PREFACE
TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
INTRODUCTION
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
II
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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.
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."
III
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.
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.
OCCULTISM
AND THE ADEPTS
I
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
II
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.
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.
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.
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.
THE THEOSOPHICAL
SOCIETY
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
FIRST
OCCULT EXPERIENCES
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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-
"
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.
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.
"
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
"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ;-
"Sir,
-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.
ALICE
GORDON
"Sir,
-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."
" 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.
" CHARLES FRANCIS MASSY."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"
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.........
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."
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.
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 :-
"
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.
"
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.
-----."
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:-
"
This gentleman also has done me the great honour to address me by name, offering
to me a few
questions, and stating the conditions upon which he would be willing to work
for us seriously. But your motives and aspirations being of diametrically
opposite character, and hence leading to different results, I must reply to
each of you separately. "
'The
first and chief consideration in determining us to accept or reject your offer
lies in the inner motive which propels you to seek our 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.
"
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...
"
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.
"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.
"
Is any of you so eager for knowledge and the beneficent powers it confers,
as to be ready to leave your world and come into ours? Then let him come,
but he must not think to return until the seal of the mysteries has locked
his lips even against the chances of his own weakness or indiscretion. Let
him come by all means as the pupil to the master, and without conditions,
or let him wait, as so many others have, and be satisfied with such crumbs
of knowledge as may fall in his way.
"
And supposing you were thus to come, as two of your own countrymen have already-as
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.
"
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.
"
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...."
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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
:
"
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 ."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"
........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."
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.
" 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.
" 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.....
" 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.
" 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 ?
" 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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
" ..........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?
" 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."
In another letter
Koot Hoomi expatiates more fully on the difficulty of making occult explanations
intelligible to minds trained only in modern science.
" 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."
The following passage
occurs in another letter, but it adheres naturally enough to the extract just
concluded.
" 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."
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.
" 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."
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
:-
" 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-
'.,; 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."
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 :-
" 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."
TEACHINGS
OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY
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.
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.
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.
" 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.
" 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."
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.
LATER
OCCULT PHENOMENA
[ 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.
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.
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.
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.
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-
"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. ..
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
APPENDIX
A
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.
B.
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.
C
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.
D
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:
To THE EDITOR OF "LIGHT."
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."
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. .
Extract
from Mr. Kiddle's discourse, entitled "The Present Outlook of Spiritualism",
delivered at Lake Pleasant Camp Meeting on Sunday, August 15, 1880.
"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.
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.,
New
York, August 11th, 1883
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.
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.
HENRY
KIDDLE.
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.
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.
" ...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: