Preface

(2)BV/SIN
THE OCCULT WORLD
BV THE SAME A UTHOR.
ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.
Crown 8vo, pp. 235. Cloth, 7s. 6d.
I
THE OCCULT WORLD
BY
A. P. S I N N E T T
PRESIDENT OF THE SIMLA ECLECTIC THEOSOPHICAL
FOURTH EDITION
LONDON
TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE
1884
\_All rights reserved']
SOCIETY
HILL
•BaflantEnc
BALI-ANTYNE, HANSON AND CO., EDINBURGH CHANDOS STREET, LONDON
Y/ellcome Library for tbe History an
V
H>e^icatton>
To one whose comprehension of Nature and Humanity ranges so far beyond the science and philosophy of Europe, that only the broadest minded representatives of either will be able to realize the existence of such powers in Man as those he constantly exercises, — to
THE MAHATMA KOOTHOOMI,
whose gracious friendship has given the present writer his title to claim the attention of the European world, this little volume, with permission sought and obtained, is afiec- tionately dedicated.
A. P. SiNNETT.
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PREFACE
TO
THE SECOND EDITION.
If I had time to write this book again, a year having now elapsed since its publication, I should have to enlarge it enormously. I have learned so much in the interim, that I am almost pleased to think I knew so (relatively) little when I wrote it. If I had approached the task then, from my present standpoint, I might have given up the idea of performing it at all in the few brief months of leisure which a hohday trip to England enabled me to bestow on it. But the book was easily undertaken while there was only a little to say, and the short story of external facts which claimed telling a year ago, was soon told.
A second edition is now required, and some further ex- planations must be prepared before I can let this go forth. But these must, I regret to say, for the present be kept within the narrowest limits. I have long since returned to the current duties of a very onerous appointment ; and I cannot at present attempt to write, what I nevertheless hope to be able to write at some future time, a book which shall not merely call the attention of the world at large to the existence of the wonderful fraternity of occulists here spoken of as The Brothers,” but shall present in a shape acceptable to western readers, the outlines of the knowledge they possess, concerning the origin, constitution, and destinies of Man.
Vlll
PREFACE.
The correspondence which forms the kernel of the present volume has largely expanded during the last twelve months; but to attempt the incorporation of fresh letters with the present collection would be to set an altogether new under- taking on foot. I must be content to add one final chapter, the motive of which will lie plainly on the surface, and to give my readers the assurance that, even though I might, if other engagements permitted, add largely to the present record, at almost every step, still, as it stands, it contains nothing which requires alteration, nothing which is mis- leading or inaccurately described in any particular.
But some remarks made by my reviewers claim attention. I have been much more amused than annoyed at the sar- casms directed against my “ credulity ” in connection with my plain narrative of fact, and at the bitter disgust ex- hibited by various organs of orthodoxy at the idea that there may really be something in Heaven and earth not dreamed of in their philosophy — something sufficiently real to be not merely talked about in poetry, but observed at given times and places, and described in straightforward prose. “ Evidently sincere,” says one reviewer, “ and so candid that hostility to the writer is disarmed by pity.”
But besides deploring my own intellectual inferiority, which it is quite within the discretion of my critics to esti- mate as they please, they have in many cases endeavoured to weaken the value of my evidence by suggesting that I have been imposed upon by Madame Blavatsky. Now, first of all, some of the experiences I have had since this book was first published have been lifted clean out of reach of Madame Blavatsky ; but to these I will refer more fully m my concluding chapter. Secondly, as Madame Blavasky’s friends in this country grew annoyed last autumn at the reiteration of insulting suspicions about her trustworthiness and motives of action, they took steps to establish her real identity and station in life, in a manner which should once for all convict of imbecility^ any person who should again
PREFACE.
IX
suggest that she might be an adventuress pursuing purposes of gain. That these measures were not taken unnecessarily may he made sufficiently clear without quoting any Indian newspapers, by reference to some of the reviews of this book, which appeared in London. The St. James’s Gazette (June 22, i88i) refers to Madame Blavatsky as “a mys- terious character, a Russian lady naturalized in the United States,” and her ‘‘ nationality and character sufficiently account in the opinion of many for the general interest she has taken in Mr. Sinnett’s psychological development.” Atlienmum says of her (August 27, 1881), “He,” the present writer, “ appears to have no more knowledge than we have of the degree of the rank, or the extent of the fortune, which she enjoyed in her native land ; and until that is ascertained, the incredulous will persist in suggesting that for ‘a Russian by birth, though naturalized in the United States,’ without visible means of subsistence, the chance of living at free quarters in the houses of well- to-do Indian officials might have its attractions.” Far worse than this even was the language employed by the Saturday Review. In an article attacking the Theosophical move- ment generally (September 3, 1881), that paper actually denounced Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott, the President of the Theosophical Society, as “a couple of un- scrupulous adventurers,” and expressed a doubt “ whethei* Colonel Olcott ’s title was earned in the war of Succession or at the bar of a drinking saloon.”
In order to vindicate Madame Blavatsky’s character (first of all) from these gross expressions, i wrote to her uncle. General Fadeeff, Joint Secretary of State in the Home Department at St. Petersburg, enclosing an open letter from Madame Blavatsky to him, in which she asked him to reply to the fact that she really was — herself; After showing both these letters to a gentleman on the Viceroy’s staff — a neutral person as regards the whole subject, and quite unconcerned with occultism — I posted them with my own
X
PREFACE.
hands, and in due time the answer came back, directed as I had requested, in the note which our neutral friend saw, to his care. General Fadeeff sent the following certificate : —
“ I certify by the present that Madame H. P, Blavatsky, now residing at Simla (British India), is from her father’s side the daughter of Colonel Peter Hahn, and grand-daughter of Lieutenant-General Alexis Hahn von Boltenstern-Hahn (a noble family of Mecklenburg, Gennauy, settled in Kussia). And that she is from her mother’s side the daughter of Helene FadeelF, and grand-daughter of Privy Councillor Andrew Fadeeff and of the Princess Helene Dolgorouki ; that she is the widow of the Councillor of State, Nicephore Blavatsky, late Vice-Governor of the Province df Erivan, Caucasus.
“ (Signed) Major-General Kostislav Fadeeff, “of H. I. Majesty’s Staff,
“ Joint Secretary of State at the Ministry of the “ Interior.
“ St. Petersburg, 29, Little Morskaya,
“ i8t/i September, 1881.”
I also received a little later a letter from Madame Fadeeff, sister of the General Fadeeff just mentioned, eagerly and amply confirming these statements, and enclosing certain portraits of Madame Blavatsky taken at various periods of her life, but obviously portraits of the lady we all know in India. Concerning these Madame Fadeeff wrote : —
“ To establish her identity I enclose in this letter two of her portraits’ one taken twenty years ago in my presence, the other sent from America four or five years ago. Furthermore, in order that sceptics may not conceive suspicions as to my personal identity, I take the liberty of re- turning your letter, received through M. le Prince Dondoukoff- Korsakoff, Governor-General of Odessa. I hope that this proof of authenticity is perfectly satisfactory. I believe, moreover, that you will have already received the certificate of the individuality of Madame Blavatsky that the Governor-General desired himself to send to Bombay.”
The allusion here to Prince Dondoukoff-Korsakoff (now Viceroy of the Caucasus) is explained by the fact that I for- warded my letter for General Fadeeff to his care, knowing him to be an old friend of Madame Blavatsky’s. He him- self has since sent her letters which I have seen, expressing,
PREFACE.
XI
besides warm sympathy and personal friendship, no small measure of (well deserved) contempt for persons, who, per- sonally knowing her, could misunderstand her true character. The originals of the true documents quoted above are in French, but I give an exact translation. Madame Fadeeff took the trouble to have her own signature to the letter to me authenticated by the Notary of the Bourse at Odessa, whose seal is attached.
I need not here prolong this explanation by inserting documents relating to Colonel Olcott, as these are referred to in a letter I am about to quote.
In reply to the unjust and groundless attack made by the Saturday Review, Mr. A. O. Hume, C.B., son of the late Joseph Hume, M.P., and late Secretary to the Grovernment of India, wrote to that paper : —
“ As regards Colonel Olcott’s title, the printed papers which I send by this same mail will prove to you that that gentleman is an officer of the American Army, who rendered good service during the war (as will be seen from the letters of the Judge Advocate-General, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Assistant-Secretaries of War and of the Treasury), and who was sufficiently well known and esteemed in his own country to induce the President of the United States to furnish him with an auto- graph letter of introduction and recommendation to all Ministers and Consuls of the United States, on the occasion of his leaving America for the East, at the close of 1878.
“ Surely this is scarcely the kind of men to whom the epithet ‘ un- scrupulous adventurer ’ can be justly applied,
“I may add, from my own knowledge, that a purer-minded, more noble, or more self-devoted gentleman than Colonel Olcott does not exist. He may he right or wrong in his belief, but to the cause of that belief he has devoted his fortune, energies, and the remainder of his life ; and while I can quite understand many treating him as a fanatic, I confess that 1 am surprised at a paper, of the high class to which the Saturday Review belongs, denouncing such a man as an ‘ unscrupulous adventurer.’
“ As regards Madame Blavatsky (in Russia still ‘ Son Excellence
Madame la Generale
Helene P. Blavatsky,’
though she dropped all titles on becoming a naturalized American
PREFACE.
xii
citizen.) She is the widow of General N, V. Blavatsky, Governor during the Crimean War, and, for many years, of Erivan in Armenia. She is the eldest daughter of the late Colonel Hahn, of the Russian Horse Artillery, and grand- daughter of Princess Dolgorouki of the elder branch which died with her. The present Princess Dolgorouki belongs to the younger branch. The Countess Ida v. Hahn-Hahn was Madame Bla- vatsky’s father’s first cousin. Her father’s mother married, after her husband’s death, Prince VassiltchikofF. General Fadeeff, well known even to English readers, is her mother’s youngest brother. She is well known to Prince Loris Melikoff, and all who were on the staff, or in society, when Prince Michael S. Woronzofif was Viceroy of the Caucasus. Prince Emile v. Sayn Wittgenstein, cousin of the late Empress of Russia* was an intimate friend of hers, and corresponded with her to the day of his death, as had done his brother Ferdinand, who lately com- manded some Regiment (Cossacks of the Guard, I think) in Turkestan. Her aunt, Madame de Witte, who, like the rest of her family, corresponds regularly with her, and indeed her whole family, are well known to Prince Kondoukofif-Korsakofif, at present Governor-General of Odessa.
“ I could add the names of scores of other Russian nobles who are well acquainted with her ; for she is as well known and connected in Russia as Lady Hester Stanhope was in England ; but I think I have said enough to convince any impartial person that she is scarcely the kind of woman likely to be an ‘ unscrupulous adventuress.’
“Ladies are not generally prone to taking fancies to outside ladies ; there is very commonly a little suppressed sex-jealousy of those especially who are cleverer than themselves ; but Madame Blavatsky has lived for months at a time in my house, and is certainly one of the cleverest women I ever met, and yet all the ladies of my house have learnt to love dearly this energetic, crotchety, impulsive, self-devoted old woman. Any one may set her down as a mystic or a visionary, but no one who knows her can doubt her all-consuming faith in the mission to which she has sacrificed her life.
“But, after all, can you rightly call people adventurers who not only make no money out of the cause they espouse, but, on the contrary, spend on it every farthing that they can spare from their private means? If not, then assuredly Colonel Olcott and Madame Blavatsky are not adventurers, for to my certain knowledge they have spent on the Theosophical Society over £ipoo (two thousand pounds) more than its total receipts. The accounts have been regularly audited, printed, and published, so that anyone may satisfy themselves on this head.
“ But it will be asked, what is this grand cause ? It is the formation
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Xlll
and development of the Theosophical Society, the objects of which, as stated in the published rules, are as follows : —
“ First. — To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity.
Second. — To study Aryan literature, religion and science.
“ Third. — To vindicate the importance of this inquiry.
“ Fourth. — To explore the hidden mysteries of Nature and the latent powers of man.
“Now, these objects may be considered Utopian or visionary, but they seem to me innocent enough, and hardly the kind of objects that would satisfy unscrupulous adventurers.
* * * * * *
“ There are many other misconceptions involved in the article under reference, to which objection might reasonably be taken ; but these are perhaps of less importance. All I desire now to make clear is, that so far from being ‘ unscrupulous adventurers,’ Colonel Olcott and Madame Blavatsky are very unworldly, unselfish, pure-minded people, who are de- voting their time, their property, and their lives to a cause which even, if Utopian, is unobjectionable, and may incidentally be productive (indeed, it already has been so) of much good.
“ I remain, yours obediently,
“A. O. HUME,
“ Late Sec. to the Govt, of IndiaP
Gentle and temperate as this letter was, and unfair as had been the imputations which evoked it, the Saturday Review, to the shame of that journal as it seems to me, never inserted it. It is true that before the letter reached home, commu- nications had apparently been made to the Saturday Review, by some friends of Colonel Olcott, and the following grace- less and grudging admission had been published in the paper of Sept. 17 : —
“ We have received a letter from a friend of Colonel Olcott, objecting to some strictures which were lately made upon that gentleman and Madame Blavatsky as founders of the so-called Theosophical Society of India. Our remarks were based upon the published accounts of their doings, which struck us as hearing a suspicious resemblance to those of the ^spirit mediums ’ in Europe and America. We are quite willing to accept our correspondent’s statement that Colonel Olcott occupied an honourable position in his own country, and to believe that both he and Madame Blavatsky are credulous enthusiasts and not unscrupulous
XIV
PREFACE.
adventurers. When, however, people promulgate pernicious theories and adopt practices which, under another name, have been authori- tatively 'pronounced illegal and mischevious, they must not be surprised if, in the absence of private information as to their biogi'aphy, they lay themselves open to adverse criticism.”
Tliis paragraph, the previous pubhcation of which justi- fied the Saturday Review (in its own sight) in taking no notice of Mr. Hume’s letter, is itself full of fresh insinua- tions which are groundless and untrue, as any reader of the present volume will perceive ; but in India, at all events, considerable pubhcity has been given to the documents quoted above, as also to others of the same series, which it seems unnecessary to republish here in full, and whatever opinion may be formed by careless observers who will not take the trouble to investigate them, concerning the tenets of occultism, there is no longer any room there for two opinions about the blameless hves and pure devotion of the leading representatives of the Theosophical Society.
CONTENTS.
Introduction
Occultism and its Adepts
The Theosophical Society
Recent Occult Phenomena
Teachings of Occult Philosophy
Conclusion .
Appendix . .
PAGE
I
II
20
30
105
I18
. I4I
THE OCCULT WORLD.
INTKODUCTION.
I.
There is a school of Philosophy still in existence of which modern culture has lost sight. Glimpses of it are discernible in the ancient philosophies with which all educated men are familiar, but these are hardly more intelligible than frag- ments of forgotten sculpture, — less so, for we comprehend the human form, and can give imaginary limbs to a torso ; but we can give no imaginary meaning to the hints coming down to us from Plato or Pythagoras, pointing, for those who hold the clue to their significance, to the secret know- ledge of the ancient world. Side lights, nevertheless, may enable us to decipher such language, and a very rich intel- lectual reward offers itself to persons who are willing to attempt the investigation.
For, strange as the statement wiU appear at first sight, modern metaphysics, and to a large extent modern physical science, have been groping for centuries blindly after know- ledge which occult philosophy has enjoyed in full measure all the while. Owing to a train of fortunate circumstances, I have come to know that this is the case ; I have come into some contact with persons who are heirs of a greater know- ledge concerning the mysteries of Nature and humanity than modern culture has yet evolved ; and my present wish is to sketch the outlines of this knowledge, to record with exacti- tude the experimental proofs I have obtained that occult science invests its adepts with a control of natural forces superior to that enjoyed by physicists of the ordinary type, and the grounds there are for bestowing the most respectful
2
THE OCCULT WORLD.
consideration on the theories entertained by occult science concerning the constitution and destinies of the human soul. Of course people in the present day will be slow to beheve that any knowledge worth considering can be found outside the bright focus of European culture. Modern science has accomplished grand results by the open method of investiga- tion, and is very impatient of the theory that persons who ever attained to real knowledge, either in sciences or metaphysics, could have been content to hide their hght under a bushel. So the tendency has been to conceive that occult philosophers of old — Egyptian priests, Chaldean Magi, Essenes, Gnostics, theurgic Neo-Platonists, and the rest — who kept their knowledge secret, must have adopted that policy to conceal the fact that they knew very little. Mystery can only have been loved by charlatans who wish to mystify. The conclusion is pardonable from the modern point of view, but it has given rise to an impression in the popular mind that the ancient mystics have actually been turned inside out, and found to know very little. This impression is absolutely erroneous. Men of science in former ages worked in secret, and instead of publishing their discoveries, taught them in secret to carefully selected pupils. Their motives for adopting that pohcy are readily intelligible, even if the merits of the policy may seem still open to discussion. At all events, their teaching has not been forgotten; it has been transmitted by secret initiation to men of our own time, and while its methods and its practical achievements remain secrets in their hands, it is open to any patient and earnest student of the question to satisfy himself that these methods are of supreme efficacy, and these achievements far more admirable than any yet standing to the credit of modern science.
For the secrecy in which these operations have been shrouded has never disguised their existence, and it is only in our own time that this has been forgotten. Formerly at great public ceremonies, the initiates displayed the powers with which their knowledge of natural laws invested them. We carelessly assume that the narratives of such displays describe performances of magic ; we have decided that there is no such thing as magic, therefore the narratives must have been false, the persons whom they refer to, impostors. But supposing that magic of old was simply the science of
INTRODUCTION.
3
magi, of learned men, there is no magic, in the modern sense, left in the matter. And supposing that such science — even
in ancient times already the product of long ages of study
had gone in some directions further than our much younger modern science has yet reached, it is reasonable to conclude that some displays in connection with ancient mysteries may have been strictly scientific experiments, though they sound like displays of magic, and would look like displays of magic for us now if they could be repeated.
On that hypothesis, modern sagacity applying modern knowledge to the subject of ancient mysteries, may be merely modern folly evolving erroneous conclusions from modern ignorance.
But there is no need to construct hypotheses in the matter. The facts are accessible if they are sought for in the right way, and the facts are these : The wisdom of the ancient world — science and religion commingled, physics and meta- physics combined — was a reahty, and it still survives. It is that which will be spoken of in these pages as Occult Philosophy. It was already a complete system of knowledge that had been cultivated in secret, and handed down to initiates for ages, before its professors performed experi- ments in public to impress the popular mind in Egypt and Greece. Adepts of occultism in the present day are capable of performing similar experiments, and of exhibiting results that prove them immeasurably further advanced than ordi- nary modern science in a comprehension of the forces of Nature. Furthermore, .they inherit from their great pre- decessors a science which deals not merely with physics, but with the constitution and capacities of the human soul and spirit. Modern science has discovered the circulation of the blood ; occult science understands the circulation of the life-principle. Modern physiology deals with the body only ; occultism with the soul as well — not as the subject of vague, religious rhapsodies ; but as an actual entity, with properties that can be examined in combination with, or apart from, those of the body.
It is chiefly in the East that occultism is still kept up — in India and in adjacent countries. It is in India that I have encountered it ; and this little volume is written to describe the experiences I have enjoyed, and to retail the knowledge I have acquired.
B 2
4
THE OCCULT WORLD.
II.
My narrative of events must be preceded by some further general explanations, or it would be unintelligibly The identity of occultism as practised in all ages, must be kept in view, to account for the magnitude of its orgsmization, and for the astounding discovery^ that secluded Orientals may understand more about electricity than Faraday, more about physics than Tyndall. The culture of Evn-ope has been developed by Europeans for themselves within the last few hundred years. The culture of occultists is the growth of vast periods long anterior to these, when civilisa- tion inhabited the East. And during a career which has carried occultism in the domain of physical science tar beyond the point we have reached, physical science has merely been an object for occultism of secondary import- ance. Its main strength has been devoted to meta- physical inquiry, and to the latent psychological faculties in man, faculties which, in their development, enable the occultist to obtain actual experimental knowledge coimermng the soul’s condition of extra-corporeal existence.^ There is thus something more than a mere archaeological interest in the identification of the occult system with the doctrines ot the initiated organizations in all ages of the world’s history, and we are presented by this identification with the key to the philosophy of religious development. Occul^sm is not merely an isolated discovery showing humanity to be possessed of certain powers over Nature, which the narrower study of Nature from the merely materialistic standpoint has failed to develop; it is an illumination cast over all previous spiritual speculation worth anything, of a kind which knits together some apparently divergent systems. It is to spiritual philosophy much what Sanscrit was found to be to comparative philology; it is a conmon stock o philosophical roots. Judaism, Christianity, Buddhnsm and the Egyptian theology are thus brought into one family of ideas. Occultism, as it is no new invention, is no specific sect, but the professors of no sect can afford to dispense with the side-lights it throws upon the conception of Nature and Man’s destinies which they may have been induced by their own specific faith to form; occultism, in fact must be recognized by any one who will take the trouble to put
INTRODUCTION,
5
before his mind clearly the problems with which it deals, as a study of the most sublime importance to every man who cares to live a life worthy of his human rank in creation, and who can realize the bearing on ethics of cer- tain knowledge concerning his own survival after death. It is one thing to follow the lead of a hazy impression that a life beyond the grave, if there is one, may be somehow benefited by abstinence from wrong-doing on this side ; it will clearly be another to realize, if that can be shown to be the case, that the life beyond the grave must, with the certainty of a sum-total built up of a series of plus and minus quantities, be the final expression of the use made of opportunities in this.
I have said that the startling importance of occult know- ledge turns on the manner in which it affords exact and experimental knowledge concerning spiritual things which under all other systems must remain the subject of specu- lation or blind religious faith. It may be further asserted, that occultism shows that the harmony and smooth con- tinuity of Nature observable in physics extend to those operations of Nature that are concerned with the phenomena of metaphysical existence.
Before approaching an exposition of the conclusions con- cerning the nature of man that occult philosophy has reached, it may be worth while to meet an objection that may perhaps be raised by the reader on the threshold of the subject. How is it that conclusions of such great weight have been kept the secret property of a jealous body of initiates % Is it not a law of progress that truth asserts itself and courts the free air and light % Is it reasonable to suppose that the greatest of all truths — the fundamental basis of truth concerning man and Nature — should be afraid to show itself % With what object could the ancient professors of, or proficients in, occult philosophy keep the priceless treasures of their researches to themselves %
Now, it is no business of mine to defend the extreme tenacity with which the proficients in occultism have hitherto not only barred out the world from the knowledge of their knowledge, but have almost left it in ignorance that such knowledge exists. It is enough here to point out that it would be foohsh to shut our eyes to a revelation that may now be partially conceded, merely because we are
6
THE OCCULT WORLD.
piqued at the behaviour of those who have been in a posi- tion to make it before, but have not chosen to do so. Nor would it be wiser to say that the reticence of the occultists so far discredits anything we may now be told about their acquirements. When the sun is actually shining it is no use to say that its hght is discredited by the behaviour of the barometer yesterday. I have to deal, in discussing the acquirements of occultism, with facts that have actually taken place, and nothing can discredit what is known to be true. No doubt it will be worth while later on to examine the motives which have rendered the occultists of all ages so profoundly reserved. And there may be more to say in justification of the course that has been pursued than is visible at the first glance. Indeed, the reader will not go far in an examination of the nature of the powers which proficients in occultism actually possess, without seeing that it is supremely desirable to keep back the practical exercise of such powers from the world at large. But it is one thing to deny mankind generally the key which unlocks the mystery of occult power \ it is another to withhold the fact that there is a mystery to unlock. However, the fur- ther discussion of that question here would be premature. Enough for the present to take note of the fact that secrecy after all is not complete if external students of the subject are enabled to learn as much about the mysteries as I shall have to tell. Manifestly, there is a great deal more behind, but, at all events, a great deal is to be learned by inquirers who will set to work in the right way.
And that which may now be learned is no new revelation at last capriciously extended to the outer world for the first time. In former periods of history, a great deal more has been known about the nature of occultism by the world at large than is known at this moment to the modern West. The bigotry of modern civilization, and not the jealousy of the occultist, is to blame if the European races are at this moment more generally ignorant of the extent to which psychological research has been carried, than the Egyptian populace in the past, or the people of India in the present day. As regards the latter, amongst whom the truth of the theory just suggested can easily be put to the test, you will find the great majority of Hindoos perfectly convinced of the truth of the main statements which I am about to
INTRODUCTION.
7
put forward. They do not generally or readily talk about such subjects with Europeans, because these are so prone to stupid derision of views they do not understand or believe in already. The Indian native is very timid in presence of such ridicule. But it does not affect in the slightest degree the behefs which rest in his own mind on the fundamental teaching he will always have received, and in many cases on odds and ends of experiences he may himself have had. The Hindoos are thus well aware, as a body, of the fact that there are persons who by entire devotion to certain modes of life acquire unusual powers in the nature of such as Europeans would very erroneously call supernatural. They are quite famihar with the notion that such persons live secluded lives, and are inaccessible to ordinary curiosity ; and also with the fact that they are none the less approach- able by fit and determined candidates for admission to occult training. Ask any cultivated Hindoo if he has ever heard of Mahatmas and Yog Yidya or occult science, and it is a hundred to one that you will find he has — and, unless he happens to be a hybrid product of an Anglo-Indian University, that he fully believes in the reality of the powers ascribed to Yoga. It does not follow that he will at once say “ Yes” to a European asking the question. He will probably say just the reverse, from the apprehension I have spoken of above ; but push your questions home and you will discover the truth, as I did, for example, in the case of a very intelligent English-speaking native vakeel in an influential position, and in constant relations with high European officials, last year. At first my new acquaintance met my inquiries as to whether he knew anything about these subjects with a wooden look of complete ignorance, and an explicit denial of any knowledge as to what I meant at all. It was not till the second time I saw him in private, at my own house, that by degrees it grew upon him that I was in earnest, and knew something about Yoga myself, and then he quietly opened out his real thoughts on the subject, and showed me that he knew not only perfectly well what I meant all along, but was stocked with information concerning occurrences and phenomena of an occult or apparently supernatural order, many of which had been observed in his own family and some by himself.
The point of all this is that Europeans are not justified
8
THE OCCULT WORLD.
in attributing to the jealousy of the occultists the absolute and entire ignorance of all that concerns them which per- vades the modern society of the West. The West has been occupied with the business of material progress to the ex- clusion of psychological development. Perhaps it has done best for the world in confining itself to its speciality ; but however this may be, it has only itself to blame if its concentration of purpose has led to something like retro- gression in another branch of development.
Jacolliot, a French writer, who has dealt at great length with various phases of Spiritism in the East, was told by one who must have been an adept to judge by the language used : “ You have studied physical Nature, and you have obtained through the laws of Nature marvellous results — steam, electricity, &c. &c. For twenty thousand years or more we have studied the intellectual forces \ we have dis- covered their laws, and we obtain, by malang them act alone or in concert with matter, phenomena still more astonishing than your own.” Jacolliot adds: “We have seen things such as one does not describe for fear of making his readers doubt his intelhgence .... but still we have seen them.”
III.
Occult phenomena must not be confused with the phe- nomena of spiritualism. The latter, whatever they may be, are manifestations which mediums can neither control nor understand. The former are achievements of a conscious, living operator comprehending the laws with which he works. If these achievements appear miraculous that is the fault of the observer’s ignorance. The spiritualist know^s perfectly well, in spite of ignorant mockery on the part of outsiders content to laugh without knowing what they are laughing at, that all kinds of apparently supernatural occurrences do constantly take place for inquirers who hunt them with sufficient diligence. But he has never been able to get a clue to any other than a supernatural explanation of the causes at work. He has taken up a certain hypothesis faute de mieux in the first instance, and working always on this idea, has constructed such an elaborate edifice of theory round the facts that he is very reluctant to tolerate the
INTRODUCTION.
9
interposition of a new hypothesis which will oblige him to reconstruct his views almost from the beginning. There will be no help for this, however, if he belongs to the order of inquirers who care rather to be sure they have laid hold of the truth than to fortify a doctrine they have espoused for better or for worse.
Broadly speaking, there is scarcely one of the phenomena of spiritualism that adepts in occultism cannot reproduce by the force of their own will, supplemented by a comprehension of the resources of Nature. As will be seen when I come to a direct narrative of my own experiences, I have seen some of the most familiar phenomena of spirituahsm produced by purely human agency. The old original spirit-rap which introduced the mightier phenomena of spiritualism has been manifested for my edification in a countless variety of ways, and under conditions which render the hypothesis of any spiritual agency in the matter wholly preposterous. I have seen flowers fall from the blank ceiling of a room under circumstances that gave me a practical assurance that no spiritual agency was at work, though in a manner as absolutely “ supernatural” in the sense of being produced without the aid of any material appliances as any of the floral showers by which some spiritual mediums are attended. I have over and over again received “ direct writing,” produced on paper in sealed envelopes of my own, which was created or precipitated by a living human correspondent. I have information, which, though second-hand, is very trustworthy, of a great variety of other familiar spiritual phenomena produced in the same way by human adepts in occultism. But it is not my present task to make war on spiritualism. The announcements I have to make will, indeed, be probably received more readily among spiritualists than in the outer circles of the ordinary world, for the spiritualists are, at all events, aware, from their own experience, that the orthodox science of the day does not know the last word concerning mind and matter, while the orthodox outsider stupidly clings to a denial of facts when these are of a nature which he fore- sees himself unable to explain. As the facts of spiritualism, though accessible to any honest man who goes in search of them, are not of a kind which any one can carry about and fling in the faces of pragmatic “ sceptics” these latter are enabled to keep up their professions of incredulity without
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
the foolishness of their position being obvious to each other, plain as it is to “ the initiated.” However, although in this way the ordinary scientific mind will be reluctant to admit either the honesty of my testimony or the conceivabihty of my explanations, it may allay some hostile prejudices to make clear at the outset that occultism has nothing whatever to do with spiritualism — that “ the spirits” count for nothing at all in any of the abnormal experiences I shall have to relate.
OCCULTISM AND ITS ADEPTS.
II
OCCULTISM AND ITS ADEPTS.
I.
The powers with which occultism invests its adepts include, to begin with, a control over various forces in Nature which ordinary science knows nothing about, and by means of which an adept can hold conversation with any other adept, whatever intervals on the earth’s surface may lie between them. This psychological telegraphy is wholly independent of all mechanical conditions or appliances whatever. And the clairvoyant faculties of the adept are so perfect and complete that they amount to a species of omniscience as regards mundane affairs. The body is the prison of the soul for ordinary mortals. We can see merely what comes before its windows ; we can take cognisance only of what is brought within its bars. But the adept has found the key of his prison and can emerge from it at pleasure. It is no longer a prison for him — merely a dwelling. In other words, the adept can project his soul out of his body to any place he pleases with the rapidity of thought.
The whole edifice of occultism from basement to roof is so utterly strange to ordinary conceptions that it is difficult to know how to begin an explanation of its contents. How could one describe a calculating machine to an audience unfamiliar with the simplest mechanical contrivances and knowing nothing of arithmetic ? And the highly cultured classes of modern Europe as regards the achievements of occultism are, in spite of the perfection of their literary scholarship and the exquisite precision of their attainments in their own departments of science, in the position as regards occultism of knowing nothing about the A B C of the subject, nothing about the capacities of the soul at all as distinguished from the capacities of body and soul combined. The occultists for ages have devoted themselves to that study chiefly ; they have accomplished results in connection
12
THE OCCULT WORLD.
with it which are absolutely bewildering in their magni- ficence ; but suddenly introduced to some of these, the prosaic intelligence is staggered and feels in a world of miracle and enchantment. On charts that show the stream of history, the nations all intermingle more or less, except the Chinese, and that is shown coming down in a single river without affluents and without branches from out of the clouds of time. Suppose that civilized Europe had not come into contact with the Chinese till lately, and suppose that the Chinamen, very much brighter in intelligence than they teally are, had developed some branch of physical science to the point it actually has reached with us ; suppose that particular branch had been entirely neglected amongst us, the surprise we should feel at taking up the Chinese discoveries in their refined development without having gradually grown familiar with their small beginnings would be very great. Now this is exactly the situation as regards occult science. The occultists have been a race apart from an earlier period than we can fathom — not a separate race physically, not a uniform race physically at all, nor a nation in any sense of the word, but a continuous association of men of the highest intelhgence linked together by a bond stronger than any other tie of which mankind has experience, and carrying on with a perfect continuity of purpose the studies and traditions and mysteries of self- development handed down to them by their predecessors. All this time the stream of civilization, on the foremost waves of which the culture of modern Europe is floating, has been wholly and absolutely neglectful of the one study with which the occultists have been solely engaged. What wonder that the two lines of civilization have diverged so far apart that their forms are now entirely unlike each other. It remains to be seen whether this attempt to reintroduce the long-estranged cousins will be tolerated or treated as an impudent attempt to pass off an impostor as a relation.
I have said that the occultist can project his soul from his body. As an incidental discovery, it will be observed, he has thus ascertained beyond all shadow of doubt that he really has got a soul. A comparison of myths has some- times been called the science of religion. If there can really be a science of religion it must necessarily be occultism. On the surface, perhaps, it may not be obvious that religious
OCCULTISM AND ITS ADEPTS.
13
truth must necessarily open out more completely to the soul as temporarily loosened from the body, than to the soul as taking cognisance of ideas through the medium of the phy- sical senses. But to ascend into a realm of immateriality, where cognition becomes a process of pure perception, while the intellectual faculties are in full play and centred in the immaterial man, must manifestly be conducive to an en- larged comprehension of religious truth.
I have just spoken of the “ immaterial man” as distin- guished from the body of the physical senses; but, so complex is the statement I have to make, than I must no sooner induce the reader to tolerate the phrase than I must reject it for the future as inaccurate. Occult philosophy has ascertained that the inner ethereal self, which is the man as distinguished from his body, is itself the envelope of something more ethereal still — ^is itself, in a subtle sense of the term, material.
The majority of civihzed people believe that man has a soul which will somehow survive the dissolution of the body ; but they have to confess that they do not know very much about it. A good many of the most highly civilized, have grave doubts on the subject, and some think that researches in physics which have suggested the notion that even thought may be a mode of motion, tend to establish the strong probability of the hypothesis that when the life of the body is destroyed nothing else, survives. Occult philosophy does not speculate about the matter at all ; it knows the state of the facts.
St. Paul, who was an occultist, speaks of man as consti- tuted of body, soul, and spirit. The distinction is one that hardly fits in with the theory, that when a man dies his soul is translated to heaven or hell for ever. What, then, becomes of the spirit, and what is the spirit as different from the soul, on the ordinary hypothesis ? Orthodox thinkers work out each some theory on the subject for himself. Either that the soul is the seat of the emotions and the spirit of the intellectual faculties, or vice versa. No one can put such conjectures on a solid foundation, not even on the basis of an alleged revelation. But St. Paul was not indulging in vague fancies when he made use of the expression quoted,. The spirit he was referring to may be described as the soul of the soul. With that for the
4
THE OCCULT WORLD.
moment we need not be concerned. The important point which occultism brings out is that the soul of man, while something enormously subtler and more ethereal and more lasting than the body, is itself a material reahty. Not material as chemistry understands matter, but as physical science en hloc might understand it if the tentaculse of each branch of science were to grow more sensitive and were to work more in harmony. It is no denial of the materiality of any hypothetical substance to say that one cannot de- termine its atomic weight and its affinities. The ether that transmits light is held to be material by any one who holds it to exist at all, but there is a gulf of difference between it and the thinnest of the gases. You do not always approach a scientific truth from the same direction. You may per- ceive some directly; you have to infer others indirectly; but these latter may not on that account be the less certain. The materiality of ether is inferable from the behaviour of light : the materiality of the soul may be inferable from its subjection to forces. A mesmeric influence is a force emanating from certain physical characteristics of the mes- merist. It impinges on the soul of the subject at a distance, and produces an effect perceptible to him, demonstrable to others. Of course this is an illustration and no proof. I must set forth as well as I am able — and that can but be very imperfectly — the discoveries of occultism without at first attempting the establishment by proof of each part of these discoveries. Further on, I shall be able to prove some parts at any rate, and others will then be recognized as indirectly established, too.
The soul is material, and inheres in the ordinarily more grossly material body; and it is this condition of things which enables the occultist to speak positively on the sub- ject, for he can satisfy himself at one coup that there is such a thing as a soul, and that it is material in its nature, by dissociating it from the body under some conditions, and restoring it again. The occultist can even do this some- times with other souls ; his primary achievement, however, is to do so with his own. When I say that the occultist knows he has a soul I refer to this power. He knows it just as another man knows he has a great coat. He can put it from him, and render it manifest as something separate from himself. But remember that to him, when
OCCULTISM AND ITS ADEPTS.
15
the separation is effected, he is the soul and the thing put off is the body. And this is to attain nothing less than absolute certainty about the great problem of survival after death. The adept does not rely on faith, or on meta- physical speculation, in regard to the possibilities of his existence apart from the body. He experiences such an existence whenever he pleases, and although it may be allowed that the mere art of emancipating himself tem- porarily from the body would not necessarily inform him concerning his ultimate destinies after that emancipation should be final at death, it gives him, at all events, exact knowledge concerning the conditions under which he will start on his journey in the next world. While his body lives, his soul is, so to speak, a captive balloon (though with a very long, elastic, and imponderable cable). Captive ascents will not necessarily tell him whether the balloon will float when at last the machinery below breaks up, and he finds himself altogether adrift ; but it is something to be an aeronaut already, before the journey begins, and to know certainly, as I said before, that there are such things as balloons, for certain emergencies, to sail in.
There would be infinite grandeur in the faculty I have described alone, supposing that were the end of adept ship ; but instead of being the end, it is more like the beginning. The seemingly magic feats which the adepts in occultism have the power to perform are accomplished, I am given to understand, by means of familiarity with a force in Nature which is referred to in Sanscrit writings as okas. Western science has done much in discovering some of the properties and powers of electricity. Occult science, ages before, had done much more in discovering the properties and powers of okas. In ‘‘The Coming Hace,” the late Lord Lytton, whose connection with occultism appears to have been closer than the world generally has yet realized, gives a fantastic and imaginative account of the wonders achieved in the world to which his hero penetrates, by means of Yril. In writing of Yril, Lord Lytton has clearly been poetising akas. “ The Coming Race” is described as a people entirely unlike adepts in many essential particulars — as a complete nation, for one thing, of men and women all equally handling the powers, even from childhood, which — or some of which among others not described — the adepts
i6
THE OCCULT WORLD.
have conquered. This is a mere fairy-tale, founded on the achievements of occultism. But no one who has made a study of the latter can fail to see, can fail to recognize with a conviction amounting to certainty, that the author of “The Coming Bace” must have been famihar with the leading ideas of occultism, perhaps with a great deal more. The same evidence is afforded by Lord Lytton’s other novels of mystery, “ Zanoni,” and “ The Strange Story.” In “Zanoni” the subhme personage in the background, Mejnour, is intended plainly to be a great adept of Eastern occultism, exactly like those of whom I have to speak. It is difficult to know why in this case, where Lord Lytton has manifestly intended to adhere much more closely to the real facts of occultism than in “ The Coming Bace,” he should have represented Mejnour as a solitary survivor of the Bosicrucian fraternity. The guardians of occult science are content to be a small body as compared with the tremendous importance of the knowledge which they save from perishing, but they have never allowed their numbers to diminish to the extent of being in any danger of ceasing to exist as an organized body on earth. It is difficult, again, to understand why Lord L}ffton, having learned so much as he certainly did, should have been content to use up his information merely as an ornament of fiction, instead of giving it to the world in a form which should claim more serious consideration. At all events, prosaic people will argue to that effect ; but it is not impossible that Lord Lytton himself had become, through long study of the subject, so permeated with the love of mystery wliich inheres in the occult mind apparently, that he preferred to throw out his information in a veiled and mystic shape, so that it would be intelligible to readers in sympathy with himself, and would blow unnoticed past the commonplace understanding without awakening the angry rejection which these pages, for example, if they are destined to attract any notice at all, will assuredly encounter at the hands of bigots in science, religion, and the great philosophy of the commonplace.
Akas, be it, then, understood, is a force for which we have no name, and in reference to which we have no experience to guide us to a conception of its nature. One can only grasp at the idea required by conceiving that it is as much more potent, subtle, and extraordinary an agent than
OCCULTISM AND ITS ADEPTS.
7
electricity, as electricity is superior in subtlety and varie- gated efficiency to steam. It is through his acquaintance with the properties of this force that the adept can accomplish the physical phenomena which I shall presently be able to show are within his reach, besides others of far greater magnificence.
II.
Who are the adepts who handle the tremendous forces of which I speak? There is reason to believe that such adepts have existed in all historic ages, and there are such adepts in India at this moment, or in adjacent countries. The identity of the knowledge they have inherited, with that of ancient initiates in occultism, follows irresistibly from an examination of the views they hold and the faculties they exercise. The conclusion has to be worked out from a mass of literary evidence, and it will be enough to state it for the moment, pointing out the proper channels of research in the matter afterwards. For the present let us consider the position of the adepts as they now exist.
They constitute a Brotherhood, or Secret Association, which ramifies all over the East, but the principal seat of which for the present I gather to be in Thibet. But India has not yet been deserted by the adepts, and from that country they still receive many recruits. For the great fraternity is at once the least and the most exclusive organi- zation in the world, and fresh recruits from any race or country are welcome, provided they possess the needed qualifications. The door, as I have been told by one who is himself an adept, is always open to the right man who knocks, but the road that has to be travelled before the door is reached is one which none but very determined travellers can hope to pass. It is manifestly impossible that I can describe its perils in any but very general terms, but it is not necessary to have learned any secrets of initiation to understand the character of the training- through which a neophyte must pass before he attains the dignity of a proficient in occultism. The adept is not made : he becomes, as I have been constantly assured, and the process of becoming is mainly in his own hands.
Never, I believe, in less than seven years from the time
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
at which a candidate for initiation is accepted as a proba- tioner, is he ever admitted to the very first of the ordeals, whatever they may be, which bar the way to the earliest degrees of occultism, and there is no security for him that the seven years may not be extended ad libitum. He has no security that he will ever be admitted to any initiation whatever. Nor is this appalling uncertainty, which would alone deter most Europeans, however keen upon the subject intellectually, from attempting to advance, themselves, into the domain of occultism, maintained from the mere caprice of a despotic society, coquetting, so to speak, with the eagerness of its wooers. The trials through which the neophyte has to pass are no fantastic mockeries, nor mimicries of awful peril. Nor, do I take it, are they artificial barriers set up by the masters of occultism, to try the nerve of their pupils, as a riding-master might put up fences in his school. It is inherent in the nature of the science that has to be explored, that its revelations shall stagger the reason and try the most resolute courage. It is in his own interest that the candidate’s character and fixity of purpose, and perhaps his physical and mental attributes, are tested and watched with infinite care and patience in the first instance, before he is allowed to take the final plunge into the sea of strange experiences through which he must swim with the strength of his own right arm, or perish.
As to what may be the nature of the trials that await him during the period of his development, it will be obvious that I can have no accurate knowledge, and conjectures based on fragmentary revelations picked up here and there are not worth recording, but as for the nature of the life led by the mere candidate for admission as a neophyte it will be equally plain that no secret is involved. The ultimate development of the adept requires amongst other things a life of absolute physical purity, and the candidate must, from the beginning, give practical evidence of his willingness to adopt this. He must, that is to say, for all the years of his probation, be perfectly chaste, perfectly abstemious, and indifferent to physical luxury of every sort. This regimen does not involve any fantastic discipline or obtrusive asceticism, nor withdrawal from the world. There would be nothing to prevent a gentleman in London society
OCCULTISM AND ITS ADEPTS.
19
from being in full training for occult candidature without anybody about him being the wiser. For true occultism, the sublime attachment of the real adept, is not attained through the loathsome asceticism of the ordinary Indian fakeer, the yogi of the woods and wilds, whose dirt accumu- lates with his sanctity — of the fanatic who fastens iron hooks into his flesh, or holds up an arm until it is withered. An imperfect knowledge of some of the external facts of Indian occultism, will often lead to a misunderstanding on this point. Yog vidya is the Indian name for occult science, and it is easy to learn a good deal more than is worth learning about the practices of some misguided enthusiasts who cultivate some of its inferior branches by means of mere physical exercises. Properly speaking, this physical development is called Haiti yog, while the loftier sort, which is approached by the discipline of the mind, and which leads to the* high altitudes of occultism, is called Ragi yog. No person whom a real occultist would ever think of as an adept has acquired his powers by means of the laborious and puerile exercises of the Haiti yog. I do not mean to say that these inferior exercises are altogether futile. They do invest the person who pursues them with some abnormal faculties and powers. Many treatises have been written to describe them, and many people who have lived in India wiU be able to relate curious experiences they have had with proficients in this extraordinary craft. I do not wish to fill these pages with tales of wonders that I have had no means I of sifting, or it would be easy to collect examples ; but the point to insist on here is that no story any one can have heard or read which seems to put an ignoble, or petty, or low-minded aspect on Indian yogeeism can have any applica- tion to the ethereal yogeeism which is called Ragi yog, and which leads to the awful heights of true adeptship.
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
Secret as the occult organization has always remained, there is a good deal more to be learned concerning the philosophical views which it has preserved or acquired than might be supposed at the first glance. As my own experi- ence when fully described will show, the great adepts of occultism themselves have no repugnance to the dissemina- tion of their religious philosophy so far as a world untrained as ours is in pure psychological investigation can profit by such teaching. Nor even are they unconquerably averse to the occasional manifestation of those superior powers over the forces of Nature to which their extraordinary researches have led them. The many apparently miraculous pheno- mena which I have witnessed through occult agency could never have been exhibited if the general rule which pre- cludes the Brothers from the exhibition of their powers to uninitiated persons were absolute. As a general rule, indeed, the display of any occult phenomenon for the pur- pose of exciting the wonder and admiration of beholders is strictly forbidden. And indeed I should imagine that such prohibition is absolute if there is no higher purpose involved. But it is plain that with a purely philanthropic desire to spread the credit of a philosophical system which is enno- bling in its character, the Brothers may sometimes wisely permit the display of abnormal phenomena when the minds to which such an appeal is made may be likely to rise from the appreciation of the wonder to a befitting respect for the philosophy which it accredits. And the history of the Theosophical Society has been an expansion of this idea. That history has been a chequered one, because the pheno- mena that have been displayed have often failed of their effect, have sometimes become the subject of a premature publicity, and have brought down on the study of occult philosophy as regarded from the point of view of the outer
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
2
world, and on the devoted persons who have been chiefly identified with its encouragement by means of the Theoso- phical Society, a great deal of stupid ridicule and some malevolent persecution. It may be asked why the Brothers, if they are really the great and all-powerful persons I represent them, have permitted indiscretions of the kind referred to, but the inquiry is not so embarrassing as it may seem at the first glance. If the picture of the Brothers that I have endeavoured to present to the reader has been appreciated rightly, it will show them less accurately quali- fied, in spite of their powers, than persons of lesser occult development, to carry on any undertaking which involves direct relations with a multiplicity of ordinary people in the commonplace world. I gather the primary purpose of the Brotherhood to be something very unlike the task I am engaged in, for example, at this moment — the endeavour to convince the pubhc generally that there ‘really are faculties latent in humanity capable of such extraordinary develop- ment, that they carry us at a bound to an immense distance beyond the dreams of physical science in reference to the comprehension of Nature, and at the same time afford us positive testimony concerning the constitution and destinies of the human soul. That is a task on which it is reasonable to suppose the Brothers would cast a sympathetic glance ; but it will be obvious on a moment’s reflection, that their primary duty must be to keep alive the actuality of that knowledge, and of those powers concerning which I am merely giving some shadowy account. If the Brothers were to employ themselves on the large, rough business of hacking away at the incredulity of a stolid multitude, at the acrimonious increduhty of the materialistic phalanx, at the terrified and indignant increduhty of the orthodox rehgious world, it is conceivable that they might — propter vitam vivendi perdere causas — suffer the occult science itself to decay for the sake of persuading mankind that it did really exist. Of course it might be suggested that division of labour might be possible in occultism as in everything else, and that some adepts quahfied for the work might be told off for the purpose of breaking down the increduhty of modern science, while the others would carry on the primary duties of then? career in their own beloved seclusion. But a suggestion of this kind, however practical it may sound to
22
THE OCCULT WORLD.
a practical world, would probably present itself as eminently unpractical to the true mystic. To begin with, an aspirant for occult honours does not go through the tremendous and prolonged effort required to win him success, in order at the end of all things to embrace a life in the midst of the ordinary world, which on the hypothesis of his success in occultism must necessarily be repugnant to him in the extreme. Probably there is not one real adept who does not look with greater aversion and repugnance on any life except a life of seclusion, than we of the outer world would look on the notion of being buried alive in a remote moun- tain fastness where no foot or voice from the outer world could penetrate. I shall very soon be able to show that the love of seclusion, inherent in adeptship, does not imply a mind vacant of the knowledge of European culture and manners. It is, on the contrary, compatible with an amount of European culture and experience that people acquainted merely with the common-place aspects of Eastern life will be surprised to find possible in the case of a man of Oriental birth. Now, the imaginary adept told off on the suggestion I am examining, to show the scientific world that there are realms of knowledge it has not yet explored, and faculties attainable to man that it has not yet dreamed of possessing, would have to be either appointed to discharge that duty, or to volunteer for it. In the one case we have to assume that the occult fraternity is despotic in its treatment of its members in a manner which all my observation leads me to believe it certainly is not j in the other, we have to suppose some adept making a voluntary sacrifice of what he regards as not only the most agreeable but also the higher life — for what ? for the sake of accom- plishing a task which he does not regard as of very great importance — relatively, at any rate, to that other task in which he may take a part — the perpetuation and perhaps the development of the great science itself. But I do not care to follow the argument any further, because it will come on for special treatment in a different way presently. Enough for the moment to indicate that there are considera- tions against the adoption of that method of persuasion which, as far as the judgment of ordinary people would go, would seem the best suited to the introduction of occult truths to modern intelligence.
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
23
And these considerations appear to have prompted the acceptance, by the Brothers, of the Theosophical Society as a more or less imperfect, but still the best available agency for the performance of a piece of work, in which, without being actually prepared to enter on it themselves, they nevertheless take a cordial interest.
And what are the peculiar conditions wliich render the Theosophical Society, the organization and management of which have been faulty in many ways, the best agency hitherto available for the propagation of occult truths % The zeal and qualifications of its founder, Madame Blavatsky, give the explanation required. It is obvious that to give any countenance or support at all to a society concerned with the promulgation of occult philosophy, it was necessary for the Brothers to be in occult communica- tion with it in some way or other. For it must be remem- bered that though it may seem to us a very amazing and impossible thing to sit still at home and impress our thoughts upon the mind of a distant friend by an effort of will, a Brother living in an unknown Himalayan retreat is not only able to converse as freely as he likes with any of his friends who are initiates like himself, in whatever part of the world they may happen to be, but would find any other modes of communication, such as those with which the crawling faculties of the outer world have to be content, simply intolerable in their tedium and inefficacy. Besides, he must, to be able to afford assistance to any society having its sphere of operations among people in the world, be able to hear from it with the same facility that he can send communications to it. So there must be an initiate at the other end of the line. Finally, the occult rules evidently require this last-named condition, or, what amounts to the same thing, forbid arrangements which can only be avoided on this condition.
Now, Madame Blavatsky is an initiate — is an adept to the extent of possessing this magnificent power of psycho- logical telegraphy with her occult friends. That she has stopped short of that further development in adeptship that would have tided her right over the boundary between this and the occult world altogether, is the circumstance which has rendered her assumption of the task with which the Theosophical Society’s is concerned, compatible with the
24
THE OCCULT WORLD.
considerations pointed out above as operating to prevent the assumption of such a duty by a full adept. As regards the supremely essential characteristic, she has, in fact, been exactly suited to the emergency. How it came to pass that her occult training carried her as far as it did and no further, is a question into which it is fruitless to inquire, because the answer would manifestly entail explanations which would impinge too closely on the secrets of initiation which are never disclosed under any circumstances what- ever. After all, she is a woman — though her powerful mind, widely if erratically cultivated, and perfectly daunt- less courage proved among other ways on the battle-field, but more than by any bravery with bullets, by her occult initiation, renders the name, connoting what it ordinarily does, rather absurd in application to her — and this has, perhaps, barred her from the highest degrees in occultism that she might otherwise have attained. At all events, after a course of occult study carried on for seven years in a Himalayan retreat, and crowning a devotion to occult pursuits extending over five-and-thirty or forty years, Madame Blavatsky reappeared in the world, dazed, as she met ordinary people going about in commonplace, benighted ignorance concerning the wonders of occult science, at the mere thought of the stupendous gulf of experience that separated her from them. She could hardly at first bear to associate with them, for thinking of all she knew that they did not know and that she was bound not to reveal. Any one can understand the burden of a great secret, but the burden of such a secret as occultism, and the burden of ‘great powers only conferred on condition that their exercise should be very strictly circumscribed by rule, must have been trying indeed.
Circumstances — or to put the matter more plainly, the guidance of friends from whom, though she had left t^hem behind in the Himalayas on her return to Europe, she was no longer in danger of separation, as we understand the term, induced her to visit America, and there, assisted by some other persons whose interest in the subject was kindled by occasional manifestations of her extraordinary powers, and notably by Colonel Olcott, its life-devoted President, she founded the Theosophical Society, the objects of which, as originally defined, were to explore the latent
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
25
psychological powers of man, and the ancient Oriental literature in which the clue to these may be hidden, and in which the philosophy of occult science may be partly discovered.
The Society took root readily in America, while branches were also formed in England and elsewhere ; but, leaving these to take care of themselves, Madame Blavatsky ultimately returned to India, to establish the Society there among the natives, from whose natural hereditary sympathies with mysticism it was reasonable to expect an ardent sympathy with a psychological enterprise which not only appealed to their intuitive belief in the reality of yog viclya, but also to their best patriotism, by exhibiting India as the fountain-head of the highest, if the least known and the most secluded, culture in the world.
Here, however, began the practical blunders in the management of the Theosophical Society which led to the incidents referred to above, as having given it, so far, a chequered career. Madame Blavatsky, to begin with, was wholly unfamiliar with the everyday side of Indian life, her previous visits having brought her only into contact with groups of people utterly unconnected with the current social system and characteristics of the country. Nor could she have undertaken a worse preparation for Indian life than that supplied by a residence of some years in the United States. This sent her out to India unfurnished with the recommendations which she could readily have obtained in England, and poisoned her mind with an absolutely erroneous and prejudiced conception of the cha- racter of the British ruling classes of India and their relations with the people. India and the United States are a good way apart geographically, but they are even more completely separated in other ways. The consequence was that Madame Blavatsky, on her first arrival in India, adopted an attitude of obtrusive sympathy with the natives of the soil as compared with the Europeans, seeking their society in a manner which, coupled with the fact that she made none of the usual advances to European society, and with her manifestly Bussian name, had the effect not unnaturally of rendering her suspecte to the rather clumsy organization which in India attempts to combine, with sundry others, the functions of a political police. These
26
THE OCCULT WORLD.
suspicions, it is true, were allayed almost as soon as they were conceived, but not before Madame Blavatsky had been made for a short time the object of an espionage so awkward that it became grossly obvious to herself and roused her indignation to fever heat. To a more phlegmatic nature the incident would have been little more than amusing, but all accidents combined to develop trouble. A Russian by birth, though naturalized in the United States, Madame Blavatsky is probably more sensitive than an English woman less experienced in political espionage would be to the insult involved in being taken for a spy. Then the inner consciousness of having, for enthusiasm in the purely intellectual or spiritual enterprise to which she had devoted her life, renounced the place in society to which her distin- guished birth and family naturally entitled her,^ probably intensified the bitterness of her indignation, at fimding the sacrifice not only unappreciated, but turned against her, and regarded as justifying a foul suspicion. At all events, the circumstances acting on an excitable temperament led her to make public protest which caused it to be vudely known by natives as well as by Europeans, that she had been looked at askance by Government authorities. And this idea for a time impeded the success of her work. Nothing can be done in India without a European impulse in the beginning ; at all events, it handicaps any enterprise frightfully to be without such an impulse if native co-opera- tion is required. Not that the Theosophical Society failed to get members. The natives were flattered at the attitude towards them taken up by their new “ European” friends, as Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott were no doubt generally regarded in spite of their American nationahty, and showed a shallow eagerness to become Theosophists. But their ardour did not always prove durable, and in some few cases they showed a lamentable want of earnestness by breaking away from the Society altogether.
Meanwhile, Madame Blavatsky began to make friends amongst the Europeans, and in 1880 visited Simla, where she began late in the day to approach her work from the right direction. Again, however, some mistakes were made which have retarded the establishment of the Theosophical Society, as far as India is concerned, on the dignifiied footing * See Preface.
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
27
that it ought to occupy. A great many wonderful pheno- mena were manifested in the presence at various times of a great many people ; but proper safeguards were not taken to avert the great danger that must always attend such a method of recommending occult science to public notice. It is beyond dispute that phenomena, exhibited under thoroughly satisfactory conditions to persons intelligent enough to comprehend their significance, create an effect in awakening a thirst for the study of occult philosophy that no other appeal can produce. But it is equally true, though at the first glance this may not be so apparent, that to minds quite unprepared by previous training to grasp the operation of occult forces, the most perfectly unimpeachable phenomenon will be received rather as an insult to the understanding than as a proof of the operation of occult power. This is especially the case with persons of merely average intelligence, whose faculties cannot stand the shock of a sudden appeal to an entirely new set of ideas. The strain is too great ; the new chain of reasoning breaks, and the commonplace observer of abnormal occurrences reverts to his original frame of stolid incredulity, perfectly unaware of the fact that a revelation of priceless intellectual impor- tance has been offered to him and has been misunderstood. Nothing is commoner than to hear people say : “ I can’t believe in the reality of a phenomenal occurrence unless I see it for myself. Show it me and I shall believe in it, but not till then.” Many people who say this are quite mis- taken as to what they would believe if the occurrence were shown to them. I have over and over again seen pheno- mena of an absolutely genuine nature pass before the eyes of people unused to investigating occurrences of the kind, and leave no impression behind beyond an irritated convic- tion that they were somehow being taken in. Just this happened in some conspicuous instances at Simla, and it is needless to say that many as were the phenomena that Madame Blavatsky produced, or was instrumental in pro- ducing, during the visit to which I am referring, the number of people in the place who had no opportunity of seeing them was considerably greater than that of the witnesses. And for these, as a rule, the whole series of incidents presented itself simply as an imposition. It was nothing to the purpose for the holders of this theory that
28
THE OCCULT WORLD,
there was a glaring absence from the whole business of any motive for imposture, that a considerable group of persons whose testimony and capacity would never have been impugned had any other matter been under discussion, were emphatic in their declarations as to the complete reahty of the phenomena that had been displayed. The commonplace mind could not assimilate the idea that it was face to face with a new revelation in Nature, and any hypothesis, no matter how absurd and illogical in its details, was preferable for the majority to the simple grandeur of the truth.
On the whole, therefore, as Madame Blavatsky became a celebrity in India, her relations with European society were intensified. She made many friends, and secured some ardent converts to a behef in the reality of occult powers ; but she became the innocent object of bitter animosity on the part of some other acquaintances, who, unable to assimi- late what they saw in her presence, took up an attitude of disbelief, which deepened into positive enmity as the whole subject became enveloped in a cloud of more or less excited controversy.
And it is needless to say that many of the newspapers made great capital out of the whole situation, ridiculing Madame Blavatsky’s dupes, and twisting every bit of information that came out about her phenomena into the most ludicrous shape it could be made to assume. Mockery of that sort was naturally expected by Enghsh friends who avowed their belief in the reahty of Madame Blavatsky ’s powers, and probably never gave one of them a moment’s serious annoyance. But for the over-sensitive and excitable person chiefly concerned they were indescribably tormenting, and eventually it grew doubtful whether her patience would stand the strain put upon it; whether she would not rehnquish altogether the ungrateful task of inducing the world at large to accept the good gifts which she had devoted her life to offering them. Happily, so far, no catastrophe has ensued ; but no history of Columbus in chains for discovering a new world, or Galileo in prison for announcing the true principles of astronomy, is more remarkable for those who know all the bearings of the situation in India, as regards the Theosophical Society, than the sight of Madame Blavatsky, slandered and ridiculed by
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
29
most of the Anglo-Indian papers, and spoken of as a char- latan by the commonplace crowd, in return for having freely offered them some of the wonderful fruits — as much as the rules of the great occult association permit her to offer — of the life-long struggle in which she has conquered her extraordinary knowledge.
In spite of all this, meanwhile, the Theosophical Society remains the one organization which supplies to inquirers who thirst for occult knowledge a link of communication, however slight, with the great fraternity in the background which takes an interest in its progress, and is accessible to its founder.
30
THE OCCULT WORLD.
EECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
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 pro- ducing 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 satis- faction when once I had formed her acquaintance. It is, however, an illustration of the embarrassments which sur- round 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 Blavatsky’s acquain- tance 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 auxious to get at the truth, the difficulties to be overcome were almost insuper- able. 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
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
31
€nthusiasm 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 dis- approved 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 per- mitted 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 trouble- some for them to account for the wide development of the delusion, but any theory, they think, is preferable to admit- ting 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-decep- tion as regards spirit-rapping, which must be rather an awkward theory for any one 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 window-pane would do equally well, or the wall, or any
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
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 clockshade 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 satis- factory 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 window-pane 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 a 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 some one 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.
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
33
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 httle 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 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 famihar 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, or 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. Any one 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 thumb-nails 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 thumb- nails ; she puts only one hand on the table ; the raps come still. Does she conceal any artifice under her hand % She hfts her hand from the table altogether, and merely holding it in the air above, the raps still come. Has she done any- thing to the table % She puts her hand on a window-pane, on a picture-frame, on a dozen different places about the room in succession, and from each in turn come the
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
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 besides you will hear them producing httle 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 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 a night?’
Maskelyne and Cooke cannot do them for a night
nor for ten lakhs a night under the circumstances I describe.”
The raps even as I heard them during the first visit that Madame Blavatsky paid us at Allahabad, gave me a com- plete assurance that she was in possession of some faculties of an abnormal character. And this assurance lent a cre- dibility, that would not otherwise have belonged to them, to one or two phenomena of a difierent kind which also occurred at that time, the conditions of which were not complete enough to make them worth recording here. But it was mortifying to approach no nearer to absolute certi- tude 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 pro- claim any specific belief on the subject. It simply recom-
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
35
mended 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 pre- possessions of any specific rehgious 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 tantalizing 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 material- istic philosophy.
One conviction we felt had been fully attained. This was the conviction of her own good faith. It is disagree- able merely to recognize that this can be impugned ; but this has been done in India so recklessly and cruelly by people who take up an attitude of hostility to the views with which she is identified, that it would be affectation to pass the question by. On thetother hand, it would be too great a concession to an ignoble attack to go minutely over the evidence of her honesty of character with which my intimacy with Madame Blavatsky has gradually supplied me. At various times she has been a guest of ours for periods now amounting in all to more than three months out of nearly two years. To any impartial intelligence it will be manifest that, under these circumstances, I must have been able to form a better opinion concerning her real character than can possibly be derived from the crude observations of persons who have perhaps met her once or twice. I am not, of course, attributing any scientific value to this sort of testimony as accrediting the abnormal character of phenomena she may be concerned in producing. With such a mighty problem at stake as the trustworthiness of the fundamental theories of modern physical science, it is impossible to proceed by any other but scientific modes of investigation. In any experiments I have tried I have always been careful to exclude, not merely the probability, but the possibihty, of trickery; and where it has been im- possible to secure the proper conditions, I have not allowed
D 2
36
THE OCCULT WORLD.
the results of the experiment to enter into the sum total of my conclusions. But, in its place, it seems only right — only a shght 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 wel- fare oi* 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 direc- tion 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 staying at a house lent to us by the Maharajah of Vizianagram — a big, bare, comfortless abode as judged by European standards — in the central haU 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 under- stand, by Madame Blavatsky, sitting in an armchair read- ing 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 convic- tion 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, &c.,
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
37
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.
Coming now to details in connection with some of the larger mysteries of occultism, I am oppressed by the diffi- culty 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 under- standing 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 Thibet 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 pro- duction of which she herself has little or nothing to do. In
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
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 pro- duction of the result. Precise explanations of this Hnd 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 alto- gether. Any one 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 connection with the character of the observations which, so far, I have been enabled to make — that is to say, in connection 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 experi- ments 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 convinc- ing 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
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
39
to a conjuring trick. But this will not necessarily impair the value of the test for people capable of deahng 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 feehng on the part of persons who warmly espoused the theory that they must be the result of im- posture. 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
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
the force employed to produce the sound of raps on any object, Madame Blavatsky can produce in the air, without the intermediation of any sohd 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 con- jecture 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 pro- cure 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 hypothesis 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 diJficult to persuade any one had come from another room ; but the occult bell-sound is like that, only purer and clearer, with no sub-sound of
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
41
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 overheard, 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 gentleman 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 beUs in all manner of places, that Madame Blavatsky carried some apparatus about her with which to produce the sound. As for the notion of con- federacy, that is disposed of by the fact that I have re- peatedly heard the sounds when out walking beside Madame Blavatsky ’s jampan, with no other person near us but the jampanees carrying it.
The beU-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 where 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 beU-sounds at any distance in the neighbour- hood 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
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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 verandah, 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 common-place 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 wonder- fulness which the feelings recognize 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
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readers who may be, either through spirituahstic experi- ences or in any other way, already alive to the possibility of phenomena as such, and interested rather in experiments which may throw hght 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 that 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 hfe for a great number of years, and it is easy to realize that, for her, the jealous distrust with which ordinary people hunt round the shghtest manifestation of occult force to find any loophole through which a suspicion of fraud may creep, as no less tiresome and stupid, than the ordinary person con- ceives 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 of 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 hke 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
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persons. It wiU 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 mis- take, Into another tree at a Httle distance, which neither Madame nor the one other person present had approached, my wife now chmbed 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 Thibetan 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 cowp manque, though, but for
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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 Thibetan temple, or rest-house, such as is often found about the Himalayas, and which the bhnd apathy of commonplace Enghsh 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 coinci- dent for a considerable distance ; but a shght 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 hill-side where Madame declared she once more felt the missing current j 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 intelhgent Englishmen. We can learn so little about the daily Hfe 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
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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 tentaculse that one of her illustrious friends was in the neighbourhood. She immediately — having a sincere desire to obhge 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 -hedged “ brother ’’ in occultism, Madame Blavatsky, “ Very well, bring them, if you hke : I am in such and such a place.” And then he would go on wdth 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.
How^ever 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
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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 con- versation 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 debris 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 corre- sponding saucer was also found after a little more digging. Both objects were in among the roots which spread every- where through the ground, so that it seemed as if the roots were growing round them. The cup and saucer both cor- responded 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 pre- viously 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
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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 truthful- ness 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 sup- position, 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 intelhgence 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 guests, that the cups taken were chosen from others that might just as easily
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have been taken. Had the burial fraud been really perpe- trated, 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’ jampans 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 even- ing 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 hhud 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 considera- tion— 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 picniced.
E
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The hypothesis of fraud in this affair is, as I have said, a defiance of common sense when worked out in any imagin- able way. The extravagance of this explanation will, more- over, 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. Xow, when the cup
and saucer were found most of us who were present, X
among the number, were greatly impressed, and in the con- versation 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 know- ledge and a general adhesion to broad 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 mth the Brother who had then interested himself in our proceedings, Madame told us that the diploma would be forthcoming.
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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 wood 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 Thibetan temple, or rest-house, in which the Brother who had been passing through Simla — according to what Madame Blavatsky told us — had spent 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 some one 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 pur- poses 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 off, 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 some one 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 beheve, which had been brought back by the coolie
E 2
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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 conjuror defines the thing to be done. In our case 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 the coolie sent up for that water should have been so abnor- mally 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 acci- dents supervened on the fundamental accident, improbable in itself, that our servants should have sent us out insuffi- ciently supplied. That any bottle of water could have been left unnoticf‘d at the bottom of the basket is a suggestion that I can hardly imagine any one present putting forward, for the servants had been found fault with for not bring- ing 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 Blavatzky 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 under- standing 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 miracu- lous 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 hghts in your mind it ought to be something different from what it is. Still
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less can you argue away a mass of facts like those I am now recording by a series of extravagant and contradictory hypothesis 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 scientifi- cally impossible. He had worked out the times of vibra- tions 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 pheno- mena by denying, in face of the palpable experience of thousands — in face of the testimony in shelves-ful 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 phenomenon, 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 ulti- mately 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 any one example that I have seen.
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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 httle 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 httle more fully. In doing this, I may use names with a certain freedom, as these were ah appended to the pubhshed document.
We, that is my wife and myself with our guests, had gone up the hill to dine, in accordance with previous en- gagements, 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 platewarmers with hot water before each guest, on which each plate served re- mains while in use. Such platewarmers 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 sometimes seemed easier and the efiects 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 T Now Madame Blavatsky, as I have
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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 follow- ing 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, exclaimed, “ 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 T Bemarks 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 beforehand 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
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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. David- son, Colonel Olcott, and Madame Blavatsky. Most of the persons present having recently seen many remarkable occurrences inMadame 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, hut 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 Blavat- sky, 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 coin had been wrapped was gone. A little later, in the dravdng-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 accom- panying 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 corre- sponding 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 any one 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
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
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described was no believer either in occult phenomena or in Madame Bla- vatsky’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 unquestion- ably the one which Mrs. Hume lost. Even supposing, which is practi- cally 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.