The Occult
World
by
A. P. Sinnett
Fifth American
Edition
( from the Fourth
English Edition
with
The Author's
corrections and a New Preface)
1888
Dedication
To one whose comprehension of Nature and Humanity
ranges 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 as those he constantly exercises,-to
THE MAHATMA KOOT HOOMI
whose gracious friendship has given the present writer
his title to claim the attention of the European world,
this little volume, with permission sought and obtained,
is affectionately dedicated.
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
INTRODUCTION
OCCULTISM AND ITS ADEPTS
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
FIRST OCCULT EXPERIENCES
TEACHINGS OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY
LATER OCCULT PHENOMENA
APPENDIX
PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
1.
I VENTURE to think that this volume has acquired an importance that did not
attach to it at first, now that subsequent experience has enabled me to follow
it up with a more elaborate philosophical treatise. In the later work I have
endeavored to set forth the general outlines of that knowledge concerning the
higher mysteries of Nature which the following pages describe as possessed by
the Indian " Mahatmas," or Adept Brothers. To that later work the reader whose
attention may be arrested by the story told here must of course be referred ;
but meanwhile, the present introduction to the subject may be recommended to
public notice now in a more confident tone than that which I was justified in
taking up when it was first put forward. At that time the experiences I felt
impelled to relate embodied no absolute promise of the systematic teaching
accorded to me afterwards. Certainly those experiences in themselves appeared to
me to claim telling. They seemed by far too remarkable to be left buried
unfruitfully in the consciousness of the few persons concerned with them. It was
true they elucidated no great principles of science; they merely suggested that
for some of the abnormal phenomena which have arrested public attention during
the last few years a more scientific explanation than those usually assigned
might be possible. They afforded, if not absolute proof, at least an
overwhelming assumption, that living men might actually develop faculties
qualified to operate freely on that superior plane of Nature beyond the reach of
the physical senses which, had been generally supposed accessible only to the
spirits of the dead. But all was still shadowy and ill-defined. The story I had
to tell revealed a magnificent possibility rather than a definite prospect. It
would still, perhaps, have been an interesting story, even if the curtain had
gone down upon the situation as I left it when these pages were first put
together, but it would have been nothing then, compared to what it has since
become.
2.
Now the position in which the subject stands has
altogether changed. The tentative communications addressed to me by my Mahatma
correspondent in the first instance have paved the way for a long series of
still more instructive and valuable letters. Assisted in other ways as well, my
comprehension of occult philosophy advanced so far during the two years
following the first appearance of this volume, that I was enabled to publish a
more important statement, defining the outlines of that teaching, and exhibiting
in a connected and intelligible shape the great esoteric theory of human
evolution on this earth ( and of the cosmogony on which it depends) with which
the Adepts deal. The opening which presented itself to me in 1880 proved, in
fact, no passing adventure, but the beginning of a new intellectual life.
Attracted to it as I was at the time, I was certainly far then from divining the
magnitude of the results destined to flow from it. But now that the proportions
of the revelation I have thus been happily instrumental in procuring for the
service of my readers have become apparent, I revert to the introductory episode
of the undertaking with the certain assurance that I shall be engaging no one
who will spare me his attention in any waste of time.
3.
I am bold enough to say this because the Mahatmas, or
great philosophical teachers of Asia, into some relations with whom I was
enabled to come under the circumstances described in the following narrative,
have now surrendered to the outer world so much of the spiritual science they
have hitherto jealously guarded, that the whole framework of their stupendous
doctrine has grown intelligible. Fragments of esoteric truth- of that science of
superphysical nature which the Adepts explore- have been thrown out into the
world at large from time to time before now, but in puzzling and unattractive
disguises. The esoteric doctrine is no new system of belief, but, on the
contrary, can be discerned now as lurking in a good deal of old Kabalistic and
Oriental literature, that very few ordinary readers could have made sense of
without the help of the keys now put in their hands. But now at last the subject
has emerged into the clear daylight of modern thinking, and the central
principle of the sublime esoteric doctrine stands plainly revealed as one which
harmonizes in absolute perfection with the preparatory conceptions of Nature
that have been derived by physical science from the observation and reflection
of the current century. Biology is the latest, and, in some respects, the
greatest of the physical sciences ; and as the corollary, the complement, the
crown of the science of Life, we are now furnished, by the teaching that has
come to us from the East, with the science of spiritual evolution. Without this
it may now be seen by those who appreciate the necessity of this doctrine, -the
manifest, inherent self-evidence of it when it is once fairly understood,
-without it, the doctrine of physical evolution is a libel on Nature, a
caricature of her grandest purposes. The great idea to which I am now referring
exhibits the human soul as a continuous entity, subject to an individual
evolution of vast duration, and developing on the spiritual plane of existence,
as a result of its successive returns to Earth life. Mounting always upward, it
has passed through the lower manifestations of the animal kingdom, and can never
again revert to them; but as regards the future, it will not merely pass through
a purposeless succession of human lives like those going on around us. It will
advance and expand in its individual progress towards perfection, pari passu
with that general improvement of physical types on Earth which is still going
forward, though the short views of human nature afforded us by mere historic
observation may not render this process of improvement as perceptible to
uninitiated intelligence as it becomes to the psychic discernment of the Adept.
4.
To comprehend the way the work goes on, we have to
contemplate the operations of Nature on other planes besides those cognizable to
the physical senses. And it soon becomes apparent that the physical life of the
Earth is only one process of the long series over which the evolution of
humanity extends. But -and this is one of the most admirably scientific and
ethically beautiful of the ideas brought out by occult study -the physical life
of the Earth is shown to be no incoherent episode in the experiences of a human
soul, no futile incident in the course of a spiritual evolution, the major
portion of which is accomplished in higher spheres of being. It is inseparably
blended along its whole course with the spiritual growth of the soul. The Earth
is shown to be no cosmic railway carriage which we enter for the purpose of
accomplishing a more or less laborious journey, and the discomforts of which we
may carelessly forget when we are able to jump out of it on reaching our
destination. It is the home of our race for a long time to come, if not for
eternity, and it is our interest, as well as our duty, to embellish and improve
and ennoble it. " In my Father's house," says the old symbolical text, " are
many mansions," and in this planetary house of humanity there are many more
states of existence than the physical state. Some of these states may be far
more enjoyable, for that matter, than the physical state as this is at present;
and the esoteric doctrine shows us that the duration of the higher spiritual
states, when each individual Ego passes each time into these, is enormously more
prolonged than its physical states, but both kinds of existence are equally
necessary in the whole scheme of things.
5.
All these views, and the vast mass of explanatory detail
which has since been furnished to the inquirers of the Theosophical Society ,
were still undeveloped for those of us who were pursuing the clue afforded by my
experiences of 1880, when the present book was written. But I refer to them here
because I want very briefly to indicate the direction which our later inquiries
took when, our attention having been arrested by the strange and startling
phenomena here described, it dawned upon us by degrees that the intellectual
instruction the Mahatmas could give us, if they would, would be enormously more
interesting than even the exhibition of their abnormal powers. The same
considerations I hope will follow in due order, in the case of readers whom this
volume may have the good fortune to attract. It has been sometimes argued in my
hearing that it would have been better if the authors of this great new movement
of spiritual thought -new for us, though so old in one sense -which theosophy
embodies had furnished us with the results of their philosophical thinking
without impairing the pure dignity of that exalted scheme by mingling it in the
first instance with sensational displays of thaumaturgic skill. I am not
inclined myself to quarrel with the order in which events were actually
unfolded, Miracles, it is quite true, are illogical guarantees for theological
dogma; but the manifest possession of great faculties and powers in other planes
of Nature than those on which ordinary conclusions concerning her processes are
formed, does certainly afford a presumption that persons so endowed may gather
observations on those higher planes which it is well worth our while to
correlate with our own. Meanwhile I do not put forward the narrative of occult
phenomena, of which this volume largely consists, as a statement which in itself
constitutes a foundation for the very stupendous edifice of doctrines which
later opportunities enabled me to construct. But I know that the experiences I
record in this book were neither futile nor fruitless in their effects on my own
development; and in anticipation of events that may contribute in no small
degree, in a near future, to give a great impetus to theosophic speculation in
America, I venture to recommend this book with special urgency to the American
public, in the hope that a reflection on their minds of the influence produced
on my own, by the incidents described, may serve to attract a good many fresh
explorers into the paths of study and meditation, in which I believe myself to
have gained such inestimable advantage.
6.
I have not found much to alter in the original text of
this book, though I am glad to, take advantage of this opportunity to append
some notes here and there, and amplify some passages. But important additions to
its contents have been made from time to time, and now especially I am anxious
to call the attention of American readers to the latest of these, which will be
found in an appendix. It is possible that in America some persons, to whom the
existence of theosophy as a new school of thought is not altogether strange, may
have heard of it especially in connection with a correspondence which has
attracted a good deal of attention in the spiritualistic press. The discussion
to which I refer has borne reference to a manifest identity of language traced
between a certain passage in one of my Mahatma teacher's letters and a similar
passage in an address delivered a few years ago by an American lecturer. The
explanation I am now enabled to give of the curious circumstances under which
this state of things arose, constitutes in itself, I venture to think, not
merely a complete refutation of some unfriendly theories which were started to
account for it, but also affords a very interesting contribution to our
acquaintanceship with the ways and faculties of the Mahatmas.
8.
INTRODUCTION
9.
THERE is a school
of Philosophy still in
existence of which modern culture has lost sight. Glimpses of it are discernible
in the ancient philosophies with which all educated men are familiar, but these
are hardly more intelligible than fragments of forgotten sculpture,-less so, for
we comprehend the human form, and can give imaginary limbs to a torso; but we
can give no imaginary meaning to the truth coming down to us from Plato or
Pythagoras, pointing, for those who hold the clue to their significance, to the
secret knowledge of the ancient world. Side lights, nevertheless, may enable us
to decipher such language, and a very rich intellectual reward offers itself to
persons who are willing to attempt the investigation.
10.
For, strange as the statement will appear at first
sight, modern metaphysics, and to a large extent modern physical science, have
been groping for centuries blindly after knowledge which occult philosophy has
enjoyed in full measure all the while. Owing to a train of fortunate
circumstances, I have come to know that this is the case; I have come into some
contact with persons who are heirs of a greater knowledge concerning the
mysteries of Nature and humanity than modern culture has yet evolved; and my
present wish is to sketch the outlines of this knowledge, to record with
exactitude the experimental proofs I have obtained that occult science invest
its adepts with a control of natural forces superior to that enjoyed by
physicists of the ordinary type, and the grounds there are for bestowing the
most respectful consideration on the theories entertained by occult science
concerning the constitution and destinies of the human soul. Of course people in
the present day will be slow to believe that any knowledge worth considering can
be found outside the bright focus of Western culture. Modern science has
accomplished grand results by the open method of investigation, and is very
impatient of the theory that persons who ever attained to real knowledge, either
in sciences or metaphysics, could have been content to hide their light under a
bushel. So the tendency has been to conceive that occult philosophers of old-
Egyptian priests, Chaldean Magi, Essenes, Gnostics, theurgic Neo-Platonists, and
the rest-who kept their knowledge secret, must have adopted that policy to
conceal the fact that they knew very little. Mystery can only have been loved by
charlatans who wished to mystify. The conclusion is pardonable from the modern
point of view, but it has given rise to an impression in the popular mind that
the ancient mystics have actually been turned inside out, and found to know very
little. This impression is absolutely erroneous. Men of science in former ages
worked in secret, and instead of publishing their discoveries, taught them in
secret to carefully selected pupils. Their motives for adopting that policy are
readily intelligible, even if the merits of the policy may seem still open to
discussion. At all events, their teaching has not been forgotten; it has been
transmitted by secret initiation to men of our own time, and while its methods
and its practical achievements remain secrets in their hands, it is open to any
patient and earnest student of the question to satisfy himself that these
methods are of supreme efficacy, and these achievements far more admirable than
any yet standing to the credit of modern science.
11.
For the secrecy in which these operations have been
shrouded has never disguised their existence, and it is only in our own time
that this has been forgotten. Formerly at great public ceremonies, the initiates
displayed the powers with which their knowledge of natural laws invested them.
We carelessly assume that the narratives of such displays describe performances
of magic: we have decided that there is no such thing as magic, therefore the
narratives must have been false, the persons whom they refer to, impostors. But
supposing that magic, of old, was simply the science of magi, of learned men,
there is no magic, in the modern sense, left in the matter. And supposing that
such science- even in ancient times already the product of long ages of study-
had gone in some directions further than our much younger modern science has yet
reached, it is reasonable to conclude that some displays in connection with
ancient mysteries may have been strictly scientific experiments, though they
sound like displays of magic, and would look like displays of magic for us now
if they could be repeated.
12.
On that hypothesis modem sagacity applying modem
knowledge to the subject of ancient mysteries, may be merely modem folly
evolving erroneous conclusions from modem ignorance.
But there is no need to construct hypotheses in the matter. The facts are
accessible if they are sought for in the right way, and the facts are these: The
wisdom of the ancient world-science and religion commingled, physics and
metaphysics combined- was a reality, and it still survives. It is that which
will be spoken of in these pages as Occult Philosophy. It was already a complete
system of knowledge that had been cultivated in secret, and handed down to
initiates for ages, before its professors performed experiments in public to
impress the popular mind in Egypt
and Greece.
Adepts of occultism in the present day are capable of performing similar
experiments, and of exhibiting results that prove them immeasurably further
advanced than ordinary modern science in a cornprehension of the forces of
Nature. Furthermore, they inherit from their great predecessors a science which
deals not merely with physics, but with the constitution and capacities of the
human soul and spirit. Modern science has discovered the circulation of the
blood; occult science understands the circulation of the life-principle. Modem
physiology deals with the body only; occultism with the soul as well- not as the
subject of vague, religious rhapsodies; but it is an actual entity, with
properties that can be examined in combination with, or apart from, those of the
body.
13.
It is chiefly in the East that occultism is still kept
up in India
and in adjacent countries. It is in India that I have encountered it;
and this little volume is written to describe the experiences I have enjoyed,
and to retail the knowledge I have acquired.
14.
II
15.
My narrative of events must be preceded by some further
general explanations, or it would be unintelligible. The identity of occultism
as practised in all ages, must be kept in view, to account for the magnitude of
its organization, and for the astounding discovery that secluded Orientals may
understand more about electricity than Faraday, more about physics than Tyndall.
The culture of Europe has been developed by
Europeans for themselves within the last few hundred years. The culture of
occultists is the growth of vast periods long anterior to these, when
civilization inhabited the East. And during a career which has carried occultism
in the domain of physical science far beyond the point we have reached, physical
science has merely been an object for occultism of secondary importance. Its
main strength has been devoted to metaphysical inquiry, and to the latent
psychological faculties in man, faculties which, in their development, enable
the occultist to obtain actual experimental knowledge concerning the soul's
condition of extra-corporeal existence. There is thus something more than a mere
archaeological interest in the identification of the occult system with the
doctrines of the initiated organisations in all ages of the world's history, and
we are presented by this identification with the key to the philosophy of
religious development. Occultism is not merely an isolated discovery showing
humanity to be possessed of certain powers over Nature, which the narrower study
of Nature from the merely materialistic standpoint has failed to develop; it is
an illumination cast over all previous spiritual speculation worth anything, of
a kind which knits together some apparently divergent systems. It is to
spiritual philosophy much what Sanskrit was found to be to comparative philology
; it is a common stock of philosophical roots. Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism
and the Egyptian theology are thus brought into one family of ideas. Occultism,
as it is no now invention, is no specific sect, but the professors of no sect
can afford to dispense with the sidelights it throws upon the conception of
Nature and Man's destinies which they may have been induced by their own
specific faith to form; occultism, in fact, must be recognised by anyone who
will take the trouble to put before his mind clearly the problems with which it
deals, as a study of the most sublime importance to every man who cares to live
a life worthy of his human rank in creation, and who can realise the bearing on
ethics of certain knowledge concerning his own survival after death. It is one
thing to follow the lead of a hazy impression that a life beyond the grave, if
there is one, may be somehow benefited by abstinence from wrongdoing on this
side; it will clearly be another to realise if that can be shown to be the case,
that the life beyond the grave must, with the certainty of a sum total built up
of a series of plus and minus quantities, be the final expression of the use
made of opportunities in this.
16.
I have said that the startling importance of occult
knowledge turns on the manner in which it affords exact and experimental
knowledge concerning spiritual things which under all other systems must remain
the subject of speculation or blind religious faith. It may be further asserted
that occultism shows that the harmony and smooth continuity of Nature observable
in physics extend to those operations of Nature that are concerned with the
phenomena of metaphysical existence.
17.
Before approaching an exposition of the conclusions
concerning the nature of man that occult philosophy has reached, it may be worth
while to meet an objection that may perhaps be raised by the reader on the
threshold of the subject. How is it that conclusions of such great weight have
been kept the secret property of a jealous body of initiates. Is it not a law of
progress that truth asserts itself and courts the free air and light ? Is it
reasonable to suppose that the greatest of all truths-the fundamental basis of
truth concerning man and Nature- should be afraid to show itself? With what
object could the ancient professors of, or proficients in, occult philosophy
keep the priceless treasures of their researches to themselves ?
18.
Now, it is no business of mine to defend the extreme
tenacity with which the proficients in occultism have hitherto not only shut out
the world from the knowledge of their knowledge, but have almost left it in
ignorance that such knowledge exists [ See Appendix A.]. It is enough here to
point out that it would be foolish to shut our eyes to a revelation that may now
be partially conceded, merely because we are piqued at the behaviour of those
who have been in a position to make it before, but have not chosen to do so. Nor
would it be wiser to say that the reticence of the occultists so far discredits
anything we may now be told about their acquirements. When the sun is actually
shining it is no use to say that its light is discredited by the behaviour of
the barometer yesterday. I have to deal, in discussing the acquirements of
occultism, with facts that have actually taken place, and nothing can discredit
what is known to be true. No doubt it will be worth while later on to examine
the motives which have rendered the occultists of all ages so profoundly
reserved. And there may be more to say in justification of the course that has
been pursued than is visible at the first glance. Indeed, the reader will not go
far in an examination of the nature of the powers which proficients in occultism
actually possess, without seeing that it is supremely desirable to keep back the
practical exercise of such powers from the world at large. But it is one thing
to deny mankind generally the key which unlocks the mystery of occult power; it
is another to withhold the fact that there is a mystery to unlock. However, the
further discussion of that question here would be premature. Enough for the
present to take note of the fact that secrecy after all is not complete if
external students of the subject are enabled to learn as much about the
mysteries as I shall have to tell. Manifestly, there is a great deal more
behind, but, at all events, a great deal is to be learned by inquirers who will
set to work in the right way, and that which may now be learned is no new
revelation at last capriciously extended to the outer world for the first time.
19.
In former periods of history , a great deal more has
been known about the nature of occultism by the world at large than is known at
this moment to the modern West. The bigotry of modem civilization, and not the
jealousy of the occultist, is to blame if the European races are at this moment
more generally ignorant of the extent to which psychological research has been
carried, than the Egyptian populace in the past, or the people of India in the
present day. As regards the latter, amongst whom the truth of the theory just
suggested can easily be put to the test, you will find the great majority of
Hindus perfectly convinced of the truth of the main statements which I am about
to put forward. They do not generally or readily talk about such subjects with
Europeans, because these are so prone to stupid derision of views they do not
understand or believe in already. The Indian native is very timid in presence of
such ridicule. But it does not affect in the slightest degree the beliefs which
rest in his own mind on the fundamental teaching he will always have received,
and in many cases on odds and ends of experiences he may himself have had. The
Hindus are thus well aware, as a body, of the fact that there are persons who by
entire devotion to certain modes of life acquire unusual powers in the nature of
such as Europeans would very erroneously call supernatural. They are quite
familiar with the notion that such persons live secluded lives, and are
inaccessible to ordinary curiosity, and that they are none the less approachable
by fit and determined candidates for admission to occult training. Ask any
cultivated Hindu if he has ever heard of Mahatmas and Yog Vidya or occult
science, and it is a hundred to one that you will find he has-and, unless he
happens to be one of the hybrid products of Anglo-Indian Universities, that he
fully believes in the reality of the powers ascribed to Yoga. It does not follow
that he will at once say " Yes" to a European asking the question. He will
probably say just the reverse from the apprehension I have spoken of above, but
push your questions home and you will discover the truth, as I did, for example,
in the case of a very intelligent English-speaking native vakeel in an
influential position and in constant relations with high European officials,
last year. At first my new acquaintance met my inquiries as to whether he knew
anything about these subjects with a wooden look of complete ignorance, and an
explicit denial of any knowledge as to what I meant at all. It was not till the
second time I saw him in private, at my own house, that by degrees it grew upon
him that I was in earnest, and knew something about Yoga myself, and then he
quietly opened out his real thoughts on the subject, and showed me that he knew
not only perfectly well what I meant all along, but was stocked with information
concerning occurrences and phenomena of an occult or apparently supernatural
order, many of which had been observed in his own family and some by himself.
20.
The point of all this is that Europeans are not
justified in attributing to the jealousy of the occultists the absolute and
entire ignorance of all that concerns them which pervades the modern society of
the West. The West has been occupied with the business of material progress to
the exclusion of psychological development. Perhaps it has done best for the
world in confining itself to its specially, but however this may be, it has only
itself to blame if its concentration of purpose has led to something like
retrogression in another branch of development.
21.
Jacolliot, a French writer, who has dealt at great
length with various phases of Spiritism in the East, was told by one who must
have been an adept to judge by the language used: " You have studied physical
Nature, and you have obtained through the laws of Nature marvellous results-
steam, electricity, etc.,etc. For twenty thousand years or more we have studied
the intellectual forces; we have discovered their laws, and we obtain, by making
them act alone or in concert with matter, phenomena still more astonishing than
your own." Jacolliot adds: " We have seen things such as one does not describe
for fear of making his readers doubt his intelligence......... but still we have
seen them."
22.
III
23.
Occult phenomena must not be confused with the phenomena
of spiritualism. The latter, whatever they may be, are manifestations which
mediums can neither control nor understand in a scientific sense. The former are
achievements of a conscious, living operator comprehending the laws with which
he works. If these achievements appear miraculous, that is the fault of the
observer's ignorance. The spiritualist knows perfectly well, in spite of
ignorant mockery on the part of outsiders content to laugh without knowing what
they are laughing at, that all kinds of occurrences distinctly outside the range
of physical causation do constantly take place for inquirers who hunt them with
sufficient diligence. But he has never been able to do more than frame
hypotheses in respect to the hidden laws of Nature by virtue of which they have
been produced. He has taken up a certain hypothesis faute de mieux in the first
instance, and working always on this idea, has constructed such an elaborate
edifice of theory round the facts that he is very reluctant to tolerate the
interposition of a new hypothesis which will oblige him to revise his
conclusions in some very important particulars. There will be no way of avoiding
this necessity, however, if he belongs to the order of inquirers who care rather
to be sure they have laid hold of the truth than to fortify a doctrine they have
espoused for better or for worse.
24.
Broadly speaking, there is scarcely one of the phenomena
of spiritualism that adepts in occultism cannot reproduce by the force of their
own will, supplemented by a comprehension of the resources of Nature. As will be
seen when I come to a direct narrative of my own experiences, I have seen some
of the most familiar phenomena of spiritualism produced by purely human agency.
The old original spirit-rap which introduced the mightier phenomena of
spiritualism has been manifested for my edification in a countless variety of
ways, and under conditions which render the hypothesis of any spiritual agency
in the matter wholly preposterous. I have seen flowers fall from the blank
ceiling of a room under circumstances that gave me a practical assurance that no
spiritual agency was at work, though in a manner as absolutely " supernatural"
in the sense of being produced without the aid of any material appliances, as
any of the floral showers by which some spiritual mediums are attended. I have
over and over again received " direct writing," produced on paper in sealed
envelopes of my own, which was created or precipitated by a living human
correspondent. I have information, which, though second-hand, is very
trustworthy, of a great variety of other familiar spiritual phenomena produced
in the same way by human adepts in occultism. But it is not my present task to
make war on spiritualism. The announcements I have to make will, indeed, be
probably received more readily among spiritualists than in the outer circles of
the ordinary world, for the spiritualists are at all events aware, from their
own experience, that the orthodox science of the day does not know the last word
concerning mind and matter, while the orthodox outsider stupidly clings to a
denial of facts when these are of a nature which he foresees himself unable to
explain. As the facts of spiritualism, though accessible to any honest man who
goes in search of them, are not of a kind which anyone can carry about and fling
in the faces of pragmatic" sceptics," these latter are enabled to keep up their
professions of incredulity without the foolishness of their position being
obvious to each other, plain as it is to" the initiated." However, although in
this way the ordinary scientific mind will be reluctant to admit either the
trustworthiness of my testimony or the conceivability of my explanations, it may
allay some hostile prejudices to make clear at the onset that occult science
deals with no guesswork concerning the post-mortem intervention of human beings
in the affairs of this world. Its methods are as precise, and its mental
discipline as rigid, as those of the laboratory or the university lecture-room.
Wedding with theosophic research, spiritualism itself might guard itself from
all those hasty inferences which have done so much to turn large sections of the
cultivated people against it, and if they will but take the trouble to approach
the subject from the point of view of occult science, students of physical
Nature will be enabled at last to handle the phenomena of spiritualism freely,
to consider them apart from the theories to which they have prematurely given
rise ; and thus relieved of the repugnance they feel for them at present, to
bring them within the area of that which they at last will willingly recognise
as true scientific generalisations.
26.
OCCULTISM AND THE ADEPTS
27.
I
28.
The powers with which occultism invests its adepts
include, to begin with, a control over various forces in Nature which ordinary
science knows nothing about, and by means of which an adept can hold
conversation with any other adept, whatever intervals on the earth's surface may
lie between them. This psychological telegraphy is wholly independent of all
mechanical conditions or appliances whatever.[ See Appendix B. ] And the
clairvoyant faculties of the adept are so perfect and complete that they amount
to a species of omniscience as regards mundane affairs. The body is the prison
of the soul for ordinary mortals. We can see merely what comes before its
windows ; we can take cognisance only of what is brought within its bars. But
the adept has found the key of his prison and can emerge from it at pleasure. It
is no longer a prison for him-merely a d welling. In other words, the adept can
project his soul out of his body to any place he pleases with the rapidity of
thought.
29.
The whole edifice of occultism from basement to roof is
so utterly strange to ordinary conceptions that it is difficult to know how to
begin an explanation of its contents. How could one describe a calculating
machine to an audience unfamiliar with the simplest mechanical contrivances and
knowing nothing of arithmetic§ And the highly cultured classes of modern Europe,
as regards the achievements of occultism, are, in spite of the perfection of
their literary scholarship and the exquisite precision of their attainments in
their own departments of science, in the position as regards occultism of
knowing nothing about the A B C of the subject, nothing about the capacities of
the soul at all as distinguished from the capacities of body and soul combined.
The occultists for ages have devoted themselves to that study chiefly; they have
accomplished results in connexion with it which are absolutely bewildering in
their magnificence; but suddenly introduced to some of these, the prosaic
intelligence is staggered and feels in a world of miracle and enchantment. On
charts that show the stream of history, the nations all intermingle more or
less, except the Chinese, and that is shown coming down in a single river
without affluents and without branches from out of the clouds of time. Suppose
that civilized Europe had not come into contact with the Chinese till lately,
and suppose that the Chinamen, very much brighter in intelligence than they
really are, had developed some branch of physical science to the point it
actually has reached with us; suppose that particular branch had been entirely
neglected with us, the surprise we should feel at taking up the Chinese
discoveries in their refined development without having gradually grown familiar
with their small beginnings would be very great. Now this is exactly the
situation as regards occult science. The occultists have been a race apart from
an earlier period than we can fathom- not a separate race physically, not a
uniform race physically at all, nor a nation in any sense of the word, but a
continuous association of men of the highest intelligence linked together by a
bond stronger than any other tie of which mankind has experience, and carrying
on with a perfect continuity of purpose the studies and traditions and mysteries
of self-development handed down to them by their predecessors. All this time the
stream of civilization, on the foremost waves of which the culture of modern
Europe is floating, has been wholly and absolutely neglectful of the
one study with which the occultists have been solely engaged. What wonder that
the two lines of civilization have diverged so far apart that their forms are
now entirely unlike each other. It remains to be seen whether this attempt to
reintroduce the long-estranged cousins will be tolerated or treated as an
impudent attempt to pass off an impostor as a relation.
30.
I have said that the occultist can project his soul from
his body. As an incidental discovery, it will be observed, he has thus
ascertained beyond all shadow of doubt that he really has got a soul. A
comparison of myths has sometimes been called the science of religion. If there
can really be a science of religion it must necessarily be occultism. On the
surface, perhaps, it may not be obvious that religious truth must necessarily
open out more completely to the soul as temporarily loosened from the body, than
to the soul as taking cognisance of ideas through the medium of the physical
senses. But to ascend into a realm of immateriality, where cognition becomes a
process of pure perception while the intellectual faculties are in full play and
centred in the immaterial man, must manifestly be conducive to an enlarged
comprehension of religious truth.
31.
I have just spoken of the" immaterial man " as
distinguished from the body of the physical senses ; but, so complex is the
statement I have to make, that I must no sooner induce the reader to tolerate
the phrase than I must reject it for the future as inaccurate. Occult philosophy
has ascertained that the inner ethereal self, which is the man as distinguished
from his body, is itself the envelope of something more ethereal still --is
itself, in a subtle sense of the term, material.
32.
The majority of civilized people believe that man has a
soul which will somehow survive the dissolution of the body; but they have to
confess that they do not know very much about it. A good many of the most highly
civilized, have grave doubts on the subject, and some think that researches in
physics which have suggested the notion that even thought may be a mode of
motion, tend to establish the strong probability of the hypothesis that when the
life of the body is destroyed nothing else survives. Occult philosophy does not
speculate about the matter at all ; it knows the state of the facts.
33.
St. Paul,
who was an occultist, speaks of man as constituted of body, soul, and spirit.
The distinction is one that hardly fits in with the theory, that when a man dies
his soul is translated to heaven or hell for ever. What then becomes of the
spirit, and what is the spirit as different from the soul, on the ordinary
hypothesis. Orthodox thinkers work out each some theory on the subject for
himself. Either that the soul is the seat of the emotions and the spirit of the
intellectual faculties, or vice versa. No one can put such conjectures on a
solid foundation, not even on the basis of an alleged revelation. But St. Paul was not indulging
in vague fancies when he made use of the expression quoted. The spirit he was
referring to may be described as the soul of the soul. With that for the moment
we need not be concerned. The important point which occultism brings out is that
the soul of man, while something enormously subtler and more ethereal and more
lasting than the body, is itself a material reality. Not material as chemistry
understands matter, but as physical science en bloc might understand it if the
tentacle of each branch of science were to grow more sensitive and were to work
more in harmony. It is no denial of the materiality of any hypothetical
substance to say that one cannot determine its atomic weight and its affinities.
The ether that transmits light is held to be material by anyone who holds it to
exist at all, but there is a gulf of difference between it and the thinnest of
the gases. You do not always approach a scientific truth from the same
direction. You may perceive some directly; you have to infer others indirectly;
but these latter may not on that account be the less certain. The materiality of
ether is inferable from the behaviour of light: the materiality of the soul may
be inferable from its subjection to forces. A mesmeric influence is a force
emanating from certain physical characteristics of the mesmerist. It impinges on
the soul of the subject at a distance and produces an effect perceptible to him,
demonstrable to others. Of course this is an illustration and no proof. I must
set forth as well as I am able--and that can but be very imperfectly-the
discoveries of occultism without at first attempting the establishment by proof
of each part of these discoveries. Further on, I shall be able to prove some
parts at any rate, and others will then be recognised as indirectly established,
too.
34.
The soul is material, and inheres in the ordinarily more
grossly material body; and it is this condition of things which enables the
occultist to speak positively on the subject, for he can satisfy himself at one
coup that there is such a thing as a soul, and that it is material in its
nature, by dissociating it from the body under some conditions, and restoring it
again. The occultist can even do this sometimes with other souls; his primary
achievement, however, is to do so with his own. When I say that the occultist
knows he has a soul I refer to this power. He knows it just as another man knows
he has a great coat. He can put it from him, and render it manifest as something
separate from himself. But remember that to him, when the separation is
effected, he is the soul and the thing put off is the body. And this is to
attain nothing less than absolute certainty about the great problem of survival
after death. The adept does not rely on faith, or on metaphysical speculation,
in regard to the possibilities of his existence apart from the body. He
experiences such an existence whenever he pleases, and although it may be
allowed that the more art of emancipating himself temporarily from the body
would not necessarily inform him concerning his ultimate destinies after that
emancipation should be final at death, it gives him, at all events, exact
knowledge concerning the conditions under which he will start on his journey in
the next world. While his body lives, his soul is, so to speak, a captive
balloon (though with a very long, elastic and imponderable cable). Captive
ascents will not necessarily tell him whether the balloon will float when at
last the machinery below breaks up, and he finds himself altogether adrift; but
it is something to be an aeronaut already, before the journey begins, and to
know definitely, as I said before, that there are such things as balloons, for
certain emergencies, to sail in.
35.
There would be infinite grandeur in the faculty I have
described alone, supposing that were the end of adeptship : but instead of being
the end, it is more like the beginning. The seemingly magic feats which the
adepts in occultism have the power to perform, are accomplished, I am given to
understand, by means of familiarity with a force in nature which is referred to
in Sanskrit writings as akaz. Western science has done much in discovering some
of the properties and powers of electricity. Occult science, ages before, had
done much more in discovering the properties and powers of akaz. In " The Coming
Race," the late Lord Bulwer Lytton, whose connexion with occultism appears to
have been closer than the world generally has yet realised, gives a fantastic
and imaginative account of the wonders achieved in the world to which his hero
penetrates, by means of Vril. In writing of Vril, Lord Lytton has clearly been
poetising akaz. "The Coming Race" is described as a people entirely unlike
adepts in many essential particulars--as a complete nation, for one thing, of
men and women all equally handling the powers, even from childhood, which- or
some of which among others not described- the adepts have conquered. This is a
mere fairy-tale, founded on the achievements of occultism. But no one who has
made a study of the latter can fail to see, can fail to recognise with a
conviction amounting to certainty, that the author of "The Coming Race " must
have been familiar with the leading ideas of occultism, perhaps with a great
deal more. The same evidence is afforded by Lord Lytton's other novels of
mystery, " Zanoni," and "The Strange Story." In "Zanoni," the sublime personage
in the background, Mejnour, is intended plainly to be a great adept of Eastern
occultism, exactly like those of whom I have to speak. It is difficult to know
why in this case, where Lord Lytton has manifestly intended to adhere much more
closely to the real facts of occultism than in " The Coming Race," he should
have represented Mejnour as a solitary survivor of the Rosicrucian fraternity.
The guardians of occult science are content to be a small body as compared with
the tremendous importance of the knowledge which they save from perishing, but
they have never allowed their numbers to diminish to the extent of being in any
danger of ceasing to exist as an organised body on earth. It is difficult again
to understand why Lord Lytton, having learned so much as he certainly did,
should have been content to use up his information merely as an ornament of
fiction, instead of giving it to the world in a form which should claim more
serious consideration. At all events, prosaic people will argue to that effect;
but it is not impossible that Lord Lytton himself had become, through long study
of the subject, so permeated with the love of mystery which inheres in the
occult mind apparently, that he preferred to throw out his information in a
veiled and mystic shape, so that it would be intelligible to readers in sympathy
with himself, and would blow unnoticed past the commonplace understanding
without awakening the angry rejection which these pages, for example, if they
are destined to attract any notice at all, will assuredly encounter at the hands
of bigots in science, religion, and the great philosophy of the commonplace.
36.
Akaz, be it then understood, is a force for which we
have no name, and in reference to which we have no experience to guide us to a
conception of its nature. One can on)y grasp at the idea required by conceiving
that it is as much more potent, subtle, and extraordinary an agent than
electricity, as electricity is superior in subtlety and variegated efficiency to
steam. It is through his acquaintance with the properties of this force, that
the adept can accomplish the physical phenomena, which I shall presently be able
to show are within his reach, besides others of far greater magnificence.
37.
II
38.
Who are the adepts who handle the tremendous forces of
which I speak ? There is reason to believe that such adepts have existed in all
historic ages, and there are such adepts in India at this moment, or in adjacent
countries. The identity of the knowledge they have inherited, with that of
ancient initiates in occultism, follows irresistibly from an examination of the
views they hold and the faculties they exercise. The conclusion has to be worked
out from a mass of literary evidence, and it will be enough to state it for the
moment, pointing out the proper channels of research in the matter afterwards.
For the present let us consider the position of the adepts as they now exist,
or, to use the designation more generally employed in
India, of " the Mahatmas." [ Mahatma -Great
Soul, or Great Spirit, derived from Maha and Atma.]
They constitute a Brotherhood, or Secret Association, which ramifies all over
the East, but the principal seat of which for the present I gather to be in Tibet. But India has not
yet been deserted by the adepts, and from that country they still receive many
recruits. For the great fraternity is at once the least and the most exclusive
organization in the world, and fresh recruits from any race or country are
welcome, provided they possess the needed qualifications. The door, as I have
been told by one who is himself an adept, is always open to the right man who
knocks, but the road that has to be travelled before the door is reached is one
which none but very determined travellers can hope to pass. It is manifestly
impossible that I can describe its perils in any but very general terms, but it
is not necessary to have learned any secrets of initiation to understand the
character of the training through which a neophyte must pass before he attains
the dignity of a proficient in occultism. The adept is not made: he becomes, as
I have been constantly assured, and the process of becoming is mainly in his own
hands.
39.
Never, I believe, in less than seven years from the time
at which a candidate for initiation is accepted as a probationer, is he ever
admitted to the very first of the ordeals, whatever they may be, which bar the
way to the earliest decrees of occultism, and there is no security for him that
the seven years may not be extended ad libitum. He has no security that he will
ever be admitted to any initiation whatever. Nor is this appalling uncertainty,
which would alone deter most Europeans, however keen upon the subject
intellectually, from attempting to advance, themselves, into the domain of
occultism, maintained from the mere caprice of a despotic society, coquetting,
so to speak, with the eagerness of its wooers. The trials through which the
neophyte has to pass are no fantastic mockeries, or mimicries of awful peril.
Nor, do I take it, are they artificial barriers set up by the masters of
occultism, to try the nerve of their pupils, as a riding-master might put up
fences in his school. It is inherent in the nature of the science that has to be
explored, that its revelations shall stagger the reason and try the most
resolute courage. It is in his own interest that the candidate's character and
fixity of purpose, and perhaps his physical and mental attributes, are tested
and watched with infinite care and patience in the first instance, before he is
allowed to take the final plunge into the sea of strange experiences through
which he must swim with the strength of his own right arm, or perish.
40.
As to what may be the nature of the trials that await
him during the period of his development, it will be obvious that I can have no
accurate knowledge, and conjectures based on fragmentary revelations pictured up
here and there are not worth recording, but as for the nature of the life led by
the mere candidate for admission as a neophyte it will be equally plain that no
secret is involved. The ultimate development of the adept requires amongst other
things a life of absolute physical purity, and the candidate must, from the
beginning, give practical evidence of his willingness to adopt this. He must,
that is to say, for all the years of his probation, be perfectly chaste,
perfectly abstemious, and indifferent to physical luxury of every sort. This
regimen does not involve any fantastic discipline or obtrusive asceticism, nor
withdrawal from the world. There would be nothing to prevent a gentleman in
ordinary society from being in some of the preliminary stages of training for
occult candidature without anybody about him being the wiser. For true
occultism, the sublime achievement of the real adept, is not attained through
the loathsome asceticism of the ordinary Indian fakir, the yogi of the woods and
wilds, whose dirt accumulates with his sanctity--of the fanatic who fastens iron
hooks into his flesh, or holds up an arm until it is withered. An imperfect
knowledge of some of the external facts of Indian occultism will often lead to a
misunderstanding on this point.
41.
Yog Vidya is the Indian name for occult science, and it
is easy to learn a good deal more than is worth learning about the practices of
some misguided enthusiasts who cultivate some of its inferior branches by means
of mere physical exercises. Properly speaking, this physical development is
called Hatta Yog, while the loftier sort, which is approached by the discipline
of the mind, and which leads to the high altitudes of occultism, is called Raya
yog. No person whom a real occultist would ever think of as an adept, has
acquired his powers by means of the laborious and puerile exercises of the Hatta
yog. I do not mean to say that these inferior exercises are altogether futile.
They do invest the person who pursues them with some abnormal faculties and
powers. Many treatises have been written to describe them, and many people who
have lived in India
will be able to relate curious experiences they have had with proficients in
this extraordinary craft. I do not wish to fill these pages with tales of wonder
that I have had no means of sifting, or it would be easy to collect examples;
but the point to insist on here is that no story anyone can have heard or read
which seems to put an ignoble, or petty, or low-minded aspect on Indian yogeeism
can have any application to the ethereal yogeeism which is called Raya yog, and
which leads to the awful heights of true adeptship.
43.
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
44.
SECRET as the occult organization has always remained,
there is a good deal more to be learned concerning the philosophical views which
it has preserved or acquired, than might be supposed at the first glance. As my
own experience when fully described will show, the great adepts of occultism
themselves have no repugnance to the dissemination of their religions philosophy
So far as a world untrained as ours is in pure psychological investigation can
profit by such teaching. Nor even are they unconquerably averse to the
occasional manifestation of those superior powers over the forces of Nature to
which their extraordinary researches have led them. The many apparently
miraculous phenomena which I have witnessed through occult agency could never
have been exhibited if the general rule which precludes the Brothers from the
exhibition of their powers to uninitiated persons were absolute. As a general
rule, indeed, the display of any occult phenomenon for the purpose of exciting
the wonder and admiration of beholders is strictly forbidden. And indeed I
should imagine that such prohibition is absolute if there is no higher purpose
involved. But it is plain that with a purely philanthropic desire to spread the
credit of a philosophical system which is ennobling in its character, the
Brothers may sometimes wisely permit the display of abnormal phenomena when the
minds to which such an appeal t is made may be likely to rise from the
appreciation of the wonder to a befitting respect for the philosophy in which it
accredits. And the history of the Theosophical Society has been an expansion of
this idea. That history has been a chequered one, because the phenomena that
have been displayed have often failed of their effect, have sometimes become the
subject of a premature publicity, and have brought down on the study of occult
philosophy as regarded from the point of view of the outer world, and on the
devoted persons who have been chiefly identified with its encouragement by means
of the Theosophical Society, a great deal of stupid ridicule and some malevolent
persecution. It may be asked why the Brothers, if they are really the great and
all- powerful persons I represent them, have permitted indiscretions of the kind
referred to, but the inquiry is not so embarrassing as it may seem at the first
glance. If the picture of the Brothers that I have endeavoured to present to the
reader has been appreciated rightly, it will show them less accurately
qualified, in spite of their powers, than persons of lesser occult development,
to carryon any under taking which involves direct relations with a multiplicity
of ordinary people in the commonplace world. I gather the primary purpose of the
Brotherhood to be something very unlike the task I am engaged in, for example,
at this moment- the endeavour to convince the public generally that there really
are faculties latent in humanity capable of such extraordinary development, that
they carry us at a bound to an immense distance beyond the dreams of physical
science in reference to the comprehension of Nature, and at the same time afford
us positive testimony concerning the constitution and destinies of the human
soul. That is a task on which it is reasonable to suppose the Brothers would
cast a sympathetic glance, but it will be obvious on a moment's reflection, that
their primary duty must be to keep alive the actuality of that knowledge, and of
those powers concerning which I am merely giving some shadowy account. If the
Brothers were to employ themselves on the large, rough business of hacking away
at the incredulity of a stolid multitude, at the acrimonious incredulity of the
materialistic phalanx, at the terrified and indignant incredulity of the
orthodox religious world, it is conceivable that they might- propter vitam
vivendi perdere causas- suffer the occult science itself to decay for the sake
of persuading mankind that it did really exist. Of course it might be suggested
that division of labour might be possible in occultism as in everything else,
and that some adepts qualified for the work might be told off for the purpose of
breaking down the incredulity of modern science, while the others would carry on
the primary duties of their career in their own beloved seclusion. But a
suggestion of this kind, however practical it may sound to a practical world,
would probably present itself as eminently unpractical to the true mystic. To
begin with, an aspirant for occult honours does not go through the tremendous
and prolonged effort required to win him success, in order at the end of all
things to embrace a life in the midst of the ordinary world, which on the
hypothesis of his success in occultism must necessarily be repugnant to him in
the extreme. Probably there is not one real adept who does not look with greater
aversion and repugnance on any life except a life of seclusion, than we of the
outer world would look on the notion of being buried alive in a remote mountain
fastness where no foot or voice from the outer world could penetrate. I shall
very soon be able to show that the love of seclusion, inherent in adeptship,
does not imply a mind vacant of the knowledge of European culture and manners.
It is, on the contrary, compatible with an amount of European culture and
experience that people acquainted merely with the commonplace aspects of Eastern
life will be surprised to find possible in the case of a man of Oriental birth.
Now, the imaginary adept told off of the suggestion I am examining, to show the
scientific world that there are realms of knowledge it has not yet explored and
faculties attainable to man that it has not yet dreamed of possessing, would
have to be either appointed to discharge that duty, or to volunteer for it. In
the one case we have to assume that the occult fraternity is despotic in its
treatment of its members in a manner which all my observation leads me to
believe it certainly is not; in the other, we have to suppose some adept making
a voluntary sacrifice of what he regards as not only the most agreeable but also
the higher life- for what? for the sake of accomplishing a task which he does
not regard as of very great importance-relatively, at any rate, to that other
task in which he may take a part--the perpetuation and perhaps the development
of the great science itself. But I do not care to follow the argument any
further, because it will come on for special treatment in a different way
presently. Enough for the moment to indicate that there are considerations
against the adoption of that method of persuasion which, as far as the judgment
of ordinary people would go, would seem the best suited to the introduction of
occult truths to modern intelligence.
45.
And these considerations appear to have prompted the
acceptance by the Brothers, of the Theosophical Society as a more or less
imperfect, but still the best available agency for the performance of a piece of
work, in which, without being actually prepared to enter on it themselves, they
nevertheless take a cordial interest.
46.
And what are the peculiar conditions which render the
Theosophical Society, the organization and management of which have been faulty
in many ways, the best agency hitherto available for the propagation of occult
truths ? The zeal and qualifications of its founder, Madame Blavatsky, give the
explanation required. It is obvious that to give any countenance or support at
all to a society concerned with the promulgation of occult philosophy, it was
necessary for the Brothers to be in occult communication with it in some way or
other. For it must be remembered that though it may seem to us a very amazing
and impossible thing to sit still at home and impress our thoughts upon the mind
of a distant friend by an effort of will, a Brother living in an unknown
Himalayan retreat is not only able to converse as freely as he likes with any of
his friends who are initiates like himself, in whatever part of the world they
may happen to be, but would find any other modes of communication, such as those
with which the crawling faculties of the outer world have to be content, simply
intolerable in their tedium and inefficacy. Besides, he must be able to afford
assistance to any society having its sphere of operations among people in the
world, be able to hear from it with the same facility that he can send
communications to it. So there must be an initiate at the other end of the line
Finally, the occult rules evidently require this last-named condition, or what
amounts to the same thing, forbid arrangements which can only be avoided on this
condition.
47.
Now, Madame Blavatsky is an initiate- is an adept to the
extent of possessing this magnificent power of psychological telegraphy with her
occult friends. That she has stopped short of that further development in
adeptship that would have tided her right over the boundary between this and the
occult world altogether, is the circumstance which has rendered her assumption
of the task with which the Theosophical Society is concerned compatible with the
considerations pointed out above as operating to prevent the assumption of such
a duty by a full adept. .As regards the supremely essential characteristic, she
has, in fact, been exactly suited to the emergency. How it came to pass that her
occult training carried her as far as it did and no further, is a question into
which it is fruitless to inquire, because the answer would manifestly entail
explanations which would impinge too closely on the secrets of initiation which
are never disclosed under any circumstances whatever. After all she is a woman,
-though her powerful mind, widely if erratically cultivated, and perfectly
dauntless courage proved among other ways on the battlefield, but more than by
any bravery with bullets, by her occult initiation, renders the name, connoting
what I it ordinarily does, rather absurd in application to her,-and this has,
perhaps, barred her from the highest degrees in occultism that she might
otherwise have attained. At all events, after a course of occult study carried
on for seven years in a Himalayan retreat, and crowning a devotion to occult
pursuits extending over five-and-thirty or forty years, Madame Blavatsky
reappeared in the world, dazed, as she met ordinary people going about in
commonplace, benighted ignorance concerning the wonders of occult science, at
the mere thought of the stupendous gulf of experience that separated her from
them. She could hardly at first bear to associate with them, for thinking of all
she knew that they did not know and that she was bound not to reveal. Any one
can understand the burden of a great secret, but the burden of such a secret as
occultism, and the burden of great powers only conferred on condition that their
exercise should be very strictly circumscribed by rule, must have been trying
indeed.
48.
Circumstances --or to put the matter more plainly, the
guidance of friends from whom, though she had left them behind in the Himalayas
on her return to Europe, she was no longer in danger of separation, as we
understand the term, induced her to visit America, and there, assisted by some
other persons whose interest in the subject was kindled by occasional
manifestations of her extraordinary powers, and notably by Colonel Olcott, its
life- devoted President, she founded the Theosophical Society, the objects of
which, as originally defined, were to explore the latent psychological powers of
man, and the ancient Oriental literature in which the clue to these may be
hidden, and in which the philosophy of occult science may be partly discovered.
49.
The Society took root readily in America, while branches
were also formed in England and elsewhere; but, leaving these to take care of
themselves, Madame Blavatsky ultimately returned to India, to establish the
Society there among the natives, from whose natural hereditary sympathies with
mysticism it was reasonable to expect an ardent sympathy with a psychological
enterprise which not only appealed to their intuitive belief in the reality of
yog vidya, but also to their best patriotism, by exhibiting India as the
fountainhead of the highest if the least known and the most secluded culture in
the world.
50.
Here, however, began the practical blunders in the
management of the Theosophical Society which led to the incidents referred to
above, as having given it, so far, a chequered career. Madame Blavatsky, to
begin with, was wholly unfamiliar with the everyday side of Indian life, her
previous visits having brought her only into contact with groups of people
utterly unconnected with the current social system and characteristics of the
country Nor could she have undertaken a worse preparation for Indian life than
that supplied by a residence of some years in the United States. This sent her
out to India unfurnished with the recommendations which she could readily have
obtained, if she had spent the time just referred to in England, and left her
unprovided with information it was highly important for her to possess
concerning the true character of the British ruling classes of India and their
relations with the people.
51.
The consequence was that Mme. Blavatsky, on her first
arrival in India, adopted an attitude of obtrusive sympathy with the natives of
the soil as compared with the Europeans, seeking their society in a manner
which, coupled with the fact that she made none of the usual advances to
European society, and with her manifestly Russian name, had the effect not
unnaturally of rendering her suspecte to the rather clumsy organization which in
India attempts to combine with sundry others, the functions of a political
police. These suspicions, it is true, were allayed almost as soon as they were
conceived, but not before Madame Blavatsky had been made for a short time the
object of an espionage so awkward that it became grossly obvious to herself and
roused her indignation to fever heat. To a more phlegmatic nature the incident
would have been little more than amusing, but all accidents combined to develop
trouble. A Russian by birth, though naturalised in the United States,
Madame Blavatsky is probably more sensitive than an English woman ,less
experienced in political espionage would be to the insult involved in being
taken for a spy. Then the inner consciousness of having, for enthusiasm in the
purely intellectual or spiritual enterprise to which she had devoted her life,
renounced the place in society to which her distinguished birth and family
naturally entitled her, probably intensified the bitterness of her indignation,
at finding the sacrifice not only unappreciated, but turned against her, and
regarded as justifying a foul suspicion. At all events, the circumstances acting
on an excitable temperament led her to make public protests which caused it to
be widely known by natives as well as by Europeans, that she had been looked at
askance by Government authorities. And this idea for a time impeded the success
of her work. Nothing can be done in India without a European impulse in
the beginning; at all events, it handicaps any enterprise frightfully to be
without such an impulse if native co-operation is required. Not that the
Theosophical Society failed to get members. The natives were :flattered at the
attitude towards them taken up by their new" European " friends, as Madame
Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott were no doubt generally regarded in spite of their
American nationality, and showed a shallow eagerness to become Theosophists. But
their ardour did not always prove durable, and in some few cases they showed a
lamentable want of earnestness by breaking away from the Society altogether.
52.
Meanwhile, Madame Blavatsky began to make friends
amongst the Europeans, and in 1880 visited Simla, where she began late in the
day to approach her work from the right direction. Again, however, some mistakes
were made which have retarded the establishment of the Theosophical Society, as
far as India
is concerned, on the dignified footing that it ought to occupy. A great many
wonderful phenomena were manifested in the presence at various times of a great
many people; but proper safeguards were not taken to avert the great danger that
must always attend such a method of recommending occult science to public
notice. It is beyond dispute that phenomena, exhibited under thoroughly
satisfactory conditions to persons intelligent enough to comprehend their
significance, create an effect in awakening a thirst for the study of occult
philosophy that no other appeal can produce. But it is equally true, though at
the first glance this may not be so apparent, that to minds , quite unprepared
by previous training to grasp the operation of occult forces, the most perfectly
unimpeachable phenomenon will be received rather as an insult to the
understanding than as a proof of the operation of occult power. This is
especially the case with persons of merely average intelligence, of whose
faculties cannot stand the shock of a sudden appeal to an entirely new set of
ideas. The strain is too great; the new chain of reasoning breaks, and the
commonplace observer of abnormal occurrences reverts to his original frame of
stolid incredulity, perfectly unaware of the fact that a revelation of priceless
intellectual importance has been offered to him and has been misunderstood.
Nothing is commoner than to hear people say: " I can't believe in the reality of
a phenomenal occurrence unless I see it for myself. Show it me and I shall
believe in it, but not till then." Many people who say this are quite mistaken
as to what they would believe if the occurrence were shown to them. I have over
and over again seen phenomena of an absolutely genuine nature pass before the
eyes of people unused to investigating occurrences of the kind, and leave no
impression behind beyond an irritated conviction that they were somehow being
taken in. Just this happened in some conspicuous instances at Simla, and it is
needless to say that many as were the phenomena that Madame Blavatsky produced,
or was instrumental in producing, during the visit to which I am referring, the
number of people in the place who had no opportunity of seeing them was
considerably greater than that of the witnesses. And for these, as a rule, the
whole series of incidents presented itself simply as an imposition. It was
nothing to the purpose for the holders of this theory that there was a glaring
absence from the whole business of any motive for imposture, that a considerable
group of persons whose testimony and capacity would never have been impugned had
any other matter been under discussion, were emphatic in their declarations as
to the complete reality of the phenomena that had been displayed. The
commonplace mind could not assimilate the idea that it was face to face with a
new revelation in Nature, and any hypothesis, no matter how absurd and illogical
in its details, was preferable for the majority to the simple grandeur of the
truth.
53.
On the whole, therefore, as Madame Blavatsky became a
celebrity in India,
her relations with European society were intensified. She made many friends, and
secured some ardent converts to a belief in the reality of occult powers ; but
she became the innocent object of bitter animosity on the part of some other
acquaintances, who, unable to assimilate what they saw in her presence, took up
all attitude of disbelief, which deepened into positive enmity as the whole
subject became enveloped in a cloud of more or less excited controversy.
54.
And it is needless to say that many of the newspapers
made great capital out of the whole situation ridiculing Madame Blavatsky's
dupes, and twisting every bit of information that came out about her phenomena
into the most ludicrous shape it could be made to assume. Mockery of that sort
was naturally expected by English friends who avowed their belief in the reality
of Madame Blavatsky's powers, and probably never gave one of them a moment's
serious annoyance. But for the oversensitive and excitable person chiefly
concerned they were indescribably tormenting, and eventually it grew doubtful
whether her patience would stand the strain put upon it; whether she would not
relinquish altogether the ungrateful task of inducing the world at large to
accept the good gifts ,which she had devoted her life to offering them. Happily,
so far, no catastrophe has ensued ; but no history of Columbus in chains for
discovering a new world, or Galileo in prison for announcing the true principles
of astronomy, is more remarkable for those who know all the bearings of the
situation in India, as regards the Theosophical Society, than the sight of Madam
Blavatsky, slandered and ridiculed by most of the Anglo-Indian papers, and
spoken of as a charlatan by the commonplace crowd, in return for having freely
offered them some of the wonderful fruits- as much as the rules of the great
occult association permit her to offer-of the lifelong struggle in which she has
conquered her extraordinary knowledge.
55.
In spite of all this, meanwhile, the Theosophical
Society remains the one organization which supplies to inquirers who thirst for
occult knowledge a link of communication, however slight, with the great
fraternity in the background which takes an interest in its progress, and is
accessible to its founder.
57.
FIRST OCCULT EXPERIENCES
58.
It has been through my connection with the Theosophical
Society and my acquaintance with Madame Blavatsky that I have obtained
experiences in connection with occultism, which have prompted me to undertake my
present task. The first problem I had to solve was whether Madame Blavatsky
really did, as I heard, possess the power of producing abnormal phenomena. And
it may be imagined that, on the assumption of the reality of her phenomena,
nothing would have been simpler than to obtain such satisfaction when once I had
formed her acquaintance. It is, however, an illustration of the embarrassments
which surround all inquiries of this nature- embarrassments with which so many
people grow impatient, to the end that they cast inquiry altogether aside and
remain wholly ignorant of the truth for the rest of their lives- that although
on the first occasion of my making. Madame BIavatsky's acquaintance she became a
guest at my house at Allahabad
and remained there for six weeks, the harvest of satisfaction I was enabled to
obtain during this time was exceedingly small. Of course I heard a great deal
from her during the time mentioned about occultism and the Brothers, but while
she was most anxious that I should understand the situation thoroughly, and I
was most anxious to get at the truth, the difficulties to be overcome were
almost insuperable. For the Brothers, as already described, have an
unconquerable objection to showing off. That the person who wishes them to show
off is an earnest seeker of truth, and not governed by mere idle curiosity, is
nothing to the purpose. They do not want to attract candidates for initiation by
an exhibition of wonders. Wonders have a very spirit-stirring effect on the
history of every religion founded on miracles, but occultism is not a pursuit
which people can safely take up in obedience to the impulse of enthusiasm
created by witnessing a display of extraordinary power. There is no absolute
rule to forbid the exhibition of powers in presence of the outsider ; but it is
clearly disapproved of by the higher authorities of occultism on principle, and
it is practically impossible for less exalted proficients to go against this
disapproval. It was only the very slightest of all imaginable phenomena that,
during her first visit to my house, Madame Blavatsky was thus permitted to
exhibit freely. She was allowed to show that" raps " like those which
spiritualists attribute to spirit agency, could be produced at will. This was
something, and faute de mieux we paid great attention to raps.
59.
Spiritualists are aware that when groups of people sit
round a table and put their hands upon it, they will, if a "medium " be present,
generally hear little knocks which respond to questions and spell out messages.
The large outer circle of persons who do not believe in spiritualism are fain to
imagine that all the millions who do, are duped as regards this impression. It
must sometimes be troublesome for them to account for the wide development of
the delusion, but any theory, they think, is preferable to admitting the
possibility that the spirits of deceased persons can communicate in this way;
or, if they take the scientific view of the matter, that a physical effect,
however slight, can be produced without a physical cause. Such persons ought to
welcome the explanations I am now giving, tending as these do to show that the
theory of universal self-deception as regards spirit-rapping, which must be
rather an awkward theory for anyone but a ludicrously conceited objector to
hold, is not the only one by means of which the asserted facts of spiritualism-
those with which we are now dealing at all events- can be reconciled with a
reluctance to accept the spiritual hypothesis as the explanation.
60.
Now, I soon found out not only that raps would always
come at a table at which Madame Blavatsky sat with the view of obtaining such
results, but that all conceivable hypotheses of fraud in the matter were rapidly
disposed of by a comparison of the various experiments we were able to make. To
begin with, there was no necessity for other people to sit at the table at all.
We could work with any table under any circumstances, or without a table at all.
A windowpane would do equally well, or the wall, or any door, or anything
whatever which could give out a sound if hit. A half glass door put ajar was at
once seen to be a very good instrument to choose, because it was easy to stand
opposite Madame Blavatsky in this case, to see her bare hands or hand (without
any rings) resting motionless on the pane, and to hear the little ticks come
plainly, as if made with the point of a pencil or ,with the sound of electric
sparks passing from one knob of an electrical apparatus to another. Another very
satisfactory way of obtaining the raps- one frequently employed in the evening-
was to set down a large glass clock-shade on the hearthrug, and get Madame
Blavatsky, after removing all rings from her hands, and sitting well clear of
the shade so that no part of her dress touched it, to lay her hands on it.
Putting a lamp on the ground opposite, and sitting down on the hearthrug, one
could see the under surfaces of the hands resting on the glass, and still under
these perfectly satisfactory conditions the raps would come, clear and distinct,
on the sonorous surface of the shade.
61.
It was out of Madame Blavatsky's power to give an exact
explanation as to how these raps were produced. Every effort of occult power is
connected with some secret or other, and slight, regarded in the light of
phenomena, as the raps were, they were physical effects produced by an effort of
will, and the manner in which the will can be trained to produce physical
effects may be too uniform, as regards great and small phenomena, to be made in
accordance with the rules of occultism the subject of exact explanations to
uninitiated persons. But the fact that the raps were obedient to the will was
readily put beyond dispute, in this way amongst others: working with the
windowpane or the clockshade, I would ask to have a name spelled out, mentioning
one at random. Then I would call over the alphabet, and at the right letters the
raps would come. Or I would ask for a definite number of raps, and they would
come. Or for series of raps in some defined rhythmical progression, and they
would come. Nor was this all. Madame Blavatsky would sometimes put her hands, or
one only, on someone else's head, and make the raps come, audibly to an
attentive listener and perceptibly to the person touched, who would feel each
little shock exactly as if he were taking sparks off the conductor of an
electrical machine.
62.
At a later stage of my inquiries I obtained raps under
better circumstances again than these- namely, without contact between the
object on which they were produced and Madame Blavatsky's hands at all. This was
at Simla in the summer of last year (1880), but I may as well anticipate a
little as far as the raps are concerned. At Simla Madame Blavatsky used to
produce the raps on a little table set in the midst of an attentive group, with
no one touching it at all. After starting it, or of charging it with some
influence by resting her hands on it for a few moments, she would hold one about
a foot above it and make mesmeric passes at it, at each of which the table would
yield the familiar sound. Nor was this done only at our own house with our own
tables. The same thing would be done at friends houses, to which Madame
Blavatsky accompanied us. And a further development of the head experiment was
this: It was found to be possible for several persons to feel the same rap
simultaneously. Four or five persons used sometimes to put their hands in a
pile, one on another on a table; then Madame Blavatsky would put hers on the top
of the pile and cause a current, of whatever it is which produces the sound, to
pass through the whole series of hands, felt by each simultaneously, and record
itself in a rap on the table beneath. Anyone who has ever taken part in forming
such a pile of hands must feel as to some of the hypotheses concerning the raps
that have been put forward in the Indian papers by determined sceptics-
hard-headed persons not to be taken in- to the effect that the raps are produced
by Madame Blavatsky's thumbnails or by the cracking of some joint- that such
hypotheses are rather idiotic.
63.
Summing up the argument in language which I used in a
letter written at the time, it stands as follows; " Madame Blavatsky puts her
hands on a table and raps are heard on it. Some wiseacre suggests she does it
with her thumbnails; she puts only one hand on the table; the raps comes still.
Does she conceal any artifice under her hand? She lifts her hand from the table
altogether, and merely holding it in the air above, the raps still come. Has she
done anything to the table? She puts her hand on a windowpane, on a picture
frame, on a dozen different places about the room in succession, and from each
in turn come the mysterious raps. Is the house where she stays with her own
particular friends about her prepared all over? She goes to half a dozen other
houses at Simla and produces raps at them all. Do the raps really come from
somewhere else than where they seem to come from-are they perhaps ventriloquism
? She puts her hand on your head, and from the motionless fingers you feel
something which resembles a minute series of electric shocks, and an attentive
listener beside you will hear them producing little raps on your skull. Are you
telling a lie when you say you feel the shocks ? Half a dozen people put their
hands one on top of the other in a pile on the table ; Madame Blavatsky puts
hers on the top of all, and each person feels the little throbs pass through,
and hears them record themselves in faint raps on the table on which the pile of
hands is resting. When a person has seen all these experiments many times, as I
have, what impression do you think is made on his mind by a person who says.
There is nothing in raps but conjuring- Maskelyne and Cooke can do them for £10
a night . Maskelyne and Cooke cannot do them for £10 a night nor for ten lakhs a
night under the circumstances I describe."
64.
The raps even as I heard them during the first visit
that Madame Blavatsky paid us at
Allahabad, gave me a complete assurance that she was in
possession of some faculties of an abnormal character. And this assurance lent a
credibility, that would not otherwise have belonged to them, to one or two
phenomena of a different kind which also occurred at that time, the conditions
of which wore not complete enough to make them worth recording here. But it was
mortifying to approach no nearer to absolute certitude concerning the questions
in which we were really interested- namely, whether there did indeed exist men
with the wonderful powers ascribed to the adepts, and whether in this way it was
possible for human creatures to obtain positive knowledge concerning the
characteristics of their own spiritual nature. It must be remembered that Madame
Blavatsky was preaching no specific doctrine on this subject. What she told us
about the adepts and her own initiation was elicited by questions. Theosophy, in
which she did seek to interest all her friends, did not proclaim any specific
belief on the subject. It simply recommended the theory that humanity should be
regarded as a Universal Brotherhood in which each person should study the truth
as regards spiritual things, freed from the prepossessions of any specific
religious dogma. But although her attitude, as regards the whole subject, put
her under no moral obligation to prove the reality of occultism, her
conversation and her book, " Isis Unveiled," disclosed a view of things which
one naturally desired to explore further; and it was tantalising to feel that
she could, and yet could not give us the final proofs we so much desired to
have, that her occult training really had invested her with powers over material
things of a kind which, if one could but feel sure they were actually in her
possession, would utterly shatter the primary foundations of materialistic
philosophy.
65.
One conviction we felt had been fully attained. This was
the conviction of her own good faith. It is disagreeable merely to recognise
that this can be impugned; but this has been done in Indiana so recklessly and
cruelly by people who take up an attitude of hostility to the views with which
she is identified, that it would be affectation to pass the question by. On the
other hand, it would be too great a concession to an ignoble attack to go
minutely over the evidence of her honesty of character with which my intimacy
with Madame Blavatsky has gradually supplied me. At various times she has been a
guest of ours for periods now amounting in all to more than three months out of
nearly two years. To any impartial intelligence it will be manifest that, under
these circumstances, I must have been able to form a better opinion concerning
her real character than can possibly be derived from the crude observations of
persons who have perhaps met her once or twice. I am not, of course, attributing
any scientific value to this sort of testimony as accrediting the abnormal
character of phenomena she may be concerned in producing. With such a mighty
problem at stake as the trustworthiness of the fundamental theories of modern
physical science, it is impossible to proceed by any other but scientific modes
of investigation. In any experiments I have tried I have always been careful to
exclude, not merely the probability, but the possibility of trickery; and where
it has been impossible to secure the proper conditions, I have not allowed the
results of the experiment to enter into the sum total of my conclusions. But, in
its place, it seems only right- only a slight attempt to redress the scandalous
wrong which, as far as mere insult and slander can do a wrong, has been done to
a very high-minded and perfectly honourable woman - to record the certainty at
which in progress of time both my wife and myself arrived, that Madame Blavatsky
is a lady of absolutely upright nature, who has sacrificed, not merely rank and
fortune, but all thought of personal welfare or comfort in any shape, from
enthusiasm for occult studies in the first instance, and latterly for the
special task she has taken in hand as an initiate in, if relatively a humble
member of, the great occult fraternity- the direction of the Theosophical
Society.
66.
Besides the production of the raps one other phenomenon
had been conceded to us during Madame Blavatsky's first visit. We had gone with
her to Benares for a few days, and were
studying at a house lent to us by the Maharajah of Vizianagram - a big, bare,
comfortless abode as judged by European standards-in the central hall of which
we were sitting one evening after dinner. Suddenly three or four flowers-cut
roses-fell in the midst of us- just as such things sometimes fall in the dark at
spiritual seances. But in this case there were several lamps and candles in the
room. The ceiling of the hall consisted simply of the solid, bare, painted
rafters and boards that supported the flat cement roof of the building. The
phenomenon was so wholly unexpected-as unexpected, I am given to understand, by
Madame Blavatsky, sitting in an armchair reading at the time, as by the rest of
us- that it lost some of the effect it would otherwise have had on our minds. If
one could have been told a moment beforehand " now some flowers are going to
fall", so that we could have looked up and seen them suddenly appear in the air
above our heads, then the impressive effect of an incident so violently out of
the common order of things would have been very great. Even as it was, the
incident has always remained for those who witnessed it one of the stages on
their road to a conviction of the reality of occult powers. Persons to whom it
is merely related cannot be expected to rely upon it to any great extent. They
will naturally ask various questions as to the construction of the room, who
inhabited the house, etc., and even when all these questions had been answered,
as they truthfully could be in a manner which would shut out any hypothesis by
means of which the fall of the flowers could be explainable by any conjuring
trick, there would still be an uncomfortable suspicion left in the questioner's
mind as to the completeness of the explanation given. It might hardly have been
worth while to bring the incident on to the present record at all, but for the
opportunity it affords me of pointing out that the phenomena produced in Madame
Blavatsky's presence need not necessarily be of her producing.
67.
Corning now to details in connection with some of the
larger mysteries of occultism, I am oppressed by the difficulty of leading up to
a statement of what I know now to be facts-as absolute facts as Charing
Cross-which shall, nevertheless, be gradual enough not to shock the
understanding of people absolutely unused to any but the ordinary grooves of
thought as regards physical phenomena. None the less is it true that any
"Brother," as the adepts in occultism are familiarly referred to, who may have
been seized with the impulse to bestow on our party at Benares the little
surprise described above, may have been in Tibet or in the South of India, or
anywhere else in the world at the time, and yet just as able to make the roses
fall as if he had been in the room with us. I have spoken already of the adept's
power of being present " in spirit " as we should say, " in astral body " as an
occultist would say, at any distant place in the flash of a moment at will. So
present, he can exercise in that distant place some of the psychological powers
which he possesses, as completely as he can exercise them in physical body
wherever he may actually be, as we understand the expression. I am not
pretending to give an explanation of how he produces this or that result, nor
for a moment hinting that I know. I am recording merely the certain fact that
various occult results have been accomplished in my presence, and explaining as
much about them as I have been able to find out. But at all events it has long
since become quite plain to me, that wherever Madame Blavatsky is, there the
Brothers, wherever they may be, can and constantly do produce phenomena of the
most overwhelming sort, with the production of which she herself has little or
nothing to do. In reference, indeed, to any phenomenon occurring in her
presence, it must be remembered that one can never have any exact knowledge as
to how far her own powers may have been employed, or how far she may have been "
helped," or whether she has not been quite uninfluential in the production of
the result. Precise explanations of this kind are quite contrary to the rules of
occultism- which, it must always be remembered, is not trying to convince the
world of its existence. In this volume I am trying to convince the world of its
existence, but that is another matter altogether. Anyone who wishes to know how
the truth really stands can only take up the position of a seeker of truth. He
is not a judge before whom occultism comes to plead for credibility. It is
useless, therefore, to quarrel with the observations we are enabled to make on
the ground that they are not of the kind one would best like to make. The
question is whether they yield data on which conclusions may safely rest.
68.
And another consideration claims treatment in connexion
with the character of the observations which, so far, I have been enabled to
make-that is to say, in connexion with any search for proof of occult power as
regards physical phenomena which but for such agency would be miraculous. I can
foresee that, in spite of the abject stupidity of the remark, many people will
urge that the force of the experiments with which I have had to deal is vitiated
because they relate to phenomena which have a certain superficial resemblance to
conjuring tricks. Of course this ensues from the fact that conjuring tricks all
aim at achieving a certain superficial resemblance to occult phenomena. Let any
reader, whatever his present frame of mind on the subject may be, assume for a
moment that he has seen reason to conceive that there may be an occult
fraternity in existence wielding strange powers over natural forces as yet
unknown to ordinary humanity; that this fraternity is bound by rules which cramp
the manifestation of these powers, but do not absolutely prohibit it; and then
let him propose some comparatively small but scientifically convincing tests
which he could ask to have conceded to him as a proof of the reality of some
part, at all events, of these powers: it will be found that it is impossible to
propose any such test that does not bear a certain superficial resemblance to a
conjuring trick. But this will not necessarily impair the value of the test for
people capable of dealing with those characteristics of experiments that are not
superficial.
69.
The gulf of difference which is really to be observed
lying between any of the occult phenomena I shall have to describe presently and
a conjuring trick which might imitate it, is due to the fact that the conditions
would be utterly unlike. The conjuror would work in his own stage, or in a
prepared room. The most remarkable of the phenomena I have had in the presence
of Madame Blavatsky have taken place away out of doors in fortuitously chosen
places in the woods and on the hills. The conjuror is assisted by any required
number of confederates behind his scenes. Madame Blavatsky comes a stranger to
Simla, and is a guest in my own house, under my own observation, during the
whole of her visit. The conjuror is paid to incur the expenses of accomplishing
this or that deception of the senses. Madame Blavatsky is, what I have already
explained, a lady of honourable character, instrumental in helping her friends -
at their earnest desire wherever phenomena are produced at all-to see some
manifestation of the powers in the acquisition of which (instead of earning
money by them as the conjuror does with his) she has sacrificed everything the
world generally holds dear- station, and so forth, immeasurably above that to
which any conjuror or any impostor could aspire. Pursuing Madame Blavatsky with
injurious suspicions, persons who resent the occult hypothesis will constantly
forget the dictates of common sense in overlooking these considerations.
70.
About the beginning of September, 1880, Madame Blavatsky
came to Simla as our guest, and in the course of the following six weeks various
phenomena occurred, which became the talk of all Anglo-India for a time, and
gave rise to some excited feeling on the part of persons who warmly espoused the
theory that they must be the result of imposture. It soon became apparent to us
that whatever might have been the nature of the restrictions which operated the
previous winter at Allahabad
to prevent our guest from displaying more than the very least of her powers,
these restrictions were now less operative than before. We were soon introduced
to a phenomenon we had not been treated to previously. By some modification of
the force employed to produce the sound of raps on any object, Madame Blavatsky
can produce in the air, without the intermediation of any solid object whatever,
the sound of a silvery bell-sometimes a chime or little run of three or four
bells on different notes. We had often heard about these bells, but had never
heard them produced before. They were produced for us for the first time one
evening after dinner while we were still sitting round the table, several times
in , succession in the air over our heads, and in one instance instead of the
single bell-sound there came one of the chimes of which I speak. Later on I
heard them on scores of occasions and in all sorts of different places-in the
open air and at different houses where Madame Blavatsky went from time to time.
As before with the raps, there is no hypothesis in the case of the bells which
can be framed by an adherent of the imposture theory which does not break down
on a comparison of the different occasions and conditions under which I have
heard them produced. Indeed, the theory of imposture is one which in the matter
of the bells has only one narrow conjecture to rest on. Unlike the sound of a
rap, which in the ordinary way could be produced by many different methods --so
that, to be sure any given example of such a sound is not produced by ordinary
means, one has to procure its repetition under a great variety of conditions-the
sound of a bell can only be made, physically, in a few ways. You must have a
bell, or some sonorous object in the nature of a bell, to make it with. Now,
when sitting in a well lighted room, and attentively watching, you get the sound
of a bell up above your heads where there is no physical bell to yield it- what
are the hypotheses which can attribute the result to trickery. Is the sound
really produced outside the room altogether by some agent or apparatus in
another. First of all no rational person who had heard this sound would advance
that theory, because the sound itself is incompatible with the idea. It is never
loud- at least I have never heard it very loud- but it is always clear and
distinct to a remarkable extent. If you lightly strike the edge of a thin claret
glass with a knife you may get a sound which it would be difficult to persuade
anyone had come from another room; but the occult bell-sound is like that, only
purer and clearer, with no sub-sound of jarring in it whatever. Independently of
this, I have, as I say, heard the sound in the open air produced up in the sky
in the stillness of evening. In rooms it has not always been overhead, but
sometimes down on the ground amongst the feet of a group of persons listening
for it. Again, on one occasion, when it had been produced two or three times in
the drawing-room of a friend's house where we had all been dining, one gentlemen
of the party went back to the dining-room two rooms off, to get a finger glass
with which to make a sound for the occult bells to repeat- a familiar form of
the experiment. While by himself in the dining-room he heard one of the
bell-sounds produced near him, though Madame Blavatsky had remained in the
drawing-room. This example of the phenomenon satisfactorily disposed of the
theory, absurd in itself for persons who frequently heard the bells in all
manner of places, that Madame Blavatsky carried some apparatus about her with
which to produce the sound. As for the notion of confederacy, that is disposed
of by the fact that I have repeatedly heard the sounds when out walking beside
Madame Blavatsky's jampan with no other person near us but the jampanees
carrying it.
71.
The bell-sounds are not mere sportive illustrations of
the properties of the currents which- are set in action to produce them. They
serve the direct, practical purpose among occultists of a telegraphic call-bell.
It appears that when trained occultists are concerned, so that the mysterious
magnetic connection, whatever it may be, which enables them to communicate ideas
is once established, they can produce the bell-sounds at any distance in the
neighbourhood of the fellow-initiate whose attention they wish to attract. I
have repeatedly heard Madame Blavatsky called in this way, when our own little
party being alone some evening, we have all been quietly reading. A little "
ting " would suddenly sound, and Madame Blavatsky would get up and go to her
room to attend to whatever occult business may have been the motive of her
summons. A very pretty illustration of the sound, as thus produced by some
brother-initiate at a distance, was afforded one evening under these
circumstances. A lady, a guest at another house in Simla, had been dining with
us, when about eleven o'clock I received a note from her host, enclosing a
letter which he asked me to get Madame Blavatsky to send on by occult means to a
certain member of the great fraternity to whom both he and I had been writing. I
shall explain the circumstances of this correspondence more fully later on. We
were all anxious to know at once- before the lady with us that evening returned
up the hill, so that she could take back word to her host- whether the letter
could be sent; but Madame Blavatsky declared that her own powers would not
enable her to perform the feat. The question was whether a certain person, a
half-developed brother then in the neighbourhood of Simla, would give the
necessary help. Madame Blavatsky said she would see if she could " find him,"
and taking the letter in her hands, she went out into the veranda, where we all
followed her. Leaning on the balustrade, and looking over the wide sweep of the
Simla valley, she remained for a few minutes perfectly motionless and silent, as
we all were; and the night was far enough advanced for all commonplace sounds to
have settled down, so that the stillness was perfect. Suddenly, in the air
before us, there sounded the clear note of an occult-bell. " All right," cried
Madame, " he will take it." And duly taken the letter was shortly afterwards.
But the phenomenon involved in its transmission will be better introduced to the
reader in connection with other examples.
72.
I come now to a series of incidents which exhibit occult
power in a more striking light than any of those yet described. To a scientific
mind, indeed, the production of sounds by means of a force unknown to ordinary
science should be as clear a proof that the power in question is a power, as the
more sensational phenomena which have to do with the transmission of solid
objects by occult agency. The sound can only reach our ears by the vibration of
air, and to set up the smallest undulation of air as the effect of a thought
will appear to the ordinary understanding as no less outrageous an impossibility
than the uprooting of a tree in a similar way. Still there are degrees in
wonderfulness which the feelings recognise even if such distinctions are
irrational.
The first incident of the kind which I now take up is not one which would in
itself be a complete proof of anything for an outsider. I describe it rather for
the benefit of readers who may be, either through spiritualistic experiences or
in any other way, already alive to the possibility of phenomena as such, and
interested rather in experiments which may throw light on their genesis than in
mere texts. Managed a little better, the occurrence now to be dealt with would
have been a beautiful test ; but Madame Blavatsky, left to herself in such
matters, is always the worst devisor of tests imaginable. Utterly out of
sympathy with the positive and incredulous temperament; engaged all her life in
the development amongst Asiatic mystics of the creative rather than the critical
faculties, she never can follow the intricate suspicions with which the European
observer approaches the consideration of the marvellous in its simplest forms.
The marvellous, in forms so stupendously marvellous that they almost elude the
grasp of ordinary conceptions, has been the daily food of her life for a great
number of years, and it is easy to realise that, for her, the jealous distrust
with which ordinary people hunt round the slightest manifestation of occult
force to find any loophole through which a suspicion of fraud may creep, as no
less tiresome and stupid, then the ordinary person conceives the too credulous
spirit to be.
73.
About the end of September my wife went one afternoon
with Madame Blavatsky to the top of a neighbouring hill. They were only
accompanied by one other friend. I was not present myself on this occasion.
While there Madame Blavatsky asked my wife, in a joking way, what was her
heart's desire. She said at random and on the spur or the moment, " to get a
note from one of the Brothers." Madame Blavatsky took from her pocket a piece of
blank pink paper that had been torn off a note received that day. Folding this
up into a small compass she took it to the edge of the hill, held it up for a
moment or two between her hands and returned saying that it was gone. She
presently, after communicating mentally by her own occult methods with the
distant Brother, said he asked where my wife would have the letter. At first she
said she should like it to come fluttering down into her lap, but some
conversation ensued as to whether this would be the best way to get it, and
ultimately it was decided that she should find it in a certain tree. Here, of
course, a mistake was made which opens the door to the suspicions of resolutely
disbelieving persons. It will be supposed that Madame Blavatsky had some reasons
of her own for wishing the tree chosen. For readers who favour that conjecture
after all that has gone before, it is only necessary to repeat that the present
story is being told not as a proof, but as an incident.
74.
At first Madame Blavatsky seems to have made a mistake
as to the description of the tree ,which the distant Brother was indicating as
that in which he was going to put the note, and with some trouble my wife
scrambled on to the lower branch of a bare and leafless trunk on which nothing
could be found. Madame then again got into communication with the Brother and
ascertained her mistake. Into another tree at a little distance, which neither
Madame nor the one other person present had approached, my wife now climbed a
few feet and looked all round among the branches. At first she saw nothing, but
then, turning back her head without moving from the position she had taken up,
she saw on a twig immediately before her face- where a moment previously there
had been nothing but leaves-a little pink note. This was stuck on to the stalk
of a leaf that had been quite freshly torn off, for the stalk was still green
and moist- not withered as it would have been if the leaf had been torn off for
any length of time. The note was found to contain these few words: " I have been
asked to leave a note here for you. What can I do for you?", It was signed by
some Tibetan characters. The pink paper on which it was written appeared to be
the same which Madame Blavatsky had taken blank from her pocket shortly before.
75.
How was it transmitted first to the Brother who wrote
upon it and then back again to the top of our hill ? not to speak of the mystery
of its attachment to the tree in the way described. So far as I can frame
conjectures on this subject, it would be premature to set them forth in detail
till I have gone more fully into the facts observed. It is no use to discuss the
way the wings of flying-fish are made for people who will not believe in the
reality of flying fish at all, and refuse to accept phenomena less guaranteed by
orthodoxy than Pharaoh's chariot wheels.
76.
I come now to the incidents of a very remarkable day.
The day before, I should explain, we started on a little expedition which turned
out a coup manqué, though, but for some tiresome mishaps, it might have led, we
afterwards had reason to think, to some very interesting results. We mistook our
way to a place of which Madame Blavatsky had received an imperfect description-
or a description she imperfectly understood- in an occult conversation with one
of the Brothers then actually passing through Simla. Had we gone the right way
that day we might have had the good fortune of meeting him, for he stayed one
night at a certain old Tibetan temple, or rest-house, such as is often found
about the Himalayas, and which the blind apathy
of commonplace English people leads them to regard as of no particular interest
or importance. Madame Blavatsky was wholly unacquainted with Simla, and the
account she gave us of the place she wanted to go to led us to think she meant a
different place. We started, and for a long time Madame declared that we must be
going in the right direction because she felt certain currents. Afterwards it
appeared that the road to the place we were making for, and to that for which we
ought to have made, were coincident for a considerable distance ; but a slight
divergence at one point carried us into a wholly wrong system of hill-paths.
Eventually Madame utterly lost her scent: we tried back; we who knew Simla
discussed its topography and wondered where it could be she wanted to get to,
but all to no purpose. We launched ourselves down a hillside where Madame
declared she once more felt the missing current; but occult currents may flow
where travellers cannot pass, and when we attempted this descent. I knew the
case was desperate. After a while the expedition had to be abandoned, and we
went home much disappointed.
77.
Why, some one may ask, could not the omniscient Brother
feel that Madame was going wrong, and direct us properly in time ? I say this
question will be asked, because I know from experience that people unused to the
subject will not bear in mind the relations of the Brothers to such inquirers as
ourselves. In this case, for example, the situation was not one in which the
Brother in question was anxiously waiting to prove his existence to a jury of
intelligent Englishmen. We can learn so little about the daily life of an adept
in occultism, that we who are uninitiated can tell very little about the
interests that really engage his attention; but we can find out this much - that
his attention is constantly engaged on interests connected with his own work,
and the gratification of the curiosity concerning occult matters of persons who
are not regular students of occultism forms no part of that work at all. On the
contrary, unless under very exceptional conditions, he is even forbidden to make
any concessions whatever to such curiosity. In the case in point the course of
events may probably have been something of this kind :-Madame Blavatsky
perceived by her own occult tentacle that one of her illustrious friends was in
the neighbourhood. She immediately - having a sincere desire to oblige us- may
have asked him whether she might bring us to see him. Probably he would regard
any such request very much as the astronomer royal might regard the request of a
friend to bring a party of ladies to look through his telescopes; but none the
less he might say, to please his half-fledged " brother " in occultism, Madame
Blavatsky, " Very well, bring them, if you like: I am in such and such a place."
And then he would go on with his work, remembering afterwards that the intended
visit had never been paid, and perhaps turning an occult perception in the
direction of the circumstances to ascertain what had happened.
78.
However this may have been, the expedition as first
planned broke down. It was not with the hope of seeing the Brother, but on the
general principle of hoping for something to turn up, that we arranged to go for
a picnic the following day in another direction, which, as the first road had
failed, we concluded to be probably the one we ought to have taken previously.
79.
We set out at the appointed time next morning. We were
originally to have been a party of six, but a seventh person joined us just
before we started. After going down the hill for some hours a place was chosen
in the wood near the upper waterfall for our breakfast: the baskets that had
been brought with us were unpacked, and, as usual at an Indian picnic, the
servants at a little distance lighted a fire and set to work to make tea and
coffee. Concerning this some joking arose over the fact that we had one cup and
saucer too few, on account of the seventh person who joined us at starting, and
some one laughingly asked Madame Blavatsky to create another cup and saucer.
There was no set purpose in the proposal at first, but when Madame Blavatsky
said it would be very difficult, but that if we liked she would try, attention
was of course at once arrested. Madame Blavatsky, as usual, held mental
conversation with one of the Brothers, and then wandered a little about in the
immediate neighbourhood of where we were sitting- that is to say, within a
radius of half-a-dozen to a dozen yards from our picnic cloth- I closely
following, waiting to see what would happen. Then she marked a spot on the
ground, and called to one of the gentlemen of the party to bring a knife to dig
with. The place chosen was the edge of a little slope covered with thick weeds
and grass and shrubby undergrowth. The gentleman with the knife-let us call him
X-------------- as I shall have to refer to him afterwards- tore up these in the
first place with some difficulty, as the roots were tough and closely
interlaced. Cutting then into the matted roots and earth with the knife, and
pulling away the débris with his hands, he came at last, on the edge of
something white, which turned out, as it was completely excavated, to be the
required cup. A corresponding saucer was also found after a little more digging.
Both objects were in among the roots which spread everywhere through the ground,
so that it seemed as if the roots were growing round them. The cup and saucer
both corresponded exactly, as regards their pattern, with those that had been
brought to the picnic, and constituted a seventh cup and saucer when brought
back to where we were to have breakfast. I may as well add at once that
afterwards, when we got home, my wife questioned our principal khitmutgar as to
how many cups and saucers of that particular kind we possessed. In the progress
of years, as the set was an old set, some had been broken, but the man at once
said that nine teacups were left. When collected and counted that number was
found to be right, without reckoning the excavated cup. That made ten, and as
regards the pattern- it was one of a somewhat peculiar kind, bought a good many
years previously in London,
and which assuredly could never have been matched in Simla.
80.
Now, the notion that human beings can create material
objects by the exercise of mere psychological power, will of course be revolting
to the understandings of people to whom this whole subject is altogether
strange. It is not making the idea much more acceptable to say that the cup and
saucer appear in this case to have been " doubled " rather than created. The
doubling of objects seems merely another kind of creation- creation according to
a pattern. However, the facts, the occurrences of the morning I have described,
were at all events exactly as I have related them. I have been careful as to the
strict and minute truthfulness of every detail. If the phenomenon was not what
it appeared to be- a most wonderful display of a power of which the modern
scientific world has no comprehension whatever it was, of course, an elaborate
fraud. That supposition, however, setting aside the moral impossibility from any
point of view of assuming Madame Blavatsky capable of participation in such an
imposture, will only bear to be talked of vaguely. As a way out of the dilemma
it will not serve any person of ordinary intelligence who is aware of the facts,
or who trusts my statement of them. The cup and saucer were assuredly dug up in
the way I describe. If they were not deposited there by occult agency, they must
have been buried there beforehand. Now, I have described the character of the
ground from which they were dug up; assuredly that had been undisturbed for
years by the character of the vegetation upon it. But it may be urged that from
some other part of the sloping ground a sort of tunnel may have been excavated
in the first instance through which the cup and saucer could have been thrust
into the place where they were found. Now this theory is barely tenable as
regards its physical possibility. If the tunnel had been big enough for the
purpose it would have left traces which were not perceptible on the ground -
which were not even discoverable when the ground was searched shortly afterwards
with a view to that hypothesis. But the truth is that the theory of previous
burial is morally untenable in view of the fact that the demand for the cup and
saucer-of all the myriad things that might have been asked for-could never have
been foreseen. It arose out of circumstances themselves the sport of the moment.
If no extra person had joined us at the last moment the number of cups and
saucers packed up by the servants would have been sufficient for our needs, and
no attention would have been drawn to them. It was by the servants, without the
knowledge of any guest, that the cups taken were chosen from others that might
just as easily have been taken. Had the burial fraud been really perpetrated it
would have been necessary to constrain us to choose the exact spot we did
actually choose for the picnic with a view to the previous preparations, but the
exact spot on which the ladies' jarnpans were deposited was chosen by myself in
concert with the gentleman referred to above as X-, and it was within a few
yards of this spot that the cup was found. Thus, leaving the other absurdities
of the fraud hypothesis out of sight, who could be the agents employed to
deposit the cup and saucer in the ground, and when did they perform the
operation? Madame Blavatsky was under our roof the whole time from the previous
evening when the picnic was determined on to the moment of starting. The one
personal servant she had with her, a Bombay boy and a perfect stranger to Simla,
was constantly about the house the previous evening, and from the first
awakening of the household in the morning- and as it happened he spoke to my own
bearer in the middle of the night, for I had been annoyed by a loft door which
had been left unfastened, and was slamming in the wind, and called up servants
to shut it. Madame Blavatsky it appears, thus awakened, had sent her servant,
who always slept within call, to inquire what was the matter. Colonel Olcott,
the President of the Theosophical Society, also a guest of ours at the time of
which I am speaking, was certainly with us all the evening from the period of
our return from the abortive expedition of the afternoon, and was also present
at the start. To imagine that he spent the night in going four or five miles
down a difficult khud through forest paths difficult to find, to bury a cup and
saucer of a kind that we were not likely to take in a place we were not likely
to go to, in order that in the exceedingly remote contingency of its being
required for the perpetration of a hoax it might be there, would certainly be a
somewhat extravagant conjecture. Another consideration- the destination for
which we were making can be approached by two roads from opposite ends of the
upper horseshoe of hills on which Simla stands. It was open to us to select
either path, and certainly neither Madame Blavatsky nor Colonel Olcott had any
share in the selection of that actually taken. Had we taken the other, we should
never have come to the spot where we actually picnicked.
81.
The hypothesis of fraud in this affair is, as I have
said, a defiance of common sense when worked out in any imaginable way. The
extravagance of this explanation will, moreover, be seen to heighten as my
narrative proceeds, and as the incident just related is compared with others
which took place later. But I have not yet done with the incidents of the
cup-morning.
82.
The gentleman called X ---------------------------had
been a good deal with us during the week or two that had already elapsed since
Madame Blavatsky's arrival. Like many of our friends, he had been greatly
impressed with much he had seen in her presence. He had especially come to the
conclusion that the Theosophical Society, in which she was interested, was
exerting a good influence with the natives, a view which he had expressed more
than once in warm language in my presence. He had declared his intention of
joining this Society as I had done myself. Now, when the cup and saucer were
found most of us who were present, X among the number, were greatly impressed,
and in the conversation that ensued the idea arose that X-- might formally
become a member of the Society then and there. I should not have taken part in
this suggestion-I believe I originated it-if X ----------had not in cool blood
decided, as I understood, to join the Society; in itself, moreover, a step which
involved no responsibilities whatever, and simply indicated sympathy with the
pursuit of occult knowledge and a general adhesion to broadly philanthropic
doctrines of brotherly sentiments towards all humanity, irrespective of race and
creed. This has to be explained in view of some little annoyances which
followed.
83.
The proposal that X ------------should then and there
formally join the Society was one with which he was quite ready to fall in. But
some documents were required-a formal diploma, the gift of which to a new member
should follow his initiation into certain little Masonic forms of recognition
adopted in the Society. How could we get a diploma? Of course for the group then
present a difficulty of this sort was merely another opportunity for the
exercise of Madame's powers. Could she get a diploma brought to us by " magic?"
After an occult conversation with the Brother who had then interested himself in
our proceedings,Madame told us that the diploma would be forthcoming. She
described the appearance it would present- a roll of paper wound round with an
immense quantity of string, and then bound up in the leaves of a creeping plant.
We should find it about in the woods where we were, and we could all look for
it, but it would be X-, for whom it was intended, who would find it. Thus it
fell out. We all searched about in the undergrowth or in the trees, wherever
fancy prompted us to look, and it was X- who found the roll, done up as
described.
84.
We had had our breakfast by this time. X- was formally"
initiated " a member of the society by Colonel Olcott, and after a time we
shifted our quarters to a lower place in the wood where there was the little
Tibetan temple, or rest-house, which the Brother who had been passing through
Simla- according to what Madame Blavatsky told us- had passed the previous
night. We amused ourselves by examining- the little building inside and out, "
bathing in the "good magnetism," as Madame Blavatsky expressed it, and then,
lying on the grass outside, it occurred to someone that we wanted more coffee.
The servants were told to prepare some, but it appeared that they had used up
all our water. The water to be found in the streams near Simla is not of a kind
to be used for purposes of this sort, and for a picnic, clean filtered water is
always taken out in bottles, It appears that all the bottles in our baskets had
been exhausted. This report was promptly verified by the servants by the
exhibition of the empty bottles. The only thing to be done was to send to a
brewery, the nearest building, about a mile oft, and ask for water. I wrote a
pencil note and a coolie went off with the empty bottles. Time passed, and the
coolie returned, to our great disgust, without the water. There had been no
European left at the brewery that day (It was Sunday) to receive the note, and
the coolie had stupidly plodded back with the empty bottles under his arm,
instead of asking about and finding someone able to supply the required water.
85.
At this time our party was a little dispersed. X- and
one of the other gentlemen had wandered off. No one of the remainder of the
party was expecting fresh phenomena, when Madame suddenly got up, went over to
the baskets, a dozen or twenty yards off, picked out a bottle- one of those, I
believe, which had been brought back by the coolie empty-and came back to us
holding it under the fold of her dress. Laughingly producing it it was found to
be full of water. Just like a conjuring trick, will some one say ? Just like,
except for the conditions. For such a conjuring trick, the conjurer defines the
thing to be done. In our ease the want of water was as unforeseeable in the
first instance as the want of the cup and saucer. The accident that left the
brewery deserted by its Europeans, and the further accident that the coolie sent
up for water should have been so abnormally stupid even for a coolie as to come
back without, because there happened to be no European to take my note, were
accidents but for which the opportunity for obtaining the water by occult agency
could not have arisen. And those accidents supervened on the fundamental
accident, improbable in itself, that our servants should have sent us out
insufficiently supplied. That any bottle of water could have been left unnoticed
at the bottom of the baskets is a suggestion that I can hardly imagine anyone
present putting forward, for the servants had been found fault with for not
bringing enough; they had just before had the baskets completely emptied out,
and we had not submitted to the situation till we had been fully satisfied that
there really was no more water left. Furthermore, I tasted the water in the
bottle Madame Blavatsky produced, and it was not water of the same kind as that
which came from our own filters. It was an earthy tasting water, unlike that of
the modern Simla supply, but equally unlike, I may add, though in a different
way, the offensive and discoloured water of the only stream flowing through
those woods.
86.
How was it brought ? The how, of course, in all these
cases is the great mystery which I am unable to explain except in general terms;
but the impossibility of understanding the way adepts manipulate matter is one
thing; the impossibility of denying that they do manipulate it in a manner which
Western ignorance would describe as miraculous is another. The fact is there
whether we can explain it or not. The rough, popular saying that :you cannot
argue the hind leg off a cow, embodies a sound reflection ,which our prudent
sceptics in matters of the kind with which I am now dealing are too apt to
overlook. You cannot argue away a fact by contending that by the lights in your
mind it ought to be something different from what it is. Still less can you
argue away a mass of facts like those I am now recording by a series of
extravagant and contradictory hypotheses about each in turn. What the determined
disbeliever so often overlooks is that the scepticism which may show an
acuteness of mind up to a certain point, reveals a deficient intelligence when
adhered to in face of certain kinds of evidence.
87.
I remember when the phonograph was first invented, a
scientific officer in the service of the Indian Government sent me an article he
had written on the earliest accounts received of the instrument- to prove that
the story must be a hoax, because the instrument described was scientifically
impossible. He had worked out the times of vibrations required to reproduce the
sounds and so on, and very intelligently argued that the alleged result was
unattainable. But when phonographs in due time were imported into India, he did
not continue to say they were impossible, and that there must be a man shut up
in each machine, even though there did not seem to be room. That last is the
attitude of the self-complacent people who get over the difficulty about the
causation of occult and spiritual phenomena by denying, in face of the palpable
experience of thousands- in face of the testimony in shelves- full of books that
they do not read- that any such phenomena take place at all.
88.
X-, I should add here, afterwards changed his mind about
the satisfactory character of the cup phenomena, and said he thought it vitiated
as a scientific proof by the interposition of the theory that the cup and saucer
might have been thrust up into their places by means of a tunnel cut from a
lower part of the bank. I have discussed that hypothesis already, and mention
the fact of X-'s change of opinion, which does not affect any of the
circumstances I have narrated, merely to avoid the chance that readers, who may
have heard or read about the Simla phenomenon in other pages, might think I was
treating the change of opinion in question as something which it was worth while
to disguise. And, indeed, the convictions which I ultimately attained were
themselves the result of accumulated experiences I have yet to relate, so that I
cannot tell how far my own certainty concerning the reality of occult power
rests on anyone example that I have seen.
89.
It was on the evening of the day of the cup phenomenon
that there occurred an incident destined to become the subject of very wide
discussion in all the Anglo-Indian papers. This was the celebrated " brooch
incident." The facts were related at the time in a little statement drawn up for
publication, and signed by the nine persons who witnessed it. ! This statement
will be laid before the reader directly, but as the comments to which it gave
rise showed that it was too meagre to convey a full and accurate idea of what
occurred, I will describe the course of events a little more fully. In doing
this, I may use names with a certain freedom, as these were all appended to the
published document.
90.
We, that is, my wife and myself with our guest, had gone
up the hill to dine, in accordance with previous engagements, with Mr. and Mrs.
Hume. We dined, a party of eleven, at a round table, and Madame Blavatsky,
sitting next our host, tired and out of spirits as it happened, was unusually
silent. During the beginning of dinner she scarcely said a word, Mr. Hume
conversing chiefly with the lady on his other hand. It is a common trick at
Indian dinner-tables to have little metal plate warmers with hot water before
each guest, on which each plate served remains while in use. Such plate warmers
were used on the evening I am describing, and over hers -in an interval during
which plates had been removed- Madame Blavatsky was absently warming her hands.
Now, the production of Madame Blavatsky's raps and bell-sounds we had noticed
some- times seemed easier and the effects better when her hands had been warmed
in this way ; so some one, seeing her engaged in warming them, asked her some
question, hinting in an indirect way at phenomena. I was very far from expecting
anything of the kind that evening, and Madame Blavatsky was equally far from
intending to do anything herself or from expecting any display at the hands of
one of the Brothers. So, merely in mockery, when asked why she was warming her
hands, she enjoined us all to warm our hands too and see what would happen. Some
of the people present actually did so, a few joking words passing among them.
Then Mrs. Hume raised a little laugh by holding up her hands and saying, " But I
have warmed my hands, what next". Now Madame Blavatsky, as I have said, was not
in a mood for any occult performances at all, but it appears from what I learned
afterwards that just at this moment, or immediately before, she suddenly
perceived by those occult faculties of which mankind at large have no knowledge,
that one of the Brothers was present " in astral body" invisible to the rest of
us in the room. It was following his indications, therefore, that she acted in
what followed; of course no one knew at the time that she had received any
impulse in the matter external to herself. What took place as regards the
surface of things was simply this: When Mrs. Hume said what I have set down
above, and when the little laugh ensued, Madame Blavatsky put out her hand
across the one person sitting between herself and Mrs. Hume and took one of that
lady's hands, saying, " Well then, do you wish for anything in particular ? or
as the lawyers say, " words to that effect." I cannot repeat the precise
sentences spoken, nor can I say now exactly what Mrs. Hume first replied before
she quite understood the situation; but this was made clear in a very few
minutes. Some of the other people present catching this first, explained, "
Think of something you would like to have brought to you; anything you like not
wanted for any mere worldly motive ; is there anything you can think of that
will be very difficult to get ?" Remarks of this sort were the only kind that
were made in the short interval that elapsed between the remark by Mrs. Hume
about having warmed her hands and the indication by her of the thing she had
thought of. She said then that she had thought of something that would do. What
was it ? An old brooch that her mother had given her long ago and that she had
lost.
91.
Now, when this brooch, which was ultimately recovered by
occult agency, as the rest of my story will show, came to be talked about,
people said :- " Of course Madame Blavatsky led up the conversation to the
particular thing she had arranged before- hand to produce." I have described all
the conversation which took place on this subject, before the brooch was named.
There was no conversation about the brooch or any other thing of the kind
whatever. Five minutes before the brooch was named, there had been no idea in
the mind of any person present that any phenomenon in the nature of finding any
lost article, or of any other kind, indeed, was going to be performed. Nor while
Mrs. Hume was going over in her mind the things she might ask for, did she speak
any word indicating the direction her thoughts were taking.
92.
From the point of the story now reached the narrative
published at the time tells it almost as fully as it need be told, and, at all
events, with a simplicity that will assist the reader in grasping all the
facts-so I reprint it here in full-
93.
" On Sunday, the 3rd of October, at Mr. Hume's house at
Simla, there were present at dinner Mr. and Mrs. Hume, Mr. and Mrs. Sinnett,
Mrs. Gordon, Mr. F. Hogg, Captain P.J. Maitland, Mr. Beatson, Mr. Davidson,
Colonel Olcott, and Madame Blavatsky. Most of the persons present having
recently seen many remarkable occurrences In Madame Blavatsky's presence,
conversation turned on occult phenomena, and in the course of this Madame
Blavatsky asked Mrs. Hume if there was anything she particularly wished for.
Mrs. Hume at first hesitated, but in a short time said there was something she
would particularly like to have brought her, namely, a small article of
jewellery that she formerly possessed, but had given away to a person who had
allowed it to pass out of her possession. Madame Blavatsky then said if she
would fix the image of the article in question very definitely on her mind, she,
Madame Blavatsky, would endeavour to procure It. Mrs. Hume then said that she
vividly remembered the article, and described it as an old-fashioned breast
brooch set round with pearls, With glass at the front, and the back made to
contain hair. She then, on being asked, drew a rough sketch of the brooch.
94.
Madame Blavatsky then wrapped up a coin attached to her
watch-chain In two cigarette papers, and put it in her dress, and said that she
hoped the brooch might be obtained in the course of the evening. At the close of
dinner she said to Mr. Hume that the paper in which the corn had been wrapped
was gone. A little later, in the drawing room , she said that the brooch would
not be brought into the house, but that it must be looked for in the garden, and
then as the party went out accompanying her, she said she had clairvoyantly seen
the brooch fall into a star-shaped bed of flowers. Mr. Hume led the way to such
a bed in a distant part of the garden. A prolonged and careful search was made
with lanterns, and eventually a small paper packet, consisting of two cigarette
papers, was found amongst the leaves by Mrs. Sinnett. This being opened on the
spot was found to contain a brooch exactly corresponding to the previous
description, and which Mrs. Hume Identified as that which she had originally
lost. None of the party, except Mr. and Mrs. Hume, had ever seen or heard of the
brooch. Mr. Hume had not thought of it for years. Mrs. Hume had never spoken of
it to anyone since she parted with it, nor had she, for long, even thought of
it. She herself stated, after it was found, that it was only when Madame asked
her whether there was anything she would like to have, that the remembrance of
this brooch, the gift of her mother, flashed across her mind.
95.
" Mrs. Hume is not a spiritualist, and up to the time of
the occurrence described was no believer either in occult phenomena or in Madame
Blavatsky's powers. The conviction of all present was, that the occurrence was
of an absolutely unimpeachable character, as an evidence of the truth of the
possibility of occult phenomena. The brooch is unquestionably the one which Mrs,
Hume lost. Even supposing, which is practically impossible, that the article,
lost months before Mrs. Hume ever heard of Madame Blavatsky, and bearing no
letters or other indication of original ownership, could have passed in a
natural way into Madame Blavatsky's possession, even then she could not possibly
have foreseen that it would be asked for, and Mrs. Hume herself had not given it
a thought for months
96.
" This narrative, read over to the party, is signed by-
A. 0. HUME,
ALICE GORDON,
M. A. HUME,
P. J. :MAITLAND,
FRED. R. HOGG,
WM. DAVIDSON,
A. P. SINNETT,
STUART BEATSON.
PATIENCE SINNETT.
97.
It is needless to state that when this narrative was published the nine persons
above mentioned were assailed with torrents of ridicule, the effect of which,
however; has not been in any single case to modify, in the smallest degree, the
conviction which their signatures attested at the time, that the incident
related was a perfectly conclusive proof of the reality of occult power. Floods
of more or less imbecile criticism have been directed to show that the whole
performance must have been a trick; and for many persons in India it is now, no
doubt, an established explanation that Mrs. Hume was adroitly led up to ask for
the particular article produced, by a quantity of preliminary talk about a feat
which Madame Blavatsky specially went to the house to perform. A further
established opinion with a certain section of the Indian public is, that the
brooch which it appears Mrs. Hume gave to her daughter, and which her daughter
lost, must have been got from that young lady about a year previously, when she
passed through Bombay, where Madame Blavatsky was
living, on her way to England.
The young lady's testimony to the effect that she lost the brooch before she
went to Bombay,
or ever saw Madame Blavatsky, is a little feature of this hypothesis which its
contented framers do not care to enquire into. Nor do persons who think the fact
that the brooch once belonged to Mrs. Hume's daughter, and that this young lady
once saw Madame Blavatsky at Bombay, sufficiently " suspicious " to wipe out the
effect of the whole incident as described above- ever attempt, as far as I have
discerned, to trace out a coherent chain of events as illuminated by their
suspicions, or to compare these with the circumstances of the brooch's actual
recovery. No care, however, to arrange the circumstances of an occult
demonstration so that the possibility of fraud and delusion may really be
excluded, is sufficient to exclude the imputation of this afterwards by people
for whom any argument, however illogical really, is good enough to attack a
strange idea with.
98.
As regards the witnesses of the brooch phenomenon the
conditions were so perfect that when they were speculating as to the objections
which might be raised by the public when the story should come to be told, they
did not foresee either of the objections actually raised afterwards- the leading
up in conversation theory, and the theory about Miss Hume having- put Madame
Blavatsky in possession of the brooch. They knew that there had been no previous
conversation at all about the brooch or any other proposed feat, that the idea
about getting something Mrs. Hume should ask for, arose all in a moment, and
that almost immediately afterwards, the brooch was named. As for Miss Hume
having unconsciously contributed to the production of the phenomenon, it did not
occur to the witnesses that this would be suggested, because they did not
foresee that anyone could be so foolish as to shut their eyes to the important
circumstances, to concentrate their attention entirely on one of quite minor
importance. As the statement itself says, even supposing, which is practically
impossible, that the brooch could have passed into Madame Blavatsky's possession
in a natural way, she could not possibly have foreseen that it would have been
asked for.
99.
The only conjectures the witnesses could frame to
explain beforehand the tolerably certain result that the public at large would
refuse to be convinced by the brooch incident, were that they might be regarded
as misstating the facts and omitting some which the superior intelligence of
their critics- as their critics would regard the matter- would see to upset the
significance of the rest, or that Mrs. Hume must be a confederate. Now, this
last conjecture, which will no doubt occur to readers in England, had only to be
stated, to be, for the other persons concerned in the incident, one of the most
amusing results to which it could give rise. We all knew Mrs. Hume to be as
little predisposed towards any such a conspiracy as she was morally incapable of
the wrongdoing it would involve.
100.
At one stage of the proceedings, moreover, we had
considered the question as to the extent to which the conditions of the
phenomenon were satisfactory. It had often happened that faults had eventually
been found with Madame Blavatsky's phenomena by reason of some oversight in the
conditions that had not been thought of at first. One of our friends, therefore,
on the occasion I am describing, had suggested, after we rose from the
dinner-table, that before going any further the company generally should be
asked whether, if the brooch could be produced, that would under the
circumstances be a satisfactory proof of occult agency in the matter. We
carefully reviewed the matter in which the situation had been developed and we
all came to the conclusion that the test , would be absolutely complete, and
that on this occasion there was no weak place in the chain of the argument. Then
it was that Madame Blavatsky said the brooch would be brought to the garden, and
that we could go out and search for it.
101.
An interesting circumstance for those who had already
watched some of the other phenomena I have described was this: The brooch, as
stated above, was found wrapped up in two cigarette papers, and these, when
examined in a full light in the house, were found still to bear the mark of the
coin attached to Madame Blavatsky's watch chain, which had been wrapped up in
them before they departed on their mysterious errand. They were thus identified
for people who had got over the first stupendous difficulty of believing in the
possibility of transporting material objects by occult agency as the same papers
that had been seen by us at the dinner-table.
102.
The occult transmission of objects to a distance not
being, "magic', 'as Western readers understand the word, is susceptible of some
partial explanation even for ordinary readers, for whom the means by which the
forces employed are manipulated must remain entirely mysterious. It is not
contended that the currents which are made use of, convey the bodies transmitted
in a solid mass just as they exist for the senses. The body, to be transmitted,
is supposed first to be disintegrated, conveyed on the currents in infinitely
minute particles, and then reintegrated at its destination. In the case of the
brooch, the first thing to be done must have been to find it. This, however,
would simply be a feat of clairvoyance- the scent of the object, so to speak,
being taken up from the person who spoke of it and had once possessed it- and
there is no clairvoyance of which the western world has any knowledge,
comparable in its vivid intensity to the clairvoyance of an adept in occultism.
Its resting- place thus discovered, the disintegration process would come into
play, and the object desired would be conveyed to the place where the adept
engaged with it would choose to have it deposited. The part played in the
phenomenon by the cigarette papers would be this: In order that we might be able
to find the brooch, it was necessary to connect it by an occult scent with
Madame Blavatsky. The cigarette papers, which she always carried about with her,
were thus impregnated with her magnetism, and taken from her by the Brother,
left an occult trail behind them. Wrapped round the brooch, they conducted this
trail to the required spot.
103.
The magnetisation of the cigarette papers always with
her, enabled Madame Blavatsky to perform a little feat with them which was found
by everyone for whom it was done an exceedingly complete bit of evidence ;
though here again the superficial resemblance of the experiment to a conjuring
trick misled the intelligence of ordinary persons who read about the incidents
referred to in the newspapers. The feat itself may be most conveniently
discussed by the quotation of three letters ,which appeared in the Pioneer of
the 23rd of October, and were as follows ;-
105.
"Sir,
106.
-The account of the discovery of Mrs. Hume's brooch has
called forth several letters, and many questions have been asked, some of which
I may answer on a future occasion, but I think it only right to first contribute
further testimony to the occult powers possessed by Madame Blavatsky. In thus
coming before the public, one must be prepared for ridicule, but it is a weapon
which we who know something of these matters can well afford to despise. On
Thursday last, at about half-past ten o'clock, I was sitting in Madame
Blavatsky's room conversing with her, and in a casual way asked her if she would
be able to send me anything by occult means when I returned to my home. She said
"'No", and explained to me some of the laws under which she acts, one being that
she must know the place and have been there- the more recently the better- in
order to establish a magnetic current: She then recollected that she had been
somewhere that morning, and after a moment's reflection remembered whose house
it was she had visited.[ This house at which the cigarette was found was Mr.
O'Meara's. He is quite willing that this should be stated. ]. She said she could
send a cigarette there, if I would go at once to verify the fact. I of course,
consented. I must here mention that I had seen her do this kind of thing once
before; and the reason she gives for sending cigarettes is, that the paper and
tobacco being always about her person, are highly magnetised, and therefore more
amenable to her power, which she most emphatically declares is not super-
natural, but merely the manifestation of laws unknown to us. To continue my
story. She took out a cigarette paper and slowly tore oft a corner as zigzag as
possible, I never taking my eyes off her hands. She gave me the corner, which I
at once put into an envelope, and it never left my possession I can declare. She
made the cigarette with the remainder of the paper, She then said she would try
an experiment which might not succeed, but the failure would be of no
consequence with me. She then most certainly put that cigarette into the fire,
and I saw it burn, and I started at once to the gentleman's house, scarcely able
to believe that I should find in the place indicated by her the counterpart of
the cigarette paper I had with me ; but sure enough there it was, and, in the
presence of the gentleman and his wife, I opened out the cigarette and found my
corner piece fitted exactly. It would be useless to try and explain any theory
in connection with these phenomena, and it would be unreasonable to expect
anyone to believe in them, unless their own experience had proved the
possibility of such wonders. All one asks or expects is, that a few of the more
intelligent members of the community may be led to look into the vast amount of
evidence now accumulated of the phenomena taking place all over Europe and
America. It seems a pity that the majority should be in such utter ignorance of
these facts; it is within the power of anyone visiting
England
to convince himself of their truth.
107.
ALICE GORDON
109.
"Sir,
110.
-I have been asked to give an account of a circumstance
which took place in my presence on the 13th instant. On the evening of that day
I was sitting alone with Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott in the drawing-room
of Mr. Sinnett's house in Simla. After some conversation on various matters,
Madame Blavatsky said she would like to try an experiment in a manner which had
been suggested to her by Mr. Sinnett. She, therefore, took two cigarette papers
from her pocket and marked on each of them a number of parallel lines in pencil.
She then tore a piece off the end of each paper across the lines, and gave them
to me. At that time Madame Blavatsky was sitting close to me, and I intently
watched her proceedings, my eyes being not more than two feet from her hands.
She declined to let me mark or tear the papers alleging that if handled by
others they would become imbued with their personal magnetism, which would
counterset her own. However, the torn pieces were handed directly to me, and I
could not observe any opportunity for the substitution of other papers by
sleight of hand. The genuineness or otherwise of the phenomena afterwards
presented appears to rest on this point. The torn off pieces of the paper
remained in my closed left hand until the conclusion of the experiment. Of the
larger pieces Madame Blavatsky made two cigarettes, giving the first to me to
hold while the other was being made up. I scrutinised this cigarette very
attentively, in order to be able to recognise it afterwards. The cigarettes
being finished, Madame Blavatsky stood up, and took them between her hands,
which she rubbed together. After about twenty or thirty seconds, the grating
noise of the paper, at first distinctly audible, ceased. She then said the
current [The theory is that a current of what can only be called magnetism, can
be made to convey objects, previously dissipated by the same force, to any
distance, and in spite of the Intervention of any amount of matter.] Is passing
round this end of the room, and I can only send them somewhere near here. A
moment afterwards she said one had fallen on the piano, the other near that
bracket. As I sat on a sofa with my back to the wall, the piano was opposite,
and the bracket, supporting a few pieces of china, was to the right, between it
and the door. Both were in full view across the rather narrow room. The top of
the piano was covered with piles of music books, and it was among these Madame
Blavatsky thought a cigarette would be found; The books were removed, one by
one, by myself, but without seeing anything. I then opened the piano, and found
a cigarette on a narrow shelf inside it. This cigarette I took out and
recognised as the one I had held in my hand. The other was found in a covered
cup on the bracket. Both cigarettes were still damp where -they had been
moistened at the edges in the process of manufacture. I took the cigarettes to a
table, without permitting them to be touched or even seen by Madame Blavatsky
and Colonel Olcott. On being unrolled and smoothed out, the torn, jagged edges
were found to fit exactly to the pieces that I had all this time retained in my
hand. The pencil marks also corresponded. It would therefore appear that the
papers were actually the same as those I had seen torn. Both the papers are
still in my possession. It may be added that Colonel Olcott sat near me with his
back to Madame Blavatsky during the experiment, and did not move till it was
concluded.
"P. J. MAITLAND, Captain."
112.
" Sir,
-
With reference to the correspondence now filling your
columns, on the subject of Madame Blavatsky's recent manifestations, it may
interest your readers if I record a striking incident which took place last week
in my presence. I had occasion to call on Madame, and in the course of our
interview she tore off a corner from a cigarette paper, asking me to hold the
same, which I did. With the remainder of the paper she prepared a cigarette in
the ordinary manner, and in a few moments caused this cigarette to disappear
from her hands. We were sitting at the time in the drawing-room. I inquired if
it were like]y to find this cigarette again, and after a short pause Madame
requested me to accompany her into the dining-room, where the cigarette would be
found on the top of a curtain hanging over the window. By means of a tab]e and a
chair placed thereon, I was enabled with some difficulty to reach and take down
a cigarette from the place indicated. This cigarette I opened, and found the
paper to correspond exactly with that I had seen a few minutes before in the
drawing-room. That is to say, the corner-piece, which I had retained in my
possession, fitted exactly into the jagged edges of the torn paper in which the
tobacco had been rolled. To the best of my belief, the test was as complete and
satisfactory as any test can be. I refrain from giving my opinion as to the
causes which produced the effect, feeling sure that your readers who take an
interest in these phenomena will prefer exercising their own judgement in the
matter. I merely give you an unvarnished statement of what I saw. I may be
permitted to add I am not a member of the Theosophist Society, nor, so far as I
know, am I biassed in favour of occult science, although a warm sympathiser with
the proclaimed objects of the Society over which Colonel Olcott presides.
113.
" CHARLES FRANCIS MASSY."
115.
Of course, anyone familiar with conjuring will be aware that an imitation of
this" trick " can be arranged by a person gifted with a little sleight of hand.
You take two pieces of paper, and tear off a corner of both together, so that
the jags of both are the same. You make a cigarette with one piece, and put it
in the place where you mean to have it ultimately found. You then hold the other
piece underneath the one you tear in presence of the spectator, slip in one of
the already torn corners into his hand instead of that he sees you tear, make
your cigarette with the other part of the original piece, dispose of that anyhow
you please, and allow the prepared cigarette to be found. Other variations of
the system may be readily imagined, and for persons who have not actually seen
Madame Blavatsky do one of her cigarette feats it may be useless to point out
that she does not do them as a conjuror would, and that the spectator, if he is
gifted with ordinary common sense, can never have the faintest shadow of a doubt
about the corner given to him being the corner torn off- a certainty which the
pencil-marks upon it, drawn before his eyes, would enhance, if that were
necessary. However, as I say, though experience shows me that the outsider is
prone to regard the little cigarette phenomenon as ''suspicious," it has never
failed to be regarded as convincing by the most acute people among those who
have witnessed it. With all phenomena, however, stupidity on the part of the
observer will defeat any attempt to reach his understanding, no matter how
perfect the tests supplied.
116.
I realise this more fully now than at the time of which
I am writing. Then I was chiefly anxious to get experiments arranged ,which
should be really complete in their details and leave no opening for the
suggestion even of imposture. It was "an uphill struggle first, because Madame
Blavatsky was intractable and excitable as an experimentalist, and herself no
more than the recipient of favours from the Brothers in reference to the greater
phenomena. And it seemed to me conceivable that the Brothers might themselves
not always realise precisely the frame of mind in which persons of European
training approached the consideration of such miracles as these with which we
were dealing, so that they did not always make sufficient allowance for the
necessity of rendering their test phenomena quite perfect and unassailable in
all minor details. I knew, of course, that they were not primarily anxious to
convince the commonplace world of anything whatever; but still they frequently
did assist Madame Blavatsky to produce phenomena that had no other motive except
the production of an effect on the minds of people belonging to the outer world;
and it seemed to me that under these circumstances they might just as well do
something that would leave no room for the imputation even of any trickery.
117.
One day, therefore, I asked Madame Blavatsky whether if
I wrote a letter to one of the Brothers explaining my views, she could get it
delivered for me. I hardly thought this was probable, as I knew how very
unapproachable the Brothers generally are; but as she said that at any rate she
would try, I wrote a letter, addressing it " to the Unknown Brother," and gave
it to her to see if any result would ensue. It was a happy inspiration that
induced me to do this, for out of that small beginning has arisen the most
interesting correspondence in which I have ever been privileged to engage- a
correspondence which, I am happy to say, still promises to continue, and the
existence of which, more than any experiences of phenomena which I have had,
though the most wonderful of these are yet to be described, is the raison d'être
of this little book.
118.
The idea I had specially in my mind when I wrote the
letter above referred to, was that of all test phenomena one could wish for, the
best would be the production in our presence in India of a copy of the London Times
of that day's date. With such a piece of evidence in my hand, I argued, I would
undertake to convert everybody in Simla who was capable of linking two ideas
together, to a belief in the possibility of obtaining by occult agency physical
results which were beyond the control of ordinary science. I am sorry that I
have not kept copies of the letter itself nor of my own subsequent letters, as
they would have helped to elucidate the replies in a convenient way; but I did
not at the time foresee the developments to which they would give rise and,
after all, the interest of the correspondence turns almost entirely on the
letters I received: only in a very small degree on those I sent.
119.
A day or two elapsed before I heard anything of the fate
of my letter, but Madame Blavatsky then informed me that I was to have an
answer. I afterwards learned that she had not been able at first to find a
Brother willing to receive the communication. Those whom she first applied to
declined to be troubled with the matter. At last her psychological telegraph
brought her a favourable answer from one of the Brothers with whom she had not
for some time been in communication. He would take the letter and reply to it.
120.
Hearing this, I at once regretted that I had not written
at greater length, arguing my view of the required concession more fully. I
wrote again, therefore, without waiting for the actual receipt of the expected
letter.
A day or two after I found one evening on my writing-table the first letter sent
me by my new correspondent. I may here explain, what I learned afterwards, that
he was a native of the Punjab who was attracted
to occult studies from his earliest boyhood. He was sent to Europe while still a youth at the intervention of a
relative-himself an occultist- to be educated in Western knowledge, and since
then has been fully initiated in the greater knowledge of the East. From the
self complacent point of view of the ordinary European this will seem a strange
reversal of the proper order of things, but I need not stop to examine that
consideration now.
121.
My correspondent is known to me as the Mahatma Koot
Hoomi.[See Appendix "C"] .This is his " Tibetan Mystic name " -occultists, it
would seem, taking new names on initiation- a practice which has no doubt given
rise to similar customs which we find perpetuated here and there in ceremonies
of the Roman Catholic church.
122.
The letter I received began, in medias res, about the
phenomenon I had professed. " Precisely," the Mahatma wrote, " because the test
of the London
newspaper would close the mouths of the sceptics," it was inadmissible. " See it
in what light you will, the world is yet in its first stage of
disenthralment...... 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 result would be deplorable.
Believe me it would be so especially for yourself, who originated the idea, and
for 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. ...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, they to expect who would offer the
world an innovation which, owing to human ignorance, if believed in, will surely
be attribute to those dark agencies the two-thirds of humanity believe in and
dread as yet ?.... 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, 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 free thought. It says that, in
their turn, ignorant prejudice and religious bigotry, bottled up like the wicked
djin of old, and sealed by the Solomons of science, rest at the bottom of the
sea, and can never, escaping to the surface again, reign over the world as in
the days of old: that the public mind is quite free, in short, and ready to
accept any demonstrated truth. Ay, 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 us in your English schools. 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 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 Hookes' suggestions, that the intimate relations of object 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 connection 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
a hypothesis is, not that it should be true, but only plausible, in their
opinion.
123.
" 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.........
124.
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 eyewitness. Would the
lifetime of a man suffice to satisfy the whole world of sceptics ? It may an 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 eyewitnesses ? 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- ay,
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 multitude, 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 fantasies 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 proficient in occult sciences
lies in the scepticism 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, become deadly in the hands of the wicked and selfish."
125.
The remainder of the letter is concerned chiefly with
personal matters, and need not be here reproduced. I shall, of course,
throughout my quotations from letters, leave out passages which, specially
addressed to myself, have no immediate bearing on the public argument. The
reader must be fearful to remember, however, as I now most unequivocally affirm,
that I shall in no case alter one syllable of the passages actually quoted. It
is important to make this declaration very emphatically, because the more my
readers may be acquainted with India, the less they will be willing to believe,
except on the most positive testimony, that the letters from the Mahatma, as I
now publish them, have been written by a native of India. That such is the fact,
however, is beyond dispute.
126.
I replied to the letter above quoted at some length,
arguing, if I remember rightly, that the European mind was less hopelessly
intractable than Koot Hoomi represented it. His second letter was as follows :-
127.
" 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 have 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 inquirers ; 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 Madame Blavatsky or any medium.
Your idea would be, as I understand it, to obtain such communications, either by
letter, 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
communication. 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.
128.
" My first answer covered, I believe, 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. -----."
129.
I should here explain that one of my friends at Simla,
deeply interested with me in the progress of this investigation, had, on reading
Koot Hoomi's first letter to me, addressed my correspondent himself. More
favourably circumstanced than I, for such an enterprise, he had even proposed to
make a complete sacrifice of his other pursuits, to pass away into any distant
seclusion ,which might he appointed for the purpose, where he might, if accepted
as a pupil in occultism, learn enough to return to the world armed with powers
which would enable him to demonstrate the realities of spiritual development and
the errors of modern materialism, and then devote his life to the task of
combating modern incredulity and leading men to a practical comprehension of a
better life. I resume the letter:-
130.
" 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. "
131.
'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 instruction 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 aspects, leaving details for further consideration. They are-(l
) The desire to see 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 rare 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.
132.
" 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
is that which you really 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 Theosophical Society is
not so much to gratify individual aspirations as to serve our fellowmen, 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, 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 a desire for self-benefit, or a
tendency to do injustice, even where 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 Theosophical Society on
the principle of a college for the special study of occultism...
133.
" Having disposed of personal motives, let us analyse
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 ; [ In the absence of my own
letter, to which this Is a reply, the reader might think from this sentence that
I had been animated by some unfriendly feeling for the representatives referred
to- Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott. This is far from having been the case;
but, keenly alive to mistakes which had been made up to the time of, which I am
writing, In the management of the Theosophical Society, Mr. ------and myself
were under the impression that better public results might be obtained by
commencing operations de novo, and taking, ourselves, the direction of the
measures which might be employed to recommend the study of occultism to the
modern world. This belief on our part was coexistent In both cases with a warm
friendship based on the purest esteem for both the persons mentioned. ] 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.
134.
"From your point of view, therefore, 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 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 proof to the other that his instructions were
correct? Man of the world, living in, and in full 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 it 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.
135.
" 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.
136.
" And supposing you were thus to come, as two of your
own countrymen have already-as Madame B. did and Mr. 0. 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 energies 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 Madame B., or Mr. 0. 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 then they do, would it not be a
palpable injustice to ignore them in an important field of Theosophical effort?
Ingratitude is not among our vices, nor do we imagine you would wish to advise
it.
137.
" Neither of them has the least inclination to interfere
with the management of the contemplated Anglo-Indian Branch, nor dictate its
officers. But the new Society, if formed at all, must, though bearing a
distinctive title of its own, be, in fact, a branch of the parent body, as is
the British Theosophical Society at
London, and contribute to its vitality and usefulness by
promoting its leading idea of a Universal Brotherhood, and in other practicable
ways.
138.
" 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, yet she is the best available at present, and her phenomena
have for about half a century astonished and baffled some of the cleverest minds
of the age...."
139.
"Two or three little notes which I next received from
the Mahatma had reference to an incident I must now describe, the perfection of
which as a test phenomenon appears to me more complete than that of any other I
have yet described. It is worth notice, by-the-bye, that although the
circumstances of this incident were related in the Indian papers at the time,
the happy company of scoffers who flooded the Press with their simple comments
on the brooch phenomenon, never cared to discuss " the pillow incident."
140.
Accompanied by our guests, we went to have lunch one day
on the top of a neighbouring hill, The night before, I had had reason to think
that my correspondent, Koot Hoomi, had been in what, for the purpose of the
present explanation, I may call subjective communication with me. I do not go
into any details, because it is unnecessary to trouble the general reader with
impressions of that sort, After discussing the subject in the morning, I found
on the hall-table a note from Koot Hoomi , in which he promised to give me
something on the hill which should be a token of his (astral) presence near me
the previous night.
141.
We went to our destination, camped down on the top of
the hill, and were engaged on our lunch, when Madame Blavatsky said Koot Hoomi
was asking where we would like to find the object he was going to send me. Let
it be understood that up to this moment there had been no conversation in regard
to the phenomenon I was expecting. The usual suggestion will, perhaps, be made
that Madame Blavatsky " led up " to the choice I actually made. The fact of the
matter was simply that in the midst of altogether other talk Madame Blavatsky
pricked up her ears on hearing her occult voice- at once told me what was the
question asked, and did not contribute to the selection made by one single
remark on the subject, In fact, there was no general discussion, and it was by
an absolutely spontaneous choice of my own that I said, after a little
reflection, " inside that cushion," pointing to one against which one of the
ladies present was leaning. I had no sooner uttered the words than my wife cried
out, " Oh no, let it be inside mine," or words to that effect. I said, " very
well, inside my wife's cushion; " Madame Blavatsky asked the Mahatma by her own
methods if that would do, and received an affirmative reply. My liberty of
choice as regards the place where the object should be found was thus absolute
and unfettered by conditions. The most natural choice for me to have made under
the circumstances, and having regard to our previous experiences, would have
been up some particular tree, or buried in a particular spot of the ground; but
the inside of a sewn-up cushion, fortuitously chosen on the spur of a moment,
struck me, as my eye happened to fall upon the cushion I mentioned first, as a
particularly good place; and when I had started the idea of a cushion, my wife's
amendment to the original proposal was really an improvement, for the particular
cushion then selected had never been for a moment out of her own possession all
the morning. It was her usual jampan cushion; she had been leaning against it
all the way from home, and was leaning against it still, as her jampan had been
carried right up to the top of the hill, and she had continued to occupy it. The
cushion itself was very firmly made of worsted work and velvet, and had been in
our possession for years. It always remained, when we were at home, in the
drawing-room, in a conspicuous corner of a certain sofa whence, when my wife
went out, it would be taken to her jampan and again brought in on her return.
142.
When the cushion was agreed to, my wife was told to put
it under her rug, and she did this with her own hands, inside her jampan. It may
have been there about a minute, when Madame Blavatsky said we could set to work
to cut it open. I did this with a penknife, and it was a work of some time, as
the cushion was very securely sewn all round, and very strongly, so that it had
to be cut open almost stitch by stitch, and no tearing was possible. When one
side of the cover was completely ripped up, we found that the feathers of the
cushion were enclosed in a separate inner case, also sewn round all the edges.
There was nothing to be found between the inner cushion and the outer case ; so
we proceeded to rip up the inner cushion; and this done, my wife searched among
the feathers.
143.
The first thing she found was a little three-cornered
note, addressed to me in the now familiar handwriting of my occult
correspondent. It ran as follows :
144.
" My dear Brother,
-This brooch, No. 2, is placed in this very strange place, simply to show 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
Kashmere valley ."
145.
While I was reading this note, my wife discovered, by
further search among the feathers, the brooch referred to, one of her own, it
very old and very familiar brooch which she generally left on her dressing-table
when it was not in use. It would have been impossible to invent or imagine a
proof of occult power, in the nature of mechanical proofs, more irresistible and
convincing than this incident was for us who had personal knowledge of the
various circumstances described. The whole force and significance to us of the
brooch thus returned, hinged on to my subjective impressions of the previous
night. The reason for selecting the brooch as a thing to give us, dated no
earlier than then. On the hypothesis, therefore, idiotic hypothesis as it would
be on all grounds, that the cushion must have been got at by Madame Blavatsky,
it must have been got at since I spoke of my impressions that morning, shortly
after breakfast; but from the time of getting up that morning, Madame Blavatsky
had hardly been out of our sight, and had been sitting with my wife in the
drawing-room. She had been doing this, by-the- bye, against the grain, for she
had writing which she wanted to do in her own room, but she had been told by her
voices to go and sit in the drawing-room with my wife that morning, and had done
so, grumbling at the interruption of her work, and wholly unable to discern any
motive for the order. The motive was afterwards clear enough, and had reference
to the intended phenomenon. It was desirable that we should have no arrière
pensée in our minds as to what Madame Blavatsky might possibly have been doing
during the morning, in the event of the incident taking such a turn as to make
that a factor in determining its genuineness. Of course, if the selection of the
pillow could have been foreseen, it would have been unnecessary to victimise our
" old Lady, " as we generally called her. The presence of the famous pillow
itself, with my wife all the morning in the drawing-room, would have been
enough. But perfect liberty of choice was to be left to me in selecting a cache
for the brooch; and the pillow can have been in nobody's mind, any more than in
my own, beforehand.
146.
The language of the note given above embodied many
little points which had a meaning for us. All through, it bore indirect
reference to the conversation that had taken place at our dinner-table the
previous evening. I had been talking of the little traces here and there which
the long letters from Koot Hoomi bore, showing in spite of their splendid
mastery over the language and the vigour of their style, a turn or two of
expression that an Englishman would not have made use of; for example, in the
form of address, which in the two letters already quoted had been tinged with
Orientalism. " But what should he have written?' somebody asked, and I had said,
" under similar circumstances an Englishman would probably have written simply:
" My dear Brother." Then the allusion to the Kashmir Valley as the place from
which the letter was written, instead of from a Lodge, was au allusion to the
same conversation ; and the underlining of the " k " was another, as Madame
Blavatsky had been saying that Koot Hoomi's spelling of " Scepticism" with a " k
" was not an Americanism in his case, but due to a philological whim of his.
147.
The incidents of the day were not quite over, even when
the brooch was found; for that evening, after we had gone home, there fell from
my napkin, after I had unfolded it at dinner, a little note, too private and
personal to be reprinted fully, but part of which I am impelled to quote, for
the sake of the allusion it contains, to occult modus operandi. I must explain
that, before starting for the hill, I had penned a few lines of thanks for the
promise contained in the note then received as described. This note I gave to
Madame Blavatsky, to despatch by occult methods if she had an opportunity. And
she carried it in her hand as she and my wife went on in advance, in jampans,
along the Simla Mall, not finding an opportunity until about halfway to our
destination. Then she got rid of the note, occultism only knows how. This
circumstance had been spoken of at the picnic; and as I was opening the note
found in the pillow, someone suggested that it would, perhaps, be found to
contain an answer to my note just sent. It did not contain any allusion to this,
as the reader will be already aware.
The note I received at dinnertime said :-" 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 there was no necessity
for an answer. ..."
It seemed to bring one in imagination one step nearer a realisation of the state
of the facts to hear " the currents " employed to accomplish what would have
been a miracle for all the science of Europe, spoken of thus familiarly.
148.
A miracle for all the science of Europe, and as hard a
fact for us, nevertheless, as the room in which we sat. We knew that the
phenomenon we had seen was a wonderful reality; that the thought-power of a man
in Kashmir had picked up a material object from a table in Simla, and,
disintegrating it by some process of which Western science does not yet dream,
had passed it through other matter, and had there restored it to its original
solidarity, the dispersed particles resuming their precise places as before, and
reconstituting the object down to every line or scratch upon its surface.
(By-the-by, it bore some scratches when it emerged from the pillow which it
never bore before -the initials of our friend. ) And we knew that written notes
on tangible paper had been flashing backwards and forwards that day between our
friend and ourselves, though hundreds of miles of Himalayan mountains intervened
between us, and had been flashing backwards and forwards with the speed of
electricity, And yet we knew that an impenetrable wall, built up of its own
prejudice and obstinacy, of its learned ignorance and polished dulness, was
established round the minds of scientific men in the West, as a body, across
which we should never be able to carry our facts and our experience. And it is
with a greater sense of oppression than people who have never been in a similar
position will realise, that I now tell the story I have to tell, and know all
the while that the solemn accuracy of its minutest detail, the utter
truthfulness of every syllable in this record, is little better than incense to
my own conscience - that the scientific minds of the West with which of all
cultivated minds my own has hitherto been most in sympathy, will be closed to my
testimony most hopelessly. " Though one should rise from the dead," etc.. It is
the old story. It is the old story, at all events as regards the crashing
results on opinion which such evidence as that I have been giving, ought to
have. The smile of incredulity which thinks itself so wise and is so foolish,
the suspicions which flatter themselves they are so cunning, and are really the
fruit of so much dulness, will gleam over these pages, and wither all their
meaning-for the readers who smile. But I suppose that Koot Hoomi is not only
right in declaring the world unripe as yet for too staggering a proof of occult
power, but also in taking a friendly interest, as it will be seen presently that
he does, in the little book I am writing, as one of the influences which bit by
bit may sap the foundations of dogmatism and stupidity, on which science, which
thinks itself so liberal, has latterly become so firmly rooted.
149.
The next letter- the third long one-that I received from
the Mahatma, reached me shortly after my return for the cold weather to
Allahabad. But I received one communication from him- a telegram -before its
arrival, on the day of my own return to Allahabad. This telegram, of no great
importance as regards its contents, which were little more than an expression of
thanks for some letters I had written in the papers, was, nevertheless, of great
interest indirectly, affording me, as it ultimately did, evidence of a kind
which could appeal to other minds besides my own, that Koot Hoomi's letters were
not, as some ingenious persons may have been inclined to imagine - in spite of
various mechanical difficulties in the way of the theory- the work of Madame
Blavatsky. For me, knowing her as intimately as I did, the inherent evidence of
the style was enough to make the suggestion that she might have written them, a
mere absurdity. And, if it is urged that the authoress of "Isis Unveiled " has
certainly a command of language which renders it difficult to say what she could
not write, the answer is simple. In the production of this book she was so
largely helped by the Brothers, that great portions of it are not really her
work at all. She never makes any disguise of this fact, though it is one of a
kind which it is useless for her to proclaim to the world at large, as it would
be perfectly unintelligible, except to persons who knew something of the
external facts, at all events, of occultism. Koot Hoomi's letters, as I say, are
perfectly unlike her own style. But, in reference to some of them, receiving
them as I did while she was in the house with me, it was not mechanically
possible that she might have been the writer. Now, the telegram I received at
Allahabad, which was wired to me from Jhelum, was in reply specially to a letter
I addressed to Koot Hoomi just before leaving Simla, and enclosed to Madame
Blavatsky, who had started some days previously, and was then at Amritsur. She
received the letter, with its enclosure, at Amritsur on the 27th of October, as
I came to know, not merely from knowing when I sent it, but positively by means
of the envelope which she returned to me at Allahabad by direction of Koot
Hoomi, not in the least knowing why he wished it sent to me. I did not at first
see what on earth was the use of the old envelope to me, but I put it away and
afterwards obtained the clue to the idea in Koot Hoomi's mind when Madame
Blavatsky wrote me word that he wanted me to obtain the original of the Jhelum
telegram. Through the agency of a friend connected with the administration of
the telegraph department, I was enabled eventually to obtain a sight of the
original of the telegram- a message of about twenty words; and then I saw the
meaning of the envelope. The message was in Koot Hoomi's own handwriting, and it
was an answer from Jhelum to a letter which the delivery postmark on the
envelope showed to have been delivered at Amritsur on the same day the message
was sent. Madame Blavatsky assuredly was herself at Amritsur on that date,
seeing large numbers of people there in connection with the work of the
Theosophical Society, and the handwriting of Koot Hoomi's letters, nevertheless,
appears on a telegram undeniably handed in at the Jhelum office on that date. So
although some of Koot Hoomi's letters passed through her hands to me, she is
proved not to be their writer, as she is certainly not the producer of their
handwriting.
Koot Hoomi was probably himself actually at or near Jhelum at the time, as he
came down into the midst of the world for a few days, under peculiar
circumstances, to see Madame Blavatsky: the letter I received at Allahabad
shortly after my return explained this.
Madame Blavatsky had been deeply hurt by the behaviour of some incredulous
persons at Simla whom she had met at our house and elsewhere, who, being unable
to assimilate the experience they had had of her phenomena, got by degrees into
that hostile frame of mind which is one of the phases of feeling I am now used
to seeing developed. Perfectly unable to show how the phenomena can be the
result of fraud, but thinking that, because they do not understand them, they
must be fraudulent, people of a certain temperament become possessed with the
spirit which animated persecution by religious authorities in the infancy of
physical science. And, by a piece of bad luck, a gentleman who was thus affected
was annoyed at a trifling indiscretion on the part of Colonel Olcott, who, in a
letter to one of the Bombay papers, quoted some expressions he had made use of
in praise of the Theosophical Society and its good influence on the natives. All
the irritation thus set up, worked on Madame Blavatsky's excitable temperament
to an extent which only those who know her will be able to imagine. The
allusions in Koot Hoomi 's letter will now be understood. After some reference
to important business with which he had been concerned since writing to me last,
Koot Hoomi went on :-
" You see, then, that we have weightier matters than small societies to think
about; yet the Theosophical Society 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, 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 Theosophical Society. It
came quite forcibly upon me the other day as I was coming down the defiles of
Konenlun -- Karakorum you call them- and saw an avalanche tumble. I had gone
personally to our chief. ... 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 cataclysms,
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-"
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 a 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 Sunuyasis knew anything
about the mysteries of Nature, or that any living man can, or ever could,
perform any phenomena. I turn my face homeward tomorrow.
150.
" ........I have telegraphed you my thanks for your
obliging compliance with my wishes in the matter you allude to in your letter of
the 24th..... Received at Amritsur, on the 27th, at 2 P.M. I got your letter
about thirty miles beyond Rawul Pinder, five minutes later, and had an
acknowledgement wired to you from Jhelum at 4 P. M. on the same afternoon. Our
modes of accelerated delivery and quick communications [ Many old Indians, and
some books about the Indian Mutiny, take note of the perfectly incomprehensible
way news of events transpiring at a distance would sometimes be found to have
penetrated the native bazaars before It had reached the Europeans at such places
by the quickest means of communication at their disposal. The explanation I have
been informed, Is that the Brothers, who were anxious to save the British power
at that time, regarding it as a better government for India than any system of
native rule that could take its place, were quick to distribute information by
their own methods when this could operate to quiet popular excitement and
discourage new risings. The sentiment that animated them then, animates them
still, and the influence of the Theosophical Society In India is one which the
Government would do wisely to countenance and support. The suspicions directed
against its founders in the first instance, misdirected as they were, were
excusable enough , but now that the character of the whole movement is better
understood, it would be well for the officers of the British Government in India
who have any opportunity of the kind, to do whatever they can towards showing
their sympathy with the promoters of the Society, who must, necessarily, have an
uphill task to perform without such manifestations of sympathy. ] Are not, then,
as you will see, to be despised by the Western world, or even the Aryan
English-speaking and sceptical 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?...... It is not possible that there should be much more
at best than a. benevolent neutrality shown by your people towards 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."
The letter before me at present is occupied so much with matters personal to
myself, that I can only make quotations here and there; but these are specially
interesting, as investing with an air of reality subjects which are generally
treated in "vague and pompous language. Koot Hoomi was anxious to guard me from
idealising the Brothers too much on the strength of my admiration for their
marvellous powers.
" Are you certain," he writes, " 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 Madame Blavatsky to select, among the two or three Aryian
Punjabees who study Yog Vidya and are 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 despatch to you with a letter of
introduction, and have him to 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 world -
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 organise a branch
of English mystics, by proving to them practically to what wonderful results led
the study of Yog, Madame Blavatsky 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 the Brother, 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
:- Madame,' he said, you who preach the highest standard of morality, of
truthfulness, etc., you would have me play the part of an impostor. 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. Here is an illustration of the
difficulties under which we have to labour. Powerless to send 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."
151.
The present letter yields only little more that it seems
desirable to quote. In a guarded way, Koot Hoomi said that as often as it was
practicable to communicate with me, " whether ..........by letters (in or out of
pillows) or personal visits in astral form, it will be done. But remember," he
added, " that Simla is 7,000 feet higher than Allahabad, and the difficulties to
be surmounted at the latter are tremendous." To the ordinary mind, feats of "
magic " are hardly distinguishable by degrees of difficulty, and the little hint
contained in the last sentence may thus help to show that, magical as the
phenomena of the Brothers appear (as soon as the dull-witted hypothesis of fraud
is abandoned), they are magic of a kind which is amenable to its own laws. Most
of the bodies in Nature were elements, in the infancy of chemistry; but in turn
the number is reduced by deeper and deeper researches into the law of
combinations - and so with magic. To ride the clouds in a basket, or send
messages under the sea, would have been magic in one age of the world, but
becomes the commonplace of the next. The Simla phenomena are magic for the
majority of this generation, but psychological telegraphy itself may become, if
not the property of mankind a few generations hence, a fact of science as
undeniable as the differential calculus, and known to be attainable by its own
appropriate students. That it is easier to accomplish it and cognate
achievements, in certain strata of the atmosphere rather than in others, is
already a practical suggestion which tends to drag it down from the realms of
magic; or, as the same idea might be differently expressed, to lift it towards
the region of exact science.
I am here enabled to insert the greater part of a letter addressed by Koot Hoomi
to the friend referred to in a former passage, as having opened up a
correspondence with him in reference to the idea which he contemplated under
certain conditions, of devoting himself entirely to the pursuit of occultism.
This letter throws a great deal of light upon some of the metaphysical
conceptions of the occultists, and their metaphysics, be it remembered, are a
great deal more than abstract speculation.
152.
" 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 from a remote past, we have a love for our
motherland no deep and passionate that it has survived even the broadening and
cosmopolitanizing (pardon me if that is not an English word) effect of our
studies in the 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 all convinced that the degradation of India
is largely due to the suffocation of her ancient spirituality, and that whatever
helps to restore that higher standard of thought and morals, must be
regenerating in national force, everyone 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
the 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, cannot 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-lndian branch. We know it would be a good
thing to have you and a few of your 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 schoolboy's copybook, though it sounds so, but only
the clumsy statement of the law of our order, and we cannot 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 ides 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 realise 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 instinctively 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 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 and
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 of time
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 utilizes and manipulates materials which Nature has in
store around him, and 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 out of mere compliment)
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 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 everyone and everything, or more bound to nothing
but the selfish requisites for its advancement, then, this materialistic science
of fact ? May I ask then, what have the laws of Faraday, Tyndall, or others to
do with philanthropy in their abstract relations with humanity, viewed as an
intelligent whole? What care they for Man as an isolated atom of this great and
harmonious whole, even though they may be sometimes 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 word of experimenters that Nature consciously prefers that matter
should be indestructible under organic rather than 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 two 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 nervous organization 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, accumulates each in its 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.
153.
" Exact experimental science has nothing to do with
morality, virtue, philanthropy- therefore, can make no claim upon our help until
it blends itself with 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 method, 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
develops 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 and transcendental:
(hence absurd) notion of the mediaeval Theosophist 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 energy - in its capacity as a direct
motor-shall result in the evolution of nutritious food out inorganic matter, is
unthinkable for men of science. Were the sun, the great nourishing father of or
planetary system, to hatch granite chickens out of a boulder 'under test
conditions' tomorrow, the (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 make him
confess what granary he had robbed. This is exact science and your realistic
world. An 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 generalised, 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.....
154.
" 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 would 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 that 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, the benign or
hostile influence 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 battleground of moral no less than of
physical forces, and the boisterousness of animal passion, 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 Bramaputra 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 utilise its hydraulic power for the good of
mankind. So we, who cannot 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 demigods, 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,' you say, ' 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 civilization
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
towards 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 sceptical Sanscritists do not care, which your
religious missionaries do not dare, to understand. Science would gain much,
humanity everything. Under the stimulus of the AngIo-Indian Theosophical
Society, we might in time see another golden age of Sanskrit literature.
155.
" If we look at Ceylon we shall see the most scholarly
priests combining, under the lead of the Theosophical 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 three hundred scholars; an example about to be imitated at
three other points in that island. If the Theosophical Society, as at present
constituted,' has indeed no' real vitality,' and yet in its modest way has done
so much practical good, how much greater results might not be anticipated from a
body organised upon the better plan you could suggest ?
156.
" The same causes that are materialising the Hindu mind
are equally affecting all Western thought. Education enthrones scepticism, but
imprisons spirituality. You can do immense good by helping to give the Western
nations a secure basis upon which to reconstruct their crumbling faith. And 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 inquiry is here. Inquiry 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
cannot 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 towards extreme atheism, or drag it back to extreme
sacerdotalism, if it is not led to the primitive 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 freethinkers, 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
proof of their faith in miracles. The sceptics make game of both. All are blind
and there is no one to lead them. You and your colleagues may help to 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
scepticism, 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."
157.
I have hitherto said nothing of the circumstances under
which these various letters reached my hands ; nor, in comparison with the
intrinsic interest of the ideas they embody, can the phenomenal conditions under
which some of them were delivered, be regarded as otherwise than of secondary
interest for readers who appreciate their philosophy. But every bit of evidence
which helps to exhibit the nature of the powers which the adepts exercise, is
worth attention, while the rationale of such powers is still hidden from the
world. The fact of their existence can only be established by the accumulation
of such evidence, as long as we are unable to prove their possibility by a
priori analysis of the latent capacities in man.
My friend to whom the last letter was addressed wrote a long reply, and
subsequently an additional letter for Koot Hoomi , which he forwarded to me,
asking me to read and then seal it up and send or give it to Madame Blavatsky
for transmission, she being expected at about that time at my house at Allahabad
on her way down country from Amritsur and Lahore, where, as I have already
indicated, she had stayed for some little time after our household broke up for
the season at Simla. I did as desired, and gave the letter to Madame Blavatsky,
after gumming and sealing the stout envelope in which it was forwarded. That
evening, a few hours afterwards, on returning home to dinner, I found that the
letter had gone, and had come back again. Madame Blavatsky told me that she had
been talking to a visitor in her own room, and had been fingering a blue pencil
on her writing-table without noticing what she was doing, when she suddenly
noticed that the paper on which she was scribbling was my letter that the
addressee had duly taken possession of, by his own methods, an hour or two
before. She found that she had, while talking about something else,
unconsciously written on the envelope the words which it then bore, " Read and
returned with thanks, and a few commentaries. Please open. " I examined the
envelope carefully, and it was absolutely intact, its very complete fastenings
having remained just as I arranged them. Slitting it open, I found the letter
which it had contained when I sent it, and another from Koot Hoomi to me,
criticising the former with the help of a succession of pencil figures that
referred to particular passages in the original letter- another illustration of
the passage of matter through matter, which, for thousands of people who have
had personal experience of it in Spiritualism, is as certain a fact of nature as
the rising of the sun, and which I have now not only encountered at spiritual
séances, but, as this record will have shown, on many occasions when there is no
motive for suspecting any other agency than that of living beings with faculties
of which we may all possess the undeveloped germs, though it is only in their
case that knowledge has brought these to phenomenal fruition.
158.
Sceptical critics, putting aside the collateral bearing
of all the previous phenomena I have described, and dealing with this letter
incident by itself alone, will perhaps say- of course Madame Blavatsky had ample
time to open the envelope by such means as the mediums who profess to get
answers to sealed letters from the spirit world are in the habit of employing.
But, firstly, the Jhelum telegram proof, and the inherent evidence of the whole
correspondence show that, the letters which come to me in that which I recognise
as Koot Hoomi 's handwriting, are not the work of Madame Blavatsky, at all
events; secondly, let the incident I have just described be compared with
another illustration of an exactly similar incident which occurred shortly
afterwards under different circumstances Koot Hoomi had sent me a letter
addressed to my friend to read and forward on. On the subject of this letter
before sending it I had occasion to make a communication to Koot Hoomi . I wrote
a note to him, fastened it up in an ordinary adhesive envelope, and gave it to
Madame Blavatsky. She put it in her pocket, went into her own room, which opened
out of the drawing room , and came out again almost instantly. Certainly she had
not been away thirty seconds. She said " he " had taken it at once. Then she
followed me back through the house to my office room, spoke for a few minutes in
the adjoining room to my wife, and, returning into my office, lay down on a
couch. I went on with my work, and perhaps ten minutes elapsed, perhaps less.
Suddenly she got up. " There's your letter," she said, pointing to the pillow
from which she had lifted her head; and there lay the letter I had just written,
intact as regards its appearance, but with Koot Hoomi's name on the outside
scored out and mine written over it. After a thorough examination I slit the
envelope, and found inside, on the flyleaf of my note, the answer I required in
Koot Hoomi's handwriting. Now, except for the thirty seconds during which she
retired to her own room, Madame Blavatsky had not been out of my sight, except
for a minute or two in my wife's room, during the short interval which elapsed
between the delivery of the letter by me to her and its return to me as
described. And during this interval no one else had come into my room. The
incident was as absolute and complete a mechanical proof of abnormal power
exercised to produce the result as any conceivable test could have yielded.
Except by declaring that I cannot be describing it correctly, the most resolute
partisan of the commonplace will be unable seriously to dispute the force of
this incident. He may take refuge in idiotic ridicule, or he may declare that I
am misrepresenting the facts. As regards the latter hypothesis I can only pledge
my word, as I do hereby, to the exact accuracy of the statement.
159.
In one or two cases I have got back answers from Koot
Hoomi to my letters in my own envelopes, these remaining intact as addressed to
him, but with the address changed, and my letter gone from the inside, his reply
having taken its place. In two or three cases I have found short messages from
Koot Hoomi written across the blank parts of letters from other persons, coming
to me through the post, the writers in these cases being assuredly unaware of
the additions so made to their epistles.
160.
Of course I have asked Koot Hoomi for an explanation of
these little phenomena, but it is easier for me to ask than for him to answer,
partly because the forces which the adepts bring to bear upon matter to achieve
abnormal results, are of a kind which ordinary science knows so little about
that we of the outer world are not prepared for such explanations; and partly
because the manipulation of the forces employed has to do, sometimes, with
secrets of initiation which an occultist must not reveal. However, in reference
to the subject before us, I received on one occasion this hint as an
explanation.
161.
" ..........Besides, bear in mind that these my letters
are not written, but impressed, or precipitated, and then all mistakes
corrected."
Of course I wanted to know more about such precipitation; was it a process which
followed thought more rapidly than any with which we were familiar? And as
regards letters received, did the meaning of these penetrate the understanding
of an occult recipient at once, or were they read in the ordinary way?
162.
" Of course I have to read every word you write," Koot
Hoomi replied, " 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 surfaces 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
litho-biblion ), and how the impress of leaves comes originally to take place on
stones, then I will 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."
163.
In another letter Koot Hoomi expatiates more fully on
the difficulty of making occult explanations intelligible to minds trained only
in modern science.
164.
" 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 those 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 the 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 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 off 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 lines 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 find in space anyone of the so called
subjective or accidental colours - 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. .......'
without moving from your writing-desk, try search for, and produce before your
eyes the whole solar spectrum decomposed into fourteen prismatic colour -(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 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- l
had better, perhaps, go and search for my mythical dichromatic and solar 'pairs'
in 'Tibet, for modern science has hitherto been unable to bring under any theory
even so simple a phenomenon as the colours of all such dichromatic bodies. And
yet truth knows these colours are objective enough.
" So you see the insurmountable difficulties in the way of obtaining not only
absolute, but even primary knowledge in Occult Science, for one situated as you
are. How could you make yourself 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 colour are the main factors in
forming those 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 if 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."
165.
The following passage occurs in another letter, but it
adheres naturally enough to the extract just concluded.
166.
" 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 an addition to the tangled
mass of theory or speculation that they are being given to you, but for their
practical bearing on the interests of mankind. The terms Unscientific,
Impossible, Hallucination, Imposture, 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 in 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 sceptics 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, undreamed 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. [See Appendix D.] Ideas
rule the world ; and as men's minds will receive new ideas, leaving 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
their Irresistible force. It will be just as impossible to resist their
influence 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 first to
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, recognising
the eternal 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........ Meanwhile, being human,
I have to rest. I took no sleep for over sixty hours."
167.
Here are It few lines from Koot Hoomi's hand, in a
letter not addressed to me, It fall conveniently into the present series of
extracts.
168.
" 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
art 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."
169.
Turning back to my own correspondence, and to the latest
letter I received from Koot Hoomi before leaving India on the trip home during
which I am writing these pages, I read :-
170.
" 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. Mejnour 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 desiccated pansy between the leaves of a
volume of solemn poetry. We may not be quite' the boys' to quote -----'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, 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 final negation of Moksha)
can so far enfranchise ourselves from the influence of our earthly connection as
to be unsusceptible in various degrees to the higher pleasures, emotions, and
interests of the common run of humanity. 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, will all give way 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. 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 into whom 'it ever cries
for help, but is not heard.' Thus-
171.
'Since there is hope for man only in man,
I would not let one cry whom I could save. '
172.
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 towards others, and philanthropy as preached by our great Patron
173.
"...................The Saviour of the world,
The teacher of Nirvana and the Law
174.
'.,; 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 individualised."
175.
I had asked Koot Hoomi how far I was at liberty to use
his letters in the preparation of this volume, and, a few lines after the
passage just quoted, he says :-
176.
" I lay no restrictions upon your making use of anything
I may have written to you or Mr. ----- 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. ..." and then he goes on to indicate one letter which he wishes me
to withhold......" As to the rest, I relinquish it to the mangling tooth of
criticism."
178.
TEACHINGS OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY
179.
As affirmed more than once already, Occult Philosophy in
various countries and through different periods has remained substantially the
same. At different times and places very different mythological efflorescences
have been thrown off for the service of the populace; but, underlying each
popular religion, the religious knowledge of the initiated minority has been
identical. Of course, the modern Western conception of what is right in such
matters will be outraged by the mere idea of a religion which is kept as the
property of the few, while a" false religion, " as modern phraseology would put
it is served out to the common people. However, before this feeling is permitted
to land us in too uncompromising disapproval of the ancient hiders of the truth,
it may be well to determine how far it is due to any intelligent conviction that
the common herd would be benefited by teaching, which must be in its nature too
refined and subtle for popular comprehension, and how far the feeling referred
to, may be due to an acquired habit of looking on religion as something which it
is important to profess, irrespective of understanding it. No doubt, assuming
that a man's eternal welfare depends upon his declaration, irrespective of
comprehension, of the right faith, among all the faiths he might have picked out
from the lucky bag of birth and destiny- then it would be the sovereign duty of
persons conscious of possessing such a faith to proclaim it from the housetops.
But, on the other hypothesis, that it cannot profit any man to mutter a formula
of words without attaching sense to it, and that crude intelligences can only be
approached by crude sketches of religious ideas, there is more to be advanced on
behalf of the ancient policy of reserve than seems at first sight obvious.
Certainly the relations of the populace and the initiates, look susceptible of
modification in the European world of the present day. The populace, in the
sense of the public at large, including the finest intellects of the age, are at
least as well able as those of any special class to comprehend metaphysical
ideas. These finer intellects dominate public thought, so that no great ideas
can triumph among the nations of Europe without their aid, while their aid can
only be secured in the open market of intellectual competition. Thus it ensues
that the bare notion of an esoteric science superior to that offered in public
to the scientific world, strikes the modern Western mind as an absurdity. With
which very natural feeling it is only necessary at present here to fight, so far
as to ask people not to be illogical in its application; that is to say, not to
assume that because it would never occur to a modern European coming into
possession of a new truth to make a secret of it, and disclose it only to a
fraternity under pledges of reserve, therefore such an idea could never have
occurred to an Egyptian priest or an intellectual giant of the civilization
which overspread India, according to some not unreasonable hypotheses, before
Egypt began to be a seat of learning and art. The secret society system was as
natural, indeed, to the ancient man of science, as the public system is in our
own country and time. Nor is the difference one of time and fashion merely. It
hinges on to the great difference that is to be discerned in the essence of the
pursuits in which learned men engage now, as compared with those they were
concerned with in former ages. We have belonged to the material progress epoch,
and the watchword of material progress has always been publicity. The initiates
of ancient psychology belonged to the spiritual age, and the watchword of
subjective development has always been secrecy. Whether in both cases the
watchword is dictated by necessities of the situation is a question on which
discussion might be possible ; but, at all events, these reflections are enough
to show that it would be unwise to dogmatize too confidently on the character of
the philosophy and the philosophers who could be content to hoard their wisdom
and supply the crowd with a religion adapted rather to the understanding of its
recipients than to those eternal verities.
180.
It is impossible now to form a conjecture as to the date
or time at which occult philosophy began to take the shape in which we find it
now. But though it may be reasonably guessed that, the last two or three
thousand years have not passed over the devoted initiates who have held and
transmitted it during that time, without their having contributed something
towards its development, the proficiency of initiates belonging to the earliest
periods with which history deals, appears to have been already so far advanced,
and so nearly as wonderful as the proficiency of initiates in the present day,
that we must assign a very great antiquity to the earliest beginnings of occult
knowledge on this earth. Indeed the question cannot be raised without bringing
us in contact with considerations that hint at absolutely startling conclusions
in this respect.
But, apart from specific archaeological speculations, it has been pointed out
that " a philosophy so profound, a moral code so ennobling, and practical
results so conclusive and so uniformly demonstrable, are not the growth of a
generation, or even a single epoch. Fact must have been piled upon fact,
deduction upon deduction, science have begotten science, and myriads of the
brightest human intellects have reflected upon the laws of Nature, before this
ancient doctrine had taken concrete shape. The proofs of this identity of
fundamental doctrine in the old religions are found in the prevalence of a
system of initiation; in the secret sacerdotal castes, who had the guardianship
of mystical words of power, and a public display of a phenomenal control over
natural forces indicating association with preter-human beings. Every approach
to the mysteries of all these nations, was guarded with the same jealous care,
and in all the penalty of death was inflicted upon all initiates of any degree
who divulged the secrets entrusted to them." The book just quoted shows this to
have been the case with the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries among the Chaldean
Magi and the Egyptian Hierophants. The Hindu book of Brahminical ceremonies, the
"Agrushada Parikshai," contains the same law, which appears also to have been
adopted by the Essenes, the Gnostics, and the Theurgic Neo-Platonists.
Freemasonry has copied the old formula, though its raison d'être has expired
here with the expiration from among freemasons of the occult philosophy on which
their forms and ceremonies are shaped to a larger extent than they generally
conceive. Evidences of the identity spoken of may be traced in the vows,
formulas, rites, and doctrines of various ancient faiths, and it is affirmed by
those whom I believe qualified to speak with authority as to the fact, " that
not only is their memory still preserved in India; but also that the secret
association is still alive, and as active as ever."
As I have now, in support of the views just expressed, to make some quotations
from Madame Blavatsky's great book, " Isis Unveiled," it is necessary to give
certain explanations concerning the genesis of that work, for which the reader
who has followed my narrative of occult experiences through the preceding pages,
will be better prepared than he would have been previously. I have shown how,
throughout the most ordinary incidents of her daily life, Madame Blavatsky is
constantly in communication, by means of the system of psychological telegraphy
that the initiates employ, with her superior " Brothers " in occultism. This
state of the facts once realised, it will be easy to understand that in
compiling such a work as " Isis," which embodies a complete explanation of 'all
that can be told about occultism to the outer world, she would not be left
exclusively to her own resources, The truth which Madame Blavatsky would be the
last person in the world to wish disguised, is that the assistance she derived
from the Brothers, by occult agency, throughout the composition of her book, was
so abundant and continuous that she is not so much the author of " Isis" as one
of a group of collaborateurs, by whom it was actually produced. I am given to
understand that she set to work on " Isis" without knowing anything about the
magnitude of the task she was undertaking, She began writing to dictation- the
passages thus written not now standing first in the completed volumes-in
compliance with the desire of her occult friends, and without knowing whether
the composition on which she was engaged would turn out an article for a
newspaper, or an essay for a magazine, or a work of larger dimensions. But on
and on it grew. Before going very far, of course, she came to understand what
she was about; and fairly launched on her task, she in turn contributed a good
deal from her own natural brain. But the Brothers appear always to have 'been at
work with her, not merely dictating through her brain as at first, but sometimes
employing those methods of" precipitation " of which I have myself been favoured
with some examples, and by means of which quantities of actual manuscript in
other handwritings than her own were produced while she slept. In the morning
she would sometimes get up and find as much as thirty slips added to the
manuscript she had left on her table overnight. The book " Isis " is in fact as
great a " phenomenon "-apart from the nature of its contents- as any of those I
have described.
The faults of the book, obvious to the general reader, will be thus explained,
as well as the extraordinary value it possesses for those who may be anxious to
explore as far as possible the mysteries of occultism. The deific powers which
the Brothers enjoy cannot protect a literary work which is the joint production
of several-even among their minds, from the confusion of arrangement to which
such a mode of composition inevitably gives rise. And besides confusion of
arrangement, the book exhibits a heterogeneous variety of different styles,
which mars its dignity as a literary work, and must prove both irritating and
puzzling to the ordinary reader. But for those who possess the key to this
irregularity of form, it is an advantage rather than otherwise. It will enable
an acute reader to account for some minor incongruities of statement occurring
in different parts of the book. Beyond this it will enable him to recognise the
voice, as it were, of the different authors as they take up the parable in turn.
The book was written-as regards its physical production-at New York, where
Madame Blavatsky was utterly unprovided with books of reference. It teems,
however, with references to books of all sorts, including many of a very unusual
character', and with quotations the exactitude of which may easily be verified
at the great European libraries, as footnotes supply the number of the pages,
from which the passages taken are quoted.
181.
I may now go on to collect some passages from " Isis, "
the object of which is to show the unity of the esoteric philosophy underlying
various ancient religions, and the peculiar value which attaches for students of
that philosophy, to pure Buddhism, a system which, of all those presented to the
world, appears to supply us with occult philosophy in its least adulterated
shape. Of course, the reader will guard himself from running away with the idea
that Buddhism, as explained by writers who are not occultists, can be accepted
as an embodiment of their views. For example, one of the leading ideas of
Buddhism, as interpreted by Western scholars, is that " Nirvana " amounts to
annihilation. It is possible that Western scholars may be right in saying that
the explanation of" Nirvana " supplied by exoteric Buddhism leads to this
conclusion; but that, at all events, is not the occult doctrine.
" Nirvana, " it is stated in " Isis, " " means the certitude of personal
immortality in spirit, not in soul, which, as a finite emanation, must certainly
disintegrate its particles, a compound of human sensations, passions, and
yearning for some objective kind of existence, before the immortal spirit of the
Ego is quite freed, and henceforth secure against transmigration in any form.
And how can man reach that state so long as the 'Upadana' that state of longing
for life, more life, does not disappear from the sentient being, from the
Ahancara clothed, however, in a sublimated body? It is the 'Upadana" , or the
intense desire that produces will, and it is will which develops force, and the
latter generates matter, or an object having form. Thus the disembodied Ego,
through this sole undying desire in him, unconsciously furnishes the conditions
of his successive self-procreations in various forms, which depend on his
mental, state, and 'Karma', the good or bad deeds of his preceding existence,
commonly called' merit' and 'demerit.' " There is a world of suggestive
metaphysical thought in this passage, which will serve at once to justify the
view propounded just now as regards the reach of Buddhistic philosophy as viewed
from the occult standpoint.
The misunderstanding about the meaning of " Nirvana" is so general in the West,
that before going on with explanations of the philosophy which this same
misunderstanding has improperly discredited, it will be well :to consider the
following elucidation also :-
" Annihilation means with the Buddhistical philosophy only a dispersion of
matter, in whatever form or semblance of form it may be; for every thing that
bears a shape was created, and thus must sooner or later perish, i.e., change
that shape; therefore, as something temporary, though seeming to be permanent,
it is but an illusion, 'Maya' ; for as eternity has neither beginning nor end,
the more or less prolonged duration of some particular form passes, as it were,
like an instantaneous flash of lightning. Before we have the time to realise
that we have seen it, it has gone and passed away forever; hence even our astral
bodies, pure ether; are but illusions of matter so long as they retain their
terrestrial outline. The latter changes, says the Buddhist, according to the
merits or demerit of the person during his lifetime, and this is metempsychosis.
When the spiritual entity breaks loose for ever from every particle of matter,
then only it enters upon the eternal and unchangeable 'Nirvana'. He exists in
spirit, in nothing; as a form, a shape, a semblance, he is completely
annihilated, and thus will die no more ; for spirit alone is no' Maya' but the
only reality in an illusionary universe of ever-passing forms. ...To accuse
Buddhistical philosophy of rejecting a Supreme Being-God, and the soul's
immortality-of Atheism, in short- on the ground that 'Nirvana' means
annihilation, and' Svabha vat' is not a person, but nothing, is simply absurd.
The En (or Aym) of the Jewish Ensoph also means nihil, or nothing, that which is
not (quo ad nos), but no one bas ever ventured to twit the Jews with atheism. In
both cases the real meaning of the term nothing carries with it the idea that
God is not a thing, not a concrete or visible being to which a name expressive
of any object known to us on earth may be applied with propriety."
Again: " 'Nirvana' is the world of cause in which all deceptive effects or
illusions of our senses disappear. 'Nirvana' is the highest attainable
sphere."The secret doctrines of the Magi of the pre-Vedic Buddhists, of the
hierophants of the Egyptian Thoth or Hermes, were we find it laid down in "
Isis"-identical from the beginning, an identity that applied equally to the
secret doctrines of the adepts of whatever age or nationality, including the
Chaldean Kabalists and the Jewish Nazars. " When we use the word Buddhists, we
do not mean to imply by it either the exoteric Buddhism instituted by the
followers of Gautama Buddha, or the modern Buddhistic religion, but the secret
philosophy of Sakyamuni, which, in its essence, is certainly identical with the
ancient wisdom-religion of the sanctuary- the pre-vedic Brahmanisn. The schism
of Zoroaster, as it is called, is a direct proof of it: for it was no schism,
strictly speaking, but merely a partially public exposition of strictly
monotheistic religious truths hitherto taught only in the sanctuaries, and that
he had learned from the Brahmans. Zoroaster, the primeval institution of
sun-worship, cannot be called the founder of the dualistic system, neither was
he the first to teach the unity of God, for he taught but what he had learned
himself from the Brahmans, And that Zarathustra, and his followers the
Zoroastrians, had been settled in India before they immigrated into Persia, is
also proved by Max Muller. ' That the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started
from India,' he says. ' during the Vaidic period, can be proved as distinctly as
that the inhabitants of Massilia started from Greece...........Many of the gods
of the Zoroastrians come out......., as mere reflections and deflections of the
gods of the Veda.'
" If, now, we can prove, and we ban do so on the evidence of the' Kabala,' and
the oldest traditions of the wisdom religion, the philosophy of the old
sanctuaries, that all these gods, whether of the Zoroastrians or of the Veda,
are but so many personated occult powers of Nature, the faithful servants of the
adepts of secret wisdom -magic -we are on secure ground.
182.
" Thus; whether we say that Kabalism and Gnosticism
proceeded from Masdeanism or Zoroastrianism, it is all the same, unless we meant
the exoteric worship, which we do not. Likewise, and in this sense we may echo
King, the author of the' Gnostics,' and several other archaeologists, and
maintain that both the former proceeded from Buddhism, at once the simplest and
most satisfying of philosophies, and which resulted in one of the purest
religions in the world. , ..But whether among the Essenes or the Neo-Platonists,
or again among the innumerable struggling sects born but to die, the same
doctrine, identical in substance and spirit, if not always in form, are
encountered. By Buddhism, therefore, we mean that religion signifying literally
the doctrine of wisdom, and which by many ages antedates the metaphysical
philosophy of Siddhartha Sakyamuni,"
Modern Christianity has, of course, diverged widely from its own original
philosophy, but the identity of this with the original philosophy of all
religions is maintained in " Isis " in the course of an interesting argument.
183.
" Luke, who was a physician, is designated in the Syriac
texts as Asaia, the Essaian or Essene. Josephus and Philo Judreus have
sufficiently described this sect to leave no doubt in our mind that the Nazarene
Reformer, after having received his education in their dwellings in the desert,
and being duly initiated in the mysteries, preferred the free and independent
life of a wandering Nazaria, and so separated, or inazarenized, himself, from
them, thus becoming a travelling Therapeute, or Nazaria, a healer ... In his
discourses and sermons Jesus always spoke in parables, and used metaphors with
his audience. This habit was again that of the Essenians and the Nazarenes; the
Galileans, who dwelt in cities and villages, were never known to use such
allegorical language. Indeed, some of his disciples, being Galileans as well as
himself, felt even surprised to find him using with the people such a form of
expression. ' Why speakest thou unto them in parables ? ' they often inquired'.
Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven; but
to them it is not given,' was the reply, which was that of an initiate. '
Therefore, I speak unto them in parables, because they seeing, see not, and
hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand.' Moreover, we find Jesus
expressing his thoughts ... in sentences which are purely Pythagorean, when,
during the Sermon on the Mount, he says, 'Give ye not that which is sacred to
the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine; for the swine will tread
them under their feet, and the dogs will turn and rend you.' Professor A.
Wilder, the editor of Taylor's' Eleusillian Mysteries, , observes a' like
disposition on the part of Jesus and Paul to classify their doctrines as
esoteric and exoteric- the mysteries of the Kingdom of God for the apostles, and
parables for the multitude'. We speak wisdom, says Paul, 'among them that are
perfect,' or' initiated. ' In the Eleusinian and other mysteries the
participants were always divided in two classes, the neophytes and the perfect.
...The narrative of the Apostle Paul in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians,
has struck several scholars well versed in 'the descriptions of the mystical
rites of the initiation given by some classes as all ending most undoubtedly to
the final Epopteia: ' I know a certain man- whether in body or outside of body I
know not; God knoweth- who was rapt into Paradise, and heard things ineffable
which it is not lawful for a man to repeat.' These words have rarely, so far as
we know, been regarded by commentators as an allusion 'to the beatific visions
of an initiated seer; but the phraseology is unequivocal'. These things which it
is not lawful to repeat, are hinted at in the same words, and the reason
assigned for it is the same as that which we find repeatedly expressed by Plato,
Proclus, Jamblichus, Herodotus, and other classics. ' We speak wisdom only among
them that are perfect,' says Paul; the plain and undeniable translation of the
sentence being: ' We speak of the profounder or final esoteric doctrines of the
mysteries (which are denominated wisdom), only among them who alone initiated.
So in relation to the man who was rapt into Paradise- and who was evidently Paul
himself- the Christian word Paradise having replaced that of Elysium."
The final purposes of occult philosophy is to show what Man was, is, and will
be. " That which survives as an individuality," says' Isis,' " after the death
of the body is the actual soul, which Plato, in the Timaeus and Gorgias calls
the mortal soul; for, according to the Hermetic doctrine, it throws off the more
material particles at every progressive change into a higher sphere. The astral
spirit is a faithful duplicate of the body in a physical and spiritual sense.
The Divine, the highest immortal spirit, can be neither punished nor rewarded.
To maintain such a doctrine would be at the same time absurd and blasphemous;
for it is not merely a flame lit at the central and inextinguishable fountain of
light, but actually a portion of it and of identical essence. It assures
immortality to the individual astral being in proportion to the willingness of
the latter to receive it. So long as the double man- i.e., the man of flesh and
spirit- keeps within the limits of the law of spiritual continuity; so long as
the divine spark lingers in him, however faint]y, he is on the road to an
immortality in the future state. But those who resign themselves to a
materialistic existence, shutting out the divine radiance shed by their spirit,
at the beginning of their earthly pilgrimage, and stifling the warning voice of
that faithful sentry the conscience, which serves as a focus for the light in
the soul- such beings as these, having left behind conscience and spirit, and
crossed the boundaries of matter, will, of necessity, have to follow its laws."
Again. " The secret doctrine teaches that man, if he wins immortality, will
remain for ever the trinity that he is in life, and will continue so throughout
all the spheres. The astral] body, which in this life is covered by a gross
physical envelope, becomes, when relieved of that covering by the process of
corporeal death, in its turn the shell of another and more ethereal body. This
begins developing from the moment of death, and becomes perfected when the
astral body of the earthly form finally separates from it."
184.
The passages quoted, when read by the light of the
explanations I have given, will enable the reader, if so inclined, to take up "
Isis " in a comprehending spirit, and find his way to the rich veins of precious
metal which are buried in its pages. But neither in " Isis " nor in any other
book on occult philosophy which has been or seems likely to be written yet
awhile, must anyone hope to obtain a cut-and-dried, straightforward, and
perfectly clear account of the mysteries of birth, death, and the future. At
first, in pursuing studies of this kind, one is irritated at the difficulty of
getting at what the occultists really believe as regards the future state, the
nature of the life to come, and its general mise en scène. The well known
religions have very precise views on these subjects, further rendered practical
by the assurance some of them give that qualified persons, commissioned by
churches to perform the duty, can shunt departing souls on to the right or the
wrong lines, in accordance with consideration received. Theories of that kind
have at any rate the merit of simplicity and intelligibility, but they are not,
perhaps, satisfactory to the mind as regards their details. After a very little
investigation of the matter, the student of occult philosophy will realise that
on that path of knowledge he will certainly meet with no conceptions likely to
outrage his purest idealisation of God and the life to come. He will soon feel
that the scheme of ideas he is exploring is lofty and dignified to the utmost
limits that the human understanding can reach. But it will remain vague, and he
will seek for explicit statements on this or that point, until by degrees he
realises that the absolute truth about the origin and destinies of the human
soul may be too subtle and intricate to be possibly expressible in
straightforward language. Perfectly clear ideas may be attainable for the
purified minds of advanced scholars in occultism, who, by entire devotion of
every faculty to the pursuit and prolonged assimilation of such ideas, come at
length to understand them with the aid of peculiar intellectual powers specially
expanded for the purpose ; but it does not at all follow that with the best will
in the world such persons must necessarily be able to draw up an occult creed
which should bring the whole theory of the universe into the compass of a dozen
lines. The study of occultism, even by men of the world, engaged in ordinary
pursuits as well, may readily enlarge and purify the understanding, to the
extent of arming the mind, so to speak, with tests that will detect absurdity in
any erroneous religious hypotheses ; but the absolute structure of occult belief
is something which, from its nature, can only be built up slowly in the mind of
each intellectual architect. And I imagine that a very vivid perception of this
on their part explains the reluctance of occultists even to attempt the
straight- forward explanation of their doctrines. They know that really vital
plants of knowledge, so to speak, must grow up from the germ in each man's mind,
and cannot be transplanted into the strange soil of an untrained understanding
in a complete state of mature growth. They are ready enough to supply seed, but
every man must grow his own tree of knowledge for himself. As the adept himself
is not made, but becomes so, -in a minor degree, the person who merely aspires
to comprehend the adept and his views of things must develop such comprehension
for himself, by thinking out rudimentary ideas to their legitimate conclusions.
These considerations fit in with, and do something towards elucidating, the
reserve of occultism, and they further suggest an explanation of what will at
once seem puzzling to a reader of" Isis," who takes it up by the light of the
present narrative. If great parts of the book, as I have asserted, are really
the work of actual adepts, who know of their own knowledge what is the actual
truth about many of the mysteries discussed, why have they not said plainly what
they meant, instead of beating about the bush, and suggesting arguments derived
from this or that ordinary source, from literary or historical evidence, from
abstract speculation concerning the harmonies of Nature? The answer seems to be,
firstly, that they could not well write, " We know that so and so is the fact,"
without being asked, " How do you know ?"-and it is manifestly impossible that
they could reply to this question without going into details, that it would be "
unlawful," as a Biblical writer would say, to disclose, or without proposing to
guarantee their testimony by manifestations of powers which it would be
obviously impracticable for them to keep always at hand for the satisfaction of
each reader of the book in turn. Secondly, I imagine that, in accordance with
the invariable principle of trying less to teach than to encourage spontaneous
development, they have aimed in " Isis," rather at producing an effect on the
reader's mind, than at shooting in a store of previously accumulated facts. They
have shown that Theosophy, or Occult Philosophy, is no new candidate for the
world's attention, but is really a restatement of principles which have been
recognised from the very infancy of mankind. The historic sequence which
establishes this view is distinctly traced through the successive evolution's of
the philosophical schools, in a manner which it is impossible for me to attempt
in a work of these dimensions, and the theory laid down is illustrated with
abundant accounts of the experimental demonstrations of occult power ascribed to
various thaumaturgists. The authors of " Isis," have expressly refrained from
saying more than might conceivably be said by a writer who was not an adept,
supposing him to have access to all the literature of the subject and an
enlightened comprehension of its meaning.
But once realise the real position of the authors or inspirers of " Isis," and
the value of any argument on which you find them launched is enhanced enormously
above the level of the relatively commonplace considerations advanced on its
behalf. The adepts may not choose to bring forward other than exoteric evidence
in favour of any particular thesis they wish to support, but if they wish to
support it, that fact alone will be of enormous significance for any reader who,
in indirect ways, has reached a comprehension of the authority with which they
are entitled to speak.
186.
LATER OCCULT PHENOMENA
187.
[ Added to the second English edition.]
I CANNOT let a second edition of this book appear without recording some, at
least, of the experiences which have befallen me since its preparation. The most
important of these, indeed, are concerned with fragmentary instruction I have
been privileged to receive from the Brothers in reference to the great truths of
cosmology which their spiritual insight has enabled them to penetrate. But the
exposition even of the little, relatively, that I have learned on this head
would exact a more elaborate treatise than I can attempt at present.[
Subsequently published as Esoteric Buddhism. ] And the purpose of the present
volume is to expound the outer facts of the situation rather than to analyse a
system of philosophy. This is not entirely inaccessible to exoteric students,
apart from what may be regarded as direct revelation from the Brothers. Though
almost all existing occult literature is unattractive in its form, and rendered
purposely obscure by the use of an elaborate symbology, it does contain a great
deal of information that can be distilled from the mass by the application of
sufficient patience. Some industrious students of that literature have proved
this. Whether the masters of occult philosophy will ultimately consent to the
complete exposition in plain language of the state of the facts regarding the
spiritual constitution of Man, remains to be seen. Certainly, even if they are
still reticent in a way that no ordinary observer can comprehend, they are more
disposed to be communicative at this moment than they have been for a long time
past.
But the first thing to do is to dissipate as much as possible the dogged
disbelief that encrusts the Western mind as to the existence of any abnormal
persons who can be regarded as masters of True Philosophy -distinguished from
all the speculations that have tormented the world - and as to the abnormal
nature of their faculties. I have endeavored already to point out plainly, but
may as well here emphasise the reason why I dwell upon, the phenomena which
exhibit these faculties. Rightly regarded, these are the credentials of the
spiritual teaching which their authors supply. Firstly, indeed, in themselves
abnormal phenomena accomplished by the willpower of living men must be intensely
interesting for every one endowed with an honest love of science. They open out
new scientific horizons. It is as certain as the sun's next rising that the
forward pressure of scientific discovery, advancing slowly as it does in its own
grooves, will ultimately, and probably at no very distant date, introduce the
ordinary world to some of the superior scientific knowledge already enjoyed by
the masters of occultism. Faculties will be acquired by exoteric investigation
that will bring the outworks of science a step or two nearer the comprehension
of some of the phenomena I have described in the present volume. And meanwhile
it seems to me very interesting to get a glimpse beforehand of achievements
which we should probably find engaging the eager attention of a future
generation, if we really could, as Tennyson suggests -
-" sleep through terms of mighty wars,
And wake on science grown to more,
On secrets of the brain, the stars,
As wild as aught of fairy lore."
But even superior to their scientific interest is the importance of the lesson
conveyed by occult phenomena, when these distinctly place their authors in a
commanding position of intellectual superiority as compared with the world at
large. They show most undeniably that these men have gone far ahead of their
contemporaries in a comprehension of Nature as exemplified in this world; that
they have acquired the power of cognizing events by other means than the
material senses; that while their bodies are at one place, their perceptions may
be at another, and that they have consequently solved the great problem as to
whether the Ego of man is a something distinct from his perishable frame. From
all other teachers we can but find out what has been thought probable in
reference to the soul or spirit of man : from them we can find out what is the
fact; and if that is not a sublime subject of inquiry, surely it would be
difficult to say what is. But we cannot read poetry till we have learned the
alphabet; and, if the combinations b-a ba, and so on are found to be
insufferably trivial and uninteresting, the fastidious person who objects to
such foolishness will certainly never be able to read the " Idylls of the King."
So I return from the clouds to my patient record of phenomena, and to the
incidents which have confirmed the experiences and conclusions set forth in the
previous chapter of this book, since my return to India.
The very first incident which took place was in the nature of a pleasant
greeting from my revered friend, Koot Hoomi. I had written to him (per Madame
Blavatsky, of course) shortly before leaving London, and had expected to find a
letter from him awaiting my arrival at Bombay. But no such letter had been
received, as I found when I reached the headquarters of the Theosophical
Society, where I had arranged to stay for a few days before going on to my
destination up country. I got in late at night, and nothing remarkable happened
then. The following morning, after breakfast, I was sitting talking with Madame
Blavatsky in the room that had been allotted to me. We were sitting at different
sides of a large square table in the middle of the room, and the full daylight
was shining. There was no one else in the room. Suddenly, down upon the table
before me, but to my right hand, Madame Blavatsky being to my left, there fell a
thick letter. It fell "out of nothing", so to speak; it was materialised, or
reintegrated in the air before my eyes. It was Koot Hoomi's expected reply, -a
deeply interesting letter, partly concerned with private matters and replies to
questions of mine, and partly with some large, though as yet shadowy ,
revelations of occult philosophy, the first sketch of this that I had received.
Now, of course, I know what some readers will say to this (with a self-satisfied
smile) -" wires, springs, concealed apparatus," and so forth; but first all the
suggestion would have been grotesquely absurd to anyone who had been present;
and secondly, it is unnecessary to argue about objections of this sort all over
again ab initio every time. There were no more wires and springs about the room
I am now referring to, than about the breezy hilltops at Simla, where some of
our earlier phenomena took place. I may add, moreover, that some months later an
occult note was dropped before a friend of mine, a Bengal civilian, who has
become an active member of the Theosophical Society, at a dak bungalow in the
north of India; and that later again, at the headquarters of the Theosophical
Society at Bombay, a letter was dropped, according to a previous promise, out in
the open air in the presence of six or seven witnesses.
For some time the gift of the letter from Koot Hoomi in the way I have described
was the only phenomenon accorded to me, and, although my correspondence
continued, I was not encouraged to expect any further displays of abnormal
power. The higher authorities of the occult world, indeed, had by this time put
a very much more stringent prohibition upon such manifestations than had been in
operation the previous summer at Simla. The effect of the manifestations then
accorded was not considered to have been satisfactory on the whole. A good deal
of acrimonious discussion and bad feeling had ensued; and I imagine that this
was conceived to outweigh, in its injurious effect on the progress of the
Theosophical movement, the good effect of the phenomena on the few persons who
appreciated them. When I went up to Simla in August, 1881, therefore, I had no
expectation of further events of an unusual nature. Nor have I any stream of
anecdotes to relate which will bear comparison with those derived from the
experience of the previous year. But none the less was the progress of a certain
undertaking in which I became concerned -the establishment of a Simla branch of
the Theosophical Society -interspersed with little incidents of a phenomenal
nature. When this Society was formed, many letters passed between Koot Hoomi and
ourselves which were not in every case transmitted through Madame Blavatsky. In
one case, for example, Mr. Hume, who became president for the first year of the
new Society - the Simla Eclectic Theosophical Society, as it was decided it
should be called -got a note from Koot Hoomi inside a letter received through
the post from a person wholly unconnected with our occult pursuits, who was
writing to him in connection with some municipal business. I myself, dressing
for the evening, have found an expected letter in my coat-pocket, and on another
occasion under my pillow in the morning. On one occasion, having just received a
letter by the mail from England which contained matter in which I thought she
would be interested, I went up to Madame Blavatsky's writing-room and read it to
her. As I read it, a few lines of writing, comment upon what I was reading, were
formed on a sheet of blank paper which lay before her. She actually saw the
writing form itself, and called to me, pointing to the paper where it lay. There
I recognise Koot Hoomi's hand-and his thought, for the comment was to the
effect, " Didn't I tell you so? " and referred back to something he had said in
a previous letter.
188.
By-the-by, it may be as well to inform the reader that
during the whole of the visit to Simla, of which I am now speaking, for several
months before it, and until several months later, Colonel Olcott was in Ceylon,
where he was engaged in a very successful lecturing tour on behalf of the
Theosophical Society , in reference to some of the phenomena which occurred at
Simla in 1880, when both he and Madame Blavatsky were present. Ill-natured and
incredulous people -when it would be glaringly absurd about some particular
phenomenon to say that Madame Blavatsky had done it by trickery of her own -used
to be fond of suggesting that the wire-puller must be Colonel Olcott. In some of
the newspaper criticisms of the first edition of this book, even, it has been
suggested that Colonel Olcott must be the writer of the letters that I
innocently ascribe to Koot Hoomi, Madame Blavatsky merely manipulating their
presentation. But inasmuch as all through the autumn of 1881, while Colonel
Olcott was at Ceylon and I at Simla, the letters continued to come, alternating
day by day sometimes with the letters we wrote, my critics, in future, must
acknowledge that this hypothesis is played out.
For me myself -as I think it will also be for my appreciative readers -the most
interesting fact connected with my Simla experience of 1881 was this : During
the period in question I got into relations with one other of the Brothers,
besides Koot Hoomi. It came to pass that in the progress of his own development
it was necessary for Koot Hoomi to retire for a period of three months into
absolute seclusion, as regards not merely the body -which in the case of an
Adept may be secluded in the remotest corner of the earth without that
arrangement checking the activity of his " astral " intercourse with mankind -
but as regards the whole potent Ego with whom we had dealings. Under these
circumstances one of the Brothers with whom Koot Hoomi was especially associated
agreed, rather reluctantly at first, to pay attention to the Simla Eclectic
Society, and keep us going during Koot Hoomi's absence with a course of
instruction in occult philosophy. The change which came over the character of
our correspondence when our new master took us in hand was very remarkable.
Every letter that emanated from Koot Hoomi had continued to bear the impress of
his gently mellifluous style. He would write half a page at any, time rather
than run the least risk of letting a brief or careless phrase hurt anybody's
feelings. His hand writing, too, was always very legible and regular. Our new
master treated us very differently: he declared himself almost unacquainted with
our language, and wrote a very rugged hand which it was sometimes difficult to
decipher. He did not beat about the bush with us at all. If we wrote out an
essay on some occult ideas we had picked up, and sent it to him, asking if it
was right, it would sometimes come back with a heavy red line scored through it,
and " No " written on the margin. On one occasion one of us had written, " Can
you clear my conceptions about so and so ? " The annotation found in the margin
when the paper was returned was, " How can I clear what you haven't got I " and
so on. But with all this we made progress under M-, and by degrees the
correspondence, which began on his side with brief notes, scrawled in the
roughest manner on bits of coarse Tibetan paper, expanded into considerable
letters sometimes. And it must be understood that while his rough and abrupt
ways formed an amusing contrast with the tender gentleness of Koot Hoomi, there
was nothing in these to impede the growth of our attachment to him as we began
to feel ourselves tolerated by him as pupils a little more willingly than at
first. Some of my readers, I am sure, will realise what I mean by " attachment "
in this case. I use a colourless word deliberately to avoid the parade of
feelings which might not be generally understood; but I can assure them that in
the course of prolonged relations- even though merely of the epistolary kind
-with a personage who, though a man like the rest of us as regards his natural
place in creation, is elevated so far above ordinary men as to possess some
attributes commonly considered divine, feelings are engendered which are too
deep to be lightly or easily described.
It was by M--------- quite recently that a little manifestation of force was
given for my gratification, the importance of which turned on the fact that
Madame Blavatsky was entirely uninfluential in its production, and eight hundred
miles away at the time. For the first three months of my acquaintance with him,
M------ had rigidly adhered to the principle he laid down w hen he agreed to
correspond with the Simla Eclectic Society during Koot Hoomi 's retirement. He
would correspond with us, but would perform no phenomena whatever. This
narrative is so much engaged with phenomena that I cannot too constantly remind
the reader that these incidents were scattered over a long period of time, and
that as a rule nothing is more profoundly distasteful to the great adepts than
the production of wonders in the outside world. Ordinary critics of these, when
they have been thus exceptionally accorded, will constantly argue, " But why did
not the Brothers do so and so differently ? then the incident would have been
much more convincing." I repeat that the Brothers, in producing abnormal
phenomena now and then, are not trying to prove their existence to an
intelligent jury of Englishmen. They are simply letting their existence become
perceptible to persons with a natural gravitation towards spirituality and
mysticism. It is not too much to say that all the while they are scrupulously
avoiding the delivery of direct proof of a nature calculated to satisfy the
commonplace mind. For the present, at all events, they prefer that the crass,
materialistic Philistines of the sensual, selfish world should continue to
cherish the conviction that " the Brothers " are myths. They reveal themselves,
therefore, by signs and hints which are only likely to be comprehended by people
with some spiritual insight or affinity. True the appearance of this book is
permitted by them, -no page of it would have been written if a word from Koot
Hoomi had indicated disapproval on his part, - and the phenomenal occurrences
herein recorded are really in many cases absolutely complete and irresistible
proofs for me, and therefore for anyone who is capable of understanding that I
am telling the exact truth. But the Brothers, I imagine, know quite well that,
large as the revelation has been, it may safely be passed before the eyes of the
public at large just because the herd, whose convictions they do not wish to
reach, can be relied upon to reject it. The situation may remind the reader of
the farceur who undertook to stand on Waterloo Bridge with a hundred real
sovereigns on a tray, offering to sell them for a shilling apiece, and who
wagered that he would so stand for an hour without getting rid of his stock. He
relied on the stupidity of the passers-by, who would think themselves too clever
to be taken in. So with this little book. It contains a straightforward
statement of absolute truths, which, if people could only believe them, would
revolutionise the world; and the statement is fortified by unimpeachable
credentials. But the bulk of mankind will be blinded to this condition of things
by their own vanity and inability to assimilate super-materialistic ideas, and
none will be seriously affected but those who are qualified to benefit by
comprehending.
Readers of the latter class will readily appreciate the way the phenomena that I
have had to record have thus followed in the track of my own growing
convictions, confirming these as they have in turn been inferentially
constructed, rather than provoking and enforcing them in the first instance. And
this has been emphatically the case with the one or two phenomena that have
latterly been accorded by M------. It was in friendship and kindness that these
were given, long after all idea of confirming my belief in the Brothers was
wholly superfluous and out of date. M------ came indeed to wish that I should
have the satisfaction of seeing him (in the astral body of course), and would
have arranged for this in Bombay, in January, when I went down there for a day
to meet my wife, who was returning from England, had the atmospherical and other
conditions just at that period permitted it. But, unfortunately for me, these
were not favourable. As M----- wrote in one of several little notes I received
from him during that day and the following morning, before my departure from the
headquarters of the Theosophical Society, where I was staying, even they, the
Brothers, could not " work miracles; " and though to the ordinary spectator
there may be but little difference between a miracle and anyone of the phenomena
that the Brothers do sometimes accomplish, these latter are really results
achieved by the manipulation of natural laws and forces, and are subject to
obstacles which are sometimes practically insuperable.
But M------, as it happened, was enabled to show himself to one member of the
Simla Eclectic Society, who happened to be at Bombay a day or two before my
visit. The figure was clearly visible for a few moments, and the face distinctly
recognised by my friend, who had previously seen a portrait of M-------.
Then it passed across the open door of an inner room in which it had appeared,
in a direction where there was no exit; and when my friend, who had started
forward in its pursuit, entered the inner room, it was no longer to be seen. On
two or three other occasions previously, M----- had made his astral figure
visible to other persons about the headquarters of the Society, where the
constant presence of Madame Blavatsky and one or two other persons of highly
sympathetic magnetism, the purity of life of all habitually resident there, and
the constant influences poured in by the Brothers themselves, render the
production of phenomena immeasurably easier than elsewhere.
And this brings me back to certain incidents which took place recently at my own
house at Allahabad, when, as I have already stated, Madame Blavatsky herself was
eight hundred miles off, at Bombay. Colonel Olcott, then on his way to Calcutta,
was staying with us for a day or two in passing.
He was accompanied by a young native mystic, ardently aspiring to be accepted by
the Brothers as a chela, or pupil, and the magnetism thus brought to the house
established conditions which for a short time rendered some manifestations
possible. Returning home one evening shortly before dinner, I found two or three
telegrams awaiting me, enclosed in the usual way, in envelopes securely fastened
before being sent out from the telegraph office. The messages were all from
ordinary people, on commonplace business; but inside one of the envelopes I
found a little folded note from M-----. The mere fact that it had been thus
transfused by occult methods inside the closed envelope was a phenomenon in
itself, of course (like many of the same kind that I have described before) ;
but I need not dwell on this point, as the feat that had been performed, and of
which the note gave me information, was even more obviously wonderful. The note
made me search in my writing-room for a fragment of a plaster bas-relief that
M----- had just transported instantaneously from Bombay. Instinct took me at
once to the place where I felt that it was most likely I should find the thing
which had been brought- the drawer of my writing-table, exclusively devoted to
occult correspondence ; and there, accordingly, I found a broken corner from a
plaster slab, with M-----'s signature marked upon it. I telegraphed at once to
Bombay, to ask whether anything special had just happened, and next day received
back word that M----- had smashed a certain plaster portrait, and had carried
off a piece. In due course of time I received a minute statement from Bombay,
attested by the signatures of seven persons in all, which was, as regards all
essential points, as follows: -
" At about seven in the evening the following persons " (five are enumerated,
including Madame Blavatsky ) " were seated at the dining-table, at tea, in
Madame Blavatsky's veranda opposite the door in the red screen separating her
first writing-room from the long veranda. The two halves of the writing-room
were wide open, and the dining-table, being about two feet from the door, we
could all see plainly everything in the room. About five or seven minutes after,
Madame Blavatsky gave a start. We all began to watch. She then looked all round
her, and said, , What is he going to do ? ' and repeated the same twice or
thrice without looking at or referring to any of us. We all suddenly heard a
knock -a loud noise, as of something falling and breaking -behind the door of
Madame Blavatsky's writing- room, when there was not a soul there at the time. A
still louder noise was heard, and we all rushed in. The room was empty and
silent; but just behind the red cotton door, where we had heard the noise, we
found fallen on the ground a Paris plaster mould, representing a portrait,
broken into several pieces. After carefully picking the pieces up to the
smallest fragments, and examining it, we found the nail, on which the mould had
hung for nearly eighteen months, strong as ever in the wall. The iron wire loop
of the portrait was perfectly intact, and not even bent. We spread the pieces on
the table, and tried to arrange them, thinking they could be glued, as Madame
Blavatsky seemed very much annoyed, as the mould was the work of one of her
friends in New York. We found that one piece, nearly square and of about two
inches, in the right corner of the mould, was wanting. We went into the room and
searched for it, but could not find it. Shortly afterwards, Madame Blavatsky
suddenly arose and went into her room, shutting the door after her. In a minute
she called Mr. ------in, and showed to him a small piece of paper. We all saw
and read it afterwards. It was in the same handwriting in which some of us have
received previous communications, and the same familiar initials. It told us
that the missing piece was taken by the Brother whom Mr. Sinnett calls , the
Illustrious,'[ "My illustrious friend," was the expression I originally used in
application to the Brother I have here called M-, and it got shortened
afterwards into the pseudonym given in the statement. It is difficult sometimes
to know what to call the Brothers, even when one knows their real names. The
less these are promiscuously handled the better, for various reasons, among
which is the profound annoyance which it gives their real disciples if such
names get into frequent and disrespectful use among scoffers. I regret now that
Koot Hoomi's name, so ardently venerated by all who have been truly subject to
his influence, should ever have been allowed to appear in full in the text of
the book.] To Allahabad, and that she should collect and carefully preserve the
remaining pieces." The statement goes after this into some further details,
which are unimportant as regards the general reader, and is signed by the four
native friends who were with Madame Blavatsky at the time the plaster portrait
was broken. A postcript, signed by three other persons, adds that these three
came in shortly after the actual breakage, and found the rest of the party
trying to arrange the fragments on the table.
189.
It will be understood, of course, but I may s well
explicitly state, that the evening to which the above narrative relates was the
same on which I found Mr. -----'s note inside my telegram at Allahabad, and the
missing piece of the cast in my drawer; and no appreciable time appears to have
elapsed between the breakage of the cast at Bombay and the delivery of the piece
at Allahabad, for though I did not note the exact minute at which I found the
fragment - and, indeed, it may have been already in my drawer for some little
time before I came home- the time was certainly between seven and eight,
probably about half-past seven or a quarter to eight. And there is nearly half
an hour's difference of longitude between Bombay and Allahabad, so that seven at
Bombay would be nearly half-past at Allahabad. Evidently, therefore, the plaster
fragment, weighing two or three ounces, was really brought from Bombay to
Allahabad, to all intents and purposes, instantaneously. That it was veritably
the actual piece missing from the cast broken at Bombay was proved a few days
later, for all the remaining pieces at Bombay were carefully packed up and sent
to me, and the fractured edges of my fragment fitted exactly into those of the
defective corner, so that I was enabled to arrange the pieces all together again
and complete the cast.
190.
The shrewd reader -of the class of persons who would
never have been " taken in " by the man who sold sovereigns on Waterloo Bridge
-will laugh at the whole story. A lump of plaster of Paris sent a distance of
eight hundred miles across India in the wink of an eye by the willpower of
somebody Heaven knows where at the time -probably in Tibet ! The shrewd person
could not manage the feat himself, so he is convinced that nobody else could,
and that the event never occurred. Rather believe that the seven witnesses at
Bombay and the present writer are telling a pack of lies than that there can be
anyone living in the world who knows secrets of Nature, and can employ forces
'of Nature that shrewd persons of the Times- reading, "Jolly Bank-holiday,
three-penny 'bus young man " type know nothing about. Some friends of mine,
criticising the first edition of this book, have found fault with me for not
adopting a more respectful and conciliatory tone towards scientific scepticism
when confronting the world with allegations of the kind these pages contain. But
I fail to see any motive for hypocrisy in the matter. A great number of
intelligent people in these days are shaking themselves free at once from the
fetters of materialism forged by modern science and the entangled superstition
of ecclesiastics, resolved that the Church herself, with all her mummeries,
shall fail to make them irreligious; that science itself, with all its conceit,
shall not blind them to the possibilities of Nature. These are the people who
will understand my narrative and the sublimity of the revelations it embodies.
But all people who have been either thoroughly enslaved by dogma, or thoroughly
materialised by modern science, have finally lost some faculties, and will be
unable to apprehend facts that do not fit in with their preconceived ideas. They
will mistake their own intellectual deficiencies for inherent impossibility of
occurrence on the part of the fact described; they will be very rude in thought
and speech towards persons of superior intuition, who do find themselves able to
believe and, in a certain sense, to understand; and it seems to me that the time
has come for letting the commonplace scoffers realise plainly that in the
estimation of their more enlightened contemporaries they do indeed seem a
Beotian herd, in which the better educated and the lesser educated -the orthodox
savant and the city clerk -differ merely in degree and not in kind.
The morning after the occurrence of the incident just detailed, B---- R-----,
the young native aspirant for chelaship, who had accompanied Colonel Olcott, and
was staying at my house, gave me a note from Koot Hoomi , which he found under
his pillow in the morning. One which I had written to Koot Hoomi , and had given
to B----- R----- the previous day, had been taken, he told me, at night, before
he slept. The note from Koot Hoomi was a short one, in the course of which he
said, " To force phenomena in the presence of difficulties magnetic or other is
forbidden as strictly as for a bank cashier to disburse money which is only
entrusted to him. Even to do this much for you so far from the headquarters
would be impossible but for the magnetisms 0---- and B----- R----,- have brought
with them -and I could do no more." Not fully realising the force of the final
words in this passage, and more struck by a previous passage, in which Koot
Hoomi wrote -" It is easy for us to give phenomenal proofs when we have
necessary conditions " -I wrote next day, suggesting one or two things which I
thought might be done to take additional advantage of the conditions presented
by the introduction into my house of available magnetism different from that of
Madame Blavatsky, who had been so much, however absurdly, suspected of imposing
on me. I gave this note to B---- R----- on the evening of the 13th of March -the
plaster fragment incident had taken place on the 11th- and on the morning of the
14th I received a few words from Koot Hoomi , simply saying that what I proposed
was impossible, and that he would write more fully through Bombay. When in due
time I so heard from him, I learned that the limited facilities of the moment
had been exhausted, and that my suggestions could not be complied with; but the
importance of the explanations I have just been giving turns on the fact that I
did, after all, exchange letters with Koot Hoomi at an interval of a few hours,
at a time when Madame Blavatsky was at the other side of India.
191.
The account I have just been giving of the instantaneous
transmission of the plaster of Paris fragment from Bombay to Allahabad forms a
fitting prelude to a remarkable series of incidents I have next to record. The
story now to be told has already been made public in India, having been fully
related in " Psychic Notes," [Newton & Co., Calcutta.] a periodical temporarily
brought out at Calcutta, with the object especially of recording incidents
connected with the spiritualistic mediumship of Mr. Eglinton, who stayed for
some months at Calcutta during the past cold season. The incident was hardly
addressed to the outside world; rather to spiritualists, who while infinitely
closer to a comprehension of occultism than people still wrapped in the darkness
of orthodox incredulity, about all super-material phenomena, are nevertheless to
a large extent inclined to put a purely spiritualistic explanation on all such
phenomena. In this way it had come to pass that many spiritualists in India were
inclined to suppose that we who believed in the Brothers were in some way misled
by extraordinary mediumship on the part of Madame Blavatsky. And at first the "
spirit guides" who spoke through Mr. Eglinton confirmed this view. But a very
remarkable change came over their utterances at last. Shortly before Mr.
Eglinton's departure from Calcutta, they declared their full knowledge of the
Brotherhood, naming the " Illustrious " by that designation, and declaring that
they had been appointed to work in concert with the Brothers thenceforth. On
this aspect of affairs, Mr. Eglinton left India in the steamship Vega, sailing
from Calcutta, I believe, on the 16th of March. A few days later, on the morning
of the 24th, at AIahabad, I received a letter from Koot Hoomi, in which he told
me that he was going to visit Mr. Eglinton on board the Vega at sea, convince
him thoroughly as to the existence of the Brothers, and if successful in doing
this notify the fact immediately to certain friends of Mr. Eglinton's at
Calcutta. The letter had been written a day or two before, and the night between
the 21st and 22nd was mentioned as the period when the astral visit would be
paid. Now the full explanation of all the circumstances under which this
startling programme was carried out will take some little time, but the
narrative will be the more easily followed if I first describe the outline of
what took place in a few words. ' The promised visit was actually paid, and not
only that but a letter written by Mr. Eglinton at sea on the 24th describing it
-and giving in his adhesion to a belief in the Brothers fully and completely-
was transported instantaneously that same evening to Bombay, where it was
dropped "out of nothing " like the first letter I received on my return to India
before several witnesses; by them identified and tied up with cards written on
by them at the time ; then taken away again and a few moments later dropped
down, cards from Bombay and all, among Mr. Eglinton's friends at Calcutta who
had been told beforehand to expect a communication from the Brothers at that
time. All the incidents of this series are authenticated by witnesses and
documents, and there is no rational escape, for any one who looks into the
evidence, from the necessity of admitting that the various phenomena as I have
just described them have actually been accomplished, " impossible " as ordinary
science will declare them.
For the details of the various incidents of the series, I may refer the reader
to the account published in Psychic Notes of March 30, by Mrs. Gordon, wife of
Colonel W. Gordon, of Calcutta, and authenticated with her signature.
Colonel Olcott, Mrs. Gordon explains in the earlier part of her statement, which
for brevity's sake I condense, had just arrived at Calcutta on a visit to
Colonel Gordon and herself. A letter had come from Madame Blavatsky-
192.
"dated Bombay the 19th, telling us that something was
going to be done, and expressing the earnest hope that she would not be required
to assist, as she had had enough abuse about phenomena. Before this letter was
brought by the post peon, Colonel Olcott had told me that he had had an
intimation in the night from his Chohan (teacher) that K. H.[ We had got into
the habit at this time of using these initials for the Mahatma's name. ] Had
been to the Vega and seen Eglinton. This was at about eight o'clock on Thursday
morning, the 23rd. A few hours later a telegram, dated at Bombay, 22nd day,21
hours 9 minutes, that is, say 9 minutes past 9 P.M. on Wednesday evening, came
to me from Madame Blavatsky, to this effect: ' K. H. just gone to Vega.' This
telegram came as a 'delayed' message, and was I to me from Calcutta, which
accounts for its not reaching me until midday on Thursday. It corroborated, as
will be seen, the message of the previous night to Colonel Olcott. We then felt
hopeful of getting the letter by occult means from Mr. Eglinton. A telegram
later on Thursday asked us to fix a " time for a sitting, so we named 9 o'clock
Madras time, on Friday, 24th. At this hour we three- Colonel Olcott, Colonel
Gordon, and myself -sat in the room which had been occupied by Mr. Eglinton.. We
had a good light, and sat with our chairs placed to form a triangle, of which
the apex was to the north. In a few minutes Colonel Olcott saw outside the open
window the two' Brothers' whose names are best known to us, and told us so; he
saw them pass to another window, the glass doors of which were closed. He saw
one of them point his hand towards the air over my head, and I felt something at
the same moment fall straight down from above on to my shoulder, and saw it fall
at my feet in the direction towards the two gentlemen. I knew it would be the
letter, but for the moment I was so anxious to see the' Brothers' that I did not
pick up what had fallen. Colonel Gordon and Colonel Olcott both saw and heard
the letter fall. Colonel Olcott had turned his head from the window for a moment
to see what the I Brother' was pointing at, and so noticed the letter falling
from a point about two feet from the ceiling. When he looked again the two
'Brothers' had vanished.
" There is no veranda outside, and the window is several feet from the ground.
" I now turned and picked up what had fallen on me, and found a letter in Mr.
Eglinton's handwriting, dated on the Vega the 24th ; a message from Madame
Blavatsky, dated at Bombay the 24th, written on the backs of three of her
visiting cards; also a larger card, such as Mr. Eglinton had a packet of, and
used at his séances. On this latter card was the, to us, well-known handwriting
of K. H., and a few words in the handwriting of the other' Brother,' who was
with him outside our window, and who is Colonel Olcott's chief. All these cards
and the letter were threaded together with a piece of blue sewing silk. We
opened the letter carefully, by slitting up one side, as we saw that some one
had made on the flap in pencil three Latin crosses, and so we kept them intact
for identification. The letter is as follows: -
"'S. S. Vega, Friday, 24th March, 1882. " , My DEAR MRS. GORDON,
-At last your hour of triumph has come! After the many battles we have had at
the breakfast-table regarding K. H.'s existence, and my stubborn scepticism as
to the wonderful powers possessed by the " Brothers," I have been forced to a
complete belief in their being living distinct persons, and just in proportion
to my scepticism will be my firm unalterable opinion respecting them. I am not
allowed to tell you all I know, but K. H. appeared to me in person two days ago,
and what he told me dumfounded me. Perhaps Madame B. will have already
communicated the fact of K. H.'s appearance to you. The "Illustrious " is
uncertain whether this can be taken to Madame or not, but he will try,
notwithstanding the many difficulties in the way. If he does not I shall post it
when I arrive at port. I shall read this to Mrs. B---- and ask her to mark the
envelope; but whatever happens, you are requested by K. H. to keep this letter a
profound secret until you hear from him though Madame. A storm of opposition is
certain to be raised, and she has had so much to bear that it is hard she should
have more.' Then follow some remarks about his health and the trouble which is
taking him home, and the letter ends.
" In her note on the three visiting cards Madame Blavatsky says:
-' Headquarters, March 24th.
These cards and contents to certify to my doubters that the attached letter
addressed to Mrs. Gordon by Mr. Eglinton was just brought to me from the Vega,
with another letter from himself to me, which I keep. K. H. tells me he saw Mr.
Eglinton and had a talk with him, long and convincing enough to make him a
believer in the "Brothers," as actual living beings, for the rest of his natural
life. Mr. Eglinton writes to me: " The letter which I enclose is going to be
taken to Mrs. G. through your influence. You will receive it wherever you are,
and will forward it to her in ordinary course. You will learn with satisfaction
of my complete conversion to a belief in the "Brothers", and I have no doubt K.
H. has already told you how he appeared to me two nights ago," etc., etc.. K. H.
told me all. He does not, however, want me to forward the letter in "ordinary
course", as it would defeat the object, but commands me to write this and send
it off without delay, so that it would reach you all at Howrah tonight, the
24th. I do so. ...H. P. Blavatsky.'
" The handwriting on these cards and signature are perfectly well known to us.
That on the larger card (from Mr. Eglinton's packet) attached was easily
recognised as coming from Koot Hoomi . Colonel Gordon and I know his writing as
well as our own; it is so distinctly different from any other I have ever seen,
that among thousands I could select it. He says, William Eglinton thought the
manifestation could only be produced through H. P. B. as a "medium", and that
the power would become exhausted at Bombay. We decided otherwise. Let this be a
proof to all that the spirit of living man has as much potentiality in it (and
often more) as a disembodied soul. He was anxious to test her, he often doubted;
two nights ago he had the required proof and will doubt no more. But he is a
good young man, bright, honest, and true as gold when once convinced. ..
193.
"This card was taken from his stock today. Let it be an
additional proof of his wonderful mediumship. ...K. H.'
" This is written in blue ink, and across it is written in red ink a few words
from the other 'Brother' (Colonel Olcott's Chohan or chief). This interesting
and wonderful phenomenon is not published with the idea that anyone who is
unacquainted with the phenomena of spiritualism will accept it. But I write for
the millions of spiritualists, and also that a record may be made of such an
interesting experiment. Who knows but that it may pass on to a generation which
will be enlightened enough to accept such wonders?"
A postscript adds that since the above statement was written, a paper had been
received from Bombay, signed by seven witnesses who saw the letter arrive there
from the Vega.
As I began by saying, this phenomenon was addressed more to spiritualists than
to the outer world, because its great value for the experienced observer of
phenomena turns on the utterly unmediumistic character of the events. Apart from
the testimony of Mr. Eglinton's own letter to the effect that he, an experienced
medium, was quite convinced that the interview he had with his occult visitant
was not an interview with such " spirits " as he had been used to, we have the
three-cornered character of the incident to detach it altogether from mediumship
either on his part or on that of Madame Blavatsky.
194.
Certainly there have been cases in which under the
influence or mediumship the agencies of the ordinary spiritual séance have
transported letters half across the globe. A conclusively authenticated case in
which an unfinished letter was thus brought from London to Calcutta will have
attracted the attention of all persons who have their understanding awakened to
the importance of these matters, and who read what is currently published about
them, quite recently. But every spiritualist will recognise that the transport
of a letter from a ship at sea to Bombay, and then from Bombay to Calcutta, with
a definite object in view, and in accordance with a prearranged and
pre-announced plan, is something quite outside the experience of mediumship.
195.
Will the effort made and the expenditure of force,
whatever may have been required to accomplish the wonderful feat thus recorded,
be repaid by proportionately satisfactory effects on the spiritualistic world ?
There has been a great deal written lately in England about the antagonism
between spiritualism and theosophy, and an impression has arisen in some way
that the two cultes are incompatible. Now, the phenomena and the experiences of
spiritualism are facts, and nothing can be incompatible with facts. But
theosophy brings on the scene new interpretations of those facts, it is true,
and sometimes these prove very unwelcome to spiritualists long habituated to
their own interpretation. Hence, such spiritualists are now and then disposed to
resist the new teaching altogether, and hold out against a belief that there can
be anywhere in existence men entitled to advance it. This is consequently the
important question to settle before we advance into the region of metaphysical
subtleties. Let spiritualists once realise that the Brothers do exist, and what
sort of people they are, and a great step will have been accomplished. Not all
at once is it to be expected that the spiritual world will consent to revise its
conclusions by occult doctrines. It is only by prolonged intercourse with the
Brothers that a conviction grows up in the mind that as regards spiritual
science they cannot be in error. At first, let spiritualists think them in error
if they please; but at all events it will be unworthy of their elevated position
above the Beotian herd if they deny the evidence of phenomenal facts; if they
hold towards occultism the attitude which the crass sceptic of the mere
Lankester type occupies towards spiritualism itself. So I cannot but hope that
the coruscation of phenomena connected with the origin and adventures of the
letter written on board the Vega may have flashed out of the darkness to some
good purpose, showing the spiritualistic world quite plainly that the great
Brother to whom this work is dedicated is, at all events, a living man, with
faculties and powers of that entirely abnormal kind which spiritualists have
hitherto conceived to inhere merely in beings belonging to a superior scheme of
existence.
196.
For my part, I am glad to say that I not only know him
to be a living man by reason of all the circumstances detailed in this volume,
but I am now enabled to realise his features and appearance by means of two
portraits, which have been conceded to me under very remarkable conditions. It
was long a wish of mine to possess a portrait of my revered friend ; and some
time ago he half promised that some time or other he would give me one. Now, in
asking an adept for his portrait, the object desired is not a photograph, but a
picture produced by a certain occult process which I have not yet had occasion
to describe, but with which I had long been familiar by hearsay. I had heard,
for example, from Colonel Olcott, of one of the circumstances under which his
own original convictions about the realities of occult power were formed many
years ago in New York, before he had actually entered on "the path." Madame
Blavatsky on that occasion had told him to bring her a piece of paper which he
would be certainly able to identify, in order that she might get a portrait
precipitated upon it. We cannot, of course, by the light of ordinary knowledge
form any conjecture about the details of the process employed; but just as an
adept can, as I have had so many proofs, precipitate writing in closed
envelopes, and on the pages of uncut pamphlets, so he can precipitate color in
such a way as to form a picture. In the case of which Colonel Olcott told me he
took home a piece of note-paper from a club in New York- a piece bearing a club
stamp -and gave this to Madame Blavatsky. She put it between the sheets of
blotting-paper on her writing-table, rubbed her hand over the outside of the
pad, and then in a few moments the marked paper was given back to him with a
complete picture upon it representing an Indian fakir in a state of samadhi. And
the artistic execution of this drawing was conceived by artists to whom Colonel
Olcott afterwards showed it to be so good that they compared it to the works of
old masters whom they specially adored and affirmed that as an artistic
curiosity it was unique and priceless. Now in aspiring to have a portrait of
Koot Hoomi, of course I was wishing for a precipitated picture, and it would
seem that just before a recent visit Madame Blavatsky paid to Allahabad,
something must have been said to her about a possibility that this wish of mine
might be gratified. For the day she came she asked me to give her a piece of
thick white paper and mark it. This she would leave in her scrapbook, and there
was reason to hope that a certain highly advanced chela, or pupil, of Koot
Hoomi's, not a full adept himself as yet, but far on the road to that condition,
would do what was necessary to produce the portrait.
197.
Nothing happened that day nor that night. The scrapbook
remained lying on a table in the drawing-room, and was occasionally inspected.
The following morning it was looked into by my wife, and my sheet of paper was
found to be still blank. Still the scrapbook lay in full view on the
drawing-room table. At half-past eleven we went to breakfast; the dining-room,
as is often the case in Indian bungalows, only being separated from the
drawing-room by an archway and curtains, which were drawn aside. While we were
at breakfast Madame Blavatsky suddenly showed, by the signs with which all who
know her are familiar, that one of her occult friends was near. It was the chela
to whom I have above referred. She got up, thinking she might be required to go
to her room; but the astral visitor, she said, waved her back, and she returned
to the table. After breakfast we looked into the scrapbook, and on my marked
sheet of paper, which had been seen blank by my wife an hour or two before, was
a precipitated profile portrait. The face itself was left white, with only a few
touches within the limits of the space it occupied ; but the rest of the paper
all round it was covered with cloudy blue shading. Slight as the method was by
which the result was produced, the outline of the face was perfectly
well-defined, and its expression as vividly rendered as would have been possible
with a finished picture.
198.
At first Madame Blavatsky was dissatisfied with the
sketch. Knowing the original personally, she could appreciate its deficiencies;
but though I should have welcomed a more finished portrait, I was sufficiently
pleased with the one I had thus received to be reluctant that Madame Blavatsky
should try any experiment with it herself with the view of improving it, for
fear it would be spoilt. In the course of the conversation, M---- put himself in
communication with Madame Blavatsky, and said that he would do a portrait
himself on another piece of paper. There was no question in this case of a "
test phenomenon" ; so after I had procured and given to Madame Blavatsky a
(marked) piece of Bristol board, it was put away in the scrapbook, and taken to
her room, where, free from the confusing cross magnetisms of the drawing-room,
M---- would be better able to operate.
Now it will be understood that neither the producer of the sketch I had
received, nor M-----, in the natural state, is an artist. Talking over the whole
subject of these occult pictures, I ascertained from Madame Blavatsky that the
supremely remarkable results have been obtained by those of the adepts whose
occult science as regards this particular process has been superseded to
ordinary artistic training. But entirely without this, the adept can produce a
result which, for all ordinary critics, looks like the work of an artist, by
merely realising very clearly in his imagination the result he wishes to
produce, and then precipitating the coloring matter in accordance with that
conception.
199.
In the course of about an hour from the time at which
she took away the piece of Bristol board- or the time may have been less -we
were not watching it, Madame Blavatsky brought it me back with another portrait,
again a profile, though more elaborately done. Both portraits were obviously of
the same face, and nothing, let me say at once, can exceed the purity and lofty
tenderness of its expression. Of course it bears no mark of age. Koot Hoomi, by
the mere years of his life, is only a man of what we call middle age; but the
adept's physically simple and refined existence leaves no trace of its passage ;
and while our faces rapidly wear out after forty - strained, withered, and
burned up by the passions to which all ordinary lives are more or less exposed-
the adept age, for periods of time that I can hardly venture to define, remains
apparently the perfection of early maturity. M-----, Madame Blavatsky's special
guardian still, as I judge by a portrait of him that I have seen, though I do
not yet possess one, in the absolute prime of manhood, has been her occult
guardian from the time she was a child; and now she is an old lady. He never
looked, she tells me, any different from what he looks now.
200.
I have now brought up to date the record of all external
facts connected with the revelations I have been privileged to make. The door
leading to occult knowledge is still ajar, and it is still permissible for
explorers from the outer world to make good their footing across the threshold.
This condition of things is due to exceptional circumstances at present, and may
not continue long. Its continuance may largely depend upon the extent to which
the world at large manifests an appreciation of the opportunity now offered.
Some readers who are interested, but slow to perceive what practical action they
can take, may ask what they can do to show appreciation of the opportunity. My
reply will be modelled on the famous injunction of Sir Robert Peel: " Register,
register, register! " Take the first steps towards making a response to the
offer which emanates from the occult world - register, register, register; in
other words, join the Theosophical Society -the one and only association which
at present is linked by any recognised bond of union with the Brotherhood of
Adepts in Tibet. There is a Theosophical Society in London, as there are other
branches in Paris and America, as well as in India. If there is as yet but
little for these branches to do, that fact does not vitiate their importance.
After a voter has registered, there is not much for him to do for the moment.
The mere growth of branches of the Theosophical Society, as associations of
people who realise the sublimity of adeptship, and have been able to feel that
the story told in this little book, and more fully, if more obscurely, in many
greater volumes of occult learning, is absolutely true -true, not as shadowy
religious " truths" or orthodox speculations are held to be true by their
votaries, but true as the " London Post-Office Directory" is true; as the
Parliamentary reports people read in the morning are true; the mere enrolment of
such people in a society under conditions which may enable them sometimes to
meet and talk the situation over if they do no more, may actually effect a
material result as regards the extent to which the authorities of the occult
world will permit the further revelation of the sublime knowledge they possess.
Remember, that knowledge is real knowledge of other worlds and other states of
existence -not vague conjecture about hell and heaven and purgatory, but precise
knowledge of other worlds going on at this moment, the condition and nature of
which the adepts can cognize, as we can the condition and nature of a strange
town we may visit. These worlds are linked with our own, and our lives with the
lives they support; and will the further acquaintance with the few men on earth
who are in a position to tell us more about them be superciliously rejected by
the advance guard of the civilized world, the educated classes of England ?
Surely no inconsiderable group will be sufficiently spiritualized to comprehend
the value of the present opportunity, and sufficiently practical to follow the
advice already quoted, and - register, register, register.
202.
APPENDIX
203.
A
204.
LATER acquaintance with the subject has done much to
show me that the reserve hitherto maintained by the masters of occult science
was inevitable. It is useless to offer any man information which his faculties
are not sufficiently expanded to receive. Only a few hundred years after the
physical science that has been absorbed by the last two or three generations
with avidity would have been unwelcome and despised. Till quite recently the
serious contemplation of psychic phenomena would have been resented as a relapse
into superstition. No man can investigate causes till he is willing to observe
facts, and it was only the other day that a disposition to observe facts lying
outside the domain of physical causation would have alienated any prematurely
developed enthusiast from the sympathies of all his contemporaries. The light of
mere worldly wisdom may thus vindicate the reticence of the few and secluded
custodians of the higher knowledge, but with far greater precision is their
policy vindicated when with their own help we come at last to comprehend the
scientific law of human intellectual development. The progress of the world is
not rolling on under the direction of blind chance. Propelled though it is by
the collective impulses of individual energy, it advances in a defined path, and
the knowledge, the discoveries, the spiritual teaching, which breaks upon the
world at each stage of its advancement, is precisely proportioned to the
receptivity of mankind at that period of its evolution. The revelation of occult
truth going on in the world just now in many ways and under various aspects-
though as I most emphatically believe, under none more unequivocally or
satisfactorily than in the case of the direct teaching of occult science I am
instrumental in bringing to public notice - is the legitimate inheritance of
this generation, and the good it may do in the world now could not have been
done only a few decades ago. It is useless to try to take a photographic picture
upon a non-sensitized plate; it is useless to present the subtle conceptions of
spiritual science to minds on which no psychic collodion has previously been
deposited. The Esoteric study in which some of us connected with the
Theosophical Society have been privileged, during the last two or three years,
to engage, has so effectually dispelled the discontent we first felt at the
jealousy that had withheld this teaching from the world so long, that we
recognise the message we are now commissioned to convey as addressed so far only
to the most highly advanced and intuitive minds of our time. We are but
beginning to put forward a doctrine which will only be appreciated in its full
significance later on.
-June 7,1884.
205.
B.
206.
It is interesting to observe that, in accordance with
predictions made to me when I began to write on these subjects, the dawn of
psychic truth has begun to brighten our sky from several directions at once. The
psychological telegraphy here referred to was quite unheard of In the world at
large in 1880. But for the last year or two the Psychic Research Society in
London has been specially engaged on a long series of experiments in what it
calls " thought transference," the phenomena of which contain the germs of the
adepts' psychic telegraph. If anyone still doubts that thought impressions
really can be conveyed from one mind to another, without the aid of speech or
any sign or communication whatever having to do with the physical senses, he is
unacquainted with the result of scientific enquiry in that direction. The
transactions of the society referred to put the broad fact just noted beyond the
reach of incredulity that can any longer be regarded as intelligent.
207.
C
208.
It is too late in the day now, when several editions of
this book have already passed through the press, to affect any reserve about
this name. But in truth I greatly regret now that I ever permitted it to become
public property. All over India the disciples of the Brothers regard their
Masters' names with the tenderest possible respect. The free and easy criticism
to which this book has naturally been subject since its first appearance has
often been associated with more or less disrespectful references to my revered
correspondent, and this has given rise to great pain on the part of the regular
chelas in India, the pupils of occult science; indeed, it is no longer necessary
to go to India in search of persons whose sensibilities are liable to be
disturbed seriously in the same way. In London a large and earnestly studious
branch of the Theosophical Society has
been formed, and long contact with the grand conceptions of Esoteric philosophy
has developed on the part of its members a sentiment of reverence for the
Mahatmas only second in intensity to that of the regular oriental initiates. It
would spare all such persons a great deal of indignant distress, if the name I
was unfortunately led to print in this work at full length had never been
disclosed. To most Western readers the matter may seem very unimportant, but
trouble and annoyance which I greatly deplore have ensued from the mistake thus
committed. As a matter of fact, I may here observe that the original manuscript
of my book , was written from end to end without the use of the name, instead of
,which I had placed a mere initial, " H", but a letter I received from India
shortly before the publication of the book authorised the use of the name, and I
felt at that time that it was absurd to be plus royaliste que le roi. So the
step came to be taken which cannot now be recalled. The name of the Mahatma here
made use of, I may explain, in conclusion of this digression.
209.
D
210.
The necessity of reprinting this work for a fourth
edition gives me an opportunity of noticing some discussion that has taken place
in the spiritualistic press on the subject of a letter addressed to Light, of
September 1st, 1883, by Mr. Henry Kiddle, an American spiritualist. The letter
was as follows:
211.
To THE EDITOR OF "LIGHT."
212.
Sir,
-In a communication that appeared in your issue of July 21st, '" G. W., M.D.,"
reviewing '" Esoteric Buddhism," says: Regarding this Koot Hoomi, it is a very
remarkable and unsatisfactory fact that Mr. Sinnett, although in correspondence
with him for years, has yet never been permitted to see him." I agree with your
corespondent entirely ; and this is not the only fact that is unsatisfactory to
me. On reading Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World," more than a year ago, I was very
greatly surprised to find in one of the letters presented by Mr. Sinnett as
having been transmitted to him by Koot Hoomi, in the mysterious manner
described, a passage taken almost verbatim from an address on Spiritualislm by
me at Lake Pleasant in August, 1880, and published the same month by the Banner
of Light. As Mr. Sinnett's book did not appear till a considerable time
afterwards (about a year, I think), it is certain that I did not quote,
consciously or unconsciously, from its pages. How, then, did it get into Koot
Hoomi's mysterious letter?
I sent to Mr. Sinnett a letter through his publishers, enclosing the printed
pages of my address, with the part used by Koot Hoomi marked upon it, and asked
for an explanation, for I wondered that so great a sage as Koot Hoomi should
need to borrow anything from so humble a student of spiritual things as myself.
As yet I have received no reply; and the query has been suggested to my mind -Is
Koot Hoomi a myth? or, if not, is he so great an adept as to have impressed my
mind with his thoughts and word while I was preparing my address?If the latter
were the case he could not consistently exclaim: '" Pereant qui ante nos nostra
dixerunt."
213.
Perhaps Mr. Sinnett may think it scarcely worth while to
solve this little problem; but the fact that the existence of the brotherhood
has not yet been proved may induce some to raise the question suggested by "G. W
., M. D". Is there any such secret order ? On this question, which is not
intended to imply anything offensive to Mr. Sinnett, that other still more
important question may depend. Is Mr. Sinnett's recently published book an
exponent of Esoteric Buddhism ? It Is, doubtless, a work of great ability, and
its statements are worthy of deep thought; but the main question is, are they
true, or how can they be verified ?' As this cannot he accomplished except by
the exercise of abnormal or transcendental faculties, they must be accepted, if
at all, upon the ipse dixtt of the accomplished adept, who has been so kind as
to sacrifice his esoteric character or vow, and make Mr. Sinnett his channel of
communication with the outer world, thus rendering his sacred knowledge
exoteric. Hence, if this publication, with its wonderful doctrine of Shells,"
overturning the consolatory conclusions of Spiritualists, is to be accepted, the
authority must he established, and the existence of the adept or adepts -indeed,
the facts of adeptship - must be proved. The first step in affording this proof
has hardly yet, I think, been taken. I trust this book will be very carefully
analysed, and the nature of its inculcations exposed, whether they are Esoteric
Buddhism or not,
The following are the passages referred to, printed side by side [ in the book,
but one after the other in this document ]- for the sake of ready reference. .
215.
Extract from Mr. Kiddle's discourse, entitled "The
Present Outlook of Spiritualism", delivered at Lake Pleasant Camp Meeting on
Sunday, August 15, 1880.
216.
"My friends, ideas rule the world; and as men's minds
receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete, the world advances. Society
rests upon them; mighty revolutions spring from them ; institutions crumble
before their onward march. It is just as impossible to resist their influx, when
the time comes, as to stay the progress of the tide.
217.
And the agency called Spiritualism is bringing a new set
of ideas into the world - ideas on the most momentous subjects,touching man's
true position in the universe; his origin and destiny; the relation of the
mortal to the immortal; of the temporary to the Eternal; of the finite to the
Infinite; of man's deathless soul to the material universes in which it now
dwells - ideas larger, more general, more comprehensive, recognising more fully
the universal reign of law as the expression of the Divine will, unchanging and
unchangeable in regard to which there is only an Eternal Now, while to mortals
time is past or future, as related to their finite existence on this material
plane; etc., etc., etc.,
218.
New York, August 11th, 1883
220.
Extract from Koot Hoomi's letter to Mr. Sinnett, in the
"Occult World", 3rd Edition, page 102. The first edition was published in June
1881.
221.
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, creeds and even powers will crumble before
their onward march, crushed by their irresistible force. It will be just as
impossible to resist their influence when the time comes as to stay the progress
of the tide. But all this will come gradually on, 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 first
to 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, recognising
the eternal reign of immutable law, unchanging and unchangeable, in regards 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,
etc., etc., etc.
222.
HENRY KIDDLE.
224.
The appearance of this letter puzzled, without very much
disturbing, the equanimity of Theosophical students. If it had been published
immediately after the first publication of the " Occult World," its effect might
have been more serious, but in the interim the Brothers had by degrees
communicated to the public through my agency such a considerable block of
philosophical teaching, then already embodied in my second book, " Esoteric
Buddhism," and scattered through two or three volumes of the Theosophist, that
appreciative readers had passed beyond the stage of development in which it
might have been possible for them to suppose that the principal author of this
teaching could at any time have been under any intellectual temptation to borrow
thoughts from a spiritualistic lecture. Various hypotheses were framed to
account for the mysterious identity between the two passages cited, and people
to whom the Theosophic teachings were unacceptable, as overthrowing conceptions
to which they were attached, were greatly enchanted to find my revered
instructor convicted, as they thought, of a commonplace plagiarism. A couple of
months necessarily elapsed before an answer could be obtained from India on the
subject, and meanwhile the " Kiddle incident," as it came to be called, was
joyfully treated by various correspondents writing in the columns of Light, as
having dealt a fatal blow at the authority of the Indian Mahatmas as "'
exponents of esoteric truth.
In due course I received a long and instructive explanation of the mystery from
Mahatma Koot Hoomi himself; but this letter reached me under the seal of the
most absolute confidence. Rigidly adhering to the policy which had all along
restrained within narrow limits the communication of their teaching to the world
at large, the Brothers remained as anxious as ever to leave everybody full
intellectual liberty to disbelieve in them, and reject their revelation if his
spiritual intuitions were not of a kind to be readily kindled. In the same way
that from the first they had refused me the overwhelming and irresistible proofs
of their power, which I had sought for in the beginning as weapons with which I
might successfully combat incredulity, they now shrank from interfering with the
conclusions of any readers who might be found capable, after the rich assurances
of the later teaching, of distrusting the Mahatmas on the strength of a
suspicion which was ill founded in reality, plausible though it might seem.
Debarred myself, however,from making any public use of the Mahatma's letter,
some of the residents and visitors at the Headquarters of the Theosophical
Society at Adyar, Madras, came into possession of the true facts of the case,
and some communications appeared in the society's magazine which afforded
everyone honestly desirous of comprehending the truth of the matter, all
necessary information. In the December number of the Theosophist, Mr. Subba Row
put forward a very cautiously worded article, hinting merely at the actual
explanation of the identity of the passages cited by Mr. KiddIe, and concerned
chiefly with an elaborate analysis of the " plagiarised" sentences, the object
of which was to show that in truth we might have divined for ourselves, if we
had been sharp enough in the beginning, that some mistake had been made, and
that the Mahatma could not have intended to write the sentences just as they
stood. The hint conveyed by Mr. Subba was as follows: -
" Therefore from a careful perusal of the passage and its contents, any unbiased
reader will come to the conclusion that somebody must have greatly blundered
over the said passage, and will not be surprised to hear that it was
unconsciously altered through the carelessness and ignorance of the chela by
whose instrumentality it was 'precipitated.' Such alterations, omissions, and
mistakes sometimes occur in the process of precipitation; and I now assert I
know it for certain, from an inspection of the original precipitation proof,
that such was the case with regard to the passage under discussion."
The same Theosophist in which this article appeared contained a letter from
General Morgan in reply to various spiritualistic attacks on the Theosophical
position, and in the course of his remarks he referred to the " Kiddle incident
" as follows :-
" Happily we have been permitted, many of us, to look behind the veil of the
parallel passage mystery, and the whole affair is very satisfactorily explained
to us; but all that we are permitted to say is that many a passage was entirely
omitted from the letter received by Mr. Sinnett, its precipitation from the
original dictation to the chela. Would our Great Master but permit us his humble
followers to photograph and publish in the Theosophist the scraps shown to us,
scraps in which whole sentences parenthetical and quotation marks are defaced
and obliterated and consequently omitted in the chela' clumsy transcription -
the public would be treated to a rare sight -something entirely unknown to
modern science- namely, an akasic impression as good as a photograph of mentally
expressed thoughts dictated from a distance."
A month or two after the appearance of these fragmentary hints, I received a
note from the Mahatma relieving me of all restrictions previously imposed on the
full letter of explanation he had previously sent me. The subject, by that time,
however, seemed to have lost its interest for all persons in England whose
opinions I valued. Within the London Theosophical Society, now already a large
and growing body, the Kiddle incident was looked on as little more than a joke,
and the notion that the Mahatma who had inspired the teachings of Esoteric
Buddhism, could have " plagiarised" from a spiritualistic lecture, as so absurd
on the face of things that no appearances seeming to endorse that conception
could have any importance. I did not feel disposed, therefore, to treat the
suspicions some critics had entertained, with the respect that would have been
involved in any appeal from me to the public to listen to what would have been
represented as a defence -and a strangely postponed defence - of the Mahatma.
225.
Now, however, that this new edition of the Occult World
II is required, there is an obvious propriety in the course I now take. The new
letter from the Mahatma constitutes in itself a correction of the letter from
which I quote on pages 101-102, and apart from the interest of the explanation
it furnishes in regard to the precipitation process, the thoughts it conveys are
in themselves valuable and suggestive.
"The letter in question," writes the Mahatma, referring to the communication I
originally received, "was framed by me while on a journey and on horseback. 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 over and correct it, I answered -imprudently, I 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 forty-eight 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. When I awoke 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. Riddle'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, I had directed my attention, some
two months previous, to the great annual camping movement of the American
Spiritualists 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 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 effected. 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 PIeasant 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. KiddIe'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 bank 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 colors drawn from that exhaustless store-house 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 change, 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 boy having done hut 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 color
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, I was
struck, upon carefully reading it, by the great discrepancy between the
sentences, a gap, so to say, of ideas between part 1 and part 2, the plagiarised
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 sceptical 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 enclose the copy verbatim from the restored fragments,
underlining in red the omitted sentences for easier comparison.
226.
" ...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 Spiritualists, with their mistaken,
grotesquely perverted views and notions, are hazily realising the new situation.
They prophecy -and their prophecies are not always without a point of truth in
them -or intuitional prevision, 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 brain of the former) is that all this will come gradually on, and that
before it comes they, as well us 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. 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 and 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 teaching of their own. Most of these ideas are taken
piecemeal 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 plagiarised, while the
missing links are precisely those phrases that would have shown the passages
were simply reminiscences, if not quotations -the keynote around which came
grouping my own reflections on that morning. 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-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. 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 have 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."
I need only add a few words of apology to Mr. Kiddle for my accidental neglect
of his original communication on this subject addressed to me in India. When his
letter above quoted appeared in Light, I had no recollection ,whatever of having
received any letter from him while in India; but within the last few months
going over, in London, and sorting papers brought back en masse from India, I
have turned up the forgotten note. While in India, and the editor of a daily
newspaper, my correspondence was such that letters requiring no immediate action
on my part would inevitably sometimes be put aside after a hasty glance, and
would unfortunately sometimes escape attention afterwards. And after the
appearance of this book, I received letters of inquiry of various kinds from all
parts of the world, which I was too often prevented by other calls on my time
from answering as I should have wished. With the tone and spirit in which Mr.
Kiddle made his very natural inquiry I have no fault to find whatever, and if
his subsequent letter to Light betrayed some disposition on his part to
construct unfavourable hypotheses on the basis of the parallel passages, even
this second letter would hardly in itself have justified some of the indignant
protests ultimately published on the other side. The spiritualists pur sang,
eager to seize on an incident which seemed to cast discredit on the Theosophical
teachings by which their views had been so seriously compromised, were
responsible for handling the 'Kiddle incident' , in such a way as to provoke the
vehement rejoinders of some Theosophical correspondents writing in the columns
of Light and elsewhere. In consideration, however, of the explanations to which
it has eventually given rise, and of the further insight thus afforded us into
some interesting details connected with the methods under which an adept's
correspondence may sometimes be conducted, the whole incident need not
altogether be regretted.
The relations with the " Occult World " that I have been fortunate enough to
establish have so greatly expanded during the few years that have elapsed since
this volume was written that I must refer my readers to my second book, "
Esoteric Buddhism," for an account of their later development. It may be worth
while, however, as directly connected with the main purpose of this earlier
narrative, to insert here some papers I wrote quite recently for submission to
Theosophical audiences in London on the main question discussed in this volume,
the existence and sources of knowledge at the command of the adepts. The
evidence on this subject has long since overshadowed in its amplitude and
completeness the preliminary testimony afforded by my own experiences in India.
I summed up some of this later evidence on one of the occasions just referred
to, as follows: -
All persons who become interested in any of the teachings which have found their
way out into the world through the intermediation of the Theosophical Society
very soon turn to the sanctions on which those teachings rest.
Now the orthodox occult reply hitherto given to inquirers as to the authenticity
of any small statements of occult science that have hitherto been put forth, has
simply been this: -" Ascertain for yourself." That is to say, lead the pure
spiritual life, cultivate the inner faculties, and by degrees these will be
awakened and developed to the extent of enabling you to probe Nature for
yourself. But that advice is not of a kind which great numbers of people have
ever been ready to take, and hence knowledge concerning the truths of occult
science has remained in the hands of a few.
A new departure has now been taken. Certain proficients in occult science have
broken through the old restrictions of their order, and have suddenly let out a
flood of statements into the world, together with some information concerning
the attributes and faculties they have themselves acquired, and by means of
which they have learned what they now tell us.
It, is very widely recognised that the teaching is interesting and coherent and
even supported by analogies, but every new inquirer in turn must ask what
assurance we can have that the persons from whom this teaching emanates are in a
position to ascertain so much. Most people, I think, would be ready to admit
that persons invested, as the Brothers of of Theosophy are said to be invested
with abnormal and extraordinary powers over Nature- even in the departments of
Nature with which we are familiar- may very probably have faculties which enable
them to obtain a deep insight into many of the generally hidden truths of
Nature. But then come the primary question, " What assurance can you give us
that there really are behind the few people who stand forward as the visible
representatives of the Theosophical Society, any such persons as the Adept
Brothers at all ? " This is an old question which is always recurring, and which
must go on recurring as long as new comers continue to approach the threshold of
the Theosophical Society. For many of us it has long been settled; for some new
inquirers the existence of psychological Adepts seems so probable that the
assurances of the leading representatives of the Society in India are readily
accepted but for others again, the existence of the Brothers must first be
established by altogether plain and unequivocal evidence before it will seem
worth while to pay attention to the report some of us make as to the specific
doctrine they teach.
I propose, therefore, to go over the evidence on this main question, which
certainly underlies any with which the Theosophical Society, so far as it is
concerned with the Indian teaching, can be engaged. Of course, I am not going to
trouble you with any repetition of particular incidents already described in
published writings. What I propose to do is briefly to review the whole case as
it now stand, very greatly enlarged and strengthened as it has been during the
last two years. The evidence, to begin with, divides itself into two kinds.
First, we have the general body of current belief, which in India goes to show
that such persons as Mahatmas or Adepts are somewhere in existence; secondly,
the specific evidence which shows that the leaders of the Theosophical Society
are in relation with, and in the confidence of, such Adepts.
As to the general body of belief, it would hardly be too much to say that the
whole mass of the sacred literature of India rests on belief in the existence of
Adepts and a very widely-spread belief, covering great areas of space and time,
can rarely be regarded as evolved from nothing -as having had no basis of fact.
But passing over the Mahabharata and the Puranas and all they tell us concerning
" Rishis or Adepts of ancient date, I may call your attention to a paper in the
Theosophist of May 1882, on some relatively modern popular Indian books,
recounting the lives of various " Sadhus," another word for saint, yogee, or
Adept, who have lived within the last thousand years. In this article a list is
given of over seventy such persons, whose memory is enshrined in a number of
Marathi book", where the miracles they are said to have wrought are recorded.
The historical value of their narratives may, of course, be disputed. I mention
them merely as illustrations of the fact that belief in the persons having the
power now ascribed to the Brothers is no new thing in India. And next we have
the testimony of many modern writers concerning the very remarkable occult feats
of Indian yogees and fakirs. Such people, of course, are immeasurably below the
psychological rank of those whom we speak of as Brothers, but the faculties they
possess, sometimes, will be enough to convince anyone who studies the evidence
concerning them that living men can acquire powers and faculties commonly
regarded as superhuman.
In Jaccolliot's books about his experiences in Benares and elsewhere, this
subject is fully dealt with, and some facts connected with it have even forced
their way into Anglo-Indian official records. The Report of an English resident
at the court of Runjeet Singh describes how he was present at the burial of a
yogee who was shut up in a vault, by his own consent, for a considerable period
-six weeks, I think, but I have not got the report at hand just now to quote in
detail- and emerged alive, at the end of that time, which he had spent in
Samadhi or trance. Such a man would, of course be an " Adept " of a very
inferior type, but the record of his achievements has the advantage of being
very well authenticated as far as it goes. Again, up to within a few years ago,
a very highly spiritualized ascetic and gifted seer was living at Agra, where he
taught a group of disciples, and by their own statement has frequently
reappeared amongst them since his death. This event itself was an effort of will
accomplished at an appointed time. I have heard a good deal about him from one
of his principal followers, a cultivated and highly respected native Government
official, now living at Allahabad. His existence, and the fact that he possessed
great psychological gifts, are quite beyond question.
Thus, in India, the fact that there are such people in the world as Adepts is
hardly regarded as open to dispute. Most of those, of course, concerning whom
one can obtain definite information, turn out on inquiry to be yogees of the
inferior type, men who have trained their inner faculties to the extent of
possessing various abnormal powers, and even insight into spiritual truths.' But
none the less do all inquiries after Adepts superior to them in attainments
provoke the reply that certainly there are such, though they live in complete
seclusion, The general vague, indefinite belief, in fact, paves the way to the
inquiry with which we are more immediately concerned -whether the leaders of the
Theosophical Society are really in relation with some of the higher Adepts who
do not habitually live amongst the community at large, nor make known the fact
of their adeptship to any but their own regularly accepted pupils.
~Now the evidence n this point divides itself as follows:
227.
First, We have the primary evidence of witnesses who
have personally seen certain of these Adepts, both in the flesh and out of the
flesh, who have seen their powers exercised, and who have obtained certain
knowledge as to their existence and attributes.
228.
Secondly. The evidence of those who have seen them in
the astral form, identifying them in various ways with the living men others
have seen.
229.
Thirdly. The testimony of those who have acquired
circumstantial evidence as to their existence.
230.
Foremost among the witnesses of the first group stand
Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott themselves. For those who see reason to
trust Madame Blavatsky , her testimony is, of course ample and precise, and
altogether satisfactory. She has lived among the Adepts for many years. She has
been in almost daily communication with them ever since. She has returned to
them, and they have visited her in their natural bodies on several occasions
since she emerged from Tibet after her own initiation. There is an intermediate
alternative between the conclusion that her statements concerning the Brothers
are broadly true, and the conclusion that she is what some American enemies have
called her, " the champion impostor of the age." I am aware of the theory which
some Spiritualists entertain to the effect that she may be a medium controlled
by spirits whom she mistakes for living men, but this theory can only be held by
people who are quite inattentive to nine-tenths of the statements she makes, not
to speak yet of the testimony of others. How can she have lived under the roof
of certain persons in Tibet for seven years and more, seeing them and their
friends and relation" going about the business of their daily lives, instructing
her by slow degrees in the vast science to which she is devoted, and be in any
doubt as to whether they are living men or spirits. The conjecture is absurd.
She is either speaking falsely when she tells us that she has so lived among
them, or the Adepts who taught her are living men. The Spiritualists hypothesis
about her supposed "controls " is built upon the statement she makes, that the
Adepts appear to her in the astral form when she is at a distance from them. If
they had never appeared to her in any other form there would be room to argue
the matter from the Spiritualists' point of view, or there might be, but for
other circumstances again. But her astral visitors are identical in all respects
with the men she has lived and studied amongst, At intervals, as I have said,
she has been enabled to go back again and see them in the flesh. Her astral
communication with them merely fills up the gap of her personal intercourse with
them, which has extended over a long series of years. Her veracity may of course
be challenged, though I think it can be shown that it is most unreasonable to
challenge this, but we might as reasonably doubt the living reality of our
nearest relations, of the people we live amongst most intimately, as suppose
that Madame Blavatsky can be herself mistaken in describing the Brothers as
living men. Either she must be right, or has consciously been weaving an
enormous network of falsehood in all her writings, acts, and conversations for
the last eight or nine years And the plea that she may be a loose talker and
given to exaggeration will no more meet the difficulty than the Spiritualists'
hypothesis. Pare away as much as you like from the details of Madame Blavatsky's
statement on account of possible exaggeration, and that which remains is a great
solid block of residual statement which must be either true, or a structure of
conscious falsehood. And even if Madame Blavatsky's testimony stood alone, we
should have the wonderful fact of her self-sacrifice in the cause of Theosophy
to make the hypothesis of her being a conscious impostor one of the most
extravagant that could be entertained. At first, when we in India who specially
became her friends pointed this out, people said, "But how do you know that she
had anything to sacrifice? she may have been an adventurer from the beginning."
We proved this conjecture as I have fully explained in my preface to the second
edition of the "Occult World", and from some of the foremost people in Russia,
her relations and affectionate friends, came abundant assurances of her personal
identity. If she had not given up her life to Occultism she might have spent it
in luxury among her own people, and in fact as a member of the aristocratic
class.
231.
Difficult as the hypothesis of her imposture thus
becomes, we next find it in flagrant incompatibility with all the facts of
Colonel Olcott's life. As undeniably as in the case of Madame Blavatsky, he has
forsaken a life of worldly prosperity to lead the theosophical life, under
circumstances of great physical self-denial, in India. And he also tells us that
he has seen the Brothers, both in the flesh and in the astral form. By a long
series of the most astounding thaumaturgic displays when he was first introduced
to the subject in America, he was made acquainted with their powers. He has been
visited at Bombay by the living man, his own special master, with whom he had
first become acquainted by seeing him in the astral form in America. His life,
for years, has been surrounded with the abnormal occurrences which Spiritualists
again will sometimes conjecture - so wildly - to be Spiritualism, but which all
hinge on to that continuous chain of relationship with the Brothers, which for
Colonel Olcott has been partly a matter of occult phenomena, and partly a matter
of waking intercourse between man and man. Again, in reference to Colonel
Olcott, as in reference to Madame Blavatsky, I assert, fearlessly, that there is
no compromises possible between the extravagant assumption that he is
consciously lying in all he says about the Brothers, and the assumption that
what he says establishes the existence of the Brothers as a broad fact, for
remember that Colonel Olcott has now been a co-worker of Madame Blavatsky's and
in constant intimate association with her for eight years. The notion the she
has been able to deceive him all this while by fraudulent tricks, apart from its
monstrosity in other ways, is too unreasonable to be entertained. Colonel
Olcott, at all events, knows whether Madame Blavatsky is fraudulent or genuine,
and he has given up his whole life to the service of the cause she represents in
testimony of his conviction that she is genuine. Again the spiritualistic
hypothesis comes into play. Madame Blavatsky may be a medium whose presence
surrounds Colonel Olcott with phenomena ; but then she is herself deceived by
astral influences as to the true nature of the Brothers who are the head and
front of the whole phenomenal display, and we have a!ready seen reason, I think,
to reject that hypothesis as absurd. There is logical escape from the conclusion
that things are broadly as she and Colonel Olcott say, or they are both
conscious impostors, rival champions of the age in this respect, both
sacrificing everything that worldly-minded people live for, to revel in this
lifelong imposture which brings them nothing but hard living and hard words.
But the case for the authenticity of their statement, far from ending here, may
in one sense be said to begin here. Our native Indian witnesses now come to the
front. First, Damodar of whom the well known writer of " Hints on Esoteric
Theosophy speaks as follows in that pamphlet:-
" You specially in a former letter referred to Damodar, and you asked how it
could be believed that the Brothers would waste time with a half-educated slip
of a boy like him, and yet absolutely refuse to visit and convince men
like------ and ------, Europeans of the highest education and marked abilities.
But do you know that this slip of a boy has deliberately given up high caste,
family and friends, and an ample fortune, all in pursuit of the truth. That be
has for years lived that pure, unworldly self-denying life which we are told is
essential to direct intercourse with the Brothers? 'Oh, a monomaniac,' you say ;
'of course he sees anything and everything. But do not you see whither this
leads you ? Men who do not lead the life do not obtain direct proof of the
existence of the Brothers. A man does lead the life and avers that he has
obtained such proof, and you straightaway call him a monomaniac, and refuse his
testimony,.... quite a " heads I win, tails you lose,' sort of position."
Damodar has seen some of the Brothers visit the headquarters of the Society in
the flesh. He has repeatedly been visited by them in the astral shape. He has
himself gone through certain initiations; he has acquired very considerable
powers, for he has been rapidly developed as regards these, expressly that he
might be an additional link of connection, independently of Madame Blavatsky,
between the Brothers, his masters, and the Theosophical Society. The whole life
be leads is impressive testimony to the fact that he also knows the reality of
the Brothers. On another hypothesis we must include Damodar in the conscious
imposture supposed to be carried on by Madame Blavatsky, for he has been her
intimate associate and devoted assistant, sharing her meals, doing her work,
living under her roof at Bombay for several years.
Shall we, then, rather than believe in the Brothers accept the hypothesis that
Madame Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott, and Damodar are a band of conscious impostors?
In that case Ramaswamy has to he accounted for. Ramaswamy is a very respectable,
educated, English-speaking native of Southern India, in government service as a
registrar of a court in Tinnevelly, I believe. I have met him several times.
First, to indicate the course of his experience in a few words, -he sees the
astral form of Madame Blavatsky's Guru, at Bombay; then he gets clairaudient
communication with him,while many hundred miles away from all the Theosophists,
at his own home in the South of India. Then he travels in obedience to that
voice to Darjeeling; then be plunges wildly into the Sikkim jungles in search of
the Guru, whom he has reason to believe in that neighbourhood, and after various
adventures meets him, -the same man be has seen before in astral shape, the same
man whose portrait Colonel Olcott has, and whom be has seen, the living speaker
of the voice that has been leading him on from Southern India- He has a long
interview with him, a waking, open-air, daylight interview,with a living man,
and returns his devoted chela, as he is at this moment, and assuredly ever will
be. Yet his master, who called him from Tinnevelly and received him in Sikkim,
is of those who on the spiritualistic hypothesis are Madame Blavatsky's spirit
controls.
232.
Two more witnesses who personally know the Brothers next
come to me at Simla, in the persons of two regular chelas who have been sent
across the mountains on some business, and are ordered en passant to visit me
and tell me about their master, my Adept correspondent. These men had just come,
when I first saw them, from living with the Adepts. One of them, Dhabagiri Nath,
visited me several days running, talked to me for hours about Koot Hoomi- with
whom he had been living for ten years, and impressed me and one or two others
who saw him as a very earnest, devoted, and trustworthy person. Later on, during
his visit to India, he was associated with many striking occult phenomena
directed to the satisfaction of native inquirers. He, of course, must be a false
witness, invented to prop up Madame Blavatsky's vast imposture, if he is
anything else than the chela of Koot Hoomi that he declares himself to be.
233.
Another native, Mohini, soon after this, begins to get
direct communication from Koot Hoomi independently altogether of Madame
Blavatsky, and when hundreds of miles away from her. He also becomes a devoted
adherent to the Theosophical cause; but Mohini must, as far as I am aware, be
ranked in the second group of our witnesses, those who have had personal astral
communication with the Brothers, but have not yet seen them in the flesh.
234.
Bhavani Rao, a young native candidate for chelaship, who
came once in company with Colonel Olcott, but at a time when Madame Blavatsky
was in another part of India, to see me at Allahabad, and spent two nights under
our roof there, is another witness who has had independent communication with
Koot Hoomi, and more than that, who is able himself to act as a link of
communication between Koot Hoomi and the outer world, For during the visit I
speak of, he was enabled to pass a letter of mine to the master, to receive back
his reply, to get off a second note of mine, and to receive back a little note
of a few words in reply again. I do not mean that he did all this of his own
power, but that his magnetism was such as to enable Koot Hoomi to do it through
him. The experience is valuable because it affords a striking illustration of
the fact that Madame Blavatsky is not an essential intermediary in the
correspondence between myself and my revered friend. Other illustrations are
afforded by the frequent passage of letters between Koot Hoomi and myself
through the mediation of Damodar at Bombay, at a time when both Madame Blavatsky
and Colonel Olcott were away at Madras, travelling about on a Theosophical tour,
in the course of which their presence at various places was constantly mentioned
in the local papers, I was at AIlahabad, and I used, during that time, to send
my letters for Koot Hoomi to Damodar at Bombay, and occasionally receive replies
so promptly that it would have been impossible for these to have been furnished
by Madame Blavatsky, then four or more days further from me in the course of
post than Bombay.
In this way, my very voluminous correspondence is, demonstrably as regards
portions of it, and therefore by irresistible inference as regards the whole,
not the work of Madame Blavatsky, or Colonel Olcott, which, if the Brothers are
not a reality, it must be, The correspondence is visible on paper, a
considerable mass of it, How has it come into existence; reaching me at
different places and times, and in different countries, and through different
people? I do not quite understand what hypotheses can be framed by a nonbeliever
in the Brothers about my correspondence. I can think of none which are not at
once negatived by some of the facts about It.
235.
It would be useless to copy out from statements that
from time to time have been published in the Theosophist the names of native
witnesses who have seen the astral forms of the Brothers -spectral shapes which
they were informed were such- about the headquarters of the Society at Bombay.
Quite a cloud of witnesses would testify to such experiences, and I myself, I
may add, saw such an appearance on one occasion at the Society's present
headquarters in Madras. But, of course, it might be suggested of such
appearances that they were spiritualistic. On the other hand, in that case the
argument travels back to the considerations already pointed out, which show that
the occult phenomena surrounding Madame Blavatsky cannot be Spiritualism. They
can be, in fact, nothing but what we who know her intimately and are now closely
identified with the Society believe them to be with all conviction- viz.,
manifestations of the abnormal psychological powers of those whom we speak of as
the Brothers.
236.
As I write, Colonel Olcott and Mr. Mohini Mohun
Chatterjee, mentioned above, are in London on a short visit, and many people
have heard from their own lips the verification of what I have here stated- as
far as it concerns them-and a great deal more besides. For during his recent
tour in Northern India, Colonel Olcott had an opportunity of meeting the Mahatma
Koot Hoomi personally in the flesh, and thus identifying his previous "astral "
visitor. At the same time that this meeting took place, Mr. W. T. Brown, a young
Scotchman who has recently become a devoted adherent to the Theosophical cause,
also saw the Mahatma, and Mr. Lane Fox, who has gone out to India to follow up
the clue afforded by the Theosophical Society, has been in receipt in India, by
abnormal methods, of correspondence from Koot Hoomi, while Madame Blavatsky and
Colonel Olcott have been in Europe. Taking into account, in fact, over and above
the evidence collected in these pages, the abundant information connected with
the adepts which has latterly been poured out through the pages of the
Theosophist, the magazine of the Theosophical Society now published at Madras,
the argument in the form in which it is here presented is really out of date.
Anyone who may still think with Mr. Kiddle, if he remains of the opinion
expressed in his letter to Light, that the allegations of my book concerning the
existence of the adepts and the facts of adeptship still remain to be proved,
must be inaccessible to the force of reason, or still unacquainted with the
literature of the subject.
The second of the papers I wish to insert here, read like the first to a meeting
of the Theosophists in London, dealt with the considerations which, after the
existence of the Brothers is established, lead us to put confidence in the
teaching they convey to us in regard to the origin and destinies of man and the
whole problem of Nature. It is as follows: -
Many people who approach the consideration of occult philosophy are inclined to
lay great emphasis on the difference between believing in the existence of those
whom we call "the Brothers," and believing in the vast and complicated body of
teaching which has now been accumulated by their recent pupils. I think it can
really be shown that there is no halting place at which a man who sets out on
this enquiry can rationally pause and say, '" Thus far will I go, and no
farther". The chain of considerations which will lead anyone who has once
realised the existence of the Adepts to feel sure that there can be no great
error in a conception of nature obtained with their help, consists of many
links, but is really unbroken in its continuity, and equally capable of bearing
a strain at any point.
It consists of many links, partly because no one at present among those who are
in our position as students- who are living, that is to say, an ordinary worldly
life all the while that they are intellectually studying Occultism -can ever
obtain in his own person a complete knowledge of the Adepts. He cannot, that is
to say, come to know of his own personal knowledge all about even any one Adept.
The full elucidation of this difficulty leads to a proper comprehension of the
principle on which the Adepts shroud themselves in a partial seclusion, a
seclusion which has only become partial within a very recent period, and was so
complete until then that the world at large was hardly aware of the existence of
any esoteric knowledge from which it could be shut out. This is a matter that is
all the more important because experience has shown how the world at large has
been quick to take offence at the hesitating and imperfect manner in which the
Adepts have hitherto dealt with those who have sought spiritual instruction at
their hands. Judging the occult policy pursued by comparison with inquiries on
the plane of physical knowledge, the impatience of inquirers is very natural,
but none the less does even a limited acquaintance with the conditions of mystic
research show the occult policy to be reasonable likewise.
237.
Of course, everyone will admit that Adepts are justified
in exercising great caution in regard to communicating any peculiar scientific
knowledge which would put what are commonly called magical powers within the
reach of persons not morally qualified for their exercise. But the
considerations that prescribe this caution do not seem to operate also in
reference to the communication of knowledge concerning the spiritual progress of
man or the grander processes of evolution. And in truth the Adepts have come to
that very conclusion; they have undertaken the communication to the general
public of their safe theoretical knowledge, and the effort they are making
merely hangs fire, or may seem to do so to some observers, by reason of the
magnitude of the task in hand, and the novel aspect it wears, as well for the
teachers as for the students. For remember, if there has been that change of
policy on the part of the Adepts to which I have just referred, it has been a
change of such recent origin that it may almost be described as only just coming
on. And if the question be then asked, Why has this safe theoretical knowledge
not been communicated sooner, it seems reasonable to find a reply to that
question in the actual state of the intellectual world around us at this moment.
The freedom of thought of which English writers often boast is not very widely
diffused over the world as yet; and hardly, at all events, in any generation
before this, could the free promulgation of quite revolutionary tenets in
religious matters have been safely undertaken in any country. Communities in
which such an undertaking would still be fraught with peril are even now more
numerous than those in which it could be set on foot with any practical
advantage. One can thus readily understand how in the occult world the question
has been one of debate up to our own time, whether it was desirable as yet to
promote the dissemination of esoteric philosophy in the world at large at the
risk of provoking the acrimonious controversies, and even more serious
disturbances, liable to arise from the premature disclosure of truths which only
a small minority would really be ready to accept. Keeping this in view, the
mystery of the Adepts' reserve, up till recently, can hardly be thought so
astounding as to drive us on violent alternative hypotheses at variance with all
the plain evidence concerning their present action. There is manifest reason why
they should be careful in launching a body of newly-won disciples on to their
general stream of human progress; and added to this, the force of their own
training is such as to make them habitually cautious to a far greater extent
than the utmost prudence of ordinary life would render ordinary men. "But," it
will be argued, " granting all this, but assuming, that at last some of the
Adepts, at all events, have come to the conclusion that some of their knowledge
is ripe for presentation to the world, why do they not present as much as they
do present, under guarantees of a more striking, irresistible, and conclusive
kind than those which have actually been furnished ? " I think the answer may be
easily drawn from the consideration of the way in which it would be natural to
expect that a change of policy amongst the Adepts in a matter of this kind would
gradually be introduced. By the hypothesis we conceive them but just coming to
the conclusion that it is desirable to teach mankind at large some portions of
that spiritual science hitherto conveyed exclusively to those who give
tremendous pledges in justification of their claim to acquire it. They will
naturally advance, in dealing with the world at large, along the same lines they
have learned to trust in dealing with aspirants for regular initiation. Never in
the history of the world have they sought out such aspirants, courted them or
advertised for them in any way whatever. It has been found an invariable law of
human progress that some small percentage of mankind will always come into the
world invested by Nature with some of the attributes proper to adeptship, and
with minds so constituted as to catch conviction as to the possibilities of the
occult life, from the least little sparks of evidence on the subject that may be
floating about. Of persons so constituted some have always been found to press
forward into the ranks of chelaship, to resort, that is to say, to any devices
or opportunities that circumstances may afford them for fathoming occult
knowledge. When thus besieged by the aspirant the Adept has always, sooner or
later, disclosed himself. The change of policy now introduced prescribes that
the Adept shall make one step towards the disclosure of himself in advance of
the aspirant's demand upon him, but we can easily understand how the Adept, in
first making this change, would argue that if many chelas have hitherto come
forward in the absence of any spontaneous action from his side, it might be that
an almost dangerous rush of ill qualified aspirants would be invited by any
manifestation from him that should be more than a very slight one. At any rate,
the Adept would say it would be premature to begin by too sensational a display
of faculties inherent in advanced spiritual knowledge with which the world at
large is as yet unfamiliar. It will be better at first to make such an offer as
will only be calculated to inflame the imagination of persons only one step
removed beyond those whose natural instincts would lead them into the occult
life. This appears actually to have been the reasoning on which the Adepts have
proceeded so far, and this may help us to understand how it is that, as I began
by saying, no one person amongst those outer students, who have been called
lay-chelas, has yet been enabled to say that of his own personal knowledge he
knows all about any of the Adepts.
On the other hand, putting together the various scattered revelations concerning
the Brothers which have been distributed amongst various people in India
belonging to the Theosophical Society, so much can be learned about the Adepts
as to put us in a very strong position in regard to estimating their
qualifications for speaking with confidence as they do about the actual facts of
Nature on the superphysical plane. These scattered revelations -if my reasoning
in what has gone before may be accepted -have been broken up and thrown about in
fragments designedly, in order that as yet it should only be possible to arrive
at a full conviction concerning Adeptship after a certain amount of trouble
spent in piecing together the disjointed proofs. But when this process is
accomplished we are provided with a certain block of knowledge concerning the
Adepts, out of which large inferences must necessarily grow. We find, to begin
with, that they do unequivocally possess the power of cognizing event and facts
on the physical plane of knowledge with which we are familiar, by other means
than those connected with the five senses. We find also that they unequivocally
possess the power of emerging from their proper bodies and appearing at distant
places in more or less ethereal counterparts thereof which are not only agencies
for producing impressions on others but habitations for the time being of the
Adepts' own thinking principles, and thus in themselves, if the proof went no
further, demonstration of the fact that a human soul is something quite
independent of brain matter and nerve centres. I do not stop now to enumerate
instances. The record of evidence must be dissociated from its manipulation in
arguments like the present, but the records are abundant and accessible for all
who will take the trouble of examining them. Now, if we know that the Adept's
soul can pass at his own discretion into that state in which its perceptive
faculties are independent of corporeal machinery, it is not surprising that he
should be enabled to make, of his own knowledge, a great many statements
concerning processes of Nature, reaching far beyond any knowledge that can be
obtained by mere physical observation. Take for example, the Adepts' statement
that certain other planets besides this earth, are concerned with the growth of
the great crop of humanity of which we form a part. This is not advanced as a
conjecture or inference. The Adepts tell us that once out of the body they find
they can cognize events on some other planets as well as in distant parts of our
own. This is not the exceptional belief of an exceptional!y organised
individual, who may be regarded by doubters as hallucinated; there is no room
for doubting the fact that it is the concurrent testimony' of a considerable
body of men engaged in the constant experimental exercise of similar faculties.
In this way the fact becomes as much a fact of true science, as the fact that
the great nebula Orion, for instance, exhibits a gaseous spectrum, and is
therefore a true nebula. All of us who have star spectroscope can ascertain that
fact for ourselves, if we make use of a clear night when the conditions of
observation are possible. To doubt it, would not be to show greater caution than
is exercised by those who believe it, but merely an imperfect appreciation of
the evidence. It is true that in regard to the condition of the other planets
our acceptance of the Adepts' statement must be governed by our impressions
concerning the bona fides of their intention in telling us that they have made
such and such observations. So far it is a matter of inference with us whether
the Adepts are saying what they believe to be true-when they speak of the
septenary chain of planets to which the earth belongs -or consciously deluding
us with a rigmarole of statements which they know to be false. I think it can be
shown in a variety of ways, that the latter supposition is absurd. But an
exhaustive examination of its absurdity would be a considerable task in itself.
For the moment the position I am endeavouring to establish is one which does not
depend upon the question whether the Adepts are telling us, in reference to the
planets, what they know to be true, or something which they know to be untrue.
My present position is that at all events the Adepts themselves know what is
true In the matter, and that position, it will be observed, is not vitiated by
the fact that, as yet, we, their most recent pupils, are unable to follow In
their footsteps and repeat the experiments on which their teaching rests.
The same train of reasoning may be applied to the whole body of teaching which
the Theosophical Society is now concerned in endeavouring to assimilate. As
offered now to the uninitiated world, it can only take the form of a set of
statement on authority. And that sort of statement is not one which is most
agreeable to our methods or to the Adepts' habitual methods of teaching. For
there is no chemical laboratory in England where the system of teaching Is more
rigidly confined to the direction of the learner's own experiments, than that
same system is adopted with occult chelas following the regular course of
initiation. Step by step, as the regular chela is told that such and such is the
fact in regard to the inner mysteries of Nature, he is shown how to apply his
own developing faculties to the direct observation of such facts, But those
developing faculties carry with them, as pointed out a while ago, fresh powers
over Nature which can only be entrusted to those from whom the Adepts take the
recognised pledges. In teaching outsiders as they are trying to do now, the
Adepts must depart from their own habitual methods,- we must depart, if we wish
to understand what they are willing to teach, from our habitual methods of
inquiry. We must suspend our usual demand for proof of each statement made, in
turn as it is advanced. We must rest our provisional trust in each statement on
our broad general conviction which can be satisfied along familiar lines of
demonstration, -that such men as the Adepts certainly exist, even though we
cannot visit them at pleasure, that they must understand an enormous block of
Nature's laws outside the range of those which the physical senses cognize, that
in any statement they make to us they must be in a position to know absolutely
whether that statement is or is not true.
238.
This much fully realised-, the truth is that each
inquirer in turn becomes satisfied, pari passu with his realisation of the case
so far, that reason revolts against the notion that the Adepts can be engaged in
their present attempt to convey some of their own knowledge to the world at
large in any other than the purest good faith. It may be concluded that we who
have come to the conclusion that their teaching is altogether to be accepted,
are rearing a large inverted pyramid upon a small base. But the logical strength
of our position is not impaired by this objection. In every branch of human
knowledge, inferences far transcend the observed facts out of which they grow.
And even in the most exact science of all, a theorem is held to be proved if any
alternative hypothesis is found, on examination to be irrational. Moreover, the
doctrine even of legal testimony recognises the value of secondary evidence
where in the nature of the case It is impossible that primary evidence can be
forthcoming. That is exactly the state of the case in regard to the present
attempt to bridge the gulf that separates the school of physical research from
the from the school of spiritual knowledge. As long as we of this side were
justified in doubting whether there was anywhere on earth such a thing as a
school of spiritual knowledge, it may have been hardly worth while to worry
ourselves with the stray fragments of its teaching which now and then broke
loose in barely intelligible shapes. But to doubt the existence of such a school
now is equivalent, really to doubting the statement about the nebula in Orion,
according to the illustration I adduced just now. It can only arise from
inattention to the facts of the whole case as these now stand, -from reluctance
to take that trouble to examine these thoroughly, which still, as a sort of
hedge, separates the Theosophical Society from the general community in the
midst of which it is planted. Regarded in the light of an occult barrier, -as an
obstacle which corresponds, in the case of the lay-chela to the really serious
ordeals which have to be crossed by the regular chela, - the necessity of taking
this trouble can hardly be regarded as a hedge that it is difficult to traverse.
And on the other side there lies a wealth of information concerning the
mysteries of Nature which clearly lights up vast regions of the past and future
hitherto shrouded in total darkness for critical intelligences, and the prey for
others of untrustworthy conjecture. For those who once thoroughly go into the
matter, and obtain a complete mastery over all the considerations I have put
forward, -who thus obtain full conviction the Brothers certainly exist, that
they must be acquainted with the actual facts about Nature behind and beyond
this life, that they are now ready to convey a considerable block of their
knowledge to us, and that it is ridiculous to distrust their bona fides in doing
this, -for all such true Theosophists of the Theosophical Society, nothing, at
present, connected with spiritual success is comparable in importance with the
study of the vast doctrine now in process of delivery Into our hands.
---------------------------