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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 London, and which assuredly could never have been matched
in Simla.
Now,
the notion that human beings can create material objects by the exercise of
mere psychological power, will of course be revolting to the understandings of
people to whom this whole subject is altogether strange. It is not making the idea
much more acceptable to say that the cup and saucer appear in this case to have
been " doubled " rather than created. The doubling of objects seems
merely another kind of creation- creation according to a pattern. However, the
facts, the occurrences of the morning I have described, were at all events
exactly as I have related them. I have been careful as to the strict and minute
truthfulness of every detail.
If
the phenomenon was not what it appeared to be- a most wonderful display of a
power of which the modern scientific world has no comprehension whatever it
was, of course, an elaborate fraud. That supposition, however, setting aside
the moral impossibility from any point of view of assuming Madame Blavatsky
capable of participation in such an imposture, will only bear to be talked of
vaguely. As a way out of the dilemma it will not serve any person of ordinary
intelligence who is aware of the facts, or who trusts my statement of them. The
cup and saucer were assuredly dug up in the way I describe. If they were not
deposited there by occult agency, they must have been buried there beforehand.
Now, I have described the character of the ground from which they were dug up;
assuredly that had been undisturbed for years by the character of the vegetation
upon it. But it may be urged that from some other part of the sloping ground a
sort of tunnel may have been excavated in the first instance through which the
cup and saucer could have been thrust into the place where they were found. Now
this theory is barely tenable as regards its physical possibility. If the
tunnel had been big enough for the purpose it would have left traces which were
not perceptible on the ground - which were not even discoverable when the
ground was searched shortly afterwards with a view to that hypothesis. But the
truth is that the theory of previous burial is morally untenable in view of the
fact that the demand for the cup and saucer-of all the myriad things that might
have been asked for-could never have been foreseen. It arose out of
circumstances themselves the sport of the moment. If no extra person had joined
us at the last moment the number of cups and saucers packed up by the servants
would have been sufficient for our needs, and no attention would have been
drawn to them. It was by the servants, without the knowledge of any guest, that
the cups taken were chosen from others that might just as easily have been
taken. Had the burial fraud been really perpetrated it would have been
necessary to constrain us to choose the exact spot we did actually
choose for the picnic with a view to the previous preparations, but the exact
spot on which the ladies' jarnpans were deposited was chosen by myself in
concert with the gentleman referred to above as X-, and it was within a few
yards of this spot that the cup was found. Thus, leaving the other absurdities
of the fraud hypothesis out of sight, who could be the agents employed to
deposit the cup and saucer in the ground, and when did they perform the
operation? Madame Blavatsky was under our roof the whole time from the previous
evening when the picnic was determined on to the moment of starting. The one
personal servant she had with her, a Bombay boy and a perfect stranger to
Simla, was constantly about the house the previous evening, and from the first
awakening of the household in the morning- and as it happened he spoke to my
own bearer in the middle of the night, for I had been annoyed by a loft door
which had been left unfastened, and was slamming in the wind, and called up
servants to shut it. Madame Blavatsky it appears, thus awakened, had sent her
servant, who always slept within call, to inquire what was the matter. Colonel
Olcott, the President of the Theosophical Society, also a guest of ours at the
time of which I am speaking, was certainly with us all the evening from the
period of our return from the abortive expedition of the afternoon, and was
also present at the start. To imagine that he spent the night in going four or
five miles down a difficult khud through forest paths difficult to find,
to bury a cup and saucer of a kind that we were not likely to take in a place
we were not likely to go to, in order that in the exceedingly remote
contingency of its being required for the perpetration of a hoax it might be
there, would certainly be a somewhat extravagant conjecture. Another
consideration- the destination for which we were making can be approached by
two roads from opposite ends of the upper horseshoe of hills on which Simla
stands. It was open to us to select either path, and certainly neither Madame
Blavatsky nor Colonel Olcott had any share in the selection of that actually
taken. Had we taken the other, we should never have come to the spot where we
actually picnicked.
The
hypothesis of fraud in this affair is, as I have said, a defiance of common
sense when worked out in any imaginable way. The extravagance of this
explanation will, moreover, be seen to heighten as my narrative proceeds, and
as the incident just related is compared with others which took place later. But
I have not yet done with the incidents of the cup-morning.
The
gentleman called X ---------------------------had been a good deal with us
during the week or two that had already elapsed since Madame Blavatsky's
arrival. Like many of our friends, he had been greatly impressed with much he
had seen in her presence. He had especially come to the conclusion that the
Theosophical Society, in which she was interested, was exerting a good
influence with the natives, a view which he had expressed more than once in
warm language in my presence. He had declared his intention of joining this
Society as I had done myself. Now, when the cup and saucer were found most of
us who were present, X among the number, were greatly impressed, and in the
conversation that ensued the idea arose that X-- might formally become a member
of the Society then and there. I should not have taken part in this
suggestion-I believe I originated it-if X ----------had not in cool blood
decided, as I understood, to join the Society; in itself, moreover, a step
which involved no responsibilities whatever, and simply indicated sympathy with
the pursuit of occult knowledge and a general adhesion to broadly philanthropic
doctrines of brotherly sentiments towards all humanity, irrespective of race and
creed. This has to be explained in view of some little annoyances which
followed.
The
proposal that X ------------should then and there formally join the Society was
one with which he was quite ready to fall in. But some documents were
required-a formal diploma, the gift of which to a new member should follow his
initiation into certain little Masonic forms of recognition adopted in the
Society. How could we get a diploma? Of course for the group then present a
difficulty of this sort was merely another opportunity for the exercise of
Madame's powers. Could she get a diploma brought to us by " magic?"
After an occult conversation with the Brother who had then interested himself
in our proceedings,Madame told us that the diploma would be forthcoming. She described
the appearance it would present- a roll of paper wound round with an immense
quantity of string, and then bound up in the leaves of a creeping plant. We
should find it about in the woods where we were, and we could all look for it,
but it would be X-, for whom it was intended, who would find it. Thus it fell
out. We all searched about in the undergrowth or in the trees, wherever fancy
prompted us to look, and it was X- who found the roll, done up as described.
We
had had our breakfast by this time. X- was formally" initiated " a
member of the society by Colonel Olcott, and after a time we shifted our
quarters to a lower place in the wood where there was the little Tibetan
temple, or rest-house, which the Brother who had been passing through Simla-
according to what Madame Blavatsky told us- had passed the previous night. We
amused ourselves by examining- the little building inside and out, "
bathing in the "good magnetism," as Madame Blavatsky expressed it,
and then, lying on the grass outside, it occurred to someone that we wanted
more coffee. The servants were told to prepare some, but it appeared that they
had used up all our water. The water to be found in the streams near Simla is
not of a kind to be used for purposes of this sort, and for a picnic, clean
filtered water is always taken out in bottles, It appears that all the bottles
in our baskets had been exhausted. This report was promptly verified by the
servants by the exhibition of the empty bottles. The only thing to be done was
to send to a brewery, the nearest building, about a mile oft, and ask for
water.
I
wrote a pencil note and a coolie went off with the empty bottles. Time passed,
and the coolie returned, to our great disgust, without the water. There had
been no European left at the brewery that day (It was Sunday) to receive the
note, and the coolie had stupidly plodded back with the empty bottles under his
arm, instead of asking about and finding someone able to supply the required
water.
At
this time our party was a little dispersed. X- and one of the other gentlemen
had wandered off. No one of the remainder of the party was expecting fresh
phenomena, when Madame suddenly got up, went over to the baskets, a dozen or
twenty yards off, picked out a bottle- one of those, I believe, which had been
brought back by the coolie empty-and came back to us holding it under the fold
of her dress. Laughingly producing it it was found to be full of water. Just
like a conjuring trick, will some one say ? Just like, except for the
conditions. For such a conjuring trick, the conjurer defines the thing to be
done. In our ease the want of water was as unforeseeable in the first instance
as the want of the cup and saucer. The accident that left the brewery deserted
by its Europeans, and the further accident that the coolie sent up for water
should have been so abnormally stupid even for a coolie as to come back
without, because there happened to be no European to take my note, were
accidents but for which the opportunity for obtaining the water by occult
agency could not have arisen. And those accidents supervened on the fundamental
accident, improbable in itself, that our servants should have sent us out
insufficiently supplied. That any bottle of water could have been left
unnoticed at the bottom of the baskets is a suggestion that I can hardly
imagine anyone present putting forward, for the servants had been found fault
with for not bringing enough; they had just before had the baskets completely
emptied out, and we had not submitted to the situation till we had been fully
satisfied that there really was no more water left.
Furthermore,
I tasted the water in the bottle Madame Blavatsky produced, and it was not
water of the same kind as that which came from our own filters. It was an
earthy tasting water, unlike that of the modern Simla supply, but equally
unlike, I may add, though in a different way, the offensive and discoloured
water of the only stream flowing through those woods.
How
was it brought ? The how, of course, in all these cases is the great mystery
which I am unable to explain except in general terms; but the impossibility of
understanding the way adepts manipulate matter is one thing; the impossibility
of denying that they do manipulate it in a manner which Western ignorance would
describe as miraculous is another. The fact is there whether we can explain it
or not. The rough, popular saying that :you cannot argue the hind leg off a
cow, embodies a sound reflection ,which our prudent sceptics in matters of the
kind with which I am now dealing are too apt to overlook. You cannot argue away
a fact by contending that by the lights in your mind it ought to be something
different from what it is. Still less can you argue away a mass of facts like
those I am now recording by a series of extravagant and contradictory
hypotheses about each in turn. What the determined disbeliever so often
overlooks is that the scepticism which may show an acuteness of mind up to a
certain point, reveals a deficient intelligence when adhered to in face of
certain kinds of evidence.
I
remember when the phonograph was first invented, a scientific officer in the
service of the Indian Government sent me an article he had written on the
earliest accounts received of the instrument- to prove that the story must be a
hoax, because the instrument described was scientifically impossible. He had
worked out the times of vibrations required to reproduce the sounds and so on,
and very intelligently argued that the alleged result was unattainable. But
when phonographs in due time were imported into India, he did not continue to
say they were impossible, and that there must be a man shut up in each machine,
even though there did not seem to be room. That last is the attitude of the
self-complacent people who get over the difficulty about the causation of
occult and spiritual phenomena by denying, in face of the palpable experience
of thousands- in face of the testimony in shelves- full of books that they do
not read- that any such phenomena take place at all.
X-,
I should add here, afterwards changed his mind about the satisfactory character
of the cup phenomena, and said he thought it vitiated as a scientific proof by
the interposition of the theory that the cup and saucer might have been thrust
up into their places by means of a tunnel cut from a lower part of the bank. I
have discussed that hypothesis already, and mention the fact of X-'s change of
opinion, which does not affect any of the circumstances I have narrated, merely
to avoid the chance that readers, who may have heard or read about the Simla
phenomenon in other pages, might think I was treating the change of opinion in
question as something which it was worth while to disguise. And, indeed, the
convictions which I ultimately attained were themselves the result of accumulated
experiences I have yet to relate, so that I cannot tell how far my own
certainty concerning the reality of occult power rests on anyone example that I
have seen.
It
was on the evening of the day of the cup phenomenon that there occurred an
incident destined to become the subject of very wide discussion in all the
Anglo-Indian papers. This was the celebrated " brooch incident." The
facts were related at the time in a little statement drawn up for publication,
and signed by the nine persons who witnessed it. ! This statement will be laid
before the reader directly, but as the comments to which it gave rise showed
that it was too meagre to convey a full and accurate idea of what occurred, I
will describe the course of events a little more fully. In doing this, I may
use names with a certain freedom, as these were all appended to the published
document.
We,
that is, my wife and myself with our guest, had gone up the hill to dine, in
accordance with previous engagements, with Mr. and Mrs. Hume. We dined, a party
of eleven, at a round table, and Madame Blavatsky, sitting next our host, tired
and out of spirits as it happened, was unusually silent. During the beginning
of dinner she scarcely said a word, Mr. Hume conversing chiefly with the lady
on his other hand. It is a common trick at Indian dinner-tables to have little
metal plate warmers with hot water before each guest, on which each plate
served remains while in use. Such plate warmers were used on the evening I am
describing, and over hers -in an interval during which plates had been removed-
Madame Blavatsky was absently warming her hands. Now, the production of Madame
Blavatsky's raps and bell-sounds we had noticed some- times seemed easier and
the effects better when her hands had been warmed in this way ; so some one,
seeing her engaged in warming them, asked her some question, hinting in an
indirect way at phenomena. I was very far from expecting anything of the kind
that evening, and Madame Blavatsky was equally far from intending to do
anything herself or from expecting any display at the hands of one of the
Brothers. So, merely in mockery, when asked why she was warming her hands, she
enjoined us all to warm our hands too and see what would happen. Some of the
people present actually did so, a few joking words passing among them. Then
Mrs. Hume raised a little laugh by holding up her hands and saying, " But
I have warmed my hands, what next". Now Madame Blavatsky, as I have said,
was not in a mood for any occult performances at all, but it appears from what
I learned afterwards that just at this moment, or immediately before, she
suddenly perceived by those occult faculties of which mankind at large have no
knowledge, that one of the Brothers was present " in astral body"
invisible to the rest of us in the room. It was following his indications,
therefore, that she acted in what followed; of course no one knew at the time
that she had received any impulse in the matter external to herself. What took
place as regards the surface of things was simply this: When Mrs. Hume said
what I have set down above, and when the little laugh ensued, Madame Blavatsky
put out her hand across the one person sitting between herself and Mrs. Hume
and took one of that lady's hands, saying, " Well then, do you wish for
anything in particular ? or as the lawyers say, " words to that
effect." I cannot repeat the precise sentences spoken, nor can I say now
exactly what Mrs. Hume first replied before she quite understood the situation;
but this was made clear in a very few minutes. Some of the other people present
catching this first, explained, " Think of something you would like to
have brought to you; anything you like not wanted for any mere worldly motive ;
is there anything you can think of that will be very difficult to get ?"
Remarks of this sort were the only kind that were made in the short interval
that elapsed between the remark by Mrs. Hume about having warmed her hands and
the indication by her of the thing she had thought of. She said then that she
had thought of something that would do. What was it ? An old brooch that her
mother had given her long ago and that she had lost.
Now,
when this brooch, which was ultimately recovered by occult agency, as the rest
of my story will show, came to be talked about, people said :- " Of course
Madame Blavatsky led up the conversation to the particular thing she had
arranged before- hand to produce." I have described all the
conversation which took place on this subject, before the brooch was named.
There was no conversation about the brooch or any other thing of the kind
whatever. Five minutes before the brooch was named, there had been no idea in
the mind of any person present that any phenomenon in the nature of finding any
lost article, or of any other kind, indeed, was going to be performed. Nor
while Mrs. Hume was going over in her mind the things she might ask for, did
she speak any word indicating the direction her thoughts were taking.
From
the point of the story now reached the narrative published at the time tells it
almost as fully as it need be told, and, at all events, with a simplicity that
will assist the reader in grasping all the facts-so I reprint it here in full-
"
On Sunday, the 3rd of October, at Mr. Hume's house at Simla, there were present
at dinner Mr. and Mrs. Hume, Mr. and Mrs. Sinnett, Mrs. Gordon, Mr. F. Hogg,
Captain P.J. Maitland, Mr. Beatson, Mr. Davidson, Colonel Olcott, and Madame
Blavatsky. Most of the persons present having recently seen many remarkable occurrences
In Madame Blavatsky's presence, conversation turned on occult phenomena, and in
the course of this Madame Blavatsky asked Mrs. Hume if there was anything she
particularly wished for. Mrs. Hume at first hesitated, but in a short time said
there was something she would particularly like to have brought her, namely, a
small article of jewellery that she formerly possessed, but had given away to a
person who had allowed it to pass out of her possession. Madame Blavatsky then
said if she would fix the image of the article in question very definitely on
her mind, she, Madame Blavatsky, would endeavour to procure It. Mrs. Hume then
said that she vividly remembered the article, and described it as an
old-fashioned breast brooch set round with pearls, With glass at the front, and
the back made to contain hair. She then, on being asked, drew a rough sketch of
the brooch.
Madame
Blavatsky then wrapped up a coin attached to her watch-chain In two cigarette
papers, and put it in her dress, and said that she hoped the brooch might be
obtained in the course of the evening. At the close of dinner she said to Mr.
Hume that the paper in which the corn had been wrapped was gone. A little
later, in the drawing room , she said that the brooch would not be brought into
the house, but that it must be looked for in the garden, and then as the party
went out accompanying her, she said she had clairvoyantly seen the brooch fall
into a star-shaped bed of flowers. Mr. Hume led the way to such a bed in a
distant part of the garden.
A
prolonged and careful search was made with lanterns, and eventually a small
paper packet, consisting of two cigarette papers, was found amongst the leaves
by Mrs. Sinnett. This being opened on the spot was found to contain a brooch
exactly corresponding to the previous description, and which Mrs. Hume
Identified as that which she had originally lost. None of the party, except Mr.
and Mrs. Hume, had ever seen or heard of the brooch. Mr. Hume had not thought
of it for years. Mrs. Hume had never spoken of it to anyone since she parted
with it, nor had she, for long, even thought of it. She herself stated, after
it was found, that it was only when Madame asked her whether there was anything
she would like to have, that the remembrance of this brooch, the gift of her
mother, flashed across her mind.
"
Mrs. Hume is not a spiritualist, and up to the time of the occurrence described
was no believer either in occult phenomena or in Madame Blavatsky's powers. The
conviction of all present was, that the occurrence was of an absolutely
unimpeachable character, as an evidence of the truth of the possibility of
occult phenomena. The brooch is unquestionably the one which Mrs, Hume lost.
Even supposing, which is practically impossible, that the article, lost months
before Mrs. Hume ever heard of Madame Blavatsky, and bearing no letters or
other indication of original ownership, could have passed in a natural way into
Madame Blavatsky's possession, even then she could not possibly have foreseen
that it would be asked for, and Mrs. Hume herself had not given it a thought
for months
"
This narrative, read over to the party, is signed by-
A. 0. HUME,
ALICE GORDON,
M. A. HUME,
P. J. :MAITLAND,
FRED. R. HOGG,
WM. DAVIDSON,
A. P. SINNETT,
STUART BEATSON.
PATIENCE SINNETT.
It is needless to state that when this narrative was published the nine persons
above mentioned were assailed with torrents of ridicule, the effect of which,
however; has not been in any single case to modify, in the smallest degree, the
conviction which their signatures attested at the time, that the incident
related was a perfectly conclusive proof of the reality of occult power. Floods
of more or less imbecile criticism have been directed to show that the whole
performance must have been a trick; and for many persons in India it is now, no
doubt, an established explanation that Mrs. Hume was adroitly led up to ask for
the particular article produced, by a quantity of preliminary talk about a feat
which Madame Blavatsky specially went to the house to perform. A further
established opinion with a certain section of the Indian public is, that the
brooch which it appears Mrs. Hume gave to her daughter, and which her daughter
lost, must have been got from that young lady about a year previously, when she
passed through Bombay, where Madame Blavatsky was living, on her way to
England. The young lady's testimony to the effect that she lost the brooch
before she went to Bombay, or ever saw Madame Blavatsky, is a little feature of
this hypothesis which its contented framers do not care to enquire into. Nor do
persons who think the fact that the brooch once belonged to Mrs. Hume's
daughter, and that this young lady once saw Madame Blavatsky at Bombay,
sufficiently " suspicious " to wipe out the effect of the whole
incident as described above- ever attempt, as far as I have discerned, to trace
out a coherent chain of events as illuminated by their suspicions, or to
compare these with the circumstances of the brooch's actual recovery. No care,
however, to arrange the circumstances of an occult demonstration so that the
possibility of fraud and delusion may really be excluded, is sufficient to
exclude the imputation of this afterwards by people for whom any argument,
however illogical really, is good enough to attack a strange idea with.
As
regards the witnesses of the brooch phenomenon the conditions were so perfect
that when they were speculating as to the objections which might be raised by
the public when the story should come to be told, they did not foresee either
of the objections actually raised afterwards- the leading up in conversation
theory, and the theory about Miss Hume having- put Madame Blavatsky in
possession of the brooch. They knew that there had been no previous
conversation at all about the brooch or any other proposed feat, that the idea
about getting something Mrs. Hume should ask for, arose all in a moment, and
that almost immediately afterwards, the brooch was named. As for Miss Hume
having unconsciously contributed to the production of the phenomenon, it did
not occur to the witnesses that this would be suggested, because they did not
foresee that anyone could be so foolish as to shut their eyes to the important
circumstances, to concentrate their attention entirely on one of quite minor
importance. As the statement itself says, even supposing, which is practically
impossible, that the brooch could have passed into Madame Blavatsky's
possession in a natural way, she could not possibly have foreseen that it would
have been asked for.
The
only conjectures the witnesses could frame to explain beforehand the tolerably
certain result that the public at large would refuse to be convinced by the
brooch incident, were that they might be regarded as misstating the facts and
omitting some which the superior intelligence of their critics- as their
critics would regard the matter- would see to upset the significance of the
rest, or that Mrs. Hume must be a confederate. Now, this last conjecture, which
will no doubt occur to readers in England, had only to be stated, to be, for
the other persons concerned in the incident, one of the most amusing results to
which it could give rise. We all knew Mrs. Hume to be as little predisposed
towards any such a conspiracy as she was morally incapable of the wrongdoing it
would involve.
At
one stage of the proceedings, moreover, we had considered the question as to
the extent to which the conditions of the phenomenon were satisfactory. It had
often happened that faults had eventually been found with Madame Blavatsky's
phenomena by reason of some oversight in the conditions that had not been
thought of at first. One of our friends, therefore, on the occasion I am
describing, had suggested, after we rose from the dinner-table, that before
going any further the company generally should be asked whether, if the brooch
could be produced, that would under the circumstances be a satisfactory proof
of occult agency in the matter. We carefully reviewed the matter in which the
situation had been developed and we all came to the conclusion that the test ,
would be absolutely complete, and that on this occasion there was no weak place
in the chain of the argument. Then it was that Madame Blavatsky said the brooch
would be brought to the garden, and that we could go out and search for it.
An
interesting circumstance for those who had already watched some of the other
phenomena I have described was this: The brooch, as stated above, was found
wrapped up in two cigarette papers, and these, when examined in a full light in
the house, were found still to bear the mark of the coin attached to Madame
Blavatsky's watch chain, which had been wrapped up in them before they departed
on their mysterious errand. They were thus identified for people who had got
over the first stupendous difficulty of believing in the possibility of
transporting material objects by occult agency as the same papers that had been
seen by us at the dinner-table.
The
occult transmission of objects to a distance not being, "magic', 'as
Western readers understand the word, is susceptible of some partial explanation
even for ordinary readers, for whom the means by which the forces employed are
manipulated must remain entirely mysterious. It is not contended that the
currents which are made use of, convey the bodies transmitted in a solid mass
just as they exist for the senses. The body, to be transmitted, is supposed
first to be disintegrated, conveyed on the currents in infinitely minute
particles, and then reintegrated at its destination. In the case of the brooch,
the first thing to be done must have been to find it. This, however, would
simply be a feat of clairvoyance- the scent of the object, so to speak, being
taken up from the person who spoke of it and had once possessed it- and there
is no clairvoyance of which the western world has any knowledge, comparable in
its vivid intensity to the clairvoyance of an adept in occultism. Its resting-
place thus discovered, the disintegration process would come into play, and the
object desired would be conveyed to the place where the adept engaged with it
would choose to have it deposited. The part played in the phenomenon by the
cigarette papers would be this: In order that we might be able to find the
brooch, it was necessary to connect it by an occult scent with Madame
Blavatsky. The cigarette papers, which she always carried about with her, were
thus impregnated with her magnetism, and taken from her by the Brother, left an
occult trail behind them. Wrapped round the brooch, they conducted this trail
to the required spot.
The
magnetisation of the cigarette papers always with her, enabled Madame Blavatsky
to perform a little feat with them which was found by everyone for whom it was
done an exceedingly complete bit of evidence ; though here again the
superficial resemblance of the experiment to a conjuring trick misled the
intelligence of ordinary persons who read about the incidents referred to in
the newspapers. The feat itself may be most conveniently discussed by the
quotation of three letters ,which appeared in the Pioneer of the 23rd of
October, and were as follows ;-
"Sir,
-The
account of the discovery of Mrs. Hume's brooch has called forth several
letters, and many questions have been asked, some of which I may answer on a
future occasion, but I think it only right to first contribute further
testimony to the occult powers possessed by Madame Blavatsky. In thus coming
before the public, one must be prepared for ridicule, but it is a weapon which
we who know something of these matters can well afford to despise. On Thursday
last, at about half-past ten o'clock, I was sitting in Madame Blavatsky's room
conversing with her, and in a casual way asked her if she would be able to send
me anything by occult means when I returned to my home. She said
"'No", and explained to me some of the laws under which she acts, one
being that she must know the place and have been there- the more recently the
better- in order to establish a magnetic current: She then recollected that she
had been somewhere that morning, and after a moment's reflection remembered
whose house it was she had visited.[ This
house at which the cigarette was found was Mr. O'Meara's. He is quite willing
that this should be stated. ].
She said she could send a cigarette there, if I would go at once to
verify the fact. I of course, consented. I must here mention that I had seen
her do this kind of thing once before; and the reason she gives for sending cigarettes
is, that the paper and tobacco being always about her person, are highly
magnetised, and therefore more amenable to her power, which she most
emphatically declares is not super- natural, but merely the manifestation of
laws unknown to us. To continue my story. She took out a cigarette paper and
slowly tore oft a corner as zigzag as possible, I never taking my eyes off her
hands. She gave me the corner, which I at once put into an envelope, and it
never left my possession I can declare. She made the cigarette with the
remainder of the paper, She then said she would try an experiment which might not
succeed, but the failure would be of no consequence with me. She then most
certainly put that cigarette into the fire, and I saw it burn, and I started at
once to the gentleman's house, scarcely able to believe that I should find in
the place indicated by her the counterpart of the cigarette paper I had with me
; but sure enough there it was, and, in the presence of the gentleman and his
wife, I opened out the cigarette and found my corner piece fitted exactly. It
would be useless to try and explain any theory in connection with these
phenomena, and it would be unreasonable to expect anyone to believe in them,
unless their own experience had proved the possibility of such wonders. All one
asks or expects is, that a few of the more intelligent members of the community
may be led to look into the vast amount of evidence now accumulated of the
phenomena taking place all over Europe and America. It seems a pity that the
majority should be in such utter ignorance of these facts; it is within the
power of anyone visiting England to convince himself of their truth.
ALICE
GORDON
"Sir,
-I
have been asked to give an account of a circumstance which took place in my
presence on the 13th instant. On the evening of that day I was sitting alone
with Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott in the drawing-room of Mr. Sinnett's
house in Simla. After some conversation on various matters, Madame Blavatsky
said she would like to try an experiment in a manner which had been suggested
to her by Mr. Sinnett. She, therefore, took two cigarette papers from her
pocket and marked on each of them a number of parallel lines in pencil. She
then tore a piece off the end of each paper across the lines, and gave them to
me. At that time Madame Blavatsky was sitting close to me, and I intently
watched her proceedings, my eyes being not more than two feet from her hands.
She declined to let me mark or tear the papers alleging that if handled by
others they would become imbued with their personal magnetism, which would
counterset her own. However, the torn pieces were handed directly to me, and I
could not observe any opportunity for the substitution of other papers by
sleight of hand. The genuineness or otherwise of the phenomena afterwards
presented appears to rest on this point. The torn off pieces of the paper
remained in my closed left hand until the conclusion of the experiment. Of the
larger pieces Madame Blavatsky made two cigarettes, giving the first to me to
hold while the other was being made up. I scrutinised this cigarette very attentively,
in order to be able to recognise it afterwards. The cigarettes being finished,
Madame Blavatsky stood up, and took them between her hands, which she rubbed
together. After about twenty or thirty seconds, the grating noise of the paper,
at first distinctly audible, ceased. She then said the current [The theory is that a current of what
can only be called magnetism, can be made to convey objects, previously
dissipated by the same force, to any distance, and in spite of the Intervention
of any amount of matter.] Is
passing round this end of the room, and I can only send them somewhere near
here. A moment afterwards she said one had fallen on the piano, the other near
that bracket. As I sat on a sofa with my back to the wall, the piano was
opposite, and the bracket, supporting a few pieces of china, was to the right,
between it and the door. Both were in full view across the rather narrow room.
The top of the piano was covered with piles of music books, and it was among
these Madame Blavatsky thought a cigarette would be found; The books were
removed, one by one, by myself, but without seeing anything. I then opened the
piano, and found a cigarette on a narrow shelf inside it. This cigarette I took
out and recognised as the one I had held in my hand. The other was found in a
covered cup on the bracket. Both cigarettes were still damp where -they had
been moistened at the edges in the process of manufacture. I took the
cigarettes to a table, without permitting them to be touched or even seen by
Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott. On being unrolled and smoothed out, the
torn, jagged edges were found to fit exactly to the pieces that I had all this
time retained in my hand. The pencil marks also corresponded. It would
therefore appear that the papers were actually the same as those I had seen
torn. Both the papers are still in my possession. It may be added that Colonel
Olcott sat near me with his back to Madame Blavatsky during the experiment, and
did not move till it was concluded.
"P. J. MAITLAND, Captain."
" Sir,
-
With reference to the correspondence now filling your columns, on the subject
of Madame Blavatsky's recent manifestations, it may interest your readers if I
record a striking incident which took place last week in my presence. I had
occasion to call on Madame, and in the course of our interview she tore off a
corner from a cigarette paper, asking me to hold the same, which I did. With
the remainder of the paper she prepared a cigarette in the ordinary manner, and
in a few moments caused this cigarette to disappear from her hands. We were
sitting at the time in the drawing-room. I inquired if it were like]y to find
this cigarette again, and after a short pause Madame requested me to accompany
her into the dining-room, where the cigarette would be found on the top of a
curtain hanging over the window. By means of a tab]e and a chair placed
thereon, I was enabled with some difficulty to reach and take down a cigarette
from the place indicated. This cigarette I opened, and found the paper to
correspond exactly with that I had seen a few minutes before in the
drawing-room. That is to say, the corner-piece, which I had retained in my
possession, fitted exactly into the jagged edges of the torn paper in which the
tobacco had been rolled. To the best of my belief, the test was as complete and
satisfactory as any test can be. I refrain from giving my opinion as to the
causes which produced the effect, feeling sure that your readers who take an
interest in these phenomena will prefer exercising their own judgement in the
matter. I merely give you an unvarnished statement of what I saw. I may be
permitted to add I am not a member of the Theosophist Society, nor, so far as I
know, am I biassed in favour of occult science, although a warm sympathiser
with the proclaimed objects of the Society over which Colonel Olcott presides.
" CHARLES FRANCIS MASSY."
Of course, anyone familiar with conjuring will be aware that an imitation of
this" trick " can be arranged by a person gifted with a little sleight
of hand. You take two pieces of paper, and tear off a corner of both together,
so that the jags of both are the same. You make a cigarette with one piece, and
put it in the place where you mean to have it ultimately found. You then hold
the other piece underneath the one you tear in presence of the spectator, slip
in one of the already torn corners into his hand instead of that he sees you
tear, make your cigarette with the other part of the original piece, dispose of
that anyhow you please, and allow the prepared cigarette to be found. Other
variations of the system may be readily imagined, and for persons who have not
actually seen Madame Blavatsky do one of her cigarette feats it may be useless
to point out that she does not do them as a conjuror would, and that the
spectator, if he is gifted with ordinary common sense, can never have the
faintest shadow of a doubt about the corner given to him being the corner torn
off- a certainty which the pencil-marks upon it, drawn before his eyes, would
enhance, if that were necessary. However, as I say, though experience shows me
that the outsider is prone to regard the little cigarette phenomenon as
''suspicious," it has never failed to be regarded as convincing by the
most acute people among those who have witnessed it. With all phenomena,
however, stupidity on the part of the observer will defeat any attempt to reach
his understanding, no matter how perfect the tests supplied.
I
realise this more fully now than at the time of which I am writing. Then I was
chiefly anxious to get experiments arranged ,which should be really complete in
their details and leave no opening for the suggestion even of imposture. It was
"an uphill struggle first, because Madame Blavatsky was intractable and
excitable as an experimentalist, and herself no more than the recipient of
favours from the Brothers in reference to the greater phenomena. And it seemed
to me conceivable that the Brothers might themselves not always realise
precisely the frame of mind in which persons of European training approached
the consideration of such miracles as these with which we were dealing, so that
they did not always make sufficient allowance for the necessity of rendering
their test phenomena quite perfect and unassailable in all minor details. I
knew, of course, that they were not primarily anxious to convince the
commonplace world of anything whatever; but still they frequently did assist
Madame Blavatsky to produce phenomena that had no other motive except the
production of an effect on the minds of people belonging to the outer world;
and it seemed to me that under these circumstances they might just as well do
something that would leave no room for the imputation even of any trickery.
One
day, therefore, I asked Madame Blavatsky whether if I wrote a letter to one of
the Brothers explaining my views, she could get it delivered for me. I hardly
thought this was probable, as I knew how very unapproachable the Brothers
generally are; but as she said that at any rate she would try, I wrote a letter,
addressing it " to the Unknown Brother," and gave it to her to see if
any result would ensue. It was a happy inspiration that induced me to do this,
for out of that small beginning has arisen the most interesting correspondence
in which I have ever been privileged to engage- a correspondence which, I am
happy to say, still promises to continue, and the existence of which, more than
any experiences of phenomena which I have had, though the most wonderful of
these are yet to be described, is the raison d'être of this little book.
The
idea I had specially in my mind when I wrote the letter above referred to, was
that of all test phenomena one could wish for, the best would be the production
in our presence in India of a copy of the London Times of that day's
date. With such a piece of evidence in my hand, I argued, I would undertake to
convert everybody in Simla who was capable of linking two ideas together, to a
belief in the possibility of obtaining by occult agency physical results which
were beyond the control of ordinary science. I am sorry that I have not kept
copies of the letter itself nor of my own subsequent letters, as they would
have helped to elucidate the replies in a convenient way; but I did not at the
time foresee the developments to which they would give rise and, after all, the
interest of the correspondence turns almost entirely on the letters I received:
only in a very small degree on those I sent.
A
day or two elapsed before I heard anything of the fate of my letter, but Madame
Blavatsky then informed me that I was to have an answer. I afterwards learned
that she had not been able at first to find a Brother willing to receive the
communication. Those whom she first applied to declined to be troubled with the
matter. At last her psychological telegraph brought her a favourable answer
from one of the Brothers with whom she had not for some time been in
communication. He would take the letter and reply to it.
Hearing
this, I at once regretted that I had not written at greater length, arguing my
view of the required concession more fully. I wrote again, therefore, without
waiting for the actual receipt of the expected letter.
A day or two after I found one evening on my writing-table the first letter
sent me by my new correspondent. I may here explain, what I learned afterwards,
that he was a native of the Punjab who was attracted to occult studies from his
earliest boyhood. He was sent to Europe while still a youth at the intervention
of a relative-himself an occultist- to be educated in Western knowledge, and
since then has been fully initiated in the greater knowledge of the East. From
the self complacent point of view of the ordinary European this will seem a
strange reversal of the proper order of things, but I need not stop to examine
that consideration now.
My
correspondent is known to me as the Mahatma Koot Hoomi.[See Appendix "C"]
.This is his " Tibetan Mystic name " -occultists, it would seem,
taking new names on initiation- a practice which has no doubt given rise to
similar customs which we find perpetuated here and there in ceremonies of the
Roman Catholic church.
The
letter I received began, in medias res, about the phenomenon I had
professed. " Precisely," the Mahatma wrote, " because the test
of the London newspaper would close the mouths of the sceptics," it was
inadmissible. " See it in what light you will, the world is yet in its
first stage of disenthralment...... hence unprepared. Very true we work by
natural, not supernatural, means and laws. But as on the one hand science would
find itself unable, in its present state, to account for the wonders given in
its name, and on the other the ignorant masses would still be left to view the
phenomenon in the light of a miracle, everyone who would thus be made a witness
to the occurrence would be thrown off his balance, and the result would be
deplorable. Believe me it would be so especially for yourself, who originated
the idea, and for the devoted woman who so foolishly rushes into the wide, open
door leading to notoriety. This door, though opened by so friendly a hand as
yours, would prove very soon a trap- and a fatal one, indeed, for her. And such
is not surely your object. ...Were we to accede to your desires know you really
what consequences would follow in the trail of success ? The inexorable shadow
which follows all human innovations moves on, yet few are they who are ever
conscious of its approach and dangers. What are, then, they to expect who would
offer the world an innovation which, owing to human ignorance, if believed in,
will surely be attribute to those dark agencies the two-thirds of humanity
believe in and dread as yet ?.... The success of an attempt of such a kind as
the one you propose must be calculated and based upon a thorough knowledge of
the people around you. It depends entirely upon the social and moral conditions
of the people in their bearing on these deepest and most mysterious questions
which can stir the human mind- the deific powers in man and the possibilities
contained in Nature. How many even of your best friends, of those who surround
you, are more than superficially interested in these abstruse problems? You
could count them upon the fingers of your right hand. Your race boasts of
having liberated in their century the genius so long imprisoned in the narrow
vase of dogmatism and intolerance- the genius of knowledge, wisdom, and free
thought. It says that, in their turn, ignorant prejudice and religious bigotry,
bottled up like the wicked djin of old, and sealed by the Solomons of
science, rest at the bottom of the sea, and can never, escaping to the surface
again, reign over the world as in the days of old: that the public mind is
quite free, in short, and ready to accept any demonstrated truth. Ay, but is it
verily so, my respected friend? Experimental knowledge does not quite date from
1662, when Bacon, Robert Boyle, and the. Bishop of Chester transformed under
the royal charter their' invisible college' into a society for the promotion of
experimental science. Ages before the Royal Society found itself becoming a
reality upon the plan of the' Prophetic Scheme,' an innate longing for the
hidden, a passionate love for, and the study of, Nature, had led men in every
generation to try and fathom her secrets deeper than their neighbours did. Roma
ante Romulum fuit is an axiom taught us in your English schools. The Vril
of the Coming Race was the common property of races now extinct. And as
the very existence of those gigantic ancestors of ours is now questioned-
though in the Himavats, on the very territory belonging to you, we have a cave
full of the skeletons of these giants-and their huge frames, when found, are
invariably regarded as isolated freaks of Nature-so the Vril, or akas
as we call it, is looked upon as an impossibility-a myth. And without a thorough
knowledge of akas-its combinations and properties, how can science hope to
account for such phenomena? We doubt not but the men of your science are open
to conviction ; yet facts must be first demonstrated to them; they must first
have become their own property, have proved amenable to their modes of
investigation, before you find them ready to admit them as facts. If you but
look into the preface to the Micrographia, you will find, in Hookes'
suggestions, that the intimate relations of object were of less account in his
eyes than their external operation on the senses, and Newton's fine discoveries
found in him their greatest opponent. The modern Hookeses are many. Like this
learned but ignorant man of old, your modern men of science are less anxious to
suggest a physical connection of facts which might unlock for them many an
occult force in Nature, as to provide a convenient classification of scientific
experiments, so that the most essential quality of a hypothesis is, not that it
should be true, but only plausible, in their opinion.
"
So far for science- as much as we know of it. As for human nature in general it
is the same now as it was a million of years ago. Prejudice, based upon
selfishness, a general unwillingness to give up an established order of things
for new modes of life and thought - and occult study requires all that and much
more- pride and stubborn resistance to truth, if it but upsets their previous
notions of things- such are the characteristics of your age.........
What,
then, would be the results of the most astounding phenomena supposing we
consented to have them produced ? However successful, danger would be growing
proportionately with success. No choice would soon remain but to go on, ever crescendo,
or to fall in this endless struggle with prejudice and ignorance, killed by
your own weapons. Test after test would be required, and would have to be
furnished; every subsequent phenomenon expected to be more marvellous than the
preceding one. Your daily remark is, that one cannot be expected to believe
unless he becomes an eyewitness. Would the lifetime of a man suffice to satisfy
the whole world of sceptics ? It may an an easy matter to increase the original
number of believers at Simla to hundreds and thousands. But what of the hundreds
of millions of those who could not be made eyewitnesses ? The ignorant, unable
to grapple with the invisible operators, might some day vent their rage on the
visible agents at work; the higher and educated classes would go on
disbelieving, as ever, tearing you to shreds as before. In common with many,
you blame us for our great secrecy. Yet we know something of human nature, for
the experience of long centuries- ay, ages, has taught us. And we know that so
long as science has anything to learn, and a shadow of religious dogmatism
lingers in the hearts of the multitude, the world's prejudices have to be
conquered step by step, not at a rush. As hoary antiquity had more than one
Socrates, so the dim future will give birth to more than one martyr. Enfranchised
Science contemptuously turned away her face from the Copernican opinion
renewing the theories of Aristarchus Samius, who 'affirmeth that the earth
moveth circularly about her own centre', years before the Church sought to
sacrifice Galileo as a holocaust to the Bible. The ablest mathematician
at the Court of Edward VI., Robert Recorde, was left to starve in jail by his
colleagues, who laughed at his Castle of Knowledge, declaring his
discoveries vain fantasies All this is old history, you will think. Verily so,
but the chronicles of our modern days do not differ very essentially from their
predecessors. And we have but to bear in mind the recent persecutions of
mediums in England, the burning of supposed witches and sorcerers in South
America, Russia, and the frontiers of Spain, to assure ourselves that the only
salvation of the genuine proficient in occult sciences lies in the scepticism
of the public: the charlatans and the jugglers are the natural shields of the
adepts. The public safety is only ensured by our keeping secret the terrible
weapons which might otherwise be used against it, and which, as you have been
told, become deadly in the hands of the wicked and selfish."
The
remainder of the letter is concerned chiefly with personal matters, and need
not be here reproduced. I shall, of course, throughout my quotations from
letters, leave out passages which, specially addressed to myself, have no
immediate bearing on the public argument. The reader must be fearful to
remember, however, as I now most unequivocally affirm, that I shall in no case alter
one syllable of the passages actually quoted. It is important to make this
declaration very emphatically, because the more my readers may be acquainted
with India, the less they will be willing to believe, except on the most
positive testimony, that the letters from the Mahatma, as I now publish them,
have been written by a native of India. That such is the fact, however, is
beyond dispute.
I
replied to the letter above quoted at some length, arguing, if I remember
rightly, that the European mind was less hopelessly intractable than Koot Hoomi
represented it. His second letter was as follows :-
"
We will be at cross purposes in our correspondence until it has been made
entirely plain that occult science has its own methods of research, as fixed
and arbitrary as the methods of its antithesis, physical science, are in their
way. If the latter has its dicta, so also have the former; and he who would
cross the boundary of the unseen world can no more prescribe how he will
proceed, than the traveller who tries to penetrate to the inner subterranean
recesses of L'Hassa the Blessed could show the way to his guide. The mysteries
never were, never can be, put within the reach of the general public, not, at
least, until that longed-for day when our religious philosophy becomes
universal. At no time have more than a scarcely appreciable minority of men
possessed Nature's secret, though multitudes have witnessed the practical
evidences of the possibility of their possession. The adept is the rare
efflorescence of a generation of inquirers ; and to become one, he must obey
the inward impulse of his soul, irrespective of the prudential considerations
of worldly science or sagacity. Your desire is to be brought to communicate
with one of us directly, without the agency of either Madame Blavatsky or any
medium. Your idea would be, as I understand it, to obtain such communications,
either by letter, as the present one, or by audible words, so as to be guided
by one of us in the management, and principally in the instruction of the
Society. You seek all this, and yet, as you say yourself, hitherto you have not
found sufficient reasons to even give up your modes of life, directly hostile
to such modes of communication. This is hardly reasonable. He who would lift up
high the banner of mysticism and proclaim its reign near at hand must give the
example to others. He must be the first to change his modes of life, and,
regarding the study of the occult mysteries as the upper step in the ladder of
knowledge, must loudly proclaim it such, despite exact science and the
opposition of society. The 'kingdom of Heaven is obtained by force', say the
Christian mystics. It is but with armed hand, and ready to either conquer or
perish, that the modern mystic can hope to achieve his object.
"
My first answer covered, I believe, most of the questions contained in your
second and even third letter. Having, then, expressed therein my opinion that
the world in general was unripe for any too staggering proof of occult power,
there but remains to deal with the isolated individuals who seek, like
yourself, to penetrate behind the veil of matter into the "world of primal
causes ---- i.e., we need only consider now the cases of yourself and
Mr. -----."
I
should here explain that one of my friends at Simla, deeply interested with me
in the progress of this investigation, had, on reading Koot Hoomi's first
letter to me, addressed my correspondent himself. More favourably circumstanced
than I, for such an enterprise, he had even proposed to make a complete
sacrifice of his other pursuits, to pass away into any distant seclusion ,which
might he appointed for the purpose, where he might, if accepted as a pupil in
occultism, learn enough to return to the world armed with powers which would
enable him to demonstrate the realities of spiritual development and the errors
of modern materialism, and then devote his life to the task of combating modern
incredulity and leading men to a practical comprehension of a better life. I
resume the letter:-
"
This gentleman also has done me the great honour to address me by name,
offering to me a few questions, and stating the conditions upon which he would
be willing to work for us seriously. But your motives and aspirations being of
diametrically opposite character, and hence leading to different results, I
must reply to each of you separately. "
'The
first and chief consideration in determining us to accept or reject your offer
lies in the inner motive which propels you to seek our instruction and, in a
certain sense, our guidance; the latter in all cases under reserve, as I
understand it, and therefore remaining a question independent of aught else.
Now, what are your motives ? I may try to define them in their general aspects,
leaving details for further consideration. They are-(l ) The desire to see
positive and unimpeachable proofs that there really are forces in Nature of
which science knows nothing; (2) The hope to appropriate them some day- the
sooner the better, for you do not like to wait- so as to enable yourself ; (a)
to demonstrate their existence to a few chosen Western minds; (b) to
contemplate future life as an objective reality built upon the rock of
knowledge, not of faith; and (c) to finally learn -most important this, among
all your motives, perhaps, though the most occult and the best guarded- the
whole truth about our lodges and ourselves; to get, in short, the positive
assurance that the' Brothers,' of whom everyone hears so much and sees so
little, are rare entities, not fictions of a disordered, hallucinated brain.
Such, viewed in their best light, appear to us your motives for addressing me.
And in the same spirit do I answer them, hoping that my sincerity will not be
interpreted in a wrong way, or attributed to anything like an unfriendly
spirit.
"
To our minds, then, these motives, sincere and worthy of every serious
consideration from the worldly standpoint, appear selfish. (You have to
pardon me what you might view as crudeness of language, if your desire is that
which you really profess- to learn truth and get instruction from us who belong
to quite a different world from the one you move in.) They are selfish, because
you must be aware that the chief object of the Theosophical Society is not so
much to gratify individual aspirations as to serve our fellowmen, and the real
value of this term' selfish,' which may jar upon your ear, has a peculiar
significance with us which it cannot have with you; therefore, to begin with,
you must not accept it otherwise than in the former sense. Perhaps you will
better appreciate our meaning when told that in our view the highest
aspirations for the welfare of humanity become tainted with selfishness, if, in
the mind of the philanthropist, there lurks the shadow of a desire for
self-benefit, or a tendency to do injustice, even where these exist
unconsciously to himself. Yet you have ever discussed but to put down, the idea
of a Universal Brotherhood, questioned its usefulness, and advised to remodel
the Theosophical Society on the principle of a college for the special study of
occultism...
"
Having disposed of personal motives, let us analyse your terms for helping us
to do public good. Broadly stated, these terms are-first, that an independent
Anglo -Indian Theosophical Society shall be founded through your kind services,
in the management of which neither of our present representatives shall have
any voice ; [ In the absence of
my own letter, to which this Is a reply, the reader might think from this
sentence that I had been animated by some unfriendly feeling for the
representatives referred to- Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott. This is far
from having been the case; but, keenly alive to mistakes which had been made up
to the time of, which I am writing, In the management of the Theosophical
Society, Mr. ------and myself were under the impression that better public
results might be obtained by commencing operations de novo, and taking,
ourselves, the direction of the measures which might be employed to recommend
the study of occultism to the modern world. This belief on our part was
coexistent In both cases with a warm friendship based on the purest esteem for
both the persons mentioned. ]
And second, that one of us shall take the new body' under his patronage,' be'
in free and direct communication with its leaders,' and afford them' direct
proof that he really possessed that superior knowledge of the forces of Nature
and the attributes of the human soul which would inspire them with proper
confidence in his leadership.' I have copied your own words so as to avoid
inaccuracy in defining the position.
"From
your point of view, therefore, those terms may seem so very reasonable as to
provoke no dissent, and, indeed, a majority of your countrymen -if not of
Europeans-might share that opinion. What, will you say, can be more reasonable
than to ask that that teacher anxious to disseminate his knowledge, and pupil
offering him to do so, should be brought face to face, and the one give the
experimental proof to the other that his instructions were correct? Man of the
world, living in, and in full sympathy with it, you are undoubtedly right. But
the men of this other world of ours, untutored in your modes of thought, and
,who find it very hard at times to follow and appreciate the latter, can hardly
be blamed for not responding as heartily to your suggestions as in your opinion
they deserve. The first and most important of our objections is to be found in
our rules. True, we have our schools and teachers, our neophytes and'
shaberons' (superior adepts) and the door is always opened to the right man who
knocks. And we invariably welcome the new comer; only, instead of going over to
him, he has to come to us. More than that, unless he has reached that point in
the path of occultism from which return is impossible by his having irrevocably
pledged himself to our Association, we never - except in cases of utmost moment
visit him or even cross the threshold of his door in visible appearance.
"
Is any of you so eager for knowledge and the beneficent powers it confers, as
to be ready to leave your world and come into ours? Then let him come, but he
must not think to return until the seal of the mysteries has locked his lips
even against the chances of his own weakness or indiscretion. Let him come by
all means as the pupil to the master, and without conditions, or let him wait,
as so many others have, and be satisfied with such crumbs of knowledge as may
fall in his way.
"
And supposing you were thus to come, as two of your own countrymen have
already-as Madame B. did and Mr. 0. will - supposing you were to abandon all
for the truth; to toil wearily for years up the hard, steep road, not daunted
by obstacles, firm under every temptation ; were to faithfully keep within your
heart the secrets entrusted to you as a trial ; had worked with all your
energies and unselfishly to spread the truth and provoke men to correct
thinking and a correct life -would you consider it just, if, after all your
efforts, we were to grant to Madame B., or Mr. 0. as ' outsiders ' the terms
you now ask for yourselves. Of these two persons, one has already given
three-fourths of a life, the other six years of manhood's prime to us, and both
will so labour to the close of their days; though ever working for their merited
reward, yet never demanding it, nor murmuring when disappointed. Even though
they respectively could accomplish far less then they do, would it not be a
palpable injustice to ignore them in an important field of Theosophical effort?
Ingratitude is not among our vices, nor do we imagine you would wish to advise
it.
"
Neither of them has the least inclination to interfere with the management of
the contemplated Anglo-Indian Branch, nor dictate its officers. But the new
Society, if formed at all, must, though bearing a distinctive title of its own,
be, in fact, a branch of the parent body, as is the British Theosophical
Society at London, and contribute to its vitality and usefulness by promoting
its leading idea of a Universal Brotherhood, and in other practicable ways.
"
Badly as the phenomena may have been shown, there have still been, as yourself
admit, certain ones that are unimpeachable. The' raps on the table when no one
touches it, , and the' bell sounds in the air,' have, you say, always been regarded
as satisfactory, etc. etc. From this, you reason that good test phenomena' may
easily be multiplied ad infinitum.' So they can- in any place where our
magnetic and other conditions are constantly offered, and where we do not have
to act with and through an enfeebled female body, in which, as we might say, a
vital cyclone is raging much of the time. But imperfect as may be our visible
agent, yet she is the best available at present, and her phenomena have for
about half a century astonished and baffled some of the cleverest minds of the
age...."
"Two
or three little notes which I next received from the Mahatma had reference to
an incident I must now describe, the perfection of which as a test phenomenon
appears to me more complete than that of any other I have yet described. It is
worth notice, by-the-bye, that although the circumstances of this incident were
related in the Indian papers at the time, the happy company of scoffers who
flooded the Press with their simple comments on the brooch phenomenon, never
cared to discuss " the pillow incident."
Accompanied
by our guests, we went to have lunch one day on the top of a neighbouring hill,
The night before, I had had reason to think that my correspondent, Koot Hoomi,
had been in what, for the purpose of the present explanation, I may call
subjective communication with me. I do not go into any details, because it is
unnecessary to trouble the general reader with impressions of that sort, After
discussing the subject in the morning, I found on the hall-table a note from
Koot Hoomi , in which he promised to give me something on the hill which should
be a token of his (astral) presence near me the previous night.
We
went to our destination, camped down on the top of the hill, and were engaged
on our lunch, when Madame Blavatsky said Koot Hoomi was asking where we would
like to find the object he was going to send me. Let it be understood that up
to this moment there had been no conversation in regard to the phenomenon I was
expecting. The usual suggestion will, perhaps, be made that Madame Blavatsky
" led up " to the choice I actually made. The fact of the matter was
simply that in the midst of altogether other talk Madame Blavatsky pricked up
her ears on hearing her occult voice- at once told me what was the question
asked, and did not contribute to the selection made by one single remark on the
subject, In fact, there was no general discussion, and it was by an absolutely
spontaneous choice of my own that I said, after a little reflection, "
inside that cushion," pointing to one against which one of the ladies
present was leaning.
I
had no sooner uttered the words than my wife cried out, " Oh no, let it be
inside mine," or words to that effect. I said, " very well, inside my
wife's cushion; " Madame Blavatsky asked the Mahatma by her own methods if
that would do, and received an affirmative reply. My liberty of choice as
regards the place where the object should be found was thus absolute and
unfettered by conditions. The most natural choice for me to have made under the
circumstances, and having regard to our previous experiences, would have been
up some particular tree, or buried in a particular spot of the ground; but the
inside of a sewn-up cushion, fortuitously chosen on the spur of a moment,
struck me, as my eye happened to fall upon the cushion I mentioned first, as a
particularly good place; and when I had started the idea of a cushion, my
wife's amendment to the original proposal was really an improvement, for the
particular cushion then selected had never been for a moment out of her own
possession all the morning.
It
was her usual jampan cushion; she had been leaning against it all the way from
home, and was leaning against it still, as her jampan had been carried right up
to the top of the hill, and she had continued to occupy it. The cushion itself
was very firmly made of worsted work and velvet, and had been in our possession
for years. It always remained, when we were at home, in the drawing-room, in a
conspicuous corner of a certain sofa whence, when my wife went out, it would be
taken to her jampan and again brought in on her return.
When
the cushion was agreed to, my wife was told to put it under her rug, and she
did this with her own hands, inside her jampan. It may have been there about a minute,
when Madame Blavatsky said we could set to work to cut it open. I did this with
a penknife, and it was a work of some time, as the cushion was very securely
sewn all round, and very strongly, so that it had to be cut open almost stitch
by stitch, and no tearing was possible. When one side of the cover was
completely ripped up, we found that the feathers of the cushion were enclosed
in a separate inner case, also sewn round all the edges. There was nothing to
be found between the inner cushion and the outer case ; so we proceeded to rip
up the inner cushion; and this done, my wife searched among the feathers.
The
first thing she found was a little three-cornered note, addressed to me in the
now familiar handwriting of my occult correspondent. It ran as follows :
"
My dear Brother,
-This brooch, No. 2, is placed in this very strange place, simply to show you
how very easily a real phenomenon is produced, and how still easier it is to
suspect its genuineness. Make of it what you like, even to classing me with
confederates.
" The difficulty you spoke of last night with respect to the interchange
of our letters, I will try to remove. One of our pupils will shortly visit
Lahore and the N. W. P. ; and an address will be sent to you which you can
always use; unless, indeed, you really would prefer corresponding through
-----pillows! Please to remark that the present is not dated from a Lodge, ,
but from a Kashmere valley ."
While
I was reading this note, my wife discovered, by further search among the feathers,
the brooch referred to, one of her own, it very old and very familiar brooch
which she generally left on her dressing-table when it was not in use. It would
have been impossible to invent or imagine a proof of occult power, in the
nature of mechanical proofs, more irresistible and convincing than this
incident was for us who had personal knowledge of the various circumstances
described. The whole force and significance to us of the brooch thus returned,
hinged on to my subjective impressions of the previous night. The reason for
selecting the brooch as a thing to give us, dated no earlier than then. On the
hypothesis, therefore, idiotic hypothesis as it would be on all grounds, that
the cushion must have been got at by Madame Blavatsky, it must have been got at
since I spoke of my impressions that morning, shortly after breakfast; but from
the time of getting up that morning, Madame Blavatsky had hardly been out of
our sight, and had been sitting with my wife in the drawing-room. She had been
doing this, by-the- bye, against the grain, for she had writing which she
wanted to do in her own room, but she had been told by her voices to go and sit
in the drawing-room with my wife that morning, and had done so, grumbling at
the interruption of her work, and wholly unable to discern any motive for the
order.
The
motive was afterwards clear enough, and had reference to the intended
phenomenon. It was desirable that we should have no arrière pensée in
our minds as to what Madame Blavatsky might possibly have been doing during the
morning, in the event of the incident taking such a turn as to make that a
factor in determining its genuineness. Of course, if the selection of the
pillow could have been foreseen, it would have been unnecessary to victimise
our " old Lady, " as we generally called her. The presence of the
famous pillow itself, with my wife all the morning in the drawing-room, would
have been enough. But perfect liberty of choice was to be left to me in
selecting a cache for the brooch; and the pillow can have been in nobody's
mind, any more than in my own, beforehand.
The
language of the note given above embodied many little points which had a
meaning for us. All through, it bore indirect reference to the conversation
that had taken place at our dinner-table the previous evening. I had been
talking of the little traces here and there which the long letters from Koot
Hoomi bore, showing in spite of their splendid mastery over the language and
the vigour of their style, a turn or two of expression that an Englishman would
not have made use of; for example, in the form of address, which in the two
letters already quoted had been tinged with Orientalism.
"
But what should he have written?' somebody asked, and I had said, " under
similar circumstances an Englishman would probably have written simply: "
My dear Brother." Then the allusion to the Kashmir Valley as the place
from which the letter was written, instead of from a Lodge, was au allusion to
the same conversation ; and the underlining of the " k " was another,
as Madame Blavatsky had been saying that Koot Hoomi's spelling of "
Scepticism" with a " k " was not an Americanism in his case, but
due to a philological whim of his.
The
incidents of the day were not quite over, even when the brooch was found; for
that evening, after we had gone home, there fell from my napkin, after I had
unfolded it at dinner, a little note, too private and personal to be reprinted
fully, but part of which I am impelled to quote, for the sake of the allusion
it contains, to occult modus operandi. I must explain that, before
starting for the hill, I had penned a few lines of thanks for the promise
contained in the note then received as described. This note I gave to Madame
Blavatsky, to despatch by occult methods if she had an opportunity. And she
carried it in her hand as she and my wife went on in advance, in jampans, along
the Simla Mall, not finding an opportunity until about halfway to our
destination. Then she got rid of the note, occultism only knows how. This circumstance
had been spoken of at the picnic; and as I was opening the note found in the
pillow, someone suggested that it would, perhaps, be found to contain an answer
to my note just sent. It did not contain any allusion to this, as the reader
will be already aware.
The note I received at dinnertime said :-" A few words more. Why should
you have felt disappointed at not receiving a direct reply to your last note.
It was received in my room about half a minute after the currents for the
production of the pillow dak, had been set ready, and in full play. And
there was no necessity for an answer. ..."
It seemed to bring one in imagination one step nearer a realisation of the
state of the facts to hear " the currents " employed to accomplish
what would have been a miracle for all the science of Europe, spoken of thus
familiarly.
A
miracle for all the science of Europe, and as hard a fact for us, nevertheless,
as the room in which we sat. We knew that the phenomenon we had seen was a
wonderful reality; that the thought-power of a man in Kashmir had picked up a
material object from a table in Simla, and, disintegrating it by some process
of which Western science does not yet dream, had passed it through other
matter, and had there restored it to its original solidarity, the dispersed
particles resuming their precise places as before, and reconstituting the
object down to every line or scratch upon its surface. (By-the-by, it bore some
scratches when it emerged from the pillow which it never bore before -the initials
of our friend. ) And we knew that written notes on tangible paper had been
flashing backwards and forwards that day between our friend and ourselves,
though hundreds of miles of Himalayan mountains intervened between us, and had
been flashing backwards and forwards with the speed of electricity, And yet we
knew that an impenetrable wall, built up of its own prejudice and obstinacy, of
its learned ignorance and polished dulness, was established round the minds of
scientific men in the West, as a body, across which we should never be able to
carry our facts and our experience. And it is with a greater sense of
oppression than people who have never been in a similar position will realise,
that I now tell the story I have to tell, and know all the while that the
solemn accuracy of its minutest detail, the utter truthfulness of every
syllable in this record, is little better than incense to my own conscience -
that the scientific minds of the West with which of all cultivated minds my own
has hitherto been most in sympathy, will be closed to my testimony most
hopelessly. " Though one should rise from the dead," etc.. It is the
old story. It is the old story, at all events as regards the crashing results
on opinion which such evidence as that I have been giving, ought to have. The
smile of incredulity which thinks itself so wise and is so foolish, the
suspicions which flatter themselves they are so cunning, and are really the
fruit of so much dulness, will gleam over these pages, and wither all their
meaning-for the readers who smile. But I suppose that Koot Hoomi is not only
right in declaring the world unripe as yet for too staggering a proof of occult
power, but also in taking a friendly interest, as it will be seen presently
that he does, in the little book I am writing, as one of the influences which
bit by bit may sap the foundations of dogmatism and stupidity, on which
science, which thinks itself so liberal, has latterly become so firmly rooted.
The
next letter- the third long one-that I received from the Mahatma, reached me
shortly after my return for the cold weather to Allahabad.
But
I received one communication from him- a telegram -before its arrival, on the
day of my own return to Allahabad. This telegram, of no great importance as
regards its contents, which were little more than an expression of thanks for
some letters I had written in the papers, was, nevertheless, of great interest
indirectly, affording me, as it ultimately did, evidence of a kind which could
appeal to other minds besides my own, that Koot Hoomi's letters were not, as
some ingenious persons may have been inclined to imagine - in spite of various
mechanical difficulties in the way of the theory- the work of Madame Blavatsky.
For
me, knowing her as intimately as I did, the inherent evidence of the style was
enough to make the suggestion that she might have written them, a mere
absurdity. And, if it is urged that the authoress of "Isis Unveiled "
has certainly a command of language which renders it difficult to say what she
could not write, the answer is simple. In the production of this book she was
so largely helped by the Brothers, that great portions of it are not really her
work at all. She never makes any disguise of this fact, though it is one of a
kind which it is useless for her to proclaim to the world at large, as it would
be perfectly unintelligible, except to persons who knew something of the
external facts, at all events, of occultism. Koot Hoomi's letters, as I say,
are perfectly unlike her own style.
But,
in reference to some of them, receiving them as I did while she was in the
house with me, it was not mechanically possible that she might have been the
writer.
Now,
the telegram I received at Allahabad, which was wired to me from Jhelum, was in
reply specially to a letter I addressed to Koot Hoomi just before leaving
Simla, and enclosed to Madame Blavatsky, who had started some days previously,
and was then at Amritsur. She received the letter, with its enclosure, at
Amritsur on the 27th of October, as I came to know, not merely from knowing
when I sent it, but positively by means of the envelope which she returned to
me at Allahabad by direction of Koot Hoomi, not in the least knowing why he
wished it sent to me. I did not at first see what on earth was the use of the
old envelope to me, but I put it away and afterwards obtained the clue to the
idea in Koot Hoomi's mind when Madame Blavatsky wrote me word that he wanted me
to obtain the original of the Jhelum telegram. Through the agency of a friend connected
with the administration of the telegraph department, I was enabled eventually
to obtain a sight of the original of the telegram- a message of about twenty
words; and then I saw the meaning of the envelope. The message was in Koot
Hoomi's own handwriting, and it was an answer from Jhelum to a letter which the
delivery postmark on the envelope showed to have been delivered at Amritsur on
the same day the message was sent. Madame Blavatsky assuredly was herself at
Amritsur on that date, seeing large numbers of people there in connection with
the work of the Theosophical Society, and the handwriting of Koot Hoomi's
letters, nevertheless, appears on a telegram undeniably handed in at the Jhelum
office on that date. So although some of Koot Hoomi's letters passed through
her hands to me, she is proved not to be their writer, as she is certainly not
the producer of their handwriting.
Koot Hoomi was probably himself actually at or near Jhelum at the time, as he
came down into the midst of the world for a few days, under peculiar
circumstances, to see Madame Blavatsky: the letter I received at Allahabad
shortly after my return explained this.
Madame Blavatsky had been deeply hurt by the behaviour of some incredulous
persons at Simla whom she had met at our house and elsewhere, who, being unable
to assimilate the experience they had had of her phenomena, got by degrees into
that hostile frame of mind which is one of the phases of feeling I am now used
to seeing developed. Perfectly unable to show how the phenomena can be the
result of fraud, but thinking that, because they do not understand them, they
must be fraudulent, people of a certain temperament become possessed with the
spirit which animated persecution by religious authorities in the infancy of
physical science. And, by a piece of bad luck, a gentleman who was thus
affected was annoyed at a trifling indiscretion on the part of Colonel Olcott,
who, in a letter to one of the Bombay papers, quoted some expressions he had
made use of in praise of the Theosophical Society and its good influence on the
natives. All the irritation thus set up, worked on Madame Blavatsky's excitable
temperament to an extent which only those who know her will be able to imagine.
The allusions in Koot Hoomi 's letter will now be understood. After some
reference to important business with which he had been concerned since writing
to me last, Koot Hoomi went on :-
" You see, then, that we have weightier matters than small societies to
think about; yet the Theosophical Society must not be neglected. The affair has
taken an impulse which, if not well guided, might beget very evil issues.
Recall to mind the avalanches of your admired Alps, and remember that at first
their mass is small, and their momentum little. A trite comparison, you may
say, but I cannot think of a better illustration when viewing the gradual
aggregation of trifling events growing into a menacing destiny for the
Theosophical Society. It came quite forcibly upon me the other day as I was
coming down the defiles of Konenlun -- Karakorum you call them- and saw an
avalanche tumble. I had gone personally to our chief. ... and was crossing over
to Lhadak on my way home. What other speculations might have followed I cannot
say. But just as I was taking advantage of the awful stillness which usually
follows such cataclysms, to get a clearer view of the present situation, and
the disposition of the' mystics ' at Simla, I was rudely recalled to my senses.
A familiar voice, as shrill as the one attributed to Saraswati's peacock-
which, if we may credit tradition, frightened off the King of the Nagas-
shouted along the currents-" Koot Hoomi,....... come quicker and help me!
" and, in her excitement, forgot she was speaking English. I must say that
the "old Lady's" telegrams do strike one like stones from a catapult.
" What could I do but come. Argument through space with one who was in
cold despair and in a state of moral chaos, was useless. So I determined to
emerge from a seclusion of many years, and spend some time with her to comfort
her as well as I could. But our friend is not one to cause her mind to reflect
the philosophical resignation of Marcus Aurelius. The Fates never wrote, that
she could say :- 'It is a royal thing when one is doing good to hear evil
spoken of himself.' I had come for a few days, but now find that I myself
cannot endure for any length of time the stifling magnetism even of my own
countrymen. I have seen some of our proud old Sikhs drunk and staggering over
the marble pavement of their sacred temple. I have heard an English-speaking
Vakil declaim against Yog Vidya and Theosophy as a delusion and a lie,
declaring that English science had emancipated them from such degrading
superstitions, and saying that it was an insult to India to maintain that the
dirty Yogees and Sunuyasis knew anything about the mysteries of Nature, or that
any living man can, or ever could, perform any phenomena. I turn my face
homeward tomorrow.
"
........I have telegraphed you my thanks for your obliging compliance with my
wishes in the matter you allude to in your letter of the 24th..... Received at
Amritsur, on the 27th, at 2 P.M. I got your letter about thirty miles beyond
Rawul Pinder, five minutes later, and had an acknowledgement wired to you from
Jhelum at 4 P. M. on the same afternoon. Our modes of accelerated delivery and
quick communications [ Many old
Indians, and some books about the Indian Mutiny, take note of the perfectly
incomprehensible way news of events transpiring at a distance would sometimes
be found to have penetrated the native bazaars before It had reached the
Europeans at such places by the quickest means of communication at their
disposal. The explanation I have been informed, Is that the Brothers, who were
anxious to save the British power at that time, regarding it as a better
government for India than any system of native rule that could take its place,
were quick to distribute information by their own methods when this could
operate to quiet popular excitement and discourage new risings. The sentiment that
animated them then, animates them still, and the influence of the Theosophical
Society In India is one which the Government would do wisely to countenance and
support. The suspicions directed against its founders in the first instance,
misdirected as they were, were excusable enough , but now that the character of
the whole movement is better understood, it would be well for the officers of
the British Government in India who have any opportunity of the kind, to do
whatever they can towards showing their sympathy with the promoters of the
Society, who must, necessarily, have an uphill task to perform without such
manifestations of sympathy. ]
Are not, then, as you will see, to be despised by the Western world, or even
the Aryan English-speaking and sceptical Vakils.
" I could not ask a more judicial frame of mind in an ally than that in
which you are beginning to find yourself. My brother, you have already changed
your attitude toward us in a distinct degree. What is to prevent a perfect
mutual understanding one day?...... It is not possible that there should be
much more at best than a. benevolent neutrality shown by your people towards
ours. There is so very minute a point of contact between the two civilisations
they respectively represent, that one might almost say they could not touch at
all. Nor would they, but for the few- shall I say eccentrics ?-who, like you,
dream better and bolder dreams than the rest, and, provoking thought, bring the
two together by their own admirable audacity."
The letter before me at present is occupied so much with matters personal to
myself, that I can only make quotations here and there; but these are specially
interesting, as investing with an air of reality subjects which are generally
treated in "vague and pompous language. Koot Hoomi was anxious to guard me
from idealising the Brothers too much on the strength of my admiration for
their marvellous powers.
" Are you certain," he writes, " that the pleasant impression
you now may have from our correspondence would not instantly be destroyed upon
seeing me. And which of our holy shaberons has had the benefit of even
the little university education and inkling of European manners that has fallen
to my share. An instance: I desired Madame Blavatsky to select, among the two
or three Aryian Punjabees who study Yog Vidya and are natural mystics, one
whom, without disclosing myself to him too much, I could designate as an agent
between yourself and us, and whom I was anxious to despatch to you with a
letter of introduction, and have him to speak to you of Yoga and its practical
effects. This young gentleman, who is as pure as purity itself, whose
aspirations and thoughts are of the most spiritual, ennobling kind, and who,
merely through self-exertion, is able to penetrate into the regions of the
formless world - this young man is not fit for a drawing-room. Having explained
to him that the greatest good might result for his country if he helped you to
organise a branch of English mystics, by proving to them practically to what wonderful
results led the study of Yog, Madame Blavatsky asked him, in guarded and very
delicate terms, to change his dress and turban before starting for Allahabad ;
for-though she did not give him this reason- they were very dirty and slovenly.
You are to tell Mr. Sinnett, she said, that you bring him a letter from the
Brother, with whom he corresponds ; but if he asks you anything either of him
or the other Brothers, answer him simply and truthfully that you are not
allowed to expatiate upon the subject. Speak of Yog, and prove to him what
powers you have attained. 'This young man who had consented, wrote later on the
following curious letter :- Madame,' he said, you who preach the highest
standard of morality, of truthfulness, etc., you would have me play the part of
an impostor. You ask me to change, my clothes at the risk of giving a false
idea of my personality and mystifying the gentleman you send me to. Here is an
illustration of the difficulties under which we have to labour. Powerless to
send you a neophyte before you have pledged yourself to us, we have to either
keep back or despatch to you one who, at best, would shock, if not inspire, you
at once with disgust."
The
present letter yields only little more that it seems desirable to quote. In a
guarded way, Koot Hoomi said that as often as it was practicable to communicate
with me, " whether ..........by letters (in or out of pillows) or personal
visits in astral form, it will be done. But remember," he added, "
that Simla is 7,000 feet higher than Allahabad, and the difficulties to be
surmounted at the latter are tremendous." To the ordinary mind, feats of
" magic " are hardly distinguishable by degrees of difficulty, and
the little hint contained in the last sentence may thus help to show that, magical
as the phenomena of the Brothers appear (as soon as the dull-witted hypothesis
of fraud is abandoned), they are magic of a kind which is amenable to its own
laws. Most of the bodies in Nature were elements, in the infancy of chemistry;
but in turn the number is reduced by deeper and deeper researches into the law
of combinations - and so with magic. To ride the clouds in a basket, or send
messages under the sea, would have been magic in one age of the world, but
becomes the commonplace of the next. The Simla phenomena are magic for the
majority of this generation, but psychological telegraphy itself may become, if
not the property of mankind a few generations hence, a fact of science as
undeniable as the differential calculus, and known to be attainable by its own
appropriate students. That it is easier to accomplish it and cognate
achievements, in certain strata of the atmosphere rather than in others, is
already a practical suggestion which tends to drag it down from the realms of
magic; or, as the same idea might be differently expressed, to lift it towards
the region of exact science.
I am here enabled to insert the greater part of a letter addressed by Koot
Hoomi to the friend referred to in a former passage, as having opened up a
correspondence with him in reference to the idea which he contemplated under
certain conditions, of devoting himself entirely to the pursuit of occultism.
This letter throws a great deal of light upon some of the metaphysical
conceptions of the occultists, and their metaphysics, be it remembered, are a
great deal more than abstract speculation.
"
Dear Sir-
Availing of the first moments of leisure to formally answer your letter of the
17th ultimo, I will now report the result of my conference with our chiefs upon
the proposition therein contained, trying at the same time to answer all your
questions.
" I am first to thank you on behalf of the whole section of our fraternity
that is especially interested in the welfare of India for an offer of help
whose importance and sincerity no one can doubt. Tracing our lineage through
the vicissitudes of Indian civilization from a remote past, we have a love for
our motherland no deep and passionate that it has survived even the broadening
and cosmopolitanizing (pardon me if that is not an English word) effect of our
studies in the laws of Nature. And so I, and every other Indian patriot, feel
the strongest gratitude for every kind word or deed that is given in her
behalf.
" Imagine, then, that since we are all convinced that the degradation of
India is largely due to the suffocation of her ancient spirituality, and that
whatever helps to restore that higher standard of thought and morals, must be
regenerating in national force, everyone of us would naturally and without
urging, be disposed to push forward a society whose proposed formation is under
debate, especially if it really is meant to become a society untainted by
selfish motive, and whose object is the revival of ancient science, and
tendency, to rehabilitate our country in the world's estimation. Take this for
granted without further asseverations. But you know, as any man who has read
history, that patriots may burst their hearts in vain if circumstances are
against them. Sometimes it has happened that no human power, not even the fury
and force of the loftiest patriotism, has been able to bend an iron destiny
aside from its fixed course, and nations have gone out like torches dropped
into the water in the engulfing blackness of ruin. Thus, we who have the sense
of our country's fall, though not the power to lift her up at once, cannot do
as we would either as to general affairs or this particular one. And with the
readiness, but not the right to meet your advances more than half way, we are
forced to say that the idea entertained by Mr. Sinnett and yourself is
impracticable in part. It is, in a word, impossible for myself or any Brother,
or even an advanced neophyte, to be specially assigned and set apart as the
guiding spirit or chief of the Anglo-lndian branch. We know it would be a good
thing to have you and a few of your colleagues regularly instructed and shown
the phenomena and their rationale. For though none but you few would be
convinced, still it would be a decided gain to have even a few Englishmen, of
first-class ability, enlisted as students of Asiatic Psychology. We are aware
of all this, and much more; hence we do not refuse to correspond with, and
otherwise help you in various ways. But what we do refuse is, to take any other
responsibility upon ourselves than this periodical correspondence and
assistance with our advice, and, as occasion favours, such tangible, possibly
visible, proofs, as would satisfy you of our presence and interest. To "
guide " you we will not consent. However much we may be able to do, yet we
can promise only to give you the full measure of your deserts. Deserve much,
and we will prove honest debtors; little, and you need only expect a
compensating return. This is not a mere text taken from a schoolboy's copybook,
though it sounds so, but only the clumsy statement of the law of our order, and
we cannot transcend it. Utterly unacquainted with Western, especially English,
modes of thought and action, were we to meddle in an organization of such a
kind, you would find all your fixed habits and traditions incessantly clashing,
if not with the new aspirations themselves, at least with their modes of
realisation as suggested by us. You could not get unanimous consent to go even
the length you might yourself. I have asked Mr. Sinnett to draft a plan embodying
your joint ides for submission to our chiefs, this seeming the shortest way to
a mutual agreement. Under our' guidance' your branch could not live, you not
being men to be guided at all in that sense. - Hence the society would be a
premature birth and a failure, looking as incongruous as a Paris Daumont drawn
by a team of Indian yaks or camels. You ask us to teach you true science- the
occult aspect of the known side of Nature ; and this you think can be as easily
done as asked. You do not seem to realise the tremendous difficulties in the
way of imparting even the rudiments of our science to those who have
been trained in the familiar methods of yours. You do not see that the more you
have of the one the less capable you are of instinctively comprehending the
other, for a man can only think in his worn grooves, and unless he has the
courage to fill up these, and make new ones for himself, he must perforce
travel on the old lines. Allow me a few instances. In conformity with exact
science you would define but one cosmic energy, and see no difference between
the energy expended by the traveller who pushes aside the bush that obstructs
his path, and the scientific experimenter who expends an equal amount of energy
in setting a pendulum in motion. We do; for we know there is a world of
difference between the two. The one uselessly dissipates and scatters force,
the other concentrates and stores it. And here please understand that I do not
refer to the relative utility of the two, as one might imagine, but only to the
fact that in the one case there is but brute force flung out without any
transmutation of that brute energy into the higher potential form of spiritual
dynamics, and in the other there is just that. Please do not consider me
vaguely metaphysical. The idea I wish to convey is that the result of the
highest intellection in the scientifically occupied brain is the evolution of a
sublimated form of spiritual energy, which, in the cosmic action, is productive
of illimitable results; while the automatically acting brain holds, or stores
up in itself, only a certain quantum of brute force that is unfruitful of
benefit for the individual or humanity. The human brain is an exhaustless
generator of the most refined quality of cosmic force out of the low, brute
energy of Nature ; and the complete adept has made himself a centre from which
irradiate potentialities that beget correlations upon correlations through
Aeons of time to come. This is the key to the mystery of his being able to
project into and materialise in the visible world the forms that his
imagination has constructed out of inert cosmic matter in the invisible world.
The adept does not create anything new, but only utilizes and manipulates
materials which Nature has in store around him, and material which, throughout
eternities, has passed through all the forms. He has but to choose the one he
wants, and recall it into objective existence. Would not this sound to one of
your ' learned ' biologists like a madman's dream?
" You say there are few branches of science with which you do not possess
more or less acquaintance, and that you believe you are doing a certain amount
of good having acquired the position to do this by long years of study.
Doubtless you do ; but will you permit me to sketch for you still more clearly
the difference between the modes of physical (called exact out of mere
compliment) and metaphysical sciences. The latter, as you know, being incapable
of verification before mixed audiences, is classed by Mr. Tyndall with the fictions
of poetry. The realistic science of fact on the other hand is utterly prosaic.
Now, for us, poor unknown philanthropists, no fact of either of these sciences
is interesting except in the degree of its potentiality of moral results, and
in the ratio of its usefulness to mankind. And what, in its proud isolation,
can be more utterly indifferent to everyone and everything, or more bound to
nothing but the selfish requisites for its advancement, then, this
materialistic science of fact ? May I ask then, what have the laws of Faraday,
Tyndall, or others to do with philanthropy in their abstract relations with
humanity, viewed as an intelligent whole? What care they for Man as an
isolated atom of this great and harmonious whole, even though they may be sometimes
of practical use to him ? Cosmic energy is something eternal and incessant;
matter is indestructible and there stand the scientific facts. Doubt them, and
you are an ignoramus; deny them, a dangerous lunatic, a bigot; pretend to
improve upon the theories - an impertinent charlatan. And yet even these
scientific facts never suggested any proof to the word of experimenters that
Nature consciously prefers that matter should be indestructible under organic
rather than inorganic forms, and that she works slowly but incessantly towards
the realisation of this object - the evolution of conscious life out of inert
material. Hence, their ignorance about the scattering and concretion of cosmic
energy in its metaphysical aspects, their division about Darwin's theories,
their uncertainty about the degree of conscious life in separate elements, and,
as a necessity, the scornful rejection of every phenomenon outside their own
stated conditions, and the very idea of worlds of semi-intelligent if not
intellectual forces at work in hidden corners of Nature. To give you another
practical illustration- we see a vast difference between the two qualities of
two equal amounts of energy expended by two men, of whom one, let us suppose,
is on his way to his daily quiet work, and another on his way to denounce a
fellow creature at the police-station, while the men of science see none ; and
we- not they- see a specific difference between the energy in the motion of the
wind and that of a revolving wheel. And why? Because every thought of man upon
being evolved passes into the inner world, and becomes an active entity by
associating itself, coalescing we might term it, with an elemental- that is to
say, with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the kingdoms. It survives as an
active intelligence-a creature of the mind's begetting-for a longer or shorter
period proportionate with the original intensity of the cerebral action which
generated it. Thus, a good thought is perpetuated as an active, beneficent
power, an evil one as a maleficent demon. And so man is continually peopling
his current in space with a world of his own, crowded with the offsprings of
his fancies, desires, impulses, and passions; a current which reacts upon any
sensitive or nervous organization which comes in contact with it, in proportion
to its dynamic intensity. The Buddhist calls this his 'Skandha ' ; the Hindu
gives it the name of 'Karma.' The adept evolves these shapes consciously; other
men throw them off unconsciously. The adept, to be successful and preserve his
power, must dwell in solitude, and more or less within his own soul. Still less
does exact science perceive that while the building ant, the busy bee, the
nidifacient bird, accumulates each in its own humble way as much cosmic energy
in its potential form as a Haydn, a Plato, or a ploughman turning his furrow,
in theirs; the hunter who kills game for his pleasure or profit, or the
positivist who applies his intellect to proving that + x + =---, are wasting
and scattering energy no less than the tiger which springs upon its prey. They
all rob Nature instead of enriching her, and will all, in the degree of their
intelligence, find themselves accountable.
"
Exact experimental science has nothing to do with morality, virtue,
philanthropy- therefore, can make no claim upon our help until it blends itself
with metaphysics. Being but a cold classification of facts outside man, and
existing before and after him, her domain of usefulness ceases for us at the
outer boundary of these facts; and whatever the inferences and results for
humanity from the materials acquired by her method, she little cares.
Therefore, as our sphere lies entirely outside hers- as far as the path of
Uranus is outside the Earth's - we distinctly refuse to be broken on any wheel
of her construction. Heat is but a mode of motion to her, and motion develops
heat, but why the mechanical motion of the revolving wheel should be
metaphysically of a higher value than the heat into which it is gradually
transformed she has yet to discover. The philosophical and transcendental:
(hence absurd) notion of the mediaeval Theosophist that the final progress of
human labour, aided by the incessant discoveries of man, must one day culminate
in a process which, in imitation of the sun energy - in its capacity as a
direct motor-shall result in the evolution of nutritious food out inorganic
matter, is unthinkable for men of science. Were the sun, the great nourishing
father of or planetary system, to hatch granite chickens out of a boulder
'under test conditions' tomorrow, the (the men of science) would accept it as a
scientific fact without wasting a regret that the fowls were not alive so as to
feed the hungry and the starving. But let a shaberon cross the Himalayas
in a time of famine and multiply sacks of rice for the perishing multitudes-as
he could- and your magistrates and collectors would probably lodge him in jail
make him confess what granary he had robbed. This is exact science and your
realistic world. An though, as you say, you are impressed by the vast extent of
the world's ignorance on every subject which you pertinently designate as a'
few palpable facts collected and roughly generalised, and a technical jargon
invented to hide man's ignorance of all that lies behind these facts,' and
though you speak of your faith in the infinite possibilities of Nature, yet you
are content to spend your life in a work which aids only that same exact
science.....
"
Of your several questions we will first discuss, if you please, the one
relating to the presumed failure of the' Fraternity' to ' leave any mark upon
the history of the world.' They ought, you think, to have been able, with their
extraordinary advantages, to have' gathered into their schools a considerable
portion of the more enlightened minds of every race.' How do you know they have
made no such mark ~ Are you acquainted with their efforts, successes, and
failures? Have you any dock upon which to arraign them ? How could your world
collect proofs of the doings of men who have sedulously kept closed every
possible door of approach by which the inquisitive would spy upon them? The
prime condition of their success was that they should never be supervised or
obstructed. What they have done they know; all that those outside their circle
could perceive was results, the causes of which were masked from view. To
account for these results, men have, in different ages, invented theories of
the interposition of gods, special providences, fates, the benign or hostile
influence of the stars. There never was a time within or before the so- called
historical period when our predecessors were not moulding events and' making
history,' the facts of which were subsequently and invariably distorted by
historians to suit contemporary prejudices. Are you quite sure that the visible
heroic figures in the successive dramas were not often but their puppets? We
never pretended to be able to draw nations in the mass to this or that crisis
in spite of the general drift of the world's cosmic relations. The cycles must
run their rounds. Periods of mental and moral light and darkness succeed each
other as day does night. The major and minor yugas must be accomplished
according to the established order of things. And we, borne along on the mighty
tide, can only modify and direct some of its minor currents. If we had the
powers of the imaginary Personal God, and the universal and immutable laws were
but toys to play with, then, indeed, might we have created conditions that
would have turned this earth into an arcadia for lofty souls. But having to
deal with an immutable law, being ourselves its creatures, we have had to do
what we could, and rest thankful. There have been times when a considerable
portion of 'enlightened minds' were taught in our schools. Such times there
were in India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. But, as I remarked in a letter
to Mr. Sinnett, the adept is the efflorescence of his age, and comparatively
few ever appear in a single century. Earth is the battleground of moral no less
than of physical forces, and the boisterousness of animal passion, under the
stimulus of the rude energies of the lower group of etheric agents, always
tends to quench spirituality. What else could one expect of men so nearly
related to the lower kingdom from which they evolved ? True also, our numbers
are just now diminishing, but this is because, as I have said, we are of the
human race, subject to its cyclic impulse, and powerless to turn that back upon
itself. Can you turn the Gunga or the Bramaputra back to its sources; can you
even dam it so that its piled-up waters will not overflow the banks ? No; but
you may draw the stream partly into canals, and utilise its hydraulic power for
the good of mankind. So we, who cannot stop the world from going in its
destined direction, are yet able to divert some part of its energy into useful
channels. Think of us as demigods, and my explanation will not satisfy you;
view us as simple men- perhaps a little wiser as the result of special study-
and it ought to answer your objection.
" What good,' you say, ' is to be attained for my fellows and myself (the
two are inseparable) by these occult sciences ? ' When the natives see that an
interest is taken by the English, and even by some high officials in India, in
their ancestral science and philosophies, they will themselves take openly to
their study. .And when they come to realise that the old' divine' phenomena
were not miracles, but scientific effects, superstition will abate. Thus, the
greatest evil that now oppresses and retards the revival of Indian civilization
will in time disappear. The present tendency of education is to make them
materialistic and root out spirituality. With a proper understanding of what
their ancestors meant by their writings and teachings, education would become a
blessing, whereas now it is often a curse. .At present the non-educated, as
much as the learned natives, regard the English as too prejudiced, because of
their Christian religion and modern science, to care to understand them or
their traditions. They mutually hate and mistrust each other. This changed
attitude towards the older philosophy, would influence the native princes and
wealthy men to endow normal schools for the education of pundits ; and old
MSS., hitherto buried out of the reach of the Europeans, would again come to
light, and with them the key to much of that which was hidden for ages from the
popular understanding, for which your sceptical Sanscritists do not care, which
your religious missionaries do not dare, to understand. Science would
gain much, humanity everything. Under the stimulus of the AngIo-Indian
Theosophical Society, we might in time see another golden age of Sanskrit
literature.
"
If we look at Ceylon we shall see the most scholarly priests combining, under
the lead of the Theosophical Society, in a new exegesis of Buddhistic
philosophy; and at Galle, on the 15th of September, a secular Theosophical
School for the teaching of Singhalese youth, opened with an attendance of over
three hundred scholars; an example about to be imitated at three other points
in that island. If the Theosophical Society, as at present constituted,' has
indeed no' real vitality,' and yet in its modest way has done so much practical
good, how much greater results might not be anticipated from a body organised
upon the better plan you could suggest ?
"
The same causes that are materialising the Hindu mind are equally affecting all
Western thought. Education enthrones scepticism, but imprisons spirituality.
You can do immense good by helping to give the Western nations a secure basis
upon which to reconstruct their crumbling faith. And what they need is the
evidence that Asiatic psychology alone supplies. Give this, and you will confer
happiness of mind on thousands. The era of blind faith is gone; that of inquiry
is here. Inquiry that only unmasks error, without discovering anything upon
which the soul can build, will but make iconoclasts. Iconoclasm, from its very
destructiveness, can give nothing; it can only raze. But man cannot rest
satisfied with bare negation. Agnosticism is but a temporary halt. This is the
moment to guide the recurrent impulse which must soon come, and which will push
the age towards extreme atheism, or drag it back to extreme sacerdotalism, if
it is not led to the primitive soul-satisfying philosophy of the Aryans. He who
observes what is going on today, on the one hand among the Catholics, who are
breeding miracles as fast as the white ants do their young, on the other among
the freethinkers, who are converting, by masses, into Agnostics- will see the
drift of things. The age is revelling at a debauch of phenomena. The same
marvels that the spiritualists quote in opposition to the dogmas of eternal
perdition and atonement, the Catholics swarm to witness as proof of their faith
in miracles. The sceptics make game of both. All are blind and there is no one
to lead them. You and your colleagues may help to furnish the materials for a
needed universal religious philosophy; one impregnable to scientific assault,
because itself the finality of absolute science, and a religion that is indeed
worthy of the name since it includes the relations of man physical to man
psychical, and of the two to all that is above and below them. Is not this
worth a slight sacrifice? And if, after reflection, you should decide to enter
this new career, let it be known that your society is no miracle-mongering or
banqueting club, nor specially given to the study of phenomenalism. Its chief
aim is to extirpate current superstitions and scepticism, and from long-sealed
ancient fountains to draw the proof that man may shape his own future destiny,
and know for a certainty that he can live hereafter, if he only wills, and that
all ' phenomena' , are but manifestations of natural law, to try to comprehend
which is the duty of every intelligent being."
I
have hitherto said nothing of the circumstances under which these various
letters reached my hands ; nor, in comparison with the intrinsic interest of
the ideas they embody, can the phenomenal conditions under which some of them
were delivered, be regarded as otherwise than of secondary interest for readers
who appreciate their philosophy. But every bit of evidence which helps to
exhibit the nature of the powers which the adepts exercise, is worth attention,
while the rationale of such powers is still hidden from the world. The fact of
their existence can only be established by the accumulation of such evidence,
as long as we are unable to prove their possibility by a priori analysis
of the latent capacities in man.
My friend to whom the last letter was addressed wrote a long reply, and
subsequently an additional letter for Koot Hoomi , which he forwarded to me,
asking me to read and then seal it up and send or give it to Madame Blavatsky
for transmission, she being expected at about that time at my house at
Allahabad on her way down country from Amritsur and Lahore, where, as I have
already indicated, she had stayed for some little time after our household
broke up for the season at Simla. I did as desired, and gave the letter to
Madame Blavatsky, after gumming and sealing the stout envelope in which it was
forwarded. That evening, a few hours afterwards, on returning home to dinner, I
found that the letter had gone, and had come back again. Madame Blavatsky told
me that she had been talking to a visitor in her own room, and had been
fingering a blue pencil on her writing-table without noticing what she was
doing, when she suddenly noticed that the paper on which she was scribbling was
my letter that the addressee had duly taken possession of, by his own methods,
an hour or two before. She found that she had, while talking about something
else, unconsciously written on the envelope the words which it then bore,
" Read and returned with thanks, and a few commentaries. Please open.
" I examined the envelope carefully, and it was absolutely intact, its
very complete fastenings having remained just as I arranged them. Slitting it
open, I found the letter which it had contained when I sent it, and another
from Koot Hoomi to me, criticising the former with the help of a succession of
pencil figures that referred to particular passages in the original letter-
another illustration of the passage of matter through matter, which, for
thousands of people who have had personal experience of it in Spiritualism, is
as certain a fact of nature as the rising of the sun, and which I have now not
only encountered at spiritual séances, but, as this record will have
shown, on many occasions when there is no motive for suspecting any other
agency than that of living beings with faculties of which we may all possess
the undeveloped germs, though it is only in their case that knowledge has
brought these to phenomenal fruition.
Sceptical
critics, putting aside the collateral bearing of all the previous phenomena I
have described, and dealing with this letter incident by itself alone, will
perhaps say- of course Madame Blavatsky had ample time to open the envelope by
such means as the mediums who profess to get answers to sealed letters from the
spirit world are in the habit of employing. But, firstly, the Jhelum telegram
proof, and the inherent evidence of the whole correspondence show that, the
letters which come to me in that which I recognise as Koot Hoomi 's
handwriting, are not the work of Madame Blavatsky, at all events; secondly, let
the incident I have just described be compared with another illustration of an
exactly similar incident which occurred shortly afterwards under different
circumstances Koot Hoomi had sent me a letter addressed to my friend to read
and forward on. On the subject of this letter before sending it I had occasion
to make a communication to Koot Hoomi . I wrote a note to him, fastened it up
in an ordinary adhesive envelope, and gave it to Madame Blavatsky. She put it
in her pocket, went into her own room, which opened out of the drawing room ,
and came out again almost instantly. Certainly she had not been away thirty
seconds. She said " he " had taken it at once. Then she followed me
back through the house to my office room, spoke for a few minutes in the
adjoining room to my wife, and, returning into my office, lay down on a couch.
I went on with my work, and perhaps ten minutes elapsed, perhaps less. Suddenly
she got up. " There's your letter," she said, pointing to the pillow
from which she had lifted her head; and there lay the letter I had just
written, intact as regards its appearance, but with Koot Hoomi's name on the
outside scored out and mine written over it. After a thorough examination I
slit the envelope, and found inside, on the flyleaf of my note, the answer I
required in Koot Hoomi's handwriting. Now, except for the thirty seconds during
which she retired to her own room, Madame Blavatsky had not been out of my
sight, except for a minute or two in my wife's room, during the short interval
which elapsed between the delivery of the letter by me to her and its return to
me as described. And during this interval no one else had come into my room.
The incident was as absolute and complete a mechanical proof of abnormal power
exercised to produce the result as any conceivable test could have yielded.
Except by declaring that I cannot be describing it correctly, the most resolute
partisan of the commonplace will be unable seriously to dispute the force of
this incident. He may take refuge in idiotic ridicule, or he may declare that I
am misrepresenting the facts. As regards the latter hypothesis I can only
pledge my word, as I do hereby, to the exact accuracy of the statement.
In
one or two cases I have got back answers from Koot Hoomi to my letters in my
own envelopes, these remaining intact as addressed to him, but with the address
changed, and my letter gone from the inside, his reply having taken its place.
In two or three cases I have found short messages from Koot Hoomi written across
the blank parts of letters from other persons, coming to me through the post,
the writers in these cases being assuredly unaware of the additions so made to
their epistles.
Of
course I have asked Koot Hoomi for an explanation of these little phenomena, but
it is easier for me to ask than for him to answer, partly because the forces
which the adepts bring to bear upon matter to achieve abnormal results, are of
a kind which ordinary science knows so little about that we of the outer world
are not prepared for such explanations; and partly because the manipulation of
the forces employed has to do, sometimes, with secrets of initiation which an
occultist must not reveal. However, in reference to the subject before us, I
received on one occasion this hint as an explanation.
"
..........Besides, bear in mind that these my letters are not written, but impressed,
or precipitated, and then all mistakes corrected."
Of course I wanted to know more about such precipitation; was it a process
which followed thought more rapidly than any with which we were familiar? And
as regards letters received, did the meaning of these penetrate the
understanding of an occult recipient at once, or were they read in the ordinary
way?
"
Of course I have to read every word you write," Koot Hoomi replied, "
otherwise I would make a fine mess of it. And whether it be through my physical
or spiritual eyes, the time required for it is practically the same. As much
may be said of my replies; for whether I precipitate or dictate them or write my
answers myself, the difference in time saved is very minute. I have to think it
over, to photograph every word and sentence carefully in my brain, before it
can be repeated by precipitation. As the fixing on chemically prepared surfaces
of the images formed by the camera requires a previous arrangement within the
focus of the object to be represented, for otherwise- as often found in bad
photographs- the legs of the sitter might appear out of all proportion with the
head, and so on- so we have to first arrange our sentences and impress every
letter to appear on paper in our minds before it becomes fit to be read. For
the present it is all I can tell you. When science will have learned
more about the mystery of the lithophyl (or litho-biblion ), and how the
impress of leaves comes originally to take place on stones, then I will be able
to make you better understand the process. But you must know and remember one
thing -we but follow and servilely copy Nature in her works."
In
another letter Koot Hoomi expatiates more fully on the difficulty of making
occult explanations intelligible to minds trained only in modern science.
"
Only the progress one makes in the study of arcane knowledge from its
rudimental elements brings him gradually to understand our meaning. Only thus,
and not otherwise, does it, strengthening and refining those mysterious links
of sympathy between intelligent men- the temporarily isolated fragments of the
universal soul, and the cosmic soul itself- bring them into full rapport. Once
this established, then only will those awakened sympathies serve, indeed, to
connect Man with- what, for the want of a European scientific word more
competent to express the idea, I am again compelled to describe as that
energetic chain which binds together the material and immaterial kosmos - Past,
Present, and Future, and quicken his perceptions so as to clearly grasp not
merely all things of matter, but of spirit also. I feel even irritated at
having to use the three clumsy words - Past, Present, and Future. Miserable
concepts of the objective phases of the subjective whole, they are about as ill
adapted for the purpose, as an axe for fine carving. Oh, my poor disappointed
friend, that you were already so far advanced on THE PATH that this simple
transmission of ideas should not be encumbered by the conditions of matter, the
union of your mind with ours prevented by its induced incapabilities. Such is
unfortunately the inherited and self-acquired grossness of the Western mind,
and so greatly have the very phrases expressive of modern thoughts been
developed in the line of practical materialism, that it is now next to
impossible, either for them to comprehend or for us to express in their own
languages anything of that delicate, seemingly ideal, machinery of the occult
kosmos. To some little extent that faculty can be acquired by the Europeans
through study and meditation, but- that's all. And here is the bar which has
hitherto prevented a conviction of the theosophical truths from gaining
currency among Western nations - caused theosophical study to be cast aside as
useless and fantastic by Western philosophers. How shall I teach you to read
and write, or even comprehend a language off which no alphabet palpable or
words audible to you have yet been invented. How could the phenomena of our
modern electrical science be explained to --- say a " Greek philosopher of
the days of Ptolemy, were he suddenly recalled to life - with such an unbridged
hiatus in discovery as would exist between his and our age? Would not the very
technical terms be to him an unintelligible jargon, an abracadabra of
meaningless sounds, and the very instruments and apparatuses used but
miraculous monstrosities? And suppose for one instant I were to describe to you
the lines of those colour rays that lie beyond the so-called visible spectrum -
rays invisible to all but a very few even among us; to explain how we can find
in space anyone of the so called subjective or accidental colours - the complement
(to speak mathematically) moreover' of any other given colour of a
dichromatic body (which alone sounds like an absurdity) could you
comprehend, do you think, their optical effect, or even my meaning? And since
you see them not - such rays - nor can know them, nor have you any names for
them as yet in science, if I were to tell you. .......' without moving from
your writing-desk, try search for, and produce before your eyes the whole solar
spectrum decomposed into fourteen prismatic colour -(seven being complementary)
as it is but with the help of that occult light that you can see me from a
distance as I see you '-what think you would be your answer? What would you
have to reply? Would you not be likely enough to retort by telling me that as
there never ,were but seven (now three) primary colours which, moreover, have
never yet by any known physical process been seen decomposed further than the
seven prismatic hues, my invitation was as unscientific as it was absurd?
Adding that my offer to search for an imaginary solar complement, being no
compliment to your knowledge of physical science- l had better, perhaps, go and
search for my mythical dichromatic and solar 'pairs' in 'Tibet, for modern
science has hitherto been unable to bring under any theory even so simple a
phenomenon as the colours of all such dichromatic bodies. And yet truth knows
these colours are objective enough.
" So you see the insurmountable difficulties in the way of obtaining not
only absolute, but even primary knowledge in Occult Science, for one
situated as you are. How could you make yourself understood, command in
fact, those semi-intelligent forces, whose means of communicating with us are
not through spoken words, but through sounds and colours in correlations
between the vibrations of the two ? For sound, light, and colour are the main
factors in forming those grades of intelligences, these beings of whose very
existence you have no conception, nor are you allowed to believe in them -
Atheists and Christians, Materialists and Spiritualists, all bringing forward
their respective arguments against such a belief-Science objecting stronger
than either of these to such a degrading superstition.
" Thus, because they cannot with one leap over the boundary walls attain
to the pinnacles of Eternity- because we cannot take a savage from the centre
of Africa and make him comprehend at once the' Principia' of Newton, or the'
Sociology' of Herbert Spencer, or make an unlettered child write a new "
Iliad in old Achaian Greek, or an ordinary painter depict scenes in Saturn, or
sketch the inhabitants of Arcturus- because if all this our very existence
is denied. Yes, for this reason are believers in us pronounced impostors
and fools, and the very science which leads to the highest goal of the highest
knowledge, to the real tasting of the Tree of Life and Wisdom - is scouted as a
wild flight of imagination."
The
following passage occurs in another letter, but it adheres naturally enough to
the extract just concluded.
"
The truths and mysteries of occultism constitute, indeed, a body of the highest
spiritual importance, at once profound and practical for the world at large.
Yet it is not as an addition to the tangled mass of theory or speculation that
they are being given to you, but for their practical bearing on the interests
of mankind. The terms Unscientific, Impossible, Hallucination, Imposture, have
hitherto been used in a very loose, careless way, as implying in the occult
phenomena something either mysterious and abnormal, or a premeditated
imposture. And this is why our chiefs have determined to shed upon a few
recipient minds more light upon the subject, and to prove to them that such
manifestations are as reducible to law as the simplest phenomena in the
physical universe. The wiseacres say,' the age of miracles is past', but we
answer, ' it never existed.' While not unparalleled or without their
counterpart in universal history, these phenomena must and will come
with an overpowering influence upon the world of sceptics and bigots. They have
to prove both destructive and constructive - destructive in the pernicious
errors of the past, in the old creeds and superstitions which suffocate in
their poisonous embrace, like the Mexican weed, nigh all mankind ; but
constructive of new institutions of a genuine, practical Brotherhood of Humanity,
where all will become co-workers of Nature, will work for the good of mankind, with
and through the higher planetary spirits, the only spirits we
believe in. Phenomenal elements previously unthought of, undreamed of, will
soon begin manifesting themselves day by day with constantly augmented force,
and disclose at last the secrets of their mysterious workings. Plato was right.
[See Appendix D.] Ideas rule the world ; and as men's
minds will receive new ideas, leaving aside the old and effete, the world will
advance, mighty revolutions will spring from them, creeds and even powers will
crumble before their onward march, crushed by their Irresistible force. It will
be just as impossible to resist their influence when the time comes as to stay
the progress of the tide. But all this will come gradually on, and before it
comes we have a duty set before us: that of sweeping away as much as possible
the dross left to us by our pious forefathers. New ideas have to be planted on
clean places, for these ideas touch upon the most momentous subjects. It is not
physical phenomena, but these universal ideas, that we study; as to comprehend
the former, we have first to understand the latter.
They
touch man's true position in the universe in relation to his previous and future
births, his origin and ultimate destiny; the relation of the mortal to the
immortal, of the temporary to the eternal, of the finite to the infinite; ideas
larger, grander, more comprehensive, recognising the eternal reign of immutable
law, unchanging and unchangeable, in regard to which there is only an ETERNAL
Now : while to uninitiated mortals, time is past or future, as related to their
finite existence on this material speck of dirt. This is what we study and what
many have solved........ Meanwhile, being human, I have to rest. I took no
sleep for over sixty hours."
Here
are It few lines from Koot Hoomi's hand, in a letter not addressed to me, It
fall conveniently into the present series of extracts.
"
Be it as it may, we are content to live as we do, unknown and undisturbed by a
civilization which rests so exclusively upon intellect. Nor do we feel in any
way concerned about the revival of our ancient art and high civilization, for
these are as sure to come back in their time, and in a higher form, as the
Plesiosaurus and the Megatherium in theirs.
We
have the weakness to believe in ever-recurrent cycles, and hope to quicken the
resurrection of what is past and gone. We could not impede it, even if we
would. The new civilization will be but the child of the old one, and we have
but to leave the eternal law to take its own course, to have our dead ones come
out of their graves; yet we are certainly anxious to hasten the welcome event.
Fear not, although we do 'cling superstitiously to the relics of the past', our
knowledge will not pass away from the sight of man. It is , the gift of the
gods,' and the most precious relic of all. The keepers of the sacred light did
not safely cross so many ages but to find themselves wrecked on the rocks of
modern scepticism. Our pilots are too experienced sailors to allow us to fear
any such disaster. We will always find volunteers to replace the tired
sentries, and the world, bad as it is in its present state of transitory
period, can yet furnish us with a few men now and then."
Turning
back to my own correspondence, and to the latest letter I received from Koot
Hoomi before leaving India on the trip home during which I am writing these
pages, I read :-
"
I hope that at least you will understand that we ( or most of us) are
far from being the heartless morally dried-up mummies some would fancy us to
be. Mejnour is very well where he is-as an ideal character of a thrilling, in
many respects truthful story. Yet, believe me, few of us would care to play the
part in life of a desiccated pansy between the leaves of a volume of solemn
poetry. We may not be quite' the boys' to quote -----'s irreverent expression
when speaking of us, yet none of our degree are like the stern hero of
Bulwer's romance. While the facilities of observation secured to some of us by
our condition certainly give a greater breadth of view, a more pronounced and
impartial, a more widely spread humaneness- for answering Addison, we might
justly maintain that it is the business of "magic " to humanize
our natures with compassion' -for the whole mankind as all living beings,
instead of concentrating and limiting our affections to one predilected race-
yet few of us (except such as have attained the final negation of Moksha) can
so far enfranchise ourselves from the influence of our earthly connection as to
be unsusceptible in various degrees to the higher pleasures, emotions, and
interests of the common run of humanity.
Of
course the greater the progress towards deliverance, the less this will be the
case, until, to crown all, human and purely individual personal feelings,
blood-ties and friendship, patriotism and race predilection, will all give way
to become blended into one universal feeling, the only true and holy, the only
unselfish and eternal one - Love, an Immense Love for humanity as a whole. For
it is humanity which is the great orphan, the only disinherited one upon this
earth, my friend. And it is the duty of every man who is capable of an
unselfish impulse to do something, however little, for its welfare. It reminds
me of the old fable of the war between the body and its members ; here, too,
each limb of this huge' orphan,' fatherless and motherless, selfishly cares but
for itself, The body, uncared for, suffers eternally whether the limbs are at
war or at rest. Its suffering and agony never cease; and who can blame it-as
your materialistic philosophers do- if, in this everlasting isolation and
neglect, it has evolved gods into whom 'it ever cries for help, but is not
heard.' Thus-
'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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