unfairness, injustice or worse? Most decidedly not. A more honest, sincere or a kinder man never breathed on the Himalayas. I know actions of his of which his own family and lady are utterly ignorant of — so noble, so kind and grand, that even his own pride remains blind to their full worth. So that anything he might do or say, is unable to diminish my respect for him; but with all this, I am forced to tell him the truth; and while that side of his character has all my admiration, his pride will never win my approbation, — for which once more, Mr. Hume will not care one twopence, but that matters very little, indeed. The most sincere and outspoken man in India, Mr. Hume is unable to tolerate a contradiction; and, be that person Dev or mortal, he cannot appreciate or even permit without protest the same qualities of sincerity in any other than himself. Nor can he be brought to confess that anyone in this world can know better than himself anything that HE has studied and formed his opinion thereupon. "They will not set about the joint work in what seems to ME the best way," he complains of us in his letter to Olcott, and that sentence alone gives to us the key to his whole character; it gives us the clearest insight into the working of his inner feelings. Having a right — he thinks — to regard himself as slighted and wronged, in consequence of such an "ungenerous," "selfish" refusal to work under his guidance, he cannot help thinking himself at the bottom of his heart, as a most forgiving, generous man, who, instead of resenting our refusal is nevertheless "willing to go on in their (our) way." And this irreverence of ours for his opinions cannot be pleasing to him; and thus the feeling of this great wrong we do him rises, and becomes proportional to the magnitude of our "selfishness" and "huffishness." Hence his disenchantment, and the sincere pain he feels at finding the Lodge and all of us so much below the mark of his ideal. He laughs, for my defending H.P.B.; and giving way to a feeling unworthy of his nature, very unfortunately forgets that his is just the disposition to warrant friends and foes at calling him "protector of the poor" and like names, and that his enemies among others, never fail to apply such epithets to himself; and yet, far from falling upon him as an insult, that chivalrous feeling which has ever prompted him to take the defence of the weak and the oppressed and to redress the wrongs done by his colleagues — as in the last instance of the Simla municipality row — it covers him with a garment of undying glory spun out of the gratitude and affection for him of the people he so fearlessly defends. Both of you labour under the strange impression that we can, and even do care for anything that may be said or thought of us. Disabuse your minds, and remember that the first requisite in even a simple fakir, is that he should have trained himself to remain as indifferent to moral pain as to physical suffering. Nothing can give us personal pain or pleasure. And what I now say is, rather to bring you to understand us than yourselves which is the most difficult science to learn. That Mr. Hume's intention — prompted by a feeling as transient as it was hasty, and due to a sense of growing irritation against me whom he accused of a desire "to sit upon him" — was to revenge himself by an ironical, hence (to the European mind) an insulting fling at me — is as certain as that he missed the mark. Ignorant, or rather forgetful of the fact that we Asiatics, are utterly devoid of that sense of the ridiculous which prompts the Western mind to caricature the best, the noblest aspirations of mankind — could I yet feel offended or flattered by the world's opinion I would have felt rather complimented than otherwise. My Rajput blood will never permit me to see a woman hurt in her feelings — though she be a "visionary," and the now called "imaginary" wrong but another of her "fancies" — without defending her; and Mr. Hume knows enough of our traditions and customs to be sufficiently aware of that remnant of chivalrous feeling for our women in our otherwise degenerated race. Therefore do I say, that whether hoping that the satirical epithets would reach and hurt me, or aware of the fact that he was apostrophizeing a granite pillar — the feeling that prompted him was unworthy of his nobler and better nature, as in the first case it was to be regarded as a petty feeling of revenge, and in the second as childishness. Then in his letter to O. he complains of or denounces (you must forgive the limited number of English words I have at my command) the attitude of "half threat" to break with you that he imagines he finds in our letters. Nothing could be more erroneous. We have no more the intention of breaking with him, than an orthodox Hindu has of leaving the house he is visiting until told that his company is no more wanted. But when the latter is hinted to him he leaves. So with us. Mr. Hume quite prides himself at repeating that personally he has no desire to see us, no curiosity to meet us; that our philosophy and teaching cannot benefit him in the least, him who has learnt and knows all that can be learnt; that he cares not a snap whether we break with him or not, nor is he in the least concerned whether we are pleased with him or not. Qui bono then? Between the (by him) imagined reverence we expect from him, and that uncalled for combativeness, which may degenerate at any day with him, into unexpressed yet real hostility, there is an abyss and no middle ground that even the Chohan can see. Though he cannot now be accused of not making, as in the past, any allowance for circumstances and our own peculiar rules and laws, yet he is always hurrying towards that black borderland of amity, where trust is obscured and dark suspicions and erroneous impressions cloud the whole horizon. I, am as I was; and, as I was and am, so am I likely always to be — the slave of my duty to the Lodge and mankind, not only taught, but desirous to subordinate every preference for individuals to a love for the human race. It is gratuitous, therefore, to accuse me or any one of us of selfishness, and desire to regard or treat you as "paltry Pelingis" and to "ride donkeys," only because we are unable to find convenient horses. Neither the Chohan, nor K.H., nor myself ever under valued Mr. Hume's worth. He has done invaluable service to the Th. Soc. and to H.P.B. and is alone capable of making the Society an efficient agent for good. When the spiritual soul is left to guide him, no purer, no better, nor kinder man can be found. But, when his fifth principle rises in irrepressible pride, we will always confront and challenge it. Unmoved by his excellent worldly counsel as to how you should be armed with proofs of our reality, or how you should set about the joint work in the way that seems the best to HIM, I will remain so unmoved, till I receive contrary orders. Referring to your last letter (Mr. Sinnett's) clothe your ideas as you may, in the pleasantest of phrases, you are nevertheless surprised and as regards Mr. Sinnett disappointed, that I should neither accord permission for phenomena nor yet any of us make one step towards you. I cannot help it, and whatever the consequences there will be no change in my attitude until my Brother's return among the living. You know both of us love our country and our race; that we regard the Theos. Society as a great potentiality for their good in proper hands; that he has joyfully welcomed Mr. Hume's identification with the cause and that I have placed a high — but only a proper — value upon it. And so you ought to realize that whatever we could do to bind you and him closer to us we would do with all our heart. But still if the choice lies between our disobeying the lightest injunction of our Chohan as to when we may see either of you, or what we may write, or how, or where, and the loss of your good opinion, even the feeling of your strong animosity and the disruption of the Society, we should not hesitate a single instant. It may be considered unreasonable, selfish, huffish and ridiculous, denounced as jesuitical and the blame all lain at our door, but law is LAW with us, and no power can make us abate one jot or tittle of our duty. We have given you a chance to obtain all you desired by improving your magnetism, by pointing you to a nobler ideal to work up to and Mr. Hume has been shown what he already knew how he may benefit immensely some millions of his fellow men. Choose according to your best light. Your choice is made I know — but Mr. Hume may yet change his ideas more than once; I shall be the same to my group and promise whatever he may determine. Nor, do we fail to appreciate the great concessions made already by him; concessions the more great in our sight, as he becomes less interested in our existence, and makes a violence to his feelings solely in the hope of benefitting humanity. No one in his place would have accommodated himself to his situation with such a good grace as he has, or stood more strictly upon the declaration "of primary objects" at the meeting of 21st Aug.; while "proving to the native community that members of the ruling class" also are desirous of promoting the commendable projects of the T.S., he bides his time, for even the obtaining of our metaphysical truths. He has already done an immense good and has yet received nothing in return. Nor does he expect anything. Reminding you that the present is an answer to all your letters, and to all your objections and suggestions, I may add that you are right and that in spite of all "your earthiness" my blessed Brother certainly entertains a real regard for you, and Mr. Hume, who I am happy to find has some good feeling for him, though he is not like you and really is "too proud to look for his reward in our protection." Only where you are and will be ever wrong, my dear sir, it is in entertaining the idea that phenomena can ever become "a powerful engine" to shake the foundations of erroneous beliefs in the Western mind. None but those who see for themselves will ever believe do what you may. "Satisfy us and then we will satisfy the world," you once said. You were satisfied and what are the results? And I wish I could impress upon your minds the deep conviction that we do not wish Mr. Hume or you to prove conclusively to the public that we really exist. Please realize the fact that so long as men doubt there will be curiosity and enquiry, and that enquiry stimulates reflection which begets effort; but let our secret be once thoroughly vulgarized and not only will sceptical society derive no great good but our privacy would be constantly endangered and have to be continually guarded at an unreasonable cost of power. Have patience, friend of my friend. It took Mr. Hume years to kill enough birds to make up his book; and he did not command them to leave their leafy retreats, but had to wait for them to come and let him stuff and label them: so must you be patient with us. Ah, Sahibs, Sahibs! if you could only catalogue and label us and set us up in the British Museum, then indeed might your world have the absolute, the dessicated truth.

And so it all comes around again as usual to the starting point. You have been chasing us around your own shadows, just catching a vanishing glimpse of us now and again, but never coming near enough to escape the gaunt skeleton of suspicion that is at your heel and stares you in the future. So I fear may be to the end of the chapter, as you not have the patience to read the volume to its end. For you are trying to penetrate the things

And now for a few parting words of explanation. O's memo, which produced such disastrous results and a most unique qui proquo, was written on the 27th. On the night of the 25th, my beloved Brother told me, that having heard Mr. Hume say in H.P.B.'s room that he had never himself heard O. state to him that, he, O., had personally seen us, and also had heard add, that were Olcott to tell him so, he had confidence enough in the man to believe in what he said, — he, K.H. thought of asking me to go and tell O. to do so; believing it might please Mr. Hume to learn some of the details. K.H. wishes are — law to me. And that is why Mr. Hume received that letter from O., at a time when his doubts were already settled. At the same time as I delivered my message to O., I satisfied his curiosity as to your Society and told what I thought of it. O. asked my permission to send to you these notes which I accorded. Now, that is the whole secret. For reasons of my own I desired you should know what I thought of the situation, a few hours after my beloved Brother, went out of this world. When the letter reached you my feelings were somewhat changed and I altered, as said before, the memo a good deal. As O's style had made me laugh, I added my postcriptum which related solely to Olcott, but was nevertheless applied wholly by Mr. Hume to himself!

Let us drop it. I close the longest letter I have ever written in my life; but as I do it for K.H. — I am satisfied. Though Mr. Hume may not think it, the "mark of the adept" is kept at -— —— not at Simla, and I try to keep up to it, however poor I may be as a writer and a correspondent.

M.

Letter 30 Table of Contents

Letter No. 30

[The portion of A. O. Hume's letter quoted by K.H. pp. 229-30, is a facsimile precipitation of

A.O.H.'s own writing, and the passages in italics in it have been underlined by K.H. — ED.]

Private.

My dear Brother.

Perhaps, a week ago, I would have hardly failed to embrace this available opportunity and say that your letter concerning Mr. Fern is as complete a misrepresentation of the spirit, and above all, of the attitude of M. towards the said young gentleman, as your complete ignorance of the aim he is pursuing could produce — and I would have said no more. But now, things have changed; and though you have "come to know that we" did not really possess the power of reading minds as had been pretended, nevertheless, we know enough of the spirit in which my last letters were received, and of the dissatisfaction produced, — to suspect, if not to know that unwelcome as truth may often come, yet the time has arrived for me to speak frankly and openly with you. Lying is a refuge to the weak, and we are sufficiently strong, even with all the shortcomings you are pleased to discover in us, to dread truth very little; nor are we likely to lie, only because it is to our interest to appear wise concerning matters of which we are ignorant. Thus, perchance it might have been more prudent to remark that you knew that we did not really possess the power of reading minds, unless we brought ourselves thoroughly en rapport with, and concentrated an undivided attention on, the person whose thoughts we wanted to know — since that would be an undeniable fact, instead of a gratuitous assumption as it now stands in your letter. However it may be, I now find but two ways before us, with not the smallest path for compromise. Henceforth, if your desire is that we should work together, we must do so on a footing of perfect understanding. You will be at perfect liberty to tell us — since you seem, or rather have brought yourself to sincerely believe it — that most of us, owing to the mystery that enshrouds us, live by getting credit for knowing what we really do not know; while I, for instance, will be as entitled as you are, to let you know what I may think of you, yourself meanwhile promising, that you will not laugh at it outwardly, and bear a grudge for it inwardly (something that notwithstanding your efforts you can rarely help) but that, in case I am mistaken you will prove it by some demonstration weightier than a mere denial. Unless you bind yourself by such a promise, it is utterly useless for any of us to be losing our time in controversies and correspondences. Better shake hands astrally, across space, and wait until either you have acquired the gift of discerning truth from falsehood to a greater degree than you now have it; or, that we are shown to be no better than impostors (or still worse — lying spooks); or finally, that some one of us is in a position to demonstrate our existence to yourself or Mr. Sinnett — not astrally, for that might only strengthen the "Spirit" theory but — by visiting you personally.

Since it becomes quite hopeless to convince you that even we occasionally, do read other people's thoughts, may I hope that you will credit us, at least, with a sufficient knowledge of the English language not to have entirely misunderstood your very plain letter? And, to believe me, when I say, that having perfectly understood it, I answer you as plainly "as My dearest Brother, you are egregiously mistaken from first to last!" Your whole letter is based upon a misconception, an entire ignorance of "missing links," which alone may have given you a true key to the whole situation. What can you mean by the following?

My dear Master.

Amongst you you are utterly spoiling Fern — it is a thousand pities — for he is really a good fellow at heart and he has an intense desire for occult knowledge — and strong will and a great capacity for self-mortification — he would I am sure be useful for your purposes; but his self-conceit is growing intolerable and he is becoming a confirmed fabricator of fiction and this is due to you all. He has thoroughly humbugged Morya!! from the first — and he has gone persistently lying to Sinnett to keep up the delusion he has got Morya to entrust him with secrets and to accept him as a chela and he now thinks himself a match for anyone. . . .Morya replies quite falling into the trap . . . this fraud no doubt commenced in (y)our interests . . . etc. etc. etc.

It is unnecessary for me to repeat once more what I have said before; namely, that up to receiving your first letter concerning Mr. Fern, I had never given him one moment's attention. Who then, amongst us — spoils that young gentleman? Is it Morya? Well, it is easy to see, that you know still less of him, than he knows, in your conceptions, of what you have in your mind. "He has thoroughly humbugged Morya." Has he? I am sorry to be obliged to confess that, in accordance with your Western code it would look rather the reverse; that it was my beloved Brother who "humbugged" Mr. Fern — had not the ill-sounding term another meaning with us, as also another name. The latter of course, may appear to you still more "revolting," since even Mr. Sinnett, who is but the echo in that of every English Society man, regards it as thoroughly revolting to the feelings of the average Englishman. That other name is — PROBATION; something every chela who does not want to remain simply ornamental, has nolens volens to undergo for a more or less prolonged period; something that — for this very reason that it is undoubtedly based upon what you Westerns would ever view as a system of humbug or deception — that I, who knew European ideas better than Morya, have always refused to accept or even to regard any of you two as — chelas. Thus, what you have now mistaken for "humbug" as coming from Mr. Fern, you would have charged M. with it, had you only known a little more than you do of our policy; whereas the truth is, that one is utterly irresponsible for much he is now doing, and that the other is carrying out that of which he has honestly warned Mr. Fern beforehand; that, which, — if you have read, as you say, the correspondence — you must have learned from H.P.B.'s letter to Fern from Madras, that in her jealousy for M.'s favours, she wrote to him to Simla, hoping she would thereby frighten him off. A chela under probation is allowed to think and do whatever he likes. He is warned and told beforehand: you will be tempted and deceived by appearances; two paths will be open before you, both leading to the goal you are trying to attain; one easy, and that will lead you more rapidly to the fulfilment of orders you may receive; the other — more arduous, more long; a path full of stones and thorns that will make you stumble more than once on your way; and, at the end of which you may, perhaps, find failure after all and be unable to carry out the orders given for some particular small work, — but, whereas the latter will cause the hardships you have undergone on it to be all carried to the side of your credit in the long run, the former, the easy path, can offer you but a momentary gratification, an easy fulfilment of the task. The chela is at perfect liberty, and often quite justified from the standpoint of appearances — to suspect his Guru of being "a fraud" as the elegant word stands. More than that: the greater, the sincerer his indignation — whether expressed in words or boiling in his heart — the more fit he is, the better qualified to become an adept. He is free to, and will not be held to account for using the most abusive words and expressions regarding his guru's actions and orders, provided he comes out victorious from the fiery ordeal; provided he resists all and every temptation; rejects every allurement, and proves that nothing, not even the promise of that which he holds dearer than life, of that most precious boon, his future adeptship — is unable to make him deviate from the path of truth and honesty, or force him to become a deceiver. My dear Sir, we will hardly ever agree in our ideas of things, and even of the value of words. You have once upon a time called us Jesuits; and, viewing things as you do, perhaps, you were right to a certain extent in so regarding us, since apparently our systems of training do not differ much. But it is only externally. As I once said before, they know that what they teach is a lie; and we know that what we impart is truth, the only truth and nothing but the truth. They work for the greater power and glory (!) of their order; we — for the power and final glory of individuals, of isolated units, of humanity in general, and we are content, nay forced — to leave our Order and its chiefs entirely in the shade. They work, and toil, and deceive, for the sake of worldly power in this life; we work and toil, and allow our chelas to be temporarily deceived, to afford them means never to be deceived hereafter, and to see the whole evil of falsity and untruth, not alone in this but in many of their after lives. They — the Jesuits sacrifice the inner principle, the Spiritual brain of the ego, to feed and develop the better the physical brain of the personal evanescent man, sacrificing the whole humanity to offer it as a holocaust to their Society — the insatiable monster feeding on the brain and marrow of humanity, and developing an incurable cancer on every spot of healthy flesh it touches. We — the criticized and misunderstood Brothers — we seek to bring men to sacrifice their personality — a passing flash — for the welfare of the whole humanity, hence for their own immortal Egos, a part of the latter, as humanity is a fraction of the integral whole, that it will one day become. They are trained to deceive; we — to undeceive; they do the scavenger's work themselves — barring a few poor sincere tools of theirs — con amore, and for selfish ends; we — leave it to our menials — the dugpas at our service, by giving them carte blanche for the time being, and with the sole object of drawing out the whole inner nature of the chela, most of the nooks and corners of which, would remain dark and concealed for ever, were not an opportunity afforded to test each of these corners in turn. Whether the chela wins or loses the prize — depends solely of himself. Only, you have to remember that our Eastern ideas about "motives" and

"truthfulness" and "honesty" differ considerably from your ideas in the West. Both we believe that it is moral to tell the truth and immoral to lie; but here every analogy stops and our notions diverge in a very remarkable degree. For instance it would be a most difficult thing for you to tell me, how it is that your civilized Western Society, Church and State, politics and commerce have ever come to assume a virtue that it is quite impossible for either a man of education, a statesman, a trader, or anyone else living in the world — to practice in an unrestricted sense? Can any one of the above mentioned classes — the flower of England's chivalry, her proudest peers and most distinguished commoners, her most virtuous and truth speaking ladies

— can any of them speak the truth, I ask, whether at home, or in Society, during their public functions or in the family circle? What would you think of a gentleman, or a lady, whose affable politeness of manner and suavity of language would cover no falsehood; who, in meeting you would tell you plainly and abruptly what he thinks of you, or of anyone else? And where can you find that pearl of honest tradesmen or that god-fearing patriot, or politician, or a simple casual visitor of yours, but conceals his thoughts the whole while, and is obliged under the penalty of being regarded as a brute, a madman — to lie deliberately, and with a bold face, no sooner he is forced to tell you what he thinks of you; unless for a wonder his real feelings demand no concealment? All is lie, all falsehood, around and in us, my brother; and that is why you seemed so surprised, if not affected, whenever you find a person, who will tell you bluntly truth to your face; and also why it seems impossible for you to realize that a man may have no ill feelings against you, nay even like and respect you for some things, and yet tell you to your face what he honestly and sincerely thinks of you. In noticing M's opinion of yourself expressed in some of his letters — (you must not feel altogether so sure that because they are in his handwriting, they are written by him, though of course every word is sanctioned by him to serve certain ends) — you say he has "a peculiar mode of expressing himself to say the least." Now, that "way" is simply the bare truth, which he is ready to write to yourself, or even say and repeat to your face, without the least concealment or change — (unless he has purposely allowed the expressions to be exaggerated for the same purposes as mentioned above); and he is — of all the men I know just the one to do it without the least hesitation! And for this, you call him "an imperious sort of chap very angry if he is opposed," but add, that you "bear him for it no malice, and like him none the less for that." Now THIS IS NOT SO, my brother, and YOU KNOW IT. However, I am prepared to concede the definition in a limited sense, and to admit and repeat with you (and himself at my elbow) that he is a very imperious sort of chap, and certainly very apt sometimes to become angry, especially if he is opposed in what he knows to be right. Would you think more of him, were he to conceal his anger; to lie to himself and the outsiders, and so permit them to credit him with a virtue he has not? If it is a meritorious act to extirpate with the roots all feelings of anger, so as to never feel the slightest paroxysm of a passion we all consider sinful, it is a still greater sin with us to pretend that it is so extirpated. Please read over the "Elixir of Life" No. 2 (April, p. 169 col. 1, paras. 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6). And yet in the ideas of the West, everything is brought down to appearances even in religion. A confessor does not inquire of his penitent whether he felt anger, but whether he has shown anger to anyone. "Thou shalt in lying, stealing, killing, etc. avoid being detected" — seems to be the chief commandment of the Lord gods of civilization — Society and Public opinion. That is the sole reason why you, who belong to it, will hardly if ever be able to appreciate such characters as Morya's: a man as stern for himself, as severe for his own shortcomings, as he is indulgent for the defects of other people, not in words but in the innermost feelings of his heart; for, while ever ready to tell you to your face anything he may think of you, he yet was ever a stauncher friend to you than myself, who may often hesitate to hurt anyone's feelings, even in speaking the strictest truth. Thus, were M. one to ever descend to an explanation he could have told you: "My Brother, in my opinion you are intensely egotistical and haughty. In your appreciation and self-adulation you generally lose sight of the rest of mankind, and I verily believe that you regard the whole universe created for man, and that man — yourself. If I cannot bear to be opposed when I know I am right, you can bear contradiction still less, even when your conscience plainly tells you that you are wrong. You are unable to forget — though I admit that you are one to forgive — the smallest slight. And, sincerely believing yourself to have been so slighted, by me (sat upon — as you once expressed it) to this day the supposed offence exercises a silent influence over all your thoughts in connexion with my humble individual. And though your great intellect will ever prevent any vindictive feelings from asserting themselves and thus over-ruling your better nature, yet they are not without a certain influence even over your reasoning faculties, since you find pleasure (though you will hardly admit it to yourself) — in devising means to catch me tripping to the length of representing me in your imagination a fool, a credulous ignoramus capable of falling into the traps of a — Fern! Let us reason, my Brother. Let us put entirely aside the fact of my being an initiate, an adept — and reason out the position your imaginative faculties have created for me, like two common mortals with a certain dose of common sense in mine, and a great dose of the same in your head. If you are prepared to concede me even so little, I am prepared to prove to you that it is absurd to think that I could have been taken in in the meshes of so poor a scheme! You write that in order to test me, Fern wanted to know "if Morya wished it (his vision) published — and Morya replies quite falling into the trap that he did wish it." Now, to credit the last assertion is rather hard; and it needs a man of but moderate good sense and reasoning powers to perceive that there are two insuperable difficulties in the way of reconciling your foregoing opinion of myself and the belief that I was actually caught in the trap. 1st: The substance and text of the vision. In that vision there are three mysterious beings — the "guru" — the "Mighty one" and the "Father"; — the latter one being your humble servant. Now it is hard to believe — unless I am credited with faculties of a hallucinated medium — that I, knowing well that I had never approached, until then, the young gentleman from within a mile's distance, nor had I ever visited him in his dreams — that I should believe the reality of the vision described, or that, at least, my suspicions should not have been aroused by such a strange assertion.

2nd. The difficulty of reconciling the double fact of my being "an imperious chap" who gets very angry when opposed, and, my quiet submission to the disobedience, the rebellion of a chela under probation, who upon learning that "Morya did wish it — i.e. to have his vision published — and had actually promised to rewrite it, never thought of obeying the wish after that, nor had the poor fatuous guru and "Father" thought any more of the matter. Now the whole of the foregoing would be made quite plain even to a man of an average intellect. The reverse having happened, and a man of undoubtedly great intellectual and still greater reasoning powers, having been caught in the poorest cobweb of falsehoods ever imagined — the conclusion is imperative and no other can be formed: that man allowed, unknown to himself, to have his little vindictive feeling gratified at the expense of his logic and good sense. Buss, and we will talk no more of it. With all that, and while openly expressing my dislike for your haughtiness and selfishness in many things, I frankly recognise and express my admiration for your many other admirable qualities, for your sterling merits, and good sense in everything unconnected directly with yourself, — in which cases you become as imperious as myself, only far more impatient — and heartily hope you will pardon me for my blunt — and according to your western code of manners — rude talk. At the same time, like yourself, I will say, that not only do I not bear you malice, and like you none the less for that — but that what I say is a strict reality, the expression of my genuine feelings, not merely words written to satisfy a sense of assumed duty."

And now, that I have made myself the spokesman unto you for Morya, I may, perhaps be permitted to say a few words for myself. I will begin by reminding you, that at different times, especially during the last two months, you have repeatedly offered yourself as a chela, and the first duty of one is to hear without anger or malice anything the guru may say. How can we ever teach or you learn if we have to maintain an attitude utterly foreign to us and our methods: — that of two Society men? If you really want to be a chela i.e. to become the recipient of our mysteries, you have to adapt yourself to our ways, not we to yours. Until you do so, it is useless for you to expect any more than we can give under ordinary circumstances. You wanted to teach Morya, and you may find out, (and will if I am allowed by M. to have my own way) that he has taught you one, which will either make us friends and brothers for ever, or, — if there is more of the Western gentleman in you, than of the Eastern chela and future adept you will break with us in disgust and perhaps proclaim it all over the world. For this we are all prepared and are trying to hurry on the crisis one way or the other. November is fast approaching and by that time everything has to be settled. The second question: do not you think good Brother, that the uncivilized, imperious chap who would tell you his mind, honestly and for your own good, and, at the same time would be carefully though unseen — protecting yourself, family and reputation from any possible harm — aye, brother, to the length of watching for nights and days a ruffian Mussulman menial bent upon having his revenge of you and actually destroying his evil plans — do not you think him worth ten times his weight in gold, a British Resident, a gentleman, who tears down your reputation to shreds behind your back and will smile upon and heartily shake hands with you whenever he meets you? Do not you think that it is far nobler to say what one thinks, and having said — that even which you will naturally regard as an impertinence — and then render to the person so treated all manner of services of which he is never likely to hear not only to find them out — than to do what the highly civilized Colonel or General Watson and especially his lady have done, when upon seeing for the first time in their lives the two strangers in their house — Olcott and a native judge in Baroda — took a pretext to disparage the Society — because you were in it! I will not repeat to you the lies they were guilty of, the exaggerations and slanders directed against you by Mrs. Watson, and corroborated by her husband — the gallant soldier, so struck and unruffled was poor Olcott, by the unexpected attack — he who feels so proud of your belonging to the Society that he appealed in his dismay to M. Had you heard what was told by the latter of you, how much he appreciated your present work and frame of mind you would have willingly conceded him the right of being occasionally apparently rude. He forbade him telling any more than what he had already told to H.P.B. and which — woman-like — she immediately imparted to Mr. Sinnett — though angry as she was with you at the time even she resented the insult and offence done to you deeply — and went actually to the trouble of looking back into that past when as Mrs. Watson said you were receiving the hospitality at their house. Such is then, the difference between alleged well wishers and friends of Western superior origin, and the as alleged-ill-wishers of the Eastern inferior race. Apart from this I concede to you the right of feeling angry with M.; for he has done something that though it is in strict accordance with our rules and methods, will, when known be deeply resented by a Western mind, and, had I known it in time to stop it, I would have certainly prevented it from being done. It is certainly very kind of Mr. Fern to express his intention "to catch" us — "not of course to expose the Old Lady," for what has the poor "Old Lady" to do with all this? But he is quite welcome to catch us and even to expose us, not only for his and your protection but for that of the whole world if it can in any way console him for his failure. And fail he will, that's certain, if he goes on in that way playing a double game. The option of receiving him or not as a regular chela — remains with the Chohan. M. has simply to have him tested, tempted and examined by all and every means, so as to have his real nature drawn out. This is a rule with us as inexorable as it is disgusting in your Western sight, and I could not prevent it even if I would. It is not enough to know thoroughly what the chela is capable of doing or not doing at the time and under the circumstances during the period of probation. We have to know of what he may become capable under different and every kind of opportunities. Our precautions are all taken. None of our Upasika or Yu-posah, neither H.P.B. nor O., nor even Damodar, nor any of them can be incriminated. He is welcome to show every letter in his possession, and to divulge that, which was offered to him to do, (the choice between the two paths being left at his option) and that which he has actually done, or rather not done. When the time comes — if it ever comes to his misfortune — we have the means to show how much of it is true, and how much wrong and invented by him. In the meanwhile, I have an advice to offer. Watch and do not say a word. He was, is, and will be tempted to do all manner of wrong things. As I say, I knew nothing of what was going on till the other day; when learning that even my name was indirectly mixed in the probation, I warned whom I had to warn, and forbid strictly my own business being mixed up with it. Yet, he is a magnificent subject for clairvoyance, and not at all as bad as you think him. He is conceited — but who is not? Who of us is entirely free from this defect. He may imagine and say what he likes, but that you should allow yourself to be so carried away with a prejudice the existence of which you are not even prepared to admit, is surpassingly strange! You sincerely crediting the statement that M. was humbugged and caught into the trap by Mr. Fern is something really too ludicrous, when even O. not only the "Old Lady" never believed in it, since they knew he was to be under probation, and also knew what the thing meant. M. took pains a few days ago, to prove to you that he was never taken in, as you hoped, and that he laughed at the very idea; and most certainly Olcott will give you a good proof of it, albeit he is in the interior of Ceylon at this moment, where no letters let alone telegrams can reach. Nor was this "fraud" — if you will call it so, ever commenced in our interests, for the simple reason that we have no interest in it — but in that of Mr. Fern and the Society, in the ideas of H P.B. But why call it fraud? He asked her advice, he worried and supplicated her, and she told him — "Work for the cause; try to enquire and search and so to obtain every evidence you can of the existence of the Brothers. You see they will not come this year, but there are plenty of Lamas descending every year to Simla and the neighbourhood, and so, get all the evidence you can for yourself and Mr. Hume, etc." Is there anything wrong in this? When she received the MSS containing his vision, she asked M. and he who is called in it "the mighty One" and the "Father" and what not, told her the truth and then ordered her to ask Mr. Fern whether he would publish it, telling her and O. beforehand that he would not. What Morya knows of this and other visions, he alone knows and even I will never interfere in his ways of training, however distasteful they may be to me personally. The "Old Lady" since you ask me, will of course know nothing. But you must know that since she went to Baroda, she has a worse opinion of Fern than even yourself. She learned there certain things of him and of Brookes, and heard others from the latter, he being as you know the Baroda Mejnoor of Fern's. She is a woman though she be an Upa-si-ka (female disciple) and except on occult matters can hardly hold her tongue. I believe we had enough of this. Whatever has or will yet happen it will affect but Fern — no one else.

I hear of the projected grand theosophical Conversazione — and if, at that time you are still theosophists, of course it is better that it should be in your house. And now, I would like to say to you a few parting words. Notwithstanding the painful knowledge I have of your chief and almost one defect — one that you have yourself confessed to in your letter to me, I wish you to believe me, my dearest Brother, when I say that my

regard and respect for you in all other things is great and very sincere. Nor, am I likely to forget, whatever happens, that for many months past, without expecting or asking for any reward or advantage for yourself you have worked and toiled, day after day, for the good of the Society and of humanity at large in the only hope of doing good. And, I pray you, good Brother, not to regard as "reproaches" any simple remarks of mine. If, I have argued with you, it was because I was forced to do so, since the Chohan regarded them (your suggestions) as something quite unprecedented; claims, in his position, not to be listened to for one moment. Though you may now regard the arguments directed against you in the light of "undeserved reproaches," yet you may recognise some day, that you were really "wanting unreasonable concessions." The fact that, your pressing proposals, that you — (not anyone else) — should, if possible be allowed to acquire some phenomenal gift, which would be used in convincing others, — though it may be accepted as standing simply, in its dead letter sense "as a suggestion for (my) consideration" and that it, "in no way constituted a claim" — yet for anyone who could read beneath the surface of the lines, it appeared as a definite claim, indeed. I have all your letters, and there is hardly one that does not breathe the spirit of a determined claim, a deserved request, i.e., a demand of that which is due and the rejection of which gives you a right to feel yourself wronged. I doubt not, that such was not your intention in penning them. But such was your secret thought and that innermost feeling was always detected by the Chohan, whose name you several times used, and who took note of it. You undervalue what you got so far on the ground of inconsistency and incompleteness? I have asked you: take notes of the former, beginning with the inconsistencies — as you regard them — in our first arguments pro and con the existence of God and ending with the supposed contradictions in respect to "accidents" and "suicides." Send then to me and I will prove to you that there is not one for him who knows well the whole doctrine. It is strange to accuse one, in the full possession of his brains that on Wednesday he wrote one thing, and on Saturday or Sunday next had all forgotten about it and contradicted himself point blank! I do not think even our H.P.B. with her ridiculously impaired memory could be guilty of such a complete oblivion. In your opinion "it is not worth while to be working merely for the second class minds," and you propose following out the line of such an argument, either to get all, or leave of the work entirely if you cannot get out immediately "a scheme of philosophy, which will bear the scrutiny and criticism of such men as Herbert Spencer." To this I reply that you sin against the multitudes. It is not among the Herbert Spencers and Darwins or the John Stuart Mills that the millions of Spiritualists now going intellectually to the dogs are to be found, but it is they who form the majority of the "second class minds." If you had but patience, you would have received all that you would like to get out of our speculative philosophy — meaning by "speculative" that it would have to remain such, of course, to all but adepts. But really, my dear brother you are not overloaded with that virtue. However I still fail to see, why you should be disheartened with the situation.

Whatever happens, I hope you may not resent the friendly truths you have heard from us. Why should you? Would you resent the voice of your conscience whispering to you that you are at times unreasonably impatient, and not at all as forbearing as you yourself should like to be? True, you have been labouring for the cause without remission for many months and in many directions; but you must not think that because we have never shown any knowledge of what you have been doing, nor that, because we have never acknowledged or thanked you for it in our letters — that we are either ungrateful for, or ignore purposely or otherwise what you have done, for it is really not so. For, though no one ought to be expecting thanks, for doing his duty by humanity and the cause of truth, — since, after all, he who labours for others, labours but for himself — nevertheless, my Brother I feel deeply grateful to you for what you have done. I am not very demonstrative by nature but I do hope to prove to you some day, that I am not an ingrate, as you think. And you yourself, though you have been, indeed, forbearing in your letters to me, in not complaining about what you call the flaws and inconsistencies in our letters, yet, you have not carried so far that forbearance, as to leave to time and further explanations the task of deciding whether such flaws were real or only apparently so upon their surface. You have always complained to Sinnett and even, in the beginning, to Fern. If you but consented for five minutes or so to fancy yourself in the position of a native guru and a European chela, you would soon perceive how monstrous must appear any such relations as ours to a native mind; and you would blame no one for disrespect. Now, pray, understand me; I do not complain; but the bare fact of your addressing me as "Master" in your letters — makes me the laughing-stock of all our Tchutuktus who know anything of our mutual relations. I would never have mentioned this fact, but that I am in a position to demonstrate to you by enclosing here a letter from Subba Row to myself — full of excuses, and another to H.P.B. — as full of sincere truths, — since they are both chelas, or rather disciples. I hope I am not committing an indiscretion — in the Western sense. You will please return to me both after reading them and

Yours

K. H. Believe me you are too severe upon and — unjust to Fern.

Letter 31 Table of Contents

Letter No. 31

Received London, March 26th, 1881.

It is from the depths of an unknown valley, amid the steep crags and glaciers of Terich-Mir — a vale never trodden by European foot since the day its parent mount was itself breathed out from within our Mother Earth's bosom — that your friend sends you these lines. For, it is there K.H. received your "Affectionate homages," and there he intends passing his "summer vacations." A letter "from the abodes of eternal snow and purity" sent to and received — "At the abodes of vice"! . . .

Queer, n'est-ce pas? Would, or rather could I be with you at those "abodes"? No; but I was at several different times, elsewhere, though neither in "astral" nor in any other tangible form, but simply in thought. Does not satisfy you? Well, well, you know the limitations I am subjected to in your case, and you must have patience.

Your future book is a little jewel; and, small and tiny as it is, it may, one day, be found to soar as high as Mount Everest over your Simla hills. Among all other works of that class, in the wild jungle of Spiritualistic literature, it shall undoubtedly prove the Redeemer, offered as a sacrifice for the sin of the world of Spiritualists. They will begin by rejecting — nay — vilifying it; but, it will find its faithful twelve and — the seed thrown by your hand into the soil of speculation will not grow up as a weed. So far may be promised. You are oft too cautious. You remind too often the reader of your ignorance; and presenting but as a modest theory, that, which at the bottom of your heart you know and feel to be an axiom, a primary truth — instead of helping, you but perplex him and — create doubt. But it is a spirited and discriminative little memoir, and, as a critical estimate of the phenomena witnessed by you personally far more useful than Mr. Wallace's work. It is at this sort of springs that Spiritualists ought to be compelled to slake their thirst for phenomena and mystic knowledge instead of being left to swallow the idiotic gush they find in the Banners of Light and others. The world — meaning that of individual existences — is full of those latent meanings and deep purposes which underlie all the phenomena of the Universe, and Occult Sciences — i.e., reason elevated to super-sensuous Wisdom — can alone furnish the key wherewith to unlock them to the intellect. Believe me, there comes a moment in the life of an adept, when the hardships he has passed through are a thousandfold rewarded. In order to acquire further knowledge, he has no more to go through a minute and slow process of investigation and comparison of various objects, but is accorded an instantaneous, implicit insight into every first truth. Having passed that stage of philosophy which maintains that all fundamental truths have sprung from a blind impulse — it is the philosophy of your Sensationalists or Positivists; and left far behind him that other class of thinkers — the Intellectualists or Skeptics — who hold that fundamental truths are derived from the intellect alone, and that we, ourselves, are their only originating causes; the adept sees and feels and lives in the very source of all fundamental truths — the Universal Spiritual Essence of Nature, SHIVA the Creator, the Destroyer, and the Regenerator. As Spiritualists of to-day have degraded "Spirit," so have the Hindus degraded Nature by their anthropormorphistic conceptions of it. Nature alone can incarnate the Spirit of limitless contemplation. "Absorbed in the absolute self-unconsciousness of physical Self, plunged in the depths of true Being, which is no being but eternal, universal Life," his whole form as immoveable and white as the eternal summits of snow in Kailasa where he sits, above care, above sorrow, above sin and worldliness, a mendicant, a sage, a healer, the King of Kings, the Yogi of Yogis," such is the ideal Shiva of Yoga Shastras the culmination of Spiritual Wisdom. . . . Oh, ye Max Mullers and Monier Williamses, what have ye done with our Philosophy!

But you can hardly be expected to enjoy or even understand the above phanerosis of our teachings. Pardon me. I write but seldom letters; and whenever compelled to do so follow rather my own thoughts than strictly hold to the subject I ought to have in view. I have laboured for more than a quarter of a century night and day to keep my place within the ranks of that invisible but ever busy army which labours and prepares for a task which can bring no reward but the consciousness that we are doing our duty to humanity; and, meeting you on my way I have tried to — do not fear, — not to enroll you, for that would be impossible, but to simply draw your attention, excite your curiosity if not your better feelings to the one and only truth. You proved faithful and true, and have done your best. If your efforts will teach the world but one single letter from the

Yours,

K. H.

P.S. — Our hapless "Old Lady" is sick. Liver, kidneys, head, brain, legs, every organ and limb shows fight and snaps its fingers at her efforts to ignore them. One of us will have to "fix her" as our worthy Mr. Olcott says, or it will fare bad with her.

Letter 32 Table of Contents

Letter No. 32

I am sorry for all that has happened, but it was to be expected. Mr. Hume has put his foot in a hornet's nest and must not complain. If my confession has not altered your feelings — I am determined not to influence you and therefore will not look your way to find out how the matter stands with you, my friend — and if you are not entirely disgusted with our system and ways; if in short it is still your desire to carry on a correspondence and learn, something must be done to check the irresponsible "Benefactor." I prevented her sending to Hume a worse letter than she wrote to yourself. I cannot force her to transmit his letters to me nor mine to him; and since it is no longer possible for me to trust Fern, and that G.K. can hardly be sacrificed with any sense of justice, to a man who is utterly unable to appreciate any service rendered except his own, — what shall we do about it? Since we have mixed ourselves with the outside world, we have no right to suppress the personal opinion of its individual members, nor eschew their criticisms, however unfavourable to us — hence the positive order to H.P.B. to publish Mr. Hume's article. Only, as we would have the world see both sides of the question, we have also allowed the joint protest of Deb, Subba Row, Damodar and a few other chelas — to follow his criticism of ourselves and our System in the Theosophist.

I gave you but hints of what at some other time I will write more at length. Think in the meantime of the difficulties that lie naturally in our way, and let us not, if your friendship for me is sincere, — by struggling with our chains, make them straiter and heavier. For my part I will run willingly the hazard of being thought a self-contradicting ignoramus, and criticized in unmeasured terms by Mr. Hume in print, provided you really profit by the tuition, and share from time to time your knowledge with the world. But to give you my thoughts without disguise I am never like to risk myself again with any other European but yourself. As you now see, connection with the outside world, can bring but sorrow to those who so faithfully serve us, and discredit to our Brotherhood. No Asiatic is ever likely to be affected by Mr. Hume's egotistical thrusts against us (the result of my last letter, and of the promise exacted that he will write to me more rarely and less than he has done) but these thrusts and criticisms that the European readers will accept as a revelation and a confession, without ever suspecting from whence they have arisen and by what a deeply egotistical feeling they have been generated — these thrusts are calculated to do a great harm — in a direction you have not hitherto dreamt of. Resolved not to lose so useful a tool (useful in one direction, of course) the Chohan permitted himself to be over-persuaded by us, into giving sanction to my intercourse with Mr. Hume. I had pledged my word to him that he had repented, — was a changed man. And now how shall I ever face my Great Master, who is laughed at, made the object of Mr. Hume's wit, called Rameses the Great, and such like indecent remarks? And he used terms in his letters, the brutal grossness of which prevents me from repeating them, which have revolted my soul when I read them; words so filthy as to pollute the very air that touched them, and that I hastened to send to you with the letter that contained it, so as not to have those pages in my house, full of young and innocent chelas, that I would prevent from ever hearing such terms.

Then you yourself, my friend influenced in this by him more than you know or suspect of — you yourself deduce but too readily from incompleteness "contradiction." The novelty or inexplicable aspect of any asserted fact in our science is not a sufficient reason for setting it immediately down as a contradiction, and proclaim as Hume does in his article that he could teach in one week that which he succeeded in drawing out of us in eighteen months, for your knowledge is as yet so limited that it would be difficult for him to say how much we do or do not know.

But I have lingered too long over this irrational, unphilosophical and illogical attack upon ourselves and System. One day we will show the invalidity of the objections preferred by Mr. H. He may be regarded as a sapient councillor in the municipality, but he could hardly be regarded in such a light by us. He accuses me of giving through him "false ideas and facts" to the world; and adds that he would willingly keep aloof from — break with us but for his desire of benefitting the world! Verily a most easy method of burking all the sciences, for there is not one in which "false facts" and wild theories do not abound. Only while the Western Sciences make confusion still more confused our Science explains all the seeming discrepancies and reconciles the wildest theories.

However, if you do not bring him to his senses there will be soon an end to all — this time irrevocable. I need not assure you of my sincere regard for you and our gratitude for what you have [done] for the Society here — indirectly for us two. Whatever happens, I am at your service. I would, could I but see my way, do all that can be done for your friend Colonel Chesney. For your sake, if the crisis is avoided and the black cloud blows off — I will instruct him as far as I can. But — may it not be too late?

Yours in good faith,

K. H.

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Letter No. 33

K.H. Letter received through M. shown to A.B.

I am sincerely afraid that you may have been perplexed by the apparent contradiction between the notes received by you from my Brother M. — and myself. Know my friend that in our world though we may differ in methods we can never be opposed in principles of action and the broadest and most practical application of the idea of the Brotherhood of Humanity is not incompatible with your dream of establishing a nucleus of honest scientific enquirers of good repute, who would give weight to the T.S. organization in the eyes of the multitude, and serve as a shield against the ferocious and idiotic attack of sceptics and materialists.

There are — even among English men of Science — those who are already prepared to find our teachings in harmony with the results and progress of their own researches, and who are not indifferent to their application to the spiritual needs of humanity at large. Amongst these it may be your task to throw the seeds of Truth and point out the path. Yet as my brother reminded you, not one of those who have only tried to help on the work of the Society, however imperfect and faulty their ways and means, will have done so in vain. The situation shall be more fully explained to you by and by.

Meanwhile use every effort to develop such relations with A. Besant that your work may run on parallel lines and in full sympathy; an easier request than some of mine with which you have ever loyally complied. You may, if you see fit — show this note to her, only. In travelling your own thorny path I say again courage and hope. This is not an answer to your letter.

Yours ever truly,

K. H.

Letter 34 Table of Contents

Letter No. 34

It is positively distressing to find oneself so systematically misunderstood, one's intentions misconceived, and the whole plan imperilled by this endless hurrying on. Are we never then to be granted any credit for knowing what we are about, or allowed the benefit of the doubt in the absence of any reasonable proof whatever that we have determined to "bar the progress" of the Theos: Society? Mr. Hume maintains that he does not say — "K.H. or any other brother is wrong" — withal every line of his numerous letters to myself and H.P.B. breathes the spirit of complaint and bitter accusation. I tell you, my good friend, he will never be satisfied do what we may! And as, we cannot consent to over flood the world at the risk of drowning them, with a doctrine that has to be cautiously given out, and bit by bit like a too powerful tonic which can kill as well as cure — the result will be a reaction in that insatiable craving of his, and then — well you yourself know the consequences. Enclosed two letters written and addressed to her with an eye to myself. Well, we can do no better for the present. The Society will never perish as an institution, although branches and individuals in it may. I have done to humour him lately more than I have ever done for you; and you may judge of the situation in the chaotic but on the whole reasonable remarks that H.P.B. addresses to-day to Mr. H.

We must be left to judge for ourselves and be permitted to be the best judges. Everything will be explained and given out, in good time if we are but allowed our own ways. Otherwise, rather give up the Eclectic. I had volumes from him during the past week! I send you a few notes through her. Keep this confidential.

Yours,

K. H.

Letter 35 Table of Contents

Letter No. 35

Letter from K.H. Received Allahabad, March 18th, 1882.

You did not quite apprehend the meaning of my note, good friend, of March 11th. I said it was easy to produce phenomena, when the necessary conditions were given, but not that even the presence of Olcott and Mallapura at your house brought such an accession of force as would suffice for the tests you propose.

These latter were reasonable enough from your point of view, I do not at all blame you for asking them. I, myself, would perhaps wish you to have them — for your personal gratification, not that of the public for, as you know, conviction in these cases must be reached by individual experience. Secondhand testimony never really satisfied any but a credulous (or rather non-sceptical) mind. No Spiritualist who should read in your second edition even a narrative of the very tests you have named to me, would for one moment ascribe the facts to aught but mediumship: and your lady and yourself would probably be included by them in the sum of the mediumistic factors. Fancy that! No — bide your time; you are slowly gathering together the materials for what we here call, as you know, real dgiu, make the best of it. It is not physical phenomena that will ever bring conviction to the hearts of the unbelievers in the "Brotherhood" but rather phenomena of intellectuality, philosophy and logic, if I may so express it. See "Spirit teachings" by + as given out by Oxon — the most intellectual as the best educated of all mediums. Read and — pity! Do you not see then where we are "driving at" as O. says? Do you not realize that were it not for your exceptional intellect and the help to be derived therefrom the Chohan would have long ago closed every door of communication between us? Yes, read and study, my friend; for there is an object. You seemed annoyed, disappointed, when reading the words, "Impossible: no power here, will write through Bombay." Those eight words will have cost me eight days recuperative work — in the state I am in at present. But You know not what I mean; you are absolved.

You will not disguise from yourself the difficulties of working out your scheme of "Degrees." I wanted you to develop it at your leisure, "as the spirit moved you." For even though you should not quite succeed in forming a scheme that would fit the needs of Asia and Europe, you might hit upon something that would be good for either the one or the other, and another hand might then supply the lacking portion. Asiatics are so poor, as a rule, and books are so inaccessible to them in these degenerate days, that you can see plainly how different a plan of intellectual culture — in preparation for practical experiments to unfold psychic power in themselves

— must be thought. In the olden time, this want was supplied by the Guru, who guided the chela through the difficulties of childhood and youth, and afforded him in oral teaching as much as, or more than through books the food for mental and psychic growth. The want of such a "guide, philosopher and friend," (and who so well deserves the tripartite title?) can never be supplied, try as you may. All you can do is to prepare the intellect: the impulse toward "soul-culture" must be furnished by the individual. Thrice fortunate they who can break through the vicious circle of modern influence and come up above the vapours!

To recur to your Degrees: Are you not drawing the lines too vaguely between the first three or four groups? What test do you apply to decide their respective mental states. How guard against mere "cramming? and copying? and substitute writing?" Many clever Jesuits might pass all your Degrees, even up to the 6th and 7th: would you, then, admit him into the second section? Remember the lessons of the past and Carter Black. It is quite possible — as Moorad Ali Bey said and Olcott confirmed to you — for one who had passed the first five stages to acquire "occult faculties" in the 6th. Nay, it can be done without the help of either — by adopting either the method of the Arhats, the Dasturs, the Yogis, or the Sufis; among each of which groups of mystics there have been many who did not even read or write. If the psychic idiosyncracy is lacking, no culture will supply it. And the highest theoretical as also practical school of this kind, is that one in which we associates — your interested correspondents — were taught.

All that precedes has been said not for your discouragement but as a stimulus. If you are a true Anglo-Saxon, no obstacle will daunt your zeal; and unless my Eye has been dimmed this is your character — au fond. We have one word for all aspirants: TRY.

And now, to your laugh in September last as to the imaginary dangers to him who produces phenomena, dangers growing in size in proportion to the magnitude of the phenomena — so produced, and the impossibility to refute them. Remember the proposed test of the Times to be brought here. My good friend, if the trifling phenomena (for they are trifling in comparison with what could and might be done) shown by Eglington provoked such bitter hatred evoking before him scenes of imprisonment owing to false witnesses what would not be the fate of the poor "Old Lady"! You are yet barbarians with all your boasted civilization.

And now to Morya. (This strictly between us and you must not breathe it even to Mrs. Gordon). Eglington was preparing to depart leaving on poor Mrs. G. mind the fear that she had been deceived; that there were no "Brothers" since Eglington had denied their existence and that the "Spirits" were silent as to that problem. Last week then M., stalking in, into the motley crowd took the spooks by the skin of their throats and, — the result was the unexpected admission of the Brothers, the actual existence and the honour claimed of a personal acquaintance with the "Illustrious." The lesson for you and others, derived from the above, may be useful in future — events having to grow and to develop.

Yours faithfully,

K.H.

Letter 36 Table of Contents

Letter No. 36

Received about January, 1882.

My impatient friend — allow me, as one having some authority in your theosophical mella, to empower you to "ignore the rules" for a short time. Make them fill up the forms and initiate the candidates right away. Only whatever you do, do it without delay. Remember, you are the only one now. Mr. Hume is fully engrossed in his index and expects me to write to him and make puja first. I am rather too tall for him to reach so easily as that my head — if he has any intention to cover it with the ashes of contrition. Nor will I put a sack-cloth to show repentance for what I have done. If he writes and puts questions all well and good I'll answer them if not — I will keep my lectures for someone else. Time is no object with me.

Had your letter. I know your difficulties. Will see to them. Great will be the disappointment of K.H. if upon returning to us he finds so little progress done. You — you are sincere, others — put their pride above all. Then those Prayag theosophists — the Pundits and Babus! They do naught and expect us to correspond with them. Fools and arrogant men.

M.

Letter 37 Table of Contents

Letter No. 37

{A.P.S. went to Bombay to meet his wife and son who arrived from England January 6. The Anniversary meeting was set for and held January 12; but A.P.S. did not remain for it as he was already beginning to feel insecure in his editorial position because of his connection with the T.S. He left Bombay January 8, Bennett arrived January 10 on the last half of a round-the-world tour.}

Received at Allahabad, January, 1882.

Private.

Honoured Sir,

The Master has awaked and bids me write. To his great regret for certain reasons He will not be able until a fixed period has passed to expose Himself to the thought currents inflowing so strongly from beyond the Himavat. I am therefore, commanded to be the hand to indite His message. I am to tell you that He is "quite as friendly to you as heretofore and well satisfied with both your good intentions and even their execution so far as it lay in your power. You have proved your affection and sincerity by your zeal. The impulse you have personally given to the Cause we love, will not be checked; therefore the fruits of it (the word "reward" is avoided being used but for the "goody-goody") will not be withheld when your balance of causes and effects — your Karma is adjusted. In unselfishly and at personal risk labouring for your neighbour, you have most effectually worked for yourself. One year has wrought a great change in your heart. The man of 1880 would scarcely recognise the man of 1881 were they confronted. Compare them, then, good friend and Brother, that you may fully realize what time has done, or rather what you have done with time. To do this meditate — alone, with the magic mirror of memory to gaze into. Thus shall you not only see the lights and shadows of the Past, but the possible brightness of the Future, as well. Thus, in time, will you come to see the Ego of aforetime in its naked reality. And thus also you shall hear from me direct at the earliest, practicable opportunity, for we are not ungrateful and even Nirvana cannot obliterate GOOD."

These are the Master's words, as with His help I am enabled to frame them in your language, honoured Sir. I am personally permitted, at the same time to thank you very warmly for the genuine sympathy which you felt for me at the time when a slight accident due to my forgetfulness laid me on my bed of sickness.

Though you may have read in the modern works on mesmerism how, that which we call "Will-Essence" and you "fluid" — is transmitted from the operator to his objective point, you perhaps scarcely realize how everyone is practically, albeit unconsciously, demonstrating this law every day and every moment. Nor, can you quite realize how the training for adeptship increases both one's capacity to emit and to feel this forme of force. I assure you that I, though but a humble chela as yet, felt your good wishes flowing to me as the convalescent in the cold mountains feels from the gentle breeze that blows upon him from the plains below.

I am also to tell you that in a certain Mr. Bennett of America who will shortly arrive at Bombay, you may recognise one, who, in spite of his national provincialism, that you so detest, and his too infidelistic bias, is one of our agents (unknown to himself) to carry out the scheme for the enfranchisement of Western thoughts from superstitious creeds. If you can see your way towards giving him a correct idea of the actual present and potential future state of Asiatic but more particularly of Indian thought, it will be gratifying to my Master. He desires me to let you know, at the same time, that you should not feel such an exaggerated delicacy about taking out the work left undone from Mr. Hume's hands. That gentleman chooses to do but what suits his personal fancy without any regard whatever to the feelings of other people. His present work also — a pyramid of intellectual energy misspent — his objections and reasons, are all calculated but to exonerate himself only. Master regrets to find in him the same spirit of utter, unconscious selfishness with no view to the good of the Cause he represents. If he seems interested in it at all, it is because he is opposed and finds himself roused to combativeness. Thus the answer to Mr. Terry's letter sent to him from Bombay ought to have been published in the January number. Will you kindly to see to it — Master asks? Master thinks you can do it as well as Mr. Hume if you but tried, as the metaphysical faculty in you, is only dormant but would

Since Master will not be able to write to you himself for a month or two longer (though you will always hear of him) — He begs you to proceed for his sake with your metaphysical studies; and not to be giving up the task in despair whenever you meet with incomprehensible ideas in M. Sahib's notes, the more so, as M. Sahib's only hatred in his life, is for writing. In conclusion Master sends you His best wishes and praying you may not forget Him, orders me to sign myself, your obedient servant,

The "Disinherited."

P.S. Should you desire to write to Him though unable to answer Himself Master will receive your letters with pleasure; you can do so through D. K. Mavalankar.

"Dd".

Letter 38 Table of Contents

Letter No. 38

Received Allahabad. About February, 1882.

Your "illustrious" friend did not mean to be "satirical," whatever other construction might be put on his words. Your "illustrious" friend was simply feeling sad at the thought of the great disappointment K.H. is sure to experience when he returns among us. The first retrospective glance at the work he has so much at heart, will show him such samples of mutual feeling exchanged as the two herein enclosed. The undignified, bitter, sarcastic tone of one will give him as little cause to rejoice as the undignified, foolish and childish tone of the other. I would have left the subject untouched had you not so misunderstood the feeling that dictated my last. It is better I should be frank with you. The term "Highness" to which I am not in the least entitled is far more suggestive of satire than anything I have hitherto said. Yet as "no epithet will hang to the shirt-collar of a Bod-pa" I heed it not advising you to do the same and see no satire where none is meant and which is but frankness in speech, and the correct definition of the general state of your feelings toward the natives.

Your solicitor knows better — of course. If the paragraph in question is not libellous then all I can say is, that a complete re-codification of your libel law is very much needed.

You will certainly have trouble with her about the "female branch." Her scorn for the sex — has no bounds and she can hardly be persuaded that any good can ever come from that quarter. I will be frank with you again. Neither myself nor any of us — K.H. being entirely left out of the question — would consent to become the founders, let alone the conductors of a female branch — we all having had enough of our anis. Yet we confess that a great good may result of such a movement, the females having such an influence over their children and the men in the houses, you being such an old and experienced hand in that direction could with Mr. Hume's help be of immense use to K.H., from within the area of whose "loveable nature," with the exception of his sister — females were always excluded and love for his country and humanity reigned alone. He knows nothing of the creatures — you do. He always felt the need of enrolling women — yet would never meddle with them. There's a chance for you to help him.

On the other hand we claim to know more of the secret cause of events than you men of the world do. I say then that it is the vilification and abuse of the founders, the general misconception of the aims and objects of the Society that paralyses its progress — nothing else. There's no want of definitiveness in these objects were they but properly explained. The members would have plenty to do were they to pursue reality with half the fervour they do mirage. I am sorry to find you comparing Theosophy to a painted house on the stage whereas in the hands of true philanthropists and theosophists it might become as strong as an impregnable fort. The situation is this: men who join the Society with the one selfish object of reaching power making occult science their only or even chief aim may as well not join it — they are doomed to disappointment as much as those who commit the mistake of letting them believe that the Society is nothing else. It is just because they preach too much "the Brothers" and too little if at all Brotherhood that they fail. How many times had we to repeat, that he who joins the Society with the sole object of coming in contact with us and if not of acquiring at least of assuring himself of the reality of such powers and of our objective existence — was pursuing a mirage? I say again then. It is he alone who has the love of humanity at heart, who is capable of grasping thoroughly the idea of a regenerating practical Brotherhood who is entitled to the possession of our secrets. He alone, such a man — will never misuse his powers, as there will be no fear that he should turn them to selfish ends. A man who places not the good of mankind above his own good is not worthy of becoming our chela — he is not worthy of becoming higher in knowledge than his neighbour. If he craves for phenomena let him be satisfied with the pranks of spiritualism. Such is the real state of things. There was a time, when from sea to sea, from the mountains and deserts of the north to the grand woods and downs of Ceylon, there was but one faith, one rallying cry — to save humanity from the miseries of ignorance in the name of Him who taught first the solidarity of all men. How is it now? Where is the grandeur of our people and of the one Truth? These, you may say, are beautiful visions which were once realities on earth, but had flitted away like the light of a summer's evening. Yes; and now we are in the midst of a conflicting people, of an obstinate, ignorant people seeking to know the truth, yet not able to find it for each seeks it only for his own private benefit and gratification, without giving one thought to others. Will you, or rather they, never see the true meaning and explanation of that great wreck and desolation which has come to our land and threatens all lands — yours first of all? It is selfishness and exclusiveness that killed ours, and it [is] selfishness and exclusiveness that will kill yours — which has in addition some other defects which I will not name. The world has clouded the light of true knowledge, and selfishness will not allow its resurrection, for it excludes and will not recognise the whole fellowship of all those who were born under the same immutable natural law.

You are mistaken again. I may blame your "curiosity" when I know it to be profitless. I am unable to regard as an "impertinence" that which is but the free use of intellectual capacities for reasoning. You may see things in a false light and you do often so see them. But you do not concentrate all the light in yourself as some do, and that's one superior quality you possess over other Europeans we know. Your affection for K.H. is sincere and warm and that is your redeeming quality in my eyes. Why should you then await my reply with any "nervousness" at all. Whatever happens we two will ever remain your friends, as we would not blame sincerity even when it is manifested under the somewhat objectionable form of trampling upon a prostrated chela — the hapless Babu.

Yours,

M.

Letter 39 Table of Contents

Letter No. 39

Received Allahabad, about February, 1882.

{This and the next two letters refer to an attack, on December 6, in The Statesman (India)

impugning H.P.B.'s and Olcott's financial integrity. A.P.S. printed a defense in The Pioneer,

December 10. The Solicitors, Sanderson & Co., obtained from The Statesman a retraction and

apology in that journal December 17.}

If my advice is sought and asked, then first of all the real and true situation has to be defined. My "Arhat" vows are pronounced, and I can neither seek revenge nor help others to obtain it. I can help her with cash only when I know that not a mace, not a fraction of a tael will be spent upon any unholy purpose: and revenge is unholy. But we have defence and she has a right to it. Defence and full vindication she must have, and that is why I telegraphed to offer option before proceeding to file a suit. Demand retraction and threaten with a law suit she has a right; and she can also institute proceedings — for he will retract. For that reason have I laid a stress upon the necessity of an article touching upon no other subject but that of the alleged "debt." This alone will prove sufficient to frighten the traducer for it will reveal him before the public as a "slanderer" and show to himself that he was in the wrong box. The mistake is due to the very illegible and ugly handwriting of Macamliffe (a caligrapher and scribe of my kind) who sent in the information to Statesman. This was a lucky mistake for on that may be built the whole vindication if you act wisely. But the most has to be made of it now — or you will lose the opportunity. So, if you condescend once more to take my advice — since you have opened the first shot in Pioneer, seek out the accounts in Theosophist and on that data and the Tuesday article write for her a nice pungent letter signed with her name and Olcott's. This can be published first in the Pioneer or, if you object to it in some other paper — but at all events they will have to print it in the form of a circular letter and send it to every paper in the land. Demand retraction in it from Statesman and threaten with law suit. If you do that I promise success.

The Odessa Old Lady — the Nadijda — is quite anxious for your autograph — that of "a great and celebrated writer" she says she was very undisposed to part with your letter to the General but had to send you a proof of her own identity. Tell her I — the "Khosyayin" (her niece's Khosyayin she called me as I went to see her thrice) gossiped the thing to you advising you to write to her furnishing her thus with your autograph — also send back through H.P.B. her portraits as soon as shown to your lady, for she at Odessa is very anxious to have them back especially the young face. . . . That's her, as I knew her first "the lovely maiden."

I'm a little busy just now — but will furnish you with explanatory appendix as soon as at leisure — say in two three days. The "Illustrious" will look to all that needs watching. What about Mr. Hume's superb address? Can't you have it ready for your January Number? Ditto your editorial answer to Spiritualist's editorial. Hope y'll not accuse me of any desire to sit upon you — nor will you view my humble request in any other light than the true one. My object is twofold — to develop your metaphysical intuitions and help the journal by infusing into it a few drops of real literary good blood. Your three articles are certainly praise-worthy, the points well taken and as far as I can judge — calculated to arrest the attention of every scholar and metaphysician especially the 1st. Later on you will learn more about creation.

Meanwhile I have to create my dinner — you would scarcely like it — I'm afraid.

M.

Your young friend the Disinherited is on his legs again. Would you really care for his writing to you? In such case, better ventilate in Pioneer the question as to the advisability of coming to terms with China in regard to the establishment of a regular postal service between Prayag and Tzigadzi.

Letter 40

Table of Contents

Letter No. 40

Received about February, 1882.

To your first — there's little to answer: "Can you do anything to help on the Society?" Want me to speak frankly? Well I say so: neither yourself nor the Lord Sang-yias Himself — so long as the equivocal position of the Founders is not perfectly and undeniably proved due to fiendish malice and a systematic intrigue — could help it on. That's the situation as I found it, as ordered by the chiefs. Watch the papers — all except two or three; the "dear old lady" ridiculed when not positively libelled, Olcott attacked by all the hell-hounds of the press and missions. A pamphlet headed "Theosophy" printed and circulated by the Christians at Tinevelly October 23rd on the day of O.'s arrival there with the Buddhist delegates — a pamphlet containing the Saturday Review article and another filthy, heavy attack by an American paper. The C. and M. of Lahore hardly missing a day without having some attack and other papers reprinting them, etc., etc. You English have your notions — we have our own upon the subject. If you keep the clean kerchief in your pocket and throw but the soiled one into the crowd — who will pick it up? Enough. We must have patience and do what, meanwhile, we can. My opinion is, that if your Rattigan is not quite a scoundrel, one of his papers having thrown and throwing daily dishonour upon an innocent woman, he would be the first to suggest you the idea of translating and publishing her uncle's letters (to you and herself) in the Pioneer; with a few words in a leader, to say, that a still more substantial official proof is shortly expected from the Prince D. which will settle the vexed question as to her identity for ever at rest. But you know best. This idea may have struck you; but will it ever be seen in such a light by others?

Suby Ram — a truly good man — yet a devotee of another error. Not his guru's voice — his own. The voice of a pure, unselfish, earnest soul, absorbed in misguided, misdirected mysticism. Add to it a chronic disorder in that portion of the brain which responds to clear vision and the secret is soon told: that disorder was developed by forced visions; by hatha yog and prolonged asceticism. S. Ram is the chief medium and at same time the principal magnetic factor, who spreads his disease by infection — unconsciously to himself; who innoculates with his vision all the other disciples. There is one general law of vision (physical and mental or spiritual) but there is a qualifying special law proving that all vision must be determined by the quality or grade of man's spirit and soul, and also by the ability to translate divers qualities of waves of astral light into consciousness. There is but one general law of life, but innumerable laws qualify and determine the myriads of forms perceived and of sounds heard. There are those who are willingly and others who are unwillingly — blind. Mediums belong to the former, sensitives to the latter. Unless regularly initiated and trained — concerning the spiritual insight of things and the supposed revelations made unto man in all ages from Socrates down to Swedenborg and "Fern" — no self-tutored seer or clairaudient ever saw or heard quite correctly.

No harm and much instruction may come to you by joining his Society. Go on until he demands what you will be obliged to refuse. Learn and study. You are right: they say and affirm that the one and only God of the Universe was incarnated in their guru, and were such an individual to exist he would certainly be higher than any "planetary." But they are idolators, my friend. Their guru was no initiate only a man of extraordinary purity of life and powers of endurance. He had never consented to give up his notions of a personal god and even gods though offered more than once. He was born an orthodox Hindu and died a self-reformed Hindu, something like Kechub-Ch-Sen but higher purer and with no ambition to taint his bright soul. Many of us have regretted his self-delusion but he was too good to be forcibly interfered with. Join them and learn — but remember your sacred promise to K.H. Two months more and he will be with us. I think of sending her to you. I believe you could persuade her for I do not wish to use my authority in this case.

M.

Letter 41 Table of Contents

 

Letter No. 41

Received about February, 1882.

I believe verily I am unfit to express my ideas clearly in your language. I never thought of giving any importance to the circular letter — I had asked you to draft for them — appearing in the Pioneer, or ever meant to imply that it should so appear. I had asked you to compose it for them, send your drafted copy to Bombay and make them issue it as a circular letter; which, once out, and on its round in India might be copied in your journal as other papers would be sure to copy it. Her letter B.G. was foolish, childish and silly. I have overlooked it. But you must not so labour under the impression that it will undo all the good yours has done. There are a few sensitive persons on whose nerves it will jar, but the rest will never appreciate its true spirit; nor is it in any way libellous — only vulgar and foolish. I will force her to stop.

At the same time I must say she suffers acutely and I am unable to help her for all this is effect from causes which cannot be undone — occultism in theosophy. She has now to either conquer or die. When the hour comes she will be taken back to Tibet. Do not blame the poor woman, blame me. She is but a "shell" at times and I, often careless in watching her. If the laugh is not turned on the Statesman the ball will be caught up by other papers and flung at her again.

Do not feel despondent. Courage my good friend and remember you are working off by helping her your own law of retribution for more than one cruel fling she receives is due to K.H.'s friendship for you, for his using her as the means of communication. But — Courage.

I saw the lawyer's papers and perceive he is averse to taking up the case. But for the little he is needed for, he will do. No law suit will help — but publicity in the matter of vindication as much as in the question of accusation — 10,000 circular letters sent throughout to prove the accusations false.

Yours till the morrow.

M.

Letter 42 Table of Contents

Letter No. 42

[This letter is unsigned but is in M.'s handwriting. — ED.]

Received about February, 1882.

I say again what you like me not to say, namely that no regular instruction, no regular communication is possible between us before our mutual path is cleared of its many impediments. The greatest being the public misconception about the Founders. For your impatience you cannot nor will you be blamed. But if you fail to make a profitable use of your newly-acquired privileges, you would indeed be unworthy, friend. Three, four weeks more — and I will retire to give room with you all, to him to whom that room belongs, and whose place I could but very unadequately occupy, for I am neither a scribe nor a Western scholar. Whether the Chohan finds yourself and Mr. Hume more qualified than he did before to receive instructions through us — is another question. But you ought to prepare for it. For much remains yet to break forth. You perceived, hitherto but the light of a new day — you may, if you try, see with K.H.'s help the sun of full noon-day when it reaches its meridian. But you have to work for it, work for the shedding of light upon other minds through yours. How, will you say? Hitherto of you two, Mr. H. was positively antagonistic to our advice, you — passively resisting it at times often yielding against what you conceived your better judgment — such is my answer. The results were — what they had to be expected. No good or very little came out of a kind of spasmodic defence — the solitary defence of a friend presumably prejudiced in favour of those whose champion he had come out and a member of the Society. Mr. Hume would never listen to K.H.'s suggestion of a lecture in his house during which he might have well disabused the public mind of a part of the prejudice at least, if not entirely. You thought it was unnecessary to publish and spread among the readers as to who she was.

Think ye, Prinrose and Rattigan are likely to spread the knowledge and give out reports of what they know to be the case? And so on. Hints are all sufficient to an intelligence like yours. I tell you this for I know how profound and sincere is your feeling for K.H. I know how bad y'll feel, if when among us again you find that communication between you has not improved. And its sure to pass when the Chohan finds no progress since he made him have you. See what the Fragments — the most superb of articles — has done; how little effect it will produce unless the opposition is stirred up, discussion provoked and spiritualists forced to defend their foolish claims. Read editorial in Spiritualist November 18, "Speculation-Spinning" — she cannot answer it as either he or you might and the result will be that the most precious hints will fail to reach the minds of those craving for truth for a solitary pearl is soon outshone in the midst of a heap of false diamonds, when there's no jeweller to point out its worth. So on again. What can we do! I hear already K.H. exclaiming.

It is so, friend. The pathway through earth-life leads through many conflicts and trials, but he who does naught to conquer them can expect no triumph. Let then the anticipation of a fuller introduction into our mysteries under more congenial circumstances the creation of which depends entirely upon yourself inspire you with patience to wait for, perseverance to press on to, and full preparation to receive the blissful consummation of all your desires. And for that you have to remember that when K.H. shall say to you, Come up hither — you should be ready. Otherwise the all powerful hand of our Chohan will appear once more between you and Him.

Send both portraits sent to you from Odessa back to H.P.B., the O.L. when you done with them. Write a few lines to the old Generaless to Odessa — for she sorely wants your autograph — I know. Remind her that both you belong to one Society and are — Brothers and promise help for her niece.

Letter 43 Table of Contents

Letter No. 43

Received Allahabad, February, 1882.

Before another line passes between us we must come to an agreement, my impulsive friend. You will have first to promise me faithfully never to judge of either of us, nor of the situation, nor of anything else bearing any relation to the "mythical Brothers" — tall or short — thick or thin — by your worldly experience or you will never come at the truth. By doing so until now you have only disturbed the solemn quiet of my evening meals several nights running and made my snake-like signature what with your writing it and thinking about it to haunt me even in my sleep — as by sympathy I felt it being pulled by the tail at the other side of the hills. Why will you be so impatient? You have a life time before you for our correspondence; though while the dark clouds of the Deva-Lok "Eclectic" are lowering on the horizon of the "Parent" it has to be a spasmodic and an uncertain one. It may even suddenly break off owing to the tension given it by our too intellectual friend. Oy­hai, Ram Ram! To think that our very mild criticism upon the pamphlet, a criticism reported by you to Hume Sahib — should have brought the latter to kill us at a blow! to destroy, without giving us one moment to call a Padri in or even time to repent; to find ourselves alive, and yet so cruelly deprived of our existence is truly sad, tho' not quite unexpected. But it is all our own fault. Had we — instead prudently sent a laudatory hymn to his address we might now have been alive and well, waxing in health and strength — if not in wisdom — for long years to come and finding in him our Ved-Vyasa to sing the occult prowess of the Krishna and Arjuna on the desolate shores of Tsam-pa. Now that we are dead and dessicated tho', I may as well occupy a few minutes of my time to write as a bhut to you, in the best English I find lying idle in my friend's brain; where also I find in the cells of memory the phosphorescent thought of a short letter to be sent by himself to the Editor of the Pioneer to soothe his English impatience. My friend's friend — K.H. has not forgotten you;

K.H. does not intend breaking off with you — unless Hume Sahib should spoil the situation beyond mending. And why should he? You have done all you could, and that is as much as we ever intend asking of any one. And now we will talk.

You must thoroughly put aside the personal element if you would get on with occult study and — for a certain time — even with himself. Realize, my friend, that the social affections have little, if any, control over any true adept in the performance of his duty. In proportion as he rises towards perfect adeptship the fancies and antipathies of his former self are weakened: (as K.H. in substance explained to you) he takes all mankind into his heart and regards them in the mass. Your case is an exceptional one. You have forced yourself upon him, and stormed the position, by the very violence and intensity of your feeling for him — and once be accepted he has to bear the consequences in the future. Yet it cannot be a question with him what the visible Sinnett may be — what his impulses, his failures or successes in his world, his diminished or undiminished regard for him. With the "visible" one we have nothing to do. He is to us only a veil that hides from profane eyes that other ego with whose evolution we are concerned. In the external rupa do what you like, think what you like: only when the effects of that voluntary action are seen on the body of our correspondent — is it incumbent upon us to notice it.

We are neither pleased nor displeased because you did not attend the Bombay meeting. If you had gone, it would have been better for your "merit": as you did not go you lost that little point. I could and had no right to influence you any way — precisely because you are no chela. It was a trial, a very little one, tho' it seemed important enough to you to make you think of "wife and child's interests." You will have many such; for though you should never be a chela, still we do not give confidences even to correspondents and "proteges" whose discretion and moral pluck have not been well tested. You are the victim of maya. It will be a long struggle for you to tear away the "cataracts" and see things as they are. Hume Sahib is a maya to you as great as any. You see only his mounds of flesh and bones, his official personality, his intellect and influences. What are these, pray, to his true self that you cannot see, do what you may? What has his ability to shine in a Durbar or as the leader of a scientific society to do with his fitness for occult research, or his trustworthiness to keep our secrets? If we wanted anything about our lives and work to be known is not the Theosophist columns open to us? Why should we dribble facts thro' him, to be dressed for the public meal with a currie of nauseous doubts and biting sarcasm fit to throw the public stomach into confusion. To him there is nothing sacred, either within, or without occultism. His is a bird-killing and a faith-killing temperament; he would sacrifice his own flesh and blood as remorselessly as a singing bulbul; and would dessicate yourself and us, K.H. and the "dear Old Lady" and make us all bleed to death under his scalpel — if he could — with as much ease as he would an owl, to put us away in his "museum" with appropriate labels outside and then recount our necrologies in "Stray Feathers" to the amateurs. No Sahib; the outside Hume is as different (and superior) from the inside Hume, as the outside Sinnett is different (and inferior) to the nascent inside "protege." Learn that and sit the latter to watching the editor, least he play him a bad trick some day. Our greatest trouble is to teach pupils not to be befooled by appearances.

As you have already been notified by Damodar thro' the D---, I did not call you a chela — examine your letter to assure yourself of it — I but jokingly asked O. the question whether he recognised in you the stuff of which chelas are made. You saw only that Bennett had unwashed hands, uncleaned nails and used coarse language and had — to you — a generally unsavoury aspect. But if that sort of thing is your criterion of moral excellence or potential power, how many adepts or wonder producing lamas would pass your muster? This is part of your blindness. Were he to die this minute — and I'll use a Christian phraseology to make you comprehend me the better — few hotter tears would drop from the eye of the recording Angel of Death over other such ill-used men, as the tear Bennett would receive for his share. Few men have suffered — and unjustly suffered — as he has; and as few have a more kind, unselfish and truthful a heart. That's all: and the unwashed Bennett is morally as far superior to the gentlemanly Hume as you are superior to your Bearer.

What H.P.B. repeated to you is correct: "the natives do not see Bennett's coarseness and K.H. is also a native." What did I mean? Why — simply that our Buddha-like friend can see thro' the varnish, the grain of the wood beneath and inside the slimy, stinking oyster — the "priceless pearl within!" B---- is an honest man and of a sincere heart, besides being one of tremendous moral courage and a martyr to boot. Such our K.H. loves — whereas he would have only scorn for a Chesterfield and a Grandison. I suppose that the stooping of the finished "gentleman" K.H., to the coarse fibred infidel Bennett is no more surprising than the alleged stooping of the "gentleman" Jesus to the prostitute Magdalene: There's a moral smell as well as a physical one good friend. See how well K.H. read your character when he would not send the Lahore youth to talk with you without a change of dress. The sweet pulp of the orange is inside the skin — Sahib: try to look inside boxes for jewels and do not trust to those lying in the lid. I say again: the man is an honest man and a very earnest one; not exactly an angel — they must be hunted for in fashionable churches, parties at aristocratical mansions, theatres and clubs and such other sanctums — but as angels are outside our cosmogony we are glad of the help of even honest and plucky tho' dirty men.

All this I say to you without any malice or bitterness, as you erroneously imagine. You have made progress during the past year — and therefore nearer to us — hence I talk with you as with a friend, whom I hope of finally converting to some of our ways of thinking. Your enthusiasm for our study has a tinge of selfishness in it; even your feeling for K.H. has a mixed character: still you are nearer. Only you trusted Hume too much, and mistrusted him too late, and now his bad karma reacts upon yours, to your detriment. Your friendly indiscretions as to things confided to you alone by H.P.B. — the cause — produces his rash publicities — the effect. This I am afraid must count against you. Be wiser hereafter. If our rule is to be chary of confidences it is because we are taught from the first that each man is personally responsible to the Law of Compensation for every word of his voluntary production. Mr. Hume would of course call it jesuitry.

Also try to break thro' that great maya against which occult students, the world over, have always been warned by their teachers — the hankering after phenomena. Like the thirst for drink and opium, it grows with gratification. The Spiritualists are drunken with it; they are thaumaturgic sots. If you cannot be happy without phenomena you will never learn our philosophy. If you want healthy, philosophic thought, and can be satisfied with such — let us correspond. I tell you a profound truth in saying that if you (like your fabled Shloma) but choose wisdom all other things will be added unto it — in time. It adds no force to our metaphysical truths that our letters are dropped from space on to your lap or come under your pillow. If our philosophy is wrong a wonder will not set it right. Put that conviction into your consciousness and let us talk like sensible men. Why should we play with Jack-in-the-box; are not our beards grown.

And now it is time to put a stop to my abominable penmanship and so relieve you from the task. Yes — your "cosmogony"! Well, good friend, your cosmology is — between the leaves of my Khuddaka Patha — (my family Bible) and making a supreme effort I will try to answer it as soon as I am relieved, for just now I am on duty. It is a life long task you have chosen, and somehow instead of generalizing you manage always to rest upon those details that prove the most difficult to a beginner. Take warning my good Sahib. The task is difficult and K.H. in remembrance of old times, when he loved to quote poetry, asks me to close my letter with the following to your address:

"Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

"Yes to the very end."

"Will the day's journey take the whole long day?

"From morn to night, my friend."

Knowledge for the mind, like food for the body, is intended to feed and help to growth, but it requires to be well digested and the more thoroughly and slowly the process is carried out the better both for body and mind.

I saw Olcott and instructed him what to say to our Simla Sage. If the O.L. rushes into epistolary explanations with him, stop her — as O. covered all the ground. I have no time to look after her, but I made her promise never to write to him without showing her letter first to you.

Namascar.

Yours M.

Letter 44 Table of Contents

Letter No. 44

Received Allahabad, February, 1882.

Your letter was addressed to me, as you were not aware that K.H. had again put himself in relations with you. Nevertheless, as I am addressed I will answer. "Do so; by all means: go ahead." The result may be disastrous to Spiritualism, though the reality of the phenomena be proved; hence beneficial to Theosophy. It does seem cruel to allow the poor sensitive lad to risk himself inside the lion's den; but as the acceptance or rejection of the kind invitation is with the medium under the counsel and inspiration of his mighty and far-seeing "Ernest" why should others worry themselves!

As we are not likely, worthy sir, to correspond very often now — I will tell you something you should know, and may derive profit from. On the 17th of November next the Septenary term of trial given the Society at its foundation in which to discreetly "preach us" will expire. One or two of us hoped that the world had so far advanced intellectually, if not intuitionally, that the Occult doctrine might gain an intellectual acceptance, and the impulse given for a new cycle of occult research. Others — wiser as it would now seem — held differently, but consent was given for the trial. It was stipulated, however, that the experiment should be made independently of our personal management; that there should be no abnormal interference by ourselves. So casting about we found in America the man to stand as leader — a man of great moral courage, unselfish, and having other good qualities. He was far from being the best, but (as Mr. Hume speaks in H.P.B.'s case) — he was the best one available. With him we associated a woman of most exceptional and wonderful endowments. Combined with them she had strong personal defects, but just as she was, there was no second to her living fit for this work. We sent her to America, brought them together — and the trial began. From the first both she and he were given to clearly understand that the issue lay entirely with themselves. And both offered themselves for the trial for certain remuneration in the far distant future as — as K.H. would say — soldiers volunteer for a Forlorn Hope. For the 6½ years they have been struggling against such odds as would have driven off any one who was not working with the desperation of one who stakes life and all he prizes on some desperate supreme effort. Their success has not equalled the hopes of their original backers, phenomenal as it has been in certain directions. In a few more months the term of probation will end. If by that time the status of the Society as regards ourselves — the question of the "Brothers" be not definitely settled (either dropped out of the Society's programme or accepted on our own terms) that will be the last of the "Brothers" of all shapes and colours, sizes or degrees. We will subside out of public view like a vapour into the ocean. Only those who have proved faithful to themselves and to Truth through everything, will be allowed further intercourse with us. And not even they, unless, from the President downward they bind themselves by the most solemn pledges of honour to keep an inviolable silence thenceforth about us, the Lodge, Tibetan affairs. Not even answering questions of their nearest friends, though silence might seem likely to throw the appearance of "humbug" upon all that has transpired. In such a case effort would be suspended until the beginning of another septenary cycle when, if circumstances should be more auspicious, another attempt might be made, under the same or another direction.

My own humble impression is that Hume Sahib's present pamphlet, highly intellectual as it is, might be improved so as to help enormously in giving the needed turn to Society affairs. And if he would trust more to his personal intuitions — which when he heeds them are strong — and less to the voice of one who neither represents entirely — as you seem to think — public opinion nor would he believe though he were to have a 1000 proofs — the pamphlet would be converted into one of the most powerful works that this modern movement has evolved.

Your cosmological questions will be attended to when I am not harassed with mightier business. Health and prosperity.

M.

Letter 45

Table of Contents

Letter No. 45

First received after revival in February, 1882.

My Brother — I have been on a long journey after supreme knowledge, I took a long time to rest. Then, upon coming back, I had to give all my time to duty, and all my thoughts to the Great Problem. It is all over now: the New Year's festivities are at an end and I am "Self" once more. But what is Self? Only a passing guest, whose concerns are all like a mirage of the great desert. . . .

Anyhow — this is my first moment of leisure. I offer it to you, whose inner Self reconciles me to the outer man who but too often forgets that great man is he who is strongest in the exercise of patience. Look around you, my friend: see the "three poisons" raging within the heart of men — anger, greed, delusion, and the five obscurities — envy, passion, vacillation, sloth, and unbelief — ever preventing them seeing truth. They will never get rid of the pollution of their vain, wicked hearts, nor perceive the spiritual portion of themselves. Will you not try — for the sake of shortening the distance between us — to disentangle yourself from the net of life and death in which they are all caught, to cherish less — lust and desire? Young Portman is seriously meditating to leave all, to come over to us, and "become a Tibetan monk" as he puts it. His ideas are singularly mixed upon the two entirely different characteristics and qualifications of the "Monk" or Lama and the living "Lha," or Brother: but let him try by all means.

Aye — I am only now able to correspond with you. At the same time let me tell you that it is more difficult than before to exchange letters with you, though my regard for you has sensibly increased, instead of being lessened — as you feared — and will not diminish unless — but as the consequence of your own acts. That you will try to avoid in raising any such obstacle, I know well; but man, after all, is the victim of his surroundings while he lives in the atmosphere of society. We may be anxious to befriend such as we have an interest in, and yet be as helpless to do so, as is one who sees a friend engulfed in a stormy sea when no boat is near to be launched and his personal strength is paralysed by a stronger hand that keeps him back. Yes, I see your thought . . . but you are wrong. Blame not the holy man for strictly doing his duty by humanity. Had it not been for the Chohan and his restraining influence you would not be reading now again a letter from your trans-Himalayan correspondent. The world of the Plains is antagonistic to that of the mountains, that you know; but what you do not know is the great harm produced by your own unconscious indiscretions. Shall I give you an instance? Remember the wrath produced on Stainton Moses by your too imprudent letter quoting ad libitum and with a freedom pregnant with the most disastrous results from my letter to you about him. . . . The cause generated at that time has now developed its results: not only has S.M. completely estranged himself from the Society some of whose members believe in us, but he has determined in his heart the utter annihilation of the British Branch. A psychic Society is being founded and he has succeeded in bringing over to it Wyld, Massey and others. Shall I also tell you the future of that new body? It will grow and develop and expand and finally the Theos. Soc. of London will be swamped in it, and lose first its influence then — its name, until Theosophy in its very name becomes a thing of the Past. It is you alone, the simple action of your swift pen which will have produced the nidana and the ten-del, the "cause" and its "effect" and thus the work of seven years, the constant untiring efforts of the builders of the Theos. Society will perish — killed by the wounded vanity of a medium.

This simple act on your part is silently digging out a chasm between us. The evil may yet be averted — let the Society exist but in name till the day it can get members with whom we can work de facto — and by the creation of another counteracting cause we may save the situation. The hand of the Chohan alone can bridge it, but it must be yours that places the first stone for the work. How will you do it? How can you do it? Think of it well, if you care for further intercourse. They want something new. A Ritual to amuse them. Consult with Subba Row, with San Kariah the Dewan Naib of Cochin, read attentively his pamphlet extracts from which you will find in the last Theosophist (see, "A Flash of Light upon Occult Free Masonry." Page 35). I can come nearer to you, but you must draw me by a purified heart and a gradually developing will. Like the needle the adept follows his attractions. Is this not the law of the disembodied Principles? Why then not of the living also? As the social ties of the carnal man are too weak to call back the "Soul" of the deceased except where there is a mutual affinity which survives as a force in the region within the terrestrial region, so the calls of mere friendship or even enthusiastic regard are too feeble to draw the "Lha" who has passed on a stage of the journey to him he has left behind, unless a parallel development goes on. M. spoke well and truthfully when saying that a love of collective humanity is his increasing inspiration; and if any one individual should wish to divert his regards to himself, he must overpower the diffusive tendency by a stronger force.

All this I say, not because its substance has not been told you before, but because I read your heart and detect in it a shade of sadness, not to say disappointment, that hovers there. You have had other correspondents but are not perfectly satisfied. To gratify, I write you therefore with some effort to bid you keep a cheerful frame of mind. Your strivings, perplexities and forebodings are equally noticed, good and faithful friend. In the imperishable RECORD of the Masters you have written them all. There are registered your every deed and thought; for, though not a chela, as you say to my Brother Morya, nor even a "protege" — as you understand the term — still, you have stepped within the circle of our work, you have crossed the mystic line which separates your world from ours, and now whether you persevere or not; whether we become later on, in your sight, still more living real entities or vanish out of your mind like so many dream fictions — perchance an ugly night-mare — you are virtually OURS. Your hidden Self has mirrored itself in our Akasa; your nature is — yours, your essence is — ours. The flame is distinct from the log of wood which serves it temporarily as fuel; at the end of your apparitional birth — and whether we two, meet face to face in our grosser rupas — you cannot avoid meeting us in Real Existence. Yea, verily good friend your Karma is ours, for you imprinted it daily and hourly upon the pages of that book where the minutest particulars of the individuals stepping inside our circle — are preserved; and that your Karma is your only personality to be when you step beyond. In thought and deed, by day, in soul-struggles by nights, you have been writing the story of your desires and your spiritual development. This, every one does who approaches us with any earnestness of desire to become our co-worker, he himself "precipitates" the written entries by the identical process used by us when we write inside your closed letters and uncut pages of books and pamphlets in transit. (See pp. 32, 35 Report sent by Olcott, once more.) I tell you this for your private information and it must not figure in the next pamphlet from Simla. During the past few months, especially, when your weary brain was plunged in the torpor of sleep, your eager soul has often been searching after me, and the current of your thought been beating against my protecting barriers of Akas as the lapping wavelets against a rocky shore. What that "inner Self," impatient, anxious — has longed to bind itself to, the carnal man, the worldlings' master has not ratified: the ties of life are still as strong as chains of steel. Sacred, indeed, some of them are, and no one would ask you to rupture them. There below, lies your long-cherished field of enterprise and usefulness. Ours can never be more than a bright phantom-world to the man of thorough "practical sense"; and if your case be in some degree exceptional, it is because your nature has deeper inspirations than those of others, who are still more "business-like" and the fountain-head of whose eloquence is in the brain not in the heart, which never was in contact with the mysteriously effulgent, and pure heart of Tathagata.

If you hear seldom from me, never feel disappointed, my Brother, but say — "It is my fault." Nature has linked all parts of her Empire together by subtle threads of magnetic sympathy, and, there is a mutual correlation even between a star and a man; thought runs swifter than the electric fluid, and your thought will find me if projected by a pure impulse, as mine will find, has found, and often impressed your mind. We may move in cycles of activity divided — not entirely separated from each other. Like the light in the sombre valley seen by the mountaineer from his peaks, every bright thought in your mind, my Brother, will sparkle and attract the attention of your distant friend and correspondent. If thus we discover our natural Allies in the Shadow-world — your world and ours outside the precincts — and it is our law to approach every such an one if even there be but the feeblest glimmer of the true "Tath[ma]agata" light within him — then how far easier for you to attract us. Understand this and the admission into the Society of persons often distasteful to you will no longer amaze you. "They that be whole need not the physician, but they that be sick" — is an axiom, whoever may have spoken it.

And now, let me bid you farewell for the present until the next. Indulge not in apprehensions of what evil might happen if things should not go as your worldly wisdom thinks they ought; doubt not, for this complexion of doubt unnerves and pushes back one's progress. To have cheerful confidence and hope is quite another thing from giving way to the fool's blind optimism: the wise man never fights misfortune in advance. A cloud does lower over your path — it gathers about the hill of Jakko. He whom you made your confidant — I advised you to become but his co-worker, not to divulge things to him that you should have kept locked within your bosom — is under a baneful influence, and may become your enemy. You do right to try to rescue him from it, for it bodes ill to him, to you and to the Society. His greater mind fumed by vanity and charmed by the pipings of a weaker but more cunning one, is for the time under a spell of fascination. You will easily detect the malign power that stands behind both and uses them as tools for the execution of its own nefarious plans. The intended catastrophe can be averted by redoubled vigilance and increased fervour of pure will on the part of the friends of S.B.L. Work then, if you still will, to turn the blow aside; for if it falls you will not escape unhurt however great my Brothers' efforts. The cause will never be ruined though albeit the Sisyphus' rock may crush a good many toes. Farewell, again, my friend — for longer or shorter, as you may determine. I am called to duty.

Yours faithfully,

K. H.

Letter 46 Table of Contents

Letter No. 46

Received Simla, 1882.

I will thank you, my dear Sinnett Sahib, for a personal favour. Since K.H. is too much of a perfect Yogi-Arhat, to stop the hand that undaunted by failure keeps on trying to catch the Tibetan yak by the neck to bend it under its yoke, then all that remains for me to do is to make once more my appearance on thenataka-shala to put a stop to a performance that threatens to become monotonous even to us — well trained in patience. I cannot avail myself of your kind advice to write to Mr. Hume in my brightest red since it would be opening a new door for an endless correspondence, an honour I would rather decline. But I write to you instead, and send you a telegram and answer on back on't, for your perusal. What talk of his is this? Reverence may not be in his nature, nor does any one claim or care for it any way! But I should have thought that his head, that is capacious enough to hold anything, had a corner in it for some common sense. And that sense might have told him that either we are what we claim, or we are not. That in the former case, however exaggerated the claims made on behalf of our powers still if our knowledge and foresight do not transcend his, then we are no better than shams and impostors and the quicker he parts company with us — the better for him. But if we are in any degree what we claim to be, then he acts like a wild ass. Let him remember, that we are not Indian Rajahs in need of and compelled to accept political Ayahs, and nurses to lead us on by the string. That the Society was founded, went on and will go on with or without him let him suit himself as to the latter.

So far his help, that he thrusts on us, much after the fashion of Spanish mendicant hidalgos, who offer their sword to protect the traveller with one hand and clutch him by the throat with the other, has not — as far as I can find very beneficial to the Society so far. Not to one of its founders, at any rate, whom he has nigh killed last year at Simla and whom he now harasses, sticking to her like grim death turning her blood into water and eating her liver out.

Therefore I expect you to impress upon his mind that all we should "give thanks for," would be to see him take care of his Eclectic and to leave the Parent Society to take care of itself. His advice and help to the editor of the Theosophist has no doubt been very advantageous to the editor, and she does feel grateful to him for it after deducting the large share she owes to yourself. But we beg leave to state, that some line ought to be drawn somewheres — between said editor and ourselves; for we are not quite the Tibetan triplets he takes us to be. Therefore, whether we be the ignorant savages and Orientals of his making — every wolf being master in his own den — we claim the right to know our own business best, and respectfully decline his services as a captain to steer our Theosophical ship even on "the ocean of worldly life" as he metaphorizes in his sloka. We have allowed him, under the good pretext of saving the situation with the British theosophists to ventilate his animosity against us in the organ of our own Society and to draw our portrait-likenesses, with a brush dipped in haughty bile — what more does he want? As I ordered the old woman to telegraph him back — he is not the only skilful navigator in the world; he seeks to avoid Western breakers, and we to steer our canoe clear off Eastern sandbanks. Does he mean in addition to this to dictate from the Chohan down to Juala Khool and Deb what we shall and what we shall not do? Ram, Ram and the holy Nagas! is it after centuries of independent existence that we have to fall under a foreign influence, to become the puppets of a Simla Nawab? Are we school boys, or what, in his fancy to submit to the rod of a Peling schoolmaster. . . .

Notwithstanding his sulks I beg you will tell him that you heard from me — and that I have asked you to let him know my ultimatum: if he would not break with the whole shop altogether, and for ever I will not suffer him to interfere with his wisdom between our ignorance and the Parent Society. Nor shall he ease his bad humour on one who is not responsible for anything we may do or say — a woman so sick that as in 1877 I am again forced to carry her away — when she is so needed where she now is, at Headquarters — for fear she will fall all to pieces. And that this state of hers was brought on lately by him owing to constant anxiety for the Society, and partially if not wholly by his behaviour at Simla — you can take my word for it. The whole situation and future of the Eclectic hangs on Koothumi if you will not help him. If notwithstanding my advice and the Chohan's evident displeasure he will persist making a fool of himself sacrificing himself for a man who is the evil genius of the Society in one direction — well it's his own business, only I will have nothing to do with it. Your true friend I will ever remain though you turn against me one of these days. Fern was tested and found a thorough Dugpa in his moral nature. We will see, we will see; but very little hope left notwithstanding his splendid capacities. Had I hinted to him to deceive his own father and mother he would have thrown in their fathers and mothers in the bargain. Vile, vile nature — yet irresponsible. Oh ye Westerns, who boast of your morality! May the bright Chohans keep you and all yours from the approaching harm is the sincere wish of your friend M.

M.

Letter 47 Table of Contents

Letter No. 47

Received Allahabad, 3rd March, 1882.

Reply to my remonstrance against treatment of Europe.

(Through Damodar.)

Well, say I am an ignoramus in your English ways, and I'll say you are one in our Tibetan customs and we will split the difference and shake our astral hands over Barnaway and square the discussion.

The old woman? Of course she will be frantic — but who cares? It's kept from her however secret. No use making her more miserable than what she is. Cook is a pump of filth, with perpetually working pistons and the sooner he screws them up — the better for him. Your last letter to me is less a "petition" than a protest, my respected Sahib. It's voice is that of the war sankh of my Rajput ancestors, rather than the cooing of a friend. And I like it all the more I promise you. It has the right ring of honest frankness. So let us talk — for sharp as your voice may be, your heart is warm and you end by saying "Whether you decree that what seems to me right be done or not" you are ever ours faithfully etc. Europe is a large place but the world is bigger yet. The sun of Theosophy must shine for all, not for a part. There is more of this movement than you have yet had an inkling of, and the work of the T.S. is linked in with similar work that is secretly going on in all parts of the world. Even in the T.S. there is a division, managed by a Greek Brother about which not a person in the Society has a suspicion excepting the old woman and Olcott; and even he only knows it is progressing, and occasionally executes an order I send him in connection with it. The cycle I spoke of refers to the whole movement. Europe will not be overlooked, never fear; but perhaps you even may not anticipate how the light will be shed there. Ask your Seraph — K.H. to let you have details thereof. You speak of Massey and Crookes: do you not recollect that Massey was offered 4 years ago, the chance to head the English movement and — declined? In his place was set up that old grim idol of the Jewish Sinai — Wild, who with his Christian rant and fanatical rot shut us out of the movement altogether. Our Chohan forbade us absolutely to take any part in it. Massey has to thank but himself for it, and you may tell him so. You ought to have learned by this time our ways. We advise — and never order. But we do influence individuals. Ransack the Spiritualistic literature if you will till the year 1877. Search and find in it — if you can, one single word about occult philosophy, or esotericism or anything of that element now so largely infused in the spiritual movement. Ask and enquire whether the very word of "occultism" was not so completely unknown in America, that we find Cora of the 7 husbands, the Zappan woman and talking medium inspired in her lectures to say that the word was one just coined by the Theosophists — then dawning —; that no one ever heard of elementary spirits and "astral" light — save the petroleum manufacturers and so on and on. Well ascertain this and compare. This was the first war cry, and the battle kept raging hot and fierce to the very day of the departure for India. To say and point out to Edison and Crookes and Massey — would sound much like boasting of that which can never be proven. And Crookes — has he not brought science within our bail in his "radiant matter" discovery? What but occult research was it that led him first to that. You know K.H. and me

— buss! know you anything of the whole Brotherhood and its ramifications? The Old Woman is accused of untruthfulness, inaccuracy in her statements. "Ask no questions and you will receive no lies." She is forbidden to say what she knows. You may cut her to pieces and she will not tell. Nay — she is ordered in cases of need to mislead people; and, were she more of a natural born liar — she might be happier and won her day long since by this time. But that's just where the shoe pinches, Sahib. She is too truthful, too outspoken, too incapable of dissimulation: and now she is being daily crucified for it. Try not to be hasty, respected Sir. The world was not made in a day; nor has the tail of the yak developed in one year. Let evolution take its course naturally — lest we make it deviate and produce monsters by presuming to guide it. Massey talks of coming to India — does he not? And supposing that after coming here and doing what is right and spending the needed time for disciplinary training he should be sent back with a message? And supposing that Crookes and Edison and others have other things to discover? So I say, "WAIT." Who knows what may be the situation in November? You might think it such as to justify us in carrying out our "threat" to "lock the door," while it might seem very different to us. Let us all do our best. There are cycles of 7, 11, 21,

77, 107, 700, 11,000, 21,000 etc.; so many cycles will make a major and so on. Bide your time the record book is well kept. Only, look out sharp: the Dugpas and the Gelupkas are not fighting but in Tibet alone, see their vile work in England among the "Occultists and seers!" Hear — your acquaintance Wallace preaching like a true "Hierophant" of the "left hand" the marriage of "soul with the spirit" and getting the true definition topsy-turvy seek to prove that every practicing Hierophant must at least be spiritually married — if for some reasons he cannot do so physically there being otherwise a great danger of Adulteration of God and Devil! I tell you the Shammars are there already and their pernicious work is everywhere in our way. Do not regard this as metaphorical but as a real fact, which may be demonstrated to you some day.

Its quite useless to say anything more about Olcott's eccentricity and the inferiority of America to England; all that is real in your point we recognise and knew long ago; but you do not know how much that is mere superficial prejudice glares in your eyes like the reflection of a thin taper on deep water. Take care lest we should some day take you at your thought and put you in Olcott's place, after taking him to our own, as he has longed to have us do these several years. Martyrdom is pleasant to look at and criticise, but harder to suffer. There never was a woman more unjustly abused than H.B. See the infamous insulting letters she was sent from England for publication against herself and us and the Society. You may find them undignified perhaps. But the "Answers to Correspondents" in Supplement are written by myself. So do not blame her. I'm curious to know your frank opinion on them. Perchance you might think she might have done herself better.

M.

Letter 48 Table of Contents

Letter No. 48

Received Allahabad, March 3rd, 1882.

Good friend, I "know" — of course. And knowing, without your telling me I would, were I but authorized to influence you in any one direction — answer most gladly: "that knowledge thou shalt share with me some day." When, or how — "is not for me to say, nor for myself to know," as you, aye, you alone, have to weave your destiny. Perhaps soon and perchance — never: but why feel "despairing," or even doubting? Believe me: we may yet walk along the arduous path together. We may yet meet: but if at all, it has to be along and on — those "adamantine rocks with which our occult rules surround us" — never outside them, however bitterly we may complain. No, never can we pursue our further journey — if hand in hand — along that high-way, crowded thoroughfare, which encircles them, and on which Spiritualists and mystics, prophets and seers elbow each other now-a-day. Yea, verily, the motley crowd of candidates may shout for an eternity to come, for the Sesam to open. It never will, so long as they keep outside those rules. Vainly do your modern seers and their prophetesses, creep into every cleft and crevice without outlet or continuity they chance to see; and still more vainly, when once within do they lift up their voices and loudly cry: "Eureka! We have gotten a Revelation from the Lord!" — for verily have they nothing of the kind. They have disturbed but bats, less blind than their intruders; who, feeling them flying about, mistake them as often for angels — as they too, have wings! Doubt not, my friend: it is but from the very top of those "adamantine rocks" of ours, not at their foot, that one is ever enabled to perceive the whole Truth, by embracing the whole limitless horizon. And though they may seem to you to be standing in your way, it is simply because you have hitherto failed to discover or even so much as suspect the reason and the operation of those laws; hence they appear so cold and merciless and selfish in your sight; although yourself have intuitionally recognised in them the outcome of ages of wisdom. Nevertheless, were one but to obediently follow them out, they could be made to gradually yield to one's desire and give to him all he asks of them. But no one could ever violently break them, without becoming the first victim to his guilt; yea, to the extent of risking to lose his own, his hard won share of immortality, here and there. Remember: too anxious expectation is not only tedious, but dangerous too. Each warmer and quicker throb of the heart wears so much of life away. The passions, the affections are not to be indulged in by him, who seeks to KNOW; for they "wear out the earthly body with their own secret power; and he, who would gain his aim — must be cold." He must not even desire too earnestly or too passionately the object he would reach: else, the very wish will prevent the possibility of its fulfilment, at best — retard and throw it back. . . .

You will find in the forth-coming number, two articles which you must read, I need not tell you why, as I leave it with your intuitions. As usual, it is an indiscretion, which however, I have allowed to remain as there are few, if any, who will understand the hint contained — but you. There are more than one such hint though; hence your attention is asked to the "Elixir of Life" and W. Oxley's "Philosophy of Spirit." The former contains references and explanations, the haziness of which, may remind you of a man who stealthily approaching one gives him a hit upon his back, and then runs away; as they most undeniably belong to the genus of those "Fortunes" that come to one like the thief by night and during one's sleep, and go back, finding no one to respond to the offer — of which you complain in your letter to Brother. This time, you are warned, good friend, so complain no more. Article No. 2, is penned by the Manchester Seer — Oxley. Having received no reply to his summons to K.H., he criticises — mildly so far — The utterances of that "Internal Power" — for which new title I feel rather obliged to him. At the sight of the gentle rebuke, our blunderbuss Editor failed not to explode. Nor would she be soothed, until Djwal-Khul, with whom the famous review was concocted — (one by-the-bye, which seen by, ought to have never been permitted to see the day by you) — was authorized, under the safe nom-de-plume of "Reviewer" to answer (by correcting some of his blunders) the Seer, in a few innocent foot-notes. Yet, I must say, that of all the present English "prophets," W. Oxley is the only one who has an inkling of truth; hence the only one calculated to effectually help our movement. The man runs constantly in and out of the straight road, deviating from it every time he thinks he perceives a new path; but finding himself in a cul-de-sac as invariably returns to the right direction. I must admit, there is much sound philosophy here and there in what he writes; and, though his story of "Busiris" in its anthropomorphic presentation is ridiculous nonsense, and, his rendering of Sanskrit names is mostly wrong;

and though he seems to have but very hazy notions about what he calls the "astro-masonic basis of Bhagavat Gita " and — Mahabharata to both of which he evidently attributes the same author — yet he is positively and absolutely the only one, whose general comprehension of Spirit, and its capabilities and functions after the first separation, we call death, are on the whole if not quite correct, at least approximating very nearly Truth. Read it, when it comes out, especially Par. 3, Col. I, page 152 et seq, where you will find them. You may then understand, why, instead of answering your direct question I go into a subject, so far, perfectly indifferent to you. Follow, for instance his definition of the term "Angel" (it will be on line 30,) and try to follow and comprehend his thought, so clumsily yet withal so correctly expressed and then, compare it with the Tibetan teaching. Poor, poor Humanity, when shalt thou have the whole and unadulterated Truth! Behold, each of the "privileged ones saying: "I alone am right! There is no lacuna. . . ."

No; none: — not on that one special page opened before him, and which he alone is reading in the endless volume of "Spirit Revelation," called Seership. But why such stubborn oblivion of the important fact that there are other and innumerable pages before and after that one solitary page that each of the "Seers" has so far hardly learnt to decipher? Why is it, that every one of those "Seers" believes himself the Alpha and the Omega of Truth? Thus — S.M. is taught that there are no such "Beings" as Brothers, and to reject the doctrine of frequent annihilation and that of the Elementary and of the non-human Spirits. Maitland and Mrs.

K. have revealed to them — by Jesus and GOD themselves (that alone would beat +) that many of the supposed "Spirits" which control mediums and converse with visitors — Spiritualists, are no "disembodied" spirits at all, but only "flames," — and the reliquiae of dogs, cats and pigs, helped to communicate with mortals by the spirits of "trees," vegetables and minerals. Though more hazy than the human, cautious discourses of the alleged + those teachings are nearer to the mark than anything uttered so far by the mediums, and I will tell you why. When the "Seeress" is made to reveal that "immortality is by no means a matter of course for all" . . . that "souls shrink away and expire," it being the nature of them to burn out and expand themselves" . . . etc., she is delivering herself of actual, incontrovertible facts. And why? Because both Maitland and herself as well as their circle — are strict vegetarians, while S.M. is a flesh-eater and a wine and liquor drinker. Never will the Spiritualists find reliable, trustworthy mediums and Seers (not even to a degree) so long as the latter and their "circle" will saturate themselves with animal blood, and the millions of infusoria of the fermented fluids. Since my return I found it impossible for me to breathe — even in the atmosphere of the Headquarters! M. had to interfere, and to force the whole household to give up meat; and they had, all of them, to be purified and thoroughly cleansed with various disinfecting drugs before I could even help myself to my letters. And I am not, as you may imagine, half as sensitive to the loathsome emanations as a tolerably respectable disembodied shell would be, — leaving out of question a real PRESENCE, though but a "projecting" one. In a year or so, perchance earlier, I may find myself hardened again. At present I find it impossible — do what I may.

And now, with such a Preface instead of answering I will put you a question. You know, S. Moses, and you know Maitland and Mrs. K. personally. And, you have heard of and read about a good many Seers, in the past and present centuries, such as Swedenborg, Boehme, and others. Not one among the number but thoroughly honest, sincere, and as intelligent, as well educated; aye, even learned. Each of them in addition to these qualities, has or had an + of his own; a "Guardian" and a Revelator — under whatever "mystery" and "mystic name" — whose mission it is — or has been to spin out to his spiritual ward — a new system embracing all the details of the world of Spirit. Tell me, my friend, do you know of two that agree? And why, since truth is one, and that putting entirely the question of discrepancies in details aside — we do not find them agreeing even upon the most vital problems — those that have either "to be, or not to be" — and of which there can be no two solutions? Summed up, it comes to the following: — All the "Rosicrucians," all the mediaeval mystics, Swedenborg, P.B. Randolf, Oxley, etc., etc.: "there are secret Brotherhoods of Initiates in the East, especially in Tibet and Tartary; there only can the LOST WORD (which is no Word) be found"; and, there are Spirits of the Elements, and Spirit-Flames, that were never incarnated (in this cycle), and immortality is conditional.

Mediums and clairvoyants, (of the type of S. Moses;) there are no Brothers in Tibet or India, and the 'Lost Word' is in the sole keeping of my 'Guardian' who knows the word but knows of no Brothers. And, immortality is for all and unconditional, there being no Spirits but the human and the disembodied, etc. etc."

— a system of radical denial of the first one and in complete antagonism with it. While Oxley and Mrs. H. Billing are in direct communication with the "Brothers," S.M. rejects the very idea of one. While "Busiris" is an "angel" au pluriel, or the Spirit of a congeries of Spirits (Dhyan Chohans) the + is the soul of a disembodied Sage solo. His teachings are authoritative, yet we always find a ring of uncertainty and hesitation in them: "We are not able to say now" . . . "It is doubtful" . . . "We do not understand whether it is pretended" . . . it "seems that" . . . "we do not feel sure," etc. Thus speaketh a man, conditioned and limited in his means of obtaining absolute knowledge; but why should a "Soul within the Universal Soul" a "Spirit Sage" use such a cautious, uncertain phraseology if the truth is known to him? Why not, in answer to her direct, fearless, and challenging remark: "You want objective proof of the Lodge? Have you not +? and can you not ask him whether I speak the truth?" — why not answer — (if it is + who answers) — either one way or the other, and say: — "the poor wench is hallucinated"; or, (as there cannot be another or a third alternative if S.M. is right) "she lies intentionally, with such and such an object, beware of her! "Why so hazy? — Aye, verily, because "he (+) knows," and "his name be blessed," — but he (S.M.) knoweth not; for, as his "spirits,"

+ he thinks — repeatedly remind him: "You do not appear to have gathered rightly what we said . . ." controversy stirs up your mind and feeling, and in place of a transparent medium, gives us one that is turpid. . . . we require a passive mind, and cannot act without it" . . . (see Light February 4th).

As we do not "require a passive mind" but on the contrary are seeking for those most active, which can put two and two together once that they are on the right scent, we will, if you please, drop the subject. Let your mind work out the problem for itself.

Yes; I am indeed, satisfied with your last article, though it will satisfy no Spiritualist. Yet there is more philosophy and sound logic in it than in a dozen of their most pretentious publications. Facts — will come later on. Thus, little by little, the now incomprehensible will become the self-evident; and many a sentence of mystic meaning, will shine yet out before your Soul-eye, like a transparency, illuminating the darkness of your mind. Such is the course of gradual progress; a year or two back you might have written a more brilliant, never a more profound article. Neglect then, not, my good Brother, the humble, the derided Journal of your Society, and mind not either its quaint, pretentious cover, nor the "heaps of manure" contained in it — to repeat the charitable, and to yourself the too familiar remark used often at Simla. But let your attention be rather drawn to the few pearls of wisdom and occult truths to be occasionally discovered under that "manure." Our own ways and manners are, perchance, as quaint and as uncouth — nay more so. Subba Rao is right; he who knows aught of the ways of the Siddhas shall concur with the views expressed on the third page of his incomplete letter: many of us would be mistaken for Madmen, by you English gentlemen. But he, who would become a son of Wisdom can always see beneath the rugged surface. So, with the poor old Journal. Behold, its mystically bumptious clothing!, its numerous blemishes and literary defects, and with all that cover the most perfect symbol of its contents: the main portion of its original ground, thickly veiled, all smutty and as black as night, through which peep out grey dots, and lines, and words, and even — sentences. To the truly wise those breaks of grey, may suggest an allegory full of meaning, such as the streaks of twilight, upon the Eastern sky, at morning's early dawn, after a night of intense darkness; the aurora of a more "spiritually intellectual" cycle. And who knows, how many of those, who, undismayed by its unprepossessing appearance, the hideous intricacies of its style, and the other many failures of the unpopular magazine will keep on turning its pages, who may find themselves rewarded some day for their perseverance! Illuminated sentences may gleam out upon them, at some time or other, shedding a bright light upon some old puzzling problems. Yourself, some fine morning, while poring over its crooked columns with the sharpened wits of a well rested brain, peering into what you now view as hazy, impalpable speculations, having only the consistency of vapour, — yourself you may, perchance, perceive in them the unexpected solution of an old, blurred, forgotten "dream" of yours, which once recalled will impress itself in an indelible image upon your outer from your inner memory, to never fade out from it again. All this is possible and may happen; for our ways are the ways of "Madmen" . . .

Then why feel "unhappy" and "disappointed"? My good, my faithful friend, remember that hope deferred is no hope lost. "Conditions" may change for the better — for we too — spook-like need our conditions, and can hardly work without them; and then, the vague depression of Spirit, which is now settling down upon you like a heavy cloud on a landscape may be blown away at the first favourable breeze. Bhavani Shanker is with O., and he is stronger and fitter in many a way more than Damodar or even our mutual "female" friend.

No; you will not be snatched away from your study before you have thoroughly mastered the alphabet, so as to learn to read by yourself; and, it depends but on you alone to nail for ever "the too attractive vision" that seems to you now to be fading away. . . . . . [One whole page of the original letter is missing here. — ED.] . . . .whole situation. That I am not a "Seraph" yet, is shown in the fact of my writing to you this endless letter. When it is proved that you have not misunderstood my meaning, I may say more. Morya, to enable you as he says to confront your enemies, the believers in the materialisation of "individual souls," wanted me, to acquaint you with the totality of the subtile bodies and their collective aggregate, as well as with the distributive aggregate or the sheaths. I believe it is premature. Before the world can be made to understand the difference between the "Sutratma" (thread-soul) and "Taijasa," (the brilliant or the luminous) they have to be taught the nature of the grosser elements. What I blame him for, is that he allowed you to begin from the wrong end — the most difficult unless one has thoroughly mastered the preparatory ground. I have looked over you(r) MS. to him; and more than once have I detected on the white margin the shadow of your face, with its earnest, enquiring gaze in the eyes: your thought having projected your image on the spot you had on your mind, and which you longed to receive back filled — "thirsting" as you say — for more notes and information. Well, if his laziness overcomes his good intentions much longer, I will have to do it myself, though my time is limited. At all events to write for you is no ungrateful task, as you make the best use of the little you may pick up here and there. Indeed, when you complain of being unable to comprehend the meaning of Eliphas Levi, it is only because you failed like so many other readers to find the key to their way of writing. On close observation, you will find that it was never the intention of the Occultists really to conceal what they had been writing from the earnest determined students, but rather to lock up their information for safety-sake, in a secure safe-box, the key to which is — intuition. The degree of diligence and zeal with which the hidden meaning is sought by the student, is generally the test — how far he is entitled to the possession of the so buried treasure. And certainly if you were able to make out that which was concealed under the red ink of M. — you need despair of nothing. I believe, it is time now to bid you farewell, hoping you will find less trouble to read the blue than the red hieroglyphics. O. will be with you shortly, and you ought to make the best of this opportunity which may be the last for both. And now, need I remind you that this letter is STRICTLY private?

Yours, whatever may come of it,

K. H.

Letter 49 Table of Contents

Letter No. 49

From K.H. Received at Umballa on the way to Simla, August 5, 1881.

{Olcott being in Ceylon, H.P.B. left Bombay July 22 to visit Hume at Simla. A. P. Sinnett arrived

at Hume's home as a guest early in August. The 21st the Simla Eclectic T.S. was formed with

Hume as President, A.P.S., Vice-president, Ross Scott, Secretary.}

Just home. Received more letters than I care to answer — yours excepted. Having nothing particular to say, I will simply attend to your questions; a task which may seem an easy one, but is not so, in reality, if we but remember that similar in that to the deity described in Upanishad "Sokamayata bahuh syam prajaye yeti" — they "love to be many and to multiply." At any rate, thirst for knowledge was never regarded as a sin and you will always find me prompt to answer such queries — that can be answered.

Certainly I am of opinion that since our correspondence was established for the good of the many it would prove very little profitable to the world at large unless you do recast the teachings and ideas contained therein "in the form of an essay," not only on the occult philosophical view of creation but upon every other question. The sooner you begin your "future book" the better; for who can answer for unexpected incidents? Our correspondence may break off suddenly the obstacle coming from those who know best. THEIR mind — as you know, is a sealed book for many of us, and which no amount of "art magic" can break open. Further "aids to reflection" will however come in good time; and the little I am permitted to explain, may, I hope, prove more comprehensive than Eliphas Levi's Haute Magie. No wonder you find it cloudy, for it was never meant for the uninitiated reader. Eliphas studied from the Rosicrucian MSS. (now reduced to three copies in Europe). These expound our eastern doctrines from the teachings of Rosencranz, [Rosencreutz] who, upon his return from Asia dressed them up in a semi-Christian garb intended as a shield for his pupils, against clerical revenge. One must have the key to it and that key is a science per se. Rosencranz [Rosencreutz] taught orally. Saint Germain recorded the good doctrines in figures and his only cyphered MS. remained with his staunch friend and patron the benevolent German Prince from whose house and in whose presence he made his last exit — HOME. Failure, dead failure! Speaking of "figures" and "numbers" Eliphas addresses those who know something of the Pythagorean doctrines. Yes; some of them do sum up all philosophy and include all doctrines. Isaac Newton understood them well; but withheld his knowledge very prudently for his own reputation, and very unfortunately for the writers of Saturday Review and its contemporaries. You seem to admire it — I do not. However talented from the literary point of view, a paper which gives vent to such unprogressive and dogmatic ideas as the one I came across in it, lately, ought to lose caste among its more liberal confreres. Scientific men, it thinks — "do not make at all good observers" at exhibitions of modern magic, spiritism and other "nine days wonders." This is certainly not as it should be, it adds for, "knowing as well as they do the limits of the natural (?!!) they should begin by assuming that what they see, or what they think they see, cannot be done, and should next look for the fallacy" etc. etc. Circulation of the blood, electric telegraph, railway and steamer argument all over again. They know "the limits of the natural"!! Oh, century of conceit and mental obscuration! And we are invited to, London among these academical rags whose predecessors persecuted Mesmer and branded St. Germain as an impostor! All is secret for them as yet in nature. Of man — they know but the skeleton and form; hardly are they able to outline the paths through which the invisible messengers they call "senses" pass on their way to man's perceptions; their school science is a hot-bed of doubts and conjectures; it teaches but for its own sophistry, infects with its emasculation, its scorn for truth, its false morality and dogmatism, and its representatives would boast knowing "the limits of the natural." Bus — my good friend; I would forget you belonged to this generation, and are an admirer of your "modern Science." Her behests and oracular verdicts are on a level with the papal — non possumus. Yes; the Saturday Review has let us off easily enough to be sure. Not so the Spiritualist. Poor perplexed, wee paper! You gave it a tremendous blow. Losing its footing on mediumistic ground, it fights its death struggle for supremacy of English adeptship over Eastern knowledge. I almost hear its sub rosa cry: "If we Spiritualists are shown to be in the wrong box so are you — theosophists." The great "Adept," the formidable J.K. is certainly a dangerous enemy; and I am afraid, our Boddhisatwas will have to confess some day their profound ignorance before his mighty learning. "Real Adepts like Gautama Buddha or Jesus Christ did not shroud themselves in mystery, but came and taught openly," quoth our oracle. If they did it's news to us — the humble followers of the former. Gautama is qualified the "Divine Teacher" and at the same time "God's messenger"!! (See Spt., July 8th, p. 21. para 2.) Buddha has now become the messenger of one, whom He, Sankia K'houtchoo, the precious wisdom, has dethroned 2,500 years back, by unveiling the Tabernacle and showing its emptiness. Where did that cockney adept learn his Buddhism, I wonder? You really ought to advise your friend Mr. C. C. Massey to study with that London Jewel who so despises Indian occult knowledge "The Lotus of the Good Law," and "Atma Boddha" — in the light of Jewish Kabalism.

I, "annoyed at newspaper ribald notices?" Certainly not. But I do feel a little wrathful at the sacrilegious utterances of J.K.; that I confess. I felt like answering the conceited fool — but "so far shalt thou go and no further" — again. The Hobilghan to whom I showed the passage laughed till the tears streamed down his old cheeks. I wish I could. When the "Old Lady" reads it, there will be a cedar or two damaged at Simla. Thanks indeed for your kind offer to let me have possession of the Review scraps; but I rather you should preserve them yourself, as these notices may prove unexpectedly valuable to you in a few years hence.

To your offer to give a solemn pledge never to divulge anything without permission, I can give no answer, at present. Neither its acceptance nor rejection depend of me, to tell you the truth, since it would be quite an unprecedented event to pledge an outsider to our own particular form of oath or promise, and that no other would hold good in my Superior's opinion. Unfortunately for both of us, once — or rather twice — upon a time you made use of an expression which was recorded, and but three days ago, when pleading for some privileges for you, it was brought out before me very unexpectedly, I must say. Upon hearing it repeated and seeing it recorded, I had but to turn, as gently as I could, the other cheek to still more unexpected buffets of fortune dealt out by the respected hand of him whom I so revere. Cruel as the reminder seemed to me it was just, for you have pronounced these words at Simla: "I am a member of the Theosophical Society but in no way a Theosophist," you said. I am not breaking confidence in revealing this result of my plaidoyer to you, as I am even advised to do so. We have to travel then, at the same slow rate at which we have hitherto gone, or — halt at once and write Finis at the bottom of our letters. I hope you will give preference to the former.

Once we are upon the topic, I wish you would impress upon your London friends some wholesome truths that they are but too apt to forget, even, when they have been told of them over and over again. The Occult Science is not one, in which secrets can be communicated of a sudden, by a written or even verbal communication. If so, all the "Brothers" should have to do, would be to publish a Hand-book of the art which might be taught in schools as grammar is. It is the common mistake of people that we willingly wrap ourselves and our powers in mystery — that we wish to keep our knowledge to ourselves, and of our own will refuse — "wantonly and deliberately" to communicate it. The truth is that till the neophyte attains to the condition necessary for that degree of Illumination to which, and for which, he is entitled and fitted, most if not all of the Secrets are incommunicable. The receptivity must be equal to the desire to instruct. The illumination must come from within. Till then no hocus pocus of incantations, or mummery of appliances, no metaphysical lectures or discussions, no self-imposed penance can give it. All these are but means to an end, and all we can do is to direct the use of such means as have been empirically found by the experience of ages to conduce to the required object. And this was and has been no secret for thousands of years. Fasting, meditation, chastity of thought, word, and deed; silence for certain periods of time to enable nature herself to speak to him who comes to her for information; government of the animal passions and impulses; utter unselfishness of intention, the use of certain incense and fumigations for physiological purposes, have been published as the means since the days of Plato and Iamblichus in the West, and since the far earlier times of our Indian Rishis. How these must be complied with to suit each individual temperament is of course a matter for his own experiment and the watchful care of his tutor or Guru. Such is in fact part of his course of discipline, and his Guru or initiator can but assist him with his experience and will power but can do no more until the last and Supreme initiation. I am also of opinion that few candidates imagine the degree of inconvenience — nay suffering and harm to himself — the said initiator submits to for the sake of his pupil. The peculiar physical, moral, and intellectual conditions of neophytes and Adepts alike vary much, as anyone will easily understand; thus, in each case, the instructor has to adapt his conditions to those of the pupil, and the strain is terrible for to achieve success we have to bring ourselves into a full rapport with the subject under training. And as, the greater the powers of the Adept the less he is in sympathy with the natures of the profane who often come to him saturated with the emanations of the outside world, those animal emanations of the selfish, brutal, crowd that we so dread — the longer he was separated from that world and the purer he has This is why people so often complain with a plausible show of reason that no new knowledge is communicated to them, though they have toiled for it for two, three or more years. Let those who really desire to learn abandon all and come to us, instead of asking or expecting us to go to them. But how is this to be done in your world, and atmosphere? "Woke up sad on the morning of the 18th." Did you? Well, well, patience, my good brother, patience. Something has occurred, though you have preserved no consciousness of the event; but let this rest. Only what more can I do? How am I to give expression to ideas for which you have as yet no language? The finer and more susceptible heads get like yourself, more than others do, and even when they get a little extra dose it is lost for want of words and images to fix the floating ideas. Perhaps, and undoubtedly you know not to what I now refer to. You will know it one day — Patience. To give more knowledge to a man than he is yet fitted to receive is a dangerous experiment; and furthermore, other considerations go to restrain me. The sudden communication of facts, so transcending the ordinary, is in many instances fatal not only to the neophyte but to those directly about him. It is like delivering an infernal machine or a cocked and loaded revolver into the hands of one who had never seen such a thing. Our case is exactly analogous. We feel that the time is approaching, and that we are bound to choose between the triumph of Truth or the Reign of Error and — Terror. We have to let in a few chosen ones into the great secret, or — allow the infamous Shammars to lead Europe's best minds into the most insane and fatal of superstitions — Spiritualism; and we do feel as if we were delivering a whole cargo of dynamite into the hands of those, we are anxious to see defending themselves against the Red Capped Brothers of the Shadow. You are curious to know where I am travelling about; to learn more of my great work and mission? Were I to tell you, you could hardly make anything of it. To test your knowledge and patience, I may answer you though — this once. I now come from Sakkya-Jong. To you the name will remain meaningless. Repeat it before the "Old Lady" and — observe the result. But to return. Having then, to deliver with one hand the much needed yet dangerous weapon to the world, and with the other to keep off the Shammars (the havoc produced by them already being immense) do you not think we have a right to hesitate, to pause and feel the necessity of caution, as we never did before? To sum up: the misuse of knowledge by the pupil always reacts upon the initiator; nor, do I believe you know yet, that in sharing his secrets with another, the Adept by an immutable Law, is delaying his own progress to the Eternal Rest. Perhaps, what I now tell you, may help you to a truer conception of things, and to appreciate our mutual position the better. Loitering on the way, does not conduce to a speedy arrival at the journey's end. And, it must strike you as a truism, that a Price must be paid for everything and every truth by somebody and in this case — we pay it. Fear not; I am willing to pay my share, and I told so those who put me the question. I will not desert you; nor will I show myself less self-sacrificing than the poor, worn out mortality we know as the "Old Lady." The above must remain between us two. I expect you to regard this letter as strictly confidential for it is neither for publication nor your friends. I want you alone to know it. Only, if all this was more generally known to candidates for initiation, I feel certain they would be both more thankful and more patient as well as less inclined to be irritated at what they consider our reticence and vacillations. Few possess your discretion; fewer still know to appreciate at their true value the results obtained. . . . Your two letters to S.M. will lead to no result whatever. He will remain as immovable and your trouble will have been taken in vain. You will receive a letter from him full of suspicion and with no few unkind remarks. You cannot persuade him that + is a living Brother for that was tried and — failed; unless, indeed, you convert him to popular exoteric Lamaism; which regards our "Byang-tzyoobs" and "Tchang­chubs" — the Brothers who pass from the body of one great Lama to that of another — as Lhas or disembodied Spirits. Remember what I said in my last of Planetary Spirits. The Tchang-chub (an adept who has, by the power of his knowledge and soul enlightenment, become exempt from the curse Of UNCONSCIOUS transmigration) — may, at his will and desire, and instead of reincarnating himself only after bodily death, do so, and repeatedly — during his life if he chooses. He holds the power of choosing for himself new bodies — whether on this or any other planet — while in possession of his old form, that he generally preserves for purposes of his own. Read the book of Khiu-tee and you will find in it these laws. She might translate for you some paras, as she knows them by rote. To her you may read the present.

Do I often laugh at "the helpless way in which you grope in the dark?" Most decidedly not. That would be as unkind and about as foolish for me to do as for you to laugh at a Hindu for his pidgin English, in a district, where your Government will not teach people English. Whence such a thought? And whence that other to have my portrait? Never had but one taken, in my whole life; a poor ferrotype produced in the days of the "Gaudeamus" by a travelling female artist — (some relative, I suppose, of the Munich beer ball beauties that you have interviewed of late) — and from whose hands I had to rescue it. The ferrotype is there, but the image itself has vanished: the nose peeled off and one of the eyes gone. No other to offer. I dare not promise for I never break my word. Yet — I may try — some day to get you one.

Quotation from Tennyson? Really cannot say. Some stray lines picked up in the astral light or in somebody's brain and remembered, I never forget what I once see or read. A bad habit. So much so, that often and unconsciously to myself I string together sentences of stray words and phrases, before my eyes and which may have been used hundred years ago or will be hundred years hence, in relation to quite a different subject. Laziness and real lack of time. The "Old Lady" called me a "brain pirate" and a plagiarist, the other day for using a whole sentence of five lines, which, she is firmly convinced, I must have pilfered from Dr. Wilder's brain as three months later, he reproduced it in an essay of his on prophetic intuition. Never had a look into the old philosopher's brain cells. Got it somewhere in a northern current — don't know. Write this for your information as something new for you, I suppose. Thus a child may be born bearing the greatest resemblance and features to another person, thousands of miles off, no connexion to the mother, never seen by her, but whose floating image was impressed upon her soul-memory, during sleep or even waking hours, and reproduced upon the sensitized plate of living flesh she carries in her. Yet, I believe, the lines quoted, were written by Tennyson years ago, and they are published. I hope these disjointed reflections and explanations may be pardoned in one, who, remained for over nine days in his stirrups without dismounting. From Ghalaring-Tcho Lamasery (where your Occult World was discussed and commented upon) — Heaven save the mark! will you think. I crossed to the Horpa Pa La territory, — "the unexplored regions of Turki tribes"

— say your maps ignorant of the fact that there are no tribes there at all — and thence — home. Yes; I am tired, and therefore will close.

Yours faithfully,

K. H.

In October I will be in Bhutan. I have a favour to ask of you: try and make friends with Ross Scott. I need him.

Letter 50 Table of Contents

Letter No. 50

Received August, 1882.

My dear friend,

I feel terribly pulled down (mentally) with this unceasing attitude of unavoidable opposition, and so continual attacks on our strongholds! During the whole of my quiet, contemplative life, I have never met with a man more tenacious and unreasonable! I cannot go on like that, passing my life in useless protest; and if you cannot bring to bear upon him your friendly influence, we will have all of us to part company, at some not distant day. I was with the Chohan when I received the letter I now enclose, and — the Chohan was perfectly disgusted, and called the whole thing the Tibetan name for "comedy." It is not that he is anxious to "do good" or "help the progress of the T.S." It is simply, believe me or not — insatiable pride in him; a ferocious, intense desire to feel and show to others that he is the "one elect," that he knows that which all others are barely allowed to suspect. Do not protest for it is useless. We know, and you do not. The Chohan heard the other day the idiotic but painfully sincere lamentations of the "wife" and — took note of them. Such is not a man who aims at becoming a "perfect soul" and he, who would write of a brother Theosophist what he has written to me of Fern — is no theosophist. Let this be strictly private, and do not let him know but what he will read himself in my letter. I want you to read the two letters before you take them to him, and I beg of you to be present when he reads them.

I will see what can be done for Colonel Chesney and I believe Djual Khool is after him. For the first time during my life I think I feel really disheartened. Yet for the sake of the Society, I would not lose him. Well I will do all I can, but I am seriously afraid, that he will spoil the broth himself some day.

Yours with sincere affection,

K. H.

Letter 51 Table of Contents

Letter No. 51

Received 22-8-82.

Private.

My good friend,

Remember that in the phenomenon intended for Colonel Chesney there was, is, and will be but one real phenomenal thing, or rather — an act of occultism — the likeness of your humble servant the best of the two productions of D. Khool, I am sorry to say — for you. The rest of the performance is, notwithstanding its mysterious character, something but too natural, and, of which I do not at all approve. But I have no right to go against the traditional policy however much I would like to avoid its practical application.

Keep this strictly within your own friendly heart until the day comes to let several persons know that you were warned of it. I dare not say more. The probations are hard all round and are sure not to meet your European notions of truthfulness and sincerity. But reluctant as I do feel to use such means or even to permit them to be used in connection with my chelas, yet I must say that the deception, the lack of good faith, and the traps (!!) intended to inveigle the Brothers, have multiplied so much of late; and there is so little time left to that day that will decide the selection of the chelas, that I cannot help thinking that our chiefs and especially M. may be after all right. With an enemy one has to use either equal or better weapons. But do not be deceived by appearance. Were that I could be as frank with Mr. Hume whom I as sincerely respect for some of his genuine, sterling, qualities as I cannot help blaming for some others. When will any of you know and understand what we really are, instead of indulging in a world of fiction!

In case Col. Chesney speaks to you of certain things tell him not to trust to appearances. He is a gentleman, and ought not to be allowed to labour under a deception, never meant for him but only as a test for those who would impose themselves upon us with an unclean heart. The crisis is near at hand. Who will win the day!

K. H.

Letter 52 Table of Contents

Letter No. 52

Received Simla, Autumn, 1882.

There is nothing "below the surface," my faithful friend — absolutely nothing. Hume is simply furiously jealous of anyone who received, or is likely to receive any information, favours (?) attention, or anything of the sort, emanating from us. The word "jealous" is ridiculous, but correct unless we call it envious, which is still worse. He believes himself wronged, because he fails to become our sole centre of attraction; he attitudinises before himself and feels maddened to fury in finding no one who would admire him; writes out a Hebrew passage which means in Eliphas Levi's book as I have rendered it, and failing to catch me in a new contradiction, for the purpose of which he went to the trouble of quoting it, he impresses himself with the illusion that he is "far more of an Adwaitee" than either M. or myself ever were (an easy thing to prove since we never were Adwaitees). And writes an abusive letter directed against our system and ourselves to the O.L. by way of soothing his feelings.

Are you really so generous as not to have suspected long ago the whole truth? Did I not warn you; and is it possible that you should not have perceived that he will never allow even an adept to know more or better than himself!; that his was a false humility; that he is an actor, who enacts a part for his own benefit, regardless of the pleasure or displeasure of his audience though when the latter is manifested to the slightest degree, he turns round, concealing admirably his rage and hisses and spits internally. Every time I contradict and prove him wrong, — whether in a question of Tibetan terms, or in any other trifle, the record he keeps against me swells, and he comes out with some new accusation. It is idle, my dear brother, to be always repeating that there are, nor can there be any contradictions in what was given to you. There may be inaccuracy of expression, or incompleteness of detail; but to accuse us of blundering is really too funny. I have asked you several times to make notes and to send them to me, but neither Mr. Hume nor you have thought of doing it; and indeed, I have very little time to explore back letters, compare notes, look into your heads, etc.

I confess my ignorance, in one thing at any rate. I am perfectly at a loss to understand why the expression used by me with regard to H.P.B.'s answer to C.C.M. should have so shocked you; and why you should object to my "exercising my ingenuity"? If, perchance, you give it another meaning than I do, then we are again both at sea — faut de s'entendre. Put yourself for a moment in my place, and see whether you would not have to exercise all the ingenuity you had at your command, in a case like that between C.C.M. and H.P.B. In reality, there is no contradiction between that passage in Isis and our later teaching; to anyone, who never heard of the seven principles — constantly referred to in Isis as a trinity, without any more explanation — there certainly appeared to be as good a contradiction as could be. "You will write so and so, give so far, and no more" — she was constantly told by us, when writing her book. It was at the very beginning of a new cycle, in days when neither Christians nor Spiritualists ever thought of, let alone mentioned, more than two principles in man — body and Soul, which they called Spirit. If you had time to refer to the spiritualistic literature of that day, you would find that with the phenomenalists as with the Christians, Soul and Spirit were synonymous. It was H.P.B., who, acting under the orders of Atrya (one whom you do not know) was the first to explain in the Spiritualist the difference there was between psyche andnous, nefesh and ruach — Soul and Spirit. She had to bring the whole arsenal of proofs with her, quotations from Paul and Plato, from Plutarch and James, etc. before the Spiritualists admitted that the theosophists were right. It was then that she was ordered to write Isis — just a year after the Society had been founded. And, as there happened such a war over it, endless polemics and objections to the effect that there could not be in man two souls — we thought it was premature to give the public more than they could possibly assimilate, and before they had digested the "two souls"; — and thus the further sub-division of the trinity into 7 principles was left unmentioned in Isis. And is it because she obeyed our orders, and wrote, purposely veiling some of her facts — that now, when we think the time has arrived to give most of, if not the whole truth — that she has to be left in the lurch? Would I, or any of us, ever leave her as a target for the Spiritualists to shoot at, and laugh at the contradictions when these were entirely apparent, and proceeded but from their own ignorance of the whole truth; a truth they would not listen to, nor will they accept it even now, except under protest and with the greatest reservations?

Certainly not. And when I use the word "ingenuity" — that may be an American slang expression for all I know, and that I suspect has with the English another meaning — I meant neither "cunning" nor anything like a "dodge," but simply to show the difficulty I had to labour under, to explain the right meaning with an endless and clumsy paragraph before me, that insisted upon non-reincarnation without inserting one word in it to show that the latter had reference but to the animal soul, not Spirit, to the astral, not the Spiritual monad.

Will you kindly explain to me at the first opportunity what you mean by referring to my expression as "an unhappy phrase"? If you asked a friend to draw for the Pioneer a cow, and that friend starting with the intention of reproducing a cow would owing to his inability in drawing sketch instead an ox or a buffalo, and the engraving would so appear — perhaps, because you were crowded with other work, and had no time to perceive the short-comings — would you not "exercise your ingenuity" and try your best to set the readers right, to prove to them that in truth a cow was meant by the artist: and confessing your friend's inability, do whatever you could, at the same time, to screen him from unmerited humiliation? Yes, you are right. H. has neither delicacy of perception and feeling, nor any real, genuine kindness of heart. He is one to sacrifice his own family, those nearest and dearest to him (if there are such for him, something I doubt) — for any whim of his own; and he would be the first to allow a hecatomb of victims if he needed one drop of blood; to insist upon the advisability of Sutee if it were the only thing that would keep him warm, help his benumbed fingers to do their work, and he diligently writing a treatise upon some philanthropic subject during that time and sing sincerely "Hosanna" to himself in his own thought. Exaggeration, you think? Not so; for you have no conception of the potential selfishness there is in him; of the cruel, remorseless egotism he brought back with him from his last incarnation — a selfishness and egotism which remained latent only owing to the uncongenial soil of the sphere he is in, of his social status and education — and we have. Can you believe he wrote his famous article in the Theosophist simply for the reason he gives you — to help breaking the unavoidable fall? to save the situation, and by answering Davidson and C.C.M., etc. to make the work — of answering in the future and reconciling the contradictions in the past — easier? Not at all. If, he sacrifices in it remorselessly H.P.B., and the author of the Review of the "Perfect Way," and shows the "Brothers" as inferior in intelligence to the "educated European gentlemen," and devoid of any correct notions about honesty or right and wrong — in the European sense — selfish and cold, stubborn and domineering — it is not at all because he cares one button for either of you, least of all for the Society; but simply because in view of certain possible events, that he is too highly intelligent not to have fore-shadowed in his mind — he wants to screen himself; to be the only one to come out unscarred if not immaculate in case of a crush, and to dance, if need be, the "death dance" of the Maccabreans over the prostrate body of the T.S. rather than risk one little finger of the great Simla "I am" to be sneered at. Knowing him as we do, we say that Mr. Hume is at perfect liberty to quote the "unhappy phrase" as many times a day as his breath will allow him to, if it can in any way soothe his ruffled feelings. And, it is just because Morya saw through him as plainly as I see my writing before me, that he allowed the "sell" as you call it. Nay more; for the things are so prepared, that in the case the "Eclectic" has to sink, — he will be the only one to go down with it; the only one laughed at, and thus his selfishness and carefully prepared plans will prove of no avail. Believing he knew better than I did, he was kind and considerate enough to add his explanations to mine in H.P.B.'s answer to C.C.M — and with the exception of Karma — that he explained correctly enough — made a mess of the rest. And now, the first time I contradict what he says in his article, he will turn round in fury and express his disgust at what he will call my (not his) contradictions. I am sorry to have to — what will appear to you — denounce him. But I must draw your attention to the fact, that nine times out of ten, when he accuses me of having entirely misconceived his meaning — he says, what anyone has a right to regard as a deliberate falsehood. The instance of E. Levi's ["I am that I am" (1)] — is a good instance. In order to prove me at fault, he had to become an Adwaitee and deny his "moral Governor and Ruler of the Universe," by throwing him overboard "for the last 20 years." This is not honest, my friend, and I do not see any help for it. For who can prove — when he says that the arguments embodied in his letters to me were not the expressions of his own personal belief and opinions, but brought forward simply to answer the probable objections of a theistic public — that it is no better than cheating? With such an intellectual acrobat, ever ready to perform the "grand trapeze" whether in reference to what he states verbally, or — puts on paper even we have to appear beaten. For the latter we care very little personally. But then he is ever ready to crow victory in his private letters, and even in print. He is willing that we should exist — he is too clever to risk at this hour being caught in a want of sagacity, since he knows through correspondents who are dead against the "Founders" of the actual existence of our Brotherhood — but, he will never submit to the recognition of such powers or knowledge in us, as would render his unasked advice and interference as ridiculous as they are useless; — and he works on that

I had no right to suppress the "offensive" article — as you call it, for several reasons. Having allowed our name to be connected with the T.S. and ourselves dragged into publicity, we have to suffer (the verb, a simple figure of speech if you please) — as Olcott would put it "the penalty of our greatness." We must permit the expression of every opinion whether benevolent or malevolent; to feel ourselves picked to pieces — one day; "preached" — on the following, worshipped — on the next; and — trampled down in the mud — on the fourth. Reason No. 2 — the Chohan has so ordained it. And with him this means fresh developments, unexpected results, and DANGER, I am afraid. The two names that you find heading the signatures of the 12 chelas who protest, belong to the confidential chelas of the Chohan himself. In this direction there is no more hope for Mr. Hume — consummatum est. He has overdone the thing, and, I will never have any more opportunities of pronouncing his name before our venerable chief. On the other hand, the denunciation has done good. The Chohan gave orders that the young Tyotirmoy — a lad of 14, the son of Babu Nobin Banerjee whom you know — should be accepted as a pupil in one of our lamaseries near Chamto-Dong about 100 miles off Tchigadze, and his sister, a virgin Yoginn of 18, at the female monastery of Palli. Thus, the Founders will have two witnesses in good time, and will not depend upon the caprice of Mr. Hume to kill and resurrect us at pleasure. As to proving whether we do, or do not know more of the mysteries of nature than your men of Science and your theologians do, it rests with you and those you will select to help you in the important task.

I hope, my dear friend, that you will undertake to impress upon Mr. Hume the following facts: — Though the work done by him for the Society would become ultimately most important, and that it might have borne the most useful fruits, yet his denunciatory article has nigh upset the labour done by him. People will now regard him more than ever a lunatic — Hindu members will blame him for years, and our chelas can never be made to look upon him but in the light of a iconoclast, a haughty intruder, incapable of any gratitude, hence — unfit to be one of them. This you must give out as your personal opinion — of course not unless it meets your own views, and may be given as the expression of your real feelings in the matter — for I, personally am ordered not to break with him until the day of the crisis comes. If he desires to retain his official position in the Eclectic, help him to do so. If not, I beg you most urgently to accept the position of President yourself. But I leave all this to your tact and discretion. Let him also know that the Protest of the Chelas is no work of ours, but the result of a positive order emanating from the Chohan. The Protest was received at the Headquarters, two hours before the postman brought the famous article, and telegrams were received from several chelas in India on the same day. Together with the foot-note sent by Djual Khoul to be appended to W. Oxley's article the September Number is calculated to create a certain sensation among the mystics of England and America not only among our Hindus. The "Brothers" question is kept up pretty alive, and may bear its fruit. Mr. Hume's graphic pen spurts under the mask of philanthropy, the bitterest gall, assailing us with weapons which for being represented or rather imagined as lawful and legitimate, and used for the most honest of purposes — wield by turns ridicule and abuse. And, yet he has so preserved the semblance of a sincere belief in our knowledge, that we are more than likely to be thenceforth remembered as he has painted us, and not as in reality we are. What I once said of him, I maintain. He may, outwardly, sometimes sincerely forgive, he can never forget. He is that which Johnson is said to have much admired, "a good hater."

Oh, my friend, with all your faults, and your rather too lively past, how much, how immeasureably much higher you stand in our sight than our "I am," with all his high "splendid mental capacity," and outwardly pathetic nature concealing the inward absence of anything like real feeling and heart!

M. wants me to tell you that he refuses most decidedly to take any precaution of the nature you suggest. He despises H. thoroughly; yet in a case of any real danger would be the first to protect him for the pains and labour given by him for the T.S. He says that in case H. comes to know of his ridiculous blunder, he will be ready to prove to others the existence of occult powers, but will not leave H. one leg to stand upon. His punishment must be allowed to be complete or else it will have no effect upon him, and he will only retaliate upon innocent victims. H. has shown us to the world as dishonest and lying, before he ever had one single undeniable proof that we were that, and that he was justified in his denunciation by even an appearance, a semblance of dishonesty. If H. chooses to-morrow to represent us as murderers M. will try to raise a maya to make the words good, and then destroy it, and show him a calumniator. I am afraid he is right, from the standpoint of our rules and customs. They are anti-European, I confess. With the exception of the telegram, M. never wrote Fern but one letter, the five or six other letters in his handwriting emanating from the Dugpa who has charge of Fern. He hopes that you will not spoil his work, and that you will ever remain a loyal and true friend to him, as he will be one to you. Fern will never repeat any experiment a la napkin, for the simple reason that he will be trusted with no more letters.

I have received a letter from Colonel Chesney and will answer it in a few days with a young chela who will deliver it to your care with my respectful greeting. Do not frighten the boy. He is ordered to answer all the questions he can answer, but no more. From Simla he will proceed to Budda Guya [these two words are not clearly decipherable. — ED.] and Bombay, on business, and will be back home about November.

With sincere friendship,

Yours,

K. H.

Letter 53 Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. A phrase in Hebrew characters appears here in the original, which translated means "I am that I am." — ED. (return to text)

Letter No. 53

Strictly private and confidential

My patient — friend: — Yesterday, I had a short note posted to you, and it accompanied a long letter to Hume — I had it registered somewhere in Central P. by a happy, free friend; to-day, it is a long letter to yourself, and it is intended to be accompanied by a tolling of jeremiades, a doleful story of a discomfiture, which may, or may not make you laugh as it does that bulky brother of mine — but which makes me feel like the poet: who could not sleep aright,

"For his soul kept up too much light

Under his eyelids for the night."

I hear you uttering under breath: "Now what in the world does he mean!" Patience, my best Anglo-Indian friend, patience; and when you have heard of the disreputable conduct of my wicked, more than ever laughing Brother, you will plainly see, why, I come to regret, that instead of tasting in Europe, of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil — I have not remained in Asia, in all the sancta simplicitas of ignorance of your ways and manners for then — I would be now grinning too!

I wonder what you will say when you will have learned the dreadful secret! I long to know it, to be delivered of a nightmare. Were you to meet me now, for the first time, in the shadowy alleys of your Simla, and demanded of me the whole truth, you would hear me tell it to you, most unfavourably for myself. My answer to you, would remind the world — if you were cruel enough to repeat it — of the famous answer given by Warren Hastings to "dog Jennings" on his first meeting with the exgovernor after his return from India! "My dear Hastings" — asked Jennings — "is it possible you are the great rascal Burke says, and the whole world is inclined to believe?" — "I can assure you, Jennings," was the sad and mild reply, "that though sometimes obliged to appear rascal for the Company, I was never one for myself." I am the W.H. for the sins of the Brotherhood. But to facts.

Of course you know — the "O.L." told you I think — that when we take candidates for chelas, they take the vow of secrecy and silence respecting every order they may receive. One has to prove himself fit for chelaship, before he can find out whether he is fit for adeptship. Fern is under such a probation; and a nice mess they have prepared for me between them two! As you already know from my letter to Hume, he did not interest me, I knew nothing of him, beyond his remarkable faculties, his powers for clairaudience and clairvoyance, and his still more remarkable tenacity of purpose, strong will, and other etcs. A loose, immoral character for years, — a tavern Pericles with a sweet smile for every street Aspasia, he had entirely and suddenly reformed after joining the Theosoph: Society, and "M." took him seriously in hand. It is no business of mine to tell even yourself, how much of his visions is truth and how much hallucination, or even perchance — fiction. That he bamboozled our friend Hume considerably, must be so, since Mr. Hume tells me the most marvellous yarns of him. But the worst of all this business is, the following. He bamboozled him so well, indeed, that whereas H. did not believe one word when Fern was speaking the truth, nearly every lie uttered by F. was accepted by our respected Prest. of the Eclectic — as gospel truth.

Now you will readily understand, that it is impossible for me to try and set him (H) right, since F. is M.'s chela, and that I have no right whatever — either legal, or social, according to our code — to interfere between the two. Of the several grievances, however, it is the smallest. Another of our customs, when corresponding with the outside world, is to entrust a chela with the task of delivering the letter or any other message; and if not absolutely necessary — to never give it a thought. Very often our very letters — unless something very important and secret — are written in our handwritings by our chelas. Thus, last year, some of my letters to you were precipitated, and when sweet and easy precipitation was stopped — well I had but to compose my mind, assume an easy position, and — think, and my faithful "Disinherited" had but to copy my thoughts, making only occasionally a blunder. Ah, my friend, I had an easy life of it unto the very day when the Eclectic sprung into its checkered existence. . . . Anyhow, this year, for reasons we need not mention, I have to do my own work — the whole of it, and I have a hard time of it sometimes, and get impatient over it. As Jean Paul Richter says somewhere, the most painful part of our bodily pain is that which is bodiless or immaterial, namely our impatience, and the delusion that it will last for ever. . . . Having one day permitted myself to act as though I were labouring under such a delusion, in the innocence of my unsophisticated soul, I trusted the sacredness of my correspondence into the hands of that alter ego of mine, the wicked and "imperious" chap, your "Illustrious," who took undue advantage of my confidence in him and  placed me in the position I am now in! The wretch laughs since yesterday, and to confess the truth I feel inclined to do the same. But as an Englishman, I am afraid you will be terror-struck at the enormity of his crime. You know, that notwithstanding his faults Mr. Hume is absolutely necessary, so far, to the T.S. I grow sometimes very irritated at his petty feelings and spirit of vindictiveness; yet withal, I have to put up with his weaknesses, which lead him at one moment to vex himself that it is not yet — and at another that it is already mid-day. But our "Illustrious" is not precisely of that opinion. Mr. Hume's pride and self-opinion — he argues  wish as our saying goes — that all mankind had only two bent knees, to make puja to him; and he M. is not going to humour him. He will do nothing, of course, to harm or even to vex him purposely; on the contrary, he means to always protect him as he has done until now; but — he will not lift his little finger to disabuse him.

 

The substance and pith of his argument are summed up in the following:

"Hume laughed and chuckled at real, genuine phenomena (the production of which have brought us well nigh into the Chohan's disgrace) — only and solely because the manifestations were not sketched by himself, nor were they produced in his honour or for his sole benefit. And now let him feel happy and proud over mysterious manifestations of his own making and creation. Let him taunt Sinnett in the depths of his own proud heart, and even by throwing out hints to others — that even he, Sinnett, was hardly so favoured. No one has ever attempted a deliberate deception, nor would anyone be permitted to attempt anything of the sort. Everything was made to follow its natural, ordinary course. Fern is in the hands of two clever — 'dwellers of the threshold' as Bulwer would call them — two dugpas kept by us to do our scavengers' work, and to draw out the latent vices — if there be any — from the candidates; and Fern has shown himself on the whole, far better and more moral than he was supposed to be. Fern has done but what he was ordered to do; and he holds his tongue because it is his first duty. As to his posing with Hume, and attitudinizing before himself and others as a seer, since he has brought himself to believe it, and that it is but certain details that can be really called a fiction, or to put it less mildly fibs — there is no real harm done but to himself. Hume's jealousy and pride will ever be in the way, to prevent him swallowing truth as much as ornamental fiction; and Sinnett is shrewd enough to sift very easily Fern's realities and dreams. . . . Why then, should I, or you or any one else" concludes M. — "offer advice to one who is sure not to accept it, or, which will be still worse, in case he learns for a certainty that he has been permitted to make a fool of himself — is still more sure to become an irreconcilable enemy to the Society, the Cause, the much suffering Founders and all. Let him, then, strictly alone. . . . He will not be thankful for undeceiving him. On the contrary. He will forget that no one is to be blamed but himself; that no one had ever whispered him one word that could have led him into his extra delusions; but will turn more fiercely than ever on those chaps — the adepts and he will call them publicly impostors, jesuits and pretenders. You (I) gave him one genuine pucka phenomenon — and that ought to satisfy him as to the possibility of everything else."

Such is M.'s reasoning; and were I not indirectly mixed in the quiproquo — it would be also mine. But now, owing to the plants of that little double-dealing monkey — Fern, I am compelled to disturb you for a friendly advice, since our ways are not your ways — and vice versa.

But now see what happened. Hume has lately received a good many letters from me; and I hope you will kindly follow with me the fate and various fortunes of three of them, ever since he began to receive them in a direct way. Try also, to well understand the situation and to thus realize my position. Since we had three chelas at Simla, — two regular ones and one an irregular one — the candidate Fern, I conceived the unfortunate idea of saving power, of economizing, as though I had a "Savings bank." To tell truth, I sought to separate as much as it was possible under the circumstances, the suspected "Headquarters" from every phenomenon produced at Simla; hence from the correspondence that passed between Mr. Hume and myself. Unless H.P.B., Damodar, and Deb — were entirely disconnected, there was no saying what might, or might not, happen. The first letter — the one found in the conservatory I gave to M. to have it left at Mr. H.'s house by one of the two regular chelas. He gave it to Subba Row — for he had to see him on that day; S.R. passed it in the ordinary way (posted it) to Fern, with instructions to either leave it at Mr. Hume's house, or to send it to him through post, in case he were afraid that Mr. H. should ask him — since Fern could not, had not the right to answer him and thus would be led to telling an untruth. Several times D. Kh. had tried to penetrate into Rothney Castle, but suffered each time so acutely, that I told him to give it up. (He is preparing for initiation and might easily fail as a consequence). Well, Fern did not post it but sent a friend — his dugpa to leave it at the house and the latter placed it in the conservatory about 2 a.m. This was half of a phenomenon but H. took it for an entire thing, and got very mad when M. refused as he thought to take up his answer in the same way. Then I wrote to console him, and told him as plainly as I could say, without breaking M.'s confidence in relation to Fern that D.K. could do nothing for him, at present, and that it was one of Morya's chelas that had placed the letter there, etc., etc. I believe the hint was quite broad enough and no deception practiced? The second letter, I think, was thrown on his table by Dj. Khool (the real spelling of whose name is Gjual, but not so phonetically) and, as it was done by himself it was a pucka orthodox phenomenon and Hume has no need to complain. Several were sent to him in various ways — and he may be sure of one thing: however ordinary the means by which the letters reached him, they could not be but phenomenal in reaching India from Tibet. But this does not seem to be taken into any consideration by him. And now we come to the really bad part of it, a part for which I blame entirely M. — for permitting it and exonerate Fern, who could not help it. Of course you understand that I write you this in strict confidence, relying upon your honour that whatever happens you will not betray Fern. Indeed (and I have looked most attentively into the thing) the boy was led to become guilty of a deliberate jesuitical deception rather through Hume's constant insults, suspicious attitude and deliberate slights at meals, and during the hours of work, than from any motives in consequence of his loose notions of morals. Then M.'s letters (the production of the amiable dug-pa, in reality ex-dugpa, whose past sins will never permit him to fully atone for his misdeeds) distinctly say: — "do, either so and so, or in such a way"; they tempt him, and lead him to imagine that in doing no injury to any human being and when the motive is good every action becomes legal!! I was thus tempted in my youth, and had nearly succumbed twice to the temptation, but was saved by my uncle from falling into the monstrous snare; and so was the Illustrious — who is a pucka orthodox Occultist and holds religiously to the old traditions and methods; and so would be any one of you had I consented to accept you for chelas. But as I was aware from the first, of what you have confessed to, in a letter to H.P.B., namely that there was something supremely revolting to the better class of European minds in that idea of being tested, of being under probation — I therefore had always avoided the acceptance of Mr. Hume's often expressed offer to become a chela. This may, perhaps, give you the key to the whole situation. However this is what happened. Fern had received a letter of mine through a chela, with the injunction of causing it to reach its destination immediately. They were going to take breakfast, and there was no time to lose. Fern had thrown the letter on a table and ought to have left it there, since there would have been no occasion for him then, to lie. But he was vexed with H., and he devised another dodge. He placed the letter in the folds of Mr. H.'s napkin, who at breakfast took it up and accidentally shook out the letter on to the floor; it appears, to the terrible fright of "Moggy" and the contented surprise of Hume. But, his old suspicion returning to him, (a suspicion he had always harboured since I wrote to him that my first letter was brought into the conservatory by one of M.'s chelas, and that my chela could do little, though he had visited invisibly every part of the house before) — Hume looks at Fern full and asks him — whether it was he who had placed it there. Now I have the entire picture before me of F.'s brain at that moment. There's the rapid flash in it — "this saves me. . . for I can swear I never put it there" (meaning the spot on the floor — where it had fallen) — No — he boldly answers. — "I have never put it THERE" — he adds mentally. Then a vision of M. and a feeling of intense satisfaction and relief for not having been guilty of a direct lie. Confused pictures of some Jesuits he had known, — of his little child — a disconnected thought of his room and beams in Mr. H.'s garden, etc. — not a thought of self-deception! Truly then, our friend was taken in but once, but I would pay any price could I but recall the event and replace my letter with somebody else's message. But you see how I am situated. M. tells me he gives me carte blanche to tell anything I like to you, he will not have me say a word to Hume; nor would he ever forgive you — he says, were you to interfere between the punishment of Hume's pride, and — fate. Fern is not really to be blamed, for thinking that so long as the result is accomplished the details are of no account, since he was brought at such a school, and that he really has the welfare of the Cause at heart, whereas, with Hume — it is really bona fide Selfishness, egotism — the chief and only motive power. "Egotistic philanthropist" is a word which paints his portrait at full length.

Now for Col. Chesney. Since he really and sincerely was kind enough, it appears, to discern something in the outlines of your poor, humble friend's face; an impression drawn, most probably, from the depths of his imagination rather than from any real presence of such an expression as you say, in Dj. Khool's or M.'s production — the former felt quite proud and begged my permission to precipitate another such likeness, for Col. Chesney. Of course, the permission was granted, though I laughed at the idea, and M. told D.K. that the Col. would also laugh at what he will suspect as my conceit. But D.K. would try and then went and begged permission to present it himself to Col. Chesney; a permission which was, as a matter of course, refused by the Chohan and he himself reprimanded. But the picture was ready three minutes after I had consented to it, and D.K. seemed enormously proud of it. He says — and he is right, I think, that this likeness is the best of the three. Well, it went the usual way, via Djual Khool, Deb and Fern — the H.P.B. and Damodar being both at Poona at that time. M. was training and testing Fern for a phenomenon — of course a genuine one — so that a pucka manifestation could be produced in Col. Chesney's house by Fern; but, while Fern swore he needed but three months' preparation, M. knew he would never be ready for this season — nor do I think he will be ready next year. Anyhow, he entrusted the new picture to Fern, telling him again to better send it by post, for were the Colonel to ever learn that Fern was concerned in it, he would disbelieve even in its precipitated production. But D.K. wanted it delivered immediately, and while the Col. as he said — "had Master hot in his head still" — and Fern, the conceited young fool, answers — "No; before I do anything in connection with the 'packet' I must study him (Col. Chesney) more fully (!!) I want, this time, to obtain the highest possible results at the first onset. From what I have seen of the author of the 'Battle of Dorkin' I have not been able to satisfy myself about him. . . . Father told me to be his 'eyes' and 'ears' — he not having always the time — I must find out the character we have to deal with"!!

In the interval, I, fearing that Master Fern may, perhaps, place the portrait in the folds of Col. Chesney's "napkin," and produce some "spiritual manifestation with his foot" — I wrote to you from Poona through Damodar, giving you a very broad hint I believe, which, of course, you did not understand but will now. Meanwhile, yester morning D.K. came and told me that Fern still had his picture and that he feared that some trick had or would be played. Then I immediately aroused my too indifferent Brother from his apathy. I showed to him how dangerous was the situation left in the unscrupulous hands of a boy, whose sense of morality was still more blunted, by the "probation" tests and deceit which he regarded nigh as legal and permissible and — aroused him finally into action. A telegram was sent to Fern in M.'s own handwriting, this time, from the Central Provinces — (Bussawla, I believe — where lives a chela) ordering Fern to send on immediately the packet he had for the Colonel to his address by post — and Fern, as I see received it, yesterday, in the forenoon, by our time (Tuesday, 22). And thus when you hear of it, you will know the whole truth.

I have strictly forbidden my letters or anything connected with my business to ever be given to Fern. Thus Mr. H. and yourself or anyone else at Simla may take my word of honour that Fern will have nothing more to do with my business. But, my dearest friend, you must promise me faithfully, and for my sake, never to breathe one word of what I told you to anyone — least of all to Hume or Fern; unless Fern forces you by his fibs to stop him, in which case you may use what you think proper of it, to force him to shut up, yet, without ever allowing him to know how, and from whom you have learnt it. Apart from this, use of the knowledge, at your discretion. Read my letter, registered and sent to your name from Bussawla yesterday — or rather my letter to Hume carefully and think well over before sending it to him; for this letter may provoke him to a fit of madness and hurt pride and make him quit the Society at once. Better keep it, as means for future emergency to prove to him that at least, I, am one, who will not permit even my enemies to be won over by unfair means. At least, I so regard the means that Mr. Fern seems but too ready to use. But above all, good and faithful friend, do not allow your self to misconceive the real position of our Great Brotherhood. Dark and tortuous as may seem to your Western mind the paths trodden, and the ways by which our candidates are brought to the great Light — you will be the first to approve of them when you know all. Do not judge on appearances — for you may thereby do a great wrong, and lose your own personal chances to learn more. Only be vigilant and — watch. If Mr. Hume but consents to wait he will have more, and far more extraordinary phenomena to silence the critics than he hitherto had. Exercise your influence with him. Remember in November comes the great crisis, and September will be full of dangers. Save at least our personal relations from the great wreck. Fern is the queerest psychological subject I have ever met. The pearl is inside, and truly profoundly hidden by the unattractive oyster-shell. We cannot break it at once; nor can we afford to lose such subjects. While protecting yourself — protect him from Hume. Generally I never trust a woman, any more than I would an echo; both are of the female gender because the goddess Echo like woman — will always have the last word. But with your lady it is otherwise, and I firmly believe that you can trust

Yours ever faithfully,

K. H.

Please do not regard it as a compliment — but believe me when I say that your two Letters and especially "The Evolution of Man" is simply SUPERB. Do not fear any contradictions or inconsistencies. I say again — make notes of them and send them to me and you will see. I pray you, kind sir, to lock the foolish letter sent on yesterday to Hume-Sahib into your trunk and leave it there to roost until in demand. I tell you it will create mischief and no better. K.H. is too sensitive by far — he is becoming in your Western Society a regular Miss. Yours,

M.

Letter 54 Table of Contents

Letter No. 54

Received Simla, October, 1882.

My dear friend: — the deposition and abdication of our great "I am " is one of the most agreeable events of the season for your humble servant. Mea culpa! — I exclaim, and willingly place my guilty head under a shower of ashes — from the Simla cigars if you like — for it was my doing! Some good has come of it in the shape of excellent literary work — (though, indeed, I prefer your style) — for the Parent body, but none whatever for the hapless "Eclectic." What has he done for it? He complains in a letter to Shishir Koomar Gosh (of the A.B. Patrika) that owing to his (?) Hume's incessant efforts, he had nearly "converted Chesney to Theosophy" when the great anti-Christian spirit of the Theosophist threw the Colonel violently back. This is what we may call — tampering with historical facts. I send you his last letter to me, in which you will find him entirely under the influence of his new guru — "the good Vedantin Swami" (who offers to teach him the Adwaita philosophy with a god in it by way of improvement) — and of the Sandaram Spirit. His argument is, as you will find, that with the "good old Swami" he will at any rate learn something, while with us, it is impossible for him to "ever learn anything." I — "never gave him the assurance that all the letters were not evolved out of the Old Lady's fertile brain." Even now, he adds, when he has obtained subjective certainty, that we are distinct entities from Mad. B — "I cannot tell what you are — you might be Djual Kul, or a spirit of the high Eastern plane" — etc. in like strain. In the letter enclosed he says — we "may be tantrikists" (better ascertain the value of the compliment paid) — and, he is preparing, nay — all prepared — to plunge from extreme Adwaitism, into transcendental theism, once more. Amen. I hand him over to the Salvation Army.

I would not like to see him sever his connection with the Society altogether, though; first for his own intrinsic literary worth, and then — because you would be sure to have an indefatigable though a secret enemy, who would pass his time in writing out his ink dry against theosophy, denouncing all and everyone in the Society to all and everyone outside of it, and making himself disagreeable in a thousand ways. As I once said before, he may seem to forgive, and he is just the man to bamboozle himself before his own reflection in the looking-glass into magnanimous forgiveness, but in reality he neither forgives nor ever forgets. It was pleasant news for M. and all of us to hear how unanimously and quietly you were elected President, and we all — "masters" and chelas — greet fraternally and warmly your ascension to the office; an accomplished fact which reconciles us even with the sad and humiliating tidings that Mr. Hume expressed his utter indifference to chelas and even to their masters, adding that he cared very little to meet either. But enough of him who may better be described in the words of the Tibetan proverb:

". . . Like the bird of night: by day a graceful cat, in darkness an ugly rat."

One word of advice — an earnest warning from both of us: trust not little Fern — beware of him. His placid serenity and smiles when talking to you of the "mild scolding tempered with mercy," and that it is better to be scolded than cast off — are all assumed. His letter of penitence and remorse to M — which he sends you to keep — is not sincere. If you do not watch him closely, he will mix the cards for you in a way that may lead the Society to ruin, for he swore a great oath to himself that the Society will either fall or rise with himself. If he fails next year again — and with all his great gifts, how can such an incurable little jesuit and liar help failing? — he will do his best to pull down the Society with him — as regards belief in the "Brothers" at least. Try to save him, if possible, my dearest friend; do your best to convert him to truth and unselfishness. It is real pity that such gifts should be drowned in a mire of vice — so strongly engrafted upon him by his early tutors. Meanwhile, beware of ever allowing him to see any of my letters.

And now to C. C. Massey and your letters. Both answer and your reply are excellent. Doubtless a more sincere, truthful or a more noble minded man (S. Moses not excepted) could hardly be found among the British theosophists. His only and chief fault is — weakness. Were he to learn some day how deeply he has wronged H.P.B. in thought — no man would feel more miserable over it than himself. But of this anon. If you remember in my letter to H. upon the subject I "forbade all arrangements" for the simple reason that the Bsh.

Theos. Soc. had collapsed, and virtually was no more. But, if I remember right I added — that if they re­established it on a firm basis with such members as Mrs. K. and her scribe — that we would have no objection to teach them through you — or words to that effect. I certainly objected having my letters printed and circulated like those of Paul in the bazaars of Ephesus — for the benefit (or perchance derision and criticism) of isolated members who hardly believed in our existence. But I have no objection, in case of an arrangement, as proposed by C.C.M. Only let them first organize, leaving out such bigots as Wyld — strictly out in the cold. He refused to admit Mr. Hume's sister Mrs. B. because, having never seen any mesmeric phenomena she disbelieved in mesmerism; and refused to admit Crookes, recommended by C.C.M., as I was told. I will never refuse my help and co-operation to a group of men sincere and ardent to learn; but if again, such men as Mr. Hume are to be admitted, men who generally delight in playing in every organized system they get into, the parts played by Typhon and Ahriman in the Egyptian and Zoroastrian systems — then the plan had better be left aside. I dread the appearance in print of our philosophy as expounded by Mr. H. I read his three essays or chapters on God (?) cosmogony and glimpses of the origin of things in general, and had to cross out nearly all. He makes of us Agnostics!! We do not believe in God because so far, we have no proof, etc. This is preposterously ridiculous: if he publishes what I read, I will have H.P.B. or Djual Khool deny the whole thing; as I cannot permit our sacred philosophy to be so disfigured. He says that people will not accept the whole truth; that unless we humour them with a hope that there may be a "loving Father and creator of all in heaven" our philosophy will be rejected a priori. In such a case the less such idiots hear of our doctrines the better for both. If they do not want the whole truth and nothing but the truth, they are welcome. But never will they find us — (at any rate) — compromising with, and pandering to public prejudices. Do you call this "candid" and — honest "from a European standpoint"? Read his letter and judge. The truth is, my dear friend, that notwithstanding the great tidal wave of mysticism that is now sweeping over a portion of the intellectual classes of Europe, the Western people have as yet scarcely learned to recognise that which we term wisdom in its loftiest sense. As yet, he only is esteemed truly wise in his world, who can most cleverly conduct the business of life, so that it may yield the largest amount of material profit — honours or money. The quality of wisdom, ever was, and will be yet for a long time — to the very close of the fifth race — denied to him who seeks the wealth of the mind for its own sake, and for its own enjoyment and result without the secondary purpose of turning it to account in the attainment of material benefits. By most of your gold worshipping countrymen our facts and theorems would be denominated fancy-flights, the dreams of madmen. Let the Fragments and even your own magnificent letters now published in Light, fall into the hands, and be read by the general public — whether materialists or theists or Christians; and ten to one every average reader will curl his lip with a sneer; and with the remark — "all this may be very profound and learned but of what use is it in practical life?" — dismiss letters and Fragments from his thoughts for ever.

But now your position with C.C.M. seems changing, and you are gradually bringing him round. He longs sincerely to give Occultism another trial and — is "open to conviction"; we must not disappoint him. But, I cannot undertake to furnish either them or even yourself with new facts until all I have already given is put into shape from the beginning, (vide Mr. Hume's Essays) and taught to them systematically, and by them learned and digested. I am now answering your numerous series of questions — scientific and psychological — and you will have material enough for a year or two. Of course I will be always ready with further explanations, hence unavoidably, additions — but I positively refuse to teach any further before you have understood and learned all that is already given. Nor do I want you to print anything from my letters unless previously edited by you, and put into shape and form. I have no time for writing regular "papers," nor does my literary ability extend so far as that.

Only how, about C.C.M.'s mind so prejudiced against the author of Isis and ourselves, who have dared an attempt to introduce Eglinton into the sacred precincts of the B.T.S. and to denominate + a "Brother"? Shall not our joint sins and transgressions "from a European standpoint" — be sorely in the way of mutual confidence; and will they not lead to endless suspicions and misconceptions? I am not prepared just now to afford the British Theosophists the proof of our existence in flesh and bones, or that I am not altogether H.P.B.'s "confederate"; for all this is a question of time and — Karma. But, even supposing it very easy to prove the former, it would be far less easy to disprove the latter. A "K. H.," i.e. a mortal of very ordinary appearance and acquainted tolerably well with the English, Vedanta and Buddhist philosophy, and with even a bit of drawing-room juggling — is easily found and furnished, so as to demonstrate his objective existence beyond doubt or cavil. But how about giving the positive, moral certitude that the individual, who may thus make his appearance is not a bogus K. H., a "confederate" of H.P.B.? Were not St. Germain, and Cagliostro,

both gentlemen of the highest education and achievements — and presumably Europeans — not "niggers" of my sort — regarded at the time, and still so regarded by posterity — as impostors, confederates, jugglers and what not? Yet I am morally bound to set his mind at rest — through your kind agency — with regard to H.P.B. deceiving and imposing upon him. He seems to think he has obtained proofs of it absolutely unimpeachable. I say he has not. What he has obtained is simply proof of the villainy of some men, and ex-theosophists such as Hurrychund Chintamon of Bombay now of Manchester and elsewhere; the man who robbed the Founders and Dayanand of Rs. 4,000, deceived and imposed upon them from the first (so far back as New York), and then exposed and expelled from the Society ran away to England and is ever since seeking and thirsting for his revenge. And such other as Dr. Billing, the husband of that good, honest woman, the only really and thoroughly reliable and honest medium I know of — Mrs. M. Hollis-Billing; whom he married for her few thousands pounds, ruined her during the first year of his married life, went into concubinage with another medium; and when vehemently reproached by H.P.B. and Olcott, — left his wife and Society and turned with bitter hatred against both women; and since then is ever seeking to secretly poison the minds of the British Theosophists and Spiritualists against his wife and H.P.B. Let C.C.M. put all those facts together; fathom the mystery and trace the connection between his informants and the two traducers of the two innocent women. Let him investigate thoroughly and patiently, before he believes in certain reports — and even proofs brought forward — lest he overloads his Karma with a heavier sin than any. There is not a stone these two men leave unturned in order to succeed in their evil design. While Hurrychund Chintamon never failed once during the last three years to take into his confidence every theosophist he met, pouring into his ears pretended news from Bombay about the duplicity of the Founders; and to spread reports among the spiritualists about Mad. B's pretended phenomena, showing them all as simply "impudent tricks" — since she has no real idea of the Yoga powers; or again showing letters from her, received by him while she was in America; and in which she is made to advise him to pretend — he is a "Brother" and thus deceive the British theosophists the better; while H.C. is doing all this and much more, Billing is "working" the London mystics. He attitudinizes before them as a victim of his over confidence in a wife whom he found out as a false tricky medium, helped and supported in this by H.P.B. and H.S.O.; he complains of his cruel fate and swears on his honour (!) he left her only because he had found her an impostor, his honesty revolting at such a union. Thus, it is on the strength and authority of the reports of such men, and the too confiding persons, who, believing in them help them that C.C.M. gradually came to disown and repudiate the disgusting and deformed changeling which was imposed upon him under the guise of H.P.B. Believe me — it is not so. If he tells you he was shown documentary proof — answer him that a letter in his own handwriting and over his own signature, which, if placed in the hands of law would send him in 24 hours on the bench of criminals, may be forged as easily as any other document. A man who was capable of forging on a bogus will the signature of the testator and then getting hold of the hand of the already dead man, put a pen into it and guide it over the ready signature, to afford the witnesses a chance of taking their oath that they had seen the man sign it — is ready to do more serious work than simply slandering an unpopular foreigner.

When, smarting under the exposure and bent upon revenge H. Ch. arrived three years ago from Bombay, C.C.M. would neither receive nor see him, nor would he listen to his justification, for Dayanand — whom he recognised and accepted at that time as his spiritual chief — had sent him word to hold no communication with the thief and traitor. Then it was that the latter and C. Carter Black, the jesuit expelled from the Society for slandering in the Pall Mall Gazette both Swami and Hurrychund — became fast friends. Carter Black had for over two years moved heaven and earth to get readmitted into the Society but H.P.B. had proved a Chinese Wall against such readmission. Both the ex-fellows made peace, put their heads together and worked since then in a most charming accord. This made secret enemy — No. 3. C.C.M.'s devotion was in their way — they went to work to break the object of that devotion — H.P.B. — by shaking his confidence in her. Billing who could never hope to achieve success in that direction — for C.C.M. knew him too well, having legally defended his ruined and forsaken wife — succeeded to arouse his suspicions against Mrs. Billing as a medium and against her friend H.P.B. who had defended and supported her against him. Thus was the ground well prepared for sowing in it any kind of weed. Then came — like a thunderbolt Swami's unexpected attack upon the Founders and proved the death blow to C.C.M.'s friendship. Because Swami had been represented by her to them as a high chela, an initiate, he imagined he had never been one, and that in her misguided zeal to advance the cause H.P.B. had deceived them all! After the April row, his and her enemies made an easy prey of him. Take Light; compare dates and the various cautious and covered attacks. Behold C.C.M.'s hesitation, and then his sudden pouncing upon her. Cannot you read between the lines, friend?

But what of S. Moses? Ah — he at least, is never the man to utter a deliberate falsehood, much less repeat a slanderous report. He, at least, as well as C.C.M., is a gentleman every inch of him, and an honest man. Well; and what of that? You forget his profound, sincere irritation with us and H.P.B., as a Spiritualist the chosen vessel of election of Imperator? C.C.M. is ignorant of the laws and mysteries of mediumship and he is his staunch friend. Take again Light and see, how plainly his irritation grows and becomes louder in his Notes By The Way. He has entirely misconceived your meaning, or rather quotations (followed by no explanations) from a letter of mine to yourself, who, in your turn have never correctly understood the situation. What I then said I now repeat: — There is an abyss between the highest and lowest degrees of Planetaries (this to your query — Is + a Planetary Spirit?) and then my assertion that — "+ is a Brother." But what is a "Brother," in reality — do you know? For what H.P.B. has added out of the depths of her own consciousness, perhaps, I do not hold myself responsible; for she knows nothing for a dead certainty about +, and often "dreaming dreams" she draws her own original conclusions therefrom. Result: S.M. regards us as impostors and liars, unless we be but a fiction; in which case the compliment returns to H.P.B.

Now what are the facts and what the accusations against H.P.B. Many are the shadowy points against her in C.C.M's mind and, with every day they become blacker and uglier. I will give you an instance. While in London, at the Billings, Jan. 1879, H. P. B. who had produced a china pot from under the table, was asked by C.C.M. to give him some phenomenally produced object too. Consenting she caused a small card-case, as carved in Bombay to appear in the pocket of his overcoat hung in the hall.

Inside — whether then or later in the evening, was found a slip of paper, with the facsimile of Hurrychund C's signature on it. At the time, no suspicion entered his mind, since there really was no ground for any. But now you see, he believes it — if not all a trick, at any rate a half-deception. Why? Because at that time he believed H. C. a chela, all but a great adept, as allowed and led to suppose by H.P.B.; and now he knows that H.C. was never a chela — since he himself denies it; that, he never had any powers, denies any knowledge of, or belief in such; and tells to everyone that even Dayanand has never been a Yogi but is simply "an ambitious impostor" like Mohamet. In short so many lies brought and left at the Founders' door. And then her letters, and the reports by trustworthy witnesses of her confederacy with Mrs. Billing. Hence — confederacy between her and Eglinton. She is proved, at any rate, an arch plotter, a deceiver, a crafty character; either that — or a visionary lunatic, an obsessed medium! European, western logic. Letters? Very easy to alter words, hence the whole meaning of a sentence in letters. So has the Swami letters from her, which he freely translates, quotes from and comments upon in the face of the July Supplement. Now pray, oblige me by carefully reading over again the "Defence." Note the bare-faced lies of India's "great Reformer." Remember what was admitted to you and then denied. And if my word of honour has any weight with you, then know that D. Swami was an initiated Yogi, a very high chela at Badrinath, endowed some years back with great powers and a knowledge he has since forfeited, and that H.P.B. told you but the truth, as also that H.C. was a chela of his, who preferred to follow the "left path." And now see what has become of this truly great man, whom we all knew and placed our hopes in him. There he is — a moral wreck, ruined by his ambition and panting for breath in his last struggle for supremacy, which, he knows we will not leave in his hands. And now, if this man — ten times greater morally and intellectually than Hurrychund — could fall so low, and resort to such a mean course, of what his ex-friend and pupil Hurrychund may not be capable to satisfy his thirst for revenge! The former has at least an excuse — his ferocious ambition that he mistakes for patriotism; his once alter ego has no excuse but his desire to harm those who exposed him. And, to achieve such results he is prepared to do anything. But you will perhaps enquire, why we have not interfered? Why we, the natural protectors of the Founders, if not of the Society, have not put a stop to the shameful conspiracies? A pertinent question; only I doubt whether my answer with all its sincerity will be clearly understood. You are thoroughly unacquainted with our system, and could I succeed in making it clear to you, ten to one your "better feelings" — the feelings of a European — would be ruffled, if not worse, with such a "shocking" discipline. The fact is, that to the last and supreme initiation every chela — (and even some adepts) — is left to his own device and counsel. We have to fight our own battles, and the familiar adage — "the adept becomes, he is not made" is true to the letter. Since every one of us is the creator and producer of the causes that lead to such or some other results, we have to reap but what we have sown. Our chelas are helped but when they are innocent of the causes that lead them into trouble; when such causes are generated by foreign, outside influences. Life and the struggle for adeptship would be too easy, had we all scavengers behind us to sweep away the effects we have generated through our own rashness and presumption. Before they are allowed to go into the world they, — the chelas — are everyone of them endowed with more or less clairvoyant powers; and, with the exception of that faculty that, unless paralyzed and watched would lead them perchance to divulge certain secrets that must not be revealed — they are left in the full exercise of their powers — whatever these may be: — why don't they exercise them? Thus, step by step, and after a series of punishments, is the chela taught by bitter experience to suppress and guide his impulses; he loses his rashness, his self sufficiency and never falls into the same errors. All that now happens is brought on by H.P.B. herself; and to you, my friend and brother, I will reveal her shortcomings, for you were tested and tried, and you alone have not hitherto failed — at any rate not in one direction — that of discretion and silence. But before I reveal her one great fault to you — (a fault, indeed, in its disastrous results, yet withal a virtue) I must remind you of that, which you so heartily hate: namely, that no one comes in contact with us, no one shows a desire to know more of us, but has to submit being tested and put by us on probation. Thus, C.C.M. could no more than any other escape his fate. He has been tempted and allowed to be deceived by appearances, and to fall but too easily a prey to his weakness — suspicion and lack of self-confidence. In short, he is found wanting in the first element of success in a candidate — unshaken faith, once that his conviction rests upon, and has taken root in knowledge, not simple belief in certain facts. Now C.C.M. knows that certain phenomena of hers are undeniably genuine; his position with regard to that, being precisely the position of yourself and your lady, in reference to the yellow ring-stone. Thinking you had reasons to believe the stone in question was simply brought (like the doll) not doubled — as she asserted, and disliking in the depths of your soul such a useless deception — as you always thought — on her part, you have not repudiated her for all that, nor exposed or complained of her in the papers as he has. In short, even when refusing her the benefit of the doubt in your own hearts, you have not doubted the phenomenon but only her accuracy in explaining it; and while being utterly wrong, you were undeniably right in acting with such a discretion in that matter. Not so, in his case. After entertaining during the period of three years a blind faith, in her, amounting almost to a feeling of veneration, at the first breath of successful calumny, he, a staunch friend and an excellent lawyer falls a victim to a wicked plot, and, his regard for her is changed into positive contempt and a conviction of her guilt! Instead of acting as you would have acted in such a case, namely either never mentioning the fact to her or else, asking her for an explanation, giving the accused the opportunity of defending herself, and thus acting consistently with his honest nature, he preferred giving vent to his feelings in public print, and to satisfy his rancour against herself and us by adopting an indirect means of attacking her statements in Isis. By the bye, and begging your pardon for this digression, he does not, it seems regard her answer in the Theosophist — "candid"! Funny logic, when coming from such an acute logician. Had he proclaimed in all the papers and at the top of his voice that the author or authors of Isis have not been candid while writing the book; that they often and purposely mislead the reader by withholding the necessary explanations and have given but portions of the truth, had he even declared, as Mr. Hume does — that the work teems with "practical errors" and deliberate misstatements — he would have been gloriously acquitted, because he would have been right — "from a European standpoint," and heartily excused by us — again because of his European way of judging — something innate in him and that he cannot help. But to call a correct and truthful explanation — not "candid" is something I can hardly realize, though I am quite aware that his view is shared even by yourself. Alas, my friends, I am very much afraid that our respective standards of right and wrong will never agree together, since motive is everything for us, and that you will never go beyond appearances. However, to return to the main question.

Thus C.C.M. knows; he is too intelligent, too acute an observer of human nature to have remained ignorant of that, most important of facts, namely that the woman has no possible motive for deception. There is a sentence in his letter which, framed in a little kinder spirit, would go far to show how well he could appreciate and recognise the real motives, had not his mind been poisoned by prejudice, due, perhaps, more to S. Moses' irritation, than to the efforts of her three above enumerated enemies. He remarks en passant — that the system of deception may be due to her zeal, but regards it as a dishonest zeal. And now, do you want to know how far she is guilty? Know then, that if she ever became guilty of real, deliberate deception, owing to that "zeal," it was when in the presence of phenomena produced, she kept constantly denying — except in the matter of such trifles as bells and raps — that she had anything to do with their production personally. From your "European standpoint" it is downright deception, a big thundering lie; from our Asiatic standpoint, though an imprudent, blamable zeal, an untruthful exaggeration, or what a Yankee would call "a blazing cock-a-hoop" meant for the benefit of the "Brothers," — Yet withal, if we look into the motive — a sublime, self-denying, noble and meritorious — not dishonest — zeal. Yes; in that, and in that alone, she became constantly guilty of deceiving her friends. She could never be made to realize the utter uselessness, the danger of such a zeal; and how mistaken she was in her notions that she was adding to our glory, whereas, by attributing to us very often phenomena of the most childish nature, she but lowered us in the public estimation and sanctioned the claim of her enemies that she was "but a medium"! But it was of no use. In accordance with our rules, M. was not permitted to forbid her such a course, in so many words. She had to be allowed full and entire freedom of action, the liberty of creating causes that became in due course of time her scourge, her public pillory. He could at best forbid her producing phenomena, and to this last extremity he resorted as often as he could, to her friends and theosophists great dissatisfaction. Was, or rather is, it lack of intellectual perceptions in her? Certainly not. It is a psychological disease, over which she has little if any control at all. Her impulsive nature — as you have correctly inferred in your reply — is always ready to carry her beyond the boundaries of truth, into the regions of exaggeration; nevertheless without a shadow of suspicion that she is thereby deceiving her friends, or abusing of their great trust in her. The stereotyped phrase: "It is not I; I can do nothing by myself. . . it is all they — the Brothers. . . . I am but their humble and devoted slave and instrument" is a downright fib. She can and did produce phenomena, owing to her natural powers combined with several long years of regular training and her phenomena are sometimes better, more wonderful and far more perfect than those of some high, initiated chelas, whom she surpasses in artistic taste and purely Western appreciation of art — as for instance in the instantaneous production of pictures: witness — her portrait of the "fakir" Tiravalla mentioned in Hints, and compared with my portrait by Gjual Khool. Notwithstanding all the superiority of his powers, as compared to hers; his youth as contrasted with her old age; and the undeniable and important advantage he possesses of having never brought his pure unalloyed magnetism in direct contact with the great impurity of your world and society — yet do what he may, he will never be able to produce such a picture, simply because he is unable to conceive it in his mind and Tibetan thought. Thus, while fathering upon us all manner of foolish, often clumsy and suspected phenomena, she has most undeniably been helping us in many instances; saving us sometimes as much as two-thirds of the power used, and when remonstrated — for often we are unable to prevent her doing it on her end of the line — answering that she had no need of it, and that her only joy was to be of some use to us. And thus she kept on killing herself inch by inch, ready to give — for our benefit and glory, as she thought — her life-blood drop by drop, and yet invariably denying before witnesses that she had anything to do with it. Would you call this sublime, albeit foolish self-abnegation — "dishonest"? We do not; nor shall we ever consent to regard it in such a light. To come to the point: moved by that feeling, and firmly believing at the time (because allowed to) that Hurrychund was a worthy chela (1) — of the Yogee Dayanand, she allowed C.C.M. and all those who were present to labour under the impression that it was Hurrychund who had produced the phenomena; and then went on rattling for a fortnight of Swami's great powers and of the virtues of Hurrychund, his prophet. How terribly she was punished, every one in Bombay (as you yourself) — well knows. First — the "chela" turning a traitor to his Master and his allies, and — a common thief; then the "great Yogin," the "Luther of India" sacrificing her and H.S.O. to his insatiable ambition. Very naturally, while Hurrychund's treason — shocking as it appeared at the time to C.C.M. and other theosophists left her unscarred, for Swami himself having been robbed took the defence of the "Founders" in hand, the treachery of the "Supreme Chief of the Theosophists of the Arya Samaj" was not regarded in its true light; it was not he that had played false, but the whole blame fell upon the unfortunate and too devoted woman, who, after extolling him to the sky, was compelled in self-defence to expose hismala fides and true motives in the Theosophist.

Such is the true history, and facts with regard to her "deception" or, at best — "dishonest zeal." No doubt she has merited a portion of the blame; most undeniably she is given to exaggeration in general, and when it becomes a question of "puffing up" those she is devoted to, her enthusiasm knows no limits. Thus she has made of M. an Apollo of Belvedere, the glowing description of whose physical beauty, made him more than once start in anger, and break his pipe while swearing like a true — Christian; and thus, under her eloquent phraseology, I, myself had the pleasure of hearing myself metamorphosed into an "angel of purity and light" — shorn of his wings. We cannot help feeling at times angry, with, oftener — laughing at, her. Yet the feeling that dictates all this ridiculous effusion, is too ardent, too sincere and true, not to be respected or even treated with indifference.

I do not believe I was ever so profoundly touched by anything I witnessed in all my life, as I was with the poor old creature's ecstatic rapture, when meeting us recently both in our natural bodies, one — after three years, the other — nearly two years absence and separation in flesh. Even our phlegmatic M. was thrown off his balance, by such an exhibition — of which he was chief hero. He had to use his power, and plunge her into a profound sleep, otherwise she would have burst some blood-vessel including kidneys, liver and her "interiors" — to use our friend Oxley's favourite expression — in her delirious attempts to flatten her nose against his riding mantle besmeared with the Sikkim mud! We both laughed; yet could we feel otherwise but touched? Of course, she is utterly unfit for a true adept: her nature is too passionately affectionate and we have no right to indulge in personal attachments and feelings. You can never know her as we do, therefore — none of you will ever be able to judge her impartially or correctly. You see the surface of things; and what you would term "virtue," holding but to appearances, we — judge but after having fathomed the object to its profoundest depth, and generally leave the appearances to take care of themselves. In your opinion H.P.B. is, at best, for those who like her despite herself — a quaint, strange woman, a psychological riddle: impulsive and kindhearted, yet not free from the vice of untruth. We, on the other hand, under the garb of eccentricity and folly — we find a profounder wisdom in her inner Self than you will ever find yourselves able to perceive. In the superficial details of her homely, hard-working, common-place daily life and affairs, you discern but unpracticality, womanly impulses, often absurdity and folly; we, on the contrary, light daily upon traits of her inner nature the most delicate and refined, and which would cost an uninitiated psychologist years of constant and keen observation, and many an hour of close analysis and efforts to draw out of the depth of that most subtle of mysteries — human mind — and one of her most complicated machines, — H.P.B.'s mind

 

— and thus learn to know her true inner Self.

 

All this you are at liberty to tell C.C.M. I have closely watched him, and feel pretty certain that what you will tell him will have far more effect upon him than what a dozen "K.H.'s" might tell him personally. "Imperator" stands between us two, and will, I am afraid, stand thus for ever. His loyalty to, and faith in the assertions of a European living friend can never be shaken by the assurances to the contrary, made by Asiatics, who to him

 

— if not mere figments, are unscrupulous "confederates." But I would, if possible, show to you his great injustice, and the wrong done by him to an innocent woman — at any rate comparatively innocent. However crazy an enthusiast, I pledge to you my word of honour, she was never a deceiver; nor has she ever wilfully uttered an untruth, though her position becomes often untenable, and that she has to conceal a number of things, as pledged to by her solemn vows. And now I have done with the question.

 

I am now going to approach once more a subject, good friend, I know is very repulsive to your mind, for you have told and written so repeatedly. And yet, in order to make some things clear to you, I am compelled to speak of it. You have often put the question "why should the Brothers refuse turning their attention to such worthy, sincere theosophists as C.C.M. and Hood, or such a precious subject as S. Moses? Well, I now answer you very clearly, that we have done so — ever since the said gentleman came into contact and communication with H.P.B. They were all tried and tested in various ways, and, not one of them came up the desired mark. M. gave a special attention to "C.C.M." for reasons I will now explain, and, with results as at present — known to you. You may say that such a secret way of testing people is dishonest, that we ought to have warned him, etc. Well, all I can say is, that it may be so from your European standpoint, but that, being Asiatics, we cannot depart from our rules. A man's character, his true inner nature can never be thoroughly drawn out if he believes himself watched, or strives for an object. Besides, Col. O. had never made a secret of that way of ours, and all the Bsh. theosophists ought to — if they did not — know that their body was, since we had sanctioned it, under a regular probation. As for C.C.M. — of all the theosophists, he was the one selected by M. and with a definite purpose, owing to H.P.B.'s importunities and his special promise. — "He will turn back on you some day, pumo!" M. repeatedly told her, in answer to her prayers to accept him as a regular chela with Olcott — "That he never, never will!" she exclaimed in answer. "C.C.M. is the best, most noble, etc., etc., etc." — a string of laudatory and admiring adjectives. Two years later, she said the same of Ross Scott. "Such two staunch, devoted friends — I never had!" she assured her "Boss" — who only laughed in his beard, and bid me arrange the "theosophical" marriage. Well; one was tested and tried for three years, the other for three months, with what results I hardly need remind you. Not only NO temptations were ever put in the way of either, but the latter was furnished with a wife amply sufficient for his happiness, and connections that will prove beneficent to him some day. C.C.M, had but objective, undoubted phenomena to stand upon; R. Scott had moreover, a visit in astral shape from M. In the case of one — the revenge of three unprincipled men; in the case of the other — the jealousy of a petty-minded fool made short work of the boasted friendship, and showed the "O.L." what it was worth, Oh, the poor, trusting, credulous nature! Take away from her her clairvoyant powers; plug up in a certain direction her intuitions — as in duty bound was done by M. — and what remains? A helpless, broken-hearted woman!

Take another case, that of Fern. His development, as occurring under your eye, affords you a useful study and a hint as to even more serious methods adopted in individual cases to thoroughly test the latent moral qualities of the man. Every human being contains within himself vast potentialities, and it is the duty of the adepts to surround the would-be chela with circumstances which shall enable him to take the "right-hand path," — if he have the ability in him. We are no more at liberty to withhold the chance from a postulant than we are to guide and direct him into the proper course. At best, we can only show him after his probation period was successfully terminated — that if he does this he will go right; if the other, wrong. But until he has passed that period, we leave him to fight out his battles as best he may; and have to do so occasionally with higher and initiated chelas such as H.P.B., once they are allowed to work in the world, that all of us more or less avoid. More than that — and you better learn it at once, if my previous letters to you about Fern have not sufficiently opened your eyes — we allow our candidates to be tempted in a thousand various ways, so as to draw out the whole of their inner nature and allow it the chance of remaining conqueror either one way or the other. What has happened to Fern has befallen every one else who has preceded, will befall with various results every one who succeeds him. We were all so tested; and while a Moorad Ali — failed — I, succeeded. The victor's crown is only for him who proves himself worthy to wear it; for him who attacks Mara single handed and conquers the demon of lust and earthly passions; and not we but he himself puts it on his brow. It was not a meaningless phrase of the Tathagata that "he who masters Self is greater than he who conquers thousands in battle": there is no such other difficult struggle. If it were not so, adeptship would be but a cheap acquirement. So, my good brother, be not surprised, and blame us not, as readily as you have already done, at any development of our policy towards the aspirants past, present or future. Only those who can look ahead at the far remote consequences of things are in a position to judge as to the expediency of our own actions, or those we permit in others. What may seem present bad faith may in the end prove the truest, most benevolent loyalty. Let time show who was right and who faithless. One, who is true and approved to-day, may to­morrow prove, under a new concatenation of circumstances a traitor, an ingrate, a coward, an imbecile. The reed, bent beyond its limit of flexibility, will have snapped in twain. Shall we accuse it? No; but because we can, and do pity it, we cannot select it as part of those reeds that have been tried and found strong, hence fit to be accepted as material for the indestructible fane we are so carefully building.

And now — to other matters.

We have a reform in head, and I look to you to help me. Mr. H.'s annoying and indiscreet interference with the Parent Society, and his passion of domineering all and everything, have made us come to the conclusion that it would be worth our while to attempt the following. Let it be made known "to all concerned" through the Theosophist and circulars issued to every Branch, that hitherto they have looked too often and too unnecessarily to the Parent Body for guidance and as an examplar to follow. This is quite impracticable. Besides the fact, that the Founders have to show themselves and try earnestly to be all to everyone and all things — since there is such a great variety of creeds, opinions and expectations to satisfy, they cannot possibly and at the same time satisfy all as they would like to. They try to be impartial, and never to refuse one what they may have accorded to another party. Thus they have repeatedly published criticisms upon Vedantism, Buddhism and Hinduism in its various branches, upon the Veda Bashya of Swami Dayanand — their staunchest and at that time most valued ally; but, because such criticisms were all directed against non-Christian faiths, no one ever paid the slightest attention to it. For over a year and more, the journal came out regularly with an advertisement inimical to that of the Veda Bashya and was printed side by side with it to satisfy the Benares Vedantins. And now Mr. Hume comes out with his public castigation of the Founders and seeks to prohibit the advertisement of anti-Christian pamphlets. I want you, therefore, to please bear this in mind, and point out these facts to Col. Chesney, who seems to imagine that theosophy is hostile but to Christianity; whereas it is but impartial, and whatever the personal views of the two Founders, the journal of the Society has nothing to do with them, and will publish as willingly criticism directed against Lamaism as against Christianism. At all events, willing as we both are, that H.P.B. should always and gratefully accept your advice in the matter, it was I, who advised her to "kick" as she says against Mr. H's attempts at authority, and you are at liberty to inform him of the fact.

Now in view to mending matters, what do you think of the idea of placing the Branches on quite a different footing? Even Christendom, with its divine pretensions to a Universal Brotherhood has its thousand and one sects, which, united as they all may be under one banner of the Cross are yet essentially inimical to each other, and the authority of the Pope is set to naught by the Protestants, while the decrees of the Synods of the latter are laughed at by the Roman Catholics. Of course, I would never contemplate, even in the worst of cases such a state of things among the theosophical bodies. What I want, is simply a paper on the advisability of remodelling the present formation of Branches and their privileges. Let them be all chartered and initiated as heretofore by the Parent Society, and depend of it nominally. At the same time, let every Branch before it is chartered, choose some one object to work for, an object, naturally, in sympathy with the general principles of the T.S. — yet a distinct and definite object of its own, whether in the religious, educational or philosophical line. This would allow the Society a broader margin for its general operations; more real, useful work would be done; and, as every Branch would be so to say, independent in its modus operandus, there would remain less room for complaint and par consequence — for interference. At any rate, this hazy sketch, I hope, will find an excellent soil to germinate and thrive in, in your business-like head; and if you could, meanwhile, write a paper based on the aforesaid explanations of the Theosophist's true position, giving all the reasons as above-mentioned and many more for the December, if not for the November number you would, indeed, oblige M. and myself. It is impossible, and dangerous, to entrust with such a subject, which requires the most delicate handling — either one or the other of our Editors. H.P.B., would never fail to break the padri's heads on such a good opportunity, or H.S.O. to turn a neat extra compliment or two to the Founders address, which would be useless, for I strive to show the two entities of Editor and Founder quite distinct and apart from each other blended though they be in one and same person. I am no practical business man and therefore, I feel utterly unable for the task. Will you help me, friend?

It would be better, of course, if the "feeler" would be made to appear in the November, as though in answer to Mr. Hume's very impolite letter, which, of course, I will not permit to be published. But you could take it for your ground-work and basis to frame your editorial answer upon. To return to the reform of Branches this question will have of course to be seriously considered and weighed before it is finally settled. There must be no more disappointment in members once they have joined. Each Branch has to choose its well defined mission to work for, and the greatest care should be taken in the selection of Presidents. Had the "Eclectic" been placed from the first, on such a footing of distinct independence, it might have fared better. Solidarity of thought and action within the broad outline of the chief and general principles of the Society there must always be between the Parent and Branch bodies; yet the latter must be allowed each their own independent action in everything that does not clash with those principles. Thus a Branch composed of mild Christians sympathizing with the objects of the Society might remain neutral in the question of every other religion, and utterly indifferent to and unconcerned with the private beliefs of the "Founders," the Theosophist making room as willingly for hymns on the Lamb, as for slokas on the sacredness of the cow. Could you but work out this idea, I would submit it to our venerable Chohan, who now gently smiles from the corner of an eye, instead of frowning as usual — ever since he saw you become President. Had I not, last year, owing to the ex­President's truculence, been "sent to bed" earlier than at first contemplated, I was going to propose it. I have a letter of lofty reproach, dated October 8th, from the "I am." In it, he sends for you on the 5th and explains his unwillingness to continue to hold office "and his" great desire that you should take his place. He condemns "altogether the system and policy," of our order. It seems to him "quite wrong." He winds up by: "Of course I shall ask you to get the O.L. to refrain from proposing me for the council of the Society." No fear, no fear of this; he may sleep soundly and undisturbed and see himself in dream the Dalai Lama of the Theosophists. But I must hasten to enter my indignant and emphatic protest against his definition of our "faulty" system. Because, he succeeded in catching but a few stray sparks of the principles of our Order, and could not be allowed to examine and — remodel the whole, we must all need be — what he would represent us! If we could hold such doctrines as he would impose upon us; if we in ought resembled the picture he has drawn; if we could submit for a single hour to stand silently under the load of such imputations as he has thrown upon us in his September letter; verily we should deserve to lose all credit with the Theosophists! We ought to be dismissed and hunted out of the Society and people's thoughts as charlatans and impostors — wolves in sheep's clothing, who come to steal away men's hearts with mystic promises, entertaining all the while the most despotic intentions, seeking to enslave our confiding chelas and turn the masses away from truth and the "divine revelation of nature's voice" to blank and "dreary atheism"; — i.e. a thorough disbelief in the "kind, merciful Father and Creator of all" (evil and misery, we must suppose?) who lolls from the eternity, reclining with his backbone supported on a bed of incandescent meteors, and picks his teeth with a lightning fork. . . .

Indeed, indeed, we have enough of this incessant jingle on the Jew's harp of Christian revelation!

M. thinks that the Supplement ought to be enlarged if necessary, and made to furnish room for the expression of thought of every Branch, however diametrically opposed these may be. The Theosophist ought to be made to assume a distinct colour and become a unique specimen of its own. We are ready to furnish the necessary

I cannot close without telling you of an incident which, however ludicrous, has led to something that makes me thank my stars for it, and will please you also. Your letter, enclosing that of C.C.M. was received by me on the morning following the date you had handed it over to the "little man." I was then in the neighbourhood of Pari-Jong, at the gun-pa of a friend, and was very busy with important affairs. When I received intimation of its arrival, I was just crossing the large inner courtyard of the monastery; bent upon listening to the voice of Lama Ton-dhub Gyatcho, I had no time to read the contents. So, after mechanically opening the thick packet, I merely glanced at it, and put it, as I thought, into the travelling bag I wear across the shoulder. In reality though, it had dropped on the ground; and since I had broken the envelope and emptied it of its contents, the latter were scattered in their fall. There was no one near me at the time, and my attention being wholly absorbed with the conversation, I had already reached the staircase leading to the library door, when I heard the voice of a young gyloong calling out from a window, and expostulating with someone at a distance. Turning round I understood the situation at a glance; otherwise your letter would have never been read by me for I saw a venerable old goat in the act of making a morning meal of it. The creature had already devoured part of C.C.M.'s letter, and was thoughtfully preparing to have a bite at yours, more delicate and easy for chewing with his old teeth than the tough envelope and paper of your correspondents epistle. To rescue what remained of it took me but one short instant, disgust and opposition of the animal notwithstanding — but there remained mighty little of it! The envelope with your crest on had nearly disappeared, the contents of the letters made illegible — in short I was perplexed at the sight of the disaster. Now you know why I felt embarrassed: I had no right to restore it, the letters coming from the "Eclectic" and connected directly with the hapless "Pelings" on all sides. What could I do to restore the missing parts! I had already resolved to humbly crave permission from the Chohan to be allowed an exceptional privilege in this dire necessity, when I saw his holy face before me, with his eye twinkling in quite an unusual manner, and heard his voice: "Why break the rule? I will do it myself." These simple words Kam mi ts'har — "I'll do it," contain a world of hope for me. He has restored the missing parts and done it quite neatly too, as you see, and even transformed a crumpled broken envelope, very much damaged, into a new one — crest and all. Now I know what great power had to be used for such a restoration, and this leads me to hope for a relaxation of severity one of these days. Hence I thanked the goat heartily; and since he does not belong to the ostracised Peling race, to show my gratitude I strengthened what remained of teeth in his mouth, and set the dilapidated remains firmly in their sockets, so that he may chew food harder than English letters for several years yet to come.

And now a few words about the chela. Of course you must have suspected that since the Master was prohibited the slightest tamasha exhibition, so was the disciple. Why should you have expected then, or "felt a little disappointed" with his refusing to forward to me your letters via Space — in your presence? The little man is a promising chap, far older in years than he looks, but young in European wisdom and manners and hence committing his several indiscretions, which, as I told you put me to the blush and made me feel foolish for the two savages. The idea of coming to you for money was absurd in the extreme! Any other Englishman but you would have regarded them after that as two travelling charlatans. I hope you have received by this time the loan I returned with many thanks.

Nath is right about the phonetic (vulgar) pronunciation of the word "Kiu-ti"; people usually pronounce it as Kiu-to, but it is not correct; and he is wrong in his view about Planetary Spirits. He does not know the word, and thought you meant the "devas" — the servants of the Dhyan-Chohans. It is the latter who are the "Planetary" and of course it is illogical to say that Adepts are greater than they, since we all strive to become Dhyan-Chohans in the end. Still there have been adepts "greater" than the lower degrees of the Planetary. Thus your views are not against our doctrines, as he told you, but would be had you meant the "devas" or angels, "little gods." Occultism is certainly not necessary for a good, pure Ego to become an "Angel" or Spirit in, or out of the Devachan since Angelhood is the result of Karma. I believe you will not complain of my letter being too short. It is going to be soon followed by another voluminous correspondence "Answers to your many Questions." H.P.B. is mended, if not thoroughly at least for some time to come.

With real affectionate regard,

K. H.

Letter 55 Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. The latter he certainly was, though never very "worthy" for he had always been a selfish, plotting rascal, in the secret pay of the late Gyeckwar. (return to text)

Letter No. 55

[The envelope is addressed in K.H.'s writing to "A. P. Sinnett, Esq., c/of L.C.H." — ED.]

And now, friend, you have completed one of your minor cycles; have suffered, struggled, triumphed. Tempted, you have not failed, weak you have gained strength, and the hard nature of the lot and ordeal of every aspirant after occult knowledge is now better comprehended by you, no doubt. Your flight from London and from yourself was necessary; as was also your choice of the localities where you could best shake off the bad influences of your social "season" and of your own house. It was not best that you should have come to Elberfeld sooner; it is best that you should have come now. For you are better able now to bear the strain of the present situation. The air is full of the pestilence of treachery; unmerited opprobrium is showering upon the Society and falsehood and forgery have been used to overthrow it. Ecclesiastical England and official Anglo India have secretly joined hands to have their worst suspicions verified if possible and at the first plausible pretext to crush the movement. Every infamous device is to be employed in the future as it has in the present to discredit us as its promoters, and yourselves as its supporters. For the opposition represents enormous vested interests, and they have enthusiastic help from the Dugpas — in Bhootan and the Vatican!

Among the "shining marks" at which the conspirators aim, you stand. Tenfold greater pains than heretofore will be taken to cover you with ridicule for your credulity, your belief in me — especially, and to refute your arguments in support of the esoteric teaching. They may try to shake still more than they already have your confidence with pretended letters alleged to have come from H.P.B.'s laboratory, and others, or with forged documents showing and confessing fraud and planning to repeat it. It has ever been thus. Those who have watched mankind through the centuries of this cycle, have constantly seen the details of this death-struggle between Truth and Error repeating themselves. Some of you Theosophists are now only wounded in your "honour" or your purses, but those who held the lamp in preceding generations paid the penalty of their lives for their knowledge.

Courage then, you all, who would be warriors of the one divine Verity; keep on boldly and confidently; husband your moral strength not wasting it upon trifles but keeping it against great occasions like the present one. I warned you all through Olcott in April last of what was ready to burst at Adyar, and told him not to be surprised when the mine should be fired. All will come right in time — only you, the great and prominent heads of the movement be steadfast, wary and united. We have gained our object as regards L.C.H. She is much improved, and her whole life hereafter will be benefited by the training she is passing thro'. To have stopped with you would have been to her an irreparable psychic loss. She had this shown her, before I actually consented to interfere at her own passionate prayer, between you; she was ready to fly to America, and but for my intervention would have done so. Worse than that; her mind was being rapidly unsettled and made useless as an occult instrument. False teachers were getting her into their power and false revelations misled her and those who consulted her. Your house, good friend, has a colony of Elementaries quartering in it, and to a sensitive like her, it was as dangerous an atmosphere to exist in as would be a fever cemetery to one subject to morbific physical influences. You should be more than ordinarily careful when you get back not to encourage sensitiveness in your household, not to admit more than can be helped the visits of known mediumistic sensitives. It would be well also to burn wood-fires in the rooms now and then, and carry about as fumigators open vessels (braziers?) with burning wood. You might also ask Damodar to send you some bundles of incense-sticks for you to use for this purpose. These are helps, but the best of all means to drive out unwelcome guests of this sort, is to live purely in deed and thought. The talismans you have had given you, will also powerfully aid you if you keep your confidence in them and in us unbroken. (?)

You have heard of the step H.P.B. was permitted to take. A fearful responsibility is cast upon Mr. Olcott; a still greater — owing to O.W. and Esot: Buddhism — upon you. For this step of hers is in direct relation with and as direct a result of the appearance of these two works. Your Karma, good friend, this time. I hope you will understand my meaning rightly. But if you remain true to and stand faithfully by the T.S. you may count upon our aid and so may all others to the full extent that they shall deserve it. The original policy of the T.S.

must be vindicated, if you would not see it fall into ruin and bury your reputations under it. I have told you long ago. For years to come the Soc. will be unable to stand, when based upon "Tibetan Brothers" and phenomena alone. All this ought to have been limited to an inner and very SECRET circle. There is a hero-worshipping tendency clearly showing itself, and you, my friend, are not quite free from it yourself. I am fully aware of the change that has lately come over you, but this does not change the main question. If you would go on with your occult studies and literary work — then learn to be loyal to the Idea, rather than to my poor self. When something is to be done never think whether I wish it, before acting: I wish everything that can, in great or small degree, push on this agitation. But I am far from being perfect hence infallible in all I do; tho' it is not quite as you imagine having now discovered. For you know — or think you know, of one K.H. — and can know but of one, whereas there are two distinct personages answering to that name in him you know. The riddle is only apparent and easy to solve, were you only to know what a real Mahatma is. You have seen by the Kiddle incident — perchance allowed to develop to its bitter end for a purpose — that even an "adept" when acting in his body is not beyond mistakes due to human carelessness. You now understand that he is as likely as not to make himself look absurd in the eyes of those who have no right understanding of the phenomena of thought-transference and astral precipitations — and all this, thro' lack of simple caution. There is always that danger if one has neglected to ascertain whether the words and sentences rushing into the mind have come all from within or whether some may have been impressed from without. I feel sorry to have brought you into such a false position before your many enemies and even your friends. That was one of the reasons why, I had hesitated to give my consent to print my private letters and specifically excluded a few of the series from the prohibition. I had no time to verify their contents — nor have I now. I have a habit of often quoting, minus quotation marks — from the maze of what I get in the countless folios of our Akasic libraries, so to say — with eyes shut. Sometimes I may give out thoughts that will see light years later; at other times what an orator, a Cicero may have pronounced ages earlier, and at others, what was not only pronounced by modern lips but already either written or printed — as in the Kiddle case. All this I do (not being a trained writer for the Press) without the smallest concern as to where the sentences and strings of words may have come from, so long as they serve to express, and fit in with my own thoughts. I have received a lesson now on the European plane on the danger of corresponding with western literati! But my "inspirer" Mr. Kiddle is none the less ungrateful, since to me alone he owes the distinguished honour of having become known by name, and having his utterances repeated even by the grave lips of Cambridge "Dons." If fame is sweet to him why will he not be consoled with the thought, that the case of the "Kiddle — K.H. parallel passages" has now become as much a cause celebre in the department of "who is who" — and "which plagiarized from the other?" as the Bacon-Shakespeare mystery; that in intensity of scientific research if not of value, our case is on a par with that of our two great predecessors.

But the situation — however amusing in one way — is more serious for the Society; and the "parallel passages" must yield first place to the "Christian-mission-Coulomb" conspiracy. Turn then to the latter all your thoughts, good friend — if friend all notwithstanding. You are very wrong to contemplate absence from London the coming winter. But I shall not urge you, if you do not feel equal to the situation. At any rate, if you do desert the "Inner Circle" some other arrangement has to be made: it is out of question for me to be corresponding with, and teaching both. Either you have to be my mouthpiece and secretary in the Circle, or I shall have to use somebody else as my delegate, and thus have positively no time to correspond with you. They have pledged themselves — (most of them) to me for life and death — the copy of the pledge is in the hands of Maha-Chohan — and I am bound to them.

I can now send my occasional instructions and letters with any certainty only thro' Damodar. But before I can do even so much the Soc. especially the H.Qrs. will have to pass first thro' the coming crisis. If you still care to renew the occult teachings save first our post-office. H.P.B. — I say again is not to be approached any longer without her full consent. She has earned so much, and has to be left alone. She is permitted to retire for three reasons (1) to disconnect the T.S. from her phenomena, now tried to be represented all fraudulent; (2) to help it by removing the chief cause of the hatred against it; (3) to try and restore the health of the body, so it may be used for some years longer. And now as to the details consult all of you together: for that I have asked them to send for you. The sky is black now, but forget not the hopeful motto "Post nubila Phoebus!" Blessings upon you, and your ever loyal lady.

K.H.

{The Sinnetts had spent August traveling through Switzerland. Shortly after September 10 they went to Elberfeld to visit the Gebhard family and found H.P.B. in a high state of nervous excitement because of a letter received from Damodar telling of the brewing of the Coulomb conspiracy. The "step" H.P.B. had at length been permitted to take was to cable to Adyar to evict the Coulombs from Adyar Headquarters. Among the other guests at that time at Elberfeld were Drs. Hartmann and Hubbe-Scheiden. September 20, H.P.B., accompanied by Mrs. Holloway and young Rudolph Gebhard, left for London where she stayed with Mrs. and Miss Arundale until her return to India, November 1. Mrs. Holloway returned to America shortly before H.P.B.'s own departure.}

Letter 56 Table of Contents

Letter No. 56

From K.H. — Rec. Jan. 83 Allah[abad].

It is my turn, kind friend, to intercede for lenient treatment, especially a very prudent one of Mr. Hume, and I ask you to give me a hearing. You must not overlook an element which has much to do with his moral turpitude, one, which certainly does not excuse though it mitigates in a degree, his offence. He is pushed on and half maddened by evil powers, which he has attracted to himself and come under subjection to by his innate moral turbulence. Near him lives a fakir who has an animalizing aura about him; the parting curses — I dare not say they were unjust or unprovoked — of Mr. Fern have produced their effect; and while his own self-painted adeptship is entirely imaginary, he has nevertheless, by the injudicious practice of pranayam, developed in himself to some extent mediumship — is tainted for life with it. He has opened wide the door to influences from the wrong quarter, and is, henceforth almost impervious to those from the right. So, he must not be sweepingly judged as one who has sinned with thorough and entirely unmixed deliberation. Avoid him, but do not madden him still more, for he is more than dangerous now, to one, who is unable like yourself, to fight him with his own weapons. Suffice that you should know him — as he is, and so be forewarned and prudent in future, since for the present he has succeeded in spoiling our plans in the most hopeful quarters. He is now in his days — which will extend for weeks and perhaps months — of the most selfish vanity and combativeness — during which he is capable of doing most desperate things. So, think twice, my good friend before you precipitate a crisis the results of which might thus be very severe.

As regards his connection with Theosophical matters, he is largely your chela, the captive of your spear and bow; but, since you have thus acted under my own instructions — I take the blame upon myself — the whole blame, understand me well; and I would not allow a single speck of the present disastrous results to taint your Karma. But the latter is a thing of the future, and in the meanwhile he can play the deuce with yourself and Society. It cost you no little trouble to get him in and now you must beware how you prematurely hurl him out. For, you have seen from his correspondence, what malice he is capable of, and how industriously he can work to breed suspicion and discontent so as to centre interest and loyalty upon himself. The T.S. has just tided safely through a tempest raised by another vain and ambitious malcontent — Dayanand S. — and if the issue has been favourable it is because D.S. had a short memory and was made to forget all about the documents he had issued. It is the prudent part, therefore, to wait, and watch, and lay by the materials for the defence against the time when this new iconoclast shall "charge upon your entrenchments" — if he ever does, which up to this moment, is not determined, but which would be almost inevitable if he were suddenly denounced by yourself. I do not ask you to evince friendship for him, (nay, I would strongly advise you not to even write to him yourself for some time to come, and when pressed for an explanation, ask your good lady of whom he is afraid and whom he is forced to respect to tell him bluntly and honestly the truth — in a way only women are capable of) — but simply to postpone an open breach until the hour comes when longer delay would be unpardonable. Neither of us ought to imperil a cause whose promotion is a duty paramount to considerations of Self.

I must not close my letter with this black image, but tell you that in Madras there are fairer prospects of success than at Calcutta. In a few days you will hear the results of Subba Row's work.

How do you like "Mr. Isaacs"? As you will see (for you must read and review it) the book is the Western echo of the Anglo-Indian "Occult world." The ex-editor of the "Indian Herald" has not quite grown up to the size of the editor of the Pioneer, but something is being done in the same direction. The cruel enemy of 1880-1 is turned in quasi an admirer in 1882. I think it rather hard to see people finding K.H. "Lal Singh" — mirrored in "Ram Lal" — the "all-grey" adept, of Mr. Marion Crawford. Had the book been written a year ago, I might have said the author was himself gris when making "Ram Lal" talk of eternal love and bliss in the realms of the world of Spirit. But since a certain vision procured for him by the famous "Ski" in whom Mr. C. C. M. does not believe — the man gave up entirely drinking. One man more saved. I forgive him my very "grey" appearance and even Shere-Ali!

K. H.

Letter 57 Table of Contents

Letter No. 57

Received 6/1/83.

My dear friend,

I approach a subject which I have purposely avoided for several months, until furnished with proofs that would appear conclusive even in your sight. We are not — as you know — always of the same way of thinking; nor has that which to us is — FACT — any weight in your opinion unless it violates in no way the Western methods of judging it. But now the time has come for us, to try to have you, at least, understand us better than we hitherto have been even by some of the best and most earnest amongst western Theosophists — such for instance as C. C. Massey. And though I would be the last man living to seek to make you follow in my wake as your "prophet" and "inspirer," I would, nevertheless, feel truly sorry were you ever brought to regard me as a "moral paradox," having to suffer me either as one guilty of a false assumption of powers I never had, or — of misusing them to screen unworthy objects and, as unworthy persons. Mr. Massey's letter explains to you what I mean; that which seems conclusive proof to him and unimpeachable evidence, is neither for me — who know the whole truth. On this last day of your year 1882, his name comes third on the list of failures, — something (I hasten to say for fear of a new misconception) that has nothing to do whatever with the present arrangement regarding the proposed new Branch in London, yet everything with his personal progress. I deeply regret it, but have no right to bind myself so securely to any person or persons by ties of personal sympathy and esteem that my movements shall be crippled, and I, unable to lead the rest to something grander and nobler than their present faith. Therefore, I choose to leave him in his present errors. The brief meaning of this is the following: Mr. Massey labours under the strangest misconceptions, and (literally) "dreams dreams" — though no medium, as his friend, Mr. S. Moses. With all he is the noblest, purest, in short, one of the best men I know, though occasionally too trusting in wrong directions. But he lacks entirely — correct intuition. It will come to him later on, when neither H.P.B. or Olcott will be there. Until then — remember, and tell him so: we demand neither allegiance, recognition (whether public or private) nor will we have anything to do with, or say to the British Branch, — except through you. Four Europeans were placed on probation twelve months ago; of the four — only one, yourself, was found worthy of our trust. This year it will be Societies instead of individuals that will be tested. The result will depend on their collective work, and Mr. Massey errs when hoping that I am prepared to join the motley crowd of Mrs. K.'s "inspirers." Let them remain under their masks of St. John the Baptists and like Biblical aristocrats. Provided the latter teach our doctrines — however muddled up with foreign chaff — a great point will be gained. C.C.M. wants light — he is welcome to it — through you. Since it is all he wants what matters it whether he regards the "light-bearer" handing his torch to you — as a man of clean or unclean hands, so long as light itself is not affected by it? Only let me give you a warning. An affair now so trivial as to seem but the innocent expression of feminine vanity may, unless at once set aright, produce very evil consequences. In a letter from Mrs. Kingsford to Mr. Massey conditionally accepting the presidentship of the British T.S. she expresses her belief — nay, points it out as an undeniable fact — that before the appearance of "The Perfect Way" no one "knew what the Oriental school really held about Reincarnation"; and adds that "seeing how much has been told in that book the adepts are hastening to unlock their own treasures, so 'grudgingly doled out hitherto' (as H.X. puts it)." Mr. Massey, thereupon gives in reply a full adherence to this theory, and blossoms into an adroit compliment to the lady that would not discredit a plenipotentiary. "Probably," says he, "it is felt (by the Brothers) that a community among whom such a work as "The Perfect Way" can be produced and find acceptance is ready for the light!" Now, let this idea gain currency, and it will tend to convert into a sect the school of the highly estimable authoress, who, albeit a fifth rounder, is not exempt from quite a considerable dose of vanity and despotism, hence — bigotry. Thus, elevate the misconception into an undue importance; impair thereby her own spiritual condition by feeding the latent sense of Messiahship; and you will have obstructed the cause of free and general independent enquiry which her "Initiators" as well as we would wish promoted. Write then, good friend, to Mr. Massey the truth. Tell him that you were possessed of the Oriental views of reincarnation several months before the work in question had appeared — since it is in July (18 months ago) that, you began being taught the difference between Reincarnation a la Allan Kardec, or personal rebirth — and that of the Spiritual Monad; a difference first pointed out to you on July 5th at Bombay. And to allay another uneasiness of hers, say that no allegiance by her to the "Brothers" will be expected, (nor even accepted if offered) in as much as we have no present intention of making any further experiments with Europeans and will use no other channel than yourself to impart our Arhat philosophy. The intended experiment with Mr. Hume in 1882 failed most sadly. Better than your Wren are we entitled to the motto, festina lente!

And now, you will please follow me into still deeper waters. An unsteady, wavering, suspicious candidate at one end of the line; a declared unprincipled, (I say the word and maintain it) vindictive enemy at the other end; and you will agree that between London and Simla we are not very likely to appear in either a very attractive or anything like a true light. Personally such a state of things is hardly calculated to deprive us of sleep; as regards the future progress of the British T.S. and a few other Theosophists, the current of enmity travelling between the two places is sure to affect all those who will find themselves on its way — even yourself, in the long run, perchance. Who of you could disbelieve the explicit statements of two "gentlemen" both noted for their intellectual eminence, and one of whom, at least, is as incapable of uttering an untruth as of flying in the air. Thus, end of the cycle notwithstanding, there is a great personal danger for the Bsh.T.S. as for yourself. No harm can come now to the Society; much mischief is in store for its proposed Branch and its supporters, unless yourself and Mr. Massey are furnished with some facts and a key to the true situation. Now, if for certain and very good reasons, I have to leave C.C.M. to his delusions of guilt, regarding H.P.B., and my own moral shakiness, the time is ripe to show to you Mr. Hume in his true light, thus making way with one false witness against us, while deeply regreting the fact that I am bound by the rules of our Order, and my own sense of honour (however little it may be worth in the eyes of a European) not to divulge at present certain facts that would show C.C.M. at once, how deeply he is in error. I may tell you no news if I say that it was Mr. Hume's attitude when the Eclectic was formed that caused our chiefs to bring Mr. Fern and Mr. Hume together. The latter reproached us vehemently for refusing to take in as chelas — himself, and that, sweet, handsome, spiritual and truth aspiring boy — Fern. We were daily dictated laws, and as daily taken to task for being unable to realize our own interests. And it will be no news though it may disgust and shock you, to learn that the two were brought into the closest relationship in order to bring out their mutual virtues and defects — each to shine in his own true light. Such are the laws of Eastern probation. Fern was a most remarkable psychic subject, naturally — very spiritually inclined, but corrupted by Jesuit masters, and with his sixth and seventh Principles completely dormant and paralysed within him. No idea of right and wrong whatever; in short — irresponsible for anything but the direct and voluntary actions of the animal man. I would not have burdened myself with such a subject knowing beforehand that he was sure to fail. M. consented, for the chiefs have so wished it; and he deemed it useful and good to show to you the moral stamina and worth of him whom you regarded and called a friend. Mr. H. — you think, though lacking the finer, better feelings of a gentleman is yet one by his instincts as well as by birth. I do not pretend to be thoroughly well acquainted with the code of honour of Western nations. Yet, I doubt, whether a man who, during the absence of the proprietor of certain private letters, avails himself of the key from the pocket of a waistcoat carelessly left on the verandah during work, opens with it the drawer of a writing desk, reads the private letters of that person, takes notes from them and then uses those contents as a weapon to satisfy his hatred and vindictiveness against their writer — I doubt, I say, even in the West such a man would be regarded as the ideal of even the average gentleman. And this and much more, I maintain, was done by Mr. Hume. Had I told you of it last August you would have never believed me. And now I am prepared to prove it over his own signature. Having been caught in the same honest occupation by M. twice, my Brother wrote purposely (or rather caused Damodar purposely to write) a certain letter to Fern enclosing a copy of a letter of Mr. H.'s to me. The knowledge of their contents was to bring out to light, when the time came, the true gentlemanly instincts and the honesty of him, who sets himself so high above humanity. He is now caught in his own meshes. Hatred, and the irresistible thirst of abusing and vilifying in a letter to Olcott one, who is so immeasurably higher than all his detractors, have led Mr. Hume into an imprudent confession. When caught and cornered — he resorts to a down-right, bare-faced LIE.

I am going, after this preliminary entree en matiere and necessary explanation to make you acquainted with certain extracts from private letters not intended for your eye, nevertheless, far from "confidential," since in nearly every one of them Mr. H. begs the addressee to have them read by other theosophists. I hope this will not be imputed to me as a mark of "ungentlemanly instincts" by you. As to every other man, since, now-a­days, a man universally recognised as a "gentleman" is often a low wretch, and gentleman-like externals often hide the soul of a villain — he is welcome to regard me in any light he pleases. These extracts I give you because it becomes absolutely necessary that you should be correctly informed of the true nature of him, who now passes his time in writing letters to the London theosophists and candidates for membership — with the determined object of setting every mystic in the West against a Brotherhood of "atheists, hypocrites and sorcerers." It will help to guide your action in the event of possible contingencies, and mischief caused by your friend and our well-wisher, who, while denouncing my Brother, my more than friend, as a pilferer, coward, liar, and the incarnation of baseness, insults me with words of pitying praise which he thinks I am traitor enough to accept and imbecile enough not to weigh at their value. Remember — such a friend is to be guarded against as one takes precautions against a duellist who wears a corslet beneath his shirt. His good actions are many, vices far more numerous; the former have always been largely controlled and promoted by his inordinate self-love and combativeness; and if it is not yet determined which will finally control the impetus whose outcome will be his next birth, we may prophesy with a degree of perfect assurance, that he will never become an adept either in this or his future life. His "Spiritual" aspirations received a full chance to develop. He was tested, as all have to be — as the poor moth was, who was scorched in the candle of Rothney Castle and its associations — but the victor in the struggle for adeptship was ever Self and Self alone. His cerebral visions have already painted for him the image of a new Regenerator of Mankind in place of the "Brothers" whose ignorance and black magical dealings he has found out. That new Avatar does not live at Almorah but on Jakko. And so the demon — Vanity — which has ruined Dayanand is ruining our quondam friend" and preparing him to make an assault upon us and the T.S. far more savage than the Swami's. The future however may take care of itself; I shall only have to trouble you now with the data above indicated. You will now realize, perchance, why I was made to collect evidence of his untruthful, cunning nature, in October last. Nothing, my friend, — even apparently absurd and reprehensible actions — is done by us without a purpose.

On the 1st of December, Mr. H. writing to Colonel O. said of us: "As for the Brothers, I have a sincere affection for K.H. and always shall have, and as for the others I have no doubt that they are very good men, and acting according to their lights. But as to their system, I am, of course, entirely opposed, . . . but that has nothing to do with the exoteric practical aims of the T.S. in which and in their furtherance I can as cordially and cheerfully co-operate with your good Brothers as etc. etc."

Eight days earlier (22nd November,) he had written to P. Sreenevas Row, Judge S.C.C. at Madras, — "I find the Brotherhood a set of wicked selfish men, caring as a body for nothing but their own spiritual development (mind, in this respect K.H. is an exception but he is I believe the only one) and their system one of deception and tainted largely with sorcery (!) in that they employ spooks, i.e. elementals to perform their phenomena. As to deception, once a man has become a chela and bound himself by the vows they exact, you cannot believe a word he says; . . . he will lie systematically; as for sorcery, the fact is that until the time of Sonkapa, . . . they were a set of unmitigated, vile sorcerers. . . . Every chela is a slave — a slave of the most abject description — a slave in thought, as well as in word and deed. . .; our Society is an edifice noble in outside show — but built not on the rock of ages, but on the shifting sands of atheism, a whited sepulchre all bright . . . inside full of deceit and the dead bones of a pernicious, jesuitical system. . . . You are at liberty to make what use you please of this letter inside the Society," etc.

On the 9th of the same month he wrote to Mr. Olcott of the "manifest selfishness of the Brotherhood, intent solely on their spiritual development."

On the 8th of September in a letter to 12 chelas (the very ones he was referring to in the letter to Judge Sreenavas Row of November 22nd — after having received from them an exasperatingly candid joint reply to the aforesaid diplomatic letter — as liars and bound slaves) — he said, as you know, he "should not have expected any European to read between the lines," of his plot in the HX letter in the Theosophist; but "a set of Brahmins . . . the subtlest minds, in the world . . . not ordinary Brahmins, but men of the highest, noblest training, etc" (!!). They — "may rest assured that I (he) shall never say or do anything that is not for the advantage of the Brothers, the Society and all its objects." . . . (Thus it seems the charges of sorcery and dishonesty is to the "advantage" of Asiatic adepts). In this same letter, if you remember, he adds that it "is the most efficient weapon for the conversion of the infidels at home yet forged," and that he "of course expected" (by writing this letter in the Theosophist) "to take our dear old lady in — I could not take her into the plot," etc. etc.

With all his cunning and diplomacy he really seems to suffer from a loss of memory. Not only had he taken the "dear old lady" into the plot in a long private letter written to her a few hours after the said "efficient weapon" had been sent for publication, (a letter sent by her to you and which you lost in your packing up at Simla to come down) but he had actually gone out of his way to put a few words of explanation on the back of the said "Letter." It is preserved as every other MSS. by Damodar and the note runs thus . . . "Please print this carefully and without alteration. It answers admirably Davison's and other letters from home." . . . (Extracts from these letters were enclosed in his manuscript). . . . We can't long, I fear, bolster up — but hints like these will help to break the fall" etc. . . .

Having thus himself forged this most efficient weapon for the conversion of the infidels at home, as to our actual existence, and unable henceforth to deny it, what better antidote than to add to the hints therein contained full and well defined charges of sorcery, etc.?

When accused by the 12 Chelas in their joint answer to his letter to them, of a deliberate falsification of facts with reference to the "dear Old Lady" whom he had, notwithstanding all he could say to the contrary, "taken into the plot" he writes in a letter to Subba Row that he had never done so. That his letter to the "Madam" explaining to her the whys and reasons for that "Letter" of his by "H.X." — was written and sent to her long after the said denunciatory Letter "was already in print." To this Subba Row, in his letter to whom he had bitterly abused and vilified M. answered by quoting to him the very words he had written on the back of the manuscript thus showing to him how useless was any further falsehood. And now you may judge of his love for Subba Row!

And now comes the bouquet. Writing on the 1st of December to Mr. Olcott (letter first above referred to), he distinctly claims adept powers. "I am very sorry I cannot join you in the body in Bombay — but — if allowed I may nevertheless perhaps assist you there . . ." Yet in Fern's case he says "it is a perfect chaos and no one can tell what is really owing and what is not;" and several letters upon the same topic teem with acknowledgment that he had no power to see what was going on "during the past six months." Quite the contrary, it would seem, since in a letter to me within this period he describes himself as "not on a level spiritually with him (Fern) Sinnett" and others. He did not dare brag to me of his spiritual clairvoyance; but now, having "broken forever with the Tibetan Sorcerers" his potential adept powers have suddenly developed into monstrous proportions. They must have been from birth marvellously great since, he informs Olcott (same letter) that a "certain amount of Pranavam for a few months (six weeks in all) was necessary to ensure concentration — at first. . . . I have passed that stage and — I AM A YOGI."

The charge preferred now against him is of so grave a character, that I would have never asked you to believe it on my simple assertion. Hence — this long letter, and the following evidence which, please read with the utmost care and drawing your conclusions solely on that evidence.

In his July letter to me he imputes to us the blame for Fern's course of falsehood, his pretended visions and pretended inspirations from us; and in the letter to Mr. Olcott (December 1st) he charges Morya, my beloved brother, with acting "in a most dishonourable manner," adding that he has "never since looked upon him as a gentleman, for having caused Damodar . . . to send Fern a transcript of my confidential report on him. . . ." This he regards as "a dishonourable breach of confidence" — so gross that "Moriar was afraid (!!) to let even K.H. know how he had stolen and made a bad use of my letter to him. K.H. is a gentleman I believe and would scorn so base an act." No doubt, I would had it been done without my knowledge and were it not absolutely necessary — in view of clearly foreseen events to bring Mr. Hume to betray himself and thus counteract the influence and authority of his vindictive nature. The letter so transcribed was not marked confidential, and the words "I am ready to say so to Fern's face, at any day" — are there. However — the unmeasured abuse and his truly saintly and gentlemanly indignation at M.'s treachery are followed by these words of confession (1); very startling as you will see: ". . . Fern does not, let me do him that justice, know to this day that I knew of this" i.e. of the letter pilfered by M. and sent to Fern through Damodar. In short, then Mr. Hume had means of reading the contents of a private letter addressed to Fern registered, sent to his (Mr. Hume's) care, kept in a drawer of a table belonging to the house. The proof is complete since it is himself who furnishes it. How then? Of course, either by reading its physical substance with his natural eyes, or, its astral essence by transcendental power. If the latter, then by what brief forcing system was the psychic power of this "yogi," who, in July last, was "not on a level spiritually" with yourself, or even with Fern, suddenly shot out into such full flower and fruitage, whereas it takes even us, trained "sorcerers" ten or fifteen years to acquire it? Besides, if, this and other letters to Fern, were presented to him in the "astral light" (as he maintains in his letter in reply to Colonel O.'s query, herein enclosed), how comes it that the benevolent Almorah genius (through whose help he suddenly acquired such tremendous powers) could cause him to take note of the contents, to read word for word and to remember ONLY such letters as were kept by Fern — in accordance with M's positive orders — in his desk in Mr. Hume's house? While, WE DEFY HIM to repeat one word of other and (for him) far more important letters sent by my Brother to the "probationary chela" in which the latter was forbidden to keep them at Rothney Castle, but had them securely shut up in a locked desk at his own house? These queries, arising at M.'s will in Olcott's mind he flatly put the question to Mr. Hume. As M.'s chela revering him, of course, as a Father as well as Teacher he very properly put to this Censor Elegantiarum the direct question whether he had been himself guilty of the very "dishonourable" breach of gentlemanlike conduct of which he was complaining in Morya's case. (And unjustly as you now see; for what he did had my approval, since it was a necessary part of a preconceived plan to bring out — besides Mr. H.'s true nature, — of a disgraceful situation, itself developed by the wicked appetites, follies and Karma of sundry weak men — ultimate good, as you will find).

We have no gentlemen — now at all events, that would come up to the Simla standard — in Tibet, though many honest and truthful men. To Mr. Olcott's question came a reply so reeking with deliberate, bare falsehood, foolish vanity, and so miserable an attempt to explain away the only possible theory that without the owner's knowledge he had read his private correspondence, that I have asked Morya to procure it for me for you to read. After doing this you will kindly return it to me through Dharbagiri Nath who will he at Madras within this week.

I have done an unpleasant and distasteful task, but a great point will be achieved if it helps you to know us better — whether your European standard of right and wrong inclines the scales in your opinion either one way or the other. Perchance, you may find yourself in C.C.M.'s attitude deploring to find yourself obliged to either accept or reject for ever such a "distressing moral paradox" as myself. No one would regret it more deeply than I; but our Rules have proved wise and beneficient to the world in the long run, and the world in general and its individual units especially are so terribly wicked that one has to fight each one with his or her own weapons.

As the situation stands at present, and though we would not allow too much "procrastination," it does seem desirable that you should go for a few months home — say till June. But unless you go to London and with C.C.M.'s help explain the true situation and establish the Society yourself, Mr. Hume's letters will have done too much harm to undo the mischief. Thus your temporary absence will have achieved a dual good purpose: the foundation of a true theosophical occult Society, and the salvation of a few promising individuals for future careers, now jeopardized. Besides, your absence from India will not be an unmixed evil, since the friends of the country will feel your loss, and perhaps be all the more ready for your recall: especially if the "Pioneer" changes its tone. Some of your holiday time it might be agreeable to you to utilize in one form or another of theosophical writing. You have now a large store of materials, and if you would contrive to get copies of the didactic papers given to Mr. Hume it would be a timely precaution. He is a prolific letter writer and now that he has disburdened himself of all restraints he will bear close watching. Remember the Chohan's prophesy.

Yours ever sincerely,

K. H.

Letter 58 Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. Fern was at Bombay and he dreaded the just denial of even a "rascal." (return to text)

 

Letter No. 58

Received at Madras, March, 1883.

My Dear "Ward,"

We will not, if you please, deal at present with the situation concerning "stars" and obscuration — for reasons very plainly told to you this morning by H.P.B. My task becomes with every letter more dangerous. It becomes exceedingly difficult to teach you and hold at the same time strictly to the original programme: "so far shall we go and no further." Yet — hold to it we must and will.

You have entirely mistaken my meaning in the telegram. The words: "more at Adyar" related to the true explanation of your vision, not by any means, to a promise of some further psychological experiments made in that direction by myself. The vision was due to an attempt by D.K. who is extremely interested in your progress. While he succeeded in getting you out of your body, he failed entirely in his effort to open your inner vision, for reasons correctly surmised at the time by yourself. I took no personal active part in the attempt. Hence my answer "surmises correct — more at Adyar." I am in a very false position just now, and have — in order not to jeopardise the possibilities of the future — to be doubly cautious.

The probable date of your departure? Well — on or about April 7th. If your impatience disagrees with this desire of mine you are free to do as you like. Yet, I would look upon it as a personal favour. I am profoundly disgusted with the apathy of my countrymen in general. More than ever I trust but in the few staunch workers of the luckless and hapless T.S. The Viceroy's letter would be of the greatest help if it could be but judiciously used. But in such matters, I see I am no judge, as I now augur from the impression left on your mind by R. Srinavasa Rao and others.

The incident of February the 7th being explained, your question relating to "earlier restrictions" is already covered.

May I beg of you two more personal and important favours? First — to ever bear in mind that whenever and whatever is possible will be always done for you unurged; hence never to either ask for, or suggest it, yourself — since it will amount to simply avoiding to me the supremely disagreeable task of having to refuse a friend's request without, moreover, being in a position to explain the reason why; and second — to remember that though personally and for your own sake I may be prepared to do a great deal I have in no way bound myself to do anything of the sort for the Fellows of the British T.S. I have pledged my word to you to teach them through your kind agency — our philosophy and whether they accept it or not. But I have never undertaken to convince any of them of the extent of our powers nor even of our personal existence. Their belief or disbelief in the latter is a matter of very trifling importance to us indeed. If they are ever to be benefitted by our promise, it must be through you, alone and your own personal efforts. Nor can you ever see me (in flesh), — not even in a clearly defined vision — unless you are prepared to pledge your honour never to reveal the fact to anyone, so long as you live, (save you receive permission to that effect). That the consequence of such a pledge will be a never satisfied as an ever recurring doubt in the minds of your British Fellows — is just what we want for the present. Too much, or too little was said and proved of us as M.A. (Oxon) justly remarked. We are ordered to set ourselves to work to sweep away the few vestiges — for which fresh policy you are indebted to the incessant underground intrigues of our ex-friend Mr. Hume — (now entirely in the hands of the Brothers of the Shadow) — and the more our actual existence be doubted — the better. As to tests and convincing proofs to the Sadducees of Europe generally and those of England especially — this is something to be left entirely out of our future programme. Unless allowed to use our own judgment and means — the course of future events will by no means run smooth. Thus you should never use such phrases as "for the sake of strength with friends at home" as they would be sure to do no good and would simply irritate the more the other "powers that be" — to use the ridiculous phrase. It is not always flattering, good friend, to be placed even by those one likes the best — on the same level with shells and mediums — for the purpose of tests. I thought you had luckily outgrown that stage. Let us hold at present to the simply intellectual aspect of our intercourse and busy ourselves but with philosophy and — your future paper and leave the rest to time and its

It is precisely because I follow and perceive the dual working of your mind in making such requests that I sign myself invariably Your affectionate friend,

K. H.

Letter 59 Table of Contents

Letter No. 59

Received London about July, 1883.

With whatever shortcomings my always indulgent "lay-chela" may have to charge me, he will, it appears, credit me with having given him a new source of enjoyment. For even the sombre prophecy of Sir Charles Turner (a recent obscuration of his) that you would fall into Roman Catholicism as the inevitable outcome of your dabbling in Theosophy and believing in the "K.H." maya — has not dampened the ardour of your propaganda in the gay world of London. If this zeal should be cited by the Altruist of Rothney, in support of his declaration that your grey vesicles are surcharged with Tzigadze Akasa, it will still doubtless be balm to your wounded feelings to know that you are essentially aiding to build the bridge over which the British metaphysicians may come within thinking distance of us!

It is the custom among some good people to glance back at their life's path from the hillocks of time they annually surmount. So, if my hope has not betrayed me you must have been mentally comparing your present "greatest pleasure" and "constant occupation" with that which was so in the olden time, when you threaded the streets of your metropolis, where the houses are as if "painted in Indian ink," and a day's sunshine is an event to remember. You have measured yourself against yourself, and found the Theosophist an "Anak" morally, as compared with the "old man" (the beau valseur);is it not so? Well, this is, perhaps, your reward — the beginning of it: the end you will realize in Devachan, when "floating along" in the circurnambient ether, instead of the circummuded British Channel — foggy though that state may now appear to your mind's eye. Then only will you "see thyself by thyself" and learn the true meaning of Atmanam, atmana pasya: —

"To know itself e'en as a shining light

Requires no light to make itself perceived . . ."

of the great Vedanta Philosophy.

Again and once more, an attempt has been made to dispel some of that great mist that I find in Mr. Massey's Devachan. It will appear as a contribution to the August number of the Theosophist, and to that I shall refer Mr. Massey and yourself. Quite possibly even then the "obscuration" will not be removed and it may be thought that the intended explanation is nothing of the kind; and that, instead of winding the clock, a clumsy hand has but broken out some cogs. This is our misfortune, and I doubt if we shall ever get quite free of these obscurities and alleged contradictions; since there is no way to bring the askers and respondents face to face. Still at the worst it must be conceded that there is some satisfaction in the fact that there is now a ford across this river and you are building spans for a royal bridge. It is quite right that you should baptize your new brain-babe with the waters of Hope; and, within the limits of possibility that by it "a further and very sensible impulse will be imparted to the present movement." But, friend, even the "green cheese" of the shining moon is periodically lunched upon by Rahu; so do not think yourself altogether above the contingency of popular fickleness, that would put out your light in favour of some new man's "farthing dip." The culture of Society more often inclines to lawn-tennis philosophy than to that of the banned "adepts," whose wider game has worlds for balls, and etheric space for its shaven lawn. Theplat of your first book was spiced with phenomena to tickle the spiritualistic palate: this second one is a dish of cold philosophy, and in your "large section of London Society" you will scarcely find enough of the wine of sympathy to wash it down. Many, who now think you mildly mad will buy the book to find out if a commission De lunatico should issue to prevent your doing more damage; but of all your readers few are likely to follow your lead towards our ashrum. Still the theosophist's duty is like that of the husbandman; to turn his furrows and sow his grains as best he can: the issue is with nature, and she, the slave of Law.

I shall waste no condolences upon the poor "lay-chelas" because of the "delicate weapons they can alone work with." A sorry day it would be for mankind if any sharper or deadlier ones were put in their unaccustomed hands! Ah! you would concur with me, my faithful friend, if you could but see the plaint one of them has just made on account of the agonizing results of the poisoned weapons he got the wielding of, in an evil hour, through the help of a sorcerer. Crushed morally, by his own selfish impetuosity; rotting physically from diseases engendered by the animal gratifications he snatched with "demon" help; behind him a black memory of wasted chances and hellish successes; before him a pall of dark despair, — of avitchi, — this wretched man turns his impotent rage against our "starry science" and ourselves, and hurls his ineffectual curses at those he vainly besieged for more powers in chelaship, and whom he deserted for a necromantic "Guru" who now leaves the victim to his fate. Be satisfied, friend, with your "delicate weapons"; if not as lethal as the discus of Vishnu, they can break down many barriers if plied with power. The poor wretch in question confesses to a course of "lies, breaches of faith, hatreds, temptings or misleading of others, injustices, calumnies, perjuries, false pretences," etc. The "risk" he "voluntarily took," but he adds, "if they (we) had been good and kind as well as wise and powerful, they (we) would have certainly prevented me from undertaking a task to which they knew I was unequal." In a word, we, who have gained our knowledge, such as it is, by the only practicable method, and who have no right to hinder any fellow man from making the attempt (though we have the right to warn, and we do warn every candidate), we are expected to take upon our own heads the penalty of such interference, or try to save ourselves from the same by making incompetents into adepts in spite of themselves! Because we did not do this, he is "left to linger out a wretched existence as an animated poison bag, full of mental, moral, and physical corruption." This man has, in despair, turned from a "heathen" an atheist and a free-thinker — a Christian, or rather a theist, and now humbly "submits" to Him (an extra cosmical God for whom he has even discovered a local) and to all delegated by Him with lawful authority." And we, poor creatures, are "traitors, Liars, Devils, and all my (his) crimes (as enumerated above) are as a shining robe of glory compared to Theirs:" — his capitals and underscorings being quoted as well as his words! Now friend, put away that thought that I ought not to compare your cage with his, for I do not. I have only given you a glimpse into the hell of this lost soul, to show you what disaster may come upon the "lay-chela" who snatches at forbidden power before his moral nature is developed to the point of fitness for its exercise. You must think well over the article "Chelas and Lay Chelas" which you will find in the Supplement of the July Theosophist.

So the great Mr. Crookes has placed one foot across the threshold for the sake of reading the Society's papers? Well and wisely done, and really brave of him. Heretofore he was bold enough to take a similar step and loyal enough to truth to disappoint his colleagues by making his facts public. When he was seeing his invaluable paper smothered in the "Sections" and the whole Royal Society trying to cough him down, metaphorically if not actually, as its sister Society in America did to that martyr, Hare — he little thought how perfect a revenge Karma had in store for him. Let him know that its cornucopia is not yet emptied, and that Western Science has still three additional states of matter to discover. But he should not wait for us to condense ourselves up to the stethescopic standard as his Katy did; for we men are subject to laws of molecular affinity and polaric attraction which that sweet simulacrum was not hampered with. We have no favourites, break no rules. If Mr. Crookes would penetrate Arcana beyond the corridors the tools of modern science have already excavated, let him — Try. He tried and found the Radiometer; tried again, and found Radiant matter; may try again and find the "Kama-rupa" of matter — its fifth state. But to find it's Manas he would have to pledge himself stronger to secrecy than he seems inclined to. You know our motto, and that its practical application has erased the word "impossible" from the occultist's vocabulary. If he wearies not of trying, he may discover that that most noble of all facts, his true SELF. But he will have to penetrate many strata before he comes to It. And to begin with let him rid himself of the maya that any man living can set up "claims" upon Adepts. He may create irresistible attractions and compel their attention, but they will be spiritual, not mental or intellectual. And this bit of advice applies and is directed to several British theosophists, and it may be well for them to know it. Once separated from the common influences of Society, nothing draws us to any outsider save his evolving spirituality. He may be a Bacon or an Aristotle in knowledge, and still not even make his current felt a feather's weight by us, if his power is confined to the Manas. The supreme energy resides in the Buddhi; latent — when wedded to Atman alone, active and irresistible when galvanized by the essence of "Manas" and when none of the dross of the latter commingles with that pure essence to weigh it down by its finite nature. Manas, pure and simple, is of a lower degree, and of the earth earthly: and so your greatest men count but as nonentities in the arena where greatness is measured by the standard of spiritual development. When the ancient founders of your philosophical schools came East, to acquire the lore of our predecessors, they filed no claims, except the single one of a sincere and unselfish hunger for the truth. If any now aspire to found new schools of science and philosophy the same plan will win --if the seekers have in them the elements of success.

Yes; you are right about the Society for Psychic Research: its work is of a kind to tell upon public opinion by experimentally demonstrating the elementary phases of Occult Science. H. S. Olcott has been trying to convert each of the Indian Branches into such a school of research, but the capacity for sustained independent study for knowledge's sake is lacking, and must be developed. The success of the S.P.R. will greatly aid in this direction and we wish it well.

I also go with you in your views as to the choice of the new President of the B.T.S.; in fact I concurred, I believe, before the choice was made.

There is no reason why you should not "attempt mesmeric cures" by the help not of your locket but the power of your own will. Without this latter in energetic function, no locket will do much good. The hair in it is in itself but an "accumulator" of the energy of him, who grew it, and can no more cure of itself than stored electricity can turn a wheel until liberated and conducted to the objective point. Set your will in motion and you at once draw upon the person upon whose head it (the hair not the will) grew, through the psychic current which ever runs between himself and his severed tress. To heal diseases it is not indispensable, however desirable, that the psychopathist should be absolutely pure; there are many in Europe and elsewhere who are not. If the healing be done under the impulse of perfect benevolence, unmixed with any latent selfishness, the philanthropist sets up a current which runs like a fine thrill through the sixth condition of matter, and is felt by him whom you summon to your help, if not at that moment engaged in some work which compels him to be repellent to all extraneous influences. The possession of a lock of any adept's hair is of course a decided advantage, as a better tempered sword is to the soldier in battle; but the measure of its actual help to the psychopathist will be in ratio with the degree of will power he excites in himself, and the degree of psychic purity in his motive. The talisman and his Buddhi are in sympathy.

Now that you are at the centre of modern Buddhistic exegesis, in personal relations with some of the clever commentators (from whom the holy Devas deliver us!) I shall draw your attention to a few things which are really as discreditable to the perceptions of even non-initiates, as they are misleading to the general public. The more one reads such speculations as those of Messrs. Rhys Davids, Lillie, etc. — the less can one bring himself to believe that the unregenerate Western mind can ever get at the core of our abstruse doctrines. Yet hopeless as their cases may be, it would appear well worth the trouble of testing the intuitions of your London members — of some of them, at any rate — by half expounding through you one or two mysteries and leaving them to complete the chain themselves. Shall we take Mr. Rhys Davids as our first subject, and show that indirectly as he has done it yet it is himself who strengthened the absurd ideas of Mr. Lillie, who fancies to have proved belief in a personal God in ancient Buddhism. Mr. Rhys Davids' "Buddhism" is full of the sparkle of our most important esotericism; but always, as it would seem, beyond not only his reach but apparently even his powers of intellectual perception. To avoid "absurd metaphysics" and its inventions, he creates unnecessary difficulties and falls headlong into inextricable confusion. He is like the Cape Settlers who lived over diamond mines without suspecting it. I shall only instance the definition of "Avalokitesvara" on p.p. 202 and 203. There, we find the author saying that which to any occultist seems a palpable absurdity: —

"The name Avalokitesvara, which means 'the Lord who looks down from on high,' is a purely metaphysical invention. The curious use of the past particle passive 'avalokita' in an active sense is clearly evident from the translations into Tibetan and Chinese."

Now saying that it means: "the Lord who looks down from on high," or, as he kindly explains further — "the Spirit of the Buddhas present in the church," is to completely reverse the sense. It is equivalent to saving "Mr. Sinnett looks down from on high (his Fragments of Occult Truth) on the British Theos. Society," whereas it is the latter that looks up to Mr. Sinnett, or rather to his Fragments as the (in their case only possible) expression and culmination of the knowledge sought for. This is no idle simile and defines the exact situation. In short, Avalokita Isvar literally interpreted means "the Lord that is seen." "Iswara" implying moreover, rather the adjective than the noun, lordly, self-existent lordliness, not Lord. It is, when correctly interpreted, in one sense "the divine Self perceived or seen by Self," the Atman or seventh principle ridded of its mayavic distinction from its Universal Source — which becomes the object of perception for, and by the individuality centred in Buddhi, the sixth principle, — something that happens only in the highest state of Samadhi. This is applying it to the microcosm. In the other sense Avalokitesvara implies the seventh Universal Principle, as

the object perceived by the Universal Buddhi "Mind" or Intelligence which is the synthetic aggregation of all the Dhyan Chohans, as of all other intelligences whether great or small, that ever were, are, or will be. Nor is it the "Spirit of Buddhas present in the Church," but the Omnipresent Universal Spirit in the temple of nature — in one case; and the seventh Principle — the Atman in the temple — man — in the other. Mr. Rhys Davids might have, at least remembered, the (to him) familiar simile made by the Christian Adept, the Kabalistic Paul: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you" — and thus avoided to have made a mess of the name. Though as a grammarian he detected the use of the "past particle passive" yet he shows himself far from an inspired "Panini" in overlooking the true cause and saving his grammar by raising the hue and cry against metaphysics. And yet, he quotes Beale's [Beal] Catena as his authority, for the invention, when, in truth, this work is perhaps the only one in English that gives an approximately correct explanation of the word, at any rate, on page 374. "Self-manifested" — How? it is asked. "Speech or Vach was regarded as the Son or the manifestation of the Eternal Self, and was adored under the name of Avalokitesvara, the manifested God." This shows as clearly as can be — that Avalokitesvara is both the unmanifested Father and the manifested Son, the latter proceeding from, and identical with, the other; — namely, the Parabrahm and Jivatman, the Universal and the individualized seventh Principle, — the Passive and the Active, the latter the Word, Logos, the Verb. Call it by whatever name, only let these unfortunate, deluded Christians know that the real Christ of every Christian is the Vach, the "mystical Voice," while the man Jeshu was but a mortal like any of us, an adept more by his inherent purity and ignorance of real Evil, than by what he had learned with his initiated Rabbis and the already (at that period) fast degenerating Egyptian Hierophants and priests. A great mistake is also made by Beale [Beal] who says: "this name (Avalokiteswara) in Chinese took the form of Kwan-Shai-yin, and the divinity worshipped under that name (was) generally regarded as a female." (374) Kwan-shai-yin — or the universally manifested voice "is active — male; and must not be confounded with Kwan-vin, or Buddhi the Spiritual Soul (the sixth Pr.) and the vehicle of its "Lord." It is Kwan-yin that is the female principle or the manifested passive, manifesting itself "to every creature in the universe, in order to deliver all men from the consequences of sin" — as rendered by Beale, [Beal] this once quite correctly (383), while Kwan-shai-vin, the "Son identical with his Father" is the absolute activity, hence — having no direct relation to objects of sense is — Passivity.

What a common ruse it is of your Aristoteleans! with the sleuth hound's persistence they track an idea to the very verge of the "impassable chasm," and then brought to bay leave the metaphysicians to take up the trail if they can, or let it be lost. It is but natural that a Christian theologian, a missionary, should act upon this line, since — as easily perceived even in the little I gave out just now — a too correct rendering of our Avalokitesvara and Kwan-Shai-Yin might have very disastrous effects. It would simply amount to showing Christendom, the true and undeniable origin of the "awful and incomprehensible" mysteries of its Trinity, Transubstantiation, Immaculate conception, as also whence their ideas of the Father, Son, Spiritus and — Mother. It is less easy to shuffle al piaccere the cards of Buddhistic chronology than those of Chrishna and Christ. They cannot place — however much they would — the birth of our Lord Sangyas Buddha A.D. as they have contrived to place that of Chrishna. But why should an atheist and a materialist like Mr. Rhys Davids so avoid the correct rendering of our dogmas — even when he happens to understand them, — which does not happen every day — is something surpassingly curious! In this instance the blind and guilty Rhys Davids leads the blind and innocent Mr. Lillie into the ditch; where the latter catching at the proffered straw rejoices in the idea that Buddhism teaches in reality — a personal God!!

Does your B.T.S. know the meaning of the white and black interlaced triangles, of the Parent Society's seal that it has also adopted? Shall I explain? — the double triangle viewed by the Jewish Kabalists as Solomon's Seal, is, as many of you doubtless know the Sri-antara of the archaic Aryan Temple, the "mystery of Mysteries," a geometrical synthesis of the whole occult doctrine. The two interlaced triangles are the Buddhangums of Creation. They contain the "squaring of the circle," the "philosophical stone," the great problems of Life and Death, and — the Mystery of Evil. The chela who can explain this sign from every one of its aspects — is virtually an adept. How is it then that the only one among you, who has come so near to unravelling the mystery is also the only one who got none of her ideas from books? Unconsciously she gives out — to him who has the key — the first syllable of the Ineffable name! Of course you know that the double-triangle — the Satkiri Chakram of Vishnu — or the six-pointed star, is the perfect seven. In all the old Sanskrit works — Vedic and Tantrik — you find the number 6 mentioned more often than the 7 — this last figure, the central point being implied, for it is the germ of the six and their matrix. It is then thus . . . [At this point in the original there is a rough drawing of the interlaced triangles inscribed in a circle. — ED.] — the central point standing for seventh, and the circle, the Mahakasha — endless space — for the seventh Universal Principle. In one sense, both are viewed as Avalokitesvara, for they are respectively the Macrocosm and the microcosm. The interlaced triangles — the upper pointing one — is Wisdom concealed, and the downward pointing one — Wisdom revealed (in the phenomenal world). The circle indicates the bounding, circumscribing quality of the All, the Universal Principle which, from any given point expands so as to embrace all things, while embodying the potentiality of every action in the Cosmos. As the point then is the centre round which the circle is traced — they are identical and one, and though from the standpoint of Maya and Avidya — (illusion and ignorance) — one is separated from the other by the manifested triangle, the 3 sides of which represent the three gunas — finite attributes. In symbology the central point is Jivatma (the 7th principle), and hence Avalokitesvara, the Kwan-Shai-yin, the manifested "Voice" (or Logos), the germ point of manifested activity; — hence — in the phraseology of the Christian Kabalists "the Son of the Father and Mother," and agreeably to ours — "the Self manifested in Self — Yih-sin, the "one form of existence," the child of Dharmakaya (the universally diffused Essence), both male and female. Parabrahm or "Adi-Buddha" while acting through that germ point outwardly as an active force, reacts from the circumference inwardly as the Supreme but latent Potency. The double triangles symbolize the Great Passive and the Great Active; the male and female; Purusha and Prakriti. Each triangle is a Trinity because presenting a triple aspect. The white represents in its straight lines: Gnanam — (Knowledge); Gnata — (the Knower); and Gnayam — (that which is known). The black-form, colour, and substance, also the creative, preservative, and destructive forces and are mutually correlating, etc., etc.

Well may you admire and more should you wonder at the marvellous lucidity of that remarkable seeress, who ignorant of Sanskrit or Pali, and thus shut out from their metaphysical treasures, has yet seen a great light shining from behind the dark bills of exoteric religions. How, think you, did the "Writers of the Perfect Way" come to know that Adonai was the Son and not the Father; or that the third Person of the Christian Trinity is

 female? Verily, they lay in that work several times their hands upon the keystone of Occultism. Only does the lady — who persists using without an explanation the misleading term "God" in her writings — know how nearly she comes up to our doctrine when saying: — "Having for Father, Spirit which is Life (the endless Circle or Parabrahm) and for Mother the Great Deep, which is Substance (Prakriti in its undifferentiated condition) — Adonai possesses the potency of both and wields the dual powers of all things." We would say triple, but in the sense as given this will do. Pythagoras had a reason for never using the finite, useless figure  2, and for altogether discarding it. The ONE, can, when manifesting, become only 3. The unmanifested when a simple duality remains passive and concealed. The dual monad (the 7th and 6th principles) has, in order to manifest itself as a Logos, the "Kwan-shai-yin" to first become a triad (7th, 6th and half of the 5th); then, on the bosom of the "Great Deep" attracting within itself the One Circle — form out of it the perfect Square, thus "squaring the circle" — the greatest of all the mysteries, friend — and inscribing within the latter the — WORD (the Ineffable name) — otherwise the duality could never tarry as such, and would have to be reabsorbed into the ONE. The "Deep" is Space — both male and female. "Purush (as Brahma) breathes in the Eternity: when 'he' in-breathes — Prakriti (as manifested Substance) disappears in his bosom; when 'he' out-breathes she reappears as Maya," says the Sloka. The One reality is Mulaprakriti (undifferentiated Substance)

 the "Rootless root," the. . . But we have to stop, lest there should remain but little to tell for your own intuitions.

 

Well may the Geometer of the R.S. not know that the apparent absurdity of attempting to square the circle covers a mystery ineffable. It would hardly be found among the foundation stones of Mr. Roden Noel's speculations upon the "pneumatical body . . . of our Lord," nor among the debris of Mr. Farmer's "A New Basis of Belief in Immortality"; and to many such metaphysical minds it would be worse than useless to divulge the fact, that the Unmanifested Circle — the Father, or Absolute Life — is non-existent outside the Triangle and Perfect Square, and — is only manifested in the Son; and that it is when, reversing the action and returning to its absolute state of Unity, and the square expands once more into the Circle — that "the Son returns to the bosom of the Father." There it remains until called back by his Mother — the "Great Deep," to remanifest as a triad — the Son partaking at once, of the Essence of the Father, and of that of the Mother — the active Substance, Prakriti in its differentiated condition. "My Mother — (Sophia — the manifested Wisdom) took me" — says Jesus in a Gnostic treatise; and he asks his disciples to tarry till he comes. . . . The true "Word" may only be found by tracing the mystery of the passage inward and outward of the Eternal Life, through the states typified in these three geometric figures.

The criticism of "A Student of Occultism" (whose wits are sharpened by the mountain air of his home) and the answer of "S.T.K. . . . Chary" (June Theosophist) upon a part of your annular and circular expositions need not annoy or disturb in any way your philosophic calm. As our Pondichery chela significantly says, neither you nor any other man across the threshold has had or ever will have the "complete theory" of Evolution taught him; or get it unless he guesses it for himself. If anyone can unravel it from such tangled threads as are given him, very well; and a fine proof it would indeed be of his or her spiritual insight. Some — have come very near it. But yet there is always with the best of them just enough error, — colouring and misconception; the shadow of Manas projecting across the field of Buddhi — to prove the eternal law that only the unshackled Spirit shall see the things of the Spirit without a veil. No untaught amateur could ever rival the proficient in this branch of research; yet the world's real Revelators have been few, and its pseudo-Saviours legion; and fortunate it is if their half-glimpses of the light are not, like Islam, enforced at the sword's point, or like Christian Theology, amid blazing faggots and in torture chambers. Your Fragments contain some — still very few errors, due solely to your two preceptors of Adyar, one of whom would not, and the other could not tell you all. The rest could not be called mistakes — rather incomplete explanations. These are due, partly to your own imperfect education in your last theme — I mean the ever-threatening obscurations — partly to the poor vehicles of language at our disposal, and in part again, to the reserve imposed upon us by rule. Yet, all things considered, they are few and trivial; while as to those noticed by "A Student, etc." (the Marcus Aurelius of Simla) in your No. VII, it will be pleasant for you to know that every one of them, however now seeming to you contradictory, can (and if it should seem necessary shall) be easily reconciled with facts. The trouble is that (a) you cannot be given the real figures and difference in the Rounds, and (b) that you do not open doors enough for explorers. The bright Luminary of the B.T.S. and the Intelligences that surround her (embodied I mean) may help you to see the flaws: at all events Try. "Nothing was ever lost by trying." You share with all beginners the tendency to draw too absolutely strong inferences from partly caught hints, and to dogmatize thereupon as though the last word had been spoken. You will correct this in due time. You may misunderstand us, are more than likely to do so, for our language must always be more or less that of parable and suggestion, when treading upon forbidden ground; we have our own peculiar modes of expression and what lies behind the fence of words is even more important than what you read. But still — TRY. Perhaps if Mr. S. Moses could know just what was meant by what was said to him, and about his Intelligences, he would find all strictly true. As he is a man of interior growth, his day may come and his reconciliation with "the Occultists" be complete. Who knows?

Meanwhile, I shall, with your permission, close this first volume.

K. H.

{Esoteric Buddhism was published June 11.}

Letter 60 Table of Contents

Letter No. 60

My good friend — Shakespeare said truly that "our doubts are traitors." Why should you doubt or create in your mind ever growing monsters? A little more knowledge in occult laws would have set your mind at rest long ago, avoided many a tear to your gentle lady and pang to yourself. Know then that even the chelas of the same guru are often made to separate and keep apart for long months while the process of development is going on — simply on account of the two contrary magnetisms that attracting each other prevent mutual and INDIVIDUALIZED development in some one direction. There is no offence meant or even possible. This ignorance has caused of late immense suffering on all sides. When shall you trust implicitly, in my heart if not in my wisdom for which I claim no recognition on your part? It is extremely painful to see you wandering about in a dark labyrinth created by your own doubts every issue of which, moreover, you close with your own hands. I believe you are now satisfied with my portrait made by Herr Schmiechen and as dissatisfied with the one you have? Yet all are like in their way. Only while the others are the productions of chelas, the last one was painted with M.'s hand on the artist's head, and often on his arm.

K. H.

Pray remain for the Wednesday meeting — if you feel you are not to leave the INNER CIRCLE. Otherwise

— go, remembering my friendship had WARNED YOU. Only avoid, if you do, hurting the feelings of those who sin thro' an excess, not lack of devotion.

{Mahatma M.'s portrait was painted from June 19 to July 9; that of K.H. soon after.}

Letter 61 Table of Contents

Letter No. 61

Sinnett Sahib is, my respectful salams — informed that his "guardian" is so occupied upon official business that he cannot give even a moment's consideration to the L.L. or its members; nor to write him individually whether by pen or precipitation — the more difficult, not to say costly, method of the two — to our reputations in the west anyhow.

Mohini cannot stop in London indefinitely nor for any greater length of time as he has duties to perform elsewhere — duties to his family as well as others to the Theosophical Society. Besides being a chela and so not a free man — in the ordinary acceptation of the term, he has numerous mouths to feed at Calcutta and moreover must earn enough more to repay the friend who advanced him £125 money toward the expenses of his present mission, whatever K.H. may or may not do for him something he is prohibited counting upon as every other chela. At the same time let it be known to you that he needs temporary change of climate. He suffered greatly from cold in that high room where there is no fireplace in your house and K.H. had to surround him with a double shell against a death cold that threatened him. Remember Hindus are exotic plants in your inclement pays and cold, and those who need them have to take care of them. (If when annoying Olcott on Sunday last to tell you this information, I did not make him tell you, and add (1) this it is, because I wanted to spare him in your mind already prejudiced against him and inclining towards a belief that he spoke out of his head.)

Again if you need Mohini's help at London the Theosophists at Paris require it even more since their occult education is inferior to yours. It is planned that he should divide his time equally among all the European "centres of spiritual activity" and if he is now required at Paris on the 11th inst. he will also be allowed to come back to London when the Continental movement is fairly inaugurated. In any event you will have Olcott the better part of the time. But fear not: if Henry is allowed to prolong his stay in London he will not "worry" either of you by coming down in his extravagant Asiatic undresses — for he will not stop with you but with the Arundales ladies — as ordered before now, the order being reiterated by me when Madame Sahib remarked it was better he should stop where he was after Upasika had left. Nor is Olcott worse than many others, and though some persons may not concede it there are worse wranglers than he. I must not close without letting you know that in the Kingsford row justice is no longer on your side. Though unwilling to confess — you show spite Sahib, personal spite. You have defeated her and you now would mortify and punish her. This is not right. You ought to learn to dissociate your consciousness from your external self more than you do if ye would not lose K.H. For he is much annoyed at what goes on. Excuse my remarks but it is for your own benefit. So begging pardon.

M.

Letter 62 Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. Uncertain transcription. (return to text)

Letter No. 62

Received 18.7.84.

My poor, blind friend — you are entirely unfit for practical occultism! Its laws are immutable; and no one can go back on an order once given. She can send on no letters to me, and the letter ought to have been given to Mohini. However, I have read it; and I am determined to make one more effort — (the last that I am permitted) — to open your inner intuition. If my voice, the voice of one who was ever friendly to you in the human principle of his being — fails to reach you as it has often before, then our separation in the present and for all times to come — becomes unavoidable. It pains me for you, whose heart I read so well — every protest and doubt of your purely intellectual nature, of your cold Western reason — notwithstanding. But my first duty is to my Master. And duty, let me tell you, is for us, stronger than any friendship or even love; as without this abiding principle which is the indestructible cement that has held together for so many milleniums, the scattered custodians of nature's grand secrets — our Brotherhood, nay, our doctrine itself — would have crumbled long ago into unrecognisable atoms. Unfortunately, however great your purely human intellect, your spiritual intuitions are dim and hazy, having been never developed. Hence, whenever you find yourself confronted by an apparent contradiction, by a difficulty, a kind of inconsistency of occult nature, one that is caused by our time honoured laws and regulations — (of which you know nothing, for your time has not yet come) — forthwith your doubts are aroused, your suspicions bud out — and one finds that they have made mock at your better nature, which is finally crushed down by all these deceptive appearances of outward things! You have not the faith required to allow your Will to arouse itself in defiance and contempt against your purely worldly intellect, and give you a better understanding of things hidden and laws unknown. You are unable I see, to force your better aspirations — fed at the stream of a real devotion to the Maya you have made yourself of me — (a feeling in you, that has always profoundly touched me) — to lift up the head against cold, spiritually blind reason; to allow your heart to pronounce loudly and proclaim that, which it has hitherto only been allowed to whisper: "Patience, patience. A great design has never been snatched at once." You were told, however, that the path to Occult Sciences has to be trodden laboriously and crossed at the danger of life; that every new step in it leading to the final goal, is surrounded by pit-falls and cruel thorns; that the pilgrim who ventures upon it is made first to confront and conquer the thousand and one furies who keep watch over its adamantine gates and entrance — furies called Doubt, Skepticism, Scorn, Ridicule, Envy and finally Temptation — especially the latter; and that he, who would see beyond had to first destroy this living wall; that he must be possessed of a heart and soul clad in steel, and of an iron, never failing determination and yet be meek and gentle, humble and have shut out from his heart every human passion, that leads to evil. Are you all this? Have you ever begun a course of training which would lead to it? No; you know it as I do. You are not born for it; nor are you in a position, — a family man with wife and child to support, with work to do — fitted in any way for the life of an ascetic, not even of a — Mohini. Then why should you complain that powers are not given you, that even proof of our own powers begins to fail you, etc.? True you have offered several times to give up meat and drink, and I have refused. Since you cannot become a regular chela why should you? I thought you had understood all this long ago; that you had resigned yourself, satisfied to wait patiently for future developments and for my personal freedom. You know I was the only one to attempt and persevere in my idea of the necessity of, at least, a small reform, of however slight a relaxation from the extreme rigidity of our regulations if we would see European theosophists increase and work for the enlightenment and good of humanity. I failed in my attempt, as you know. All I could obtain was to be allowed to communicate with a few — you, foremost of all, since I had chosen you as the exponent of our doctrine that we had determined to give out to the world — to some extent at least. Unable on account of work to continue my teaching regularly, I was decided to resume it after my work had been done, and I had a few hours of leisure at my disposal. I was tied hand and foot when I made that attempt to let you have a paper of your own. I was not permitted to use any psychical powers in that matter. You know the results. Yet, I would have succeeded even with the small means of action I had at my disposal had it not been for the Ilbert Bill excitement. Have you ever given a thought, or ever suspected the real reason of my failure? No; for you know nothing of the ins and outs of the work of karma — of the "side-blows" of this terrible Law. But you do know that there was a time when you felt the profoundest contempt for us all, of the dark races; and had regarded the Hindus as an inferior race. I will say no more. If you have any intuition, you will work out cause and effect and perhaps realize whence the failure. Then again you had against you the command of our Supreme Chief — not to interfere with the natural growth of the L.L. and the development psychic and spiritual of its members — especially with yours. You know that even to write to you occasionally, has been permitted only as a special favour after the Phoenix failure. As to the exhibition of any psychic or occult powers — that was, and still is, entirely out of question. You felt astonished at the interference in the quarrel between the L.L. and Kingsford? And you are unable yet to realize, why we did this and that? Believe me that you will learn some day when you know better — that it was all brought on BY YOURSELF.

You also resent the apparent absurdity of entrusting H.S.O. with a mission you find him unfit for, in London at any rate — socially and intellectually. Well — some day, perchance, you may also learn that you were equally wrong in this, as in many other things. Coming results may teach you a better lesson.

And now to the latest development, to the proof that you were not "unjustly treated" — as you complain in your letter tho' you have treated both H.S.O. and H.P.B. in a very cruel way. Your greatest grievance is caused by your perplexity. It is agonizing — you say — to be ever kept in the dark, etc. You feel profoundly hurt at what you choose to call an evident and growing "unfriendliness, the change of tone" and so on. You are mistaken from first to last. There was neither "unfriendliness," nor any change of feeling. You simply mistook M.'s natural brusqueness whenever he speaks or writes seriously.

As for my short remarks about you to H.P.B. who appealed to me and who was in her right — you never thought of the real and true reason: I had no time; I could hardly give a passing thought to yourself or the L.L. As well said by her "No one has ever thought of accusing you of any intentional wrong" — to either ourselves or chelas. As to an unintentional one — happily prevented in time by me — there was one certainly: carelessness. You never thought of the difference between the constitution of a Bengali and that of an Englishman, the power of endurance of one, and the same power in the other. Mohini was left for days in a very cold room without a fireplace. He never uttered one word of complaint, and I had to protect him from a serious illness, to give him my time and attention, to him I so needed to bring about certain results, to him who had sacrificed everything for me. . . . Hence, M.'s tone you complain of. Now you have it explained, that you were not "unjustly treated" but simply had to submit to a remark which it was impossible for you to avoid, since the mistake might have happened again. Then you deny there ever was any spite in you against K. Very well; call it by any other name you like; yet it was a feeling that interfered with strict justice, and made O. commit a still worse blunder than he had already committed — but which was allowed to take its course for it suited our purposes, and did no great harm except to himself — alone, who was so ungenerously snubbed for it. You accuse him of having done mischief to your Society and perhaps, "irretrievably"? Where is the harm done? . . . You are again mistaken. It is your nerves that made you write to H.P.B. words I would you had never uttered — for your own sake. Shall I prove to you — at any rate in one case — how utterly unjust you have been in suspecting either of them, of having either complained or told falsehoods to us about you? I trust, however, that you will never repeat what I will tell you: i.e. who it was (or might have been but was not, for she came too late) — my innocent informer about Mohini. You are at liberty to verify it one day, but I would not have that most excellent woman feel discomforted or miserable on my account. It was Mme. Gebhard whom I had promised to visit subjectively. I saw her one morning, when I was busy with Mohini making him impermeable — descending the stairs. She had heard his teeth chatter, as he was also coming down from the floor above. She knew he was still in his little fireless room days after Olcott had gone and when he might have been easily placed in the next room. She had stopped to wait for him and as I looked into her I heard the words pronounced mentally: Well, well . . . if his Master only knew! . . ." and then stopping on the landing she asked him if he would not have some additional warm clothing and such other kind words. "His master — knew" and had already remedied the evil; and knowing also, that it was unintentional — felt no "unfriendliness" at the time for he knows Europeans too well to expect from them more than they can give. Nor was it the only mute reproach I found addressed to you in Mme. Gebhard's heart, as in the minds of several others of your friends: — and it is but right that you should know it — remembering that like yourself they judge nearly everything on appearance.

I will say no more. But, if you would have another look at Karma ponder over the above, and remember that it ever works in the most unexpected ways. And now put yourself the question how far you were justified in entertaining suspicions against Olcott who knew nothing of the circumstances whatever, and against H.P.B.

who was at Paris and knew still less. Nevertheless, mere suspicion degenerated into conviction (!) and became objectivised in written reproaches and very ungenerous expressions which were, moreover, from first to last, undeserved. All this notwithstanding, you complained bitterly yesterday to Miss A. of Mme. B.'s answer to you — which was — making every allowance for the peculiar circumstances, and her own temper was surprisingly mild when confronted with your letter to her. Nor can I approve of your attitude to Olcott — if my advice and opinion are wanted. Had you been in his place and guilty you would have hardly permitted him to accuse you in such terms of falsification, slandering, lies, falsehoods and the most idiotic incompetency for his work. And Olcott is entirely innocent of any such sin! As to his work — we really must be permitted to know better. What we want is good results and you will find that we have them.

Verily "suspicion overturns what confidence builds"! And if, on the one hand, you have some reasons to quote Bacon against us, and say that "there is nothing that makes a man suspect much, more than to know little," on the other hand you ought also to remember that our Knowledge and Science cannot be pursued altogether on the Baconian methods. We are not permitted — come what may to offer it as a remedy against, or to cure people from suspicion. They have to earn it for themselves, and he who will not find our truths in his soul and within himself — has poor chances of success in Occultism. It is certainly not suspicion that will mend the situation for it is — ". . . a heavy armour, and with its own weight impedes more than it protects."

With this last remark we may, I think, let this matter drop for ever. You have brought suffering upon yourself, upon your lady and many others — which was quite useless and might have been avoided had you only abstained from creating yourself most of its causes. All that Miss Arundale told you was right and well said. You are yourself ruining that which you have so laboriously erected —; but then, the strange idea that we are quite unable to see for ourselves; that our only data is that, which we find in our chela's minds; hence — that we are not the "powerful beings" you have represented us, seems to haunt you with every day more. Hume has begun in the same way. I would gladly help you and protect you from his fate, but unless you shake off yourself the ghastly influence that is upon you I can do very little.

You ask me if you can tell Miss Arundale what I told you thro' Mrs. H. You are quite at liberty to explain to her the situation, and thereby justify in her eyes your seeming disloyalty and rebellion against us as she thinks. You can do so the more since I have never bound you to anything thro' Mrs. H.; never communicated with you or any one else thro' her — nor have any of my, or M.'s chelas, to my knowledge, except in America, once at Paris and another time at Mrs. A.'s house. She is an excellent but quite undeveloped clairvoyante. Had she not been imprudently meddled with, and had you followed the old woman's and Mohini's advice indeed, by this time I might have spoken with you thro' her — and such was our intention. It is again your own fault, my good friend. You have proudly claimed the privilege of exercising your own, uncontrolled judgment in occult matters you could know nothing about — and the occult laws — you believe you can defy and play with, with impunity — have turned round upon you and have badly hurt you. It is all as it should be. If, throwing aside every preconceived idea, you could TRY and impress yourself with this profound truth that intellect is not all powerful by itself; that to become "a mover of mountains" it has first to receive life and light from its higher principle — Spirit, and then would fix your eyes upon everything occult spiritually trying to develop the faculty according to the rules, then you would soon read the mystery right. You need not tell Mrs. H. that she has never seen correctly, for it is not so. Many a time she saw correctly — when left alone to herself, never has she left one single statement undisfigured.

And now I have done. You have two roads lying before you; one leading thro' a very dreary path toward knowledge and truth — the other . . . but really I must not influence your mind. If you are not prepared to break with us altogether then I would ask you — not only to be present at the meeting but also to speak — as it will otherwise produce a very unfavourable impression. This I ask you to do for my sake and also for your own.

Only whatever you do let me advise you not to stop midway: it may prove disastrous to you.

K. H.

Letter 63 Table of Contents

Letter No. 63

Received London, Summer, 1884.

Good friend —

When our first correspondence began, there was no idea then of any publications being issued on the basis of the replies you might receive. You went on putting questions at random, and the answers being given at different times to disjointed queries, and so to say, under a semi-protest, were necessarily imperfect, often from different standpoints. When the publication of some of these were permitted for the Occult World, it was hoped that among your readers some may be able, like yourself, to put all the different pieces together and evolve out of them the skeleton, or a shadow of our system, which, although not exactly the original — this would be an impossibility — would be as near an approach to it as could be made by a non-initiate. But the results have proved quasi-disastrous! We had tried an experiment and sadly failed! Now we see that none but those who have passed at least their third initiation are able to write upon those subjects comprehensively. A Herbert Spencer would have made a mess of it under your circumstances. Mohini is certainly not quite right, in some details he is positively wrong, but so are you my old friend, though the outside reader is none the wiser for it and no one, so far, has noticed the real vital errors in Esoteric Buddhism and Man; nor are they likely to. We can give no further information on the subject already approached by you and have to leave the facts already communicated to be woven into a consistent and systematic philosophy by the chelas at the Headquarters. The Secret Doctrine will explain many things, set to right more than one perplexed student.

Therefore, to put before the world all the crude and complicated materials in your possession in the shape of old letters, in which, I confess, much was purposely made obscure, would only be making confusion worst confounded. Instead of doing any good thereby to yourself and others it would only place you in a still more difficult position, bring criticism upon the heads of the "Masters" and thus have a retarding influence on human progress and the T.S. Hence I protest most strongly against your new idea. Leave to the Secret Doctrine the task of avenging you. My letters must not be published, in the manner you suggest, but on the contrary if you save Djual K. trouble copies of some should be sent to the Literary Committee at Adyar — about which Damodar has written to you — so that with the assistance of S.Y.K. Charya, Djual K., Subba Row and the Secret Committee (from which H.P.B. was purposely excluded by us to avoid new suspicions and calumnies) they might be able to utilise the information for the realization of the object with which the Committee was started, as explained by Damodar in the letter written by him under orders. It is neither new "Kiddle developments" that I seek to avoid, nor criticism directed against my personality, which indeed can hardly be reached; but I rather try to save yourself and Society from new troubles which would be serious this time. The letters, in short, were not written for publication or public comment upon them, but for private use, and neither M. nor I will ever give our consent to see them thus handled.

As regards your first letter Dj.K. has been instructed to attend to it. In such delicate matters I am still less competent to give advice than to satisfy aspiring "chelas" of the "L.C.H." sort. I am afraid the "poor, dear Mrs. Holloway" is showing her white teeth and would hardly be found now "a charming companion." Under instructions Olcott wrote a letter to Finch — which gives the key to the little problem. It is Fern, Moorad Ali, Bishen Lal and other wrecks, over again. Why shall "would-be" chelas with such intense self personalities, force themselves within the enchanted and dangerous circle of probation! Pardoning my short letter, I am very busy just now with the coming new year.

K. H.

Letter 64 Table of Contents

Letter No. 64

Received London, Summer, 1884.

Entirely private except for Mohini and F.A.

Good friend —

This is not an answer to your last. The letter to my address sent by you through Mohini was never written by yourself. Verily it was penned by one, at that time, entirely under the influence of a creature of Attavada —

"The sin of Self, who in the Universe

As in a mirror sees her fond face shown"

 and only hers; whose every word he then implicitly trusted; perhaps, (this is to a certain extent a justification) because there came no half expected interference, no word of warning from our quarters. Thus

 no response to it, for we rather turn a new page.

 

Ah, how long shall the mysteries of chelaship overpower and lead astray from the path of truth the wise and perspicacious, as much as the foolish and the credulous! How few of the many pilgrims who have to start without chart or compass on that shoreless Ocean of Occultism reach the wished for land. Believe me, faithful friend, that nothing short of full confidence in us, in our good motives if not in our wisdom, in our foresight, if not omniscience — which is not to be found on this earth — can help one to cross over from one's land of dream and fiction to our Truth land, the region of stern reality and fact. Otherwise the ocean will prove shoreless indeed; its waves will carry one no longer on waters of hope, but will turn every ripple into doubt and suspicion; and bitter shall they prove to him who starts on that dismal, tossing sea of the Unknown, with a prejudiced mind!

Nevertheless, feel not too much perplexed. The hour of trial is half over; try rather to understand the "whys and whatfors" of the situation, to study more seriously the laws that govern our "Occult World." I grant you, those laws do seem very often unjust, even, at times cruel. But this is due to the fact that they were never meant either for the immediate redress of wrongs, or the direct help of those who offer at random their allegiance to the legislators. Still, the seemingly real, the evanescent and quick passing evils they bring about are as necessary to the growth, progress and final establishment of your small Th. Society as those certain cataclysms in nature, which often decimate whole populations, are necessary to mankind. An earthquake may, for all the world knows, be a bliss and a tidal wave prove salvation to the many at the expense of the few. The "fittest" were seen to survive in the destruction of every old race and made to merge into, and assimilate with, the new, for nature is older than Darwin. Say rather, then, to yourself "whatever happened, there can be no cause for regret"; for it is not so much that new facts should be revealed to the "inner group" as that old puzzles and mysteries should have been explained and made clear to its few entirely staunch members. Even an innocent quotation mark fallen from under my pencil and by you objected to, would have had a world of meaning for one, less beclouded than you were in writing your last letter — based entirely on the crafty insinuations of your would-be sibyl. It was absolutely necessary that within the personal experience of those few staunch members (yourself included) the secret working of Karma should take place; that its deeper meaning should be practically illustrated (as also its effects) — on those self-opinionated volunteers and candidates for chelaship who will rush under the dark shadow of her wheels.

As against the above some will say — how then about her great clairvoyance, her chelaship, her selection among the many by the Masters?

Her clairvoyance is a fact, her selection and chelaship, another. However well fitted psychically and physiologically to answer such selection, unless possessed of spiritual, as well as of physical unselfishness a chela whether selected or not, must perish, as a chela in the long run. Self personality, vanity and conceit harboured in the higher principles are enormously more dangerous than the same defects inherent only in the lower physical nature of man. They are the breakers against which the cause of chelaship, in its probationary stage, is sure to be dashed to pieces unless the would-be disciple carries with him the white shield of perfect confidence and trust in those he would seek out through mount and vale to guide him safely toward the light of Knowledge. The world moves and lives under the shadow of the deadly upas-tree of Evil; yet its dripping is dangerous to, and can reach only those whose higher and middle natures are as much susceptible of infection as their lower one. Its venomous seed can germinate but in a willing, well prepared soil. Bring to your memory the cases of Fern, Moorad Ali and Bishen Lal, good friend, and remember what you have learnt. The mass of human sin and frailty is distributed throughout the life of man who is content to remain an average mortal. It is gathered in and centred, so to say, within one period of the life of a chela — the period of probation. That, which is generally accumulating to find its legitimate issue only in the next rebirth of an ordinary man, is quickened and fanned into existence in the chela — especially in the presumptuous and selfish candidate who rushes in without having calculated his forces.

"One who dug so many and deep pit-falls for her friends and brothers fell into them herself" — said M. to H.P.B. on the night of the mutual revelations. I tried to, but could not save her. She had entered, or rather I should say — forced herself into the dangerous path, with a double purpose in view:

 

(1) To upset the whole structure in which she had no part, and thus obstruct the path to all others, if she did not find the system and Society at the level of her expectations; and  

(2) To remain true and work out her chelaship and natural gifts, that are considerable indeed, only if those expectations were all answered. It is the intensity of that resolution that first attracted my attention. Led on gradually and gently into the right direction the acquisition of such an individuality would have been invaluable. But there are persons, who, without ever showing any external sign of selfishness, are intensely selfish in their inner spiritual aspirations. These will follow the path once chosen by them with their eyes closed to the interests of all but themselves, and see nothing outside the narrow pathway filled with their own personality. They are so intensely absorbed in the contemplation of their own supposed "righteousness" that nothing can ever appear right to them outside the focus of their own vision distorted by their self-complacent contemplation, and their judgment of the right and wrong. Alas, such an one is our new mutual friend L.C.H. "The right in thee is base, the wrong a curse," was said by our Lord Buddha for such as she; for right and wrong "cheat such as love themselves," and the others only in proportion to the benefits derived — though these benefits be purely spiritual. Aroused some 18 months ago to spasmodic, hysterical curiosity by the perusal of your Occult World and later on by that of Esoteric Buddhism to enthusiastic envy, she determined to "find out the truth" as she expressed it. She would either become a chela herself — first and foremost, to write books, thus eclipsing her "lay" rival, or upset the whole imposture in which she had no concern. She decided to go to Europe and seek you out. Her surexcited fancy, putting a mask on every stray spook, created the "Student" and made him serve her purpose and desire. She believed in it sincerely. At this juncture foreseeing the new danger I interfered. Darb: Nath was despatched and made to impress her thrice in my name. Her thoughts were for a certain period guided, her clairvoyance made to serve a purpose. Had her sincere aspirations conquered the intense personality of her lower self I would have given the T.S. an excellent help and worker. The poor woman is naturally good and moral; but that very purity is of so narrow a kind, of so Presbyterian a character, if I may use the word, as to be unable to see itself reflected in any other but her own Self. She alone is good and pure. All others must and shall be suspected. A great boon was offered her — her wayward spirit would allow her to accept of none that was not shaped in accordance with her own model.

 

And now she will receive a letter from me which will contain my ultimatum and conditions. She will not accept them, but will complain bitterly to several among you, suggesting new hints and insinuations against one whom she professed to adore. Prepare. A plank of salvation is offered to her but there is very little hope that she will accept it. However, I will try once more; but I have no right to influence her either way. If you will accept my advice, abstain from any serious correspondence with her until some fresh development. Try to save "Man" by looking it over with Mohini, and by erasing from it the alleged inspirations and dictation by "Student." Having had also "an object and a purpose" in view, I had to leave her under her self-delusion that this new book was written with the view of "correcting the mistakes" of Esoteric Buddhism (— of killing it — was the true thought); and it was only on the eve of her departure that Upasika was ordered to see that Mohini should carefully expunge from it all the objectionable passages. During her stay in England Mrs. H. would Much as remains unexplained, the little you may have gathered from this letter will serve its purpose. It will start your thoughts in a new direction and will have unveiled another corner in the domain of psychological

Isis.

If you would learn and acquire Occult Knowledge, you have, my friend, to remember that such tuition opens in the stream of chelaship many an unforeseen channel to whose current even a "lay" chela must perforce yield, or else strand upon the shoals; and knowing this to abstain for-ever judging on mere appearance. The ice is broken once more. Profit by it if you may.

K. H.

Letter 65 Table of Contents

Letter No. 65

Received London, Summer, 1884.

My friend:

You ask me "to throw light" upon the "new distressing event" arising from Mr. A. Gebhard's fanciful accusation? For the matter of that, dozens of events of a far more distressing character, each of them calculated to crush the hapless woman chosen as victim, are ripe and ready to burst over her head wounding as badly the Society. Again, I should have imagined that, after my signal failure to satisfy your rigorous logicians in the "Billing — Massey" and "Kiddle — Light" incidents, my personal opinion and explanations were held in small honour at the West? You seem, however, to think with Whewell that "every failure is a step to success" and your confidence in me must alarm seriously your friends?

With your permission, I have left the explanation of the "distressing incident" to Mad. B. herself. As she wrote to you, however, only simple truth, there is very little chance for her of being believed, save perhaps, by her few immediate friends — if she has any left by the time this reaches you.

You must have understood by this time, my friend, that the centenial (1) attempt made by us to open the eyes of the blind world — has nearly failed: in India — partially, in Europe — with a few exceptions — absolutely. There is but one chance of salvation for those who still believe: to rally together and face the storm bravely. Let the eyes of the most intellectual among the public be opened to the foul conspiracy against theosophy that is going on in the missionary circles and in one year's time you will have regained your footing. In India it is: "either Christ or the Founders (!!) Let us stone them to death!" They have nearly finished killing one — they are now attacking the other victim — Olcott. The padris are as busy as bees. The P.R.S. has given them an excellent opportunity of making capital of their ambassador. — Mr. Hodgson fell quite easily a victim to false evidence; and the scientific a priori impossibility of such phenomena helping the reality of the phenomena he was sent to investigate and report upon is utterly and totally discredited. He may plead as an excuse the personal disappointment he felt, which made him turn in a fury against the alleged authors of the "gigantic swindle"; but there is no doubt that if the Society collapses it will be due to him. We may add the praiseworthy efforts of our mutual friend of Simla (A. O. Hume) who has not, however, resigned, — and those of Mr. Lane Fox. What Society could withstand in its integrality the effects of two such tongues as those of Messrs. H. and L. F.! While the former taking into his confidence every theosophist of note, assures him that since the beginning of the Society not one of the letters alleged to have come from the Masters was genuine, Mr. L. Fox goes about preaching that he is only carrying out the wishes of the Master (M.) in acquainting the theosophists with all the defects of the T.S. and the mistakes of its Founders whose Karma it is to betray the sacred trust they had received from their Gurus.

After this you will, perhaps, blame less our chelas for detesting the Europeans at H.Q., and saying that it is they who have ruined the Society.

Thus, my friend, there comes a forcible end to the projected occult instructions. Everything was settled and prepared. The secret Committee, appointed to receive our letters and teachings and to convey them to the Oriental group, was ready, when a few Europeans — for reasons I prefer not mentioning — took upon themselves the authority of reversing the decision of the whole Council. They declined (though the reason they gave was another one) — to receive our instructions through Subba Row and Damodar, the latter of whom is hated by Messrs. L. Fox and Hartmann. Subba R. resigned and Damodar went to Tibet. Are our Hindus to be blamed for this?

And now Hume and Hodgson have goaded Subba Row to fury by telling him, that as a friend and fellow occultist of Madam B.'s he was suspected by the Government of being also a spy. It is the history of the "Count St. Germain" and Cagliostro told over again. But I may tell to you, who have ever been faithful and true to me that the fruits of your devotion shall not be allowed to decay and crumble down into dust from the tree of action. And now, may I not say a few words that may prove useful?

It is an old truism that none of you have ever formed an accurate idea of either the "Masters" or the laws of Occultism they are guided by. For instance, I, because I have received a bit of Western education — must needs be fancied as the type of a "gentleman" who strictly conforms his action to the laws of etiquette and regulates his intercourse with Europeans, after the regulations of your world and Society! Nothing could be more erroneous: the absurd picture of an Indo-Tibetan ascetic playing at Sir C. Grandison need hardly be noticed. Nevertheless, having failed to answer to the said description, I was hung in effigy, and publicly branded and degraded, as Mad. B. would say. What a poor parody! When shall you realize that I am nothing of the kind? That if, to a certain extent, I may be familiar with your (to me) peculiar notions about the propriety of this thing or another, and the obligations of a Western gentleman, so are you, to a degree, acquainted with the manners and customs of China and Tibet. For all that, as you would decline to conform yourself to our habits and live according to our customs — so do I, preferring our modes of life to yours, and our ideas to those of the West. I am accused of "plagiarism." We, of Tibet and China, know not what you mean by the word. I do, but this is no reason, perhaps, why I should accept your literary laws. Any writer has the privilege of taking out whole sentences from the dictionary of Pai — Wouen — Yen — Fu the greatest in the world, full of quotations from every known writer, and containing all the phrases ever used — and to frame them to express his thought. This does not apply to the Kiddle case which happened just as I told you. But you may find, perchance throughout my letters twenty detached sentences which may have been already used in books or MSS. When you write upon some subject you surround yourself with books of references etc.: when we write upon something the Western opinion about which is unknown to us, we surround ourselves with hundreds of paras: upon this particular topic from dozens of different works — impressed upon the Akasa. What wonder then, that not only a chela entrusted with the work and innocent of any knowledge of the meaning of plagiarism, but even myself — should use occasionally a whole sentence already existent applying it only to another — our own idea? I have told you of this before and it is no fault of mine if your friends and enemies will not remain satisfied with the explanation. When I shall undertake to write an original prize-essay I may be more careful. For the Kiddle business it is your own fault. Why have you printed the Occult World before sending it to me for revision? I would have never allowed the passage to pass; nor the "Lal Sing" either foolishly invented as half a nom de plume by Djwal K. and carelessly allowed by me to take root without thinking of the consequences. We are not infallible, all-foreseeing "Mahatmas" at every hour of the day, good friend: none of you have even learned to remember so much. And now for Occultism.

We were expected to allow the Occult forces to be treated in the same manner as their rind — physical forces in nature. We are taken to task for not giving out to every man of learning who had joined the T.S. the fruits of the researches of generations of occultists who had all devoted their lives to it, and who had as often lost them in the great struggle of wrenching her secrets from the heart of Nature. Unless we did that — Occultism could not be recognised: it has to remain within the limbo of magic and superstition, spiritualism — in the sight of some — fraud in the opinion of others. Who thought for one instant that an occult law revealed ceased to be occult to become public property, unless it was given to an Occultist who dies before he betrays the secret.

What grumblings, what criticism on Devachan and kindred subjects for their incompleteness and many a seeming contradiction! Oh blind fools! They forget — or never knew that he who holds the keys to the secrets of Death is possessed of the keys of Life? That could everyone become a creative God in this race, acquiring knowledge so easily that there would be no necessity for a 6th and 7th races? And that we, we should have perverted the programme of BEING, garbled the accounts in the Book of Life, defeated in a word the ETERNAL WILL!

My friend, I have little if anything more to say. I regret deeply my inability to satisfy the honest, sincere aspirations of a few chosen ones among your group — not at least, for the present. Could but your L.L. understand, or so much as suspect, that the present crisis that is shaking the T.S. to its foundations is a question of perdition or salvation to thousands; a question of the progress of the human race or its retrogression, of its glory or dishonour, and for the majority of this race — of being or not being, of annihilation, in fact — perchance many of you would look into the very root of evil, and instead of being guided by false appearances and scientific decisions, you would set to work and save the situation by disclosing the dishonourable doings of your missionary world.

K. H.

I believe I better tell you once more what I would have you remember always. I should be glad if every question could be answered as easily as your query about the "distressing event." Why is it that doubts and foul suspicions seem to beset every aspirant for chelaship? My friend, in the Masonic Lodges of old times the neophyte was subjected to a series of frightful tests of his constancy, courage and presence of mind. By psychological impressions supplemented by machinery and chemicals, he was made to believe himself falling down precipices, crushed by rocks, walking spider-web bridges in mid-air, passing through fire, drowned in water and attacked by wild beasts. This was a reminiscence of and a programme borrowed from the Egyptian Mysteries. The West having lost the secrets of the East, had, as I say, to resort to artifice. But in these days the vulgarization of science has rendered such trifling tests obsolete. The aspirant is now assailed entirely on the psychological side of his nature. His course of testing — in Europe and India — is that of Raj-yog and its result is — as frequently explained — to develop every germ good and bad in him in his temperament. The rule is inflexible, and not one escapes whether he but writes to us a letter, or in the privacy of his own heart's thought formulates a strong desire for occult communication and knowledge. As the shower cannot fructify the rock, so the occult teaching has no effect upon the unreceptive mind; and as the water develops the heat of caustic lime so does the teaching bring into fierce action every unsuspected potentiality latent in him.

Few Europeans have stood this test. Suspicion, followed by self-woven conviction of fraud seems to have become the order of the day. I tell you with a very few exceptions — we have failed in Europe. Henceforth, the policy of absolute neutrality of the T.S. in occult teachings and phenomena will be rigidly enforced: whatever is imparted will be to individual members from individuals. For inst: if Mad. B. finds the necessary strength to live (and this depends entirely on her will and its powers of exertion) and is willing under the guidance of her guru, or even myself, to serve us as an amanuensis for you, (Sinnett, not for the group) she can, if she likes, send you weekly or monthly instructions. Mohini could do the same — but under the pledge that neither our names, or that of the sender will be ever made public; nor shall the T.S. be made responsible for these teachings. If the Oriental group survives, something could be yet done for it. But never, henceforth, shall the Society in India be allowed to be compromised again by phenomena that are denounced wholesale as fraud. The good ship is sinking, friend, because its precious cargo has been offered to the public at large; because some of its contents have been desecrated by profane handling and its gold — received as brass. Henceforth, I say, no such profane eye will see its treasures, and its outer decks and rigging must be cleansed of the impurity and dross that was accumulated on them by the indiscretion of its own members. Try to remedy the evil done. Every step made by one in our direction will force us to make one toward him. But it is not by going to Ladak that one shall find us, as Mr. Lane Fox imagines.

Once more, accept my blessing and parting greeting if they have to be my last.

K. H.

Letter 66 Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. Clearly meant for "centennial." In the original the words "every century" appear after — "us," but have been crossed out. — ED. (return to text)

Letter No. 66

Received London, Oct. 10th, 1884.

For reasons perfectly valid though not necessary for me to enter into in detail, I could neither answer your letter at Elberfeld, nor transmit it to you through L. C. H. Since it has become impossible to utilize the main channel — H.P.B. thro' which I have hitherto reached you, because of your personal and mutual relations with her I employed the common post. Even this required more expenditure of power from a friend, than you can imagine.

It would not be the part of a friend to withhold the truth when the speaking of it can do good, so I must tell you that you ought to put a close watch upon yourself, if you would not put an end for ever to my letters. Insensibly to yourself you are encouraging a tendency to dogmatism and unjust misconception of persons and motives. I am well aware of your ideas upon that what you call the "goody goody" absurdity; and I feel as painfully confident that since in your world no one is allowed to moralize the other and that you are very likely to resent it, these words are probably written in vain. But I also know your sincere desire that our correspondence should not be broken; and knowing this, I point out to your notice that which is certain to have that result.

Beware then, of an uncharitable spirit, for it will rise up like a hungry wolf in your path, and devour the better qualities of your nature that have been springing into life. Broaden instead of narrowing your sympathies; try to identify yourself with your fellows, rather than to contract your circle of affinity. However caused — whether by faults at Adyar, or Allahabad, or by my negligence, or H.P.B.'s viciousness — a crisis is here, and it is a time for the utmost practicable expansion of your moral power. It is not the moment for reproaches or vindictive recriminations, but for united struggle. Whomsoever has sown the seeds of the present tempest, the whirlwind is strong, the whole Society is reaping it and it is rather fanned than weakened from Tchigadze. You laugh at probations — the word seems ridiculous as applied to you? You forget that he who approaches our precincts even in thought, is drawn into the vortex of probation. At any rate your temple totters, and unless you put your strong shoulders against its wall you may share the fate of Samson. Pride and "dignified contempt" will not help you in the present difficulties. There is such a thing when understood allegorically — as treasures guarded by faithful gnomes and fiends. The treasure is our occult knowledge that many of you are after — you foremost of all; and it may not be H.P.B. or Olcott or anyone else individually who have awakened the guardians thereof, but yourself, more than they and the Society collectively. Such books as the Occult World and Esoteric Buddhism do not pass unnoticed under the eyes of those faithful guardians, and it is absolutely necessary that those who would have that knowledge should be thoroughly tried and tested. Infer from this what you will; but remember that my Brother and I, are the only among the Brotherhood who have at heart the dissemination (to a certain limit) of our doctrines, and H.P.B. was hither to our sole machinery, our most docile agent. Granting that she is all you describe her — and I have already told you that the ricketty old body becomes sometimes positively dangerous — still it does not excuse in you the smallest relaxation of effort to save the situation and push on the work (and especially protect our correspondence) all the faster. Deem it, what it is, a positive advantage to the rest of you that she should have been what she is, since it has thrown upon you the greater stimulus to accomplish in spite of the difficulties you believe she has created. I do not say we should have preferred her had a more tractable agent been available, but still, so far as yourselves are concerned it has been an advantage, yet you have alienated her for a long time if not for ever and thereby thrown tremendous difficulties in my way. Remember what I said to you some two years ago "were H.P.B. to die before we found a substitute," the powers through which we work in our communications with the outside world may permit the transmission of two or three letters more, then it would die out and you would have no more letters from me. Well — she is virtually dead; and it is yourself — pardon me this one more truth — who have killed the rude but faithful agent, one moreover who was really devoted to you personally. Let us drop the subject if it is distasteful to you. I have done my best to stop the evil but I have neither jurisdiction or control over her, nor shall I have any better chance with Mrs. H. She is a magnificent subject naturally but so distrustful of herself and others, so apt to take the real for hallucination and vice versa that it will require a long time before she becomes thoroughly controllable even by herself. She is far, far

Do not, I pray you, attribute the above to any influence from H.P.B. She has doubtless complained bitterly to her Master and says so openly, but this does not alter his opinion nor affect my own attitude towards you in the least. Not alone we two, but even she knows how important to the Society's welfare are your services, and no personal grievances of hers would be allowed to stand in the way of your receiving strict justice; or to prevent our according it to her either. Her Master and I directed her to do and say all that she did concerning Mrs. H. Any unpleasantness resulting, was due to the execution of her orders. We had found Mrs. H. in America, we impressed her to prepare for the writing of the book she has produced with the aid of Mohini. Had she consented to stop at Paris, as requested, a few days longer and come over to England with H.P.B. the later complication could have been averted. The effect of her coming to your house has been described to you by her before; and in resenting what Mohini and H.P.B. were saying to you and Mrs. H. you have been simply resenting our personal wishes. You will resent my words even now when I tell you that you have been

 

— unconsciously, I agree — in my way, in her development. Yet you would have been the first one to profit thereby. But not understanding our ways and the occult methods you insisted upon knowing the cause and reason for everything done — especially things that did not suit you. You even demanded that the reason why you have been asked to come to Elberfeld should be thoroughly explained to you. This is unreasonable — from the occult point of view, good friend. You either trust in me, or do not. And I must frankly tell you that my friendly regard suffered a shock from the hearing of your "ultimatum" which may be condensed thus: — "Either Mrs. H., passes a week or so at our house, or I (you) leave the L.L. to get on as best it can." It almost meant this; "Masters" or no Masters to the contrary notwithstanding, I must and shall show the L.L. that anything they may have heard about this affair was false, and that the "Masters" would never consent to any action hurtful to my pride: that must be protected in any event." My friend, this is treading upon dangerous ground. In our mountains here, the Dugpas lay at dangerous points, in paths frequented by our Chelas, bits of old rag, and other articles best calculated to attract the attention of the unwary, which have been impregnated with their evil magnetism. If one be stepped upon a tremendous psychic shock may be communicated to the wayfarer, so that he may lose his footing and fall down the precipice before he can recover himself. Friend, beware of Pride and Egoism, two of the worst snares for the feet of him who aspires to climb the high paths of Knowledge and Spirituality. You have opened a joint of your armour for the Dugpas — do not complain if they have found it out and wounded you there. Mrs. H. did not really want to go to your house, for, as she said to you very truthfully, I had told her not to do so for reasons that you must know yourself by this time; you also should have known, that if we were worth anything in our individuality, and not mere powerless puppets, we were not to be influenced by H.P.B., nor driven by threats to do anything contrary to our light and the necessities of Karma. I am sorry that you did not recall these facts before speaking, as this makes my position still more embarrassing before my chief, who, of course has had the "ultimatum" put on record. You deny, having ever applied to be accepted as a chela: Ah! my friend, with such feelings smouldering in your heart, you could not be even a "lay chela." But once more I say let us drop the subject. Words will not obliterate deeds, and what is done is done. My brother M. who has more authority than I, has just written the promised letter to the "Inner Circle." Your "honour" good friend, is saved — at what price — read and you shall see.

 

You do not find certain recent letters and notes of mine — including the one to the treasurer of the L.L., "philosophical" and in my usual style. It could scarcely be helped: I wrote but on the business of the moment

 

— as I am doing now — and had no time for philosophy. With the L.L. and most of the other Western Branches of the T.S. in a deplorable state, philosophy may be invoked to restrain one's impatience, but the chief thing called for at present, is some practicable scheme for dealing with the situation. Some, most unjustly, try to make H.S.O. and H.P.B., solely responsible for the state of things. Those two are, say, far from perfect — in some respects, quite the opposite. But they have that in them (pardon the eternal repetition but it is being as constantly overlooked) which we have but too rarely found elsewhere — UNSELFISHNESS, and an eager readiness for self-sacrifice for the good of others; what a "multitude of sins" does not this cover! It is but a truism, yet I say it, that in adversity alone can we discover the real man. It is a true manhood when one boldly accepts one's share of the collective Karma of the group one works with, and does not permit oneself to be embittered, and to see others in blacker colours than reality, or to throw all blame upon some one "black sheep," a victim, specially selected. Such a true man as that we will ever protect and despite his shortcomings, assist to develop the good he has in him. Such an one is sublimely unselfish; he

 

I have done, my good friend, and have nothing more to say. You have too much intelligence not to see clearly, as the Americans would say — the fix I am in, and that I, personally can do very little. The present situation, as you will find from M's letter has been gradually created by all of you as much as by the wretched "Founders." Yet without at least one of them we can hardly do, for several years more to come. You have treated the old body too cruelly and it now has its day. You will never agree in this fully with me — but it is fact, nevertheless. All I can do for you personally — I will do it, unless you make the situation still worse by not changing your policy. One who would have higher instruction given to him has to be a true theosophist in heart and soul, not merely in appearance.

Meanwhile, receive my poor blessings.

K. H.

Letter 67 Table of Contents

Letter No. 67

Written to Colonel Olcott.

You have been ordered home for a rest that you need — so, you should decline any further hearings until you hear from M. The Maha-Chohan will intimate when, you are to go to the Punjab. As the English mail goes to­morrow, you might do well to give Mr. Sinnett a friendly caution against being surprised if his paper project should have checks upon checks. The state of India is just now almost comparable to a great body of dry matter in which sparks are smouldering. Agitators of both races have been and are doing their best to stir up a great flame. In the mad fanaticism of the hour there is hardly patience enough to think soberly upon any matter, least of all one that appeals like this to conservative men. Capitalists are more ready — like Holkar — to horde away their rupees than put them into share companies. So — "miracles" being barred from the first as you and Mr. Sinnett know — I see delays, disappointments, trials of patience, but — (as yet) no failure. The lamentable issue of Bishenlal's rapid scramble up the Himalayas as would be chela has sadly complicated matters. And your eminent Simla correspondent has made matters worse. Tho' unaware of it he has helped precipitate Bishenlal's insanity and (here, consciously) is plotting and scheming in many ways to make us all into a holocaust from out whose vapours may loom the giant spectre of the Jakko. Already he tells you that Sinnett is a credulous imbecile to be led by the nose (pardon my worthy friend the bad taste which compelled me to duplicate for my "ward" A. P. Sinnett that last long letter of Mr. H. to yourself which you have at the bottom of your dispatch box and did not intend H.P.B. to see in full). I had it neatly copied and for your fiery colleague he has had a deadly mine long prepared. Mr. Sinnett is now able to verify my old warning that he meant to set all your friends in London against the Society. The turn of the Kingsford-Maitland party has come. The diabolical malice which breathes thro' his present letter comes straight from the Dugpas who provoke his vanity and blind his reason. When you open M.'s letter of 1881 you will find the key to many mysteries — this included. Intuititve as you naturally are — chelaship is yet almost — a complete puzzle for you — as for my friend Sinnett and the others they have scarcely an inkling of it yet. Why must I even now (to put your thoughts in the right channel) remind you of the three cases of insanity within seven months among "lay chelas," not to mention one's turning a thief? Mr. Sinnett may consider himself lucky that his lay chelaship is in "fragments" only, and that I have so uniformly discouraged his desires for a closer relationship as an accepted chela. Few men know their inherent capacities — only the ordeal of crude chelaship develops them. (Remember these words: they have a deep meaning.)

M. sends you thro' me these vases as a home greeting.

You had better say plainly to Mr. Sinnett that his quondam friend of Simla has — no matter under what influence — distinctly injured the newspaper project not only with the Maharajah of Cashmere but with many more in India. All he hints at in his letter to you and more he has done or is preparing to do.

This is "a K.H. letter" and you may say to Mr. S. from — K. H.

Letter 68 Table of Contents

Letter No. 68

I have just taken your note from where it was placed by her as, although I might take cognisance of its contents otherwise, you will prefer that the paper itself should pass into my own hand. — Does it seem to you a small thing that the past year has been spent only in your "family duties"? Nay, but what better cause for reward, what better discipline, than the daily and hourly performance of duty? Believe me my "pupil" the man or woman who is placed by Karma in the midst of small plain duties and sacrifices and loving-kindnesses, will through these faithfully fulfilled rise to the larger measure of Duty, Sacrifice and Charity to all Humanity

— what better path towards the enlightenment you are striving after than the daily conquest of Self, the perseverence in spite of want of visible psychic progress, the bearing of ill-fortune with that serene fortitude which turns it to spiritual advantage — since good and evil are not to be measured by events on the lower or physical plane. — Be not discouraged that your practice falls below your aspirations, yet be not content with admitting this, since you clearly recognise that your tendency is too often towards mental and moral indolence, rather inclining to drift with the currents of life, than to steer a direct course of your own. Your spiritual progress is far greater than you know or can realize, and you do well to believe that such development is in itself more important than its realization by your physical plane consciousness. I will not now enter into other subjects since this is but a line of sympathetic recognition of your efforts, and of earnest encouragement to hold a calm and brave spirit toward outward events in the present, and a hopeful spirit for the future on all planes — truly yours, K. H.

Letter 69 Table of Contents

Letter No. 69

I am sincerely pleased my "pupil" that you should write to me as agreed — whether you have — or have not

— any special question to put to me. — It is impossible under your present health conditions that you should bring back to your physical brain the consciousness of higher planes of existence, yet remember, that the sense of magnetic refreshment is no true measure of spiritual benefit, and you may even attain greater spiritual progress whilst your psychic development appears to stand still.

Now to answer your questions.

 

(1) In esoteric teachings "Brahma," "Pitri," and "Deva" lokas, are states of consciousness belonging to the various ethereal hierarchies or classes of Dhyanis and Pitris (the "creators" and "ancestors" of Humanity) and of Devas — some far higher than man (spiritually) some — among the Deva classes — far behind on the descending arc of evolution, and only destined to reach the human stage in a future Manvantara. — Exoterically these lokas represent Nirvana, Devachan and the Astral world. The meaning of the terms Devachan and Deva-loka, is identical; "chan" and "loka" equally signifying place or abode. "Deva" is a word too indiscriminately used in Eastern writings, and is at times merely a blind.

 

(2) You will be right in referring the "Real Knowledge" and "True Cause" of the verses quoted to the highest plane of spiritual enlightenment; the "greater darkness" into which the perfected "Siddha" is finally merged thereby, is that Absolute Darkness, which is Absolute Light. The Real Knowledge here spoken of is not a mental but a spiritual state, implying full union between the Knower and the Known.

 

I hope that these brief replies may throw all the light you needed upon these points.

With sincere good-will,

Yours truly, K. H.

Letter 70 Table of Contents

Letter No. 70

You will have learned ere now my friend that I was not deaf to your appeal to me, altho' I was unable to answer it as you — and I too — could have wished, by lifting for a moment the everthinning veil between us — "When?" do you ask me? I can but reply "not yet." Your probation is not ended, patience a little longer. — Meanwhile you know the path to travel, it lies plainly before you for the present, tho' the choice of an easier if longer way may await you in the distant future.

Farewell my Brother.

Ever yours in sympathy K. H.

Letter 71 Table of Contents

Letter No. 71

Very kind Sinnett Sahib — many thanks and salams for the tobacco-machine. Our frenchified and pelingized Pandit tells me the little short thing has to be cooloted — whatever he may mean by this — and so I will proceed to do so. The pipe is short and my nose long, so we will agree very well toge[ther] I hope. Thanks — many thanks.

The situation is more serious than you may imagine and we will want our best forces and hands to work at pushing away bad luck. But our Chohan willing and you helping we will scramble out somehow or another. There are clouds which are below your horizon and K.H. is right — the storm is threatening. Could you but go to Bombay to the Anniversary you would confer upon K.H. and myself a great obligation a lasting one — but that you know best. This meeting will be either the triumph or the downfall of the Society and a — gulf. You are wrong too about the Peling Sahib — he is as dangerous as a friend as an enemy very very bad as both I know him best. Anyhow you Sinnett Sahib reconciled me to a good many things you are true and true I will be.

Yours always M.

Letter 72 Table of Contents

Letter No. 72

My good Brother — the little Doctor and the chela Mohini will explain to you the object of their visit and a serious conference which I believe necessary. The objections of last year are creeping out also, you have a letter from me in which I explain why we never guide our chelas (the most advanced even); nor do we forewarn them leaving the effects produced by causes of their own creation to teach them better experience. Please bear in mind that particular letter. Before the cycle ends every misconception ought to be swept away. I trust in and rely upon you to clear them entirely in the minds of the Prayag Fellows. They are a troublesome lot — especially Adityaram, who influences the whole group. But what they say of last night is right. You were a little bit too much carried away with your enthusiasm for occultism and mixed it up very imprudently with Universal Brotherhood. They will explain to you all.

Yours

K. H.

{This Anniversary, the Seventh, was held December 1882 with A.P.S. in the chair. Olcott in his

O.D.L. has confused the one held in January of the same year with this one.}

Letter 73 Table of Contents

Letter No. 73

Mr. Sinnett — you will receive a long letter — posted Sunday at Bombay — from the Brahmin boy. Koot­hoomi went to see him (as he is his chela) before going into "Tong-pa-ngi" — the state in which he now is — and left with him certain orders. The boy has a little bungled up the message so be very careful before you show it to Mr. Hume lest he should again misunderstand my Brother's real meaning. I will not stand any more nonsense, or bad feeling against him, but retire at once.

We do the best we can. M.

Letter 74 Table of Contents

Letter No. 74

If you are so anxious to find out the particular spot where I erased and precipitated instead another sentence last night at post-office I can satisfy your curiosity Mr. Sinnett, "but that it was the Chohan's KNOWLEDGE that neither you nor anyone cared for the real object of the Society, nor had any respect for the BROTHERHOOD but only a personal feeling for a few of the Brothers. So you cared only for K.H. personally and phenomena; Mr. Hume to get at the secrets of their philosophy and to assure himself that the Tibetan Mahatmas — the Lhas — if at all existing outside of Mme. B.'s imagination — were connected any way with certain adepts he had in his mind."

All this is what K.H. said, what I had to write and precipitate instead of that which stood then written by the boy in a phraseology which would have called out from Mr. Hume a whole torrent of fine words and the word "ignorance" applied to my Brother. I would not have even the desert wind listen to a word said at low breath against him who now sleeps. Such is the cause of the tamacha produced by me and for no other cause.

Yours M.

Letter 75 Table of Contents

Letter No. 75

 

The right is on her side. Your accusations are extremely unjust, and coming from you — pain me the more. If after this distinct statement you still maintain the same attitude — I shall have to express my deep regret at this new failure of ours — and wish you with all my heart better success with more worthy teachers. She certainly lacks charity, but indeed, you lack — discrimination.

Regretfully yours

K. H.

Letter 76 Table of Contents

Letter No. 76

[The first part of this letter will be found in Letter 132 at the end of a letter of Subba Row to

H.P.B. which was written on thin rice paper, whereas the continuation is upon rough parchment-like paper entirely dissimilar. — ED.]

X.. . . Chela training. Poor Subba Row is "in a fix" — that is why he does not answer you. On one hand he has the indomitable H.P.B. who plagues Morya's life to reward you and M. himself who would if he could gratify your aspirations; on the other he encounters the impassable Chinese wall of rules and Law. Believe me, good friend, learn what you can under the circumstances — to viz. — the philosophy of the phenomena and our doctrines on Cosmogony, inner man, etc. This Subba Row will help you to learn, though his terms — he being an initiated Brahmin and holding to the Brahmanical esoteric teaching — will be different from those of the "Arhat Buddhist" terminology. But essentially both are the same — identical in fact. My heart melts when I read Mr. Hume's sincere noble letter — especially what I perceive between the lines. Yes; to one from his standpoint our policy must seem selfish and cruel. I wish I were the Master! In five or six years I hope to become my own "guide" and things will have somewhat to change, then. But even Caesar in irons cannot shuffle off the irons and transfer them to Hippo or Thraso the turnkey. Let us wait. I cannot think of Mr. Hume without remembering each time an allegory of my own country: the genius of Pride watching over a treasure, an inexhaustible wealth of every human virtue, the divine gift of Brahma to man. The Genius has fallen asleep over its treasure now, and one by one the virtues are peeping out. . . . Will he awake before they are all freed from their life long bonds? That is the question —

K. H.

Letter 77 Table of Contents

Letter No. 77

Received Madras, March, 1883.

Pray, convey to Col. Gordon the expression of my sympathy and friendly esteem. He is indeed a loyal friend and trustworthy ally. Tell him that with every allowance for the motives given and his own quiet modesty I yet believe he may do much good in his own unassuming way. A Howrah Branch is really needed and he alone can create the nucleus. Why not try? He cares not for the service and is ready at any moment to throw it up. But this is unnecessary so long as it lasts and gives him a strength and authority with some native members which otherwise he would not have. At any rate then he is going to be taken to Simla and will have plenty of "nothing-to-do" time. Why not use his opportunities for putting the Eclectic and Himalayan in order — of course in his official capacity, as a member of Council and Vice-President of the Eclectic. I will have Olcott send him an official paper to that effect and write instructions for him myself. I am anxious to remove the Anglo-Indian "Eclectic" to Calcutta, and have its Headquarters (though it be nominal for a while) announced through the journal hitherto as established in the capital — the native members of the Eclectic incorporated in the Himalayan and a para: inserted to notify all those who would join the Anglo-Indian Branch that in your absence they would have to address themselves to Col. W. Gordon, Acting President in your place. Some are born for diplomacy and intrigue: I rather think that it is not my particular province. Withal, I believe the arrangement calculated to impede the disastrous effects of Mr. Hume's intrigue and his endeavours to have the Society (Eclectic) dead and buried, thus showing those concerned with it, that he was its Creator and Preserver, and that his retirement was its death-knell. Thanks for Col: G.'s letter.

The 30th is as good as any other day after the 27th. No; a Branch at Madras is not absolutely necessary from the very starting. But it does stand to reason that if it is Madras that is to furnish the largest share of the funds that it would also have the preference after Calcutta. So long as the money is not in it is useless to fix any dates. Our paper once established I will never concern myself any more with any worldly enterprise. Yes, I have worry and annoyance indeed; but then it had to be expected, and no fish undertaking a ramble on the river's bank and outside its own element need complain of catching a lumbago. We are near the end now, one way or the other, and once I take my leap back into the crystal wave — few will ever have a chance of seeing me peeping out again. Mankind are not always what they seem and I have lost much of my optimism in the late affray. Mankind was somewhere named the poetry of creation and woman the poetry of earth. When she is not an angel she must be a fury. It is in the latter capacity that I have ever met her on my way when Rajahs and Zemindars were quite ready to disburse the necessary funds. Well well, the affray is still raging and we may yet win brilliantly the day.

Yours truly,

K. H.

{A.P.S. and his family arrived in Madras on their way back to England, sailing March 30. The April Theosophist says: "It is hoped he will return in November."}

Letter 78 Table of Contents

Letter No. 78

My dear friend: — do not accuse me — after having started it myself — of indifference to, or oblivion of, our little speculation. The Chohan is not to be consulted every day on such "worldly" matters, and that is my excuse for the unavoidable delay.

And now, I am permitted by my venerated Chief to convey to you a memorandum of His views and ideas upon the fortune and destinies of a certain paper upon which his foresight was asked by your humble friend and his servant. Putting them into business shape I have noted his views as follows.

I. The establishment of a new journal of the kind described is desirable, and very feasible — with proper effort.

II. That effort must be made by your friends in the world, and every Hindu theosophist who has the good of his country at heart, and not very afraid to spend energy and his time. It has to be made by outsiders — i.e. those who do not belong to our Order irretrievably; as for ourselves —

III. We can direct and guide their efforts and the movement, in general. Tho' separated from your world of action we are not yet entirely severed from it so long as the Theosophical Society exists. Hence, while we cannot inaugurate it publicly and to the knowledge of all theosophists and those concerned, we may, and will so far as practicable, aid the enterprise. In fact, we have begun already to do so. Moreover, we are permitted to reward those who will have helped the most effectually to realize this grand idea (which promises in the end to change the destiny of a whole nation, if conducted by one like yourself).

 In proposing to capitalists, especially to natives, the risk (as they are likely to think) of so large a sum, special inducements should be held out to them. Therefore, we are of opinion that you should ask no more compensation than you now receive, until your exertions have made the journal a decided success — something that must and shall happen, if I am good for anything. For a certain time, then, it is desirable that the affair should be stripped in the eyes of the future shareholders of every objectionable feature. Capital may now be invested in various ways so as to secure moderate interest with little or no risk. But for the ordinary speculator, there is much risk in founding a new journal of high cost, which is to favour the side of just native interests in those too frequent cases of injustice (which can hardly be proven to you under ordinary circumstances, but that will) — which always occur when a country is held by foreign conquerors. Cases which, as regards India, tend to multiply with the gradual entrance of officials of a lower social origin under the competitive system of appointment; and increased friction due to a selfish resentment of the admission of natives to Civil Service. To your capitalists, therefore, you should hold out the inducement that you will unselfishly labour, for the same emolument as at your disposal now — to make their venture more than ordinarily profitable, and only claim a share of profits — as delineated by yourself with a slight change — when that point will be reached. I am ready to offer myself as a guarantee that it speedily will.

 My suggestion is therefore, agreeably with the Chohan's opinion, that you should offer to accept the consolidated monthly pay you mention, (with the usual and necessary personal expenses of travel when on business for the journal) until the capital shall be earning 8 per cent. Of the profits between 8 and ½ per cent you should have one quarter share. Of all above 12 per cent., one half share.

 

VI. You should have certainly entire control over the journal; with some reassuring provisos that that power should not be transferable to a successor without the consent of a majority of the capital represented in the ownership; and that it should cease when it became apparent that the journal was being used against the interests to promote which it was founded. Without some such reservation, my venerable Chohan, and we too, think that deep-seated prejudices and suspicions would cause native capitalists — especially the rajahs — to hesitate — not for fear to make the large risks of this undertaking, but owing to doubts as to its success. The whole Anglo-European community now suffers in native opinion for the commercial sins of dishonest houses who have heretofore broken faith with the capitalists; and there are several Rajahs, who now follow in pensive gloom the far distant form of Sir Ashley Eden, who walks off with one pocket full of never fulfilled promises and the other loaded with the remembrance of several lakhs of rupees borrowed from and never returned to his friends — the rajahs. At the same time, these provisos should be so framed as to protect your interests as well. Some offer on your part, spontaneous of course, inviting the occasional inspection of books and papers at reasonable times for the verification of accounts rendered, should be given, since your personal integrity cannot be guaranteed for all your servants. But this is not to diminish your authority over the management of the journal in all departments.

VII. It is better that the whole capital should be paid in before the journal is begun, as it is always unpleasant and troublesome to call in assessments on top of original losses. But it should be provided that so much as was not immediately needed should be kept at interest; and that a Sinking Fund should be created out of the income of the journal, to provide for any unforseen exigency. The surplus capital as well as earnings, to be distributed from time to time.

VIII. The usual contracts and copartnership papers might be executed from the beginning, but deposited in confidential hands mutually agreeable and their nature kept secret until the arrival of a certain specified contingency. This would show good faith on both sides and inspire confidence.

IX. No remark upon the other features of your programme seems called for. Therefore — to something else now.

Two or three nights ago, the following conversation, or rather, profession of independent opinion was listened to by myself, and approved, as far as worldly reasoning goes. Olcott was talking with several influential theosophists concerned with, and interested in our future journalistic operations. Your colleague and brother, the good and sincere Norendro Babu of the Mirror said wise words to this effect:

"Of the several princes, whom Mr. Sinnett's friends have in view in India, probably not one would be influenced to subscribe the capital from patriotic motives. The Nizam wants the Berars, and is hoping that England will be as generous to him as she is to Cetewayo. Holkar wants cent per cent or as nearly that as possible. Kashmir fears the C. and M. Gazette and the cupidity that has long yearned to annex his rich province (to this, my conservative and patriotic friend A.P.S. is sure to demur); Benares is orthodox and would spend freely to abolish cow- (not ox-) killing. Baroda is a boy, with a colt's restiveness and no clear idea, as yet, about life. With proper agents and discreet negotiations the 5 lakhs may (?) be raised, but it cannot be said how soon; (right, there, especially he who has little if any faith in our helping them).

H.P.B. forwarded me since then your letter. In case my advice is asked I should counsel — (1) the keeping of your Proprietors in suspense as to your actual chances, so as to give you the option of doing what may develop into the best thing. I, for one, confess to you now that I have two strings to my bow. When the new capital is raised, in case even it is so very soon — it will make no very great difference whether your paper be started next cold weather or the following so long as you are at the head of the Pioneer. You would be at it's helm until November and meanwhile your friends would have time to manage their difficult and delicate negotiations, and provisions might be made for you to receive an equitable proportion of salary while perfecting your arrangements at home, to begin in the cold weather of 1884. On the other hand, if the capital could be secured shortly you could put it at interest, and draw no pay until you leave the Pioneer. Of course, without forcing the events — in violation of our laws, save the Chohan's permission — all this is an uncertainty and a dilemma in some sort. Yet I can help your friends, and they will find it out very quick no sooner they begin. No: I would not promise, if I were you, not to start another paper; for, to begin with, you do not know what might turn up; and then it is always useful to have a sword of Damocles hanging over such heads as Rattigan's and Walker's. They are frightened to death — I tell you. They might even make it pleasant and profitable to you to continue directing the Pioneer, with increased editorial powers and salary, for this they could better afford than to have you compete with them with 5 lakhs at your back. As to the advisability of such a thing — time will show. As advised at present I still hold to the original programme. You must be complete and sole master of a paper devoted to the interests of my benighted countrymen. The "Indo-British nation" is the pulse I go by. More — anon.

I enclose a letter kindly lent to me — without his knowledge tho' — by the Colonel. Our friend foams with rage in the most unyogi like manner, and Subba Row is right in his opinions of him. Such letters and worse

But that will do! Yours sincerely,

K. H.

Letter 79 Table of Contents

Letter No. 79

Since you did not "deal exhaustively with the case" in your previous note I said only what I did, for I am no business man. One used to mercantile affairs would doubtless have deduced the entire plan from even smaller fragments than you have. But now that you have opened out the question I may say (holding at the same time my amateur opinion in very light esteem) that your scheme appears reasonable and just enough. Mr. Dare, no less than yourself should be substantially rewarded for his valuable and devoted services. Your proposal that the alienated 4-12th's of shares shall not participate in profits until their respective owners have made the remaining 8-12th's yield fair remuneration to capital — is a fair one to both parties.

Whether you shall or shall not eventually issue a duplex, or quadruplex journal, I still think that if practicable, the larger amount of capital should be sought after, for, when you are fully equipped for any emergency you may deliberately adopt such plan as cool judgment and a calculation of all the chances may indicate as best.

And now, before quitting my novel relation of a business adviser, I must repeat that while we will help the enterprise from first to last as fully as possible within our rules, the initiative must be taken by your friends and ought to be guided and sympathised with by yourself, and I will just tell you why. While the greatest good ought to result from the successful establishment of such a journal, the strict law of justice forbids us to do aught to lessen in the slightest degree the merit to which he who shall make the dream a reality will be entitled. Few are those who know their future or what is best for them. No doubt, life on the European continent and in England possesses charms lacked by poor, dull India. But the latter can, on the other hand, offer privileges and attractions undreamt of by the average mystic. I dare not say more; but, you are wrong, friend, very wrong in consenting to stop here ONLY for my sake. I, at least, do not feel myself selfish enough to accept the sacrifice, had I not known what I do.

For your obliging compliance with our wishes that you should attend the anniversary celebration accept our best thanks. The effects of your presence and speech will be greater and better than you can now conceive. And, like all good actions, they will bring abundant reward for yourself — here and — hereafter. Let it be a consolation to you that you helped in a positive degree to neutralize the evil influences which the enemies of Truth had concentrated upon the Society. The dead-point of the revolving cycle is passed: a new one begins for the Theosophical Society — on the 17th of December. Watch and see. Ever your friend,

K. H.

{Seventh Anniversary of T.S. End of First Cycle.}

Letter 80 Table of Contents

Letter No. 80

M. "son's" impression convexing lens being not yet ground to a perfect surface, he puts the matter in a somewhat crooked shape. M. did not want him to say there was anything like a possibility of failure, but just the usual possibility of delay in every business transaction left with our countrymen alone: plus, the malevolent (or if you prefer eccentric) meddling of the Rothney Swedenborg and other artists in calamity. From all I know of the situation — and I claim to watch it as closely as I am permitted to — the chances are that the money will be raised, by the end of March; but Chance being a squinting jade, according to report the time of collection is not yet written in the memorandum book of Fate. Much depends upon contingencies but still more upon the Simla Yogi leaving us for awhile alone — 3 lakhs of rupees have been just as good as lost, owing to a letter written by him to an editor at Calcutta with a delineation of our true character (Jesuits, sorcerers, a deceitful, selfish set, etc.) and by that editor shown to a rajah, hitherto well disposed and ready to do the bidding of the "Mahatma Brothers" — of patriotism in this transaction there will be very little if any. I will send you in a day or two, facts which will show to you persons in their true light.

Meanwhile if I advise your acting entirely upon your own judgment as to your departure, it is because of the false light in which nearly all our actions are viewed by the Europeans who are however indirectly concerned with us. I do not want to be misjudged by you even for one moment. But strange and crooked as our ways may appear at first sight I hope you will never allow your European mind to get influenced by your Rothney friend. Well more anon,

Yours ever faithfully,

K. H.

{H.P.B. returned from Darjeeling November 25.}

Letter 81 Table of Contents

Letter No. 81

Received London about July, 1883.

Private but not very Confidential.

I have, you observe, left for a separate private letter — in case you should like to read the other to your British "Brethren and Sistern —" and to the last any reference to the proposed new journal, about whose prospects Col. Gordon has written you so encouragingly. I scarcely knew until I had begun to watch the development of this effort to erect a bulwark for Indian interests, how deeply my poor people had sunk. As one who watches the signs of fluttering life beside a dying bed, and counts the feeble breaths to learn if there may still be room for hope, so we Aryan exiles in our snowy retreat have been attentive to this issue. Debarred from using any abnormal powers that might interfere with the nation's Karma, yet by all lawful and normal means trying to stimulate the zeal of those who care for our regard, we have seen weeks grow into months without the object having been achieved. Success is nearer than ever before, yet still in doubt. The letter of Gwindan Lal, which I shall ask Upasika to send you, shows that there is progress. In a few days a meeting of native capitalists is to be held at Madras, which Mr. Olcott is to attend and from which there may be fruits. He will see the Gwikwar at Baroda and Holkar at Indore, and do his best — as he has already at Behar and in Bengal. There was never a time when the help of a man like yourself was more needed by India. We foresaw it, as you know and patriotically tried to make your way easy for a speedy return. But, — alas! that it must be confessed — the word Patriotism has now scarcely any electric power over the Indian heart. The "Cradle Land of Arts and Creeds" swarms with unhappy beings, precariously provided for, and vexed by demagogues who have everything to gain by chicane and impudence. We knew all this in the mass, but not one of us Aryans had sounded the depths of the Indian question as we have of late. If it be permissible to symbolize things subjective by phenomena objective, I should say that to the psychic sight India seems covered with a stifling grey fog — a moral meteor — the odic emanation from her vicious social state. Here and there twinkles a point of light which marks a nature still somewhat spiritual, a person who aspires and struggles after the higher knowledge. If the beacon of Aryan occultism shall ever be kindled again, these scattered sparks must be combined to make it's flame. And this is the task of the T.S., this the pleasant part of it's work in which we would so gladly assist, were we not impeded and thrown back by the would-be chelas themselves. I stepped outside our usual limits to aid your particular project from a conviction of its necessity and its potential usefulness: having begun I shall continue until the result is known. But in this uncongenial experience of meddling in a business affair, I have ventured within the very breath of the world's furnace. I have suffered so much from the enforced insight at short distance into the moral and spiritual condition of my people; and been so shocked by this nearer view of the selfish baseness of human nature (the concomitant, always, of the passage of humanity through our stage of the evolutionary circuit): I have seen so distinctly the certainty that it cannot be helped — that I shall henceforth abstain from any repetition of the unbearable experiment. Whether your paper should succeed or not — and if the latter, it will be due to yourself exclusively, to the unfortunate inspiration on the 17th, published in the Times — I shall have no more to do with the financial side of these worldly affairs; but confine myself to our prime duty of gaining knowledge and disseminating through all available channels such fragments as mankind in the mass may be ready to assimilate. I shall, of course, be interested in your journalistic career here — if I am able to overcome and soothe the bitter feelings you have just awakened in those who confided in you most, — by that unfortunate and UNTIMELY confession, honest as its object may have been — and you may always depend upon my practical sympathy; but the genius of Mr. Dare must preside in your Counting Room as your own in the Editor's office. The great pain you have inflicted upon me, shows clearly that either I understand nothing in the fitness of political duties and therefore, could hardly hope to be a wise business and political "control" or that the man whom I regard as a true friend, however honest and willing, will never rise above English prejudices and the sinful antipathy towards our race and colour. "Madame" will tell you more.

Though you do not "ask me to deal with it afresh" yet I will say two words more about Mr. Massey's difficulty as regards the letter from our Brother H---- then in Scotland, sent him circuituously through "Ski." Be just and charitable to — a European at least. If Mr. Massey had "declared to the English spiritualists that

he was in communication with the BROTHERS by Occult means" he would have spoken the simple truth. For not only once but twice had he such occult relationship — once with his Father's glove, sent him by M. through "Ski" and again with the note in question, for the delivery of which the same practical agency was employed, though without an equal expenditure of power. His, you see, is one more example of the ease with which even a superior intellect may deceive itself in occult matters, by the maya of its own engendering. And, as regards the other case, may it not be noted — I am no barrister and therefore speak under reserve — as a mitigating circumstance for the accused that Mr. Massey is not even to this day sure that Dr. Billing did not intercept the Simpson letter to his wife, keep it to use against her at a fortunate time and actually so use it in this instance? Or, even allowing the letter to have been delivered to the addressee, know what was the answer — if any written? Has the idea struck your observant friend that, at that very time there was a womanly — worse than that — medium's spite far worse than the odium theologicum between the Simpson and Hollis-Billing, concerning their respective claims to the favours shown by Ski? That Mrs. Billing called the Ski of her "friend" Simpson "a bogus spook;" that Dr. Billing complained bitterly to Olcott and H.P.B. of the fraud perpetrated by the Simpson who tried to palm off a false Ski as the genuine one — the oldest as the most faithful "control" of his wife. The row got even into the papers. Strange, that at the time when she was publicly reproached by Mrs. B. with pretending to be controlled by her Ski Mrs. S. should have asked her for such a delicate and dangerous service! I say again — I speak under reserve — I have never looked into the accusation seriously, and know of it by having caught a glimpse of the situation in Olcott's head when reading Mr. C. C. M.'s letter. But the hint may, perchance, be of some service. But this I do know, and say; the long and short of the matter is, that your friend has hastily suspected and unjustly condemned the innocent and done himself harm spiritually. He really has no right to accuse even H.P.B. of deliberate deceit. I protest most emphatically against the woman being dealt with so uncharitably. She had no intention to deceive — unless withholding a fact be a direct deceit and lie, on the theory suppressio veri, suggestis falsi — a legal maxim which she knows nothing about. But then on this theory we all (Brothers and Chelas) ought to be regarded as liars. She was ordered to see that the letter should be delivered; she had no other means of doing so at that time but through "Ski." She had no power of sending it direct, as was the glove; M. would not help her, for certain reasons of his and very weighty too — as I have found out later —; she knew Mr. C. C. M. distrusted Ski, and was foolish enough to believe that Mr. Massey separated the medium from the "spirit" as proved by her letter; she was anxious out of pure and unselfish devotion for him that he should see that he was noticed at last by a real Brother. Hence — she tried to conceal the fact that Ski had a hand in it. Moreover, an hour after having sent her letter to Mrs. B. to be delivered by Ski, a letter read at the time, not found accidentally as alleged — she forgot all about it as she forgets everything. No idea, no thought of the slightest deceit on her part had ever crossed her mind. Had Mr. Massey asked her to tell him honestly the truth, after the letter had been shown to him she would have probably, either sent him to a very hot place, and said nothing, or honestly confessed the truth. She simply thought it best that the intended good effect of the Brother's message should not be cancelled by arousing in Mr. C. C. M.'s mind a hostile disposition the fruit of such unwarranted suspicion. We, my dear sirs, always judge men by their motives and the moral effects of their actions: for the world's false standards and prejudice we have no respect.

K. H.

Letter 82 Table of Contents

Letter No. 82

Strictly Confidential

The "quart d'heure de Rabelais" has come. On your answer, consent or refusal — depends the resurrection of the Phoenix — prostrated in a death-like Samadhi, if not in actual death. If you believe in my word, and, leaving the Ryots to our care are prepared for a somewhat unclean work — from the European standpoint though — and consent to oppose our work apparently, serving our ends in reality and thus saving our respective countries from a great evil that overhangs both — then consent to the proposal that will be made to you from India.

You may work to all intents and purposes to oppose The Bengal Rent Bill, for do whatever you or others may, you will never be able to impede our work in the opposite direction. Therefore, — one scruple less as one non-permitted confidence more. A riddle, verily.

And now good friend, I must explain. Only you have to prepare your European, cultured notions of right and wrong to receive a shock. A plan of action of a purely Asiatic character is laid bare before you; and since I may not move one finger — nor would I if I could in this case — to guide your understanding or feelings it may be found too Jesuitical, to suit your taste. Alas for all! that you should be so little versed in the knowledge of occult antidotes, as not to be able to perceive the difference between the Jesuitical "tout chemin est bon qui mene a Rome" added to the cunning and crafty — "the end justifies the means" — and the necessity of the practical application of these sublime words of our Lord and Master: — "O ye Bhikkhus and Arhats — be friendly to the race of men — our brothers! Know ye all, that he, who sacrifices not his one life to save the life of his fellow-being; and he who hesitates to give up more than life — his fair name and honour to save the fair name and honour of the many, is unworthy of the sin-destroying, immortal, transcendent Nirvana." Well, it cannot be helped.

Allow me to explain to you the situation. It is very complicated; but to him who, without any previous training was able to assimilate so well some of our doctrines as to write Esoteric Buddhism — the inner springs that we have to use ought to become intelligible.

 

(1) The Behar Chiefs propose one and a half lakhs down for the Phoenix; as much when they see you back to India, if the Bengal Rent Bill is opposed by the new paper and you promise to give them your support. Unless the proposition is accepted by you we may prepare for the final incremation of our Phoenix — and for good. Exclusive of this sum — Rs. 150,000 — we can count but upon Rs. 45,000 in shares — so far. But let the Races put down cash and all will follow.

(2) If you refuse they will secure another editor: were there any danger for the ryots and the Bill they — the Races or Zemindars would lose nothing thereby, except in the degree of cleverness of their editor; but they hope and are thoroughly unaware of being doomed — in the long run. The only and real loser in the case of refusal will be — India and your own country — eventually. This is prophecy.

(3) The resistance to, and the intrigues set on foot by the Zemindars against the Bill are infamous in their nature, yet very natural. Those who examine things at the core, perceive the real culprit in Lord Cornwallis and the long line of his successors. However it may be infamous, as I say, there it is and cannot be helped for it is human nature itself; and, there is no more dishonour to support their claims from a legal standpoint on the part of an Editor, who knows them to be doomed, than there is for a Counsel to defend his client — a great criminal sentenced to be hung. I am now trying to argue from your European standpoint, for fear, and lest you should not be able to see things from our Asiatic point of view, or rather in the light we, who are enabled to discern future events — see them.

(4) A conservative Editor whose field of action will be found to run on parallel lines with that of a conservative Viceroy, will find himself having lost nothing in fact, for a slight opposition that cannot last long after all. There are great flaws in the present Bill, examined from its legal, dead-letter aspect.

(5) Owing to the idiotically untimely "Ilbert's Bill," and the still more idiotic "Saligram-Surendro" Contempt case, the agitation is carrying the population of India to the verge of self-destruction. You must not feel as tho' I were exaggerating if I say more: the English and especially Anglo-Indians are running the same course from an opposite direction. You are at liberty to refuse my warning: you will show yourself wise if you do not. To return to our direct object —

(6) There are several Englishmen of great intellect and ability, who feel ready to defend — (and even to ally themselves — with) the Zemindars — and oppose the Bill, against their own principles and feelings — simply because the Races hate and oppose the man whom the rest of the Hindus profess, for the time being, to adore, and whom they are exalting with all the ardour of simple-minded, short-sighted savages. Thus the ryots cannot escape their fate for a few months longer whether you accept the offer or not. In the latter case, of course the paper scheme is at an end.

(7) At the same time it is better that you should be prepared to know the unavoidable results: there are ninety-nine chances against one, that — if the offer of the Zemindars is rejected — the Phoenix will ever come into existence; not so long at any rate as the present agitation is going on. And when it finally fails as the project is bound to unless we become masters of the situation, then we will have to part. In order to obtain from the Chohan permission to defend the teeming millions of the poor and the oppressed in India bringing on to bear all our knowledge and powers — I had to pledge myself, in case of the Phoenix's failure to interfere no more with such worldly matters and — to bid an eternal farewell to the European element. M. and Djual Khool would have to take my place. On the other hand, should you consent to the offer, your opposition to the Rent Bill would have no more effect on our work — for the Ryots than a straw — to save a vessel from sinking; whereas, if another editor is selected we would have no pretext to exercise our influence on their behalf. Such is the situation. It is a curious medley with no raison d'etre in your opinion. You can hardly be expected by us to see clearly through it at present, nor is there much likelihood that you will judge it fairly owing to this Egyptian darkness of cross purposes; nor is there any special need you should, if the offer has to fall to the ground. But, if your answer is favourable, I may perhaps as well add a few particulars. Know then, that opposition notwithstanding, and just because of it, you will bring the great national boil to a head sooner than it could be otherwise expected. Thus, while carrying out strictly your programme and promise made to the Races, you will be helping the events that have to be brought about to save the unfortunate population that has been sat upon ever since 1793 — the year of Lord Cornwallis's great political mistake. At the same time you may be doing immense good in every other direction. Recall the past and this will help you to see clearer into our intentions. When you took over Bengal from the native Rulers, there were a number of men who exercised the calling of Tax Collectors under their Government. These men received, as you are aware, a percentage for collecting the rents. The spirit of the letter of the tithe and tribute under the Moossulman Rulers was never understood by the East India Company; least of all the rights of the ryots to oppose an arbitrary interchange of the Law of Wuzeefa and Mookassimah. Well, when the Zemindars found that the British did not exactly understand their position they took advantage of it, as the English had taken advantage of their force: they claimed to be Landlords. Weekly enough, you consented to recognise the claim, and admitting it notwithstanding the warning of the Moossulman who understood the real situation and were not bribed as most of the Company were — you played into the hands of the few against the many, the result being the "Perpetual Settlement" documents. It is this that led to every subsequent evil in Bengal. Seeing how the unfortunate ryots are regarded by your proud nation in the full progress of the 19th Century, being in your sight of far less value than a horse or cattle, it is not difficult to imagine how they were regarded by your countrymen then — a century ago — when every Englishman was a pious Christian at heart and ordered by the Bible to draw a broad distinction between the descendants of Ham and themselves — the heirs of the chosen people. The agreement drawn between Lord Cornwallis and the Races which stipulated that the "black human cattle" should be treated by the Zemindars kindly and justly, and that they should not raise the rents of the ryots, etc. was a legal farce. The Chohan was then in India and he was an eye-witness to the beginning of horrors. No sooner had they secured the Perpetual Settlement Agreement that the Races began to disregard their engagements. Failing to fulfil any of these they brought yearly ruin and starvation on the miserable Ryots. They exacted tribute, sold them up, and trumped up false charges against them under the name of Abwab. These "doors" and "openings" led them wherever they wanted and they levied for over 50 years most extraordinary taxes. All this the Zemindars have done and much more and they will be surely made to account for it. Things too horrible to mention were done under the eyes and often with the sanction of the Company's

servants, when the Mutiny put a certain impediment by bringing as its result another form of Government. It is to redress the great wrong done, to remedy to the now irremediable that Lord Ripon took it into his head to bring forward the new Bill. It was not thought expedient by his Councillors (not those you know of) to crush the Zemindary system without securing at the same time popularity among the majority in another direction: hence "Ilbert's Bill" and some other trifles. We say then that to all appearance it is to redress the wrongs of the Past, that is the object of the present Bengal Rent Bill. My friend you are a remarkably clever Editor and an astute and observant politician; and no one, perhaps, in all India goes as deep as you do into the inner constitution of the Anglo-Indian coups d'etat. Still you do not go far enough and the original primitive layers of the political soil as the genesis of some acts of my Lord Ripon were and are terra incognita to yourself as to so many others perhaps still older hands in politics than you are. Neither Lord Ripon nor his Councillors (those behind the veil) anticipate any great results during his power in India. They are more Occultists than you may imagine. Their liberal reforms are not meant for India, to the weal or woes of which they are quite indifferent: they look far off to future results and — Press acts, Ilbert's Bills, Bengal Rent Bills and the rest are aimed at Protestant England which, very soon, too soon if Somebody or Something does not interfere, will find itself suffocating in the invisible coils of the Romish Apophis. Friend and Brother, the only one of your race whom I regard with a warm, sincere affection, take care! Do not reject too lightly my warning for it is a solemn one, and but a hint I am permitted to make. Political skepticism, like every other, scorns and laughs at the observations of those who do not belong to its factions. It finds out its mistakes when in a ditch. Beware for it is no more a simple ditch, but an abyss that is being prepared for you!

But let us see on what grounds an honest Englishman can oppose the Rent Bill. However great the misery of the Ryots even at present, however just the reprisals that are in store for the Zemindars, however human and generous, in short, on its surface the object of the Rent Bill, yet no honest Government strictly speaking has the right to break at will and its own pleasure solemn pledges and engagements. Because, it is found that the Races have not fulfilled their part of the Agreement, it gives no right to the other party to make away with their signature and tear in shreds the Perpetual Settlement Agreement. The sins of the few cannot well be visited upon the many. There are heavy flaws in the present Rent Bill as there were in the old System; and, there is no clause in the old documents stipulated to the effect that the Settlement becomes nil at the will of the British. I will not enter upon the defects of the dead-letter meaning in either the one or other, but will limit myself by telling you that there are such flaws and that, until modified you have a perfect right to object to them. You are not expected to cause the Bill to be withdrawn but to simply support the Zemindars analysis of its defects. And this you can freely promise. However I must not seem trying to influence you one way or the other. Some of the claims of the Races are infamous and no honest man can be made to support them; while others are not without a strong legal foundation in their favour. The Ruling power, for instance, was never yet and in no case the proprietor of the Khirajee land — not even under the Moossulman laws and sway. You have thus the Spirit of Khiraj and Ooshr to work upon, in order to redeem your promise to the landowners and amuse them for a few months unto the day of the "almighty smash" that is in store for them. All that you are asked to do for the benefit of (your as well as) my country is, to overlook the ugly frontispiece of the edifice, taking into consideration only the real nature of the situation and the future good results, in case you should get over your very natural squeamishness. In a few days you may receive a formal proposal. Think well over it. Do not allow yourself to be influenced by any consideration in connection with my desires. If you honestly believe the offer inconsistent with your European notions and criterion of truth and honour refuse its acceptance without any hesitation and let me bid you a sad, though ever grateful and friendly farewell. I cannot expect to see you looking at things from my own standpoint. You look without, I see within. This is no hour for sentimentalities. The whole future of the "brightest (!) jewel" — oh, what a dark satire in that name! — in the Crown of England is at stake, and I am bound to devote the whole of my powers as far as the Chohan will permit me to help my country at this eleventh hour of her misery. I cannot work except with those who will work with us. Accuse me not, my friend, for you do not know you cannot know, the extent of the limitations I am placed under. Think not, that I am seeking to place a bait — an inducement, for you to accept that which would refuse under other circumstances, for I am not. Having pledged my solemn word of honour to Him to whom I am indebted for everything I am and know I am simply helpless in case of your refusal and — we will have to part. Had not the Rent Bill been accompanied by the din and clash of the Ilbert Bill and "contempt case" I would have been the first to advise you to refuse. As the situation stands now, however, and prohibited as I am to use any but ordinary powers — I am powerless to do both, and am constrained to choose between helping my hapless mother-country, and our future intercourse. It is for you to decide. And if this letter is fated to be my last, I beg you to remember — for your sake, not mine —

Give, pray, my best wishes to your lady and the "Morsel." Be certain, that with a few undetectable mistakes and omissions notwithstanding, your "Esoteric Buddhism" is the only right exposition — however incomplete — of our Occult doctrines. You have made no cardinal, fundamental mistakes; and whatever may be given to you hereafter will not clash with a single sentence in your book but on the contrary will explain away any seeming contradiction. How greatly mistaken was Mr. Hume's theory is shown by the "Chela" in the Theosophist. With all that, you may feel sure that neither M. nor I have contradicted each other in our respective statements. He was speaking of the inner — I, of the outer Round. There are many things that you have not learned but may some day; nor will you be able to ever comprehend the process of the obscurations until you have mastered the mathematical progress of the inner and the outer Rounds and learned more about the specific difference between the seven. And thus according to Mr. Massey's philosophical conclusion we have no God? He is right — since he applies the name to an extra-cosmic anomaly, and that we, knowing nothing of the latter, find — each man his God — within himself in his own personal, and at the same time,

impersonal Avalokiteswara. And now — farewell. And if it is so decreed that we should correspond no more, remember me with the same sincere good feeling as you will ever be remembered by,

 H.

 

Letter 83 Table of Contents

Letter No. 83

Received London, October 8th, 1883.

A temporary absence upon imperative business, prevented for a few days my even knowing anything about your affairs, and it was not until to-day that I had the leisure to give them a thought. Upon reading your letter, the situation presented itself to me in such colours that I concluded to have you immediately given your freedom and so sent you a cable despatch. This was with the object of removing from your mind any feeling of compulsion, moral or otherwise, and of leaving you to either take or reject the further proposals which may come to you from any part of India, at your option. If any consideration could have prompted a different course, it would have been entirely removed by the tone of your letter of August the 16th. The advocacy of the Bengal measure in the present aspect of affairs you think would ruin every prospect of the commercial success of the proposed journal, "The Phoenix cannot possibly as now designed prove a commercial success. And a paper which is a commercial failure can have very little political weight." To persist then, would as you see it, be to lead a number of persons to fruitlessly waste a large sum of money. For "the project thus crippled is pretty effectually stripped of its grand financial possibilities." Still despite all this, you are disposed to go on if I wish it, cast the moral responsibility on me and "swallow the somewhat repulsive pledge."

My friend, you shall do nothing of the sort. The responsibility, notwithstanding all I could, and am willing to do, would fall upon you since you have been given plainly the option in my last letter to you. If henceforth, you have anything more to do with this unfortunate affair, it must be entirely upon your own judgment and responsibility. You have ill comprehended the Law of Karma — (and my letter) — if you could have imagined that I would dare to provoke its awful retaliations by forcing you or anyone to take up a line of action with such feelings in his heart. Knowing you, it was easy to foresee your — (nay, the feelings of any honourable man having to face such a situation) — repulsion for the work contemplated. Therefore, had I taken great care to impress upon you, in my letter that you were entirely and absolutely free in your choice. I blame myself for but one thing, viz., my having hinted at the probable consequence of your refusal, — as implied in my pledge to the Chohan to thenceforward abstain from collaboration with Europeans until some future and more favourable time. It was that which caused you "to swallow the repulsive pledge" more than anything said. This goes to my Karma. But, this aside, by referring to my last letter, you will perceive that the necessity for independent, unbiased action on your part was strongly urged. I hoped — even against the disheartening moral condition of my countrymen, and forced myself almost to believe it possible to found a journal so obviously necessary at this great crisis, upon a basis thoroughly satisfactory to you and to all who might be concerned. I had forgotten that external appearance is everything in your world and that I was simply subjecting you to be regarded with contempt. But rest assured: had the money been collected as first attempted, and no pressure of working in a certain direction had been offered to you; and had you been left entirely your own master in the line of policy pursued; yet at this hour of bitter hatred, of mutual malice and contempt, the mere fact that you were advocating the cause of the despised, and now more than ever hated and crushed down "nigger" — would have stripped The Phoenix of even a shadow of any "grand financial possibility." Still hardly a month ago I was so confident — from seeing the still deep, strong feelings lurking in the national soul — that I allowed you to grow equally and even more confident than myself. Others, whose intuition and foresight had not been blinded by their superiors, thought differently and some would have dissuaded me; yet, the aim being so worthy, and the possibility really existing, I was permitted to watch the project and use natural external means to aid its consummation. If indefinite waiting were practicable for you, the original scheme could be realized; but this is not so, and I must, therefore, withdraw the last appearance of constraint upon your free judgment, and thank you for having so loyally seconded the attempt to do good to India, even at the cost of your feelings and pecuniary interests. I should be most unwilling, apart from the rule of our Order as regards Karma, to draw you into a position where I could not recompense you in any way for loss of social prestige or financial disappointments. To do that is beyond my power. I could not look at you, if you were hourly feeling that you were regarded no better than a "blackguard," and had "no political weight with Society at large on the score of Character." If your lot was to be cast in with ours, such considerations would not weigh one moment. To all, whether Chohan or chela, who are obligated workers among us the first and last consideration is whether we can do good to our neighbour, no matter how humble

Again, besides yourself the contributors to capital must be justly dealt by. Among them are wealthy Zemindars, but there are also poor patriots, who have made great exertions to subscribe their small sums from pure reverence to us and love of mother-land. At least fifty such are waiting the latest turn of events, and husbanding their resources until the last moment before sending on their remittances to Calcutta. Devoted Theosophists in various parts of India have been actively soliciting for subscriptions, upon the theory of possible profit to capital set forth in Mr. Morgan's circulars; the project has been warmly advocated by Olcott, Colonel Gordon, Norendro, and others known and unknown to you: a financial disaster to The Phoenix of the nature you anticipate would compromise the personal influence of all. With such prospects, moreover, your late co-adjutor Mr. Dare, would not care to help you even though Mr. Allen should permit him. And, finally, unless your personal faith in me were so blind as to swallow up your last instinct of prudence, you would not risk your own hard-earned capital in a fore-doomed failure, and so could not in conscience allow anyone else to do it. Except — except you were allowed to "cast the moral responsibility upon me"; in short, to make me by miracle — were that possible — force a success. If that had been permitted, the journal would have been already founded, and its voice have made itself heard amid the harsh din of contemporary Indian affairs.

I would have phrased my dispatch of to-day even stronger but that I should, by telling you to abandon the affair, again assume the responsibility of blocking your free-will. It is best that you should give the Bengal party the chance to state their conditions definitely and finally, and thereupon answer "yes" or "no." To save your time and expense I asked Olcott to cause Norendro Babu to send him the Landholders' proposals, that he may, upon the instant — knowing your views and character — say whether they are fit to lay before you or not. And if not, that he will immediately communicate with your Calcutta solicitors, as you requested.

This is the present situation of affairs and very bad it is for India. It is premature as yet to tell you more of the secret influence that has brought it on, but you may hear of it later. Nor may I forecast the future, except so far as to draw more than ever your attention to the black clouds that are gathering over the political sky. You know I told you long ago to expect many and great disturbances of all kinds as one cycle was closing and the other beginning its fateful activities. You already see in the seismological phenomena of late occurrence some of the proof; you will see a great many more and shortly. And if we have to regret the blasting of a humanitarian project, it should at least mitigate the severity of your disappointment to feel that in a bad time like this one has to contend against seen and unseen influences of the most hostile nature.

And now, a pleasanter word before concluding. Your decision to follow my lead into the Phoenix matter even with the, to you, certainty of social degradation and pecuniary loss, had the reward of its Karma already. So I conclude, at any rate, by the results. Though there was no test — (so odious to you) — meant, yet you were as good as tested and you have not quailed. The fiat of contingent non-intercourse between us has been partially revoked. The prohibition with regard to other Europeans is as strict as ever, but in your case it is removed. And this consent, I know, has a direct bearing upon your consent — the great sacrifice of your personal feelings in the present situation. "This Peling" was found to have "really redeeming qualities!" But be warned, my friend, that this is not the last of your probations. It is not I who create them, but yourself — by your struggle for light and truth against the world's dark influences. Be more careful as to what you say upon forbidden topics. The "eighth sphere" mystery is a very confidential subject, and you are far from understanding even its general aspect. You were repeatedly warned and should not have mentioned it. You have unintentionally brought ridicule upon a solemn matter. I have nought to do with the Replies to Mr. Myers, but, you may recognise in them, perhaps, the brusque influence of M.

K. H.

I am advised to request that, for the future, communications intended for me may be sent thro' either Damodar or Henry Olcott. Madam B's discretion is not improving in ratio with her physiological enfeeblement.

Letter 84 Table of Contents

Letter No. 84

Private

My dear friend —

The enclosure is to be transmitted to the L.L.T.S. through you in your capacity of Vice-President of the Parent Society and therefore representative of the President Founder, not as member of the Branch at London.

The recent occurrences in which you have borne a part not altogether pleasant, may be distressing to some and tiresome to others, yet it is better so than that the old paralytic calm should have continued. An outbreak of fever in the human body is nature's evidence that she is trying to expel the seeds of disease and perhaps death anteriorily absorbed. As things were, the London Branch was but vegetating and the vast possibilities of psychic evolution in Britain were completely untried. Karma evidently required that the repose should be broken by the agency of the one most responsible for it — C. C. Massey, and so it was he who brought Mrs.

K. to her present position. She has not accomplished her object, but Karma has its own; henceforth the London group aroused, stimulated and warned, have a clear field in which to exercise their activities. Your own karma my friend, destines you to play a still more conspicuous part in European theosophical affairs than you have yet. Olcott's forthcoming visit will result in important developments, in whose out-working you are to have a hand. My desire is that you should be gathering together all the reserved forces of your being so that you may rise to the dignity and importance of the crisis. However little you may seem to achieve — psychically — in this birth, remember that your interior growth proceeds every instant, and that toward the end of your life as in your next birth your accumulated merit shall bring you all you aspire to.

It is not politic that H. S. Olcott should be exclusively your guest during his whole stay in Britain; his time should be divided between yourself and others of various opinions — should they wish to invite him for a short time. He will be accompanied by Mohini, whom I have chosen as my chela and with whom I sometimes communicate directly. Treat the boy kindly, forgetting he is a Bengalee, and only remembering he is now my chela. Do what you can to dignify Olcott's office; for he represents the entire Society, and by reason of his official position, if for no other, stands with Upasika, closest to ourselves in the chain of Theosophical work.

Assirvaclam.

K. H.

Letter 85 Table of Contents

Letter No. 85

To One of the Vice-Presidents or Councillors of "The London Lodge," Theosophical Society, from K.H.

To the Members of the "London Lodge," Theosophical Society, —

Friends and Opponents,

I have just ordered two telegrams to be sent to Mrs. A. Kingsford and Mr. A. P. Sinnett to notify both that the former should continue to be the President of the "London Lodge" Theos. Society.

This is not the desire alone of either of us two, known to Mr. Sinnett, or of both, but the express wish of the Chohan Himself. Mrs. Kingsford's election is not a matter of personal feeling between ourselves and that lady but rests entirely on the advisability of having at the head of the Society, in a place like London, a person well suited to the standard and aspirations of the (so far) ignorant (of esoteric truths) and therefore, malicious public. Nor is it a matter of the slightest consequence whether the gifted President of the "London Lodge" Theos. Soc. entertains feelings of reverence or disrespect toward the humble and unknown individuals at the head of the Tibetan Good Law, — or the writer of the present, or any of his Brothers — but rather a question whether the said lady is fitted for the purpose we have all at heart, namely the dissemination of TRUTH through Esoteric doctrines, conveyed by whatever religious channel, and the effacement of crass materialism and blind prejudices and skepticism. As the lady has rightly observed, the Western public should understand the Theosophical Society to be "a Philosophical School constituted on the ancient Hermetic basis" — that public having never heard of the Tibetan, and entertaining very perverted notions of the Esoteric Buddhist System. Therefore, and so far, we agree with the remarks embodied in the letter written by Mrs. K. to Madam B. and which the latter was asked to "submit to K.H."; and, we would remind our members of the "L.L." in this reference, that Hermetic Philosophy is universal and unsectarian, while the Tibetan School, will ever be regarded by those who know little, if anything of it, as coloured more or less with sectarianism. The former knowing neither caste, nor colour, nor creed, no lover of Esoteric wisdom can have any objection to the name, which otherwise he might feel, were the Society to which he belongs to be placarded with a specific denomination pertaining to a distinct religion. Hermetic Philosophy suits every creed and philosophy and clashes with none. It is the boundless ocean of Truth, the central point whither flows and wherein meet every river, as every stream — whether its source be in the East, West, North, or South. As the course of the river depends upon the nature of its basin, so the channel for communication of Knowledge must conform itself to surrounding circumstances. The Egyptian Hierophant, the Chaldean Mage, the Arhat, and the Rishi, were bound in days of yore on the same voyage of discovery and ultimately arrived at the same goal though by different tracks. There are even at the present moment three centres of the Occult Brotherhood in existence, widely separated geographically, and as widely exoterically — the true esoteric doctrine being identical in substance though differing in terms; all aiming at the same grand object, but no two agreeing seemingly in the details of procedure. It is an every day occurrence to find students belonging to different schools of occult thought sitting side by side at the feet of the same Guru. Upasika (Madam B.) and Subba Row, though pupils of the same Master, have not followed the same Philosophy — the one is Buddhist and the other an Adwaitee. Many prefer to call themselves Buddhists not because the word attaches itself to the ecclesiastical system built upon the basic ideas of our Lord Gautama Buddha's philosophy, but because of the Sanskrit word "Buddhi" — wisdom, enlightenment; and as a silent protest to the vain rituals and empty ceremonials, which have in too many cases been productive of the greatest calamities. Such also is the origin of the Chaldean term Mage.

Thus it is plain that the methods of Occultism, though in the main unchangeable, has yet to conform to altered times and circumstances. The state of the general Society of England — quite different from that of India, where our existence is a matter of common and, so to say, of inherent belief among the population, and in a number of cases of positive knowledge — requires quite a different policy in the presentation of Occult Sciences. The only object to be striven for is the amelioration of the condition of MAN by the spread of truth suited to the various stages of his development and that of the country he inhabits and belongs to. TRUTH has no ear-mark and does not suffer from the name under which it is promulgated — if the said object is attained. The constitution of the "L. Lodge, Theos. Society," affords ground of a hope for the right method being put in operation before long. It is well known that a magnet would cease to be a magnet if it's poles cease to be antagonistic. Heat on one side should be met by frost on the other, and the resulting temperature will be healthy to all people. Mrs. Kingsford and Mr. Sinnett are both useful, both needed and appreciated by our revered Chohan and Master, — just because they are the two poles calculated to keep the whole body in magnetic harmony, as the judicious disposal of both will make an excellent middle ground to be attained by no other means; one correcting and equilibrising the other. The direction and the good services of both is necessary for the steady progress of the Theosophical Society in England. But both cannot be Presidents. Mrs. Kingsford's views being at the bottom (minus the details) identical with those of Mr. Sinnett in matters of Occult philosophy; and, by reason of their association with the names and symbols familiar to Christian ears and eyes, they falling in better than those of Mr. Sinnett with the actual bent of English national intelligence and spirit of conservatism. Mrs. K. is thus more adapted to lead the movement successfully in England. Therefore, if our advice and desire are of any account with the members of the "London Lodge" — she will have to occupy the Presidential Chair for the ensuing year, at any rate. Let the members under her leadership resolutely try to live down the unpopularity which all esoteric teaching and all reform are sure to attract at the outset and they will succeed. The Society will be a great help to, and a great power in, the world, as well as a secure channel for the flow of its President's philanthropy. Her constant and not altogether unsuccessful strife in the cause of anti-vivisection and her staunch advocacy of vegetarianism are alone sufficient to entitle her to the consideration of our Chohans as of all true Buddhists and Adwaitees — hence our Maha-Chohan's preference in this direction. But, as the services of Mr. Sinnett in the good cause are great indeed — far greater, so far, than of any Western Theosophist — therefore, a new arrangement is found advisable.

It seems necessary for a proper study and correct understanding of our Philosophy and the benefit of those whose inclination leads them to seek esoteric knowledge from the Northern Buddhist Source; and in order that such teaching should not be even virtually imposed or offered to those Theosophists who may differ from our views, that an exclusive group composed of those members who desire to follow absolutely the teachings of the School to which we, of the Tibetan Brotherhood, belong, should be formed under Mr. Sinnett's direction and within the "London Lodge T.S." Such is, in fact, the desire of the Maha Chohan. Our last year's experience amply shows the danger of so recklessly submitting our sacred doctrines to the unprepared world. We expect, therefore, and are resolved to urge, if necessary more caution than ever from our followers in the exposition of our secret teachings. Consequently many of the latter which Mr. Sinnett and his fellow-students may from time to time receive from us, will have to be kept entirely secret from the world — if they would have us give them our help in that direction.

I need hardly point out how the proposed arrangement is calculated to lead to a harmonious progress of the "L.L. T.S." It is a universally admitted fact that the marvellous success of the Theosophical Society in India is due entirely to its principle of wise and respectful toleration of each other's opinions and beliefs. Not even the President-Founder has the right directly or indirectly to interfere with the freedom of thought of the humblest member, least of all to seek to influence his personal opinion. It is only in the absence of this generous consideration, that even the faintest shadow of difference arms seekers after the same truth, otherwise earnest and sincere, with the scorpion-whip of hatred against their brothers, equally sincere and earnest. Deluded victims of distorted truth, they forget, or never knew, that discord is the harmony of the Universe. Thus in the Theos. Society, each part, as in the glorious fugues of the immortal Mozart, ceaselessly chases the other in harmonious discord on the paths of Eternal progress to meet and finally blend at the threshold of the pursued goal into one harmonious whole, the key-note in nature [Sanskrit characters for "Sat."] Absolute justice makes no difference between the many and the few. Therefore, while thanking the majority of the "L.L" Theosophists for their "loyalty" to us their invisible teachers, we must at the same time, remind them that their President, Mrs. Kingsford, is loyal and true also — to that which she believes to be the Truth. And, as she is thus loyal and true to her convictions, however small the minority that may side with her at present, the majority led by Mr. Sinnett, our representative in London, cannot with justice charge her with the guilt, which since she has emphatically disclaimed all intention of breaking the letter or the spirit of Article VI of the Rules of the Parent Theos. Society (which please see and read) — is one only in the eyes of those who would be rather too severe. Every Western Theosophist should learn and remember, especially those of them who would be our followers — that in our Brotherhood, all personalities sink into one idea — abstract right and absolute practical justice for all. And that, though we may not say with the Christians, "return good for evil"

 we repeat with Confucius — "return good for good; for evil — JUSTICE." Thus, the Theosophists of Mrs. K.'s way of thinking, — were they even to oppose some of us personally to the bitter end, — are entitled to as much respect and consideration (so long as they are sincere) from us and their fellow-members of opposite views, as those who are ready with Mr. Sinnett to follow absolutely but our special teaching. A dutiful regard for these rules in life will always promote the best interests of all concerned. It is necessary for the parallel progress of the groups under Mrs. K. and Mr. S. that neither should interfere with the beliefs and rights of the other. And it is seriously expected that both of them will be actuated by an earnest and sleepless desire to respect the philosophical independence of each other, while preserving at the same time their unity as a whole namely the objects of the Parent Theos. Society in their integrity — and those of the London Lodge, in their slight modification. We wish the London Society should preserve its harmony in division like the Indian Branches where the representatives of all the different schools of Hinduism seek to study Esoteric Sciences and the Wisdom of old, without necessarily giving up for it their respective beliefs. Each Branch, often members of the same Branch — Christian converts included in some cases — study esoteric philosophy each in his own way, yet always knitting together brotherly hands for the furtherance of the common objects of the Society. To carry out this programme, it is desirable that the "London Lodge" should be administered by, at least, fourteen Councillors — one half openly inclining towards the Christian Esotericism as represented by Mrs. K., and the other half following Buddhist Esotericism as represented by Mr. S; all important business to be transacted by majority of votes. We are well aware of and quite alive to the difficulties of such an arrangement. Yet, it seems absolutely necessary in order to re-establish the lost harmony. The constitution of the "London Lodge" has to be amended and can be so amended if the members would but try; and so bring about more strength in such friendly division than in forced unity.

Unless, therefore, both Mrs. Kingsford and Mr. Sinnett agree to disagree in details and work in strict unison for the chief objects as laid down in the Rules of the Parent Society, we can have no hand in the future development and progress of the London Lodge.

K. H.

December 7th, 1883,

Mysore.

Letter 86 Table of Contents

Letter No. 86

Received January, 1884.

Good friend, I take you at your word. In one of your recent letters to the "O.L." you express your readiness to follow my advice in almost anything I may ask you. Well — the time has come to prove your willingness. And since, in this particular case, I myself am simply carrying out the wishes of my Chohan, I hope you will not experience too much difficulty in sharing my fate by doing — as I do. "Fascinating" Mrs, K. has to remain President — jusqu'a nouvel ordre. Nor — can I conscientiously, — after reading her apologetic letter to H.P.B. — say that I do not side with her in much she has to say in her excuse. Of course much of it is — after-thought; still her very eagerness to retain her post contains good hope for the future of the London Lodge, especially if you help me by carrying out the spirit of my instructions. Thus, the London Theos. Soc. will be no more "a tail for her to wag" at her own sweet pleasure and fancy, but she will become herself part and parcel of that "tail" — and, the more she helps to wag it — the better such activity for your Society. Minute explanations would be rather too long and tedious a job. Suffice that you should know that her anti­vivisection struggle and her strict vegetarian diet have won entirely over to her side our stern Master. He cares less than we do for any outward — or even inward — expression or feeling of disrespect to the "Mahatmas." Let her do her duty by the Society, be true to her principles and all the rest will come in good time. She is very young, and her personal vanity and other womanly short-comings are to be laid at the door of Mr. Maitland and the Greek chorus of her admirers.

The enclosed paper is to be delivered by you sealed to one of the Councillors or Vice-Presidents of your Society — Mr. C. C. Massey, I believe, would be the best fitted person for the task, as he is the sincere friend of both parties concerned. The choice is left to your own discretion and judgment, however. All that you are asked to insist upon is that it should be read before a general meeting composed of as many theosophists as you can gather, and at the earliest opportunity. It contains and carries within its folds, and characters a certain occult influence that ought to reach as many theosophists as possible. What it is you may, perhaps, gather hereafter from its direct and indirect effects. Meanwhile — read and seal it; and allow no one to put the indiscreet question whether you have taken note of its contents, for you will have to keep the knowledge secret. In case the condition should appear to you dangerous, as it might necessitate a denial of fact — better leave it alone and unread. Fear not, I am there to watch over your interests. At all events the programme is as follows: the memo written by your humble correspondent must be read to the Theosophists assembled in solemn meeting and preserved in the Society's records. It contains a statement of our views in regard to the questions raised concerning its management and basis of work. Our sympathy with it will depend upon the carrying out of the programme therein contained and laid down after mature thought.

To turn to a few of your philosophical questions — (being on my way, I cannot answer them all). It is difficult to perceive what relations you wish to establish between the different stages of subjectivity in Deva Chan and the various states of matter. If it be supposed that in Deva Chan the Ego passes through all these states of matter, then the answer would be that existence in the seventh state of matter is Nirvana and not Devachanic conditions. Humanity, although in different stages of development, yet belongs to the three dimensional condition of matter. And there is no reason why in Deva Chan the Ego should be varying its "dimensions."

Molecules occupying a place in infinity is an inconceivable proposition. The confusion arises out of the Western tendency of putting an objective construction upon what is purely subjective. The book of Khiu-te teaches us that space is infinity itself. It is formless, immutable and absolute. Like the human mind, which is the exhaustless generator of ideas, the Universal Mind or Space has its ideation which is projected into objectivity at the appointed time; but space itself is not affected thereby. Even your Hamilton has shown that infinity can never be conceived by any series of additions. Whenever you talk of place in infinity, you dethrone infinity and degrade its absolute, unconditioned character.

What has the number of incarnations to do with the shrewdness, cleverness, or the stupidity of an individual?

A strong craving for physical life may lead an entity through a number of incarnations and yet these may not develop its higher capacities. The Law of Affinity acts through the inherent Karmic impulse of the Ego, and govern its future existence. Comprehending Darwin's Law of Heredity for the body, it is not difficult to perceive how the birth-seeking Ego may be attracted at the time of rebirth to a body born in a family which has the same propensities as those of the reincarnating Entity.

You need not regret that my restriction should include Mr. C. C. Massey. One point righted and explained would but lead to other still darker points ever arising in his suspicious, restless mind. He is a bit of a misanthrope your friend. His mind is clouded with black doubt, and his psychological state is pitiable. All the brighter intentions are being stifled, his Buddhic (not Buddhistic) evolution checked. Take care for him, if he will not — of himself! The prey of illusions of his own creation, he is slipping down towards a deeper depth of spiritual misery, and it is possible that he may seek asylum from the world and himself within the pale of a theology which he would once have passionately scorned. Every lawful effort has been tried to save him, especially by Olcott, whose warm brotherly love has prompted him to make to his heart the warmest appeals

— as you know. Poor, poor, deluded man! My letters are written by H.P.B., and he has no doubt I got "defrauded Mr. Kiddle's" ideas out of her head! But let him rest as he is.

Our friend, Samuel Ward, regrets his friend Ellis's discomfiture; it should concern me and I must see, I suppose, when I return if a pair of horns — the "coveted horns" may not be picked up by some caravan, where dropped naturally by the animal. Unless in this way, "Uncle Sam" could not fairly expect me to help him out: for you would not have me shoulder a rifle and leave "Esoteric Buddhism" behind me at the foot of the chamois-crags!

I am sorry you took the trouble of posting me about Bradlaugh. I know him and his partner well. There is more than one trait in his character I esteem and respect. He is not immoral; nor could anything that might be said against or for him by Mrs. K. or even yourself, change or even influence my opinion of both himself and Mrs. Besant. Yet the book published by them — "The Fruits of Philosophy" is infamous and highly pernicious in its effects whatever and however beneficent and philanthropic the objects that led to the publication of the work. I regret — very deeply, my dear friend, to be obliged to differ widely in my views upon the said subject from you. I would rather avoid the unpleasant discussion. As usual, H.P.B. blundered greatly in rendering what she was told to say to Mrs. K., but on the whole she gave it out correctly. I have not read the work — nor ever will; but I have its unclean spirit, its brutal aura before me, and I say again in my sight the advices offered in the work are abominable; they are the fruits of Sodom and Gommorah rather than of Philosophy, the very name of which it degrades. The sooner we leave the subject — the better.

And now I have to go. The journey before me is long and tedious and the mission nearly hopeless. Yet some good will be done.

Yours ever sincerely,

K. H.

Letter 87 Table of Contents

Letter No. 87

[The words "From Bhola Deva Sarma" are written on the envelope of this letter which was posted

at Adyar, 16th January, 1884, and received in London, February 7th, 1884. The postscript only is

in K.H.'s writing. — ED.]

To, the London Lodge, Theosophical Society — Greeting.

Since the telegrams to Mrs. Kingsford and Mr. Sinnett and my letter from Mysore have not been fully understood, I was ordered by the Maha-Chohan to advise the postponement of the annual election, so as to avoid anything like precipitancy and gain time for the consideration of this letter. After the cold reception given by the members of the L.L.T.S. on December the 16th to the proposal contained on page 29 of the printed and confidential circular of Mrs. Kingsford and Mr. Maitland (in the latter's Remarks and Propositions), namely the necessity of forming a distinct body or group within the general group of the L.L.T.S. — which proposition, if not identical in its suggested practical method, is so in substance with that thrown out by me in my letter of December 7th — on the one hand, and certain misconceptions, false hopes and displeasure on the other — the postponement was found absolutely necessary.

As implied in my last, at the date of the above communication the burning question was not as to the literal or allegorical character of Mr. Sinnett's latest work but the loyalty or disloyalty of your President and her co­worker towards ourselves, whom many of you have seen fit to choose as your esoteric Teachers. From such a standpoint, and no other complaint having been lodged at that time (October 21st), an imperative necessity arose to maintain, in the wise words of Mrs. Kingsford — themselves but the echo of the Tathagatha's own voice — the policy of dissociating "the authority of names, whether in the past or in the present, from abstract principles." (Inaugural Address of the President, October 21st, 1883). The question involved being that of justice, Mrs. Kingsford's ignorance of our real character, our doctrines and status (underlying as they do all her uncomplimentary remarks in connection with the present writer and his colleagues) made them of not even the weight of a flake of cotton in the matter of her re-election. This, coupled with her own intrinsic and individual worth and her charity to the poor brutes as also the fact of her asking Madam H. P. Blavatsky to "submit my (her) letter to Koothoomi" — made the former course the proper one.

And now, the development of events since the despatch of the telegrams in question, will have perhaps suggested to some of you the true reasons for so unusual, not to say arbitrary, an action as an interference with the reserved elective rights of a Branch. Time often neutralizes the gravest evils by hastening a crisis. Moreover, and once more in the language of her address,-- (your President referring to a private letter of mine to Mr. Ward, which she had read, wherein I wrote, as she thinks) "in evident ignorance of the facts, and this is not wonderful" — we may be supposed to have been likewise ignorant of the forthcoming printed "Letter, private and confidential" circulated among the members of the L.L.T.S. on December the 16th. Thus she need hardly be surprised to find that this "Letter" has greatly altered the case. Always on the strength of the principle of impartial justice involved, we find ourselves obliged not to ratify literally our decision as to her re-election but to add to it certain clauses and make it henceforth impossible for the President and members to misconceive our mutual position. Far from our thoughts may it ever be to erect a new hierachy for the future oppression of a priest-ridden world. As it was our wish then to signify to you that one could be both an active and useful member of the Society without inscribing himself our follower or co-religionist, so is it now. But it is just because the principle has to work both ways, that (our personal desire for her re-election notwithstanding) we feel and would have it known that we have no right to influence the free will of the members in this or any other matter. Such interference would be in flagrant contradiction to the basic law of esotericism that personal psychic growth accompanies pari passu the development of individual effort, and is the evidence of acquired personal merit. Moreover, a great discrepancy is observable in the reports to us of the effects produced by the "Kingsford — Sinnett incident" upon the members. In the face of this I find it impossible to accede to Mrs. Kingsford's several desires as expressed in her letters to Madam Blavatsky. If Mr. Massey and Mr. Ward give the lady their "entire approbation and sympathy" a very large majority of members seem to give theirs to Mr. Sinnett. Therefore, were I to act up to Mr. Massey's suggestion as reported by Mrs. Kingsford in her letter of December 20th in which she gives as his opinion that "a word only from Mahatma K.H. would be quite sufficient to reconcile Mr. Sinnett to my (the lady's) view of the matter and to establish between him and the Lodge the most perfect cordiality and understanding" — I would be actually making myself the quasi Pope she deprecates and an unjust and an arbitrary one besides. I would then truly lay myself and Mr. Sinnett open to just criticism, even more severe than that found in her inaugural address, in the several remarkable utterances wherein she affirms her "mistrust of all appeals to authority." One who has just said: "I look with sorrow and concern on the growing tendency of the Theosophical Society to introduce into its methods . . . the exaggerated veneration for persons and personal authority . . . the veritable outcome of which is a mere servile hero-worship . . . . . There is far too much talk among us about the Adepts our 'MASTERS' and the like. . . . Too much capital is made of their sayings and doings, etc. . . ."

— should not have asked me for such interference even though sure that my faithful friend, Mr. Sinnett, would not have resented it. Were I to have acceded to the lady's desire to appoint her as the "Apostle of Eastern and Western Esotericism" and try to force her election on even one unwilling member, and taking advantage of Mr. Sinnett's never wavering warm regard for myself, influence his future attitude toward herself and the movement, I would then indeed deserve to be taunted as "the oracle of the Theosophists" and classed with "Jo Smith of the Latter-Day-Saints, and Thomas Lake Harris," the transcendental miscegenist of two worlds. I cannot believe that one who maintained only a few days previously that "our wise and truly theosophical course is not to set up new Popes and proclaim new Lords and Masters" — should now in her own case seek the protection and evoke the aid of an "authority," which could only assert itself upon the hypothesis of a blind surrender of private judgment. And, as I prefer to attribute Mrs. Kingsford's desire to her ignorance of the real feeling of some of her colleagues, the nature of which is perhaps disguised now under the polished insincerities of civilized Western life, — I would recommend her and others interested in the present dispute to appeal to the decision of the ballot, by which all may express their wishes without invidiously exposing themselves to the charge of discourtesy. This would be but to take advantage of the privilege given to them at the close of Art. 3 of their Rules.

And now for another consideration. However little we might care for personal subserviency to us, the accepted leaders of the Founders of the Parent Theososphical Society, we can never approve or tolerate disloyalty in any member of whatsoever Branch to the fundamental principles represented by the Parent Organization. The rules of the mother-body must be lived up to by those composing its Branches; provided of course, that they do not transcend the three declared objects of the organization. The experience of the Parent Society proves that the usefulness of a Branch very largely, if not entirely, depends upon the loyalty, discretion and zeal of its President and Secretary; however much their colleagues may do to assist them, the efficient activity of their group develops proportionately with that of those officers.

In conclusion I must repeat that it is to prevent action in the matter of Mrs. Kingsford's re-election until the effacement of any misapprehension produced by my previous communications, that I have advised the annual election of office-bearers of your Lodge to stand over until the arrival of the present letter. Moreover, as the President-Founder — who knows our mind and has our confidence — is expected to be in England in a very short time, we do not see the necessity of taking any hasty steps in the matter. He has been given such a general view of the situation as will enable him to deal impartially with this case and others upon his arrival, as the representative at once of his Master and of the best interests of the Society.

(By order of my Most Venerated Guru Deva Mahatma K [picture of triangle with point inside])

[Sanskrit characters]

It would be wise to read this letter to the members — including Mrs. Kingsford — before the new day of election. I would have you prevent, if possible, another "coup de theatre." However natural such sensational surprises may be in politics when parties are composed of devotees whose souls rejoice in party intrigue, they are very painful to witness in an association of persons who profess to give themselves up to the most solemn questions affecting human interest. Let meaner natures wrangle if they will; the wise compound their differences in a mutually forbearing spirit.

K. H.

Mr. Maitland's Remarks and Observations on Esoteric Buddhism are fully answered by Subba Row and another still greater scholar. They will be sent next week in pamphlet form, and Mr. Sinnett asked to distribute them among those members especially who may have been affected by the criticism.

Letter 88 Table of Contents

Letter No. 88

Short Note received at Allahabad during stay of Olcott and Bhavani Rao.

My good friend — it is very easy for us to give phenomenal proofs when we have necessary conditions. For instance — Olcott's magnetism after six years of purification is intensely sympathetic with ours — physically and morally is constantly becoming more and more so. Damodar and Bhavani Rao being congenitally sympathetic their auras help — instead of repelling and impeding phenomenal experiments. After a time you may become so — it depends on yourself. To force phenomena in the presence of difficulties magnetic and other is forbidden, as strictly as for a bank cashier to disburse money which is only entrusted to him. Mr. Hume cannot comprehend this. And therefore is "indignant" that the various tests he has secretly prepared for us have all failed. They demanded a tenfold expenditure of power since he surrounded them with an aura not of the purest — that of mistrust, anger, and anticipated mockery. Even to do this much for you so far from the Headquarters would be impossible but for the magnetisms O. and B.R. have brought with them — and I could do no more.

K. H.

P.S. — Perhaps, tho' I could put down for you to-day's date March the 11th, 1882.

Letter 89 Table of Contents

Letter No. 89

Received Allahabad March 24th, 1882.

Private.

Good friend, I will not, in sending forth the letter, reiterate again the many remarks that might be made respecting the various objections which we have the right to raise against Spiritual phenomena and its mediums. We have done our duty; and, because the voice of truth came thro' a channel which few liked, it was pronounced as false, and along with it — Occultism. The time has gone by to argue, and the hour when it will be proved to the world that Occult Science instead of being, in the words of Dr. R. Chambers — "superstition itself," as they may be disposed to think it, will be found the explanation and the extinguisher of all superstitions — is nearby. For reasons that you will appreciate, though at first you will be inclined to consider (in regard to yourself) unjust. I am determined to do that, for once, which hitherto I have never done; namely, to personate myself under another form, and, perhaps — character. Therefore, you need not grudge Eglington the pleasure of seeing me personally, to talk with me, and — be "dumbfounded" by me, and with the results of my visit to him, on board, "The Vega." This will be done between the 21st and the 22nd of this month and, when you read this letter, will be a "vision of the past," — if Olcott sends to you the letter to-day.

"All things being are in mystery; we expound mysteries by mysteries" — you may perhaps say. Well, well; to you as to one forewarned it will not be one; since, for several reasons — one more plausible than the other — I take you into my confidence. One of them is, — to save you a feeling of involuntary envy (the word is queer isn't it?) when you hear of it. As he will see somebody quite different from the real K.H., though it will still be

K.H. — you need not feel like one wronged by your trans-Himalayan friend. Another reason is, to save the poor fellow from the suspicion of boasting; the third and chiefest, though neither least nor last, is, that theosophy and its adherents have to be vindicated at last. Eglington is going home; and, were he upon his return to know nothing of the Brothers, there would be a sore day of trial for poor old H.P.B. and H.S.O. Mr. Hume, twitted us for not appearing to Eglington. He chuckled and defied us to do it before Fern and others. For reasons which he may or may not be able to appreciate — but that you will — we could not or rather would not do so, as long as E. was in India. No less had we very good reasons to forbid H.P.B. to either correspond with him, or take too much notice of him in the Theosophist. But now that he is gone, and will be on the 22nd, hundreds of miles away at sea; and that no suspicion of fraud can be brought against either of them, the time for the experiment has come. He thinks of putting her to test — he will be tested himself.

Thus, my faithful friend and supporter, keep yourself prepared. As I will recommend Eglington to recommend in his turn, to Mrs. Gordon discretion and that the good lady may feel inclined to carry it on too far and take it a la lettre, I furnish you beforehand with a bull for her, calculated to unseal her lips.

Now for Mr. Hume. He has worked for us, and is certainly entitled to our consideration — so far. I would fain have written to him myself, but that the sight of my familiar characters may produce a diversion in his feelings — for the worse — before he goes to the trouble of reading what I have to say. Will you kindly undertake the delicate task of notifying him of what I now write to you? Tell him that there are persons — enemies — who are anxious to catch the "old lady" at CHEATING, to entrap her, so to say, and that for that very reason I am determined to settle the question and have it once for ever at rest. Say to him that profiting by his suggestion and advice I, — K.H., will appear to Eglington in propria persona as in actu at sea, between the 21 and 22 of this month; and that, if successful in bringing the rebel who denies the "Brothers" to his senses, Mrs. Gordon and consort — will be notified of the fact immediately. That's all. We have, waited on purpose to produce our experiment until his departure, and now — WE MEAN TO ACT.

Yours ever,

K. H.

Till the 25th of March, Mr. Sinnett is expected to keep his lips closed as they will be in death — three score

K. H.

{See Occult World, p. 126; also Hints, reprint 1909, pp. 153-79.}

Letter 90 Table of Contents

Letter No. 90

[K.H.'s Comments on this letter are written in ink on the original, and are here printed in bold type.

Unless there is a footnote to the contrary italics indicate that the passage has been underlined by

K.H. — ED.]

University College, London, W.C.,

November 26th, '81.

My dear Sinnett,

I ought to have answered your letter before this, but deferred doing so till I had had the pleasure of a conversation with Mrs. Sinnett. This I have had, and greatly to my enjoyment. She is, as you led me to expect, thoroughly convinced of the reality of what she has seen and heard. Like me, she does not know what to make of the last departure, I mean in respect of my spirit-experiences. I really do not know what to say about it. There is no way of harmonizing facts with the claim made: and to your belief that 'The Brothers cannot be ignorant . . . cannot be mistaken,' I can only reply that they most undoubtedly are both in respect of me. (1) This, however, would merely be my opinion, were it not that I have an unbroken chain of documentary and other evidence extending in absolute sequence from the first time Imperator appeared down to yesterday. These are all dated communications, notes, and records which speak for themselves, and which in substance can be attested by the knowledge of my friends who have been concerned with me all thro' this matter.

When the old lady first hinted at some connexion between the "Lodge" and me, I entered at once into the thing with Imperator and put the case over and over again. Here is one record which I transcribe. Dec. 24, 1876. "I asked some questions respecting a letter from H.P.B. in which she says in reply to one of mine — 'If you are profoundly certain that I have not understood you, both your intuition and mediumship have failed you. . . . I never said that you had mistaken Imperator for another spirit. He is not to be mistaken, once that he is known. He knows and his name be blessed for ever. You want objective proof of the Lodge. Have you not Imperator and can you not ask him whether I speak the truth?'

To this the answer written was long and precise. Among other things is this: — (The first person plural is always used by I.) Why?

"We have already told you that your American friends understand neither your character, nor your training, nor your spiritual experiences . . . So far, from your Intuition having failed you, it has protected you. We are not able to say how (!) far any with whom your correspondent is in communication CAN give her a correct account of you. It is doubtful, so far as we know : though some have the power as Magus. But even he does not understand. (!!) I will try one more honest medium — Eglington, when he is gone; and see whatcomes of it. I will do so much for the Society. His work is other than ours and he is not concerned with your inner life. If any have the power, they have not been willing to exercise it. We do not understand whether it is pretended that we ourselves have given any information. It SEEMS that the hint is conveyed without direct statement. We may say at once clearly that we have at no time held any intercourse with your friend on the subject. She does not know us in any way, and we know nothing of this Lodge or Brotherhood." . . .

(As to my mistaking a personating spirit for Imperator, it was said)

"Assuredly you would not mistake any other spirit for us. It would be impossible. We are what we have revealed ourselves to you: no other; and our name and presence could not be taken by any other. We have been permanently your Guardian, and no other takes our place." No; the 6th principles cannot be shifted.

And so on quite unmistakeably. I may say here that Imperator stated when he first came to me, and many times subsequently that he had been with me all my life, tho' I was not conscious of his presence, till he revealed it — NOT at Mt. Athos most surely!? — but in quite another place and way. The coherent development of my mediumship has been uninterrupted. There is no LACUNA. Now objective mediumship is gone, and my inner spirit-sense is opened. Only yesterday I sought and got from Imper. who was clearly visible and audible to me* [see K.H.'s comments in bold type post. — ED.] exact and precise renewal of what he has so often repeated that I am ashamed to seek a repetition of his assurance. Whatever may be the explanation, rest assured without room for doubt that not only is he not a Brother, but that he knows nothing whatever of any such beings. (1)

Your warning as to my being on the wrong scent if I supposed this were a made up story of the Old Lady's is heeded, one must entertain every sort of theory to account for such a thing: but I should not have been found for years defending her against every kind of calumny if I thought her capable of a mere vulgar fraud.

It will not, however, escape your critical mind that an allegation such as this confronted by such plain and perfect testimony as I bring, must be capable of some sort of proof, if it is to be seriously entertained. It is unfortunately the fact that not only is the claim incompatible with all the facts; but the alleged facts put forward are just those, and only those, made known by me: and the guesses made are so ludicrously wide of truth — as can be shown by evidence not resting on me alone — that it is plain they are mere shots.

That is a destructive criticism from the negative side. Now what positive proof is produced? None. Can any be given? This Brother who cast his eye on me at Mt. Athos and assumed the style and title of Imperator. What did he ever say to me or tell me? When and where did he appear, and what proof can he give of the fact? During a long intercourse such as he claims he can surely produce some positive evidence to rebut the presumption drawn above.

If not any sane person would know what conclusion to draw.

Pardon me for pursuing this subject at length. I see in fact that I am come to a place where two ways meet: and I sadly fear that Fragments of Occult Truth show that Spiritualism and Occultism are incompatible. I should be heartily sorry if you were to waste your time and force over anything that cannot found itself demonstrably on Truth. Hence my desire to have this raked out.

Otherwise I should dismiss it with much contempt. As you say of the Old Lady "just consider the opportunities I have had of forming an opinion."

Hearty good wishes,

Yours ever,

W. Stainton Moses.

* So was Madme. Lebendorff to the Russian child medium. . . . So is Jesus and John the Baptist toEdward Maitland; as true and as honest and sincere as S.M.; though neither knew the other John the Baptist having never heard of Jesus who is a spiritual abstraction and no living man of that epoch. Anddoes not E. Maitland see Hermes the first and second and Elijah, etc. Finally does not Mrs. Kingsford feel as sure as S.M. with regard to + that she saw and conversed with God!!; and that but a fewevenings after she had talked with, and received a written communication from the Spirit of a dog? Read, read Maitland's Soul, etc., once more my friend, see pp. 180, 194, 239, 240, and 267-8-9, etc. Andwho purer or more truthful than that woman or Maitland! Mystery, mystery will you exclaim. IGNORANCE we answer; the creation of that we believe in and want to see.

(1) A Brother? Does he or even yourself know what is understood by the name of Brother? Does he know what we mean by Dhyan Chohans or Planetary Spirits, by the disembodied and embodied Lha?by — but it is and must remain yet for some time a mere vexation of spirit for you all. My letter is private. You may use the arguments but not my authority or name. It will be all explained to you restassured. A living Brother may show himself and be de facto ignorant of many things. But a Spirit, an omniscient Planetary show himself so completely ignorant of what is going round him: mostextraordinary.

Letter 91a Table of Contents

FOOTNOTE:

1. This passage was underlined by S. Moses. — Ed. (return to text)

Letter No. 91a

Received Allahabad, cold weather, 1882-83.

Read the enclosed from C.C.M.; summon to your recollection, and then tell Sinnett the whole truth about the message which I gave you in London about the £100 in Mrs. Billing's and Upasika's presence. Do not forget to state the conditions under which I spoke. Do not let H.P.B. see C.C.M.'s letter but return it to Allahabad with your remarks.

K. H.

Letter 91b Table of Contents

Letter No. 91b

I got out the letters of C.C.M. and yourself and gave the former to Mr. Olcott to answer. Thus one half of the "damaging" accusation is disposed of and explained away naturally enough. Poor woman! Incessantly and intensely engrossed with one ever working thought — the CAUSE and Society — even her carelessness and lack of memory, her forgetfulness and distraction are viewed in the light of criminal acts. I have now again "osmosed" his answer to return it with a few more words of explanation that should come from me.

The deduction of Mr. Massey that "the adept foresight was not available" in sundry noted cases of theosophical failure is but the restatement of the old error that the selections of members and the actions of Founders and Chelas are controlled by us! This has been often denied, and — as I believe — sufficiently explained to you in my Darjeeling letter, but objectors cling to their theory despite all. We have no concern with, nor do we guide the events generally: yet take the series of names he quotes and see that each man was an useful factor toward producing the net result. Hurry-Chund drew the party to Bombay — although they had prepared to go to Madras, which would have been fatal at that stage of the Theosophical movement; Wimbridge and Miss Bates gave an English complexion to the party and caused from the first much good by causing a bitter journalistic assault upon the Founders which brought on reaction; Dayanand stamped the movement with the impress of Aryan nationality; and lastly Mr. Hume — who is already the secret and may well become the open foe of the cause — has aided it greatly by his influence and will promote it more despite himself, by the ulterior results of his defection. In each instance the individual traitor and enemy was given his chance, and but for his moral obliquity might have derived incalculable good from it to his personal Karma.

Mrs. Billing is — a medium, and when that is said all is said. Except this, that among mediums she is the most honest if not the best. Has Mr. Massey seen her answer to Mrs. Simpson, the Boston medium that the questions — very compromising no doubt for the New England prophetess and Seer — should be brought forward as evidence of her guilt? Why — if honest has she not exposed pro bono publico all such false mediums? — may be the question asked. She tried to warn her friends repeatedly; result: "friends" fell off and she herself was regarded in the light of a slanderer, a "Judas." She tried to do so, indirectly, in the case of Miss Cook (junior). Ask Mr. Massey to recollect what were his feelings in 1879, at the time he was investigating the materialization phenomena of that young lady, — when told by Mrs. Billing — guardedly, and by H.P.B., — bluntly, that he was mistaking a piece of white muslin for a "spirit." In your world of maya and kaleidoscopic change of feelings — truth is an article rarely wanted in the market; it has its seasons and very short ones. The woman has more sterling virtues and honesty in her little finger than many of the never distrusted mediums put together. She has been a loyal member of the Society from the time she joined it, and her rooms in New York are the rallying centre where our theosophists meet. Her loyalty, moreover, is one that costs her the regard of many patrons. She also, unless closely watched by "Ski" can turn a traitor — precisely because she is a medium, though it is not likely she would do it — withal she is incapable of either a falsehood or deceit in her normal state.

I cannot control a feeling of repugnance to going into particulars about this, that, and the other phenomenon that may have occurred. They are the playthings of the tyro and if we sometimes have gratified the craving for them (as in Mr. Olcott's and in a lesser degree your own case at the beginning, since we knew what good spiritual growth would come of it) we do not feel called upon to be continually explaining away deceptive appearances, due to mixed carelessness and credulity, or blind skepticism, as the case may be. For the present we offer our knowledge — some portions of it at least — to be either accepted or rejected on its own merits independently — entirely so — from the source from which it emanates. In return, we ask neither allegiance, loyalty, nor even simple courtesy — nay, we rather have nothing of the sort offered since we would have to decline the kind offer. We have in view the good of the whole association of earnest British theosophists and care little for individual opinions or the regard of this or that member. Our four year old experience has sufficiently delineated the future of the best possible relations between ourselves and Europeans to make us still more prudent and less lavish of personal favours. Suffice then for me to say that "Ski" has more than once served as carrier and even mouthpiece for several of us; and that in the case Mr. Massey alludes to, the letter from "a Scotch Brother" was a genuine one to deliver which to him mysteriously we — the "Scotch" Brother included — refused point blank, as, notwithstanding Upasika's passionate prayers to make a few exceptions in favour of C. C. Massey, — (her "best and dearest friend," one whom she loved and trusted so implicitly, that she actually offered to accept one year more of her long, dreary exile and work far away from her final goal would we but consent to gratify him with our presence and teachings — as notwithstanding all this, I say, we were not allowed to waste our powers so ruthlessly. Madame B. was therefore, left to send it by post, or if she preferred it, to go by "Ski" — M. having forbidden her to exercise her own occult means. Surely no crime can be imputed to her — unless absolute and frenzied devotion to a great Idea and those whom she regards as her best and truest friends, may now be imputed as an offence. And now, I hope, I may be relieved of the necessity of going into detailed explanation about the famous Massey-Billing letter affair. Let me only point out to you what is the impression made on anyone with a fair unbiassed mind who would happen to read Mr. Massey's letter and the lame evidence contained therein. (1) No clever medium bent on carrying out a plan of deception previously concocted, would have the idiotic idea of producing, and placing before him with her own hands, any article (minute-book in her case) in which the tricky "phenomenon" was to take place. Had she known that "Ski" placed the letter inside that book there are 99 chances out of 100 that she would not have brought it to him herself. It is over twenty years that she made of mediumship her profession. A fraud and an unscrupulous deceiver in one thing, she must have been in many. Among hundreds of enemies and still more skeptics she passed triumphantly and unscathed the most crucial tests producing the most wonderful mediumistic phenomena. Her husband is the only one — he who ruined to now dishonour her  who accuses her with documentary proof in hand of being a trickster. H.P.B. wrote to him the most violent letters of reproach and insisted upon his expulsion from the Society. He hates her. What's the use of seeking for further motives? (2) Mr. Massey is but half a prophet when telling — he supposes "you will be told that these things were occult forgeries (!)" No; the message on the back of Dr. Wyld's letter is in her own hand­writing, as also the first portion of the letter copied and now quoted by him for your benefit — the most damaging portion in his opinion — and no harm in it as far as I see, and as explained already. She does not want him to know that she used "Ski" whose entity he was known to distrust, the shortcomings and crimes of several other "Skis" having been fathered on the real "Ski," and Mr. Massey unable to recognise one from the other. In her loose, careless way she says: "Let him think what he likes but he must not suspect you have been near him with Ski at your orders." Thereupon, Mrs. B. the "clever impostor" hardened and "experienced in deceit" does precisely that, which she is plainly asked not to do i.e. goes near him and hands to him the very book in which Ski had placed the letter! Very clever; quite so. (3) He argues that, "even if otherwise conceivable (the occult forgery) the later contents of the letter were inconsistent with the supposed object, for it went on to speak of the T.S. and of the adepts with as much apparently genuine devotion etc. etc." Mr. Massey, I see, makes no difference between an "occult" and a common forger such as his legal experience may have made him acquainted with. An "occult" forger a dugpa would have forged the letter precisely in this tone. He would have never become guilty of being carried away by his personal grudge, so as to deprive his letter of its cleverest feature. The T.S. would not be shown by him "a superstructure upon fraud," and it is "the very opposite impression" that is its crown. I say is for half of the letter is a forgery and a very occult one. Mr. Massey may perhaps believe me since it is not that portion which concerns him that is denied (all with the exception of the words "mysterious" and (or some other still more mysterious place") — but "the later portion," just that one which "Billing himself reluctantly admitted" as giving "the very opposite impression." "L.L" is nobody living or dead. Certainly not "Lord Lindsay," since he was not known to H.P.B., nor had she then nor had she ever since the least concern about his "Lordship." This portion bears so much the impression of clumsy fraud upon its face that it could have deceived but one whose mind was already well prepared to see fraud in Mrs. Billing and her "Ski." I have done, and you may show this to your friend Mr. Massey. Whatever his personal opinion about myself and Brothers can in no way influence the promised "teachings" through your friendly agency.

 H.

 

Yours,

Letter 92 Table of Contents

 

Letter No. 92

23-11-82.

P.S.— It may so happen that for purposes of our own, mediums and their spooks will be left undisturbed and free not only to personate the "Brothers" but even to forge our handwriting. Bear this in mind and be prepared for it in London. Unless the message or communication or whatever it may be is preceded by the triple words: "Kin-t-an, Na-landa, Dha-ra-ni." Know it is not me, nor from me.

K.H.

Letter 93 Table of Contents

Letter No. 93

Received in London 1883-84.

{Concerns part of Letter 6}

My good and faithful friend — the explanation herein contained would have never been made but that I have of late perceived how troubled you were during your conversations upon the subject of "plagiarism" with some friends — C.C.M. particularly. Now especially that I have received your last in which you mention so delicately "this wretched little Kiddle incident," to withhold truth from you — would be cruelty; nevertheless, to give it out to the world of prejudiced and malignantly disposed Spiritualists, would be sheer folly. Therefore, we must compromise: I must lay both yourself and Mr. Ward, who shares my confidence, under a pledge never to explain without special permission from me the facts hereinafter stated by me to anyone — not even to M. A. Oxon and C. C. Massey included for reasons I will mention presently and that you will readily understand. If pressed by any of them you may simply answer that the "psychological mystery" was cleared up to yourself and some others; and — IF satisfied — you may add, that "the parallel passages" cannot be called plagiarism or words to this effect. I give to you carte blanche to say anything you like — even the reason why I rather have the real facts withheld from the general public and most of the London Fellows — all except the details you alone with a few others will know. As you will perceive, I do not even bind you to defend my reputation — unless you feel yourself satisfied beyond any doubt, and have well understood the explanation yourself. And now I may tell you why I prefer being regarded by your friends an "ugly plagiarist."

Having been called repeatedly a "sophist," a "myth," a "Mrs. Harris" and a "lower intelligence" by the enemies, I rather not be regarded as a deliberate artificer and a liar by bogus friends — I mean those who would accept me reluctantly even were I to rise to their own ideal in their estimation instead of the reverse — as at present. Personally, I am indifferent, of course, to the issue. But for your sake and that of the Society I may make one more effort to clear the horizon of one of its "blackest" clouds. Let us then recapitulate the situation and see what your Western sages say of it. "K.H." — it is settled — is a plagiarist — if it be, after all a question of K.H. and not of the "two Occidental Humourists." In the former case, an alleged "adept" unable to evolve out of his "small oriental brain" any idea or words worthy of Plato turned to that deep tank of profound philosophy, the Banner of Light, and drew therefrom the sentences best fitted to express his rather entangled ideas, which had fallen from the inspired lips of Mr. Henry Kiddle! In the other alternative, the case becomes still more difficult to comprehend — save on the theory of the irresponsible mediumship of the pair of Western jokers. However startling and impracticable the theory, that two persons who have been clever enough to carry on undetected the fraud of personating for five years several adepts — not one of whom resembles the other; — two persons, of whom one, at any rate, is a fair master of English and can hardly be suspected of paucity of original ideas, should turn for a bit of plagiarism to a journal as the Banner, widely known and read by most English knowing Spiritualists; and above all, pilfer their borrowed sentences from the discourse of a conspicuous new convert, whose public utterances were at the very time being read and welcomed by every medium and Spiritualist; however improbable all this and much more, yet any alternative seems more welcome than simple truth. The decree is pronounced; "K.H.," whoever he is, has stolen passages from Mr. Kiddle. Not only this, but as shewn by "a Perplexed Reader" — he has omitted inconvenient words and has so distorted the ideas he has borrowed as to divert them from their original intention to suit his own very different purpose."

Well, to this, if I had any desire to argue out the question I might answer that of what constitutes plagiarism, being a borrowing of ideas rather than of words and sentences, there was none in point of fact, and I stand acquitted by my own accusers. As Milton says — "such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrower is accounted plagiary." Having distorted the ideas "appropriated," and, as now published — diverted them from their original intention to suit my own "very different purpose," on such grounds my literary larceny does not appear very formidable after all? And even, were there no other explanation offered, the most that could be said is, that owing to the poverty of words at the command of Mr. Sinnett's

correspondent, and his ignorance of the art of English composition, he has adapted a few of innocent Mr. Kiddle's effusions, some of his excellently constructed sentences — to express his own contrary ideas. The above is the only line of argument I have given to, and permitted to be used in, an editorial by the "gifted editor" of the Theosophist, who has been off her head since the accusation. Verily woman — is a dreadful calamity in this fifth race! However, to you and some few, whom you have permission to select among your most trusted theosophists, taking first care to pledge them by word of honour to keep the little revelation to themselves, I will now explain the real facts of this "very puzzling" psychological mystery. The solution is so simple, and the circumstances so amusing, that I confess I laughed when my attention was drawn to it, some time since. Nay, it is calculated to make me smile even now, were it not the knowledge of the pain it gives to some true friends.

The letter in question was framed by me while on a journey and on horse-back. It was dictated mentally, in the direction of, and "precipitated" by, a young chela not yet expert at this branch of Psychic chemistry, and who had to transcribe it from the hardly visible imprint. Half of it, therefore, was omitted and the other half more or less distorted by the "artist." When asked by him at the time, whether I would look it over and correct I answered, imprudently, I confess — "anyhow will do, my boy — it is of no great importance if you skip a few words." I was physically very tired by a ride of 48 hours consecutively, and (physically again) — half asleep. Besides this I had very important business to attend to psychically and therefore little remained of me to devote to that letter. It was doomed, I suppose. When I woke I found it had already been sent on, and, as I was not then anticipating its publication, I never gave it from that time a thought. — Now, I had never evoked spiritual Mr. Kiddle's physiognomy, never had heard of his existence, was not aware of his name. Having — owing to our correspondence and your Simla surroundings and friends — felt interested in the intellectual progress of the Phenomenalists which progress by the bye, I found rather moving backward in the case of American Spiritualists — I had directed my attention some two months previous to the great annual camping movement of the latter, in various directions, among others to Lake or Mount Pleasant. Some of the curious ideas and sentences representing the general hopes and aspirations of the American Spiritualists remained impressed on my memory, and I remembered only these ideas and detached sentences quite apart from the personalities of those who harboured or pronounced them. Hence, my entire ignorance of the lecturer whom I have innocently defrauded as it would appear, and who now raises the hue and cry. Yet, had I dictated my letter in the form it now appears in print, it would certainly look suspicious, and, however far from what is generally called plagiarism, yet in the absence of any inverted commas, it would lay a foundation for censure. But I did nothing of the kind, as the original impression now before me clearly shows. And before I proceed any further, I must give you some explanation of this mode of precipitation. The recent experiments of the Psychic Research Society will help you greatly to comprehend the rationale of this "mental telegraphy." You have observed in the Journal of that body how thought transference is cumulatively affected. The image of the geometrical or other figure which the active brain has had impressed upon it, is gradually imprinted upon the recipient brain of the passive subject — as the series of reproductions illustrated in the cuts show. Two factors are needed to produce a perfect and instantaneous mental telegraphy — close concentration in the operator, and complete receptive passivity in the "reader" — subject. Given a disturbance of either condition, and the result is proportionately imperfect. The "reader" does not see the image as in the "telegrapher's" brain, but as arising in his own. When the latter's thought wanders, the psychic current becomes broken, the communication disjointed and incoherent. In a case such as mine, the chela had, as it were, to pick up what he could from the current I was sending him and, as above remarked, patch the broken bits together as best he might. Do not you see the same thing in ordinary mesmerism — the maya impressed upon the subject's imagination by the operator becoming, now stronger, now feebler, as the latter keeps the intended illusive image more or less steadily before his own fancy? And how often the clairvoyants reproach the magnetiser for taking their thoughts off the subject under consideration? And the mesmeric healer will always bear you witness that if he permits himself to think of anything but the vital current he is pouring into his patient, he is at once compelled to either establish the current afresh or stop the treatment. So I, in this instance, having at the moment more vividly in my mind the psychic diagnosis of current Spiritualistic thought, of which the Lake Pleasant speech was one marked symptom, unwittingly transferred that reminiscence more vividly than my own remarks upon it and deductions therefrom. So to say, (the "despoiled victim's" — Mr. Kiddle's — utterances) came out as a "high light" and were more sharply photographed (first in the chela's brain and thence on the paper before him, a double process and one far more difficult than "thought reading" simply) while the rest, — my remarks thereupon and arguments — as I now find, are hardly visible and quite blurred on the original scraps before me. Put into a mesmeric subject's hand a sheet of blank paper, tell him it contains a certain chapter of some book that you have read, concentrate your thoughts upon the words, and see how — provided that he has himself not read the chapter, but only takes it from your memory — his reading will reflect your own more or less vivid successive recollections of your author's language. The same as to the precipitation by the chela of the transferred thought upon (or rather, into) paper: if the mental picture received be feeble his visible reproduction of it must correspond. And the more so in proportion to the closeness of attention he gives. He might — were he but merely a person of the true mediumistic temperament — be employed by his "Master" as a sort of psychic printing machine producing lithographed or psychographed impressions of what the operator had in mind; his nerve-system, the machine, his nerve-aura the printing fluid, the colours drawn from that exhaustless storehouse of pigments (as of everything else) the Akasa. But the medium and the chela are diametrically dissimilar and the latter acts consciously, except under exceptional circumstances during development not necessary to dwell upon here.

Well, as soon as I heard of the charge — the commotion among my defenders having reached me across the eternal snows — I ordered an investigation into the original scraps of the impression. At the first glance I saw that it was I, the only and most guilty party, — the poor little boy having done but that which he was told. Having now restored the characters and the lines — omitted and blurred beyond hope of recognition by anyone but their original evolver — to their primitive colour and places, I now find my letter reading quite differently as you will observe. Turning to the Occult World — the copy sent by you — to the page cited, (namely p. 149 in the first edition) I was struck, upon carefully reading it, by the great discrepancy between the sentences. A gap, so to say, of ideas between part 1 (from line 1 to line 25) and part 2 — the plagiarized portion so-called. There seems no connection at all between the two; for what has, indeed, the determination of our chiefs (to prove to a skeptical world that physical phenomena are as reducible to law as anything else) to do with Plato's ideas which "rule the world" or "practical Brotherhood of Humanity?" I fear that it is your personal friendship alone for the writer that has blinded you to the discrepancy and disconnection of ideas in this abortive "precipitation," even until now. Otherwise you could not have failed to perceive that something was wrong on that page; that there was a glaring defect in the connection. Moreover, I have to plead guilty to another sin: I have never so much as looked at my letters in print — until the day of the forced investigation. I had read only your own original matter, feeling it a loss of time to go over my hurried bits and scraps of thought. But now, I have to ask you to read the passages as they were originally dictated by me, and make the comparison with the Occult World before you.

I transcribe them with my own hand this once, whereas the letter in your possession was written by the chela. I ask you also to compare this hand-writing with that of some of the earlier letters you received from me. Bear in mind, also the "O.L.'s" emphatic denial at Simla that my first letter had ever been written by myself. I felt annoyed at her gossip and remarks then; it may serve a good purpose now. Alas! by no means are we all "gods"; especially when you remember that since the palmy days of the "impressions" and "precipitations" — "K.H." has been born into a new and higher light, and even that one, in no wise the most dazzling to be acquired on this earth. Verily the Light of Omniscience and infallible Prevision on this earth — that shines only for the highest CHOHAN alone is yet far away from me!

I enclose the copy verbatim from the restored fragments underlining in red [these passages are printed in italics. — ED.] the omited sentences for easier comparison.

(Page 149. — First Edition.)

. . . Phenomenal elements previously unthought of, . . . will disclose at last the secrets of their mysterious workings. Plato was right to readmit every element of speculation which Socrates had discarded. The problems of universal being are not unattainable or worthless if attained. But the latter can be solved only by mastering those elements that are now looming on the horizons of the profane. Even the Spirit[ualis]ts. with their mistaken, grotesquely perverted views and notions are hazily realizing the new situation. They prophesy and their prophecies are not always without a Point of truth in them, of intuitional pre-vision, so to say. Hear some of them reasserting the old, old axiom that "Ideas rule the world"; and as men's minds receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete the world (will) advance; mighty revolutions (will) spring from them; institutions (aye, and even creeds and powers, they may add) — WILL crumble before their onward march crushed by their own inherent force not the irresistible force of the "new ideas" offered by the Spiritualists! Yes; they are both right and wrong. It will be just as impossible to resist their influence when the time comes

as to stay the progress of the tide, — to be sure. But what the Spiritualists fail to perceive, I see, and their "Spirits" to explain (the latter knowing no more than what they can find in the brains of the former) is, that all this will come gradually on; and that before it comes they as well as ourselves, have all a duty to perform, a task set before us: that of sweeping away as much as possible the dross left to us by our pious forefathers. New ideas have to be planted on clean places, for these ideas touch upon the most momentous subjects. It is not physical phenomena or the agency called Spiritualism but these universal ideas that we have precisely to study: the noumenon not the phenomenon, for, to comprehend the LATTER we have first to understand the FORMER. They do touch man's true position in the Universe, to be sure, — but only in relation to his FUTURE not previous births. It is not physical phenomena however wonderful that can ever explain to man his origin let alone his ultimate destiny, or as one of them expresses it — the relation of the mortal to the immortal, of the temporary to the eternal, of the finite to the Infinite, etc., etc. They talk very glibly of what they regard as new ideas "larger, more general, grander, more comprehensive, and at the same time, they recognise instead of the eternal reign of immutable law, the universal reign of law as the expression of a divine will (!). Forgetful of their earlier beliefs, and that "it repented the Lord that he had made Man" these would-be philosophers and reformers would impress upon their hearers that the expression of the said divine Will "is unchanging and unchangeable — in regard to which there is only an ETERNAL NOW, while to mortals (uninitiated?) time is past or future as related to their finite existence on this material plane" — of which they know as little as of their spiritual spheres — a speck of dirt they have made the latter like our own earth, a future life that the true philosopher would rather avoid than court. But I dream with my eyes open. . . . At all events this is not any privileged teachings of their own. Most of these ideas are taken piece-meal from Plato and the Alexandrian Philosophers. It is what we all study and what many have solved. . . . . etc., etc.

This is the true copy of the original document as now restored — the "Rosetta stone" of the Kiddle incident. And, now, if you have understood my explanations about the process, as given in a few words further back,

 

— you need not ask me how it came to pass that though somewhat disconnected, the sentences transcribed by the chela are mostly those that are now considered as plagiarized while the "missing links" are precisely those phrases that would have shown the passages were simply reminiscences if not quotations — the key-note around which came grouping my own reflections on that morning. In those days you were yet hesitating to see in Occultism, or the "O.L.'s" phenomena anything beyond a variety of Spiritualism and mediumship. For the first time in my life I had paid a serious attention to the utterances of the poetical "media," of the so-called "inspirational" oratory of the English and American lecturers, its quality and limitations. I was struck with all this brilliant but empty verbiage, and recognised for the first time fully its pernicious intellectual tendency. M. knew all about them — but since I had never had anything to do with any of them they interested me very little. It was their gross and unsavoury materialism hiding clumsily under its shadowy spiritual veil that attracted my thoughts at the time. While dictating the sentences quoted — a small portion of the many I had been pondering over for some days — it was those ideas that were thrown out en relief the most, leaving out my own parenthetical remarks to disappear in the precipitation. Had I looked over the impressed negative (?) there would have been one more weapon broken in the enemy's hand. Having neglected this duty my Karma evolved, what the mediums of the future and the Banner may call the "Kiddle triumph." The coming ages will divide Society after the manner of your modern Baconians and Shakesperians into two quarrelling camps of partisans, called respectively the "Kiddlites" and the "Koot-humites" who will fight over the important literary problem — "which one of the two plagiarized from the other"? I may be told that meanwhile the American and English spiritualists are gloating over the "Sinnett — K.H." Sedan? May their great orator and champion and they enjoy their triumph in peace and happiness, for no "adept" will ever cast his Himalayan shadow to obscure their innocent felicity. To you and a few other true friends I feel it my duty to give an explanation. To all others I leave the right to regard Mr. Kiddle — whoever he may be — as the inspirer of your humble servant. I have done, and you may now, in your turn, do what you please with these facts, except the making use of them in print or even speaking of them to the opponents, save in general terms. You must understand my reasons for this. One does not cease entirely, my dear friend to be a man nor lose one's dignity for being an adept. In the latter capacity, one, no doubt, remains in every case quite indifferent to the opinion of the outside world. The former always draws the line between ignorant surmise and — deliberate, personal insult. I cannot really be expected to take advantage of the first to be ever hiding the problematic "adept" behind the skirts of the two supposed "humourists"; and as man, I had too much experience lately in such above said insults with Messrs. S. Moses and C. C. Massey to give them any more opportunities to doubt the word of "K.H.", or see in him a vulgar defendant, a kind of guilty, tricky Babu before a panel of stern European jurymen and Judge.

I have no time to answer fully now your last, long business letter, but will shortly. Nor do I answer Mr. Ward

— since it is useless. I highly approve of his coming to India, but disapprove as highly his fancy of bringing Mr. C. C. Massey here. The result of the latter would be to injure the cause among Englishmen. Distrust and prejudice are contagious. His presence in Calcutta would be as disastrous as Mr. Ward's presence and services to the cause I live for would be beneficent and fruitful of good effects. But I would insist upon his passing some time at the Headquarters before his taking up his proposed labour of love among the officials.

 

It is certainly most flattering to hear from him that Mrs. K. "had essayed her best to meet me in one or more of her trances;" and most sad to learn that "though she had invoked you (me) with all her spiritual intensity — she could get no response." It is too bad, really, that this "ladie fair" should have been put to the trouble of a fruitless ramble through space to find insignificant me. Evidently we move in different astral "circles," and hers is not the first instance of persons becoming skeptical as to the existence of things outside their own milieu. There are, you know, "Alps upon Alps" and from no two peaks does one get the same view! Nevertheless, it is, as I say flattering to find her evoking me by name, while preparing for myself and colleagues a disastrous Waterloo. To tell the truth, I was not aware of the former, though painfully conscious of the latter. Yet, had not even the dismal plot ever entered her spiritual mind, to be honest, I do not think I could have ever responded to her call. As an American Spiritualist would put it — there seems to be very little affinity between our two natures. She is too haughty and imperious, too self-complacent for me; besides which she is too young and "fascinating" for a poor mortal like myself. To speak seriously, Mme. Gebhard is quite another sort of person. Her's is a genuine, sterling nature; she is a born Occultist in her intuitions and I have made a few experiments with her — though it is rather M.'s duty than my own, and that, as you would say, it was not "originally contemplated" that I should be made to visit all the sibyls and sirens of the Theosophical establishment. My own preferences make me keep to the safer side of the two sexes in my occult dealings with them, though for certain reasons, even such visits — in my own natural skin — have to be extremely restricted and limited. I enclose a telegram from Mr. Brown to the "O.L." This day week I will be at Madras en route to Singapore and Ceylon, and Burmah. I will answer you through one of the chelas at the Headquarters.

The poor "O.L." in disgrace? Oh dear, no! We have nothing against the old woman with the exception that she is one. To save us from being insulted as she calls it, she is ready to give our real addresses and thus lead to a catastrophe. The real reason is that the hapless creature was too much compromised, too bitterly insulted owing to our existence. It all falls upon her and, therefore, it is but right that she should be screened in some things.

Yes; I would see you, President, if possible. Unless permitted by the Chohan (who forwards you His Blessing) to act on other lines of business — i.e. psychologically I renounce to trust for the rebirth of Phoenix to the good-will of my countrymen. The feeling between the two races is now intensely bitter and anything undertaken by the natives now, is sure to be opposed to the bitter end by the Europeans in India. Let us drop it for a while. I'll answer your questions in my next. If you find time to write for the Theosophist and can induce someone else, as Mr. Myers, for instance — you will oblige me personally. You are wrong in distrusting Subba Row's writings. He does not write willingly, to be sure, but he will never make a false statement. See his last in the November number. His statement concerning the errors of General Cunningham ought to be regarded as a whole revelation leading to a revolution in Indian archaeology. Ten to one — it will never receive the attention it deserves. Why? Simply because his statements contain sober facts, and that what you Europeans prefer generally is fiction so long the latter dovetails with, and answers preconceived theories.

K. H.

The more I think of it, the more reasonable appears to me your plan of a Society within the London Society. Try, for something may come out of it.

Letter 94 Table of Contents

Letter No. 94

My dear friend — Amid the various and arduous labours it has pleased the venerable Chohan to entrust me with — I had entirely forgotten the "Kiddle incident." You have my explanation. In asking you to keep me the secret I only meant the withholding of certain details that, in their ignorance to the scientific process your and my opponents would take exception to, make of it a pretext for poking fun at occult sciences and finally charge me with clumsy lies and yourself with credulity, or "hero-worship" as the golden-haired nymph of the Vicarage puts it. But if you are prepared to stand the fire of furious denial and adverse criticism, make of my letter and explanations the best use you can. The several letters and articles in the last numbers of the Theosophist given out with my permission — by Gen. Morgan, Subba Row and Dharani Dhu may pave the way for you. I would not have "the propagation of Theosophy" impeded on my account and to save my name from a few extra blows.

Yours in haste,

K. H.

{The "letters and explanations" appeared in the December, January, and February numbers of The Theosophist.}

Letter 95 Table of Contents

Letter No. 95

[Letter 95 is the continuation of Letter 18.]

Such a life of infamy. I will try my best to make of him a vegetarian and a teetotaller. Total abstinence from flesh and liquor are very wisely prescribed by Mr. Hume, if he would have good results. In good hands E. will do an immense good to the T.S. in India, but for this, he has through a training of purification. M. had to prepare him for six weeks before his departure otherwise it would have been impossible for me to project into his atmosphere even the reflection of my "double." I told you already, my kind friend, that what he saw was not me. Nor will I be able to project that reflection for you — unless he is thoroughly purified. Therefore, as the matter now stands I have not a word to say against Mr. Hume's conditions as expressed in his last "official" letter, except in congratulating him with all my heart. For the same reason it is impossible for me to answer him and his questions just now. Let him have patience, pray, in the E. matter. There are dirty conspiracies set on foot, and germinating in London, among the spiritualists; and I am not at all sure that E. will resist the tide that threatens to submerge him unless they obtain from him, at least a partial recantation. We departed from our policy and the experiment was made with him on the "Vega" solely for the benefit of some Anglo Indian theosophists. Mr. Hume had expressed his surprise that even E.'s "spirits" should know nothing of us, and that despite the interests of the cause we did not show ourselves even to him. On the other hand, the Calcutta spiritualists and Mrs. Gordon with them were triumphant, and Colonel G. followed suit. The "dear departed ones" were for the short period of his stay at Calcutta in odour of sanctity, and the "Brothers" rather low in public estimation. Many of you thought that our appearing to E., would "save the situation" and force Spiritualism to recognise the claims of Theosophy. Well, we complied with your wishes.

M. and I were determined to show to you that there was no ground for such hopes. The Bigotry and Blindness of the Spiritualists fed by the selfish motives of professional mediums are rampant and the opponents are now desperate. We must allow the natural course of events to develop, and can only help on the coming crisis by having a hand in the increasing frequency of exposures. It would never do for us to force events, as it would be only making "martyrs" and allowing these the pretext for a new craze.

Thus, pray have patience. Mr. Hume — if he only holds on to his resolutions — has a grand and noble work before him — the work of a true Founder of a new social era, of a philosophical and religious Reform. It is so vast and so nobly conceived, that if, as I hope, we will now finally agree, he will have quite enough to do during the interval that is necessary for me to probe and prepare Eglinton. I will write to Mr. Hume and answer his every point in a few days, explaining the situation as I conceive it. Meanwhile you would do well to show him this letter. Your Review of the Perfect Way is more perfect than its author's conception. I thank you, my friend, for your good services. You are beginning to attract the Chohan's' attention. And if you only knew what significance that has, you would not be calculating to a nicety what reward you are entitled to for certain recent services mentioned.

Yours affectionately,

K. H.

Letter 96 Table of Contents

Letter No. 96

Received 1883 or '84?

My humble pranams Sahib. Your memory is not good. Have you forgotten the agreement made at Prayag and the pass-words that have to proceed every genuine communication coming from us through a. . . . . . [a word in Oriental characters appears here in the original. — ED.] Choot-dak or medium? How likely the seance of December the 15th — coroneted card, my letter and all! Very similar — as a Peling pundit would say. Yes, first a loving greeting from old woman to Lonie misspelled on card Louis, then to C. C. Massey whose name she now never pronounces, and that greeting coming after supper — when C.C.M. had already left. Then my message in a feigned hand when I am at (dead loggerheads with my own; again I am made to date my supposed message from Ladhak December 16th, whereas I swear I was at Ch-in-ki (Lhassa). Smoking your pipe. Best of all my asking you to "prepare for our coming as soon as we have won over Mr. Eglinton Sahib!!!" One Saturday and Lord Dunraven having failed why not try again. A solemn evening, that Saturday, at Picadilly over old Sotheran the mouldy bookseller. Knew premises well, felt amused and watched with your leave. Why feel so disgusted? Spooks worked remarkably well nothing abashed by my presence of which neither W.E. nor his bodyguard knew nothing. My attention was attracted by their forging H.P.B.'s handwriting. Then I put aside my pipe and watched. Too much light for the creatures coming from a Picadilly Street though Sotheran emanations helped good deal. I would call your friend Mr. Myers' attention to psychic fact of rotten emanations. Raise a good bhoot crop. Yes; the room with windows overlooking Picadilly is a good place for psychic development. Poor entranced wretch.

"We wish to state to prevent any future misunderstanding that whatever phenomena may present themselves to you this evening we are in no way responsible for them and have no hand in their production." This is pure self-abnegation — modesty is no name for it. He paced the room and I followed from a distance. He went to Mr. Ward's writing desk and took a sheet of his monogram paper — and I helped myself to one — just to show you I watched. As for all of you you did not watch very keenly while he was guided to place paper and envelope between the leaves of a book and when he laid it upon the table, or you would have seen something very interesting for science. The clock's silvery tongue strikes ten — fifteen and K.H.'s form descending a hill on horseback — (he is in the far off woods of Cambodia now) is supposed to cross the horizon of "Uncle Sam's" vision — and disturbs the activity of the Pisachas. The astral disturbance impedes their dull progress. Their bells are fine — very.

Now Sahib, you must not be too hard upon the wretched young fellow. He was utterly irresponsible on that night. Of course his belonging to your L.L.T.S. is pure nonsense for a paid and suspected medium is no peer for English gentlemen. Yet he is honest in his way and however much K.H. made fun of him in his card addressed to the Gordons — that all of you took seriously at the time — he is really honest in his way and to be pitied. He is a poor epileptic subject to fits especially on the days when he is expected to have dinner with you. I mean to ask K.H. to beg a favour from Mr. Ward: to save the poor wretch from the two elementaries — which have fastened on him like two barnacles. It is easy for good "Uncle Sam" to get for him an appointment somewhere and thus save him from a life of infamy which kills him, he will thereby do a meritorious and a Theosophical act of charity. Mr. Ward is wrong. W. E. is not guilty of any conscious, deliberate jugglery that night. He got a passionate desire to join the L.L. and as the wish is father to the deed — his astral ticks fabricated that letter of mine through means of their own. Had he done it himself he would have remembered it was not my handwriting as he is familiar with it through Gordons. Woe to the spiritualists! Their Karma is heavy with the ruin of men and women they entice into mediumship, and then throw off to starve like a toothless dog. At any rate ask him for the card of Upasika with her alleged writing on it. It is a good thing to keep and show occasionally to the Masseys of the L.L. who believe pure lies and will suspect fraud where none is meant. You are at liberty to regard me as a "nigger" and savage Sahib. But though I am the first to advise Mrs. K.'s re-election — nevertheless, I would sooner trust W.E.'s clairvoyance than Mrs. K.'s or rather her rendering of her visions. But this will soon stop. Subba Row is vindicating you. — Writing an answer to the Australian convert.

M.

Letter 97 Table of Contents

Letter No. 97

"Common people" are the masses as different from those who are distinguished. Your methods were not abandoned, it was only sought to show a drift of cyclic change no doubt that is helped by you too. Are you not man of the world enough to bear the small defects of young disciples? In their way they also help — and greatly. In you is also concealed a power to help from your side for the poor Society will even yet need all it can get. It is good that you have seen the work of a noble woman, who has left all for the cause. Other ways and times will appear for your help, for you are a single witness and well knowing the facts that will be challenged by traitors.

We cannot alter Karma my "good friend" or we might lift the present cloud from your path. But we do all that is possible in such material matters. No darkness can stay for ever. Have hope and faith and we may disperse it. There are not many left true to the "original program"! And you have been taught much and have much that is, and will be, useful.

M.

Letter 98 Table of Contents

Letter No. 98

[The asterisk and numbers refer to Letter 99 from A. O. Hume on which K.H. Comments in this letter. — ED.] {Received December 30, 1880}

* I realized it perfectly. But however sincere, these feelings are too deeply covered by a thick crust of self sufficiency and egoistical stubbornness to awaken in me anything like sympathy.

(1) For centuries we have had in Thibet a moral, pure hearted, simple people, unblest with civilization, hence — untainted by its vices. For ages has been Thibet the last corner of the globe not so entirely corrupted as to preclude the mingling together of the two atmospheres — the physical and the spiritual. And he would have us exchange this for his ideal of civilization and Govt.! This is pure self peroration, an intense passion for hearing himself discuss, and for imposing his ideas upon every one.

 

(2) Now really, Mr. H. ought to be sent by an international Committee of Philanthropists, as a Friend of Perishing Humanity to teach our Dalai Lamas — wisdom. Why he does not straight-way sit down and frame a plan for something like Plato's Ideal Republic with a new scheme for everything under the Sun and moon — passes my poor comprehension !

 

(3) This is indeed benevolent in him to go so far out of his way to teach us. Of course, this is pure kindness, and not a desire to over-top the rest of humanity. It is his latest acquisition of mental evolution, which, let us hope, will not turn in — dissolution.

 

(4) AMEN! My dear friend, you ought to be held responsible for not starting in his head the glorious idea to offer his services as a General School Master for Thibet, Reformer of ancient superstitions and Saviour of future generations. Of course, were he to read this, he would show immediately that I argue like an "educated monkey."

 

(5) Now just listen to the man jabbering about what he knows nothing. No men living are freer than we when we have once passed out of the stage of pupilage. Docile and obedient but never slaves during that time we must be; otherwise, and if we passed our time in arguing we never would learn anything at all.

 

(6) And whoever thought of proposing him as such? My dear fellow can you really blame me for shrinking from closer relations with a man whose whole life seems to hang upon incessant argumentation and philipics? He says that he is no doctrinaire when he is the very essence of one! He is worthy of all the respect and even affection of those who know him well. But my stars! in less than 24 hours he would paralyse any one of us, who might be unfortunate enough to come within a mile of him, merely by his monotonous piping about his own views. No; a thousand times no: such men as he make able statesmen, orators anything you like but — never Adepts. We have not one of that sort among us. And that is perhaps why we never felt the necessity for a house of lunatics. In less than three months he would have driven half of our Thibetan population mad!

 

I mailed a letter for you the other day at Umballa. I see you did not receive it yet.

Yours ever affectionately,

Koot Hoomi.

Letter 99 Table of Contents

Letter No. 99

[Extracts only are given from this letter. The numbers in brackets refer to the previous letter

from K.H. No. 98. — ED.]

Simla. 20-11-80.

My Dear Koot Humi,

I have sent Sinnett your letter to me and he has kindly sent me yours to him — I want to make some remarks on this, not by way of cavil, but because I am so anxious that you should understand me. Very likely it is my conceit, but whether or no I have a deep rooted conviction that I could work effectually if I only saw my way, and I cannot bear the idea of your throwing me over under any misconception of my views. And yet every letter I see of yours, shows me that you do not yet realize what I think and feel.* To explain this I venture to jot down a few comments on your letter to Sinnett.

You say that if Russia does not succeed in taking Tibet, it will be due to you and herein at least you will deserve our gratitude — I do not agree to this in the sense in which you mean it. (1) If I thought that Russia would on the whole govern Tibet or India in such wise as to make the inhabitants on the whole happier than they are under the existing Governments, I would myself welcome and work for her advent. But so far as I can judge the Russian Government is a corrupt despotism, hostile to individual liberty of action and therefore to real progress . . . etc.

Then about the English-speaking vaquil. Was the man so much to blame? You and yours have never taught him that there was anything in "Yog Vidya." The only people who have taken the trouble to educate him at all have in so doing taught him materialism — you are disgusted with him, but who is to blame? . . . I judge perhaps as an outsider, but it does seem to me, that the impenetrable veil of secrecy by which you surround yourselves, the enormous difficulties which you oppose to the communication of your spiritual knowledge, are the main causes of the rampant materialism which you so much deplore. . . . You alone do possess the means of bringing home to the ordinary run of men, convictions of this nature, but you, apparently bound by ancient rules, so far from zealously disseminating this knowledge, envelope it in such a dense cloud of mystery, that naturally the mass of mankind, disbelieve in its existence . . . there can be no justification for not giving clearly to the world the more important features of your philosophy, accompanying the teaching with such a series of demonstrations as should ensure the attention of all sincere minds. That you should hesitate to confer hastily great powers too likely to be abused, I quite understand — but this in no way bars a dogmatic denunciation of the results of your psychical investigations, accompanied by phenomena, sufficiently clear and often repeated to prove that you really did know more of the subjects with which you dealt than Western Science does (2) . . .

Perhaps you will retort "how about Slade's case?" but do not forget that he was taking money for what he did; making a living out of it. Very different would be the position of a man, who came forward to teach gratuitously, manifestly at the sacrifice of his own time, comfort and convenience, what he believed it to be for the good of mankind to know. At first no doubt everyone would say the man was mad or an impostor — but then when phenomenon on phenomenon was repeated and repeated, they would have to admit there was something in it, and within three years, you would have all the foremost minds in any civilized country intent upon the question and tens of thousands of anxious enquirers out of whom ten per cent. might prove useful workers, and one in a thousand perhaps develop the necessary qualifications for becoming ultimately an adept. If you desire to react on the native through the European mind that is the way to work it. Of course, I speak under correction and in ignorance of conditions, possibilities, etc., but for this ignorance at any rate I am not to blame . . . (3).

Then I come to the passage. "Has it occurred to you that the two Bombay publications if not influenced, may at least have not been prevented by those who might have done so because they saw the necessity for that much agitation to effect the double result of making a needed diversion after the brooch grenade, and perhaps of trying the strength of your personal interest in occultism and theosophy? I do not say it was, I but enquire whether the contingency ever presented itself to your mind." Now of course this was addressed to Sinnett, but still I wish to answer it in my fashion. First I should say, cui bono throwing out such a hint? You must know whether it was so or not. If it was not, why set us speculating as to whether it may have been, when you know it was not. But if it was so, then I submit, that in the first place an idiotic business like this could be no test of any man's (there are of course lots of human beings who are only a sort of educated monkey) personal interest in anything. . . . In the second place if the Brothers did deliberately allow the publication of those letters, I can only say, that from my worldly non-initiated standpoint, I think they made a sad mistake . . . and the object of the Brothers being avowedly to make the T.S. respected, they could hardly have selected any worse means, than the publication of these foolish letters. . . . but still when the question is broadly put, did you ever consider whether the Brothers allowed this publication, I cannot avoid replying, if they did not, it is futile wasting consideration on the matter, and if they did, it seems to me that they were unwise in so doing. (4)

Then come your remarks about Colonel Olcott. Dear old Olcott, whom everyone who knows must love. I fully sympathize in all you say in his favour — but I cannot but take exception to the terms in which you praise him, the whole burthen of which is that he never questions but always obeys. This is the Jesuit organization over again — and this renunciation of private judgment, this abnegation of one's own personal responsibility, this accepting the dictates of outside voices as a substitute for one's own conscience, is to my mind a sin of no ordinary magnitude. . . . Nay further I feel bound to say that if this doctrine of blind obedience is an essential one in your system, I greatly doubt whether any spiritual light it may confer can compensate mankind for the loss of that private freedom of action, that sense of personal, individual responsibility of which it would deprive them. . . . (5)

. . . But if it be intended that I shall ever, get instructions to do this or that and without understanding the why or the wherefore, without scrutinizing consequences, blind and heedless, straightway go and do it, — then frankly the matter for me is at an end — I am no military machine — I am an avowed enemy of the military organization — friend and advocate of the industrial or co-operative system, and I will join no Society or no Body which purports to limit or control my right of private judgment. Of course I am not doctrinaire!,? and do not desire to ride any principle as a hobby horse. . . .

To return to Olcott — I do not think his connection with the proposed Society would be any evil. . . .

In the first place I should not object in any way to dear old Olcott's supervision, because I know it would be nominal, as even if he tried to make it otherwise, Sinnett and I are both quite capable of shutting him up if he interfered needlessly. But neither of us could accept him as our real guide (6), because we both know that we are intellectually his superiors. This is a brutal way, as the French would say, of putting it, but que voulez vous?. Without perfect frankness there is no coming to an understanding. . . .

Yours sincerely,

A. O. Hume.

Letter 100 Table of Contents

Letter No. 100

[This communication is written across the lines of a letter of H.P.B.'s to A.P.S.; the subject matter

of the 2 letters however bear no relation to each other. — ED.]

The new "guide" has meanwhile a few words to say to you. If you care anything about our future relations, then, you better try to make your friend and colleague Mr. Hume give up his insane idea of going to Tibet. Does he really think that unless we allow it, he, or an army of Pelings will be enabled to hunt us out, or bring back news, that we are, after all, but a "moonshine" as she calls it. Madman is that man who imagines that even the British Govt: is strong and rich enough and powerful enough to help him in carrying out his insane plan! Those whom we desire to know us will find us at the very frontiers. Those who have set against themselves the Chohans as he has — would not find us were they to go L'hassa with an army. His carrying out the plan will be the signal for an absolute separation between your world and ours. His idea of applying to the Govt: for permission to go to Tibet is ridiculous. He will encounter dangers at every step and — will not even hear the remotest tidings about ourselves or our whereabouts. Last night a letter was to be carried to him as well as to Mrs. Gordon. The Chohan forbid it. You are warned, good friend — act accordingly.

K. H.

Letter 101 Table of Contents

Letter No. 101

Received Simla, 1881.

Your letter received. I believe you had better try and see whether you could not make your ideas less polemical and dry than his. I begin to think there may be some stuff in you, since you are able so to appreciate my beloved friend and brother. I have attended to the Brahmin boy's letter and erased the offensive sentence replacing it with another. You can now show it to the Maha Sahib; him so proud in his bakbak humility and so humble in his pride. As for phenomena you will have none — I have written through Olcott. Blessed is he who knows our Koothoomi and blessed is he who appreciates him. What I now mean you will understand some day. As for your A.O.H. I know him better than you ever will.

M.

Letter 102 Table of Contents

Letter No. 102

{This and the following letter refer to one dictated by Mahatma M. to Olcott, then in Ceylon, for transmission to Hume. See Hints on Esoteric Theosophy, 1909 ed., p. 106 et seq.}

Received Simla, 1881.

My dear young friend, I am sorry to differ from you in your last two points. If he can stand one sentence of rebuke be will stand far more than what you would have me alter. Ou tout ou rien — as my frenchified K.H. taught me to say. I have thought your suggestion No. 1 — good and have fully adopted it, hoping that you will not refuse some day to give me lessons of English. I had "Benjamin" stick a patch in the page, and made him forge my caligraphy while smoking a pipe on my back. Not having the right to follow K. H. I feel very lonely without my boy. Hoping to be excused for writing, and refusal, I trust you will not shrink from telling the truth, if need be, even in the face of the son of "a member of Parliament." You have too many eyes watching you to afford making mistakes now.

M.

Letter 103 Table of Contents

Letter No. 103

Received Allahabad, 1880-81.

To accomplish a plan like the one in hand many agencies must be employed and failure in any one direction jeopardises the results tho' it may not defeat it. We have had various checks and may have more. But observe: first — that two points are auspicious — thanks to kind Providence; Allen has become friendly, and a friend of yours (I believe) is Resident at Kashmir. And second that until the Maharajah of Kashmir — the prince first on the programme — has been sounded the vital point will not have been touched. He — the first as I say on the programme has been left to the last! Not much was expected from others and thus far each of the others who has been approached has failed to respond. Why do not the chelas (?) do as they are told? If chelas neglect orders, and strained sense of delicacy interferes, how without miracle can results be expected! I have telegraphed you to await Olcott's coming because it is best that you should work together at Calcutta to try and set things in motion. One word from you to the Resident would have been sufficient — but you are proud as all your race. Olcott will be at Calcutta about the 20th. Do not listen to the old woman — she becomes weak-headed when left to herself. But M. will take her in hand.

Yours,

K. H.

Letter 104 Table of Contents

Letter No. 104

Received October, 1881. (?) P.p.c. letter written before retirement.

My dear friend: Your note received. What you say in it shows me that you entertain some fears lest I should have been offended by Mr. Hume's remarks. Be at ease, pray, for I never could be. It is not anything contained in his observations that annoyed me, but the persistence with which he was following out a line of argument that I knew was pregnant with future mischief. This argumentum ad hominem — renewed and taken up from where we had left it off last year was as little calculated as possible to draw the Chohan from his principles, or force him into some very desirable concessions. I dreaded the consequences and my apprehensions had a very good foundation, I can assure you. Please assure Mr. Hume of my personal sympathy and respect for him and give him my most friendly regards. But I will not have the pleasure of "catching up" any more of his letters or answering them for the next three months. As nothing whatever of the Society's original programme is yet settled upon, nor do I hope of seeing it settled for some time to come I have to give up my projected voyage to Bhootan, and my Brother M. is to take my place. We are at the end of September and nothing could be done by October 1st that might warrant upon my insisting to go thither. My chiefs desire me particularly to be present at our New Year's Festivals, February next, and in order to be prepared for it I have to avail myself of the three intervening months. I will, therefore, bid you now good-bye my good friend, thanking you warmly for all you have done and tried to do for me. January next I hope to be able to let you have news from me; and, — save new difficulties in the way of the Society arise again from "your shore" — you will find me in precisely the same disposition and frame of mind in which I now part with both of you. Whether I will succeed in bringing my beloved but very obstinate Brother M. to my way of thinking is what I am now unable to say. I have tried and will try once more, but I am really afraid, Mr. Hume and he would never agree together. He told me he would answer your letter and request through a third party — not Mad. B. Meanwhile she knows quite enough to furnish Mr. Hume with ten lectures had he but a desire to deliver them, and were he but to recognise the fact, instead of entertaining such a poor of her in one direction and such a very erroneous conception in some others. M. promised me though to refresh her failing memory and to revive all she has learned with him in as bright a way as could be desired. Should the arrangement fail to get Mr. Hume's approbation: I will have but to sincerely regret it, for it is the best I can think of.

I leave orders with my "Disinherited" to watch over all as much as it lies in his weak powers.

And now I must close. I have but a few hours before me, to prepare for my long, very long journey. Hoping we part as good friends as ever, and that we might meet as better ones still. Let me now "astrally" shake hands with you and assure you of my good feelings once more.

Yours as ever,

K. H.

Letter 105 Table of Contents

Letter No. 105

My dear friend —

Before I give you any definite answer to your business letter I desire to consult our venerable Chohan. We have, as you say 12 months time before us. For the present I have a little business on hand, that is very important, as it hinges on to a series of other deliberate untruths, whose real character it is nigh time to prove. We are called in so many words, or rather in five letters "liars" (sic) and accused of "base ingratitude." The language is strong, and willing as we should feel to borrow many a good thing from the English, it is not politeness, I am afraid, that we would feel inclined to learn from the class of gentlemen represented by Mr. Hume. Left standing by itself, the business I am now concerned with, you may truly regard, as of very little importance collated with other facts, unless shown on good and unimpeachable testimony as, to say the least, a perversion of facts — it tends to become a cause which will yield unpleasant effects and ruin the whole fabric. Do not, therefore, I pray you, stop to argue the utter unworthiness of the small remembrance, but relying upon our seeing something of the future which remains hidden to you, pray answer my question, as a friend and brother. When you have done that you will learn why this letter is written.

H.P.B. has just quarrelled with Djual Khool, who maintained that the unpleasant proceeding was not entered in the minutes by Davison, while she affirmed that it was. Of course he was right and she wrong. Yet if her memory failed her in this particular, it served her well as to the fact itself. You remember, of course the event. Meeting of the Eclectics in the Billiard room. Witnesses — yourself, the Hume pair, the Gordon couple, Davison and H.P.B. Subject: S. K. Chatterji his letter to Hume expressing contempt for theosophy and suspicious about the good faith of H.P.B. Handing over the letter I had returned her to Mr. Hume she said that I had given orders through her to the General Council to invite the Babu to resign. Thereupon Mr. Hume proclaimed most emphatically: "In such case your Koot Hoomi is no gentleman. The letter is a private letter and under these circumstances no gentleman would ever think of acting as desired by him." Now the letter was not a private one, since it was circulated by Mr. Hume among the members. At the time I paid no attention whatever to the fling. Nor had I come to know of it through H.P.B., but through G. Khool who had heard it himself and has an excellent memory.

Now, will you oblige me by writing for me two lines telling me as you remember the event. Were the words "no gentleman" applied to your humble servant or in general. I ask you as a gentleman, not as a friend. This has a very important bearing on the future. When done, I will let you see the latest development of the infinite "fertility of resource" at the command of our mutual friend. It may be, that under any other circumstances Mr. H.'s braggadocios about Lord Ripon's high opinion of Hume's theosophy and his "big talk" about his literary, monetary and other services rendered to us might pass unnoticed, for we all know his weaknesses; but in the present case they must be dealt with so as not to leave him a single straw to catch at, because his last letter to me (which you will see) — is not only entirely at variance with all the acknowledged rules of good breeding, but also because unless his own mis-statements are actually proved, he will boast hereafter of having given the direct lie to our Brotherhood, and that no member of the latter could ever permit it. You cannot fail to remark the absurd contrast between his apparent confidence in his wonderful powers and superiority and the soreness he exhibits at the slightest remark passed upon him by myself. He must be made to realize that were he really as great as he asserts, or even if he were himself quite satisfied of his greatness and the infallibility of his power of memory, whatever even the adepts might think, he would remain indifferent to, at any rate, would not be as vulgarly abusive as he is now. His sensitiveness is in itself evidence of the doubts lurking in his mind as to the validity of the claims he so boastfully puts forth; hence his irritability, excited by anything and everything that is likely to disturb his self-delusions.

I hope you will not refuse a direct and clear answer to my direct and clear question.

Yours ever affectionately,

K. H.

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Letter No. 106

{November 20, 1880}

I desire to answer your letter carefully and explicitly. I must, therefore, ask you to accord me a few days longer when I will be quite at leisure. We have to take measures for effectually protecting our country and vindicating the spiritual authority of our Priestly King. Perhaps, never, since the invasion of Alexander and his Greek legions have so many Europeans stood together under arms so near to our frontiers as they do now. My friend, your correspondents seem to acquaint you with the greatest news but superficially — at best: perhaps, because they do not know it themselves. Never mind it will all be known some day. However, as soon as I get a few hours leisure, you will find at your service your friend.

K. H.

Try to believe more than you do in the "old lady." She does rave betimes; but she is truthful and does the best she can for you.

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Letter No. 107

My dear Ambassador —

To quiet the anxiety I see lurking within your mind, and which has even a more definite form than you have expressed, let me say that I will use my best endeavours to calm our highly sensitive — not always sensible old friend, and make her stop at her post. Ill health resulting from natural causes, and mental anxiety have made her nervous to an extreme degree and sadly impaired her usefulness to us. For a fortnight past she has been all but useless and her emotions have sped along her nerves like electricity thro' a telegraphic wire. All has been chaos. I am sending these few lines by a friend to Olcott so that they may be forwarded without her knowledge.

Consult freely with our friends in Europe and return with a good book in your hand and a good plan in your head. Encourage the sincere brethren at Galles to persevere in their work of education. Some cheering words from you will give them heart. Telegraph to Nicolas Dias Inspector of Police Galles that you, a member of the Council of the T. S. are coming (the date and name of steamer given) and I will cause H.P.B. to do the same to another person. Think on the way of your true friend.

K. H. and -----.

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Letter No. 108

[This fragment is in M.'s handwriting. — ED.]

The man sent by me last night was a Ladakee chela and had nothing to do with you. What you just said about "initiation" is true. Any Fellow who truly and sincerely repents ought to be taken back. As you see I am with you constantly.

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Letter No. 109

I cannot make a miracle, or I would have shown myself fully to Mrs. Sinnett at least in spite of the matches of the French woman and to yourself in spite of the physical and psychical conditions. Kindly realize that my sense of justice is so strong that I would not deny you a satisfaction I gave Ramaswami and Scott. If you have not seen me it is simply because it was an impossibility. If you had gratified K.H. by attending the meeting no harm would as a matter of fact have been done to you for K.H. had foreseen and prepared all, and the very effort you made to be firm even at supposed personal risk, would have totally changed your condition. Now let us see what the future has in store.

M.

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Letter No. 110

My dear friend —

May I trouble you to hand the enclosed Rs. 50 to Darbhagiri Nath when you see him? The little man is in trouble but has to be remonstrated; and the best punishment for an accepted chela is to receive the reproof through a "lay" one. On his way from Ghoom to Bengal through imprudence and indiscretion he lost money, and, instead of addressing himself directly to me he tried to dodge the "Master's eye" and called upon a probationary chela upon whom he has not the slightest claim to help him out of his difficulty. So please tell him that Ram S. Gargya has not received his telegram from Burdwan but that it went direct into the hands of the Lama who notified me of it. Let him be more prudent in future. You now see the danger in allowing young chelas out of sight even for a few days. Money losses are nothing, but it is the results involved and the temptation that are terrible. My friend, I am afraid you too, have been again IMPRUDENT. I have a letter from Colonel Chesney — very polite and quite diplomatic. Several such messages may do for an excellent

refrigerator.

Yours,

K. H.

P.S. — I am glad to find you reprinting in the Pioneer "A Day with my Indian Cousins" by Atettjee Sahibjee, etc., from Vanity Fair. Last year I had asked you to give some work, to the author of those sketches after the manner of the once famous Ali Baba — but was refused. You thought he did not write well enough for the Pioneer. You distrusted a "native," and now his articles are accepted in Vanity Fair.

I am glad for poor Padshah. He is a madcap, yet of excellent heart and sincerely devoted to Theosophy and — our Cause.

I must consult you. Hume writes to H.P.B. (a most loving letter !). He sends her two corrected copies of a letter of his in the Pioneer of the 20th and remarking that the time has come when, if the native press all over the country will only following this, his lead, push the question strongly — material concessions will be obtained — he adds "you will of course reprint this in the Theosophist." How can she do it, without connecting her journal directly with politics? I would have extremely liked to have his letter on Education reproduced from your Pioneer in the Theosophist, but hesitated to tell her to do it, fearing it would give a new colouring to the magazine. Some of his articles are extremely able.

Well, and what are you to do about anniversary of "Eclectic" and cyclic conclusion?

She is better and we have left her near Darjeeling. She is not safe in Sikkim. The Dugpa opposition is tremendous and unless we devote the whole of our time to watching her, the "Old Lady" would come to grief since she is now unable to take care of herself. See what happened to the little man — he will tell you. You ought to take her in for October and November.

Yours again,

K. H.

This little wretch forced me to blush before you on account of his indiscretion — "from a European standpoint." I cannot be always looking after my Chelas in their travels — and their knowledge of your ways and usages amounts to cipher! It is but to-day that I learned of his borrowing from you Rs. 30 — through Djual Khool. He had no business and no right to do so; but you must pardon him for he has not the least conception of a difference between a Tibetan and a European chela and acted as unceremoniously with you as he would with Djual Khool. I send you back with thanks the money lent, hoping you will not take us all for savages!

I am writing you a long letter by fits and starts as usual. When that business letter will be on it's way, I will send another with answers to your questions. A ludicrous thing happened in connexion with C. C. M.'s letter that I will relate in my next. Hail and success to the "new President" at last!! Yours ever fondly,

K. H. Pardon the unavoidable delay. This letter with the enclosed cannot reach Darjeling before 4 or 5 days.

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Letter No. 111

My dear friend,

The present will be delivered at your house by Darbhagiri Nath, a young Chela of mine, and his brother Chela, Chandra Cusho. They are forbidden to enter anyone's house without being invited to do so. Therefore, I pray you to pardon our savage customs and, at the same time to humour them by sending them an invitation in your name, either now — if you can receive them privately and without risking their meeting at your place with any stranger; or — at any other time during the evening, or late at night.

I have not the slightest objection to Mrs. S. your lady seeing either of them; but I pray her not to address them, since they are forbidden by our religious laws to speak with any lady — their mothers and sisters excepted — and that she would otherwise greatly embarrass them. I pray her to do so in my name, and for my sake. I trust also to your friendship that none but you will speak with them. They have their mission and beyond that they must not go (1) to deliver into your hands my "answers to the famous contradictions" and (2) to interview Mr. Fern. If you have an answer for me, Darbhagiri Nath will come for it whenever you are ready. I also entreat you most earnestly not to inflict upon them Mr. Hume. Do not think of what has happened until everything is explained.

Ever yours,

K. H.

P.S. — They are also forbidden to shake hands with any man or woman i.e. to touch anyone; but you can invite my little man to come and talk with you as much as you like provided you are discreet.

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Letter No. 112

My reply to Colonel Chesney in answer to his letter was already written and ready to be forwarded by my little man, when I received yours advising me not to correspond with him. Therefore I forward it to you to be read, and should you think it expedient — to deliver it to it's address. It seems rude to leave his letter without any acknowledgment — whether he is or is not in sympathy with the movement.

But good friend I leave this entirely in your hands and pray you to use in the matter your own discretion. You ought to know that decidedly young Fern is a little humbug and worse — a congenital though often an irresponsible liar. He tries in his last to bamboozle M. and make him believe he, Fern, is a new Zanoni en herbe. He is testing us in every way and manner and constant skirmishes notwithstanding has a certain and very strong influence on Hume, whom he bamboozles with imaginary "powers" whose mission is to supplant the Brothers. He made him believe indirectly he belonged to a Society whose "name is unmentionable" a Society that seeks no one, whose one member knows not who the other is, nor will he know till the real nature of the "Brothers" is made public, though the system on which it works precludes all deception, etc. etc. To M. he writes that he confesses he "ought not to have put temptation" in his (Hume's) way. For having over estimated his strength, he has "unwittingly caused him to fall."!! This individual is at the bottom of much that has happened. Watch and beware of him. One thing is certain though. These are not times for visiting with severity the offences of the too indiscreet and but half faithful "lay chelas." Now that Mr. Hume alienated the Chohan and M. I remain alone to carry on the difficult work. You read H.'s letter. How do you like that huge shadow of a Yogi with solemnly stretched out hand, and defiant haughty eyes disavowing with contemptuous gesture the intent of hurting the Society.

Let me echo your sigh for the poor Society, and before fading away again into the foggy distance between Simla and Pari Jong assure you of my ever friendly feelings for yourself,

K. H.

Mr. W. Oxley wants to join the Eclectic. I'll tell her to send to you on his letter. Kindly write to him to say that he must not feel vexed at my denial. I know he is thoroughly sincere and as incapable of a deception or even exaggeration as you are. But he trusts too much to his subjects. Let him be cautious and very guarded; and, if he joins the Society I may help and even correspond with him through you. He is a valuable man, and indeed, more worthy of sincere respect than any other Spiritualistic mystic I know of. And though I have never approached him astrally or conversed with I have often examined him in thought. Do not fail to write to him with the first steamer.

K. H.

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Letter No. 113

Private.

My dearest Friend,

Please pardon me for troubling you with my own business — but though I am forced by the Chohan to answer I really do not know whether I am within the limits of your code of politeness or outside of it — I have a long letter to write to you upon something that troubles me and I want you to advise me. I am in a most disagreeable position placed as I am between the risk of betraying a friend and — your code of honour (the friend is not yourself.) I hope I may place an entire confidence in your personal friendship and of course honour.

Honour! What funny very funny notions you seem to have about that sacred thing! Do not be frightened for indeed the whole thing is more ludicrous than dangerous. Yet there is a danger in losing Mr. Hume.

To-morrow I will write more fully. Fern is a little ass but he is a clairvoyant and likewise a little hallucinated. But Mr. H. is too severe upon him. The boy hopes that if we are myths or frauds he will find us out. Well where is the harm in such a hallucination? Yet H. betrays his confidence and sends me a letter three yards long with advice how to get out of our difficulties! He wants to be our benefactor and place us under an eternal obligation for saving M. from falling once more into Fern's trap. I would have sent you on his letter but it is superscribed "private and confidential" and I would be in his eyes no gentleman were he find out such a breach of confidence. Well I want you to read this letter at any rate and leave it at your option to be either sent or destroyed. If you do not want him to know you have read it — well put a stamp on it and throw it into the letter-box. I do not think he will take you into his confidence this once. However, I may be mistaken. Soon you will learn more.

Yours affectionately,

K. H.

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Letter No. 114

Received about February, 1882, Allahabad.

The letter forwarded is from a Baboo — your nausea — inspiring Bengalee, from whom, I ask you, for K.H.'s sake — to conceal the feeling of queasiness that may overcome you at his sight — if he comes. Read it with attention. The lines underlined contain the germ in them of the greatest reform, the most beneficent results obtained by the Theosophical movement. Were our friend of Simla less cantankerous, I might have tried to influence him to draft out special rules and a distinct pledge with apps and obligs for the Zenana women of India. Profit by the suggestion and see whether you can prevail upon him to do so. Write to him without delay to Bombay to come and meet the old woman at your house and then pass him on to his countryman and Brother-Fellow the "Prayag" Babu — the young leach of your Society. Then telegraph to her to Meerut to come using my name — otherwise she will not. I already answered him in her name. Do not feel surprised, for everything I have a reason of mine, as you may learn some years hence.

And why should you be so anxious to see my chits to other people? Have you not sufficient trouble to make out my letters addressed to yourself?

M.

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Letter No. 115

Received during brief visit to Bombay in January, 1882.

It was certainly K.H.'s and my great desire that since Scott could not attend the anniversary you should — not to take any part in its proceedings but simply — be present at it. This hapless organization will once more exhibit its representation without one single European of position and influence. But neither of us would force a course of action — against your wish — upon you. Therefore what I say must not be construed into an order or urgent request. We think it good — but you must obey your own cool judgment — the more so as perhaps to-day marks a crisis. One reason for my calling you was K.H.'s wish that you should be brought under certain magnetic and other occult influences that would favourably act upon yourself in future.

I will write more to-morrow for I yet hope you will give us a day or two and so let us have time to see what can be done for you by Khoothoomi.

M.

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Letter No. 116

A. P. Sinnett.

My dear Friend,

I am tired and disgusted with all this wrangling to death. Please read this before giving it to Mr. Hume. If, as a debt of gratitude, he would exact but a pound of flesh, I would have naught to say — but a pound of useless verbiage is indeed more than even I — can stand!

Yours ever,

K. H.

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Letter No. 117

This will introduce to my Chela (lay) No. 1, "lay Chela No. 2" — Mohini Babu. The experiences of the latter and what he has to say will interest Mr. Sinnett. Mohini Babu is sent by me on a certain mission in reference to the forthcoming and very threatening end of the cycle (theosophical) — and has no time to lose. Please, receive him at once and take his evidence.

Yours,

K. H.

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Letter No. 118

This is a fraudulent intrusion into private correspondence. No time to even answer your queries — will do so to-morrow or next day. For several days I have noticed something like anxiety in your lady's thoughts about "Den." Children's diseases are seldom dangerous even when somewhat neglected, if the child have naturally a strong constitution; the pampered ones falling naturally victims to contagion.

I remarked her fear of carrying the germs of the disease home with her at Mr. Hume's the other day, as my attention was drawn to her by the "Disinherited" who was on the watch. Fear not in any case. I hope you will pardon me if I advise you to sow up the enclosed in a small bag — a part of it will do — and hang it on the child's neck.

Unable as I am to carry into your homestead the full magnetism of my physical person I do the next best thing by sending you a lock of hair as a vehicle for the transmission of my aura in a concentrated condition. Do not allow anyone to handle it except Mrs. Sinnett. You'll do well not to approach Mr. Fern too near for a time.

Yours,

K. H.

Say nothing of this note to anybody.

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Letter No. 119

Give Mr. Sinnett my salams — and ask him to comment upon the slip enclosed. He may know what I mean him to write upon the subject editorially. Tell him also that time is short and precious and ought not to be wasted.

K. H.

The following may lead later on to a curious confirmation of our "obscuration" doctrine which so puzzles my friend — the Editor of the "Phoenix."

Will you kindly and likewise, comment upon it and oblige thereby,

Yours,

K. H.

NEWSPAPER CUTTING

Sir John Lubbock's opinion confirms or endorses the conclusion long since put forth by some of the most eminent astronomers, namely, that there are now in the solar system, or firmament, many dark bodies — that is, bodies which now emit no light, or comparatively little. He points out, for example, that in the case of Procyon the existence of an invisible body is demonstrated by the movement of the visible stars. Another illustration which he cites relates to the notable phenomena presented by Algow, the bright star in the Head of Medusa. This star shines without change for two days and thirteen hours; then, in three hours and a half, dwindles from a star of the second to one of the fourth magnitude; and then, in another three and a half hours, resumes its original brilliancy. According to the view entertained by Professor Lubbock, these changes must be regarded as indicating the presence of an opaque body, which intercepts at regular intervals a part of the light emitted by Algow.

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Letter No. 120

{Received March 11, 1882; Olcott, accompanied by two young chelas, left Bombay February 17,

for a tour of the North. They stayed at Sinnett's March 11 to 14.}

To Mr. Sinnett's "lady."

Wear the hair enclosed in a cotton tape (and if preferred in a metal armlet) a little lower than your left armpit below the left shoulder. Follow advice that will be given to you by Henry Olcott. It is good and we shall not object. Harbour not ill-feelings even against an enemy and one who has wronged you: for hatred acts like an antidote and may damage the effect of even this hair.

K. H.

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Letter No. 121

Received at Bombay on return to India, July, 1881.

Thanks. The little things prove very useful, and I gratefully acknowledge them. You ought to go to Simla. TRY. I confess to a weakness on my part to see you do so. We must patiently await the results, as I told you of the Book. The blanks are provoking and "tantalizing" but we cannot go against the inevitable. And as it is always good to mend an error I already did so by presenting the Occult World to the C----'s notice. Patience, patience.

Yours, ever

K. H.

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Letter No. 122

My good friend; tho' Mr. Eglington has promised to return by the end of June he cannot do so — after the danger that has threatened him at Calcutta on the very day of his departure — unless he is thoroughly protected against any such disgraceful recurrence. If Mr. Hume is anxious to have him, let him for want of something better — offer him the place of his private secretary, for a year or so, now that Mr. Davison is away. If you or Mr. Hume are really anxious to see me — (or rather my astral Self) there's a chance for you.

H.P.B. is too old and not passive enough. Besides she has done too many services to be forced into it. With Mr. Eglington, and he willing, the thing would become easy. Profit then by the chance offered; in a year more it WILL BE TOO LATE.

Yours,

K. H.

London, April 27.

To Mr. A. P. Sinnett,

Editor Pioneer, Allahabad.

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Letter No. 123

Do not be impatient — good friend, I will answer to-morrow. When you learn one day the difficulties that are in my way you will see how mistaken you are at times in your notions about my movements.

K. H.

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Letter No. 124

Cannot you manage to pick up for me three pebbles? They must come from the shores of the Adriatic — Venice preferably; as near to the Dogal Palace as they can possibly be found; (under the Bridge of Sighs would be the most desirable but for the mud of the ages). The pebbles must be of three different colours one  red, the other black; the third white (or greyish). If you manage to get them, please keep them apart from every influence and contact but yours, and oblige ever yours,

 H.

 

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Letter No. 125

{Enclosed in Letter 20c.}

I am commanded by my beloved Master, known in India and the Western lands as Koot Hoomi Lal Singh, to make in his name the following declaration, in answer to a certain statement made by Mr. W. Oxley, and sent by him for publication in the Theosophist. It is claimed by the said gentleman that my Master Koot Hoomi (a) has thrice visited him "by the astral form"; and (b) that he had a conversation with Mr. Oxley when, as alleged he gave the latter certain explanations in reference to astral bodies in general, and the incompetency of his own Mayavy-rupa to preserve its consciousness simultaneously with the body "at both ends of the line" — therefore my Master declares that: — 1. Whomsoever Mr. Oxley may have seen and conversed with at the time described, it was not with Koot Hoomi, the writer of the letters published in the Occult World.

 Notwithstanding that my Master knows the gentleman in question who once honoured him with an autograph letter, thereby giving him the means of making his (Mr. Oxley's) acquaintance and of sincerely admiring his intuitional powers and western learning — yet he has never approached him whether astrally or otherwise: Nor has he ever had any conversation with Mr. Oxley, least of all one of that nature in which both the subject and predicate, the premises and conclusions are all wrong.

 In consequence of the said claims, the repetition of which is calculated to lead many of our theosophists into error, my Master has determined to issue the following resolution.

 

Henceforth any medium or seer who will feel disposed to claim either to have been visited by, or to have held conversation with, or to have seen my Master, — will have to substantiate the claim by prefixing his or her statement with THREE SECRET WORDS, which he, my Teacher, will divulge to and leave in the safe keeping of Mr. A. O. Hume, and Mr. A. P. Sinnett the respective President and Vice-President, of "The Eclectic Theosophical Society" of Simla. As long as they do not find these three words correctly repeated by a medium or heading a statement to that effect, whether verbal or printed, emanating from him or her, or on his or her behalf, the claim shall be regarded as a gratuitous assumption and no notice will be taken of it. To his regret my Master is forced to adopt this step, as unfortunately of late such self-deception have become quite frequent, and would demand a speedy check.

The above declaration and statement to be appended as a footnote to Mr. Oxley's published statement.

By order,

Gjual--Khool. M.xxx.

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Letter No. 126

 It is exceedingly difficult to make arrangements for a Punjab address through which to correspond. Both

 and I had counted much upon the young man whose sentimentalism we find unfits him for the useful office of intermediary. Still, I will not cease trying and shall hope to send you the name of a post office either in the Punjab or N.W.P. where one of our friends will be passing and re-passing once or twice a month.

 H. {Received November 1880}

 

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Letter No. 127

Extracts from Letters of K.H. to A.O.H. and A.P.S. Received by A.P.S. August 13th, 1882.

[The extracts are in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. — ED.]

One of your letters begins with a quotation from one of my own . . . "Remember that there is within man no abiding principle" — which sentence I find followed by a remark of yours "How about the sixth and seventh principles?" To this I answer, neither Atma nor Buddhi ever were within man, — a little metaphysical axiom that you can study with advantage in Plutarch and Anaxagoras. The latter made his — nous autochrates — the spirit self-potent, the nous that alone recognised noumena while the former taught on the authority of Plato and Pythagoras that the semomnius or this nous always remained without the body; that it floated and overshadowed so to say the extreme part of the man's head, it is only the vulgar who think it is within them . . . Says Buddha "you have to get rid entirely of all the subjects of impermanence composing the body that your body should become permanent. The permanent never merges with the impermanent although the two are one. But it is only when all outward appearances are gone that there is left that one principle of life which exists independently of all external phenomena. It is the fire that burns in the eternal light, when the fuel is expended and the flame is extinguished; for that fire is neither in the flame nor in the fuel, nor yet inside either of the two but above beneath and everywhere — (Parinirvana Sutra kwnen XXXIX).

. . . You want to acquire gifts. Set to work and try to develop lucidity. The latter is no gift but a universal possibility common to all. As Luke Burke puts it "idiots and dogs have it, and to a more remarkable degree often than the most intellectual men. It is because neither idiots nor dogs use their reasoning faculties but allow their natural instinctive perceptions to have full play."

. . . You use too much sugar in your food. Take fruit bread tea coffee and milk and use them as freely as you would like to, but no chocolate, fat, pastry and but very little sugar. The fermentation produced by it especially in that climate of yours is very injurious. The methods used for developing lucidity in our chelas may be easily used by you. Every temple has a dark room, the north wall of which is entirely covered with a sheet of mixed metal, chiefly copper, very highly polished, with a surface capable of reflecting in it things, as well as a mirror. The chela sits on an insulated stool, a three-legged bench placed in a flat-bottomed vessel of thick glass, — the lama operator likewise, the two forming with the mirror wall a triangle. A magnet with the North Pole up is suspended over the crown of the chela's head without touching it. The operator having started the thing going leaves the chela alone gazing on the wall, and after the third time is no longer required.

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Letter No. 128

INDIAN TELEGRAPH

To Station Adyar Madras From Station Jammoo To Person Madame Blavatsky

Editor of the Theosophist. From Person Colonel Olcott Damodar left before dawn at about eight o'clock letters from him and Koothumi found on my table — Don't

say whether return or not — Damodar bids us all farewell conditionally and says brother theosophists should all feel encouraged knowing that he has found the blessed masters and been called by them. The dear boys recent developments astonishing Hooney bids me await orders.

Madras 25-11-83. Hour 17-30. {Damodar returned the evening of the 27th, much improved in health. See O.D.L. 3:54.}

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Letter No. 129

{Enclosed in Letter 83}

Class P — Indian Telegraph — Local No. 48

To Station Adyar Madras

From Station Jummar

To Person Madame Blavatsky From Person Colonel Olcott The Masters have taken Damodar return not promised

We will send him back. K.H.

Adyar 25-11-83. Hour 10-15.

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Letter No. 130

{From April 6 nearly through May the two Founders were on tour. Subba Row and Damodar took

charge of The Theosophist. Sometime between march 25 and April 6, when H.P.B. joined Olcott

in Calcutta, she spent a few days at Allahabad with the Sinnetts. On this visit occurred the

precipitation by Dj.K. of the portrait of K.H. described, though not quiet correctly, in the second

and subsequent editions of The Occult World.}

Triplicane, Madras, 7th May, 1882.

To A. P. Sinnett Esq.,

Editor of the Pioneer, etc. etc. etc.

Dear Sir,

I have been requested by Madame Blavatsky several times within the last three months to give you such practical instruction in our occult Science as I may be permitted to give to one in your position; and I am now ordered by ---- to help you to a certain extent in lifting up a portion of the first veil of mystery. I need hardly tell you here that the Mahatmas can hardly be expected to undertake the work of personal instruction and supervision in the case of beginners like you, however sincere and earnest you may be in your belief in their existence and the reality of their science and in your endeavours to investigate the mysteries of that science. When you know more about them and the peculiar life they lead, I am sure you will not be inclined to blame them for not affording to you personally the instruction you are so anxious to receive from them.

I beg to inform you that the help hereby promised will be given to you provided you give your consent to the following conditions: —

 

(1) You must give me your word of Honour that you will never reveal to anybody whether belonging to the Theosophical Society or not, the Secrets communicated to you unless you previously obtain my permission to do so.

 

(2) You must lead such a life as is quite consistent with the Spirit of the rules already given you for your guidance.

 

(3) You must reiterate your promise to promote as far as it lies in your power the objects of the Theosophical Association.

 

(4) You must strictly act up to the directions that will be given to you with the instruction herein promised.

 

I must also add here that anything like a wavering state of mind as to the reality of Occult Science and the efficacy of the prescribed process is likely to prevent the production of the desired result.

In sending me a reply to this letter I hope you will be good enough to let me know whether you are acquainted with the Sanskrit Alphabet and whether you can pronounce Sanskrit words correctly and distinctly.

I beg to remain,

Yours sincerely,

T. Subba Row.

Letter 131

Table of Contents

Letter No. 131

Coconada. 26th June, 1882.

To A. P. Sinnett, Esq., etc. etc. etc.

Dear Sir,

Please kindly excuse me for not having sent you a reply to your letter up to this time. The qualified assent which you were pleased to give to the conditions laid down by me necessitated a reference to the Brothers for their opinion and orders. And now I am sorry to inform you that anything like practical instruction in the ritual of Occult Science is impossible under the conditions you propose. So far as my knowledge goes, no student of Occult Philosophy has ever succeeded in developing his psychic powers without leading the life prescribed for such students; and it is not within the power of the teacher to make an exception in the case of any student. The rules laid down by the ancient teachers of Occult Science are inflexible; and it is not left to the discretion of any teacher either to enforce them or not to enforce them according to the nature of the existing circumstances. If you find it impracticable to change the present mode of your life, you cannot but wait for practical instruction until you are in a position to make such sacrifices as Occult Science demands; and for the present you must be satisfied with such theoretical instruction as it may be possible to give you.

It is hardly necessary now to inform you whether the instruction promised you in my first letter under the conditions therein laid down would develop in you such powers as would enable you either to see the Brothers or converse with them clairvoyantly. Occult training, however commenced will in course of time, necessarily develop such powers. You will be taking a very low view of Occult Science if you were to suppose that the mere acquirement of psychic powers is the highest and the only desirable result of occult training. The mere acquisition of wonder-working powers can never secure immortality for the student of Occult Science unless he has learnt the means of shifting gradually his sense of individuality from his corruptible material body to the incorruptible and eternal Non-Being represented by his seventh principle. Please consider this as the real aim of Occult Science and see whether the rules you are called upon to obey are necessary or not to bring about this mighty change.

Under the present circumstances, the Brothers have asked me to assure you and Mr. Hume that I would be fully prepared to give you both such theoretical instruction as I may be able to give in the Philosophy of the Ancient Brahminical religion and Esoteric Buddhism.

I am going to leave this place for Madras on the 30th of this month.

I beg to remain your sincerely,

T. Subba Row.

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Letter No. 132

[Parts of this letter are missing. The comments in K.H.'s handwriting are printed in bold type. —

ED.]

Extracts I got for your benefit — pitying your impatience from "Rishi M." — See my note.

It would no doubt cause him considerable inconvenience if he were obliged to change his mode of life completely. You will find from the letters that he is very anxious to know beforehand the nature of the Siddhis or wonder-working powers that he is expected to obtain by the process or ritual I intend prescribing for him.

The power to which he will be introduced by the process in question will no doubt develop wonderful clairvoyant powers both as regards sight and sound in some of its higher correlations; and that the highest of its correlations is intended by our Rishi — M — to lead the candidate through the first three stages of initiation if he is properly qualified for it.

But I am not prepared to assure Mr. Sinnett NOW that I will teach him any of its higher correlations. What I mean to teach him now is a necessary preliminary preparation for studying such correlations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . my proposal into consideration.

As I have been wandering here and there since my arrival here I have not been able to complete my second article with reference to Mr. Oxley's book.

But I will try my best to finish it as soon as possible.

For the present I beg to remain

Your most obedient servant

T. SUBBA Row.

To Madam H. P. Blavatsky, etc. Coconada 3rd June, 1882.

My dear friend, I strongly advise you not to undertake at present a task beyond your strength and means; for once pledgedwere you to break your promise it would cut you off for years, if not for ever from any further progress. I said from the first to Rishi "M." that his intention was kind but his project wild. How can you in your position undertake any such labour? Occultism is not to be trifled with. It demands all or nothing. I read your letter to S.R. sent by him to Morya and I see you do notunderstand the first principles of ... X.

(Contd. Post Letter 76.)

Letter 133 Table of Contents

Letter No. 133

My dear Mr. Sinnett,

It is very strange that you should be ready to deceive yourself so willingly. I have seen last night whom I had to see, and getting the explanation I wanted I am now settled on points I was not only doubtful about but positively averse to accepting. And the words in the first line are words I am bound to repeat to you as a warning, and because I regard you, after all, as one of my best personal friends. Now you have and are deceiving, in vulgar parlance, bamboozling yourself about the letter received by me yesterday from the Mahatma. The letter is from Him, whether written through a chela or not; and — perplexing as it may seem to you, contradictory and "absurd," it is the full expression of his feelings and he maintains what he said in it. For me it is surpassingly strange that you should accept as His only that which dovetails with your own feelings, and reject all that contradicts your own notions of the fitness of things. Olcott has behaved like an ass, utterly devoid of tact; he confesses it, and is ready to confess it and to say mea culpa before all the Theosophists — and it is more than any Englishman would be willing to do. This is perhaps, why, with all his lack of tact, and his frequent freaks that justly shock your susceptibilities and mine too, heaven knows! going as he does against every conventionality — he is still so liked by the Masters, who care not for the flowers of European civilization. Had I known last night what I have learnt since — i.e. that you imagine, or rather force yourself to imagine that the Mahatma's letter is not wholly orthodox and was written by a chela to please me, or something of the sort, I would not have rushed to you as the only plank of salvation. Things are getting dark and hazy. I have managed last night to get the Psychic Research Society rid of its nightmare, Olcott; I may manage to get England rid of its bugbear — Theosophy. If you — the most devoted, the best of Theosophists — are ready to fall a victim to your own preconceptions and believe in new gods of your own fancy dethroning the old ones — then, notwithstanding all and everything Theosophy has come too early in this country. Let your L.L.T.S. go on as it does — I cannot help it, and what I mean I will tell you when I see you. But I will have nothing to do with the new arrangement and — retire from it altogether unless we agree to disagree no more.

Yours,

H.P.B.

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Letter No. 134

Dehra Dun. Friday. 4th.

Arrived only yesterday, last night late from Saharampur. The house very good but cold, damp and dreary. Received a whole heap of letters and answer yours first.

Saw at last M. and showed him your last or rather Benemadhab's on which you have scratched a query. It is the latter Morya answers. I wrote this under his dictation and now copy it.

I wrote to Sinnett my opinion on the Allahabad theosophists. (Not through me though?) Adetyarom B. wrote a foolish letter to Damodar and Benemadhab writes a foolish request to Mr. Sinnett. Because K.H. chose to correspond with two men, who proved of the utmost importance and use to the Society they all — whether wise or stupid, clever or dull, possibly useful or utterly useless — lay their claims to correspond with us directly — too. Tell him (you) that this must be stopped. For ages we never corresponded with anyone, nor do we mean to. What has Benemadhab or any other of the many claimants done to have a right to such a claim? Nothing whatever. They join the Society, and though remaining as stubborn as ever in their old beliefs and superstitions, and having never given up caste or one single of their customs, they, in their selfish exclusiveness, expect to see and converse with us and have our help in all and everything. I will be pleased if Mr. Sinnett says, to everyone of those who may address him with similar pretensions the following: "The 'Brothers' desire me to inform one and all of you, natives, that unless a man is prepared to become a thorough theosophist i.e. to do as D. Mavalankar did, — give up entirely caste, his old superstitions and show himself a true reformer (especially in the case of child marriage) he will remain simply a member of the Society with no hope whatever of ever hearing from us. The Society, acting in this directly in accordance with our orders, forces no one to become a theosophist of the IId. Section. It is left with himself and at his choice. It is useless for a member to argue 'I am one of a pure life, I am a teetotaller and an abstainer from meat and vice. All my aspirations are for good etc.' and he, at the same time, building by his acts and deeds an impassable barrier on the road between himself and us. What have we, the disciples of the true Arhats, of esoteric Buddhism and of Sang-gyas to do with the Shasters and Orthodox Brahmanism? There are 100 of thousands of Fakirs, Sannyasis and Saddhus leading the most pure lives, and yet being as they are, on the path of error, never having had an opportunity to meet, see or even hear of us. Their forefathers have driven away the followers of the only true philosophy upon earth away from India and now, it is not for the latter to come to them but to them to come to us if they want us. Which of them is ready to become a Buddhist, a Nastika as they call us? None. Those who have believed and followed us have had their reward. Mr. Sinnett and Hume are exceptions. Their beliefs are no barrier to us for they have none. They may have had influences around them, bad magnetic emanations the result of drink, Society and promiscuous physical associations (resulting even from shaking hands with impure men) but all this is physical and material impediments which with a little effort we could counteract and even clear away without much detriment to ourselves. Not so with the magnetism and invisible results proceeding from erroneous and sincere beliefs. Faith in the Gods and God, and other superstitions attracts millions of foreign influences, living entities and powerful agents around them, with which we would have to use more than ordinary exercise of power to drive them away. We do not choose to do so. We do not find it either necessary or profitable to lose our time waging war to the unprogressed Planetaries who delight in personating gods and sometimes well known characters who have lived on earth. There are Dhyan-Chohans and "Chohans of Darkness," not what they term devils but imperfect "Intelligences" who have never been born on this or any other earth or sphere no more than the "Dhyan Chohans" have and who will never belong to the "builders of the Universe," the pure Planetary Intelligences, who preside at every Manvantara while the Dark Chohans preside at the Pralayas. Explain this to Mr. Sinnett (I CAN'T) — tell him to read over what I said to them in the few things I have explained to Mr. Hume; and let him remember that as all in this universe is contrast (I cannot translate it better) so the light of the Dhyan Chohans and their pure intelligence is contrasted by the "Ma-Mo Chohans" — and their destructive intelligence. These are the gods the Hindus and Christians and Mahomed and all others of bigoted religions and sects worship; and so long as their influence is upon their devotees we would no more think of associating with or counteracting them in their work than we do the Red-Caps on earth whose evil results we

try to palliate but whose work we have no right to meddle with so long as they do not cross our path. (You will not understand this, I suppose. But think well over it and you will. M. means here, that they have no right or even power to go against the natural or that work which is prescribed to each class of beings or existing things by the law of nature. The Brothers, for instance could prolong life but they could not destroy death, not even for themselves. They can to a degree palliate evil and relieve suffering; they could not destroy evil. No more can the Dhyan Chohans impede the work of the Mamo Chohans, for their Law is darkness, ignorance, destruction etc., as that of the former is Light, knowledge and creation. The Dhyan Chohans answer to Buddh, Divine Wisdom and Life in blissful knowledge, and the Ma-mos are the personification in nature of Shiva, Jehovah and other invented monsters with Ignorance at their tail).

The last phrase of M.'s I translate is thus. Tell him (you) then that for the sake of those who desire to learn and have information, I am ready to answer the 2 or 3 enquiries of Beninadhab from the Shasters, but I will enter in no correspondence with him or any other. Let him put their questions clearly and distinctly to (you) Mr. Sinnett, and then I will answer through him (you)."

I send you my uncle's letter just received by me. He says (as my translation of his Russian letter shows) that he wrote to you the same. Whether you received it or not, I know not, but I send you this. If it is identical with yours then send me back mine. I suppose that by this time it is pretty well proved that I am I — and not someone else; that my uncle being now adjunct (or asst.) Minister of the Interior, is a personage who by signing his name in full can certainly be trusted, unless, indeed, the C. and M. and your friend Primrose invent a new version and say that we have forged the documents. But my uncle says in his official letter to me that the Prince Dondovhof is going to send me an official document to prove my identity, and so we will wait. His other private letter I cannot translate as its phraseology is far from complimentary for Mr. Primrose in particular, and the Anglo-Indians who insult and vilify me in general. I will ask the Prince to write to Lord Ripon, or Gladstone direct.

Your's in the love of Jesus

H. P. Blavatsky.

Why the deuce does the "Boss" want me now to go to Allahabad? I can't be spending money there and back for I have to go by Jeypur and Baroda and he knows it. What all this means is more than I can tell. He made me go to Lahore and now it's Allahabad!!

Letter 135 Table of Contents

Letter No. 135

My dear Mr. Sinnett,

For fear that you should "trace back" to me a new treachery, permit me to say that I have never said to Hubbe Schleiden and Frank Gebhard that the existence of our seven objective planets was an allegory. What I said was, that the objectivity and actuality of the septenary chain had nothing to do with the correct understanding of the seven rounds. That outside of the initiates no one knew the mot final of this mystery. That you could not understand it thoroughly, nor explain it, because Mahat K.H. told you hundred times that you could not be told the whole doctrine; that you knew Hume had made him questions and cross-examined Him until his hair became grey. That there were hundred apparent inconsistencies just because you had not the key to the x777x and could not be given it. In short that you gave the truth, but by far not the whole truth especially about rounds and rings which was only at best allegorical.

Yours,

H.P.B.

Letter 136 Table of Contents

Letter No. 136

March 17th.

My dear Mr. Sinnett,

Your invitation read with surprise.

Not "surprise" at myself being invited, but surprise at you inviting me again, just as if you had not had enough of me! Now what good can I be to any one in this world, except to make some stare, others to speculate upon my cleverness as an impostor, and the small minority to eye me with the feeling of wonder generally in store for "monsters" exhibited in museums or aquariums. This is fact; and I had enough proof of it, not to run again my neck into the halter if I can help it. My coming to stop with you even for a few days, would be only a source of disappointment to yourself, and one of torture to me.

Now, you must not take these words en mauvaise part. I am simply sincere with you. You are and have been, — especially Mrs. Sinnett, for ever so long — my best friends here; but it is just because I consider you as such, that I am forced to rather give a momentary than a prolonged annoyance to you; rather a refusal, than an acceptance of the kind invitation. Besides — as a medium of communication between yourself and K.H. (for I suppose you do not invite me pour mes beaux yeux, alone?) I am utterly useless now. There is a limit to endurance, there is one to the greatest self-sacrifice. I have worked for them faithfully and unselfishly for years, and the result was, that I ruined my health, dishonoured my ancestral name, got reviled by every green­grocer from Oxford Street, and every fishmonger from Hungerford market — who had become a C.S. and — finally did no good to them, very little to the Society and none at all to either poor Olcott or myself. Believe me, we are better friends with several hundred miles between us than — a few steps. Besides this, Boss says there's a new development hanging over our heads. He and K.H. put their wise heads together and are preparing to work as they tell me. We have but a few months left until November and if things are not entirely whitewashed until then and fresh blood poured into the Brotherhood and Occultism — we may just as well go to bed all of us. Personally for myself it is a matter of very little moment, whether it is so or not. My time is also fast approaching when, my hour of triumph will strike. Then is it, that I also, may prove to those who speculated about me, those who believed as those who disbelieved that none of them approached within 100 miles of the area of truth. I have suffered hell on earth, but before I leave it, I promise myself such a triumph, as will make the Ripons and his Roman Catholics, and the Baly's and Bishop Sargeant with their Protestant donkeys — bray as loud as their lungs will bear. Now, do you really think that you know ME my dear Mr. Sinnett? Do you believe that, because you have fathomed — as you think — my physical crust and brain; that shrewd analyst of human nature though you be — you have ever penetrated even beneath the first cuticles of my Real Self? You would gravely err, if you did. I am held by all of you as untruthful because hitherto I have shown the world only the true exterior Mme. Blavatsky. It is just as if you complained of the falseness of a moss and weed covered, and mud-covered, stony and rugged rock for writing outside I am not moss covered and mud-plastered; your eyes deceive you for you are unable to see beneath the crust," etc. You must understand the allegory. It is not boasting for I do not say whether inside that unprepossessing rock there is a palatial residence or an humble hut. What I say is this: you do not know me; for whatever there is inside it, is not what you think it is; and — to judge of me therefore, as of one untruthful is the greatest mistake in the world besides being a flagrant injustice. I, (the inner real "I") am in prison and cannot show myself as I am with all the desire I may have to. Why then, should I, because speaking for myself as I am and feel myself to be, why should I be held responsible for the outward jail-door and its appearance, when I have neither built nor yet decorated it?

But all this will be for you no better than vexation of spirit. "The poor old lady is crazy again —" will you remark. And let me prophecy that the day will come when you will accuse K.H. too of having deceived you; for only failing to tell you what he has no right to tell anyone. Yes; you will blaspheme even against him; because you always secretly hope that he may make an exception in your favour.

Why, such an extravagant, seemingly useless tirade as contained in this letter? Because, the hour is near; and Of course it was a joke. No; you do not hate me; you only feel a friendly, indulgent, a kind of benevolent contempt for H.P.B. You are right there, so far as you know her the one who is ready to fall into pieces. Perchance you may find out yet your mistake concerning the other — the well hidden party. I have now with me Deb; Deb "Shortridg" as we call him, who looks a boy of 12, though is past 30 and more. An ideal little face with small cut delicate features, pearly teeth, long hair, almond cut eyes and a Chinese-tartar purple cap on the top of his head. He is my "heir of Salvation" and I have work to do with him. I cannot leave him and have no right to, now. I have to make over my work to him. He is my right hand (and K.H.'s left one) — at imposture and false pretence.

And now — God bless you. Better not be angry at anything I may do or say; only as a friend, a real friend, I say to you, so long as you have not changed your mode of living, expect no exception.

Yours truly

H.P.B.

My sincere love to Mrs. Sinnett and a kiss to dear little Dennie.

Letter 137 Table of Contents

Letter No. 137

Clan Drummond: Algiers.

Sunday 8th.

My dear Mr. Sinnett,

You see I am as good as my word. Last night as we were hopelessly tossed about and pitched in our Clan wash-tub Djual K. put in an appearance and asked in his Master's name if I would send you a chit. I said I would. He then asked me to prepare some paper — which I had not. He then said any would do. I then proceeded to ask some from a passenger not having Mrs. Holloway to furnish me with. Lo! I wish those passengers, who quarrel with us every day about the possibility of phenomena could see what was taking place in my cabin on the foot of my berth! How D.K.'s hand, as real as life, was impressing the letter at his Master's dictation which came out in relief between the wall and my legs. He told me to read the letter but I am no wiser for it. I understand very well that it was all probation and all for the best; but it is devilish hard for me to understand why it should all be performed over my long suffering back. She is in correspondence with Myers and the Gebhard's and many others. You will see what splatters I will receive as an effect of the causes produced by that probation business. I wish I had never seen the woman. Such treachery, such a deceit I would never have dreamt of. I was also a chela and guilty of more than one flapdoodle; but I would have thought as soon of murdering physically a man as to murder morally my friends as she has. Had not Master brought about the explanation I would have gone away leaving a nice memory of myself in Mrs. Sinnett's and your hearts. We have on board Mrs. (Major) Burton of Simla. She left it the day before I came and has been always anxious since, to meet me. She wants to join us and is a charming little woman. We have several Anglo Indians and all kindly disposed. The steamer is a rolling wash-tub and the steward an infamy. We are all starving, and live upon our own tea and biscuits. Do write a word to Port Said, poste restante. We shall remain in Egypt perhaps a fortnight. It all depends on Olcott's letters and news from Adyar. Can't write for the rolling. Love to all.

Yours ever truly

H. P. Blavatsky.

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Letter No. 138

Adyar, March 17th.

My dear Mr. Sinnett,

I am very sorry that the Mahatma should have selected me to fight this new battle. But since there must be concealed wisdom even in the act of choosing a half dead individual who just rises from eight weeks of sick bed and can hardly gather her scattered ideas to say that which had better be left unsaid — I obey.

You cannot have forgotten what I told you repeatedly at Simla and what the Master K. H. wrote to you himself, namely, that the T.S. is first of all a universal Brotherhood, not a Society for phenomena and occultism. The latter must be held secret etc. I know that owing to my great zeal for the cause and your assurances that the Society would never prosper unless the occult element was introduced into it and the Masters proclaimed I am more guilty than any for having listened to this. Still all of you have now to suffer Karma. Well, the phenomena are now all found, on the evidence of padris, and other enemies, frauds (by Mr. Hodgson), from the "brooch" phenomenon downward; and the Masters are dragged before the public and their names desecrated by every rascal in Europe.

The padris have spent thousands for false and other witnesses, and I was not permitted to go to law where at least I could produce my evidence: and now Hodgson, who, unto this day seemed most friendly and came nearly daily to us changed front. He went to Bombay and saw Wimbridge and all my enemies. Returning he assured Hume, (who is here, and also coming daily) that in his opinion the evidence of our boys in office and other witnesses is so contradictory that after Bombay he came to the conclusion that all our phenomena were frauds. Amen.

And now what is the use in writing to disabuse Mr. Arthur Gebhard's mind? As soon as the P.R.S. oracle will have proclaimed me a wholesale "fraud" and all of you my dupes (as Hume does here laughingly, and with the greatest unconcern) — your L.L. Society is sure to collapse. Can even you, the true and the faithful, stand this storm? Happy Damodar! He went to the land of Bliss, to Tibet and must now be far away in the regions of our Masters. No one will ever see him now, I expect.

Well, this is where the accursed phenomena led us to. Olcott is returning from Burma in three days and will find nice things. At first Hume was all friendly. Then came the revelations. Hodgson had traced the brooch!!! I had given an identical brooch or pin to mend to Servai before going to Simla, he was told, and it was that brooch. Does Mrs. Sinnett remember that I spoke at that time of having had a pin very like it with pearls that I sent with another I bought at Simla to my sister's children? I spoke of the likeness even to Mr. Hume. I asked Mr. H. to have his pin sent to the jeweller (unknown but to Servai, Wimbridge's partner and my mortal enemy) who, will or will not identify it. Most probably he will. Why shouldn't he — for a hundred rupees or so?

Mr. Hume wants to save the Society and has found a means. He called yesterday a Council meeting composed of Ragunath Row, Subba Row, Sreenavas Row, Honourable Subramanya Iyer and Rama Iyer. All leaders of Hindus. Then having selected Rag: Row Chairman and the audience being composed of the two Oakeleys, Hartmann and the chelas — he gave him a paper. In it he proposed, to save the Society (he imagines and insists that it is falling to pieces after the "revelations" though not one fellow has yet resigned); to force Colonel Olcott its life-President Madame Blavatsky, (ditto) Damodar (absent) Bowaji, Bhavani Row, Ananda, Rama Swami, etc. in all 16 persons to resign as they were all frauds and accomplices since many of them asserted they knew the Masters independently of me and that the Masters did not exist. The Headquarters must be sold and on its place a new Scientifico-Philosophico-Humanitarian Theosophical society raised. I was not present at the meeting, I am confined to my room. But the Councillors came to me in a body after the proceedings. Instead of accepting the proposal though and proclaiming the phenomena a fraud as Mr. Hume said they all had done to his knowledge — Raganath Row rejected the paper throwing it aside with disgust. They all believed in the Mahatmas — he said, and the phenomena they had witnessed Ergo, no more phenomena, at least here in India. While Mascul. and Cook produce theirs far better and are paid for it, we come out second best and are kicked for them.

Mr. Hume is more liberal than the Padris. These call Olcott "a credulous fool but undeniably an honest man"; and he declares, that since Olcott swears to have seen the Masters he must be a dishonest man, and since he got his pearl-pin at the pawn-broker's at Bombay he must be (by implication) a thief too, though Hume denies this.

Such is in brief the present situation. It began at Simla opening with the first act and now comes the Prologue that will soon finish with my death. For, though, doctors notwithstanding (who proclaimed my four days' agony, and the impossibility of recovery) I suddenly got better thanks to Master's protecting hand, I carry two mortal diseases in me which are not cured — heart, and kidneys. At any moment the former can have a rupture, and the latter carry me away in a few days. I will not see another year. All this is due to five years of constant anguish, worry and repressed emotion. A Gladstone may be called a "fraud" and laugh at it. I — can't, say what you may, Mr. Sinnett.

And now to your business. I have never, before beginning the service for you and Mr. Hume, transmitted and received letters to, and from Masters except for myself. If you had any idea of the difficulties, or the modus operandi you would not have consented to be in my place. And yet I never refused. The shrine was thought of to facilitate the transmission, as now dozens and hundreds come to pray and beg to put their letters inside. As you know, and is proved to all except Mr. Hodgson, who finds contradictions, all received answers without my leaving the room and often in different languages. It is this, that unable to account for, Mr. Hume calls a wholesale collective fraud for, since the Masters in his idea, do not exist, and that they have never written one single of the letters ever received — then the logical conclusion is that it is the whole staff — everyone in the Headquarters — Damodar, Bowaji, Subba Row, all, all who helped me to write the letters and passed them through the hole. Even Hodgson finds the idea preposterous.

And now to the "deception" practised on Mr. Arthur Gebhard, of which, I learned from the Mahatma and A.G.'s own letter sent to me. This "fraud" coupled to the revelations and hints about others insinuated by kitten-like Mrs. Holloway must have impressed a figure of H.P.B. of exquisite honourability and honesty on poor, dear Mrs. Gebhard!!

Well, persons who are on the eve of their death do not generally fib and say lies. I hope you will give me credit for speaking the truth. Ar. G. is not the only one to suspect and accuse me of fraud. Say then to the "friends" who may have received letters from the Master through me that I never was a deceiver; that I never played tricks upon them. I have often facilitated phenomena of letter-transmission by easier but still occult means. Only as none of the Theosophists, except occultists, know anything of either difficult or easy means of occult transmission nor are they acquainted with occult laws, everything is suspicious to them. Take for instance this illustration as an instance: transmission by mechanical thought transference (in contradistinction with the conscious). The former is produced by calling first the attention of a chela or the Mahatma. The letter must be opened and every line of it passed over the forehead, holding the breath and never taking off the part of the letter from the latter until bell notifies it is read and noted. The other mode is to impress every sentence of the letter (consciously of course) still mechanically on the brain, and then send it phrase by phrase to the other person on the other end of the line. This of course if the sender permits you to read it, and believes in your honesty that you read it mechanically, only reproducing the form of the words and lines on your brain — and not the meaning. But in both instances the letter must be open and then burnt with what we call virgin fire (lit neither with matches, brimstone nor any preparation but rubbed with a resinous, transparent little stone, a ball that no naked hand must touch. This is done for the ashes, which, while the paper burns become immediately invisible, which they should not, if the paper were lit otherwise; because they would remain by their weight and grossness in the surrounding atmosphere, instead of being transferred instantaneously to the receiver. This double process is done for double security: for the words transmitted from one brain to another, or to the akasa near the Mahatma or chela may, some of them be omitted, whole words slip out etc., and the ashes be not perfectly transmitted; and in this way one corrects the other. I cannot do that, and therefore speak of it only as an example how deception can be easily fathered. Fancy A. giving a letter for the Mahatma to B.

B. goes in the adjoining room and opening the letter — not one word of which will he remember if he is a true chela and an honest man — transmits it to his brain by one of the two methods, sending one sentence after the other on the current and then proceeds to burn the letter; perhaps — he has forgotten the "virgin stone" in his room. Leaving inadvertently the opened letter on the table, he absents himself for a few minutes. During that time A. impatient and probably suspicious enters the room. He sees his letter opened on the table. He will either take it and make an Expose (!!) or leave it and then ask B. after he has burnt it whether he sent his letter. Of course B. will answer he has. Then will come the expose with consequences you may imagine, or A. will hold his tongue and do as many do: hold for ever B. for a fraud. This is one instance out of many, and a real one, given to me as a caution by Master.

There's a funny thing in Mr. A.G.'s letter, very funny and suggestive. For instance recounting in it how he gave me the letter and six hours later I had told him "it was gone" he adds: "four days later Colonel wrote to H.P.B. saying that his Master appeared and said that K.H. had said: (see original sent back to you.) But then the good "Colonel must also be a fraud," a confederate of mine, an accomplice? Or is it my Master who mystifies him Mr. A. G. Arthur Gebhard, or what? And then again: " . . . H.P.B. is a fraud although I will never deny her excellent qualities." "The 'excellent qualities' of a fraud is something startling and original at all events."

Thus you will please tell Mr. A. R. Gebhard that we are two "frauds --" if any; and also this: Mahatma K. H. has received but never read his letter, for the simple reason that he was prevented by his promise to the Chohan never to read a letter from any theosophist until his return from his mission to China where he then was. This He condescended now to tell me to help to my justification, as he says. He had forbidden me most strictly to send him any more letters until further orders. Since Master at Arthur G.'s urgent prayer took it upon Himself for reasons best known to Himself, I had nothing to say but to obey. I took the letter and put it in a drawer full of papers. When I looked for it, I found it was gone, at least I did not see it, and said so to him. But before going to bed taking out an enevlope I found his letter still there, though in the morning it was really gone. Now if my remembrance is right I showed to Madame Gebhard, Olcott's letter in which he speaks of what Master said. I had not read Gebhard's letter and may have taken the words as an answer to this letter. As it is I have not now the faintest recollection of the whole of the message. One thing I know and Madame Geb. will corroborate it: she spoke of the terrible quarrels between Arth. G. and his father to me in London, before going to Paris and to Olcott repeatedly. She had expressed the hope that the Mahatma would interfere on her behalf, and these words may have related to this and not at all to the letter. How can I remember? Olcott may have heard imperfectly, or I muddled up the thing. Hundred combinations may have happened. The only fraud is, then, in my telling him an unconscious untruth about the letter going six hours later when it was taken only in the morning. To this I plead "guilty."

But as in the Hume "pearl-pin" affair there is something more implied than mere fraud in the production of phenomena. If I have bamboozled in this, Mad. G. and himself then I become right away a black leg, a SWINDLER. I have received hospitality at their house for months; they have nursed me out through my sickness, and even not permitted to pay the doctor, covered me with rich presents, honours and kindnesses, for all of which I repay with — DECEPTION. Oh powers of heaven, Truth and Justice! May Mr. Arthur Gebhard's Karma prove light to him. I forgive him for the sake of his mother and father whom I will love and respect to my last hour. Please give these my parting words to Mad. Gebhard; I have nothing more to say.

It is useless, Mr. Sinnett. The Theosophical Society shall live here, in India, for ever — it seems doomed in Europe, because I am doomed. It hangs on your Esoteric Buddhism and the Occult World. And if Mahatmas are myths, I — the author of all those letters, a proclaimed FRAUD and worse — by the P.R.S. how can the London Lodge live? I told you — for I felt it, as I always feel that this investigation of Mr. Hodgson will be fatal. He is the most excellent, truthful, expert young man. But how can he recognise truth from lie when there is a thick net of conspiracy around him? At first, when he visited the Headquarters, and the padris could not well get hold of him, he seemed all right. His accounts were favourable. And then he was caught. We have our informants who followed the missionaries sharply. You, in England may laugh — we do not.

We know that the conspiracy is not one to laugh at. The 30,000 padris of India are all leagued against us. It is their last card they play — either they or we. There was 72,000 rupees collected in one week in Bombay — "to conduct the investigations against the so-called Founders of the T.S." All the Judges of the land (think of Sir C. Turner!) are against us. Sceptics and nominal Christians, free thinkers and C.S. snobs — my very name stinks in their nostrils. And now comes the old sleeping beauty again on the scene. I am, after all, A RUSSIAN SPY. Last night the Oakleys dined with Hume at the Garstins and were told very seriously that the Government was to over shadow me once more; that they had information (the Coulombs?) and that I had "to be watched." Vainly did Hume laugh and the Oakleys protest. It was "very serious" in view of the Russians crossing Cabul, Afghanistan, or something of that sort.

An old and a dying woman, confined to her room; forbidden to mount a few steps lest her heart bursts; never reading a paper for fear of finding there the most vile personal abuse; receiving letters from Russia but from relatives — a spy, a dangerous character! Oh Britishers of India where is your valour.

Notwithstanding Hume, their friend Hodgson and all the evidence, the Oakleys do not believe me a fraud. They have full confidence in the Masters, nothing, they say, will make them doubt their existence and, apart some little unpleasantness due to gossip upon private affairs, they are staunch theosophists and as they say my best friends. Well, and good. I believe Oh Lord, help thou my unbelief. How can I believe anyone my friend at such a moment? It is only he who knows, as he knows that he lives and breathes, that our Mahatmas exist and phenomena are real, who can sympathise with me, who do, and look upon me as a martyr. Pamphlets by Reverends, books and articles exposing me from top to foot appear every day. "Theosophy Unveiled —" "Madame Blavatsky Exposed —" "The Theosophical Humbug Before the World —" "Christ against Mahatmas" etc. etc.: you who knew India well, Mr. Sinnett, do you think it difficult to get false witnesses here? They have all the advantages over us. They (the enemies) work night and day, flooding the country with literature against us, and we sit motionless and only quarrel within the Theos: Headquarters. Olcott is held finally a fool, detested by the Oakleys (for some mistakes that really he could not help,) and adored by the Hindus. And now after the arrival of Hume I come for my share. Though my friends, the Oakleys, advise me to resign while the Hindus say they will all leave if I do. I must resign because being thought a "Russian spy" I endanger the Society. Such is my life during my convalescence when every emotion, says the doctor, may prove fatal. So much the better. I will then resign de facto. But then they forget that so far I am the only link between the Europeans and the Mahatmas. The Hindus do not care. Dozens of them are chelas hundreds know Them, but as in the case of Subba Row they will sooner die than speak of their Masters. Hume could get nothing from Subba Row, though everyone knows what he is. The other night he received a long letter from my Master in the meeting room when Hume voted my resignation. They had just voted there should be no phenomena any more and Mahatmas never spoken about; the letter was in Telugu, they say. Though they stand by me and will stand to the last, they accuse me of having desecrated the Truth and the Masters by having been the means of the Occult World and Esoteric Buddhism. Do not count upon the Hindus, you of the L.L. I — dead, say Society good bye to the Masters. Say even now — all perhaps with one exception — for I have pledged my word to my Hindu Brothers, the occultists, never to mention except among ourselves Their names, and that I will keep it.

This, will probably be my last letter to you, dear Mr. Sinnett. It took me a week nearly to write this one — I am so feeble; and then I do not think I will have an opportunity. I cannot tell you why: most probably, you will not regret it. You cannot remain faithful much longer, living as you do in the world. Myers and P.R.S. will laugh you to scorn. Hume, who goes to London in April will set all against the Mahatmas and me. It takes a different kind of men and women than you have in the L.L. with the exception of Miss Arundale and two or three others — to withstand such a persecution and storm. And all this because we have profaned Truth by giving it out indiscriminately — and forgot the motto of the true Occultist: To know, to dare, and to KEEP SILENT.

Good-bye then, dear Mr. Sinnett and Mrs. Sinnett. Whether I die in a few months or remain two or three years in solitude I am as good as dead — already. Forget me, and try to deserve personal communication with the Master. Then you shall be able to preach him, and if you succeed as I succeeded you shall be hooted and insulted as I was, and see whether you can stand it. The Oakleys urge me to write to my aunt and sister and ask her to send me the design of the pearl brooch I sent them in 1880. I refuse. Why, should I? The brooch phenomenon proven, then will come out some other proved fraudulent by false witnesses. I am tired, tired, tired and so disgusted that Death herself with her first hours of horror is preferable to this. Let the whole Good-bye, again. May your life be happy and prosperous and Mrs. S.'s old age more healthy than her youth. Forgive me the annoyances I may have caused you and — forget

Yours to the end

H. P. Blavatsky.

Letter 139 Table of Contents

Letter No. 139

Wednesday.

My dear Mr. Sinnett,

I asked you (I myself) in my letter to you "Do, please do try and have intuition." You have succeeded but only for one portion. You felt that a page, or so, of it had been dictated to me, and that it was by no sham K.H. But you have failed again to feel in what an unalloyed spirit of kindness sympathy for and appreciation of yourself He dictated those few sentences. You mistook it for criticism. Now, hear me. Except a vague recollection that I have been writing under His dictation, I could not, of course, remember one line of it correctly, though I have read it carefully before I closed the letter. But what I can swear to is that there was not a shadow of criticism against yourself personally meant or in the Mahatma's thought when passing this to me. I was writing my letter to you and had written about three or four pages when the Countess came in and read to me out of your letter those desponding lines in which you said that you are inclined to suspect that the "Higher Powers" do not wish the Society to live any longer and that it is useless for you to try or something of that. I had not had time to open my mouth for an answer and protest when I saw His reflection over the writing desk and heard the words "Now write, pray." I did not listen to the words dictated except in a mechanical sort of way, but I know with what attention and intense interest I watched the "thought and feeling-lights" and aura, if you understand my meaning. The Mahatma wanted me to, I suppose; otherwise His thoughts and inner working would have remained impenetrable. And I say, that NEVER, since you know Him, never was there so much kindness, genuine feeling for you, and an utter absence of "criticism" or reproach directed to yourself as this time. Don't be ungrateful; don't misunderstand. Open your inner heart and feeling entirely and do not judge through your world and cold reason spectacles. Ask the Countess to whom the letter was read and to whom I told what I say to you now, and to hear which she was so glad for you, for she does sympathise with you and your position and appreciates as much as I do, all you have done. All you say is perfectly true, and just what I thought I had discerned in the Mahatma's aura. The yellow-grayish streaks were directed all to Olcott, (London period, not now), Mohini, Finch (more reddish); and to others I will not name. Your full size portrait, or scin-lecca [lǽca], received a whole torrent of blue, clear silvery light — the Prince's Hall, Kingsford incident, and even Holloway were all far, far away from you in a mist — hence a proof undeniable that you were implicated in it by no fault of yours personally, but drawn into it irresistibly by the general Karma. Where is then the "criticism" or reproach? No man living can do more in this world than is in him. You could not avoid — Prince's Hall meeting, for the Society had chosen a path, in which it had to come. But all of you, you the first, had you prepared for it as it ought to have been done long before would have saved the situation by each of you delivering — even reading it would have been better — a speech that would have gone home to the public instead of what it has done. Your speech was the only one against which nothing could be urged — but, on account of your ill-will, you having been dragged into it — so cold, so devoid of enthusiasm or even earnestness that it became like a key-note to the others. Olcott's was a regular Yankee flapdoodle one of the worst. The "Angel-Mohini's was a remarkably stupid one, Babu-like flowers of rhetoric etc. But that's things of the past. Of course it was a failure; but it might have been a success notwithstanding everything adverse, had it been prepared beforehand. The public reception was on the path chosen and had to take place, for it would have been worse still had it not come off. Holloway was sent, and was in the programme of trials and destruction. She has done you ten times more harm than to the Society but this is your fault entirely and now she is dancing the war-dance around Olcott, who is as fast friends with her and more than you were. It is a weekly correspondence incessant and endearing, charming to behold she is his dear agent in Brooklyn, for things occult etc. Let that go. — About "chelas" — it is a more serious question. They are no fools either of them. They feel, if they do not know yet, that the abyss between them and Masters is being made wider daily. They feel they are on the wrong left side, and feeling that, they will turn towards that, to which all such "failures" turn. If Masters ordered them to go back to India I do not think they would now under Bowajee's inspiration. Mohini is ruined by him, there's — no mistake about it. And Miss A. is going to pots in their company. You have to act independently of them; not to break visibly, but to do your own work as though they did not exist. Look here, I want you to write to Arthur Gebhard a serious letter and tell him all you know about Bowajee. He is in full correspondence with the Americans, and getting round them as he got round the Gebhards. I wrote to him and the Countess did. But he will not believe us unless corroborated by you. He was surely told by this time that the Countess is entirely under my psychology. Franz is certain of it, poor man. Unless you warn him the two, or one of "chelas" are sure to go to America. If you could bring the Leonard to clamour for his departure to India, as a settlement then he would have no excuse to stop. But how to do it! If I could only see, approach the hussy I would be ready to sacrifice myself. — Anything to weed the Society from all this poisonous vegetation. But you can work independently of all [of] them — that's sure.

Before the 15th of April, we will be near you, across the stream. The Countess comes with me and takes her chances until about the middle of May. I have to be near you in case something should happen, for save herself, I do not think I have a friend real friend in this wide world besides yourself and Mrs. Sinnett. The "semblance" the theosophical Mr. Hyde (Dr. Jekyll) has done his best. I could stop it in one hour if I could only pounce on them unexpectedly. This I swear. But how to do it. If I could only arrive and stop in London for two days unknown it would be done. I would go to them at 8 in the morning. But I must see you and think over it first. If I had health only — which I have not. The "two years life and no more" of the London doctor brought by Mr. Gebhard and of my doctor at Adyar — are drawing near the end. Unless Master interferes once more — Good-bye.

You have said nothing of Gladstone's little tricks. Don't you believe in it? Funny. I am told you received a letter upon that subject so far back as during the Ilbert Bill row. Well I can tell you nice things about the Jesuits and their doings. But of course its no good. Yet indeed, indeed it is serious.

Well, good-bye, do write.

Yours ever faithfully,

H.P.B.

Love to Mrs. Sinnett.

Letter 140 Table of Contents

Letter No. 140

Jan. 6. 1886. Wurzburg.

My dear Mr. Sinnett,

I am impressed to give you the following: First let me tell you that the dear Countess went off to Munich like a shot to try and save Hubbe from his weakness and the Society from crumbling down. She was the whole evening in a trance, getting out and in from her body. She saw Master and felt him all the night. She is a great clairvoyant. Well, after reading a few pages of the Report I was so disgusted with Hume's gratuitous lies and Hodgson's absurd inferences that I nearly gave up all in despair. What could I do or say against evidence on the natural worldly plane! Everything went against me and I had but to die. I went to bed and I had the most extraordinary vision. I had vainly called upon the Masters — who came not during my waking state, but now in my sleep I saw them both, I was again (a scene of years back) in Mah. K.H.'s house. I was sitting in a corner on a mat and he walking about the room in his riding dress, and Master was talking to someone behind the door. "I remind can't" — I pronounced in answer to a question of His about a dead aunt. — He smiled and said "Funny English you use." Then I felt ashamed, hurt in my vanity, and began thinking (mind you, in my dream or vision which was the exact reproduction of what bad taken place word for word 16 years ago)" now I am here and speakingnothing but English in verbal phonetic language I can perhaps learn to speak better with Him." (To make it clear with Master I also used English, which whether bad or good was the same for Him as he does not speak it but understands every word I say out of my head; and I am made to understand Him — how I could never tell or explain if I were killed but I do. With D.K. I also spoke English, he speaking it better even than Mah. K.H.) Then, in my dream still, three months after as I was made to feel in that vision — I was standing before Mah. K.H. near the old building taken down he was looking at, and as Master was not at home, I took to him a few sentences I was studying in Senzar in his sister's room and asked him to tell me if I translated them correctly — and gave him a slip of paper with these sentences written in English. He took and read them and correcting the interpretation read them over and said "Now your English is becoming better — try to pick out of my head even the little I know of it." And he put his hand on my forehead in the region of memory and squeezed his fingers on it (and I felt even the same trifling pain in it, as then, and the cold shiver I had experienced) and since that day He did so with my head daily, for about two months. Again, the scene changes and I am going away with Master who is sending me off, back to Europe. I am bidding good-bye to his sister and her child and all the chelas. I listen to what the Masters tell me. And then come the parting words of Mah. K.H. laughing at me as He always did and saying "Well, if you have not learned much of the Sacred Sciences and practical Occultism — and who could expect a WOMAN to — you have learned, at any rate, a little English. You speak it now only a little worse than I do!" and he laughed.

Again the scene changes I am 47th St. New York writing Isis and His voice dictating to me. In that dream or retrospective vision I once more rewrote all Isis and could now point out all the pages and sentences Mah. K.H. dictated — as those that Master did — in my bad English, when Olcott tore his hair out by handfuls in despair to ever make out the meaning of what was intended. I again saw myself night after night in bed — writing Isis in my dreams, at New York, positively writing it in my sleep and felt sentences by Mah. K.H. impressing themselves on my memory. Then, as I was awakening from that vision (in Wurzburg now) I heard Mah. K. H.'s voice — "and now put two and two together, poor blind woman. The bad English and the construction of sentences you do know, even that you have learned from me . . . take off the slur thrown upon you by that misguided, conceited man (Hodgson): explain the truth to the few friends who will believe you — for the public never will to that day that the Secret Doctrine comes out." I awoke, and it was like a flash of lightning; but I still did not understand what it referred to. But an hour after, there comes H[um]ubbe Schleiden's letter to the Countess, in which he says, that unless I explain how it is that such a similarity is found and proven by Hodgson between my faulty English and Mah. K.H.'s certain expressions, the construction of sentences and peculiar Gallicisms — I stand accused for ever of deceit forgery (!!) and what not. Of course I have learned my English from Him! This Olcott even shall understand. You know and I told it to many friends and enemies — I was taught dreadful Yorkshire by my nurse called Governess. From the time my father brought me to England, when fourteen, thinking I spoke beautiful English — and people asked him if he had me educated in Yorkshire or Ireland — and laughed at my accent and way of speaking — I gave up English altogether trying to avoid speaking it as much as I could. From fourteen till I was over forty I never spoke it, let alone writing and forgot it entirely I could read — which I did very little in English — I could not speak it. I remember how difficult it was for me to understand a well written book in English so far back only as 1867 in Venice. All I knew when I came to America in 1873 was to speak a little and this Olcott and Judge and all who knew me then can testify to. I wish people saw an article I once attempted to write for the Banner of Light when instead of sanguine I put sanguinary, etc. I learned to write it through Isis, that's sure and Prof. A. Wilder who came weekly to help Olcott arranging chapters and writing Index can testify to it. When I had finished it (and this Isis is the third part only of what I wrote and destroyed) I could write as well as I do now not worse nor better. My memory and its capacities seem gone since then.

What wonder then that my English and the Mahatma's show similarity! Olcott's and mine do also in our Americanisms that I picked up from him these ten years. I translating mentally all from the French would not have written sceptic with a k, though Mahat. K.H. did and when I put it with a c Olcott and Wilder and the proof reader corrected it. Now Mah. K.H. has preserved the habit and stuck to it and I never did since I went to India. I would have never put carbolic instead of "carbonic" — and I was the first to remark the mistake when Hume Mahatma's letter, at Simla, in which it occurs. It is mean and stupid of him to publish it, for, if he says this referred to a sentence found in some magazine, then the word correctly written was there before my eyes or those of any chela who precipitated the letter, and therefore it is evidently a lapsus calami if there were any calamni in precipitation. "Difference in handwriting" — oh the great wonder! Has Master K.H. written himself all His letters? How many chelas have been precipitating and writing them — heaven only knows. Now if there is such a marked difference between letters written by the same identical person mechanically, (as the case with me for instance who never had a steady handwriting) how much more in precipitation, which is the photographic reproduction from one's head, and I bet anything that no chela (if Masters can) is capable of precipitating his own handwriting twice over in precisely the same way — a difference and a marked one there shall always be, as no painter can paint twice over the same likeness (see Schmiechen with his (Master's) portraits). Now all this shall be easily understood by theosophists (not all) and those who have thought over deeply and know something of the philosophy. Who shall believe all I say in this letter outside of the few? No one. And yet, I am demanded an explanation and when it comes out (if you write it out from facts I can give you) no one shall believe it. Yet you have to show at least one thing: occult transactions, letters handwriting etc. cannot be judged by the daily standard, experts, this that and the other. There are no three solutions but two: Either I have invented the Masters, their philosophy, written their letters etc. or, I have not. If I have and the Masters do not exist, then their handwritings could not have existed, either: I have invented them also; and if I have — how can I be called a "forger"? They are my handwritings and I have the right to use them if I am so clever. As for philosophy and doctrine invented the S.D. shall show. Now I am here alone with the Countess for witness. I have no books no one to help me. And I tell you that the Secret Doctrine will be 20 times as learned, philosophical and better than Isis which will be killed by it. Now there are hundreds of things I am permitted to say and explain. It will show what a Russian spy can do, an alleged forger plagiarist etc. The whole Doctrine is shown the mother stone the foundation of all the religions including Xty, and on the strength of exoteric published Hindu books, with their symbols explained esoterically. The extreme lucidity of "Esoteric Buddhism" will also be shown and its doctrines proven correct mathematically, geometrically logically and scientifically. Hodgson is very clever, but he is not clever enough for truth and it shall triumph after which I can die peacefully.

Babula writing my Master's letters indeed! Hume finding out five years later that the envelope from the municipality had been "tampered" by me brought by Babula. What good memory his Mahomedan bearer must have, to remember that it was precisely that envelope! And Garstin's letter taken to him by Mohini 2 1/2 hours after his letter had been placed inside and disappeared from the shrine. His letter sealed glued with every precaution bearing no such marks as now described on the night of the delivery, and now two years later, after having passed through 1000 hands, been tampered by Garstin and experts themselves, trying to see how it could have been opened — now it all goes against me! And Hume's lies. Such Tibetan or Nepaul paper he learned could be procured near Darjeeling. Masters never wrote he said on such paper before I had gone to Darjeeling. Indeed. Now I enclose a slip of such paper for your perusal, that with your memory you are sure to recognise. It is the original bit from which the first lessons of Master were given to you and Hume in his Museum at Simla. You looked at it many times. Please when recognised send it back to me. It is private and confidential and I ask you on your honour not to let it go out of your hands not to give it to any one. No

Yours — No more broken down.

H. P. Blavatsky.

Letter 141 Table of Contents

Letter No. 141

March 17th, 1886.

My Dear Mr. Sinnett,

Do anything you like. I am in your hands. Only I cannot see what harm there could be were the lawyers to be told that it is a lie my being Mme Metrovitch or Mme any one except myself. It would prevent them and put a stop to their addressing letters to me in that name; for surely they are not such fools as not to know that this open libel is against law. It is because the Bibiche bamboozle them into the belief that I was really a bigamist and a trigamist that they did it. Well very soon I may receive a letter addressed to me in the name of Mrs. Leadbeater or Mrs. Damodar or perhaps be accused of having had a child by Mohini or Bowajee. Who can tell unless something is refuted.

But this is all trifles. There is something unutterably disgusting and sickening to me in the idea of any concealment of names. I hate incognitos and changing names. Why should I give you more bother than you already have with me? Why should you lose time and money to come and meet me? Don't do this. I will send the things before hand and come out with Louise quietly second class, passing the night at Bohn or at Achen (Aix la Chapelle) or somewhere on the road. Lodgings will be dear at Ostende in June, not before. Besides I can go somewhere near-by. I do not know when I will leave here. May be on the 1st, may be on the 15th. I have paid till that date.

Why shouldn't Mrs. Sinnett come with Dennie? Where's the harm and why should she not stop with me if I find good lodgings? I would never be happy unless she was with me for what's the use of her being in other lodgings? Only discomfort for her and vexation of spirit for me.

I have written to my aunt and sister giving them Redway's address. The letters will all be addressed to you to his care, only for Madame B: under your name. However, I really care little for letters or no letters. There's a long article in my praise and glorification in the Russian papers in which I am called "the martyr of England." That's comforting and makes me feel as though I were indeed a "grand Russian Spy!" Say, do you know — but then you will never believe it. Well don't, but some day you will be forced to, Gladstone is a secret Roman Catholic convert. That's sure. Make of it what you will, you cannot change FACTS. Ah, poor England; and foolish, blind are those who seek the destruction of the T.S.!

 

Well, I must say a few words in this respect. You say "we are almost past praying for . . . paralyzed and helpless. The French and German branches of the T.S. are practically dead. The London movement can only be revivified at some future period, etc." You are asked: How is this? You are not dead. The Countess lives. Two or three fellows around you breathe, so far. The Society in India is flourishing and can NEVER die. In America it is becoming a grand movement. Dr. Buck, Prof. Coues, Arthur Gebhard with a few others are helped because they move, and show their utmost contempt for whatever is said, printed, howled in the streets. Oh, do try and be intuitional — for pity's sake do not shut your eyes and because you cannot see objectively do not paralyze subjective help which is there living, breathing, evident. Does not all around you show the indestructibility of the Society, if we see how the fierce waves raised by the Dugpa-world have been for the last two years heaving and spreading and beating ferociously around the Society to break, what? only the rotten chips of the "Ark of the Deluge." Have they carried away anyone really worthy of the movement? Not one. You suspect that the "Masters" want to put an end to the movement? They see you do not understand what they are doing and feel sorry for it. Are they to be blamed for what happened, or we, ourselves? If the Founder of the Society and the Founders or Presidents of the Branches had ever kept in view the fact that it is not so much the quantity we are in need of, but the quality, to make the Society a success half of the disasters would have been avoided. There were two paths before the L.L. as before any other branch when you took up its mangled fragments and rebuilt them into the growing successful body it was: that which led to the formation of a secret, arcane Society of studying practical occultists; the other an open and fashionable body. You have always preferred the latter. A chance was given to all of you in the formation of an inner group: you would not assert your authority and left it to the nominal President — who shook on his legs at every gentle breeze from within and without, ruined and then deserted it. Every such attempt was either repelled or, if realized, had such a strong element of sham in it that it proved a failure. It was found impossible to help it and it was left to its fate. There is an Asiatic proverb: "You may cut the serpent of wisdom in hundred pieces so long that its heart, which is in its head, remains untouched, the serpent will join its bits and live again." But when the heart and head seem everywhere and are nowhere, what can be done? The L.L. having taken its rank and place among public bodies it had to be judged by its appearances. It is not enough to laud the Body and Branches, as schools of morality and wisdom and benevolence, for they will always be judged by the outward world by their fruits not by their pretensions — not by what they say but by what they do. The Branch was always in need of efficient workers; and, as in all organizations the work devolved upon the very few. Out of those few one only had a definite object in view, pursued it firm and unwavering — YOURSELF. Yet your natural reserve and the strong element of worldly Society within the Occult body, the sense of English individuality and propriety in each member, prevented you on the one hand from asserting your rights as you ought to have done, and caused the rest to separate from you wide and apart, each determining to act as he or she thought best, to secure his own salvation and satisfy his aspirations, "working Karma out on a higher plane" as the foolish phrase goes now among them. You are right in saying that "the blows that have been struck at the movement" have been "all emanating from the consequences of the deputations from India"; you are wrong in thinking that (1) these consequences would have been as disastrous, had not the Hindu element been mixed up with the European and strongly helped and urged on toward mischief by the female element in the L.L.; and (2) that "the higher powers wish to arrest the growth of the Society." Mohini was sent, and at first won the hearts and poured new life into the L.L. He was spoiled by male and female adulation, by incessant flattery and his own weakness — your reserve and pride left you passive when you ought to have been active. The first bomb-shell from the Dugpa world came from America; you welcomed and warmed it in your own breast, you drove the writer of this more than once to the verge of despair, your thorough-going, sincere earnestness, your devotion to truth and the "Masters" having been made powerless for the time being, for discerning the real truth, for sensing that which was left unsaid for it could not be said and thus leaving the widest margin for suspicion. The latter was not unfounded. The Dugpa element triumphed fully at one time — why? because you believed in one who was sent by the opposing powers for the destruction of the Society and permitted to act as she and others did by the "higher powers," as you call them, whose duty it was not to interfere in the great probation save at the last moment. To this day you are unable to say what was true, what false — because there is no spot made apart, separated from the Society and consecrated to the one pure element in it, love and devotion to the truth whether abstract or concreted in the "Masters" — a spot in which no element of individuality or selfishness would enter — a real inner group is here meant. The Oriental group has proved a farce. Miss —— cares more for the chelas (?) than the Masters; she is blind to the fact that those who were (and yet think they still are) most devoted to the Cause, Masters, Theosophy, call it by whatever name — are those that are the most tried; that she is now being tried, that it is her last trial and that she does not come out of it as a conqueror, it seems. "In the absence of any means of communicating directly with them I can only judge by signs" — you say. The signs are evident. It is the great supreme trial all round. He who remains passive will lose nothing, but will not gain one tittle, when it is over. He may even cause his Karma to slide him gently back on the path he has already been climbing. What you sorely lack is Olcott's blessed self-confidence and — pardon — his vulgar but all powerful cheek. One need not give up tact and culture to have it. It is a many faced Proteus that can have either of his faces or cheek turned to the enemy and force him to cover. If the L.L. is composed only of six members — the President the seventh; and this daring "vieille garde" faces the enemy coolly, not allowing him to know how many you are, and impressing him with outward signs of a multitude by the number of pamphlets, convocations and other distinct, material proofs that the Society has not been shaken, that it has not felt the blows, that it snaps its fingers in the enemy's face, you will soon win the day; you will have exhausted the enemy before it tires out the Society to its last member. All this can be easily achieved and no "smashing disasters" would really affect it, if its members had intuition enough to see what "the higher powers" really wish, what they can or cannot prevent. Spiritual discernment is what is most wanted. "It is not so much a question of saving what remains of the Society — as of recommencing the movement at some future time." Fatal policy. Follow it, and you will have broken by that (future) time, every invisible yet powerfully vital thread that links the L.L. with the ashrums beyond the great mountains. NOTHING CAN KILL THE L.L. except that one thing — Passivity. Know this, you who confess that you "have no heart for the present to be giving lectures and addresses." "WORK UNDERGROUND" — it is the best you can do — but not in silence — if you would not kill the Society and your own personal aspirations with your own hand. All are not speakers in the L.L. and very lucky, or it would be a Babel. All are not wise, but those who are ought to share with the rest. Combine to make things complete. Make your activity commensurate with your opportunities and do not turn your face away from the latter, even from those that are created for you. "Fling the burning brands apart, and they will quickly go out; rake them together and they will glow, burst into flame, and shoot sky-ward with ruddy brightness." So shall the L.L. shine out if demoralization is kept at distance, if its lights are not allowed to burn and die out as isolated and intermediate points of lights, but are clustered and focalized into full ruddiness by the hand of its President, and if this hand is not allowed to drop the banner entrusted to it. Human dirt never sticks, nor does it soil the flame it is flung against. It only sticks hard to the marble, to the cold heart that has lost the last spark of the Divine flame. Yes indeed, the "Masters" and the "Powers that be" would call and guide many and many a sad, lonesome and weary one in this fair land of occult, psychic theosophy to gather with them around their altars. Two are bodily there already, who have won their day and found the alleged "Invisibles" — each by his own path. For the teachings of the "Order" are like precious stones — whatever way turned, light and truth and beauty flash forth, and will guide the weary traveller in search of them, if he but stops not on his way to follow the will-o'-wisps of the illusive world, and remains deaf to public rumour.

Now do, for pity sake — do try to arouse for once your intuitions if you can. I do suffer for you and would do anything to help you. But you prevent me. Pardon this and try to recognise the foreign from my own words.

H. P. B.

Letter 142a Table of Contents

Letter No. 142a

THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

With reference to the Rules and Organization of the Society, I beg to make the following suggestions. The points I urge, appear to me very necessary as I have had conversation with many Natives and have a claim to know the Hindu character better than a foreigner can.

A general impression appears to prevail that the Society is a religious sect. This impression owes its origin, I think, to a common belief that the whole Society is devoted to Occultism. As far as I can judge, this is not the case. If it is, the best course to adopt would be to make the entire Society a secret one, and shut its doors against all except those very few who may have shown a determination to devote their whole lives to the study of Occultism. If it is not so, and is based upon the broad Humanitarian principle of Universal Brotherhood, let Occultism, one of its several Branches, be an entirely secret study. From time immemorial this sacred knowledge has been guarded from the vulgar with great care, and because a few of us have had the great fortune to come into contact with some of the custodians of this invaluable treasure, is it right on our part to take advantage of their kindness and vulgarize the secrets they esteem more sacred than even their lives? The world is not yet prepared to hear truth about this subject. By placing the facts before the unprepared general public, we only make a laughing stock of those who have been kind to us and have accepted us as their co-workers for doing good to humanity. By harping too much upon this subject, we have made ourselves in a measure odious in the eyes of the public. We went even to such an extent that, unconsciously to ourselves, we led the public to believe that our Society is under the sole management of the Adepts, while the fact is that the entire executive management is in the hands of the Founders, and our Teachers give us advice only in rare exceptional cases of the greatest emergency. The public saw that they must have misapprehended the facts, since errors in the Management of the Society — some of which could have been very well avoided by the exercise of ordinary common sense — were from time to time exposed. Hence they came to the conclusion that

 

(1) Either Adepts do not exist at all; or

 

(2) If they do, they have no connection with our Society, and therefore we are dishonest impostors; or

 

(3) If they have any connection with the Society, it must be only those of a very low degree, since, under their management, such errors occurred.

 

With the few noble exceptions who had entire confidence in us, our Native Members came to one of these three conclusions. It is therefore necessary in my opinion that prompt measures should be adopted to remove these suspicions. For this, I see only one alternative: — (1) Either the entire Society should be devoted to occultism, in which case it should be quite as secret as the Masonic or the Rosicrucian Lodge or, (2) Nobody should know anything about occultism except those very few who may have by their conduct shown their determination to devote themselves to its study. The first alternative being found inadvisable by our "Brothers" and positively forbidden, the second remains.

Another important question is that of the admission of Members. Until now, any one who expressed a desire to join and could get two sponsors was allowed to come into the Society, without our enquiring closely what the motives in joining were. This led to two evil results. People thought or pretended to think that we took in Members simply for their Initiation Fees on which we lived; and many joined out of mere curiosity, as they thought that by paying an Initiation Fee of Rupees Ten, they could see phenomena. And when they were disappointed in this, they turned round on us, and began to revile our CAUSE for which we have been working and to which we have pledged our lives. The best way to remedy this evil would be to exclude this class of persons. The question naturally arises how can this be done, since our Rules are so liberal as to admit every one? But, at the same time our Rules prescribe an Initiation Fee of Rupees Ten. This is too low to keep out the curiosity seekers, who, for the chance of being satisfied, feel they can very well afford to lose such a paltry sum. The fee should therefore be so much increased that those only would join who are really in

earnest. We need men of principle and serious purpose. One such man can do more for us than hundreds of phenomena-hunters. The fee should in my judgment be increased to Rs: 200 or Rs: 300. It might be urged that thus we might exclude really good men who may be sincere and earnest but unable to pay. But I think it is preferable to risk the possible loss of one good man than take in a crowd of idlers, one of whom can undo the work of all the former. And yet, even this contingency can be avoided. For, as now we admit some to membership, who appear especially deserving, without their paying their own fees, so could the same thing be done under the proposed change.

Damodar K. Mavalankar, F.T.S.

Respectfully submitted to the consideration of Mr. Sinnett.

Letter 142b Table of Contents

Letter No. 142b

Respectfully submitted for the consideration of Mr. Sinnett, under the direct orders of Brother Koot Hoomi. Damodar K. Mavalankar. With the exception of fee — too exaggerated — his views are quite correct. Such is the impression produced

upon the native mind. I trust, my dear friend, that you add a paragraph showing the Society in its true light. Listen to your inner voice, and oblige once more your's Ever faithfully,

K. H

Letter 143 Table of Contents

Letter No. 143

Would you wish the pillow phenomenon described in the paper? I will gladly follow your advice. Ever yours,

A. P. Sinnett.

It certainly would be the best thing to do, and I personally would feel sincerely thankful to you on account of our much illused friend. You are at liberty to mention my first name if it will in the least help you. Koot Hoomi Lal Sing.

Letter 144 Table of Contents

Letter No. 144

Impossible: no power. Will write thro' Bombay.

K.H.

Letter 145 Table of Contents

Letter No. 145

Courage, patience and hope, my brother.

K.H.

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