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The
Occult World
By
Alfred
Percy Sinnett
Theosophy Wales are pleased
to present this
Tour
de Force of esoteric writing.
The
Occult World is an treatise on the Occult and Occult Phenomena, presented in
readable style,
by
an early giant of the Theosophical Movement.
Alfred
Percy Sinnett and his wife Patience were personally invited to join the
Theosophical
Society
by the founder of modern Theosophy,
Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky herself
Theosophists nowadays hesitate to use the
word “Occult” as it has been kicked around, adapted
and reworked to suit many purposes and
contexts.
A P Sinnett uses the word to describe the
study
of a deeper spiritual reality that extends
beyond
rigid rational thinking and the accepted
boundaries of the physical sciences.
The Occult
World
By
A P Sinnett
Chapter 3
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
" 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 '
" 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
A miracle for
all the science of
The next
letter- the third long one-that I received from the Mahatma, reached me shortly
after my return for the cold weather to
But I received one
communication from him- a telegram -before its arrival, on the day of my own
return to
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 "
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
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
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
" 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
" 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
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
" 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
" 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
" 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-
'Since
there is hope for man only in man,
I would not let one cry whom I could save. '
Yet I confess
that I individually am not yet exempt from some of the terrestrial attachments.
I am still attracted toward some men more than towards others, and philanthropy
as preached by our great Patron
"...................The Saviour of the world,
The teacher of Nirvana and the Law
'.,; has never
killed in me either individual preferences of friendship, love for my next of
kin, or the ardent feeling of patriotism for the country in which I was last
materially 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."
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What is Theosophy ? Theosophy Defined (More Detail)
Three Fundamental Propositions Key Concepts of Theosophy
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Quotes from
the Writings of
Helena
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The Secret
Doctrine , Volume 2, Page 100
It is only by the
attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites — Spirit and Matter — can be cemented together on
Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self-conscious experience and suffering, find
themselves wedded in Eternity.
The Secret
Doctrine , Volume 2, Page 108
It is the motive, and
the motive alone, which makes any exercise of power become black, malignant, or white, beneficent Magic. It is
impossible to employ spiritual forces if there is the slightest tinge of
selfishness remaining in the operator .... The powers and forces of animal
nature can equally be used by the selfish and revengeful, as by the unselfish
and the all-forgiving; the powers and forces of spirit lend themselves only to
the perfectly pure in heart — and this is Divine Magic.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, Page 36
The Secret
Doctrine , Volume 3, Page 14
Even ignorance
is better than Head-learning with no Soul-wisdom to illuminate and guide it.
The
Voice of the Silence, Page 43
Annotation - The
Path, May, 1888
The Secret
Doctrine , Proem [Volume 1], Page 35
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, Page 210
The Secret
Doctrine , Volume 1, Page 134
Oaths will never be binding till each man will fully understand that
humanity is the highest manifestation on earth of the Unseen Supreme Deity, and
each man anincarnation of
his God; and when the sense of personal responsibility will be so developed in him
that he will consider forswearing the greatest possible insult to himself, as
well as to humanity. No oath is now binding, unless taken by one who, without
any oath at all, would solemnly keep his simple promise of honour.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 2, Page 374
It is the motive, and the motive alone, which makes any exercise of power
become black,
malignant, or white, beneficent Magic. It is impossible to employ spiritual
forces if there is the slightest tinge of selfishness remaining in the operator
.... The powers and forces of animal nature can equally be used by the selfish
and revengeful, as by the unselfish and the all-forgiving; the powers and
forces of spirit lend themselves only to the perfectly pure in heart — and this
is Divine Magic.
The Secret
Doctrine , Volume 2, Page 498
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, Page 36
From strength to strength, from the beauty and perfection of one plane to
the greater beauty
and perfection of another, with accessions of new glory, of fresh knowledge and
power in each cycle, such is the destiny of every Ego, which thus becomes its own
saviour in each world and incarnation.
The Key to
Theosophy, Page 105
The Secret
Doctrine , Volume 1, Page 69
The mind receives indelible impressions even from chance acquaintance or
persons encountered but
once. As a few seconds' exposure of the sensitized photographic plate is all
that is requisite to preserve indefinitely the image of the sitter, so is it
with the mind.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, Page 311
The Key to Theosophy, Page 228
An Outstanding
Introduction to Theosophy
By a student of
Katherine Tingley
Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man? Body and Soul
Body, Soul and Spirit Reincarnation Karma
What Theosophy Is From the Absolute to Man
The Formation of a Solar System The Evolution of Life
The Constitution of Man After Death Reincarnation
The Purpose of Life The Planetary Chains
The Result of Theosophical Study
An
Outline of Theosophy
Charles
Webster Leadbeater
Theosophy - What it is How is it Known? The Method of Observation
General Principles The Three Great Truths The Deity
Advantage Gained from this
Knowledge The Divine Scheme
The Constitution of Man The True Man Reincarnation
The Wider Outlook Death Man’s Past and Future
Cause and Effect What Theosophy does for us
__________________
The
Theosophy
The Theosophy Cardiff Guide to
The Theosophy Cardiff Guide to
The Theosophy Cardiff Guide to
The Terraced Maze of Glastonbury Tor
Glastonbury and
Joseph of Arimathea
The Grave of King Arthur & Guinevere
Views of Glastonbury High Street
The Theosophy Cardiff Guide to
__________________
Camberley,
Surrey, England GU15 2LF
Concerns about the fate of the
wildlife as
Tekels Park is to
be Sold to a Developer
Concerns are raised
about the fate of the
wildlife as The Spiritual Retreat,
Tekels Park in
Camberley, Surrey,
England is to be
sold to a developer.
Tekels Park is a 50
acre woodland park,
purchased for the Adyar Theosophical
In addition to
concern about the park,
many are worried about the future
of the Tekels Park
Deer as they
Confusion as the Theoversity moves out of
Tekels Park to
Southampton, Glastonbury &
Chorley in
Lancashire while the leadership claim
that the Theosophical
Society will carry on using
Tekels Park despite its sale to a developer
Anyone planning a
“Spiritual” stay at the
Tekels Park Guest
House should be aware of the sale.
Future
of Tekels Park Badgers in Doubt
Party On!
Tekels Park Theosophy NOT
Tekels Park & the Loch Ness Monster
A Satirical view of
the sale of Tekels Park
in Camberley,
Surrey to a developer
The Toff’s Guide to the Sale of Tekels Park
What the men in top
hats have to
say about the sale
of Tekels Park
____________________
Try
these if you are looking for a local
Theosophy
Group or Centre
UK Listing of Theosophical Groups
Please tell us about your UK Theosophy Group
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website.
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General pages
about Wales, Welsh History
and The History
of Theosophy in Wales
Wales is a
Principality within the United Kingdom and has an eastern
border with
England. The land area is just over 8,000 square miles.
Snowdon in North
Wales is the highest mountain at 3,650 feet.
The coastline is
almost 750 miles long. The population of Wales
as at the 2001 census is 2,946,200.
________________
Bangor Conwy
& Swansea Lodges are members
of the Welsh
Regional Association (Formed 1993).
Theosophy Cardiff
separated from the Welsh Regional
Association in
March 2008 and became an independent
body within the Theosophical Movement in March 2010
High
Drama & Worldwide Confusion
as Theosophy Cardiff Separates from the
Welsh Regional Association (formed 1993)
Theosophy Cardiff Cancels its Affiliation
to the Adyar Based Theosophical Society