M. A, Hume.

Fred. K. Hogg. A. P. SiNNETT. Patience Sinnett.
Alice Gordon.
P. J. Maitland. Wm. Davison. Stuart Beatson.”
It is needless to state that when this narrative was- published the nine persons above mentioned were assailed with torrents of ridicule, the effect of which, however, has not been in any single case to modify, in the smallest degree, the conviction which their signatures attested at the time, that the incident related was a perfectly conclusive proof of the reahty of occult power. Floods of more or less imbecile criticism have been directed to show that the whole performance must have been a trick ; and for many persons in India it is now, no doubt, an estabhshed explana- tion that Mrs. Hume was adroitly led up to ask for the particular article produced, by a quantity of preliminary talk about a feat which Madame Blavatsky specially went to the house to perform. A further established opinion with a certain section of the Indian public is, that the brooch which it appears Mrs. Hume gave to her daughter, and which her daughter lost, must have been got from that young lady about a year previously, when she passed through Bombay, where Madame Blavatsky was living, on her way to England. The young lady’s testimony to the effect that she lost the brooch before she went to Bombay, or ever saw Madame Blavatsky, is a little feature of this hypothesis which its contented framers do not care to inquire into. Nor do persons who think the fact that the brooch once belonged to Mrs. Hume’s daughter, and that this young lady once saw Madame Blavatsky at Bombay, sufficiently “ suspicious” to wipe out the effect of the whole
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
incident as described above — ever attempt, as far as I have discerned, to trace out a coherent chain of events as illumi- nated by their suspicions, or to compare these with the circumstances of the brooch’s actual recovery. No care, however, to arrange the circumstances of an occult demon- stration so that the possibility of fraud and delusion may really be excluded, is sufficient to exclude the imputation of this afterwards by people for whom any argument, how- ever illogical really, is good enough to attack a strange idea with.
As regards the witnesses of the brooch phenomenon the conditions were so perfect that when they were speculating as to the objections which might be raised by the public when the story should come to be told, they did not foresee either of the objections actually raised afterwards — the leading up in conversation theory, and the theory about Miss Hume having put Madame Blavatsky in possession of the brooch. They knew that there had been no previous conversation at all about the brooch or any other proposed feat, that the idea about getting something Mrs. Hume should ask for, arose all in a moment, and that almost immediately afterwards, the brooch was named. As for Miss Hume having unconsciously contributed to the produc- tion of the phenomenon, it did not occur to the witnesses that this would be suggested, because they did not foresee that any one could be so foolish as to shut their eyes to the important circumstances, to concentrate their attention entirely on one of quite minor importance. As the state- ment itself says, even supposing, which is practically impossible, that the brooch could have passed into Madame Blavatsky’s possession in a natural Avay, she could not possibly have foreseen that it would have been asked for.
The only conjectures the witnesses could frame to explain beforehand the tolerably certain result that the public at large would refuse to be convinced by the brooch incident, were that they might be regarded as misstating the facts and omitting some which the superior intelligence of theii* critics — as their critics would regard the matter — would see to upset the significance of the rest, or that Mrs. Hume must be a confederate. Now, this last conjecture, wliich will no doubt occur to readers in England, had only to be stated, to be, for the other persons concerned in the incident.
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
59
one of the most amusing results to which it could give rise. We all knew Mrs. Hume to be as httle predisposed towards any such a conspiracy as she was morally incapable of the wrong-doing it would involve.
At one stage of the proceedings, moreover, we had con- sidered the question as to the extent to which the conditions of the phenomenon were satisfactory. It had often happened that faults had eventually been found with Madame Blavatsky’s phenomena by reason of some over- sight in the conditions that had not been thought of at first. One of our friends, therefore, on the occasion I am describing, had suggested, after we rose from the dinner- table, that before going any further the company generally should be asked whether, if the brooch could be produced, that would under the circumstances be a satisfactory proof of occult agency in the matter. We carefully reviewed the manner in which the situation had been developed, and we all came to the conclusion that the test would be absolutely complete, and that on this occasion there was no weak place in the chain of the argument. Then it was that Madame Blavatsky said the brooch would be brought to the garden, and that we could go out and search for it.
An interesting circumstance for those who had already watched some of the other phenomena I have described was this : The brooch, as stated above, was found wrapped up in two cigarette papers, and these, when examined in a full hght in the house, were found still to bear the mark of the coin attached to Madame Blavatsky’s watch chain, which had been wrapped up in them before they departed on their mysterious errand. They were thus identified for people who had got over the first stupendous- difficulty of believing in the possibihty of transporting material objects by occult agency, as the same papers that had been seen by us at the dinner-table.
The occult transmission of objects to a distance not being “ magic,” as Western readers understand the word, is susceptible of some partial explanation even for ordinary readers, for whom the means by which the forces employed are manipulated must remain entirely mysterious. It is not contended that the currents which are made use of, convey the bodies transmitted in a solid mass just as they exist for the senses. The body, to be transmitted, is
6o
THE OCCULT WORLD.
supposed first to be disintegrated, conveyed on the currents in infinitely minute particles, and then reintegrated at its destination. In the case of the brooch, the first thing to be done must have been to find it. This, however, would simply be a feat of clairvoyance — the scent of the object, so to speak, being taken up from the person who spoke of it and had once possessed it — and there is no clairvoyance of which the Western world has any knowledge, comparable in its vivid intensity to the clairvoyance of an adept in occultism. Its resting-place thus discovered, the disin- tegration process would come into play, and the object desired would be conveyed to the place where the adept engaged with it would choose to have it deposited. The part played in the phenomenon by the cigarette papers would be this : In order that we might be able to find the brooch, it was necessary to connect it by an occult scent with Madame Blavatsky. The cigarette papers, which she always carried about with her, were thus impregnated with her magnetism, and taken from her by the Brother, left an occult trail behind them. Wrapped round the brooch, they conducted this trail to the required spot.
The magnetization of the cigarette papers always with her, enabled Madame Blavatsky to perform a little feat with them which was found by every one for whom it was done an exceedingly complete bit of evidence ; though here again the superficial resemblance of the experiment to a conjuring trick misled the intelligence of ordinary persons who read about the incidents referred to in the newspapers. The feat itself may be most conveniently discussed by the quotation of three letters which appeared in the Pioneer of the 23rd of October, and were as follows : —
“ SiK, — The account of the discovery of Mrs. Hume’s brooch has called forth several letters, and many questions have been asked, some of which I may answer on a future occasion, but I think it only right to first con- tribute further testimony to the occult powers possessed by Madame Blavatsky. In thus coming before the public, one must be prepared for ridicule, but it is a weapon which we who know something of these ra atters can well afford to despise. On Thursday last, at about half-past ten o’clock, 1 was sitting in Madame Blavatsky ’s room conversing with her, and in a casual way asked her if she would he able to send me any- thing by occult means when I returned to my home. She said “No;” and explained to me some of the laws under which she acts, one being that she must know the place and have been there — the more recently the better — in order to establish a magnetic current. She then recol-
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
6i
lected that she had been somewhere that morning, and after a moment’s reflection remembered whose house it was she had visited.* She said she could send a cigarette there, if I would go at once to verify the fact. I, of course, consented. 1 must here mention that I had seen her do this kind of thing once before ; and the reason she gives for sending cigarettes is, that the paper and tobacco being always about her person, are highly magnetized, and therefore more amenable to her power, which she most emphatically declares is not supernatural, but merely the manifestation of laws unknown to us. To continue my story. She took out a cigarette paper and slowly tore off a corner as zigzag as possible, I never taking my eyes off her hands. She gave me the corner, which I at once put into an envelope, and it never left my possession I can declare. She made the cigarette with the remainder of the paper. She then said she would try an experiment which might not succeed, but the failure would be of no consequence with me. She then most certainly put that cigarette into the fire, and I saw it burn, and I started at once to the gentleman’s house, scarcely able to believe that I should find in the place indicated by her the counterpart of the cigarette paper I had with me ; but sure enough there it was, and, in the presence of the gentleman and his wife, I opened out the cigarette and found my corner-piece fitted exactly. It would be useless to try and explain any theory in connection with these phenomena, and it would be unreasonable to expect any one to believe in them, unless their own experience had proved the possibility of such wonders. All one asks or expects is, that a few of the more intelligent members of the community may be led to look into the vast amount of evidence now accumulated of the phenomena taking place all over Europe and America. It seems a pity that the majority should be in such utter ignorance of these facts ; it is within the power of any one visiting England to convince himself of their truth. “ Alice Gordon.”
“ Sir, — I have been asked to give an account of a circumstance which took place in my presence on the 13th instant. On the evening of that day I was sitting alone with Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott in the drawing-room of Mr. Sinnett’s house in Simla, After some conversa- tion on various matters, Madame Blavatsky said she would like to try an experiment in a manner which had been suggested to her by Mr. Sinnett. She, therefore, took two cigarette papers from her pocket and marked on each of them a number of parallel lines in pencil. She then tore a piece off the end of each paper across the lines, and gave them to me. At that time Madame Blavatsky was sitting close to me, and I intently watched her proceedings, my eyes being not more than two feet from her hands. She declined to let me mark or tear the papers, alleging that if handled by others they would become imbued with their personal magnetism, which would counteract her own. However, the torn pieces were handed directly to me, and I could not observe any opportunity for the substitu- tion of other papers by sleight of hand. The genuineness or otherwise of the phenomena afterwards presented appears to rest on this point.
* This house at which the cigarette was found was Mr. O’Meara’s. He is quite willing that this should be stated.
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
The torn-off pieces of the paper remained in my closed left hand until the conclusion of the experiment. Of the larger pieces Madame Blavatsky made two cigarettes, giving the first to me to hold while the other was being made up. I scrutinized this cigarette very attentively, in order to be able to recognize it afterwards. The cigarettes being finished, Madame Blavat- sky stood up, and took them between her hands, which she rubbed to- gether. After about twenty or thirty seconds, the grating noise of the paper, at first distinctly audible, ceased. She then said the current* is passing round this end of the room, and I can only send them somewhere near here. A moment afterwards she said one had fallen on the piano, the other near that bracket. As I sat on a sofa with my back to the wall the piano was opposite, and the bracket, supporting a few pieces of china, was to the right, between it and tbe door. Both were in full view across the rather narrow room. The top of the piano was covered with piles of music books, and it was among these Madame Blavatsky thought a cigarette would be found. The books were removed, one by one, by my- self, but without seeing anything. I then opened the piano, and found a cigarette on a narrow shelf inside it. This cigarette I took out and recognized as the one 1 had held in my hand. The other was found in a covered cup on the bracket. . Both cigarettes were still damp where they had been moistened at the edges in the process of manufacture. I took the cigarettes to a table, without permitting them to be touched or even seen by Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott. On being unrolled and smoothed out, the torn, jagged edges were found to fit exactly to the pieces that I had all this time retained in my hand. The pencil marks also corresponded. It would therefore appear that the papers were actu- ally the same as those I had seen torn. Both the papers are still in my possession. It may be added that Colonel Olcott sat near me with his back to Madame Blavatsky during tbe experiment, and did not move till it was concluded. “ P. J. Maitland, Captain.'^
“ Sir, — With reference to the correspondence now filling your columns, on the subject of Madame Blavatsky’s recent manifestations, it may in- terest your readers if I record a striking incident which took place last week in my presence. I had occasion to call on Madame, and in the course of our interview she tore off a corner from a cigarette paper, asking me to hold the same, which I did. With the remainder of the paper she prepared a cigarette in the ordinary manner*, and in a few moments caused this cigarette to disappear from her hands. We were sitting at the time in the drawing-room. I inquired if it were likely to find this cigarette again, and after a short pause Madame requested me to accom- pany her into the dining-room, where the cigarette would be found on the top of a curtain hanging over the window. By means of a table and a chair placed thereon, I was enabled with some difficulty to reach and take down a cigarette from the place indicated. This cigarette I opened, and found the paper to correspond exactly with that I had seen a few minutes
* The theory is that a current of what can only be called magnetism, can be made to convey objects, previously dissipated by the same force, to any distance, and in spite of the intervention of any amount of matter.
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
63
before in tbe drawing-room. That is to say, the corner-piece, which I had retained in my possession, fitted exactly into the jagged edges of the torn paper in which the tobacco had been rolled. To the best of my be- lief, the test was as complete and satisfactory as any test can be. I re- frain from giving my opinion as to the causes which produced the effect, feeling sure that your readers who take an interest in these phenomena will prefer exercising their own judgment in the matter. I merely give you an unvarnished statement of what I saw. I may be permitted to add I am not a member of the Theosophist Society, nor, so far as I know, am I biassed in favour of occult science, although a warm sympathizer with the proclaimed objects of the Society over which Colonel Olcott presides. “ Chakles Francis Massy.”
Of course, any one familiar with conjuring will be aware that an imitation of this “ trick ” can be arranged by a person gifted with a little sleight of hand. You take two pieces of paper, and tear off a corner of both together, so that the jags of both are the same. You make a cigarette with one piece, and put it in the place where you mean to have it ultimately found. You then hold the other piece underneath the one you . tear in presence of the spectator, slip in one of the already torn corners into his hand instead of that he sees you tear, make your cigarette with the other part of the original piece, dispose of that anyhow you please, and allow the prepared cigarette to be found. Other variations of the system may be readily imagined, and for per- sons who have not actually seen Madame Blavatsky do one of her cigarette feats it may be useless to point out that she does not do them as a conjuror would, and that the spectator, if he is gifted with ordinary common sense, can never have the faintest shadow of a doubt about the corner given to him being the corner torn off — a certainty which the pencil- marks upon it, drawn before his eyes, would enhance, if that were necessary. However, as I say, though experience shows me that the outsider is prone to regard the little cigarette phenomenon as suspicious,” it has never failed to be regarded as convincing by the most acute people among those who have witnessed it. With all phenomena, however, stupidity on the part of the observer will defeat any attempt to reach his understanding, no matter how perfect the tests supplied.
I realize this more fully now than at the time of which I am writing. Then I was chiefly anxious to get experiments arranged which should be really complete in their details
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and leave no opening for the suggestion even of imposture. It was an uphill struggle first, because Madame Blavatsky was intractable and excitable as an experimentahst, and herself no more than the recipient of favours from the Brothers in reference to the greater phenomena. And it seemed to me conceivable that the Brothers might themselves not always reahze precisely the frame of mind in which persons of European training approached the consideration of such miracles as these with which we were dealing, so that they did not always make sufficient allowance for the necessity of rendering their test phenomena quite perfect and unassailable in all minor details. I knew, of course, that they were not primarily anxious to convince the commonplace world of anything whatever ; but still they frequently did assist Madame Blavatsky to produce phe- nomena that had no other motive except the production of an effect on the minds of people belonging to the outer world ; and it seemed to me that under these cireumstances they might just as well do something that would leave no room for the imputation even of any trickery.
One day, therefore, I asked Madame Blavatsky whether if I wrote a letter to one of the Brothers explaining my views, she could get it delivered for me. I hardly thought this was probable, as I knew how very unapproachable the Brothers generally are ; but as she said that at any rate she would try, I wrote a letter, addressing it “ to the IJnknown Brother,” and gave it her to see if any result would ensue. It was a happy inspiration that induced me to do this, for out of that small beginning has arisen the most interesting correspondence in which I have ever been privileged to engage — a correspondence which, I am happy to say, still promises to continue, and the existence of which, more than any experiences of phenomena whieh I have had, though the most wonderful of these are yet to be described, is the raison d^Hre of this little book.
The idea I had specially in my mind when I wrote the letter above referred to, was that of all test phenomena one could wish for, the best would be the production in our presence in India of a copy of the London Times of that day’s date. With such a piece of evidence in my hand, I argued, I would undertake to convert everybody in Simla who was capable of linking two ideas together, to a belief in
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
65
the possibility of obtaining by occult agency physical results which were beyond the control of ordinary science. I am sorry that I have not kept copies of the letter itself nor of my own sunsequent letters, as they would have helped to elucidate the replies in a convenient way ; but I did not at the time foresee the developments to which they would vive rise, and, a,fter all, the interest of the correspondence turns almost entirely on the letters I received : only in a very small degree on those I sent. ’’ •'
A day or two elapsed before I heard anjdhing of the fate of my letter, but Madame Blavatsky then informed me that I was to have an answer. I afterwards learned that she had not been able at first to find a Brother willing to receive the communication. Those whom she first applied to declined to be troubled with the matter. At last her psychological telegraph brought her a favourable answer from one of the Brothers with whom she had not for some reply to it ^e would take the letter and
Hearing this, I at once regretted that I had not written at greater length, arguing my view of the required conces-
foTthlT/“*i*^' ^ ® ^ain, therefore, without waiting
tor the actual receipt of the expected letter.
tavt. tlf 7 two after I found one evening on my writing- table the first letter sent me by my new correspondent. I may here expHin, what I learned afterwards, that he was a native of the Punjab who was attracted to occult studiesfrom his earliest boyhood. He was sent to Europe whilst still a ^uth at the intervention of a relative— himself an occultist
. knowledge, and since then has
been fully initiated in the greater knowledge of the East From the self-complacent point of view of the ordinary Ewopean this will seem a strange reversal of the proper order of things, but I need not stop to examine tS consideration now.
Sing This IS his • Thibetan Mystic name ’’—occultists, it would seem, taking new names on initiation— a practice which has no doubt given rise to similar customs which we
Cathoh^^churc^^^ ceremonies of the Eoman
The letter I received began, in medias res, about the
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
phenomenon I had proposed. “ Precisely,” Koot Hoomi wrote, “ because the test of the London newspaper would close the mouths of the sceptics,” it was inadmissible. “ See it in what light you will, the world is yet in its first stage of disenthralment .... hence unprepared. Very true we work by natural, not supernatural, means and laws. But, as on the one hand science would find itself unable, in its present state, to account for the wonders given in its name, and on the other the ignorant masses would still be left to view the phenomenon in the light of a miracle, every one who would thus be made a witness to the occurrence would be thrown ofi* his balance, and the result would be deplorable. Believe me it would be so especially for yourself, ' who originated the idea, and for the devoted woman who so foolishly rushes into the wide, open door leading to notoriety. This door, though opened by so friendly a hand as yours, would prove very soon a trap^ — and a fatal one, indeed, for her. And such is not surely your object. . . . Were we to accede to your desires, know you really what con- sequences would follow in the trail of success? The in- exorable shadow which follows all human innovations moves nn, yet few are they who are ever conscious of its approach iind dangers. What are, then, they to expect who would offer the world an innovation which, owing to human ignor- ance, if believed in, will surely be attributed to those dark agencies the two-thirds of humanity beheve in and dread as yet ? . . . The success of an attempt of such a kind as the one you propose must be calculated and based upon a thorough knowledge of the people around you. It depends entirely upon the social and moral conditions of the people in their bearing on these deepest and most mysterious questions which can stir the human mind — the deific powers in man and the possibilities contained in IsTature. How many even of your best friends, of those who surround you, are more than superficially interested in these abstruse prob- lems ? You could count them upon the fingers of your right hand. Your race boasts of having liberated in their century the genius so long imprisoned in the narrow vase of dogma- tism and intolerance — the genius of knowledge, wisdom, and free thought. It says that, in their turn, ignorant pre- judice and religious bigotry, bottled up like the wicked djin ,of old, and sealed by the Solomons of science, rest at the
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
67
bottom of the sea, and can never, escaping to the surface again, reign over the world as in the days of old : that the pubhc mind is quite free, in short, and ready to accept any demonstrated truth. Ay, but is it verdy so, my respected friend ? Experimental knowledge does not quite date from 1662, when Bacon, Bobert Boyle, and the Bishop of Chester transformed under the royal charter their ‘invisible college’ into a society for the promotion of experimental science. Ages before the Boyal Society found itself becoming a^ reality upon the plan of the ‘Prophetic Scheme,’ an innate longing for the hidden a passionate love for, and the study of, Nature, had led men m every generation to try and fathom her secrets deeper than their neighbours did. Boma ante Romulum fuit is an
axiom taught us in your English schools The Vril
of the Coming Race was the common property of races now extinct. And as the very existence of those gigantic ancestors of ours is now questioned— though in the Hima- vats, on the very territory belonging to you, we have a cave full of the skeletons of these giants — and their huge frames when found, are invariably regarded as isolated freaks of Nature — so the vril, or ahas as we call it, is looked upon as an impossibility— a myth. And without a thorough know- ledge of ahas — its combinations and properties, how can science hope to account for such phenomena % We doubt not but the men of your science are open to conviction • yet facts must be first demonstrated to them ; they must first have become their own property, have proved amen- able to their modes of investigation, before you find them ready to admit them as facts. If you but look into the preface to the Micrographia you will find, in Hookes’ suo-- gestions, that the intimate relations of objects were of less account in his eyes than their external operation on the senses, and Newton’s fine discoveries found in him their greatest opponent. The modern Hookeses are many Like t^s learned but ignorant man of old, your modern men^ of science are less anxious to suggest a physical con- nection of facts which might unlock for them many an occult force in Nature, as to provide a convenient classifica- tion of scientific experiments, so that the most essential quality of a hypothesis is, not that it should be true, but only plausible, in their opinion.
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
‘‘ So far for science — as much as we know of it. As for human nature in general it is the same now as it was a milhon of years ago. Prejudice, based upon selfishness, a general unwillingness to give up an estabhshed order of things for new modes of life and thought — and occult study requires all that and much more — pride and stubborn resist- ance to truth, if it' but upsets their previous notions of things — such are the characteristics of your age. • • • • What, then, would be the results of the most astounding phenomena supposing we consented to have them produced % However successful, danger would be growing proportion- ately with success. No choice would soon remain but to go on, ever crescendo, or to fall in this endless struggle with prejudice and ignorance, killed by your own weapons. Test after test would be required, and would have to be furnished ; every subsequent phenomenon expected to be more marvellous than the preceding one. ^ Your daily remark is, that one cannot be expected to beheve unless he becomes an eye-witness. Would the hfetime of a man suffice to satisfy the whole world of sceptics ? It may be an easy matter to increase the original number of behevers at Simla to hundreds and thousands. But what of the hun- dreds of millions of those who could not be made eye-mt- nesses % The ignorant, unable to grapple with the invisible operators, might some day vent their rage on the visible agents at work ; the higher and educated classes would go on dis- believing, as ever, tearing you to shreds as before. In common with many, you blame us for our great secrecy. Yet we know something of human nature, for the experience of long cen- turies—ay, ages, has taught us. And we know that so long as science has anything to learn, and a shadow of religious dogmatism lingers in the hearts of the multitudes, the world’s prejudices have to be conquered step by step, not at a rush. As hoary antiquity had more than one Socrates, so the dim future will give birth to more than one martyr. Enfranchised Science contemptuously turned away her face from the Coper- nican opinion renewing the theories of Aristarchus Samius, who‘affirmeth that the earth moveth circularly about her own centre,’ years before the Church sought to sacnfice Galileo as a holocaust to the Bible. The ablest mathematician at the Court of Edward YI., Robert Becorde, was left to starve in jail by his colleagues, who laughed at his Castle oj
1
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA. 69
Knowledge, declaring his discoveries vain phantasies
All this is old history, you will think. Yerily so, but the chronicles of our modern days do not differ very essentially from their predecessors. And we have but to bear in mind the recent persecutions of mediums in England, the burning of supposed witches and sorcerers in South America, E-ussia, and the frontiers of Spain, to assure ourselves that the only salvation of the genuine proficients in occult sciences lies in the scepticism of the public : the charlatans and the jugglers are the natural shields of the adepts. The public safety is only ensured by our keeping secret the terrible weapons which might otherwise be used against it, and which, as you have been told, become deadly in the hands of the wicked and selfish.^’
The remainder of the letter is concerned chiefly with per- sonal matters, and need not be here reproduced. I shall, of course, throughout my quotations from Koot Hoomi’s letters leave out passages which, specially addressed to myself, have no immediate bearing on the public argument. The reader must be careful to remember, however, as I now most unequivocally affirm, that I shall in no case alter one syllable of the passages actually quoted. It is important to make this declaration very emphatically, because the more my readers may be acquainted with India, the less they will be wilhng to believe, except on the most positive testi- mony, that the letters from Koot Hoomi, as I now pubhsh them, have been written by a native of India. That such is the fact, however, is beyond dispute.
I replied to the letter above quoted at some length, arguing, if I remember rightly, that the European mind was less hopelessly intractable than Koot Hoomi represented it. His second letter was as follows : —
“We will be at cross purposes in our correspondence until it has been made entirely plain that occult science has its own methods of research, as fixed and arbitrary as the methods of its antithesis, physical science, are in their way. If the latter has its dicta, so also have the former ; and he who would cross the boundary of the unseen world can no more prescribe how he will proceed, than the traveller who tries to penetrate to the inner subterranean recesses of L’Hassa the Blessed could show the way to his guide. The mysteries never were, never can be, put within the reach of
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
the general public, not, at least, until that longed-for day when our rehgious philosophy becomes universal. At no time have more than a scarcely appreciable minority of men possessed Nature’s secret, though multitudes have witnessed the practical evidences of the possibility of their possession. The adept is the rare efflorescence of a generation of inquirers; and to become one, he must obey the inward impulse of his soul, irrespective of the prudential considera- tions of worldly science or sagacity. Your desire is to be brought to communicate with one of us directly, without the agency of either Madame Blavatsky or any medium. Your idea would be, as I understand it, to obtain such communications, either by letters, as the present one, or by audible words, so as to be guided by one of us in the management, and principally in the instruction of the Society. You seek all this, and yet, as you say yourself, hitherto you have not found sufflcient reasons to even give up your modes of life, directly hostile to such modes of communication. This is hardly reasonable. He who would lift up high the banner of mysticism and proclaim its reign near at hand must give the example to others. He must be the first to change his modes of fife, and, regarding the study of the occult mysteries as the upper step in the ladder of knowledge, must loudly proclaim it such, despite exact science and the opposition of society. ‘ The kingdom of Heaven is obtained by force,’ say the Christian mystics. It is but with armed hand, and ready to either conquer or perish, that the modern mystic can hope to achieve his object.
“ My first answer covered, I believe, most of the questions contained in your second and even third letter. Having, then, expressed therein my opinion that the world in general was unripe for any too staggering proof of occult power, there but remains to deal with the isolated individuals who seek, like yourself, to penetrate behind the veil of matter into the world of primal causes — ^.e., we need only, consider now the cases of yourself and Mr. ”
I should here explain that one of my friends at Simla, deeply interested with me in the progress of this investiga- tion, had, on reading Koot Hoomi’s first letter to me, addressed my correspondent himself. More favourably circumstanced than I, for such an enterprise, he had even
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
71
proposed to make a complete sacrifice of his other pursuits, to pass away into any distant seclusion which might be appointed for the purpose, where he might, if accepted as a pupil in occultism, learn enough to return to the world armed with powers which would enable him to demonstrate the realities of spiritual development and the errors of modern materiahsm, and then devote his life to the task of combating modern incredulity and leading men to a practical comprehension of a better life. I resume Koot Hoomi’s letter : —
“ This gentleman also has done me the great honour to address me by name, ofiering to me a few questions, and stating the conditions upon which he would be willing to work for us seriously. But your motives and aspirations being of diametrically opposite character, and hence leading to different results, I must reply to each of you separately.
“ The first and chief consideration in determining us to accept or reject your offer lies in the inner motive which propels you to seek our instruction and, in a certain sense, our guidance ; the latter in all cases under reserve, as 1 understand it, and therefore remaining a question inde- pendent of aught else. Now, what are your motives % 1
may try to define them in their general aspects, leaving- details for further consideration. They are — (i) The desire to see positive and unimpeachable proofs that there really are forces in Nature of which science knows nothing ; (2) The hope to appropriate them some day — the sooner the better, for you do not like to wait — so as to enable yourself ; (a) to demonstrate their existence to a few chosen Western minds ; (6) to contemplate future life as an objective reality built upon the rock of knowledge, not of faith ; and (c) to finally learn — most important this, among all your motives, perhaps, though the most occult and the best guarded — the whole truth about our lodges and ourselves ; to get, in short, the positive assurance that the ^ Brothers,’ of whom every one hears so much and sees so little, are real entities, not fictions of a disordered, hallucinated brain. Such, ■viewed in their best light, appear to us your motives for addressing me. And in the same spirit do I answer them, hoping that my sincerity will not be interpreted in a ■wrong way, or attributed to anything like an unfriendly spirit.
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“ To our minds, then, these motives, sincere and worthy of every serious consideration from the worldly standpoint, appear selfish. (You have to pardon me what you might view as crudeness of language, if your desire is that which you really profess — to learn truth and get instruction from us who belong to quite a different world from the one you move in.) They are selfish, because you must be aware that the chief object of the Theosophical Society is not so much to gratify individual aspirations as to serve our fellow-men, and the real value of this term ^ selfish,’ which may jar upon your ear, has a pecuKar significance with us which it cannot have with you ; therefore, to begin with, you must not accept it otherwise than in the former sense. Perhaps you will better appreciate our meaning when told that in our view the highest aspirations for the welfare of humanity become tainted with selfishness, if, in the mind of the philanthropist, there lurks the shadow of a desire for self- benefit, or a tendency to do injustice, even where these exist unconsciously to himself. Yet you have ever dis- cussed, but to put down, the idea of a Universal Brother- hood, questioned its usefulness, and advised to remodel the Theosophical Society on the principle of a college for the special study of occultism
“ Having disposed of personal motives, let us analyze your terms for helping us to do public good. Broadly stated, these terms are — first, that an independent Anglo- Indian Theosophical Society shall be founded through your kind services, in the management of which neither of our present representatives shall have any voice ’* and, second, that one of us shall take the new body ‘ under his patronage,’ be ‘ in free and direct communication with its leaders,’ and
* In the absence of my own letter, to which this is a reply, the reader might think from this sentence that I had been animated by some un- friendly feeling for the representatives referred to — Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott. This is far from having been the case ; but, keenly alive to mistakes which had been made up to the time of which I am
writing, in the management of the Theosophical Society, Mr. and
myself were under the impression that better public results might be obtained by commencing operations de novo, and taking, ourselves, the direction of the measures which might be employed to recommend the study of occultism to the modern world. This belief on our part was co- existent in both cases with a warm friendship based on the purest esteem for both the persons mentioned.
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
73
afford them ^ direct proof that he really possessed that superior knowledge of the forces of Nature and the attri- butes of the human soul which would inspire them with proper confidence in his leadership/ I have copied your own words so as to avoid inaccuracy in defining the position.
“ From your point of view, therefore, those terms may .seem so very reasonable as to provoke no dissent, and, indeed, a majority of your countrymen — if not of Europeans — might share that opinion. What, will you say, can be more reasonable than to ask that that teacher anxious to disseminate his knowledge, and pupil offering him to do so, should be brought face to face, and the one give the ex- perimental proof to the other that his instructions were correct % Man of the world, living in, and in full sympathy with it, you are undoubtedly right. But the men of this other world of ours, untutored in your modes of thought, and who find it very hard at times to follow and appreciate the latter, can hardly be blamed for not responding as heartily to your suggestions as in your opinion they de- serve. The first and most important of our objections is to be found in our rules. True, we have our schools and teachers, our neophytes and ‘ shaberons ’ (superior adepts), and the door is always open to the right man who knocks. And we invariably welcome the new comer ; only, instead of going over to him, he has to come to us. More than that, unless he has reached that point in the path of occultism from which return is impossible by his having irrevocably pledged himself to our Association, we never — except in cases of utmost moment — visit him or even cross the threshold of his door in visible appearance.
‘‘ Is any of you so eager for knowledge and the beneficent powers it confers, as to be ready to leave your world and come into ours % Then let him come, but he must not think to return until the seal of the mysteries has locked his hps even against the chances of his own weakness or indiscretion. Let him come by all means as the pupil to the master, and without conditions, or let him wait, as so many others have, and be satisfied with such crumbs of knowledge as may fall in his way.
And supposing you were thus to come, as two of your own countrymen have already — as Madame B. did and Mr. 0. will —supposing you were to abandon all for the truth ;
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to toil wearily for years up the hard, steep road, not daunted by obstacles, firm under every temptation ; were to faith- fully keep within your heart the secrets entrusted to you as a trial ; had worked with all your energies and unselfishly to spread the truth and provoke men to correct thinking and a correct life — would you consider it just, if, after all your efibrts, we were to grant to Madame B. or Mr. 0. as ‘ outsiders’ the terms you now ask for yourselves. Of these two persons, one has already given three-fourths of a hfe, the other six years of manhood’s prime to us, and both will so labour to the close of their days ; though ever w^orking for their merited reward, yet never demanding it, nor mur- muring when disappointed. Even though they respectively could accomplish far less than they do, would it not be a palpable injustice to ignore them in an important field of Theosophical efibrt % Ingratitude is not among our vices, nor do we imagine you would wish to advise it.
“ Neither of them has the least inclination to interfere with the management of the contemplated Anglo-Indian Branch, nor dictate its ofiicers. But the new Society, if formed at all, must, though bearing a distinctive title of its own, be, in fact, a branch of the parent body, as is the British Theosophical Society at London, and contribute to its vitality and usefulness by promoting its leading idea of a Universal Brotherhood, and in other practicable ways.
“ Badly as the phenomena may have been shown, there have still been, as yourself admit, certain ones that are unimpeachable. The ‘raps on the table when no one touches it,’ and the ‘ bell sounds in the air,’ have, you say, always been regarded as satisfactory, &c. &c. From this, you reason that good test phenomena ‘ may easily be multi- plied ad infinitum.' So they can — in any place where our magnetic and other conditions are constantly offered, and where we do not have to act with and through an enfeebled female body, in which, as we might say, a vital cyclone is raging much of the time. But imperfect as may be our visible agent, yet she is the best available at present, and her phenomena have for about half a century astonished and bafiled some of the cleverest minds of the age ”
Two or three little notes which I next received from Koot Hoomi had reference to an incident I must now describe, the perfection of which as a test phenomenon
RECEN7' OCCULT PHENOMENA.
75
appears to me more complete than that of any other I have yet described. It is worth notice, by-the-by, that although the circumstances of this incident were related in the Indian papers at the time, the happy company of scoffers who flooded the Press with their simple comments on the brooch phenomenon, never cared to discuss “ the pillow incident.”
Accompanied by our guests, we went to have lunch one day on the top of a neighbouring hill. The night before, I had had reason to think that my correspondent, Koot Hoomi, had been in what, for the purpose of the present explanation, I may call subjective communication with me. I do not go into any details, because it is unnecessary to trouble the general reader with impressions of that sort. After discussing the subject in the morning, I found on the hall-table a note from Koot Hoomi, in which we pro- mised to give me something on the hill which should be a token of his (astral) presence near me the previous night.
We went to our destination, camped down on the top of the hill, and were engaged on our lunch, when Madame Blavatsky said Koot Hoomi was asking where we would like to find the object he was going to send me. Let it be understood that up to this moment there had been no conversation in regard to the phenomenon I was expecting. The usual suggestion will, perhaps, be made that Madame Blavatsky “ led up ” to the choice I actually made. The fact of the matter was simply that in the midst of altogether other talk Madame Blavatsky pricked up her ears on hear- ing her occult voice — at once told me what was the question asked, and did not contribute to the selection made by one single remark on the subject. In fact, there was no general discussion, and it was by an absolutely spontaneous choice of my own that I said, after a little refiection, “ inside that cushion,” pointing to one against which one of the ladies present was leaning. I had no sooner uttered the words than my wife cried out, “ Oh, no, let it be inside mine,” or words to that effect. I said, “very well, inside my wife’s cushion ; ” Madame Blavatsky asked Koot Hoomi by her own methods if that would do, and received an affirmative reply. My liberty of choice as regards the place where the object should be found was thus absolute and unfettered by conditions. The most natural choice for me to have made under the circumstances, and ha^ung regard to our previous
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experiences, would have been up some particular tree, or buried in a particular spot of the ground ; but the inside of a sewn-up cushion, fortuitously chosen on the spur of a moment, struck me, as my eye happened to fall upon the cushion I mentioned first, as a particularly good place ; and when I had started the idea of a cushion, my wife’s amend- ment to the original proposal was really an improvement, for the particular cushion then selected had never been for a moment out of her own possession all the morning. It was her usual jampan cushion j she had been leaning against it all the way from home, and was leaning against it still, as her jampan had been carried right up to the top of the hill, and she had continued to occupy it. The cushion itself was very firmly made of worsted work and velvet, and had been in our possession for years. It always remained, when we were at home, in the drawing-room, in a conspicuous corner of a certain sofa whence, when my wife went out, it would be taken to her jampan and again brought in on her return.
When the cushion was agreed to, my wife was told to put it under her rug, and she did this with her own hands, inside her jampan. It may have been there about a minute, when Madame Blavatsky said we could set to work to cut it open. I did this with a penknife, and it was a work of some time, as the cushion was very securely sewn all round, and very strongly, so that it had to be cut open almost stitch by stitch, and no tearing was possible. When one side of the cover was completely ripped up, we found that the feathers of the cushion were enclosed in a separate inner case, also sewn round all the edges. There was nothing to be found between the inner cushion and the outer case \ so we proceeded to rip up the inner cushion ; and this done, my wife searched among the feathers.
The first thing she found was a little three-cornered note, addressed to me in the now familiar handwriting of my occult correspondent. It ran as follows : —
“ My ‘ DEAR Brother,’ — ^This brooch. No. 2, is placed in this very strange place, simply to show you how very easily a real phenomenon is produced, and how still easier it is to suspect its genuineness. Make of it what you like, even to classing me wdth confederates.
The difiSculty you spoke of last night with respect to
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
77
the interchange of our letters, I will try to remove. One of our pupils will shortly visit Lahore and the N. W. P. ; and an address will be sent to you which you can always use ; unless, indeed, you really would prefer corresponding through — pillows ? Please to remark that the present is not dated from a ^ Lodge,’ but from a Kashmere valley.” While I was reading this note, my wife discovered, by further search among the feathers, the brooch referred to, one of her own, a very old and very famihar brooch which she generally left on her dressing-table when it was not in use. It would have been impossible to invent or imagine a proof of occult power, in the nature of mechanical proofs, more irresistible and convincing than this incident was for us who had personal knowledge of the various circumstances described. The whole force and significance to us of the brooch thus returned, hinged on to my subjective impres- sions of the previous night. The reason for selecting the brooch as a thing to give us dated no earlier than then. On the hypothesis, therefore, idiotic hypothesis as it would be on all grounds, that the cushion must have been got at by Madame Blavatsky, it must have been got at since I spoke of my impressions that morning, shortly after breakfast ; but from the time of getting up that morning, Madame Blavatsky had hardly been out of our sight, and had been sitting with my wife in the drawing-room. She had been doing this, by-the-by, against the grain, for she had writing which she wanted to do in her own room, but she had been told by her voices to go and sit in the drawing- room with my wife that morning, and had done so, grumbling at the interruption of her work, and wholly unable to discern any motive for the order. The motive was afterwards clear enough, and had reference to the intended phenomenon. It was desirable that we should have no arriere pensee in our minds as to what Madame Blavatsky might possibly have been doing during the morning, in the event of the incident taking such a turn as to make that a factor in determining its genuineness. Of course, if the selection of the pillow could have been foreseen, it would have been unnecessary to victimize our “ old Lady,” as we generally called her. The presence of the famous pillow itself, with my wife all the morning in the drawing- room, would have been enough. But perfect hberty of
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choice was to be left to me in selecting a cache for the brooch ; and the pillow can have been in nobody’s mind, any more than in my own, beforehand.
The language of the note given above embodied many little points which had a meaning for us. All through, it bore indirect reference to the conversation that had taken place at our dinner-table the previous evening. I had been talking of the little traces here and there which the long letters from Koot Hoomi bore, showing, in spite of their splendid mastery over the language and the vigour of their style, a turn or two of expression that an Englishman would not have made use of ; for example, in the form of address, which in the two letters already quoted had been tinged with Orientalism. “ But what should he have written % ” somebody asked, and I had said, “ under similar circum- stances an Enghshman would probably have written simply :
‘ My dear Brother.’ ” Then the allusion to the Kashmir Valley as the place from which the letter was written, instead of from a Lodge, was an allusion to the same conversation ; and the underlining of the “k” was another, as Madame Blavatsky had been saying that Koot Hoomi’s spelling of “Skepticism” with a “k” was not an Ameri- canism in his case, but due to a philological whim of his.
The incidents of the day were not quite over, even when the brooch was found ; for that evening, after we had gone home, there fell from my napkin, after I had unfolded it at dinner, a little note, too private and personal to be reprinted fully, but part of which I am impelled to quote, for the sake of the allusion it contains to occult modus operandi. I must explain that, before starting for the hill, I had penned a few lines of thanks for the promise contained in the note then received as described. This note I gave to Madame Blavatsky, to despatch by occult methods if she had an opportunity. And she carried it in her hand as she and my wife went on in advance, in jampans, along the Simla Mall, not finding an opportunity until about half-way to our destination. Then she got rid of the note, occultism only knows how. This circumstance had been spoken of at the picnic ; and as I was opening the note found in the pillow, some one suggested that it would, perhaps, be found to contain an answer to my note just sent. It did not contain any illusion to this, as the reader will be already aware.
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
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The note I received at dinner-time said : — “ A few words more. Why should you have felt disappointed at not receiving a direct reply to your last note. It was received in my room about half a minute after the currents for the production of the pillow dah. had been set ready, and in full play. And there was no necessity for an answer. . . .”
It seemed to bring one in imagination one step nearer a realization of the state of the facts to hear “ the currents” employed to accomplish what would have been a miracle for all the science of Europe, spoken of thus familiarly.
A miracle for all the science of Europe, and as hard a fact for us, nevertheless, as the room in which we sat. We knew that the phenomenon we had seen was a wonderful reality ; that the thought -power of a man in Kashmir had picked up a material object from a table in Simla, and, disintegrating it by some process of which Western science does not yet dream, had passed it through other matter, and had there restored it to its original solidarity, the dispersed particles resuming their precise places as before, and reconstituting the object down to every line or scratch upon its surface. (By-the-by, it bore some scratches when it emerged from the pillow which it never bore before — the initials of our friend.) And we kneAV that written notes on tangible paper had been flashing backwards and forwards that day between our friend and ourselves, though hundreds of miles of Himalayan mountains intervened between us, :and had been flashing backwards and forwards with the speed of electricity. And yet we knew that an impenetrable wall, built up of its own prejudice and obstinacy, of its learned ignorance and polished dulness, was established round the minds of scientific men in the West, as a body, across which we should never be able to carry our facts and our experience. And it is with a greater sense of oppression than people who have never been in a similar position will realize, that I now tell the story I have to tell, and know all the while that the solemn accuracy of its minutest detail, the utter truthfulness of every syllable in this record, is little better than incense to my own conscience — that the scientific minds of the West with which of all cultivated minds my own has hitherto been most in sympathy, will be closed to my testimony most hopelessly. “Though one should rise from the dead,” &c. It is the old story. It is the old story
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
at all events as regards the crashing results on opinion which such evidence as that I have been giving, ought to have. The smile of incredulity which thinks itself so wise and is so foohsh, the suspicions which flatter themselves they are so cunning, and are really the fruit of so much dulness, will gleam over these pages, and wither all their meaning — for the readers who smile. But I suppose that Koot Hoomi is not only right in declaring the world unripe as yet for too staggering a proof of occult power, but also in taking a friendly interest, as it will be seen presently that he does, -in the little book I am writing, as one of the influences which bit by bit may sap the foundations of dog- matism and stupidity, on which science, which thinks itself so liberal, has latterly become so flrmly rooted.
The next letter — the third long one — that I received from Koot Hoomi, reached me shortly after my return for the cold weather to Allahabad. But I received one com- munication from him — a telegram — before its arrival, on the day of my own return to Allahabad. This telegram, of no great importance as regards its contents, which were little more than an expression of thanks for some letters I had written in the papers, was, nevertheless, of great interest indirectly, afibrding me, as it ultimately did, evidence of a kind which could appeal to other minds besides my own, that Koot Hoomi’s letters were not, as some ingenious persons may have been inchned to imagine — in spite of various mechanical difficulties in the way of the theory — the work of Madame Blavatsky. For me, knowing her as intimately as I did, the inherent evidence of the style was enough to make the suggestion that she might have written them, a mere absurdity. And, if it is urged that the authoress of “ Isis Unveiled ” has certainly a command of language which renders it difficult to say what she could not write, the answer is simple. In the produc- tion of this book she was so largely helped by the Brothers, that great portions of it are not really her work at all. She never makes any disguise of this fact, though it is one of a kind which it is useless for her to proclaim to the world at large, as it would be perfectly unintelligible, except to persons who knew something of the external facts, at all events, of occultism. Koot Hoomi’s letters, as I say, are perfectly unlike her own style. But, in reference to
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
8i
some of them, receiving them as I did while she was in the house mth me, it was not mechanically impossible that she
at Ahahabad, which was wired to me from Jhelum was in reply specially to a letter I addressed to Koot Hoomi iust
whrbirT®^! r ’ ‘‘“5* «“«l°“dto Madame Blava4y, who had started some days previously, and was then It
Amritsur. She received the letter, with its enclosure at Amritsur on the 27 th of October, as I came to know not merely from knowing when I sent it, but positively by m^ns of the envelope which she returned to me at Alfaha^ bad by direction of Koot Hoomi, not in the least knowing why he wished it sent to me. I did not at first see what of earth wi^ the use of the old envelope to me, but I mit it ^ay and afterw^ds obtained the clue to the idea in Koft Hoomi s mind when Madame Blavatsky wrote me word that
nation of tLTT^ f connected with the adminis- tration of the tele^aph department, I was enabled even tually to obtmn a sight of the original of the telegram— a messi^e of about twenty words ; and then I saw the mean- ing of the envelope. The message was in Koot Hoomi’s ownhandwnting a.ndit was an answer from Jhelum to f letter winch the dehvery post-mark on the envelope showed to have been dehvered at Amritsur on the same^ day the
message was sent. Madame Blavatsky assuredly wff her self at Amritsur on that date, seeing large nCberfM
fit SoTet“ ir^tt^TfMnHf lot^Ho^T’- hfinid fiTtttex^
not the producer of their handwriting. ’ certainly
Koot Hoomi was probably himself actually at or near Jhe umat the time, as he came down into the midst of the
SamfBW k r-'T circumstance, to fel
Our dear “Old Lady” had been deeply hurt by the
behaviour of some incredulous persons at sLla whom she
had met at our house and elsewhere, who, being "fXe t
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assimilate the experience they had had of her phenomena, got by degrees into that hostile frame of mind which is one of the phases of feehng I am now used to seeing developed. Perfectly unable to show how the phenomena can be the result of fraud, but thinking that, because they do not understand them, they must be fraudulent, people of a certain temperament become possessed with the spudt which animated persecution by rehgious authorities in the infancy of physical science. And, by a piece of bad luck, a gentleman who was thus affected was annoyed at a trifling indiscretion on the part of Colonel Olcott, who, in a letter to one of the Bombay papers, quoted some expressions he had made use of in praise of the Theosophical Society and its good influence on the natives. All the irritation thus set up, worked on Madame Blavatsky’s excitable temperament to an extent which only those who know her will be able to imagine. The allusions in Koot Hoomi’s letter will now be understood. After some reference to important business with which he had been concerned since writing to me last, Koot Hoomi went on : —
“You see, then, that we have weighter matters than small societies to think about ; yet the Theosophical Society must not be neglected. The affair has taken an impulse which, if not well guided, might beget very evil issues. Recall to mind the avalanches of your admired Alps, and remember that at first their mass is small, and their mo- mentum little. A trite comparison, you may say, but I cannot think of a better illustration when viewing the gradual aggregation of trifling events growing into a menacing destiny for the Theosophical Society. It came quite forcibly upon me the other day as I was coming down the defiles of Konenlun — Karakorum you call them — and saw an avalanche tumble. I had gone personally to our chief .... and was crossing over to Lhadak on my way home. What other speculations might have followed I cannot say. But just as I was taking advantage of the awful stillness which usually follows such cataclysms, to get a clearer view of the present situation, and the disposition of the ‘ mystics ’ at Simla, I was rudely recalled to my senses. A famihar voice, as shrill as the one attributed to Saraswati’s peacock — which, if we may credit tradition, frightened off the King of the Kagas — shouted along the currents — ‘ .... Koot
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
S3
Hoomi, come quicker and help me ! ’ and, in her excitement forgot she was speaking Enghsh. I must say that the ‘ old Lady s telegrams do strike one like stones from a catapult.
“ What could I do but come. Argument through space with one who was in cold despair and in a state of moral chaos, was useless. So I determined to emerge from a seclusion of many years, and spend some time with her to comfort her as weU as I could. But our friend is not one to cause her mind to reflect the philosophical resignation of Marcus Aurehus. The Fates never wrote that she could ^ is a royal thing when one is doing good to hear evil spoken of himself.’ 1 had come for a few days but now find that I myself cannot endure for any length of time the stifling magnetism even of my own countrymen. I have seen some of our proud old Sikhs drunk and stagger- ing over the marble pavement of their sacred temple. I have heard an English-speaking Vakil declaim against Yoq and Theosophy as a delusion and a lie, declaring that Enghsh science had emancipated them from such degrading superstitions, and saying that it was an insult to India to maintain that the dirty Yogees and Sunnyasis knew any- thing about the mysteries of Nature, or that any living man can, or ever could, perform any phenomena. I turn my face homeward to-morrow.
‘‘ .... I have telegraphed you my thanks for your obliging compliance with my wishes in the matter you allude
to in your letter of the 24th Beceived at Amritsur,
on the 2^h, at 2 p.m. I got your letter about thirty miles beyond Bawul Finder, five minutes later, and had an acknowledgment wired to you from Jhelum at 4 p.m. on the same afternoon. Our modes of accelerated delivery and quick communications^ are not, then, as you will see, to be
^ Many old Indians, and some books about the Indian Mutiny, take note of the perfectly incomprehensible way news of events transpiring at a distance, would sometimes be found to have penetrated the native bazaars before it had reached the Europeans at such places by the quickest means of comrnumcation at their disposal. The explanation I have been informed, is that the Brothers who were anxious to save the British power at that time, regarding it as a better government for India than any system of native rule that could take its place, were quick to distribute information by their own methods when this could operate to
S pniTrri """4 discourage new risings. The sentiment
that animated them then, animates them still, and the influence of the
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
despised by the Western world, or even the Aryan English- speaking and skeptical Yakils.
‘‘ I could not ask a more judicial frame of mind in an ally than that in which you are beginning to find yourself. My brother, you have already changed your attitude to- wards us in a distinct degree. What is to prevent a perfect mutual understanding one day? .... It is not possible that there should be much more at best than a benevolent neutrahty shown by your people towards ours. There is so very minute a point of contact between the two civiliza- tions they respectively represent, that one might almost say they could not touch at all. Nor would they, but for the few — shall I say eccentrics % — who, hke you, dream better and bolder dreams than the rest, and, provoking thought, bring the two together by their own admirable audacity.”
The letter before me at present is occupied so much with matters personal to myself, that I can only make quotations here and there ; but these are specially interesting, as in- vesting with an air of reality subjects which are generally treated in vague and pompous language. Koot Hoomi was anxious to guard me from idealizing the Brothers too much on the strength of my admiration for their marvellous powers.
“ Are you certain,” he writes, “ that the pleasant impres- sion you now may have from our correspondence would not instantly be destroyed upon seeing me. And which of our holy shaherons has had the benefit of even the little uni- versity education and inkling of European manners that has fallen to my share.”
In a guarded way, Koot Hoomi said that as often as it was practicable to communicate with me, ‘‘ whether by .... letters (in or out of pillows) or personal visits in astral form, it will be done. But remember,” he added,
“ that Simla is 7,000 feet higher than Allahabad, and the
Theosophical Society in India is one which the Government would do wisely to countenance and support. The suspicions directed against its founders in the first instance, misdirected as they were, were excusable enough, hut now that the character of the whole movement is better understood, it would be well for the officers of the British Government in * India who have any opportunity of the kind, to do whatever they can ; towards showing their sympathy with the promoters of the Society, who 1 must, necessarily, have an uphill task to perform without such manifesta- tions of sympathy.
RECENT OCCULT PHENOMENA.
85
difficulties to be surmounted at the latter are tremendous.” To the ordinary mind, feats of “ magic” are hardly distin- guishable by degrees of difficulty, and the little hint con- tained in the last sentence may thus help to show that, magical as the phenomena of the Brothers appear (as soon as the dull-witted hypothesis of fraud is abandoned), they are magic of a kind which is amenable to its own laws. Most of the bodies in Nature were elements, in the infancy of chemistry ; but in turn the number is reduced by deeper and deeper researches into the law of combinations — and so with magic. To ride the clouds in a basket, or send messages under the sea, would have been magic in one age of the world, but becomes the commonplace of the next. The Simla phenomena are magic for the majority of this generation, but psychological telegraphy itself may become, if not the property of mankind a few generations hence, a fact of science as undeniable as the differential calculus, and known to be attainable by its own appropriate students. That it is easier to accomplish it and cognate achievements, in certain strata of the atmosphere rather than in others, is already a practical suggestion which tends to drag it down from the realms of magic \ or, as the same idea might be differently expressed, to lift it towards the region of exact science.
I am here enabled to insert the greater part of a letter addressed by Koot Hoomi to the friend referred to in a former passage, as having opened up a correspondence with him in reference to the idea which he contemplated under certain conditions, of devoting himself entirely to the pursuit of occultism. This letter throws a great deal of hght upon some of the metaphysical conceptions of the occultists, and their metaphysics, be it remembered, are a great deal more than abstract speculation.
“ Dear Sir, — Availing of the first moments of leisure to formally answer your letter of the 1 7th ultimo, I will now report the result of my conference with our chiefs upon the proposition therein contained, trying at the same time to answer all your questions.
“ I am first to thank you on behalf of the whole section of our fraternity that is especially interested in the welfare of India for an offer of help whose importance and sincerity
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no one can doubt. Tracing our lineage through the vicissi- tudes of Indian civilization from a remote past, we have a love for our motherland so deep and passionate that it has survived even the broadening and cosmopohtanizing (pardon me if that is not an Enghsh word) effect of our studies in the laws of Nature. And so I, and every other Indian patriot, feel the strongest gratitude for every kind word or deed that is given in her behalf.
“ Imagine, then, that since we are all convinced that the degradation of India is largely due to the suffocation of her ancient spirituahty, and that whatever helps to restore that higher standard of thought and morals, must be a regene- rating national force, every one of us would naturally and without urging, be disposed to push forward a society whose proposed formation is under debate, especially if it really is meant to become a society untainted by selfish motive, and whose object is the revival of ancient science, and tendency to rehabilitate our country in the world’s estimation. Take this for granted without further asseverations. But you know, as any man who has read history, that patriots may burst their hearts in vain if circumstances are against them. Sometimes it has happened that no human power, not even the fury and force of the loftiest patriotism, has been able to bend an iron destiny aside from its fixed course, and nations have gone out like torches dropped into the water in the engulfing blackness of ruin. Thus, we who have the sense of our country’s fall, though not the power to lift her up at once, cannot do as we would either as to general affairs or this particular one. And with the readiness, but not the right to meet your advances more than half-way, we are forced to say that the idea entertained by Mr. Sinnett and yourself is impracticable in part. It is, in a word, impossible for myself or any Brother, or even an advanced neophyte, to be specially assigned and set apart as the guiding spirit or chief of the Anglo-Indian branch. We know it would be a good thing to have you and a few of your colleagues regularly instructed and shown the phenomena and their rationale. For though none but you few would be convinced, still it would be a decided gain to have even a few Englishmen, of first-class ability, enlisted as students of Asiatic Psychology. We are aware of all this, and much more ; hence we do not refuse to correspond
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with, and otherwise help you in various ways. But what we do refuse is, to take any other responsibility upon our- selves than this periodical correspondence and assistance with our advice, and, as occasion favours, such tangible, possibly visible, proofs, as would satisfy you of our presence and interest. To ' guide’ you we will not consent How- ever much we may be able to do, yet we can promise only to give you the full measure of your deserts. Deserve much, and we will prove honest debtors ; little, and you need only expect a compensating return. This is not a mere text taken from a schoolboy’s copybook, though it sounds so, but only the clumsy statement of the law of our order, and we cannot transcend it. Utterly unacquainted with Western, especially English, modes of thought and action, were we to meddle in an organization of such a kind, you would find all your fixed habits and traditions inces- santly clashing, if not with the new aspirations themselves, at least with their modes of realization as suggested by us. You could not get unanimous consent to go even the length you might yourself. I have asked Mr. Sinnett to draft a plan embodying your joint ideas for submission to our chiefs, this seeming the shortest way to a mutual agreement. Under our ‘ guidance ’ your branch could not live, you not being men to be guided at all in that sense. Hence the society would be a premature birth and a failure, looking as incongruous as a Paris Daumont drawn by a team of Indian yaks or camels. You ask us to teach you true science — the occult aspect of the known side of Nature ; and this you think can be as easily done as asked. You do not seem, to realize the tremendous difficulties in the way of imparting even the rudiments of our science to those who have been trained in the familiar methods of yours. You do not see that the more you have of the one the less capable you are of instinctively comprehending the other, for a man can only think in his worn grooves, and unless he has the courage to fill up these, and make new ones for himself, he must perforce travel on the old lines. Allow me a few in- stances. In conformity with exact science you would define but one cosmic energy, and see no difference between the energy expended by the traveller who pushes aside the bush that obstructs his path, and the scientific experimenter who expends an equal amount of energy in setting a pendulum
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in motion. We do; for we know there is a world of difference between the two. The one uselessly dissipates and scatters force, the other concentrates and stores it. And here please understand that I do not refer to the relative utility of the two, as one might imagine, but only to the fact that in the one case there is but brute force flung out without any transmutation of that brute energy into the higher potential form of spiritual dynamics, and in the other there is just that. Please do not consider me vaguely metaphysical. The idea I wish to convey is that the result of the highest intellection in the scientifically occupied brain is the evolution of a sublimated form of spiri- tual energy, which, in the cosmic action, is productive of illimitable results ; while the automatically acting brain holds, or stores up in itself, only a certain quantum of brute force that is unfruitful of benefit for the individual or humanity. The human brain is an exhaustless generator of the most refined quality of cosmic force out of the low, brute energy of Nature ; and the complete adept has made himself a centre from which irradiate potentialities that beget correlations upon correlations through -^®ons of time to come. This is the key to the mystery of his being able to project into and materialize in the visible world the forms that his imagination has constructed out of inert cosmic matter in the invisible world. The adept does not create anything new, but only utilizes and manipulates materials which Nature has in store around him, and material which, throughout eternities, has passed through all the forms. He has but to choose the one he wants, and recall it into objective existence. Would not this sound to one of your ‘ learned ’ biologists like a madman’s dream ?
‘‘You say there are few branches of science with which you do not possess more or less acquaintance, and that you believe you are doing a certain amount of good, having acquired the position to do this by long years of study. Doubtless you do ; but will you permit me to sketch for you still more clearly the difference between the modes of physical (called exact often out of mere compliment) and metaphysical sciences. The latter, as you know, being incapable of verification before mixed audiences, is classed by Mr. Tyndall with the fictions of poetry. The realistic science of fact on the other hand is utterly prosaic. Now,
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for us, poor unknown philanthropists, no fact of either of these sciences is interesting except in the degree of its potentiahty of moral results, and in the ratio of its useful- ness to mankind. And what, in its proud isolation, can be more utterly indifferent to every one and everything, or more bound to nothing but the selfish requisites for its advancement, than this materialistic science of fact 1 May I ask then .... what have the laws of Faraday, Tyndall, or others to do with philanthropy in their abstract relations with humanity, viewed as an intelligent whole ? What care they for Man as an isolated atom of this great and har- monious whole, even though they may sometimes be of practical use to him ? Cosmic energy is something eternal and incessant ; matter is indestructible : and there stand the scientific facts. Doubt them, and you are an ignoramus , deny them, a dangerous lunatic, a bigot ; pretend to improve upon the theories — an impertinent charlatan. And yet even these scientific facts never suggested any proof to the world of experimenters that Nature consciously prefers that matter should be indestructible under organic rather than inorganic forms, and that she works slowly but incessantly towards the realization of this object — the evolution of conscious life out of inert material. Hence, their ignorance about the scattering and concretion of cosmic energy in its metaphysical aspects, their division about Darwin’s theories, their uncertainty about the degree of conscious life in separate elements, and, as a necessity, the scornful rejection of every phenomenon outside their own stated conditions, and the very idea of worlds of semi-intelligent if not intellectual forces at work in hidden corners of Nature. To give you another practical illustration — we see a vast difference between the two qualities of two equal amounts of energy expended by two men, of whom one, let us suppose, is on his way to his daily quiet work, and another on his way to denounce a fellow-creature at the police- station, while the men of science see none ; and we — not they — see a specific difference between the energy in the motion of the wind and that of a revolving wheel. And why % Because every thought of man upon being evolved passes into the inner world, and becomes an active entity by associating itself, coalescing we might term it, with an elemental — that is to say, with one of the semi-intelligent
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forces of the kingdoms. It survives as an active intelligence — a creature of the mind’s begetting — for a longer or shorter period proportionate with the original intensity of the cerebral action which generated it. Thus, a good thought is perpetuated as an active, beneficent power, an evil one as a maleficent demon. And so man is continually peophng his current in space with a world of his own, crowded with the offsprings of his fancies, desires, impulses, and passions ; a current which re-acts upon any sensitive or nervous organization which comes in contact with it, in proportion to its dynamic intensity. The Buddhist calls this his ‘ Shandba’ ; the Hindu gives it the name of ‘ Karma.’ The adept involves these shapes consciously ; other men throw them off unconsciously. The adept, to be successful and preserve his power, must dwell in solitude, and more or less within his own soul. Still less does exact science perceive that while the building ant, the busy bee, the nidifacient bird, accumulates each in its own bumble way as much cosmic energy in its potential form as a Haydn, a Plato, or a ploughman turning his furrow, in theirs ; the hunter who kills game for his pleasure or profit, or the positivist who applies his intellect to proving that + x + = — , are wasting and scattering energy no less than the tiger which springs upon its prey. They all rob Nature instead of enriching her, and will all, in the degree of their intelligence, find themselves accountable.
‘‘ Exact experimental science has nothing to do with morality, virtue, philanthropy — therefore, can make no claim upon our help until it blends itself with metaphysics. Being but a cold classification of facts outside man, and existing before and after him, her domain of usefulness ceases for us at the outer boundary of these facts ; and whatever the inferences and results for humanity from the materials acquired by her method, she little cares. There- fore, as our sphere lies entirely outside hers — as far as the path of Uranus is outside the Earth’s — we distinctly refuse to be broken on any wheel of her construction. Heat is but a mode of motion to her, and motion developes heat, but why the mechanical motion of the revolving wheel should be metaphysically of a higher value than the heat into which it is gradually transformed she has yet to discover. The philosophical and transcendental (hence
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absurd) notion of the mediseval Theosophists that the final progress of human labour, aided by the incessant discoveries of man, must one day culminate in a process which, in imitation of the Sun’s energy — in its capacity as a direct motor — shall result in the evolution of nutritious food out of inorganic matter, is unthinkable for men of science. Were the sun, the great nourishing father of our planetary system, to hatch granite chickens out of a boulder ‘ under test conditions ’ to-morrow, they (the men of science) would accept it as a scientific fact without wasting a regret that the fowls were not alive so as to feed the hungry and the starving. But let a shaheron cross the Himalayas in a time of famine and multiply sacks of rice for the perishing- multitudes — as he could — and your magistrates and collectors would probably lodge him in jail to make him confess what granary he had robbed. This is exact science and your real- istic world. And though, as you say, you are impressed by the vast extent of the world’s ignorance on every subject, which you pertinently designate as a ‘ few palpable facts collected and roughly generalized, and a technical jargon invented to hide man’s ignorance of all that lies behind these facts,’ and though you speak of your faith in the infinite possibilities of Nature, yet you are content to spend your hfe in a work which aids only that same exact science. . . .
“ Of your several questions we will first discuss, if you please, the one relating to the presumed failure of the ‘ Fraternity ’ to ‘ leave any mark upon the history of the world.’ They ought, you think, to have been able, with their extraordinary advantages, to have ‘ gathered into their schools a considerable portion of the more enlightened minds of every race.’ How do you know they have made no such mark % Are you acquainted with their efforts, suc- cesses, and failures ? Have you any dock upon which to arraign them ? How could your world collect proofs of the doings of men who have sedulously kept closed every pos- sible door of approach by which the inquisitive could spy upon them ? The prime condition of their success was that they should never be super\dsed or obstructed. What they have done they know; all that those outside their circle could perceive was results, the causes of which were masked from view. To account for these results, men have, in different ages, invented theories of the interposition of gods
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special providences, fates, the benign or hostile influence of the stars. There never was a time within or before the so- called historical period when our predecessors were not moulding events and ^ making history,’ the facts of which were subsequently and invariably distorted by historians to suit contemporary prejudices. Are you quite sure that the visible heroic figures in the successive dramas were not often but their puppets ? We never pretended to be able to draw nations in the mass to this or that crisis in spitd of the general drift of the world’s cosmic relations. The cycles must run their rounds. Periods of mental and moral Hght and darkness succeed each other as day does night. The major and minor yugas must be accomphshed according to the established order of things. And we. borne along on the mighty tide, can only modify and direct some of its minor currents. If we had the powers of the imaginary Personal God, and the universal and immutable laws were but toys to play with, then, indeed, might we have created conditions that would have turned this earth into an arcadia for lofty souls. But having to deal with an immu- table law, being ourselves its creatures, we have had to do what we could, and rest thankful. There have been times when ‘ a considerable portion of enhghtened minds ’ were taught in our schools. Such times there were in India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Pome. But, as I remarked in a letter to Mr. Sinnett, the adept is the efflorescence of his age, and comparatively few ever appear in a single century. Earth is the battle-ground of moral no less than of physical forces, and the boisterousness of animal passion, under the stimulus of the rude energies of the lower group of etheric agents, always tends to quench spirituality. What else could one expect of men so nearly related to the lower kingdom from which they evolved % True also, our numbers are just now diminishing, but this is because, as I have said, we are of the human race, subject to its cyclic impulse, and powerless to turn that back upon itself. Can you turn the Gunga or the Bramaputra back to its sources ; can you even dam it so that its piled-up waters will not overflow the banks? No; but you may draw the stream partly into canals, and utihze its hydrauhc power for the good of man- kind. So we, who cannot stop the world from going in its destined direction, are yet able to divert some part of its
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energy into useful channels. Think of us as demi-gods, and my explanation will not satisfy you ; view us as simple men — perhaps a little wiser as the result of special study — and it ought to answer your objection.
“ ‘ What good/ you say, ‘ is to be attained for my fellows and myself (the two are inseparable) by these occult sciences % ’ When the natives see that an interest is taken by the Enghsh, and even by some high officials in India, in their ancestral science and philosophies, they will themselves take openly to their study. And when they come to realize that the old ‘ divine ’ phenomena were not miracles, but scientific effects, superstition will abate. Thus, the greatest evil that now oppresses and retards the revival of Indian civilization will in time disappear. The present tendency of education is to make them materiahstic and root out spiri- tuahty. With a proper understanding of what their ancestors meant by their writings and teachings, education would be- come a blessing, whereas now* it is often a curse. At present the non-educated, as much as the learned natives, regard the English as too prejudiced, because of their Christian religion and modern science, to care to understand them or their tra- ditions. They mutually hate and mistrust each other. This changed attitude towards the older philosophy, would influ- ence the native princes and wealthy men to endow normal schools for the education of pundits ; and old MSS., hitherto buried out of the reach of the Europeans, would again come to hght, and with them the key to much of that which was hidden for ages from the popular understanding, for which your skeptical Sanscritists do not care, which your religious missionaries do not dare, to understand. Science would gain much, humanity everything. Under the stimulus of the Anglo-Indian Theosophical Society, we might in time see another golden age of Sanscrit literature
“ If we look at Ceylon we shall see the most scholarly priests combining, under the lead of the Theosophical Society, in a new exegesis of Buddhistic philosophy ; and at Galle, on the 15 th of September, a secular Theosophical School for the teaching of Singhalese youth, opened with an attendance of over three hundred scholars ; an example about to be imitated at three other points in that island. If the Theosophical Society, ‘ as at present constituted,’ has indeed no ‘ real vitality,’ and yet in its modest way has done
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so much practical good, how much greater results might not be anticipated from a body organized upon the better plan you could suggest %
“ The same causes that are materiahzing the Hindu mind are equally affecting all Western thought. Education enthrones skepticism, but imprisons spirituahty. You can do immense good by helping to give the Western nations a secure basis upon which to reconstruct their crumbling faith. And what they need is the evidence that Asiatic psychology alone supplies. Give this, and you will confer happiness of mind on thousands. The era of bhnd faith is gone ; that of inquiry is here. Inquiry that only unmasks error, without discovering anything upon which the soul can build, will but make iconoclasts. Iconoclasm, from its very destructiveness, can give nothing ; it can only raze. But man cannot rest satisfied with bare negation. Agnosticism is but a tem- porary halt. This is the moment to guide the recurrent impulse which must soon come, and which will push the age towards extreme atheism, or drag it back to extreme sacerdotahsm, if it is not led to the primitive soul-satisfying philosophy of the Aryans. He who observes what is going on to-day, on the one hand among the Catholics, who are breeding miracles as fast as the white ants do their young, on the other among the free thinkers, who are converting, by masses, into Agnostics — will see the drift of things. The age is revelling at a debauch of phenomena. The same marvels that the spiritualists quote in opposition to the dogmas of eternal perdition and atonement, the Catholics swarm to witness as proof of their faith in miracles. The skeptics make game of both. All are blind, and there is no one to lead them. You and your colleagues may help to furnish the materials for a needed universal religious philosophy; one impregnable to scientific assault, because itself the finahty of absolute science, and a rehgion that is indeed worthy of the name since it includes the relations of man physical to man psychical, and of the two to all that is above and below them. Is not this worth a slight sacrifice ? And if, after reflection, you should decide to enter this new career, let it be known that your society is no miracle- mongering or banqueting club, nor specially given to the study of phenomenalism. Its chief aim is to extirpate current superstitions and skepticism, and from long-sealed
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ancient fountains to draw the proof that man may shape his own future destiny, and know for a certainty that he can live hereafter, if he only wills, and that all ‘ phenomena’ are but manifestations of natural law, to try to comprehend which is the duty of every intelligent being.”
I have hitherto said nothing of the circumstances under which these various letters reached my hands : nor, in comparison with the intrinsic interest of the ideas they embody, can the phenomenal conditions under which some of them were delivered, be regarded as otherwise than of secondary interest for readers who appreciate their philo- sophy. But every bit of evidence which helps to exhibit the nature of the powers which the adepts exercise, is worth attention, while the rationale of such powers is still hidden from the world. The fact of their existence can only be estabhshed by the accumulation of such evidence, as long as we are unable to prove their possibility by d priori analysis of the latent capacities in man.
My friend to whom the last letter was addressed wrote a long reply, and subsequently an additional letter for Koot Hoomi, which he forwarded to me, asking me to read and then seal it up and send or give it to Madame Blavatsky for transmission, she being expected about that time at my house at Allahabad on her way down country from Amritsur and Lahore, where, as I have already indicated, she had stayed for some little time after our household broke up for the season at Simla. I did as desired, and gave the letter to Madame Blavatsky, after gumming and sealing the stout envelope in which it was forwarded. That evening, a few hours afterwards, on returning home to dinner, I found that the letter had gone, and had come back again. Madame Blavatsky told me that she had been talking to a visitor in her own room, and had been fingering a blue pencil on her writing table without noticing what she was doing, when she suddenly noticed that the paper on which she was scribbling was my letter that the addressee had duly taken possession of, by his own methods, an hour or two before. She found that she had, while talking about something else, unconsciously written on the envelope the words which it then bore, “ Bead and returned with thanks, and a few commentaries. Please open.” T examined the envelope carefully, and it was absolutely intact, its very
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complete fastenings having remained just as I arranged them. Slitting it open, I found the letter which it had contained when I sent it, and another from Koot Hoomi to me, criticizing the former with the help of a succession of pencil figures that referred to particular passages in the original letter — another illustration of the passage of matter through matter, which, for thousands of people who have had personal experience of it in Spiritualism, is as certain a fact of Nature as the rising of the sun, and which I have now not only encountered at spiritual seances, but, as this record will have shown, on many occasions when there is no motive for suspecting any other agency than that of living beings with faculties of which we may all possess the unde- veloped germs, though it is only in their case that knowledge has brought these to phenomenal fruition.
Sceptical critics, putting aside the collateral bearing of all the previous phenomena I have described, and dealing with this letter incident by itself alone, will perhaps say — Of course, Madame Blavatsky had ample time to open the envelope by such means as the mediums who profess to get answers to sealed letters from the spirit world are in the habit of emplopng. But, firstly, the Jhelum telegram proof, and the inherent evidence of the whole correspon- dence show that, the letters which come to me in that which I recognize as Koot Hoomi’s handwriting, are not the work of Madame Blavatsky, at all events ; secondly, let the incident I have just described be compared with another illustration of an exactly similar incident which occurred shortly afterwards under different circumstances. Koot Hoomi had sent me a letter addressed to my friend to read and forward on. On the subject of this letter before send- ing it I had occasion to make a communication to Koot Hoomi. I wrote a note to him, fastened it up in an ordi- nary adhesive envelope, and gave it to Madame Blavatsky. She put it in her pocket, went into her own room, which opened out of the drawing-room, and came out again almost instantly. Certainly she had not been away thirty seconds. She said, “ he ” had taken it at once. Then she followed me back through the house to my ofl&ce-room, spoke for a few minutes in the adjoining room to my wife, and, returning into my office, lay down on a couch. I went on with my work, and perhaps ten minutes elapsed, perhaps less. Sud- denly she got up. “ There’s your letter,” she said, pointing
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to the pillow from which she had lifted her head ; and there lay the letter I had just written, intact as regards its appearance, but with Koot Hoomi^s name on the outside scored out and mine written over it. After a thorough examination I slit the envelope, and found inside, on the fly-leaf of my note, the answer I required in Koot Hoomi’s handwriting. Now, except for the thirty seconds during which she retired to her own room, Madame Blavatsky had not been out of my sight, except for a minute or two in my wife’s room, during the short interval which elapsed between the dehvery of the letter by me to her and its return to me as described. And during this interval no one else had come into my room. The incident was as absolute and complete a mechanical proof of abnormal power exercised to produce the result as any conceivable test could have pelded. Except by declaring that I cannot be describing it correctly, the most resolute partisan of the commonplace will be unable seriously to dispute the force of this incident. He may take refuge in idiotic ridicule, or he may declare that I am misrepresenting the facts. As regards the latter hypothesis lean only pledge my word, as I do hereby, to the exact accuracy of the statement.
In one or two cases I have got back answers from Koot Hoomi to my letters in my own envelopes, these remaining intact as addressed to him, but with the address changed, and my letter gone from the inside, his reply having taken its place. In two or three cases I have found short mes- sages from Koot Hoomi written across the blank parts of letters from other persons, coming to me through the post, the writers in these cases being assuredly unaware of the additions so made to their epistles.
Of course, I have asked Koot Hoomi for an explanation of these httle phenomena, but it is easier for me to ask than for him to answer, partly because the forces which the adepts bring to bear upon matter to achieve abnormal results, are of a kind which ordinary science knows so little about that we of the outer world are not prepared for such explanations ; and partly because the manipulation of the forces ^ employed has to do, sometimes, with secrets of initiation which an occultist must not reveal. However, in reference to the subject before us, I received on one occasion this hint as an explanation.
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“ . . . . Besides, bear in mind that these my letters are not written, but impressed, or precipitated, and then all mistakes corrected.”
Of course, I wanted to know more about such precipita- tion ; was it a process which followed thought more rapidly^ than any with which we were familiar % And as regards letters received, did the meaning of these penetrate the understanding of an occult recipient at once, or were they read in the ordinary way %
“ Of course I have to read every word you write,” Koot Hoomi replied, “ otherwise I would make a fine mess of it. And whether it be through my physical or spiritual eyes, the time required for it is practically the same. As much may be said of my rephes ; for whether I precipitate or dictate them or write my answers myself, the difference in time saved is very minute. I have to think it over, to photograph every word and sentence carefully in my brain, before it can be repeated by precipitation. As the fixing on chemically prepared surfaces of the images formed by the camera requires a previous arrangement within the focus of the object to be represented, for otherwise — as often found in bad photographs — the legs of the sitter might appear out of all proportion with the head, and so on — so we have to first arrange our sentences and impress every letter to appear on paper in our minds before it becomes fit to be read. For the present it is all I can tell you. When science will have learned more about the mystery of the lithophyl (or Htho- biblion), and how the impress of leaves comes originally to take place on stones, then I will be able to make you better understand the process. But you must know and remember one thing — we but follow and servilely copy Nature in her works.”
In another letter Koot Hoomi expatiates more fully on the difficulty of making occult explanations intelligible to minds trained only in modern science.
“ Only the progress one makes in the study of arcane knowledge from its rudimental elements brings him gradually to understand our meaning. Only thus, and not otherwise, does it, strengthening and refining those myste- rious links of sympathy between intelligent men — the temporarily isolated fragments of the universal soul, and the cosmic soul itself — bring them into full rapport. Once this
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established, then only will those awakened sympathies serve, indeed, to connect Man with — what, for the want of a European scientific word more competent to express the idea, I am again compelled to describe as that energetic chain which binds together the material and immaterial kosmos — Past, Present, and Future, and quicken his per- ceptions so as to clearly grasp not merely all things of matter, but of spirit also. I feel even irritated at having to use these, three clumsy words — Past, Present, and Future. Miserable concepts of the objective phases of the subjective whole, they are about as ill adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine carving. Oh, my poor disappointed friend, that you were already so far advanced on the the; Path that this simple transmission of ideas should not be encumbered by the conditions of matter, the union of your mind with ours prevented by its induced incapabilities. Such is unfortu- nately the inherited and self-acquired grossness of the Western mind, and so greatly have the very phrases expressive of modern thoughts been developed in the line of practical materiahsm, that it is now next to impossible, either for them to comprehend or for us to express in their own languages anything of that delicate, seemingly ideal, machinery of the occult kosmos. To some little extent that faculty can be acquired by the Europeans through study and meditation, but — that’s all. And here is the bar which has hitherto prevented a conviction of the theosophical truths from gaining currency among Western nations — caused theosophical study to be cast aside as useless and fan- tastic by Western philosophers. How shall I teach you to read and write, or even comprehend a language of which no alphabet palpable or words audible to you have yet been invented. How could the phenomena of our modern elec- trical science be explained to — say a Greek philosopher of the days of Ptolemy, were he suddenly recalled to life — with such an unbridged hiatus in discovery as would exist between his and our age? Would not the very technical terms be to him an unintelligible jargon, an abracadabra of meaningless sounds, and the very instruments and appara- tuses used but miraculous monstrosities % And suppose for one instant I were to describe to you the lines of those colour rays that lie beyond the so-called visible spectrum — rays invisible to all but a very few even among us ; to
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explain how we can find in space any one of the so-called subjective or accidental colours — the complement (to speak mathematically) moreover of any other given colour of a dichromatic body (which alone sounds like an absurdity) could you comprehend, do you think, their optical effect, or even my meaning? And since you see them not — such rays — nor can know them, nor have you any names for them as yet in science, if I were to tell you . . . . ^ without moving from your writing-desk, try search for, and produce before your eyes the whole solar spectrum decomposed into fourteen prismatic colours (seven being complementary) as it is but with the help of that occult light that you can see me from a distance as I see you ’ — what think you would be your answer ? What would you have to reply ?
Would you not be hkely enough to retort by telling me that as there never were but seven (now three) primary colours which, moreover, have never yet by any known physical process been seen decomposed further than the seven prismatic hues, my invitation was as unscientific as it was absurd ? Adding that my offer to search for an ima- ginary solar complement, being no comphment to your knowledge of physical science — I had better, perhaps, go and search for my mythical dichromatic and solar ^ pairs ’ in Thibet, for modern science has hitherto been unable to bring under any theory even so simple a phenomenon as the colours of all such dichromatic bodies. And yet truth knows these colours are objective enough.
“ So you see the insurmountable difficulties in the way of attaining not only absolute, but even primary knowledge in Occult Science, for one situated as you are. How could you make yourself understood, command in fact, those semi- intelligent Forces, whose means of communicating with us are not through spoken words, but through sounds and colours in correlations between the vibrations of the two ? For sound, hght, and colour are the main factors in forming those grades of intelligences, these beings of whose very existence you have no conception, nor are you allowed to beheve in them — Atheists and Christians, Materiahsts and Spirituahsts, all bringing forward their respective arguments against such a belief — Science objecting stronger than either of these to such a degrading superstition.
“ Thus, because they cannot with one leap over the
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boundary walls attain to the pinnacles of Eternity — because we cannot take a savage from the centre of Africa and make him comprehend at once the ‘ Principia ’ of Newton, or the ‘ Sociology ’ of Herbert Spencer, or make an unlettered child write a new Iliad in old Achaian Greek, or an ordinary painter depict scenes in Saturn, or sketch the inhabitants of A returns — because of all this our very existence is denied. Yes, for this reason are behevers in us pronounced impostors and fools, and the very science which leads to the highest goal of the highest knowledge, to the real tasting of the Tree of Life and Wisdom — is scouted as a wild flight of imagination.”
The following passage occurs in another letter, but it adheres naturally enough to the- extract just concluded.
“ The truths and mysteries of occultism constitute, indeed, a body of the highest spiritual importance, at once profound and practical for the world at large. Yet it is not as an addition to the tangled mass of theory or speculation that they are being given to you, but for their practical bearing on the interests of mankind. The terms XJnscientifle, Impossible, Hallucination, Imposture, have hitherto been used in a very loose, careless way^ as implying in the occult phenomena something either mysterious and abnormal, or a premeditated imposture. And this is why our chiefs have determined to shed upon a few recipient minds more hght upon the subject, and to prove to them that such manifestations are as reducible to law as the sim- plest phenomena in the physical universe. The wiseacres say, ‘ the age of miracles is past but we answer, ^ it never existed.’ While not unparalleled or without their coun- terpart in universal history, these phenomena must and icill come with an overpowering influence upon the world of skeptics and bigots. They have to prove both destructive and constructive — destructive in the pernicious errors of the past, in the old creeds and superstitions which suflbeate in their poisonous embrace, hke the Mexican weed, nigh all mankind ; but constructive of new institutions of a genuine practical Brotherhood of Humanity, where all will become co-workers of Nature, will work for the good of mankind, with and through the higher planetary sp)irits, the only spirits we beheve in. Phenomenal elements previously unthought of, undreamed of, will soon begin manifesting
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themselves day by day with constantly augmented force, and disclose at last the secrets of their mysterious workings. Plato was right. Ideas rule the world ; and as men’s minds will receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete, the world will advance, mighty revolutions will spring from them, creeds and even powers will crumble before their onward march, crushed by their irresistible force. It will be just as impossible to resist their influence when the time comes as to stay the progress of the tide. But all this will come gradually on, and before it comes we have a duty set before us: that of sweeping away as much as possible the dross left to us by our pious forefathers. New ideas have to be planted on clean places, for these ideas touch upon the most momentous subjects. It is not physical phe- nomena, but these universal ideas, that we study ; as to comprehend the former, we have first to understand the latter. They touch man’s true position in the universe in relation to his previous and future births, his origin and ultimate destiny ; the relation of the mortal to the immortal, of the temporary to the eternal, of the finite to the infinite ; ideas larger, grander, more comprehensive, recognizing the eternal reign of immutable law, unchanging and unchange- able, in regard to which there is only an Eternal Now : while to uninitiated mortals, time is past or future, as related to their finite existence on this material speck of dirt.
This is what we study and what many have solved
Meanwhile, being human, I have to rest. I took no sleep for over sixty hours.”
Here are a few lines from Koot Hoomi’s hand, in a letter not addressed to me. It falls conveniently into the present series of extracts.
‘‘Be it as it may, we are content to hve as we do, un- known and undisturbed by a civihzation which rests so exclusively upon intellect. Nor do we feel in any way concerned about the revival of our ancient art and high civilization, for these are as sure to come back in their time, and in a higher form, as the Plesiosaurus and the Megatherium in theirs. We have the weakness to beheve in ever-recurrent cycles, and hope to quicken the resurrec- tion of what is past and gone. We could not impede it, even if we would. The new civilization will be but the child of the old one, and we have but to leave the eternal
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law to take its own course, to have our dead ones come out of their graves j yet we are certainly anxious to hasten the welcome event. Fear not, although we do ‘ cling super- stitiously to the relics of the past,’ our knowledge will not pass away from the sight of man. It is ‘ the gift of the gods,’ and the most precious rehc of all. The keepers of the sacred hght did not safely cross so many ages but to find themselves wrecked on the rocks of modern skepticism. Our pilots are too experienced sailors to allow us to fear any such disaster. We will always find volunteers to replace the tired sentries, and the world, bad as it is in its present state of transitory period, can yet furnish us with a few men now and then.”
Turning back to my own correspondence, and to the latest letter I received from Koot Hoomi before leaving India on the trip home, during which I am writing these pages, I read : —
“ I hope that at least you will understand that we (or most of us) are far from being the heartless morally dried-up mummies some would fancy us to be. Mejnour is very well where he is — as an ideal character of a thrilling, in many respects truthful story. Yet, beheve me, few of us would care to play the part in hfe of a desiccated pansy between the leaves of a volume of solemn poetry. We may not be quite ‘ the boys,’ to quote ’s irreverent expres-
sion when speaking of us, yet none of our degree are like the stern hero of Bulwer’s romance. While the facilities of observation secured to some of us by our condition, certainly give a greater breadth of view, a more pronounced and impartial, a more widely spread humaneness — for answering Addison, we might justly maintain that it is ^ the business of ‘‘ magic ” to humanize our natures with compassion’ — for the whole mankind as all living beings, instead of concentrating and limiting our affections to one predilected race — yet few of us (except such as have attained the final negation of Moksha) can so far enfran- chise ourselves from the influence of our earthly con- nection as to be unsusceptible in various degrees to the higher pleasures, emotions, and interests of the common run of humanity. Of course the greater the progress towards dehverance, the less this will be the case, until, to crown all, human and purely individual personal feelings,
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blood-ties and friendship, patriotism and race predilection, will all give way to become blended into one universal feeling, the only true and holy, the only unselfish and eternal one — Love, an Immense Love for humanity as a whole. For it is humanity which is the great orphan, the only disinherited one upon this earth, my friend. And it is the duty of every man who is capable of an unselfish impulse to do something, however little, for its welfare. It reminds me of the old fable of the war between the body and its members ; here, too, each hmb of this huge ‘ orphan,’ fatherless and motherless, selfishly cares but for itself. The body, uncared for, suffers eternally whether the limbs are at war or at rest. Its suffering and agony never cease ; and who can blame it — as your materiahstic philosophers do — if, in this everlasting isolation and neglect, it has evolved gods unto whom ‘ it ever cries for help, but is not heard.’ Thus —
‘ Since there is hope for man only in man,
I would not let one cry whom I could save.’
Yet I confess that I individually am not yet exempt from some of the terrestrial attachments. I am still attracted towards some men more than towards others, and philan- thropy as preached by our Great Patron —
‘ the Saviour of the world,
The teacher of Nirvana and the Law ’ —
has never killed in me either individual preferences of friendship, love for my next of kin, or the ardent feeling of patriotism for the country in which I was last materially individualized.”
I had asked Koot Hoomi how far I was at liberty to use his letters in the preparation of this volume, and, a few lines after the passage just quoted, he says : —
“ I lay no restrictions upon your making use of anything I may have written to you or Mr. having full con-
fidence in your tact and judgment as to what should be printed, and how it should be presented. I must only ask you . . . .” and then he goes on to indicate one letter
which he wishes me to withhold “ As to the rest,
I relinquish it to the mangling tooth of criticism.”
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As affirmed more than once already, Occult Philosophy in various countries and through different periods has remained substantially the same. At different times and places very different mythological efflorescences have been thrown off for the service of the populace ; but, underlying each popu- lar rehgion, the religious knowledge of the initiated minority has been identical. Of course, the modern Western con- ception of what is right in such matters will be outraged by the mere idea of a rehgion which is kept as the property of the few, while a false religion,” as modern phraseology would put it, is served out to the common people. How- ever, before this feeling is permitted to land us in too un- compromising disapproval of the ancient hiders of the truth, it may be well to determine how far it is due to any intelli- gent conviction that the common herd would be benefited by teaching, which must be in its nature too refined and subtle for popular comprehension, and how far the feeling referred to may be due to an acquired habit of looking on rehgion as something which it is important to profess, irre- spective of understanding it. No doubt, assuming that a man’s eternal welfare depends upon his declaration, irre- spective of comprehension, of the right faith, among all the faiths he might have picked out from the lucky bag of birth and destiny — then it would be the sovereign duty of persons conscious of possessing such a faith to proclaim it from the house-tops. But, on the other hypothesis, that it cannot profit any man to mutter a formula of words without attach- ing sense to it, and that crude intelHgences can only be ap- proached by crude sketches of rehgious ideas, there is more to be advanced on behalf of the ancient policy of reserve than seems at first sight obvious. Certainly the relations of the populace and the initiates, look susceptible of modi- fication in the European world of the present day. The
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populace, in the sense of the puhhc at large, including the finest intellects of the age, are at least as well able as those of any special class to comprehend metaphysical ideas. These finer intellects dominate puhhc thought, so that no great ideas can triumph among the nations of Europe with- out their aid, while their aid can only be secured in the open market of intellectual competition. Thus it ensues that the bare notion of an esoteric science superior to that offered in pubhc to the scientific world, strikes the modern Western mind as an absurdity. With which very natural feehng it is only necessary at present here to fight, so far as to ask people not to be illogical in its apphcation ; that is to say, not to assume that because it would never occur to a modern European coming into possession of a new truth to make a secret of it, and disclose it only to a fraternity under pledges of reserve, therefore such an idea could never have occurred to an Egyptian priest or an intellectual giant of the civilization which overspread India, according to some not unreasonable hypotheses, before Egypt began to be a seat of learning and art. The secret society system was as natural, j indeed, to the ancient man of science, as the pubhc system !
is in our own country and time. Nor is the difference one i
of time and fashion merely. It hinges on to the great difference that is to be discerned in the essence of the pur- suits in which learned men engage now, as compared with those they were concerned with in former ages. We have belonged to the material progress epoch, and the watchword of material progress has always been publicity. The ini- tiates of ancient psychology belonged to the spiritual age, and the watchword of subjective development has always been secrecy. Whether in both cases the watchword is dictated by necessities of the situation is a question on which discus- sion might be possible ; but, at all events, these reflections are enough to show that it would be unwise to dogmatize too confidently on the character of the philosophy and the philosophers who could be content to hoard their wisdom and supply the crowd with a religion adapted rather to the understanding of its recipients than to the eternal verities.
It is impossible now to form a conjecture as to the date or time at which occult philosophy began to take the shape in which we find it now. But though it may be reasonably guessed that the last two or three thousand years have not
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passed over the devoted initiates who have held and trans- mitted it during that time, without their having contributed something towards its development, the proficiency of initiates belonging to the earhest periods with which history deals, appears to have been already so far advanced, and so nearly as wonderful as the proficiency of initiates in the present day, that we must assign a very great antiquity to the earliest beginnings of occult knowledge on this earth. Indeed the question cannot be raised without bringing us in contact with considerations that hint at absolutely start- ling conclusions in this respect.
But, apart from specific archaeological speculations, it has been pointed out that “ a philosophy so profound, a moral code so ennobling, and practical results so conclusive and so uniformly demonstrable, are not the growth of a generation, or even a single epoch. Fact must have been piled upon fact, deduction upon deduction, science have begotten science, and myriads of the brightest human intellects have reflected upon the laws of Nature, before this ancient doc- trine had taken concrete shape. The proofs of this identity of fundamental doctrine in the old religions are found in the prevalence of a system of initiation ; in the secret sacer- dotal castes, who had the guardianship of mystical words of power, and a public display of a phenomenal control over natural forces indicating association with preter-human beings. Every approach to the mysteries of all these nations, was guarded with the same jealous care, and in all the penalty of death was inflicted upon all initiates of any degree who divulged the secrets entrusted to them.” The book just quoted shows this to have been the case with the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries among the Chaldean Magi and the Egyptian Hierophants. The Hindu book of Brahminical ceremonies, the “ Agrushada Parikshai,” con- tains the same law, which appears also to have been adopted by the Essenes, the Gnostics, and the Theurgic Neo-Plato- nists. Freemasonry has copied the old formula, though its raison dJetre has expired here with the expiration from among freemasons of the occult philosophy on which their forms and ceremonies are shaped to a larger extent than they generally conceive. Evidences of the identity spoken of may be traced in the vows, formulas, rites, and doctrines of various ancient faiths, and it is affirmed by those whom
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I believe qualified to speak with authority as to the fact, “ that not only is their memory still preserved in India, but also that the Secret Association is still ahve, and as active as ever.”
As I have now, in support of the views just expressed, to make some quotations from Madame Blavatsky’s great book, “ Isis Unveiled,” it is necessary to give certain explanations concerning the genesis of that work, for which the reader who has followed my narrative of occult experi- ences through the preceding pages, wiU be better prepared than he would have been previously. I have shown how, throughout the most ordinary incidents of her daily life, Madame Blavatsky is constantly in communication, by means of the system of psychological telegraphy that the initiates employ, with her superior “ Brothers” in occultism. This state of the facts once realized, it will be easy to understand that in compiling such a work as “ Isis,” which embodies a complete explanation of all that can be told about occultism to the outer world, she would not be left exclusively to her own resources. The truth which Madame Blavatsky would be the last person in the world to wish disguised, is that the assistance she derived from the Brothers, by occult agency, throughout the composition of her book, was so abundant and continuous that she is not so much the author of “ Isis” as one of a group of collahora- teurs, by whom it was actually produced. I am given to understand that she set to work on “Isis” without knowing anything about the magnitude of the task she was undertaking. She began writing to dictation — the passages thus written not now standing first in the com- pleted volumes — in compliance with the desire of her occult friends, and without knowing whether the composition on which she was engaged would turn out an article for a newspaper, oi' an essay for a magazine, or a work of larger dimensions. But on and on it grew. Before going very far, of course, she came to understand what she was about ; and fairly launched on her task, she in turn contributed a good deal from her own natural brain. But the Brothers appear always to have been at work with her, not merely dictating through her brain as at first, but sometimes employing those methods of “ precipitation” of which I have myself been favoured with some examples, and by means of
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which quantities 6f actual manuscript in other handwritings than her own were produced while she slept. In the morning she would sometimes get up and find as much as thirty slips added to the manuscript she had left on her table over-night. The book “ Isis is in fact as great a “ phenomenon ” — apart from the nature of its contents — as any of those I have described.
The faults of the book, obvious to the general reader, will be thus explained, as well as the extraordinary value it possesses for those who may be anxious to explore as far as possible the mysteries of occultism. The deific powers which the Brothers enjoy cannot protect a literary work which is the joint production of several — even among their — minds, from the confusion of arrangement to which such a mode of composition inevitably gives rise. And besides confusion of arrangement, the book exhibits a heterogeneous variety of different styles, which mars its dignity as a hterary work, and must prove both irritating and puzzling to the ordinary reader. But for those who possess the key to thi^ irregularity of form, it is an advantage rather than otherwise. It will enable an acute reader to account for some minor incongruities of statement occurring in different parts of the book. Beyond this it will enable him to recog- nize the voice, as it were, of the different authors as they take up the parable in turn.
The book was written — as regards its physical production — at New York, where Madame Blavatsky was utterly unprovided with books of reference. It teems, however, with references to books of aU sorts, including many of a very unusual character, and with quotations the exactitude of which may easily be verified at the great European libraries, as foot-notes supply the number of the pages, from which the passages taken are quoted.
I may now go on to collect some passages from “ Isis,” the object of which is to show the unity of the esoteric philo- sophy underlying various ancient religions, and the peculiar value which attaches for students of that philosophy, to pure Buddhism, a system which, of all those presented to the world, appears to supply us with occult philosophy in its least adulterated shape. Of course, the reader will guard himself from running away with the idea that Buddhism, as explained by writers who are not occultists,
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can be accepted as an embodiment of their views. For example, one of the leading ideas of Buddhism, as inter- preted by Western scholars, is that “ Nirvana ” amounts to annihilation. It is possible that Western scholars may be right in saying that the explanation of “ Nirvana ” suppHed by exoteric Buddhism leads to this conclusion ; but that, at •all events, is not the occult doctrine.
“ Nirvana,” it is stated in “ Isis,” “ means the certitude of personal immortality in spirit not in soul, which, as a finite emanation, must certainly disintegrate its particles, a com- pound of human sensations, passions, and yearning for some objective kind of existence, before the immortal spirit of the Ego is quite freed, and henceforth secure against trans- migration in any form. And how can man reach that state so long as the ‘ Upadana,’ that state of longing for hfe, more life, does not disappear from the sentiment being, from the Ahancara clothed, however, in a sublimated body ] It is the ‘ Upadana ’ or the intense desire that produces will, and it is will which develops force, and the latter generates matter, or an object having form. Thus the disembodied Ego, through this sole undying desire in him, unconsciously furnishes the conditions of his successive self-procreations in various forms, which depend on his mental state, and ‘ Karma,’ the good or bad deeds of his preceding existence, commonly called ‘ merit ’ and ‘ demerit.’ ” There is a world of suggestive metaphysical thought in this passage, which will serve at once to justify the view propounded just now as regards the reach of Buddhistic philosophy as viewed from the occult standpoint.
The misunderstanding about the meaning of “ Nirvana ” is so general in the West, that it will be well to consider the following elucidation also : —
“ Annihilation means with the Buddhistical philosophy only a dispersion of matter, in whatever form or semblance of form it may be ; for everything that bears a shape was created, and thus must sooner or later perish — i.e., change that shape ; therefore, as something temporary, though seeming to be permanent, it is but an illusion, ‘ Maya ; ’ for as eternity has neither beginning nor end, the more or less prolonged duration of some particular form passes, as it were, li]?:e an instantaneous flash of lightning. Before we have the time to realize that we have seen it, it has gone and
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passed away for ever ; hence even our astral bodies, pure ether, are but illusions of matter so long as they retain their terrestrial outline. The latter changes, says the Buddhist, according to the merits or demerits of the person during his lifetime, and this is metempsychosis. When the spiritual entity breaks loose for ever from every particle of matter, then only it enters upon the eternal and unchangeable ‘ Nirvana.’ He exists in spirit, in nothing ; as a form, a shape, a semblance, he is completely annihilated, and thus will die no more ; for spirit alone is no ‘ Maya,’ but the only
reahty in an illusionary universe of ever-passing forms
To accuse Buddhistical philosophy of rejecting a Supreme Being — Grod, and the soul’s immortality — of Atheism, in short — on the ground that ‘ Nirvana’ means annihilation, and ‘ Svabhavat ’ is not a person, but nothing, is simply absurd. The En (or Aym) of the Jewish Ensoph also means nihil, or nothing, that which is not {quoad nos), but no one has ever ventured to twit the Jews with atheism. In both cases the real meaning of the term nothing carries with it the idea that God is not a thing, not a concrete or visible being to which a name expressive of any object known to us on earth may be applied with propriety.” Again: “‘Nirvana’ is the world of cause in which aU deceptive effects or illusions of our senses disappear.
‘ Nirvana’ is the highest attainable sphere.”
The secret doctrines of the Magi, of the pre-Yedic Buddhists, of the hierophants of the Egyptian Thoth or Hermes, were — we find it laid down in “ Isis ” — identical from the beginning, an identity that applies equally to the secret doctrines of the adepts of whatever age or nationality, including the Chaldean Kabalists and the Jewish Nazars. “ When we use the word Buddhists, we do not mean to imply by it either the exoteric Buddhism instituted by the followers of Gautama Buddha, or the modern Buddhistic religion, but the secret philosophy of Sakyamuni, which, in its essence, is certainly identical with the ancient wisdom- religion of the sanctuary — the pre-Yedic Brahmanism. The schism of Zoroaster, as it is called, is a direct proof of it : for it was no schism, strictly speaking, but merely a partially pubHc exposition of strictly monotheistic religious truths hitherto taught only in the sanctuaries, and that he had learned from the Brahmans. Zoroaster, the primeval
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institutor of sun-worship, cannot be called the founder of the duahstic system, neither was he the first to teach the unity of God, for he taught but what he had learned him- self from the Brahmans. And that Zarathrusta, and his followers the Zoroastrians, had been settled in India before they immigrated into Persia, is also proved by Max Muller. ‘ That the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India,’ he says, ‘ during the Yaidic period, can be proved as distinctly as that the inhabitants of Massilia started from
Greece Many of the gods of the Zoroastrians come
out as mere reflections and deflections of the gods of
the Veda.’
“ If, now, we can prove, and we can do so on the evidence of the ‘ Kabala,’ and the oldest traditions of the wisdom- religion, the philosophy of the old sanctuaries, that all these gods, whether of the Zoroastrians or of the Feda, are but so many personated occult powers of Nature, the faithful servants of the adepts of secret wisdom — magic — we are on secure ground.
“ Thus, whether we say that Kabahsm and Gnosticism proceeded from Masdeanism or Zoroastrianism, it is all the same, unless we meant the exoteric worship, which we do not. Likewise, and in this sense we may echo King, the author of the ‘ Gnostics,’ and several other archseologists, and maintain that both the former proceeded from Buddhism, at once the simplest and most satisfying of philosophies, and which resulted in one of the purest religions in the world. But whether among the Essenes or the Neo-Platonists, or again among the innumerable struggling sects born but to die, the same doctrines, identical in substance and spirit, if not always in form, are encountered. By Buddhism, therefore, we mean that religion signifying literally the doc- trine of wisdom, and which by many ages antedates the metaphysical philosophy of Siddhartha Sakyamuni.”
Modern Christianity has, of course, diverged widely from its own original philosophy, but the identity of this with the original philosophy of all religions is maintained in “ Isis” in the course of an interesting argument.
‘‘ Luke, who was a physician, is designated in the Syriac texts as Asaia, the Essaian or Essene. Josephus and Philo Judaeus’ have sufficiently described this sect to leave no doubt in our mind that the Nazarene Beformer, after
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having received his education in their dwellings in the desert, and being duly initiated in the mysteries, preferred the free and independent hfe of a wandering Nazaria, and so separated, or inazarenized, himself from them, thus be- coming a travelling Therapeute, or Nazaria, a healer. ... In his discourses and sermons Jesus always spoke in parables, and used metaphors with his audience. This habit was again that of the Essenians and the Nazarenes ; the Galileans, who dwelt in cities and villages, were never known to use such allegorical language. Indeed, some of his disciples, being Galileans as well as himself, felt even surprised to find him using with the people such a form of expression. ‘ Why speakest thou unto them in parables ? ’ they often inquired. ^ Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven ; but to them it is not given,’ was the reply, which was that of an initiate.
‘ Therefore, I speak unto them in parables, because they seeing, see not, and hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand.’ Moreover, we find Jesus expressing his thoughts .... in sentences which are purely Pythagorean, when, during the Sermon on the Mount, he says, ‘ Give ye not that which is sacred to the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine ; for the swine will tread them under their feet, and the dogs will turn and rend you.’ Professor A. Wilder, the editor of Taylor’s ‘ Eleusinian Mysteries,’ observes ‘ a like disposition on the part of Jesus and Paul to classify their doctrines as esoteric and exoteric — the mys- teries of the kingdom of God for the apostles, and parables for the multitude. ‘ We speak wisdom,’ says Paul, ‘ among them that are or ‘initiated.’ In the Eleusinian
and other mysteries the participants were always divided into two classes, the neophytes and the perfect The narra-
tive of the Apostle Paul, in his Second Epistle to the Corin- thians, has struck several scholars well versed in the descrip- tions of the mystical rites of the initiation given by some classics as alluding most undoubtedly to the final Epopteia :
‘ I know a certain man — whether in body or outside of body I know not ; God knoweth — who was rapt into Paradise, and heard things ineffable which it is not lawful for a man to repeat.’ These words have rarely, so far as we know, been regarded by commentators as an allusion to the beatific visions of an initiated seer ; but the phraseology is unequi^
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vocal. These things which it is not lawful to repeat, are hinted at in the same words, and the reason assigned for it is the same as that which we find repeatedly expressed by Plato, Proclus, Jambhchus, Herodotus, and other classics.
‘ We speak wisdom only among them that are perfect,’ says Paul ; the plain and undeniable translation of the sentence being : ‘We speak of the profounder or final esoteric doc- trines of the mysteries (which are denominated wisdom), only among them who are initiated.’ So in relation to the man who was rapt into Paradise — and who was evidently Paul himself — the Christian word Paradise having replaced that of Elysium.”
The final purpose of occult philosophy is to show what Man was, is, and will be. “ That which survives as an individuality,” says “ Isis,” “ after the death of the body is the actual soul, which Plato, in the Timceus and Gorgias^ calls the mortal soul ] for, according to the Hermetic doctrine, it throws off the more material particles at every progressive
change into a higher sphere The astral spirit is a
faithful duplicate of the body in a physical and spiritual sense. The Divine, the highest immortal spirit, can be neither punished nor rewarded. To maintain such a doctrine would be at the same time absurd and blasphemous ; for it is not merely a flame lit at the central and unextinguishable fountain of light, but actually a portion of it and of identical essence. It assures immortality to the individual astral being in proportion to the wilhngness of the latter to receive it. So long as the double man — i.e., the man of flesh and spirit — keeps within the hmits of the law of spiritual continuity ; so long as the divine spark lingers in him, how- ever faintly, he is on the road to an immortahty in the future state. But those who resign themselves to a materialistic existence, shutting out the divine radiance shed by their spirit, at the beginning of their earthly pilgrimage, and stifling the warning voice of that faithful sentry the con- science, which serves as a focus for the light in the soul — such beings as these, having left behind conscience and ! spirit, and crossed the boundaries of matter, will, of I necessity, have to follow its laws.” J
Again : “ The secret doctrine teaches that man, if he wins immortality, will remain for ever the trinity that he is in life, and will continue so throughout all the spheres. The
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astral body, which in this life is covered by a gross physical envelope, becomes, when relieved of that covering by the process of corporeal death, in its turn the shell of another and more ethereal body. This begins developing from the moment of death, and becomes perfected when the astral body of the earthly form finally separates from it.”
The passages quoted, when read by the light of the expla- nations I have given, will enable the reader, if so inclined, to take up “ Isis ” in a comprehending spirit, and find his way to the rich veins of precious metal which are buried in its pages. But neither in “ Isis ” nor in any other book on occult philosophy which has been or seems likely to be written yet awhile, must any one hope to obtain a cut-and- dried, straightforward, and perfectly clear account of the mysteries of birth, death, and the future. At first, in pursuing studies of this kind, one is irritated at the difficulty of getting at what the occultists really believe as regards the future state, the nature of the life to come, and its general mise en scene. The well-known religions have very precise views on these subjects, further rendered practical by the assurance some of them give that qualified persons, commissioned by churches to perform the duty, can shunt departing souls on to the right or the wrong lines, in accordance with the consideration received. Theories of that kind have at any rate the merit of simplicity and intelli- gibility, but they are not, perhaps, satisfactory to the mind as regards their details. After a very little investigation of the matter, the student of occult philosophy will realize that on that path of knowledge he will certainly meet with no conceptions likely to outrage his purest idealization of God and the life to come. He will soon feel that the scheme of ideas he is exploring is lofty and dignified to the utmost hmits that the human understanding can reach. But it will remain vague, and he will seek for explicit statements on this or that point, until by degrees he realizes that the absolute truth about the origin and destinies of the human soul may be too subtle and intricate to be possibly expressible in straightforward language. Perfectly clear ideas may be attainable for the purified minds of advanced scholars in occultism, who, by entire devotion of every faculty to the pursuit and prolonged assimilation of such ideas, come at length to understand them with the aid of pecuhar intel-
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
lectual powers specially expanded for the purpose ; but it does not at all follow that with the best will in the world such persons must necessarily be able to draw up an occult creed which should bring the whole theory of the universe into the compass of a dozen lines. The study of occultism, even by men of the world, engaged in ordinary pursuits as well, may readily enlarge and purify the understanding, to the extent of arming the mind, so to speak, with tests that will detect absurdity in any erroneous rehgious hypothesis ; but the absolute structure of occult belief is something which, from its nature, can only be built up slowly in the mind of each intellectual architect. And I imagine that a very vivid perception of this on then* part explains the reluctance of occultists even to attempt the straightforward explanation of their doctrines. They know that really vital plants of knowledge, so to speak, must grow up from the germ in each man’s mind, and cannot be transplanted into the strange soil of an untrained understanding in a complete state of mature growth. They are ready enough to supply seed, but every man must grow his own tree of knowledge for himself. As the adept himself is not made, but becomes so, — in a minor degree, the person who merely aspires to comprehend the adept and his views of things must develop such compre- hension for himself, by thinking out rudimentary ideas to their legitimate conclusions.
These considerations fit in with, and do something to- wards elucidating, the reserve of occultism, and they further suggest an explanation of what will at once seem puzzhng to a reader of “ Isis,” who takes it up by the hght of the present narrative. If great parts of the book, as I have asserted, are really the work of actual adepts, who know of their own knowledge what is the actual truth about many of the mysteries discussed, why have they not said plainly what they meant, instead of beating about the bush, and suggesting arguments derived from this or that ordinary source, from literary or historical evidence, from abstract speculation concerning the harmonies of Nature? The answer seems to be, firstly, that they could not weU write, “ We know that so and so is the fact,” without being asked, “ How do you know?” — and it is manifestly impossible that they could reply to this question without going into details, that it would be “ unlawful,” as a Biblical writer would say,
TEACHINGS OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY.
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to disclose, or without proposing to guarantee their testi- mony by manifestations of powers which it would be obviously impracticable for them to keep always at hand for the satisfaction of each reader of the book in turn. Secondly, I imagine that, in accordance with the invariable principle of trying less to teach than to encourage spontaneous development, they have aimed in ‘‘ Isis,” rather at producing an effect on the reader’s mind, than at shooting in a store of previously accumulated facts. They have shown that Theosophy, or Occult Philosophy, is no new candidate for the world’s attention, but is really a restatement of principles which have been recognized from the very infancy of mankind. The historic sequence which estabhshes this view is distinctly traced through the successive evolutions of the philosophical schools, in a manner which it is impossible for me to attempt in a work of these dimensions, and the theory laid down is illustrated with abundant accounts of the experimental demonstrations of occult power ascribed to various thaumaturgists. The authors of Isis ” have ex- pressly refrained from saying more than might conceivably be said by a writer who was not an adept, supposing him to have access to all the literature of the subject and an enhghtened comprehension of its meaning.
But once reahze the real position of the authors or inspirers of “ Isis,” and the value of any argument on which you find them launched is enhanced enormously above the level of the relatively commonplace considerations advanced on its behalf. The adepts may not choose to bring forward other than exoteric evidence in favour of any particular thesis they wish to support, but if they wish to support it, that fact alone will be of enormous significance for any reader who, in indirect ways, has reached a comprehension of the authority with which they are entitled to speak.
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CONCLUSION.
I CANNOT let a second edition of this book appear without recording some, at least, of the experiences which have befallen me since its preparation. The most important of these, indeed, are concerned with fragmentary instruction I have been privileged to receive from the Brothers in reference to the great truths of cosmology which their spiritual insight has enabled them to penetrate. But the exposition even of the little, relatively, that I have learned on this head would exact a more elaborate treatise than I can attempt at present.^ And the purpose of the present volume is to expound the outer facts of the situation rather than to analyze a system of philosophy. This is not entirely inaccessible to exoteric students, apart from what may be regarded as direct revelation from the Brothers. Though almost all existing occult literature is unattractive in its form, and rendered purposely obscure by the use of an elaborate symbology, it does contain a great deal of information that can be distilled from the mass by the application of sufficient patience. Some industrious students of that hterature have proved this. Whether the masters of occult philosophy will ultimately consent to the complete exposition in plain language of the state of the facts regarding the spiritual constitution of Man remains to be seen. Certainly, even if they are still reticent in a way that no ordinary observer can compre- hend, they are more disposed to be communicative at this moment than they have been for a long time past.
But the first thing to do is to dissipate as much as possible the dogged disbehef that encrusts the Western mind as to the existence of any abnormal persons who can be regarded as masters of True Philosophy — distinguished from all the speculations that have tormented the world — * Subsequently published as “Esoteric Buddhism.”
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and as to the abnormal nature of their faculties. I have endeavoured already to point out plainly, but may as well here emphasize the reason why I dwell upon, the pheno- mena which exhibit these faculties. Kightly regarded these are the credentials of the spiritual teaching which their authors supply. Firstly, indeed, in themselves
abnormal phenomena accomplished by the will-power of living men must be intensely interesting for every one endowed with an honest love of science. They open out new scientific horizons. It is as certain as the sun’s next rising that the forward pressure of scientific discovery, advancing slowly as it does in its own grooves, will ultimately, and probably at no very distant date, introduce the ordinary world to some of the superior scientific know- ledge already enjoyed by the masters of occultism. Faculties will be acquired by exoteric investigation, that will bring the outworks of science a step or two nearer the comprehension of some of the phenomena I have described in the present volume. And meanwhile it seems to me very interesting to get a glimpse beforehand of achieve- ments which we should probably find engaging the eager attention of a future generation, if we really could, as Tennyson suggests —
“ sleep through terms of mighty wars,
And wake on science grown to more,
On secrets of the brain, the stars.
As wild as aught of fairy lore.”
But even superior to their scientific interest is the import- ance of the lesson conveyed by occult phenomena, when these distinctly place their authors in a commanding position of intellectual superiority as compared with the world at large. They show most undeniably that these men have gone far ahead of their contemporaries in a comprehension of Nature as exemplified in this world, that they have acquired the power of cognizing events by other means than the material senses, that while their bodies are at one place their perceptions may be at another, and that they have consequently solved the great problem as to whether the Ego of man is a something distinct from his perishable frame. From all other teachers we can but find out what has been thought probable in reference to the
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soul or spirit of man : from them we can find out what is the fact ; and if that is not a subhme subject of inquiry, surely it would be difficult to say what is. But we cannot read poetry till we have learned the alphabet ; and, if the combinations b-a ba, and so on are found to be insufferably trivial and uninteresting, the fastidious person who objects to such foohshness will certainly never be able to read the “ Idylls of the King.”
So I return from the clouds to my patient record of phenomena, and to the incidents which have confirmed the experiences and conclusions set forth in the previous chapter of this book, since my return to India.
The very first incident which took place was in the nature of a pleasant greeting from my friend Koot Hoomi. I had written to him (per Madame Blavatsky, of course) shortly before leaving London, and had expected to find a letter from him awaiting my arrival at Bombay, But no such letter had been received, as I found when I reached the headquarters of the Theosophical Society, where I had arranged to stay for a few days before going on to my destination up country. I got in late at night and nothing remarkable happened then. The following morning, after breakfast, I was sitting talking with Madame Blavatsky in the room that had been allotted to me. We were sitting at different sides of a large square table in the middle of the room, and the full dayhght was shining. There was no one else in the room. Suddenly, down upon the table before me, but to my right hand, Madame Blavatsky being to my left, there fell a thick letter. It fell “ out of nothing,” so to speak ; it was materialized, or reintegrated in the air before my eyes. It was Koot Hoomi's expected reply — a deeply interesting letter, partly concerned with private matters and replies to questions of mine, and partly with some large, though as yet shadowy, revelations of occult philosophy, the first sketch of this that I had received. Now, of course. I know what some readers will say to this (with a self-satisfied smile) — “wires, springs, concealed apparatus,” and so forth; but first all the suggestion would have been grotesquely absurd to any one who had been present ; and secondly, it is unnecessary to argue about objections of this sort all over again ah initio every tune. There were no more wires and springs about the
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I2I
room I am now referring to, than about the breezy hill-tops at Simla, where some of our earher phenomena took place. I may add, moreover, that some months later an occult note was dropped before a friend of mine, a Bengal civihan, who has become an active member of the Theosophical Society, at a dak bungalow in the north of India ; and that later again, at the headquarters of the Theosophical Society at Bombay, a letter was dropped according to a previous promise out in the open air in the presence of six or seven witnesses.
Bor some time the gift of the letter from Koot Hoomi in the way I have described was the only phenomenon accorded to me, and, although my correspondence continued, I was not encouraged to expect any further displays of abnormal power. The higher authorities of the occult world, ‘indeed, had by this time put a very much more stringent prohibition upon such manifestations than had been in operation the previous summer at Simla. The effect of the manifestations then accorded was not considered to have been satisfactory on the whole. A good deal of acrimonious discussion and bad feehng had ensued ; and I imagine that this was conceived to outweigh, in its injurious effect on the progress of the Theosophical movement, the good effect of the phenomena on the few persons who appreciated them. When I went up to Simla in August, i88i, there- fore, I had no expectation of further events of an unusual nature. Nor have I any stream of anecdotes to relate which mil bear comparison with those derived from the experience of the previous year. But none the less was the progress of a certain undertaking in which I became con- cerned— the establishment of a Simla branch of the Theo- sophical Society — interspersed with httle incidents of a phenomenal nature. When this Society was formed, many letters passed between Koot Hoomi and ourselves which were not in every case transmitted through Madame Blavatsky. In one case, for example, Mr. Hume, who became pre- sident for the first year of the new Society — the Simla Eclectic Theosophical Society, as it was decided it should be called — got a note from Koot Hoomi inside a letter received through the post from a person wholly unconnected with our occult pursuits, who was writing to him in connection with some municipal business. I myself, dressing for the
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evening, have found an expected letter in my coat-pocket, and on another occasion under my pillow in the morning. On one occasion, having just received a letter by the mail from England which contained matter in which I thought she would be interested, I went up to Madame Blavatsky’s writing-room and read it to her. As I read it, a few lines of writing, comment upon what I was reading, were formed on a sheet of blank paper which lay before her. She actually saw the writing form itself, and called to me^ pointing to the paper where it lay. There I recognized Koot Hoomi’s hand — and his thought, for the comment was to the effect, ‘‘ Didn’t I tell you so h ” and referred back to something he had said in a previous letter.
By-the-by, it may be as well to inform the reader that during the whole of the visit to Simla, of which I am now speaking, for several months before it, and until several months later. Colonel Olcott was in Ceylon, where he was engaged in a very successful lecturing tour on behalf of the Theosophical Society, in reference to some of the phenomena which occurred at Simla in 1880 when both he and Madame Blavatsky were present. Ill-natured and incredulous people — when it would be glaringly absurd about some particular phenomenon to say that Madame Blavatsky had done it by trickery of her own — used to be fond of suggesting that the wire-puller must be Colonel Olcott. In some of the news- paper criticisms of the first edition of this book, even, it has been suggested that Colonel Olcott must be the writer of the letters that I innocently ascribe to Koot Hoomi, Madame Blavatsky merely manipulating their presentation. But inasmuch as all through the autumn of 1881, while Colonel Olcott was at Ceylon and I at Simla, the letters continued to come, alternating day by day sometimes with the letters we wrote, my critics, in future, must acknowledge that this hypothesis is played out.
For me myself — as I think it will also be for my appre- ciative readers — the most interesting fact connected with my Simla experience of 1881 was this : — During the period in question I got into relations with one other of the Brothers, besides Koot Hoomi. It came to pass that in the progress of his own development it was necessary for Koot Hoomi to retire for a period of three months into absolute seclusion, as regards not merely the body — which in the
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case of an Adept *may be secluded in the remotest corner of the earth without that arrangement checking the activity of his “ astral” intercourse with mankind — but as regards the whole potent Ego with whom we had deahngs. Under these circumstances one of the Brothers with whom Koot Hoomi was especially associated, agreed, rather reluctantly at first, to pay attention to the Simla Eclectic Society, and keep us going during Koot Hoomi’s absence with a course of instruction in occult philosophy. The change which came over the character of our correspondence when our new master took us in hand was veiy remarkable. Every letter that emanated from Koot Hoomi had continued to bear the impress of his gently mellifluous style. He would write half a page at any time rather than run the least risk of letting a brief or careless phrase hurt anybody’s feelings. His handwriting, too, was always very legible and regular. Our new master treated us very differently : he declared himself almost unacquainted with our language, and wrote a very rugged hand which it was sometimes difficult to decipher. He did not beat about the bush with us at all. If we wrote out an essay on some occult ideas we had picked up, and sent it to him asking if it was right, it would some- times come back with a heavy red line scored through it, and ‘^No” written on the margin. On one occasion one of us had written, “ Can you clear my conceptions about so and so ? ” The annotation found in the margin when the paper was returned was, “ How can I clear what you haven’t got ! ” and so on. But with all this we made pro- gress under M , and by degrees the correspondence,
which began on his side with brief notes scrawled in the roughest manner on bits of coarse Thibetan paper, expanded into considerable letters sometimes. And it must be under- stood that while his rough and abrupt ways formed an amusing contrast with the tender gentleness of Koot Hoomi, there was nothing in these to impede the growth of our attachment to him as we began to feel ourselves tolerated by him as pupils a little more wilhngly than at first. Some of my readers, I am sure, will realize what I mean by “ attachment” in this case. I use a colourless word delibe- rately to avoid the parade of feelings which might not be generally understood, but I can assure them that in the course of prolonged relations — even though merely of the
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epistolary kind — with a personage who, though a man like the rest of us as regards his natural place in creation, is elevated so far above ordinary men as to possess some attri- butes commonly considered divine, feehngs are engendered which are too deep to be lightly or easily described.
It was by M quite recently that a little manifestation
of force was given for my gratification, the importance of which turned on the fact that Madame Blavatsky was en- tirely uninfluential in its production, and eight hundred miles away at the time. For the first three months of my
acquaintance with him, M had rigidly adhered to the
principle he laid down when he agreed to correspond with the Simla Eclectic Society during Koot Hoomi’s retirement. He would correspond with us, but would perform no phe- nomena whatever. This narrative is so much engaged with phenomena that I cannot too constantly remind the reader that these incidents were scattered over a long period of time, and that as a rule nothing is more profoundly dis- tasteful to the great adepts than the production of wonders in the outside world. Ordinary critics of these, when they have been thus exceptionally accorded, will constantly argue, “ But why did not the Brothers do so and so differently? then the incident would have been much more convincing.” I repeat that the Brothers, in producing abnormal pheno- mena now and then, are not trying to prove their existence to an intelligent jury of Enghshmen. They are simply letting their existence become perceptible to persons with a natural gravitation towards spirituality and mysticism. It is not too much to say that all the while they are scrupu- lously avoiding the delivery of direct proof of a nature cal- culated to satisfy the commonplace mind. For the present, at all events, they prefer that the crass, materiahstic Phihs- tines of the sensual, selfish world should continue to cherish the conviction that ‘‘ the Brothers” are myths. They reveal themselves, therefore, by signs and hints which are only likely to be comprehended by people with some spiritual insight or affinity. True the appearance of this book is permitted by them, — no page of it would have been written if a word from Koot Hoomi had indicated disapproval on his part, — and the phenomenal occurrences herein recorded are really in many cases absolutely complete and irresistible proofs for me, and therefore for any one who is capable of
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understanding that I am telling the exact truth. But the Brothers, I imagine, know quite well, that large as the reve- lation has been, it may safely be passed before the eyes of the pubhc at large just because the herd, whose convictions they do not wish to reach, can be relied upon to reject it. The situation may remind the reader of the farceur who undertook to stand on Waterloo Bridge with a hundred real sovereigns on a tray, offering to sell them for a shilling apiece, and who wagered that he would so stand for an hour without getting rid of his stock. He relied on the stupidity of the passers-by, who would think themselves too clever to be taken in. So with this little book. It contains a straightforward statement of absolute truths, which if people could only believe them would revolutionize the world ; and the statement is fortified by unimpeachable cre- dentials. But the bulk of mankind will be blinded to this condition of things by their own vanity and inability to assimilate super-materialistic ideas, and none will be seriously affected but those who are qualified to benefit by comprehending.
Headers of the latter class will readily appreciate the way the phenomena that I have had to record have thus followed in the track of my own growing convictions, confirming these as they have in turn been inferentially constructed, rather than provoking and enforcing them in the first instance. And this has been emphatically the case with the one or two phenomena that have latterly been accorded by
M . It was in friendship and kindness that these were
given long after all idea of confirming my belief in the
Brothers was wholly superfluous and out of date. M
came indeed to wish that I should have the satisfaction of seeing him (in the astral body of course), and would have arranged for this in Bombay, in January, when I went down there for a day to meet my wife, who was returning from England, had the atmospherical and other conditions just at that period permitted it. But, unfortunately for me,
these were not favourable. As M wrote in one of
several little notes I received from him during that day and the following morning before my departure from the head- quarters of the Theosophical Society, where I was staying, even they, the Brothers, could not “ work miracles ; ” and though to the ordinary spectator there may be but little
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difference between a miracle and any one of the phenomena that the Brothers do sometimes accomphsh, these latter are really results achieved by the manipulation of natural laws and forces and are subject to obstacles which are sometimes practically insuperable.
But M , as it happened, was enabled to show himself
to one member of the Simla Eclectic Society, who happened to be at Bombay a day or two before my visit. The figure was clearly visible for a few moments, and the face dis- tinctly recognized by my friend who had previously seen a
portrait of M . Then it passed across the open door of
an inner room in which it had appeared in a direction where there was no exit : and when my friend, who had started forward in its pursuit, entered the inner room it was no longer to be seen. On two or three other occasions pre- viously, M had made his astral figure visible to other
persons about the headquarters of the Society, where the constant presence of Madame Blavatsky and one or two other persons of highly sympathetic magnetism, the purity of life of all habitually resident there, and the constant influences poured in by the Brothers themselves, render the production of phenomena immeasurably easier than elsewhere.
And this brings me back to certain incidents which took place recently at my own house at Allahabad, when, as I have already stated, Madame Blavatsky herself was eight hundred miles off, at Bombay. Colonel Olcott, then on his way to Calcutta, was staying with us for a day or two in passing. He was accompanied by a young native mystic, ardently aspiring to be accepted by the Brothers as a cliela^ or pupil, and the magnetism thus brought to the house estabhshed conditions which for a short time rendered some manifestations possible. Beturning home one evening shortly before dinner, I found two or three telegrams awaiting me, enclosed in the usual way in envelopes securely fastened before being sent out from the telegraph office. The messages were all from ordinary people on common- place business ; but inside one of the envelopes I found a
little folded note from M . The mere fact that it had
been thus transfused by occult methods inside the closed envelope was a phenomenon in itself, of course (like many of the same kind that I have described before) ; but I need
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not dwell on this point, as the feat that had been performed, and of which the note gave me information, was even more obviously wonderful. The note made me search in my writing-room for a fragment of a plaster bas-relief that
M had just transported instantaneously from Bombay.
Instinct took me at once to the place where I felt that it was most hkely I should find the thing which had been brought — the drawer of my writing-table exclusively devoted to occult correspondence ; and there, accordingly, I found a
broken corner from a plaster slab, with M ’s signature
marked upon it. I telegraphed at once to Bombay to ask whether anything special had just happened, and next day
received back word that M had smashed a certain
plaster portrait, and had carried off a piece. In due course of time I received a minute statement from Bombay, attested by the signatures of seven persons in all, which was, as regards all essential points, as follows : —
“ At about seven in the evening the following persons ” (five are enumerated, including Madame Blavatsky) ‘‘ were seated at the dining-table at tea in Madame Blavatsky’s verandah opposite the door in the red screen separating her first writing-room from the long verandah. The two halves of the writing-room were wide open, and the dining-table being about two feet from the door, we could all see plainly everything in the room. About five or seven minutes after, Madame Blavatsky gave a start. We all began to watch. She then looked all round her, and said, ‘ What is he going to do ? ’ and repeated the same twice or thrice without looking at or referring to any of us. We all suddenly heard a knock — a loud noise, as of something falling and breaking — behind the door of Madame Blavatsky ’s writing- room, when there was not a soul there at the time. A still louder noise was heard, and we all rushed in. The room was empty and silent ; but just behind the red cotton door, where we had heard the noise, we found fallen on the ground a Paris plaster mould representing a portrait broken into several pieces. After carefully picking the pieces up to the smallest fragments, and examining it, we found the nail on which the mould had hung for nearly eighteen months, strong as ever in the wall. The iron wire loop of the portrait was perfectly intact, and not even bent. We spread the pieces on the table and tried to arrange them.
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thinking they could be glued, as Madame Blavatsky seemed very much annoyed, as the mould was the work of one of her friends in New York. We found that one piece, nearly square and of about two inches, in the right corner of the mould, was wanting. We went into the room and searched for it, but could not find it. Shortly afterwards, Madame Blavatsky suddenly arose and went into her room, shutting
the door after her. In a minute she called Mr. in, and
showed to him a small piece of paper. We all saw and read it afterwards. It was in the same handwriting in which some of us have received previous communications, and the same familiar initials. It told us that the missing piece was taken by the Brother whom Mr. Sinnett calls Hhe Illustrious,’* to Allahabad, and that she should collect and carefully preserve the remaining pieces.”
The statement goes after this into some further details, which are unimportant as regards the general reader, and is signed by the four native friends who were with Madame Blavatsky at the time the plaster portrait was broken. A postscript, signed by three other persons, adds that these three came in shortly after the actual breakage, and found the rest of the party trying to arrange the fragments on the table.
It will be understood, of course, but I may as well explicitly state, that the evening to which the above narra- tive relates was the same on which I found Mr. ’s note
inside my telegram at Allahabad, and the missing piece of the cast in my drawer ; and no appreciable time appears to have elapsed between the breakage of the cast at Bombay and the delivery of the piece at Allahabad, for though I did not note the exact minute at which I found the fragment — and, indeed, it may have been already in my drawer for some little time before I came home — the time was certainly
* “My illustrious friend,” was the expression I originally used in
application to the Brother I have here called M , and it got shortened
afterwards into the pseudonym given in the statement. It is difficult sometimes to know what to call the Brothers, even when one knows their real names. The less these are promiscuously handled the better, for various reasons, among which is the profound annoyance which it gives their real disciples if such names get into frequent and disrespectful use among scoffers. I regret now that Koot Hoomi’s name, so ardently venerated by all who have been truly subject to his influence, should ever have been allowed to appear in full in the text of the book.
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between seven and eight, probably about half-past seven or a quarter to eight. And there is nearly half an hour’s difference of longitude between Bombay and Allahabad, so that seven at Bombay would be nearly half-past at Allaha- bad. E^ddently, therefore, the plaster fragment, weighing two or three ounces, was really brought from Bombay to Allahabad, to all intents and purposes, instantaneously. That it was veritably the actual piece missing from the cast broken at Bombay was proved a few days later, for all the remaining pieces at Bombay were carefully packed up and sent to me, and the fractured edges of my fragment fitted exactly into those of the defective corner, so that I was enabled to arrange the pieces all together again and complete the cast.
The shrewd reader — of the class of persons who would never have been “ taken in ” by the man who sold sovereigns on Waterloo Bridge — will laugh at the whole story. A lump of plaster of Paris sent a distance of eight hundred miles across India in the wink of an eye by the will-power of somebody Heaven knows where at the time — probably in Thibet ! The shrewd person could not manage the feat himself, so he is convinced that nobody else could, and that the event never occurred. Bather believe that the seven witnesses at Bombay and the present writer are telling a pack of lies than that there can be any one living in the world who knows secrets of Nature and can employ forces of Nature that shrewd persons of the 7Vme5-reading,“ Jolly Bank-hohday, three-penny ’bus young man type know nothing about. Some friends of mine, criticising the first edition of this book, have found fault with me for not adopting a more respectful and conciliatory tone towards scientific scepticism when confronting the world with allegations of the kind these pages contain. But I fail to see any motive for hypocrisy in the matter. A great number of intelhgent people in these days are shaking themselves free at once from the fetters of materiahsm forged by modern science and the entangled superstition of ecclesiastics, resolved that the Church herself, with all her mummeries, shall fail to make them irreligious ; that science itself, with all its conceit, shall not blind them to the possi- bihties of Nature. These are the people who will under- stand my narrative and the sublimity of the revelations it
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130
embodies. But all people who have been either thoroughly- enslaved by dogma, or thoroughly materialized by modern science, have finally lost some faculties, and will be unable to apprehend facts that do not fit in with their preconceived ideas. They will mistake their own intellectual deficiencies for inherent impossibility of occurrence on the part of the fact described ; they will be very rude in thought and speech towards persons of superior intuition, who do find themselves able to believe and, in a certain sense, to under- stand ; and it seems to me that the time has come for letting the commonplace scoffers realize plainly that in the estimation of their more enhghtened contemporaries they do indeed seem a Boeotian herd, in which the better educated and the lesser educated — the orthodox savant and the city clerk — differ merely in degree and not in kind.
The morning after the occurrence of the incident just
detailed, B B , the young native aspirant for ,
cAe?(X-ship, who had accompanied Colonel Olcott and was staying at my house, gave me a note from Koot Hoomi, which he found under his pillow in the morning. One which I had written to Koot Hoomi and had given to
B B the previous day had been taken, he told me, i
at night before he slept. The note from Koot Hoomi was a short one, in the course of which he said, “To force pheno- mena in the presence of difficulties magnetic and other is forbidden as strictly as for a bank cashier to disburse money which is only entrusted to him. Even to do this much for you so far from the headquarters would be impossible but
for the magnetisms 0 and B B have brought
with them — and I could do no more.” Not fully realizing the force of the final words in this passage, and’ more struck by a previous passage in which Koot Hoomi wrote — “ It is easy for us to give phenomenal proofs when we have neces- sary conditions ” — I wrote next day suggesting one or two things which I thought might be done to take additional advantage of the conditions presented by the introduction into my house of available magnetism different from that of Madame Blavatsky who had been so much, however absurdly, suspected of imposing on me. I gave this note to
B B on the evening of the 13th of March — the
plaster fragment incident had taken place on the iith — and on the morning of the 14th I received a few words from
CONCLUSION.
131
Koot Hoomi, simply saying that what I proposed was impossible, and that he would write more fully through Bombay. When in due time I so heard from him, I learned that the limited facilities of the moment had been exhausted, and that my suggestions could not be complied with ; but the importance of the explanations I have just been giving turns on the fact that I did, after all, exchange letters with Koot Hoomi at an interval of a few hours at a time when Madame Blavatsky was at the other side of India.
The account I have just been giving of the instantaneous transmission of the plaster of Paris fragment from Bombay to Allahabad forms a fitting prelude to a remarkable series of incidents I have next to record. The story now to be told has already been made pubhc in India, having been fully related in Psychic Notes* a periodical temporarily brought out at Calcutta, with the object especially of recording in- cidents connected with the spiritualistic mediumship of Mr. Eglinton, who stayed for some months at Calcutta during the past cold season. The incident was hardly ad- dressed to the outside world ; rather to spiritualists, who while infinitely closer to a comprehension of occultism than people still wrapped in the darkness of orthodox incy.’edulity, about all super-material phenomena, are nevertheless to a large extent inclined to put a purely spiritualistic explanation on all such phenomena. In this way it had come to pass that many spiritualists in India were inclined to suppose that we who believed in the Brothers were in some way misled by extraordinary mediumship on the part of Madame Blavatsky. And at first the “ spirit guides ” who spoke through Mr. Eglinton confirmed this view. But a very remarkable change came over their utterances at last. Shortly before Mr. Eglinton’s departure from Calcutta, they declared their full knowledge of the Brotherhood, naming the “ Illustrious by that designation, and declaring that they had been appointed to work in concert with the Brothers thenceforth. On this aspect of affairs, Mr. Eghnton left India in the steamship Vega, sailing from Calcutta, I believe, on the i6th of March. A few days later, on the morning of the 24th, at Allahabad, I received a letter from Koot Hoomi, in which he told me that he was
* Newton & Co., Calcutta.
K 2
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going to visit Mr. Eglinton on board the Vega at sea, con- vince him thoroughly as to the existence of the Brothers, and if successful in doing this notify the fact immediately to certain friends of Mr. Eglinton’s at Calcutta. The letter had been written a day or two before, and the night between the 2ist and 22nd was mentioned as the period when the astral visit would be paid. Now the full explanation of all the circumstances under which this startling programme was carried out will take some little time, but the narrative will be the more easily followed if I first describe the out- line of what took place in a few words. The promised visit was actually paid, and not only that but a letter written by Mr. Eglinton at sea on the 24th describing it — and giving in his adhesion to a belief in the Brothers fully and com- pletely— was transported instantaneously that same evening to Bombay, where it was dropped (“ out of nothing ” like the first letter I received on my return to India) before several witnesses ; by them identified and tied up with cards written on by them at the time ; then taken away again and a few moments later dropped down, cards from Bombay and all, among Mr. Eglinton’s friends at Calcutta who had been told beforehand to expect a communication from the Brothers at that time. All the incidents of this series are authenticated by witnesses and documents, and there is no rational escape for any one who looks into the evidence, from the necessity of admitting that the various phenomena as I have just described them, have actually been accom- plished, “ impossible ” as ordinary science will declare them.”
For the details of the various incidents of the series, I may refer the reader to the account pubhshed in Psychic Notes of March 30, by Mrs. Gordon, wife of Colonel W. Gordon, of Calcutta, and authenticated with her signature.
Colonel Olcott, Mrs. Gordon explains in the earlier part of her statement, which for brevity’s sake I condense, had just arrived at Calcutta on a visit to Colonel Gordon and herself. A letter had come from Madame Blavatsky —
“dated Bombay the 19th, telling us that something was going to be done, and expressing the earnest hope that she would not be required to assist, as she had had enough abuse about phenomena. Before this letter was brought by the post peon, Colonel Olcott had told me that he had had an intimation in the night from his Cliohan (teacher) that K. H. had been to the Vega and seen Eglinton. This was at about eight o’clock
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on Thursday morning, the 23rd. A few hours later a telegram, dated at Bombay, 22nd day, 21 hours 9 minutes, that is, say 9 minutes past 9 p.m. on Wednesday evening, came to me from Madame Blavatsky, to this effect : ‘ K.H. just gone to Vega' This telegram came as a ‘ delayed ’ message, and was posted to me from Calcutta, which accounts for its not reaching me until midday on Thursday. It corroborated, as will be seen, the message of the previous night to Colonel Olcott. We then felt hopeful of getting the letter by occult means from Mr. Eglinton. A telegram later on Thursday asked us to fix a time for a sitting, so we named 9 o’clock Madras time, on Friday 24th. At this hour we three — Colonel Olcott, Colonel Gfordon, and myself — sat in the room which had been occupied by Mr. Eglinton. We had a good light, and sat with our chairs placed to form a triangle, of which the apex was to the north. In a few minutes Colonel Olcott saw outside the open window the two ‘ Brothers ’ whose names are best known to us, and told us so ; he saw them pass to another window, the glass doors of which were closed. He saw one of them point his hand towards the air over my head, and I felt something at the same moment fall straight down from above on to my shoulder, and saw it fall at my feet in the direction towards the two gentlemen. I knew it would be the letter, but for the moment I was so anxious to see the ‘ Brothers ’ that I did not pick up what had fallen. Colonel Gordon and Colonel Olcott both saw and heard the letter fall. Colonel Olcott had turned his head from the window for a moment to see what the ‘ Brother ’ was pointing at, and so noticed the letter falling from a point about two feet from the ceiling. When he looked again the two ‘ Brothers ’ had vanished.
“ There is no verandah outside, and the window is several feet from the ground.
“I now turned and picked up what had fallen on me, and found a letter in Mr. Eglinton’s handwriting, dated on the Vega the 24th ; a message from Madame Blavatsky, dated at Bombay the 24th, written on the backs of three of her visiting cards ; also a larger card, such as Mr. Eglinton had a packet of, and used at his seances. On this latter card was the, to us, well-known handwriting of K. H., and a few words in the handwriting of the other ‘ Brother,’ who was with him outside our window, and who is Colonel Olcott’s chief. All these cards and the letter were threaded together with a piece of blue sewing silk. We opened the letter carefully, by slitting up one side, as we saw that some one had made on the flap in pencil three Latin crosses, and so we kept them intact for identification. The letter is as follows : —
“ ‘ S. S. Vega^ Friday, 24th March, 1882.
“ ‘ My dear Mrs. Gordon, — At last your hour of triumph has come ! After the many battles we have had at the breakfast-table regarding K. H.’s existence, and my stubborn scepticism as to the wonderful powers possessed by the ‘ Brothers,’ I have been forced to a complete belief^ in their being living distinct persons, and just in proportion to my scepticism will be mjjirm unalterable opinion respecting them. I am not allowed to tell you all I know, but K. H. appeared to me in person two days ago, and what he told me dumbfounded me. Perhaps Madame B. will have already communicated the fact of K. H.’s appearance to you. The “Illustrious,” is uncertain whether this can be taken to Madame or not,
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but he will try, notwithstanding the many difficulties in the way. If he does not I shall post it when I arrive at port. I shall read this to
Mrs. B and ask her to mark the envelope ; but ^ohatever happens,.
you are requested by K. H. to keep this letter a profound secret until you hear from him through Madame. A storm of opposition is certain to be raised, and she has had so much to bear that it is hard she should have more.’ Then follow some remarks about his health and the trouble which is taking him home, and the letter ends.
“In her note on the three visiting cards Madame Blavatsky says; —
‘ Head-quarters, March 24th. These cards and contents to certify to my doubters that the attached letter addressed to Mrs. Gordon by Mr. Eglin- ton was just brought to me from the Vega, with another letter from him- self to me, which I keep. K. H. tells me he saw Mr. Eglinton and had a talk with him, long and convincing enough to make him a believer in the “Brothers,” as actual living beings, for the rest of his natural life. Mr. Eglinton writes to me : The letter which I enclose is going to be taken to Mrs. G. through your influence. You will receive it wherever you are, and will forward it to her in ordinary course. You will learn with satisfaction of my complete conversion to a belief in the ‘ Brothers,’ and I have no doubt K. H. has already told you how he appeared to me two nights ago,” &c. &c. K. H. told me all. He does not, however, want me to forward the letter in “ ordinary course,” as it would defeat the object, but commands me to write this and send it off without delay, so that it would reach you all at Howrah to-night, the 24th. I do so H. P. Blavatsky.
“The handwriting on these cards and signature are perfectly well known to us. That on the larger card (from Mr. Eglinton’s packet) attached was easily recognized as coming from Koot Hoomi. Colonel Gordon and I know his writing as well as our own ; it is so distinctly different from any other I have ever seen, that among thousands I could select it. He says, ‘ William Eglinton thought the manifestation could only be produced through H. P. B. as a “medium,” and that the power would become exhausted at Bombay. We decided otherwise. Let this be a proof to all that the spirit of living man has as much potentiality in it (and often more) as a disembodied soul. He was anxious to test her, he often doubted ; two nights ago he had the required proof and will doubt no more. But he is a good young man, bright, honest, and true as gold when once convinced
“ ‘ This card w-as taken from his stock to-day. Let it be an additional proof of his wonderful mediumship K. H.’
“This is written in blue ink, and across it is written in red ink a few words from the other ‘ Brother ’ (Colonel Olcott’s Cholan or chief). This interesting and wonderful phenomenon is not published with the idea that any one who is unacquainted with the phenomena of spirit- ualism will accept it. But I write for the millions of spiritualists, and also that a record may be made of such an interesting experiment. Who knows but that it may pass on to a generation which will be enlightened enough to accept such wonders ?
A postscript adds, that since the above statement was written, a paper had been received from Bombay, signed
CONCLUSION,
35
by seven witnesses who saw the letter arrive there from the Vega.
As I began by saying, this phenomenon was addressed more to spiritualists than to the outer world because its great value for the experienced observer of phenomena turns on the utterly unmediumistic character of the events. Apart from the testimony of Mr. Eglinton’s own letter to the effect that he, an experienced medium, was quite con- vinced that the interview he had with his occult visitant was not an interview with such “ spirits ” as he had been used to, we have the three-cornered character of the incident to detach it altogether from mediumship either on his part or on that of Madame Blavatsky.
Certainly there have been cases in which under the in- fluence or mediumship the agencies of the ordinary spiritual seance have transported letters half across the globe. A conclusively authenticated case in which an unfinished letter was thus brought from London to Calcutta will have attracted the attention of all persons who have their under- standing awakened to the importance of these matters, and who read what is currently published about them, quite recently. But every spirituahst will recognize that the transport of a letter from a ship at sea to Bombay, and then from Bombay to Calcutta, with a definite object in view, and in accordance with a pre-arranged and pre-announced plan, is something quite outside the experience of mediumship.
Will the effort made and the expenditure of force what- ever may have been required to accomplish the wonderful feat thus recorded, be repaid by proportionately satisfactory effects on the spiritualistic world % There has been a great deal written lately in England about the antagonism between Spiritualism and Theosophy, and an impression has arisen in some way that the two cultes are incompatible. Now, the phenomena and the experiences of spiritualism are facts, and nothing can be incompatible with facts. But Theosophy brings on the scene new interpretations of those facts, it is true, and sometimes these prove very unwelcome to spirit- ualists long habituated to their own interpretation. Hence, such spiritualists are now and then disposed to resist the new teaching altogether, and hold out against a behef that there can be anywhere in existence men entitled to advance it. This is consequently the important question to settle
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before we advance into the region of metaphysical subtleties. Let spiritualists once reahze that the Brothers do exist, and what sort of people they are, and a great step will have been accomplished. Not all at once is it to be expected that the spiritual world will consent to revise its conclusions by occult doctrines. It is only by prolonged intercourse with the Brothers that a conviction grows up in the mind that as regards spiritual science they cannot be in error. At first, let spirituahsts think them in error if they please ; but at all events it will be unworthy of their elevated position above the Boeotian herd if they deny the evidence of phe- nomenal facts ; if they hold towards occultism the attitude which the crass sceptic of the mere Lankester type occupies towards spiritualism itself. So I cannot but hope that the coruscation of phenomena connected with the origin and adventures of the letter written on board the Vega may have flashed out of the darkness to some good purpose, showing the spiritualistic world quite plainly that the great Brother to whom this work is dedicated is, at all events, a living man, with faculties and powers of that entirely ab- normal kind which spirituahsts have hitherto conceived to inhere merely in beings belonging to a superior scheme of existence.
For my part, I am glad to say that I not only know him to be a living man by reason of all the circumstances detailed in this volume, but I am now enabled to realize his features and appearance by means of two portraits, which have been conceded to me under very remarkable conditions. It was long a wish of mine to possess a portrait of my revered friend ; and some time ago he half promised that some time or other he would give me one. Now, in asking an adept for his portrait, the object desired is not a photo- graph, but a picture produced by a certain occult process which I have not yet had occasion to describe, but with which I had long been familiar by hearsay. I had heard, for example, from Colonel Olcott, of one of the circumstances under which his own original convictions about the realities of occult power were formed many years ago in New York before he had actually entered on “ the path.” Madame Blavatsky on that occasion had told him to bring her a piece of paper, which he would be certainly able to identify in order that she might get a portrait precipitated upon it.
CONCLUSION.
137
We cannot, of course, by the light of ordinary knowledge form any conjecture about the details of the process em- ployed ; but just as an adept can, as I have had so many proofs, precipitate writing in closed envelopes, and on the pages of uncut pamphlets, so he can precipitate colour in such a way as to form a picture. In the case of which Colonel Olcott told me he took home a piece of note-paper from a club in New York — a piece bearing a club stamp — and gave this to Madame Blavatsky. She put it between the sheets of blotting-paper on her writing-table, rubbed her hand over the outside of the pad, and then in a few moments the marked paper was given back to him with a complete picture upon it representing an Indian fakir in a state of samadhi. And the artistic execution of this draw- ing was conceived by artists to whom Colonel Olcott after- wards showed it to be so good, that they compared it to the works of old masters whom they specially adored, and affirmed that as an artistic curiosity it was unique and price- less. Now in aspiring to have a portrait of Koot Hoomi, of course I was wishing for a precipitated picture, and it would seem that just before a recent visit Madame Blavatsky paid to Allahabad, something must have been said to her about a possibihty that this wish of mine might be gratified. For the day she came she asked me to give her a piece of thick white paper and mark it. This she would leave in her scrap-book, and there was reason to hope that a certain highly advanced chela, or pupil, of Koot Hoomi’s, not a full adept himself as yet, but far on the road to that condition, would do what was necessary to produce the portrait.
Nothing happened that day nor that night. The scrap- book remained lying on a table in the drawing-room, and was occasionally inspected. The following morning it was looked into by my wife, and my sheet of paper was found to be still blank. Still the scrap-book lay in full view on the drawing-room table. At half-past eleven we went to break- fast ; the dining-room, as is often the case in Indian bunga- lows, only being separated from the drawing-room by an archway and curtains, which were drawn aside. While we were at breakfast Madame Blavatsky suddenly showed by the signs with which all who know her are familiar, that one of her occult friends was near. It was the chela to whom I have above referred. She got up, thinking she
THE 0CCUL7 WORLD.
^38
might be required to go to her room ; but the astral visitor, she said, waved her back, and she returned to the table. After breakfast we looked into the scrap-book, and on my marked sheet of paper, which had been seen blank by my wife an hour or two before, was a precipitated profile portrait. The face itself was left white, with only a few touches within the limits of the space it occupied ; but the rest of the paper all round it was covered with cloudy blue shading. Slight as the method was by which the result was produced, the outhne of the face was perfectly well- defined, and its expression as vividly rendered as would have been possible with a finished picture.
At first Madame Blavatsky was dissatisfied mth the sketch. Knowing the original personally, she could appre- ciate its deficiencies ; but though I should have welcomed a more finished portrait, I was sufficiently pleased with the one I had thus received to be reluctant that Madame Blavatsky should try any experiment with it herself with the view of improving it, for fear it would be spoilt. In the course of the conversation, M put himself in com-
munication with Madame Blavatsky, and said that he would do a portrait himself on another piece of paper. There was j no question in this case of a ‘‘test phenomenon;” so after I had procured and given to Madame Blavatsky a (marked) piece of Bristol board, it was put away in the scrap-book, ; and taken to her room, where, free from the confusing
cross magnetisms of the drawing-room, M would be
better able to operate.
Now it will be understood that neither the producer of
the sketch I had received, nor M' , in their natural
state, are artists. Talking over the whole subject of these occult pictures, I ascertained from Madame Blavatsky that the supremely remarkable results have been obtained by those of the adepts whose occult science as regards this particular process has been superadded to ordinary artistic training. But entirely without this, the adept can produce a result which, for all ordinary critics, looks like the work of an artist, by merely realizing very clearly in his imagination the result he wishes to produce, and then precipitating the colouring matter in accordance with that conception.
In the course of about an hour from the time at which she took away the piece of Bristol board — or the time may
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139
have been less — we were not watching it, Madame Blavatsky brought it me back with another portrait, again a profile, though more elaborately done. Both portraits were obviously of the same face, and nothing, let me say at once, can exceed the purity and lofty tenderness of its expression. Of course it bears no mark of age. Koot Hoomi, by the mere years of his life, is only a man of what we call middle age ; but the adept s physically simple and refined existence leaves no trace of its passage ; and while our faces rapidly wear out after forty — strained, withered, and burned up by the passions to which all ordinary lives are more or less exposed — the adept age for periods of time that I can hardly venture to define, remains apparently the
perfection of early maturity. M , Madame Blavatsky ’s ’
special guardian still, as I judge by a portrait of him that I have seen, though I do not yet possess one, in the absolute prime of manhood, has been her occult guardian from the time she was a child ; and now she is an old lady. He never looked, she tells me, any different from what he looks now.
I have now brought up to date the record of all external facts connected with the revelations I have been privileged to make. The door leading to occult knowledge is still ajar, and it is still permissible for explorers from the outer world to make good their footing across the threshold. This condition of things is due to exceptional circumstances at present, and may not continue long. Its continuance may largely depend upon the extent to which the world at large manifests an appreciation of the opportunity now offered. Some readers who are interested, but slow to perceive what practical action they can take, may ask what they can do to show appreciation of the opportunity. My reply will be modelled on the famous injunction of Sir Bobert Peel : — “ Begister, register, register ! ” Take the first step towards making a response to the offer which emanates from the occult world — register, register, register; in other words, join the Theosophical Society — the one and only association which at present is linked by any recognized bond of union with the Brotherhood of Adepts in Thibet. There is a Theosophical Society in London, as there are other branches in Paris and America, as well as in India. If there is as yet but little for these branches to do, that fact does not
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
vitiate their importance. After a voter has registered, there is not much for him to do for the moment. The mere growth of branches of the Theosophical Society as associations of people who realize the subhmity of adeptship, and have been able to feel that the story told in this little book, and more fully, if more obscurely, in many greater volumes of occult learning, is absolutely true — true, not as shadowy religious “truths” or orthodox speculations are held to be 'true by their votaries, but true as the “ London Post-Office Directory ” is true ; as the Parliamentary reports people read in the morning are true \ the mere enrolment of such people in a society under conditions which may enable them sometimes to meet and talk the situation over if they do no more, may actually effect a material result as regards the extent to which the authorities of the occult j world will permit the further revelation of the sublime knowledge they possess. Pemember, that knowledge is real knowledge of other worlds and other states of existence — not vague conjecture about hell and heaven and purgatory, but precise knowledge of other worlds going on at this moment, the condition and nature of which the adepts can cognize, as we can the condition and nature of a strange town we may visit. These worlds are Hnked with our own, and our lives with the lives they support; and will the further acquaintance with the few men on earth who are in a position to tell us more about them, be supercihously j rejected by the advance guard of the civilized world, the educated classes of England? Surely no inconsiderable group will be sufficiently spiritualized to comprehend the value of the present opportunity, and sufficiently practical to follow the advice already quoted, and — register, register, register.
APPENDIX TO FOUETH EDITION.
The necessity of reprinting this work for a fourth edition gives me an opportunity of noticing some discussion that has taken place in the spiritualistic press on the subject of a letter addressed to Light, of September ist, 1883, by Mr. Henry Kiddle an American spiritualist. The letter was as follows : —
To the 'Editor of “ Light.’*
Sir, — In a communication that appeared in your issue of July 21st, “Gr. W,, M.D.,” reviewing “Esoteric Buddhism,” says: “Eegarding this Koot Hoomi, it is a very remarkable and unsatisfactory fact that Mr. Sinnett, although in correspondence with him for years, has yet never been permitted to see him.” I agree with your correspondent entirely ; and this is not the only fact that is unsatisfactory to me. On reading Mr. Sinnett’s “ Occult World,” more than a year ago, I was very greatly surprised to find in one of the letters presented by Mr. Sinnett as having been transmitted to him by Koot Hoomi, in the mysterious manner described, a passage taken almost verbatim from an address on Spiritualism by me at Lake Pleasant, in August, 1880, and published the same month by the Banner of Light. As Mr. Sinnett’s book did not appear till a considerable time afterwards (about a year, I think), it is certain that I did not quote, consciously or uncon- sciously, from its pages. How, then, did it get into Koot Hoomi’s mysterious letter ?
I sent to Mr, Sinnett a letter through his publishers, enclosing the printed pages of my address, with the part used by Koot Hoomi marked upon it, and asked for an explanation, for I wondered that so great a sage as Koot Hoomi should need to borrow anything from so humble a student of spiritual things as myself. As yet I have received no reply ; and the query has been suggested to my mind — Is Koot Hoomi a myth ? or, if not, is he so great an adept as to have impressed my mind with his thoughts and words while I was preparing my address ? If the latter were the case he could not con- sistently exclaim : “ Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.”
Perhaps Mr. Sinnett may think it scarcely worth while to solve this little problem ; but the fact that the existence of the brotherhood has not yet been proved may induce some to raise the question suggested by “ G. W., M.D.” Is there any such secret order ? On this question, which is not intended to imply anything offensive to Mr. Sinnett, that other still more important question may depend. Is Mr. Sinnett’s recently published book an exponent of Esoteric Buddhism? It is, doubtless, a work of great ability, and its statements are worthy of deep thought ; but the main question is, are they true, or how can they be verified ? As this cannot be accomplished except by the exercise of abnormal or transcendental faculties, they must be accepted, if at all, upon the ipse dixit of the accomplished adept, who has been so kind as to sacrifice his esoteric character or vow, and make Mr. Sinnett his channel of communication with the outer world, thus rendering his sacred knowledge exoteric. Hence, if this publication, with its wonderful doctrine of “ Shells,” overturning the consolatory conclusions of Spiritualists, is to be accepted, the authority must be established, and the existence of the
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
adept or adepts — iadeed, the facts of adeptship — must be proved. The first Step in affording this proof has hardly yet, I think, been taken. I trust this book will be very carefully analyzed, and the nature of its inculcations exposed, whether they are Esoteric Buddhism or not.
The following are the passages referred to, printed side by side for the sake of ready reference.
Extract from Mr. Kiddle’s dis- course, entitled “ The Present Out- looJc of Sjpiritualismf delivered at Lake Pleasant Camp Meeting on Sunday, August i^th, 1880.
“ My friends, ideas rule the world ; and as men’s minds receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete, the world advances. Society rests upon them; mighty revolu- tions spring from them ; institutions crumble before their onward march. It is just as impossible to resist their influx, when the time comes, as to stay the progress of the tide.
And the agency called Spiritualism is bringing a new set of ideas into the world — ideas on the most momentous subjects, touching man’s true position in the universe ; his origin and destiny; the relation of the mortal to the immortal; of the temporary to the Eternal; of the finite to the Infinite ; of man’s death- less soul to the material universe in which it now dwells — ideas larger, more general, more comprehensive, recognising more fully the universal reign of law as the expression of the Divine will, unchanging and un- changeable, in regard to which there is only an Eternal Now, while to mortals time is past or future, as related to their finite existence on this material plane ; &c., &c., &e.
New York, August nth, 1883,
Extract from Koot Moomi’ s letter to Mr. Sinnett, in the “ Occult World,” '^rd Edition, p. 102. The first editiomoas published in Line, 1881.
Ideas rule the world ; and as men’s minds receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete, the world will advance, mighty revo- lutions will spring from them, creeds and even powers will crumble before their onward march, crushed by their in-esistible force. It will be just as impossible to resist their influence when the time comes as to stay the progress of the tide. But all this will come gradually on, and before it comes we have a duty set before us : that of sweeping away as much as possible the dross left to us by our pious forefathers. New ideas have to be planted on clean places, for these ideas touch upon the most momentous subjects. It is not physical phenomena, but these xmiversal ideas that we study, as to comprehend the former, we have first to understand the latter. They touch man’s true position in the universe in relation to his previous and future births, his origin and ultimate destiny ; the relation of the mortal to the immortal, of the tem- porary to the Eternal, of the finite to the Infinite ; ideas larger, grander, more comprehensive, recognizing the eternal reign of immutable law, unchanging and unchangeable, in regard to which there is only an Eternal Now: while to unini- tiated mortals time is past or future, as related to their finite existence on this material speck of dirt., &c., &c., &c.
Henry Kiddle.
The appearance of this letter puzzled, without very much dis- turbing the equanimity of Theosophical students. If it had been published immediately after the first publication of the
APPENDIX TO FOURTH EDITION.
143
Occult World,” its effect miglit have been more serious, but in the interim the Brothers had by degrees communicated to the public through my agency such a considerable block of philosophical teaching', then already embodied in my second book, “Esoteric Buddhism,” and scattered through two or three volumes of the Theoso'pMst, that appreciative readers had passed beyond the stage of development in which it might have been possible for them to suppose that the principal author of this teaching could at any time have been under any intel- lectual temptation to borrow thoughts from a spiritualistic lecture. Various hypotheses were framed to account for the mysterious identity between the two passages cited, and people to whom the Theosophic teachings were unacceptable, as over- throwing conceptions to which they were attached, were greatly enchanted to find my revered instructor convicted, as they thought, of a commonplace plagiarism. A couple of months necessarily elapsed before an answer could be obtained from India on the subject, and meanwhile the “ Kiddle incident ” as it came to be called, was joyfully treated by various corre- spondents writing in the columns of Light, as having dealt a fatal blow at the authority of the Indian Mahatmas as exponents of esoteric truth.
In due course I received a long and instructive explanation of the mystery from Mahatma Koothoomi himself ; but this letter reached me under the seal of the most absolute con- fidence. Eigidly adhering to the policy which had all along restrained within narrow limits the communication of their teaching to the world at large, the Brothers remained as anxious as ever to leave everybody full intellectual liberty to disbelieve in them, and reject their revelation if his spiritual , intuitions were not of a kind to be readily kindled. In the same way that from the first they had refused me the over- whelming and irresistible proofs of their power, which I had sought for in the beginning as weapons with which I might successfully combat incredulity, they now shrank from interfer- ing with the conclusions of any readers who might be found capable, after the rich assurances of the later teaching, of distrusting the Mahatmas on the strength of a suspicion which was ill founded in reality, plausible though it might seem. Debarred myself, however, from making any public use of the Mahatma’s letter, some of the residents and visitors at the Head Quarters of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Madras, came into possession of the true facts of the case, and some communications appeared in the society’s magazine which afforded everyone honestly desirous of comprehending the truth of the matter, all necessary information. In the December number of the Theosophist, Mr. Subba Bow put forward a very cautiously worded article, hinting merely at the actual explan a-
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tion of the identity of the passages cited by Mr. Kiddle, and concerned chiefly with an elaborate analysis of the “ plagiarised’ * sentences, the object of which was to show that in truth we might have divined for ourselves, if we had been sharp enough in the beginning, that some mistake had been made, and that the Mahatma could not have intended to write the sentences just as they stood. The hint conveyed by Mr. Subba Kow was as follows : —
“ Therefore from a careful perusal of the passage and its contents, any unbiassed reader will come to the conclusion that somebody must have greatly blundered over the said passage, and will not be surprised to hear that it was unconsciously altered through the carelessness and. ignorance of the chela by whose instrumentality it was ‘precipitated.’ Such alterations, omissions, and mistakes sometimes occur in the process of precipitation ; and I now assert I know it for certain, from an inspection of the original precipitation proof, that such was the case with regard to the passage under discussion.”
The same Tlieoso'pMst in which this article appeared contained a letter from General Morgan in reply to various spiritualistic attacks on the Theosophical position, and in the course of his remarks he referred to the “ Kiddle incident ” as follows : —
“ Happily we have been permitted, many of us, to look behind the veil of the parallel passage mystery, and the whole affair is very satisfactorily explained to us ; but all that we are permitted to say is that many a passage was entirely omitted from the letter received by Mr. Sinnett, its precipitation from the original dictation to the chela. Would our great Master but permit us his humble followers to photograph and publish in the Theosophist the scraps shown to us, scraps in which whole sentences parenthetical and quotation marks are defaced and obliterated, and consequently omitted in the chela’s clumsy transcription — the public would be treated to a rare sight — something entirely unknown to modem science — namely, an akasic impression as good as a photograph of mentally expressed thoughts dictated from a distance.”
A month or two after the appearance of these fragmentary hints, I received a note from the Mahatma relieving me of all restrictions previously imposed on the full letter of explanation he hadpreviously sent me. The subject, by that time, however, seemed to have lost its interest for all persons in England whose opinions I valued. Within the London Theosophical Society, now already a large and growing body, the Kiddle incident was looked on a& little more than a joke, and the notion that the Mahatma, who had inspired the teachings of “ Esoteric Buddhism,” could have “ plagiarized” from a spiritualistic lecture, as so absurd on the- face of things that no appearances seeming to endorse that conception could have any importance. I did not feel disposed,, therefore, to treat the suspicions some critics had entertained with the respect that would have been involved in any appeal from me to the public to listen to what would have been repre- sented as a defence — and a strangely postponed defence — of the- Mahatma.
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Now, however, that this new edition of the “ Occult World” is required, there is an obvious propriety in the course I now take. The new letter from the Mahatma constitutes in itself a correction of the letter from which I quote on pages 101-102, and apart from the interest of the explanation it furnishes in regard to the precipitation process, the thoughts it conveys are in themselves valuable and suggestive.
“ The letter in question,” writes the Mahatma, referring to the communication I originally received, “was framed by me while on a journe}'- and on horseback. It was dictated mentally in the direction of and precipitated by a young chela not yet expert at this branch of psychic chemistry, and who had to transcribe it from the hardly visible imprint. Half of it, therefore, was omitted, and the other half more or less distorted by the ‘ artist.’ When asked by him at the time whether I would look over and correct it, I answered — imprudently, I confess — ‘ Anyhow will do, my boy ; it is of no great im- portance if you skip a few words.’ I was physically very tired by a ride of forty-eight hours consecutively, and (physically again) half asleep. Besides this, I had very important business to attend to psychically, and therefore little remained of me to devote to that letter. When I awoke I found it had already been sent on, and as I was not then anticipating its publication, I never gave it from that time a thought. Now I had never evoked spiritual Mr. Kiddle’s physiognomy, never had heard of his existence, was not aware of his name. Having, owing to our correspondence, and your Simla surroundings and friends, felt interested in the intellectual progress of the Phenome- nalists, I had directed my attention, some two months previous, to the great annual camping movement of the American Spiritualists in various directions, among others to Lake or Mount Pleasant. Some of the curious ideas and sentences representing the general hopes and aspirations of the American Spiritualists remained impressed on my memory, and I remembered only these ideas and detached sentences quite apart from the personalities of those who harboured or pro- nounced them. Hence my entire ignorance of the lecturer whom I have innocently defrauded, as it would appear, and who raises the hue and cry. Yet had I dictated my letter in the form it now appears in print, it would certainly look suspicious, and however far from what is generally called plagiarism, yet in the absence of any inverted commas it would lay a foundation for censure. But I did nothing of the kind, as the original impression now before me clearly shows. And before I proceed any further I must give you some explanation of this mode of precipitation.
The recent experiments of the Psychic Research Society will help you greatly to comprehend the rationale of this mental
L
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THE OCCULT WORLD.
telegraphy. You have observed in the journal of that body how- thought transference is cumulatively effected. The image of the geometrical or other figure which the active brain has had impressed upon it is gradually imprinted upon the recipient brain of the passive subject, as the series of reproductions illus- trated in the cuts show. Two factors are needed to produce a perfect and instantaneous mental telegraphy — close concen- tration in the operator and complete receptive passivity in the reader subject. Given a disturbance of either condition, and the result is proportionately imperfect. The reader does not see the image as in the telegrapher’s brain, but as arising in his own. When the latter’s thought wanders the psychic current becomes broken, the communication disjointed and incoherent. In a case such as mine the chela had as it were to pick up what he could from the current I was] sending him, and, as above remarked, patch the broken bits together as best he might. Do not you see the same thing in ordinary mesmerism — the maya impressed upon the subject’s imagination by the operator becoming now stronger, now feebler, as the latter keeps the intended illusive image more or less steadily before his own fancy. And how often the clairvoyants reproach the magnetizer for taking their thoughts off the subject under consideration. And the mesmeric healer will always bear you witness that if he permits himself to think of anything but the vital current he is pouring into his patient, he is at once compelled to either establish the current afresh or stop the treatment. So I, in this instance, having at the moment more vividly in my mind the psychic diagnosis of current spiritualistic thought, of which the Lake Pleasant speech was one marked symptom, unwittingly transferred that reminiscence more vividly than my own remarks upon it and deductions therefrom. So to say, the ‘ despoiled victim’s,’ — Mr. Kiddle’s — utterances came out as a highlight, and were more sharply photographed (first, in the chela’s brain, and thence on the paper before him, a double process, and one far more difficult than thought reading simply), while the rest, my remarks thereupon and arguments — as I now find, are hardly visible and quite blurred on the original scraps before me. Put into a mesmeric subject’s hand a sheet of bank paper, tell him it contains a certain chapter of some book that you have read, concentrate your thoughts upon the words, and see how — pro- vided that he has himself not read the chapter, but only takes it from your memory, his reading will reflect your own more or less vivid successive recollections of your author’s language. The same as to the precipitation by the chela of the transferred thought upon (or rather into) paper. If the mental picture received be feeble, his visible reproduction of it must correspond. And the more so in proportion to the closeness of attention he gives. He might — were he but merely a person of the true
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H7
mediumistic temperament — be employed by his “ Master” as a sort of psychic printing machine (producing lithographed or psychographed impressions of what the operator had in mind ; his nerve system the machine, his nerve aura the printing fluid, the colours drawn from that exhaustless storehouse of pigments (as of everything else) the akasa. But the medium and the chela are diametrically dissimilar, and the latter acts consciously, except under exceptional circumstances, during development not necessary to dwell upon here.
“Well, as soon as I heard of the change, the commotion among my defenders having reached me across the eternal snows, I ordered an investigation into the original scraps of the impression. At the flrst glance I saw that it was I the only and most guilty party, the poor boy having done but that which he was told. Having now restored the characters and the lines omitted and blurred beyond hope of recognition by anyone but their original evolver, to their primitive colour and places, I now find my letter reading quite differently, as you will observe. Turning to the “ Occult World,” the copy sent by you, to the page cited, I was struck, upon carefully reading it, by the great discrepancy between the sentences, a gap, so to say, of ideas between part i and part 2, the plagiarised portion so called. There seems no connexion at all between the two ; for what has indeed the determination of our chiefs (to prove to a skeptical world that physical phenomena are as reducible to law as anything else) to do with Plato’s ideas which ‘ rule the world,” or ‘ Practical Brotherhood of Humanity.’ I fear that it is your personal friendship alone for the writer that has blinded you to the discrepancy and disconnexion of ideas in this abortive pre- cipitation even until now. Otherwise you could not have failed to perceive that something was wrong on that page, that there was a glaring defect in the connexion. Moreover, I have to plead guilty to another sin : I have never so much as looked at my letters in print, until the day of the forced investigation. I had read only your own original matter, feeling it a loss of time to go over my hurried bits and scraps of thought. But now I have to ask you to read the passages as they were originally dic- tated by me, and make the comparison with the “ Occult World” before you ... I enclose the copy verbatim from the restored fragments, underlining in red the omitted sentences for easier comparison.
“ . . . . Phenomenal elements previously unthought of . . . will disclose at last the secrets of their mysterious workings. Plato was right to readmit every element of speculation which Socrates had discarded. The problems of universal being are not unattainable, or worthless if attained. But the latter can be solved only by mastering those elements that are now looming on the horizons of the profane. Even the Spiritualists,
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with their mistaken, grotesquely q)eroerted views and notions, are hazily realizing the new situation. They 'prophecy — and their prophecies are not always ivitliout a, point of truth in them ■ — of intuitioncd prevision, so to say. Hear some of them re- asserting the old, old axiom that ‘ ideas rule the world,’ and as men’s minds receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete, the world will advance, mighty revolutions will spring from them ; institutions, aye, and even creeds and powers, they may add, will crumble before their onward march, crushed by their owninherent force, not the irresistihle force of the ‘new ideas’ offered hy the Spiritualists. Yes, they are both right and wrong. It will be ‘ just as impossible to resist their influence when the time comes as to stay the progress of the tide — to he sure. But what the Spiritualists fail to perceive, I see, and their spirits to explain {the latter knowing no more than what they can find in the brains of the former) is that all this will come gradually on, and that before it comes they, as well as ourselves, have all a duty to perform, a task set before us — that of sweeping away as much as possible the dross left to us by our pious forefathers. ]^ew ideas have to be planted on clean places, for these ideas touch upon the most momentous subjects. It is not physical phenomena, or the agency called Spiritualism, but these uni- versal ideas that we have precisely to study ; the noumenon, not the phenomenon ; for to comprehend the latter we have first to understand the /ormer. They touch man’s true position in the universe, to be sure, but only in relation to his future not previous births. It is not physical phenomena, however won- derful, that can ever explain to man his origin, let alone his ultimate destiny, or as one of them expresses it, the relation of the mortal to the immortal, of the temporary to the eternal, of the finite to the infinite, &c. They talk very glibly of what they regard as new ideas, ‘larger, more general, grander, more com- prehensive,’ and at the same time tliey recognize instead of the eternal reign of immutable law, the iiniversal reign of law as the expression of a Divine will. Forgetful of their earlier beliefs, and that ‘ it repented the Lord that he had made man,' these ivoidd-be philosophers and reformers would impress upon their hearers that the expression of the said Divine will ‘is unchanging and unchangeable, in regard to which there is only an Eternal Now, while to mortals [uninitiated ?] time is past or future as related to their finite existence on this material plane,' — of which they know as little as of their spiritual spheres — a speck of dirt they have made the loiter, like our own earth, a future life that the true philosopher would rather avoid than court.
B'Ut I dream with my eyes open At all events, this is not
any privileged teaching of their own. Most of these ideas are taken piecemeal from Plato and the Alexandrian philosophers. It is what we all study, and what many have solved, &c., &c.
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“ This is the true copy of the original document as now restored — the ‘ Eosetta stone ’ of the Kiddle incident. And now, if you have understood my explanations about the process, u,s given in a few words further back, you need not ask me how it came to pass that, though somewhat disconnected, the sen- tences transcribed by the chela are mostly those that are now ■considered as plagiarised, while the missing links are precisely those phrases that would have shown the passages were simply reminiscences, if not quotations — the key-note around which -came grouping my own reflections on that morning. For the first time in my life I had paid a serious attention to the utterances of the poetical ‘ media’ of the so-called ‘ inspirational’ oratory of the English-American lecturers, its quality and limitations. I was struck with all this brilliant but empty verbiage, and recognized for the first time fully its pernicious intellectual tendency. It was their gross and unsavoury materialism, hiding clumsily under its shadowy spiritual veil, that attracted my thoughts at the time. While dictating the sentences quoted — a small portion of the many I had been pondering over for some days — it was those ideas that were •thrown out en relief th.Q most, leaving out my own parenthetical remarks to disappear in the precipitation.”
I need only add a few words of apology to Mr. Kiddle for my accidental neglect of his original communication on this subject addressed to me in India. When his letter above quoted appeared in Light, I had no recollection whatever of having received any letter from him while in India ; but within the last few months going over in London, and soiling papers brought back en masse from India, I have turned up the for- gotten note. While in India, and the editor of a daily news- paper, my correspondence was such that letters requiring no immediate action on my part would inevitably sometimes be put aside after a hasty glance, and would unfortunately some- times escape attention afterwards. And after the appearance of this book, I received letters of inquiry of various kinds from all parts of the world, which I was too often prevented by other calls on my time from answering as I should have wished. With the tone and spirit in which Mr. Kiddle made his very natural inquiry I have no fault to find whatever, •and if his subsequent letter to Light betrayed some dis- position on his part to construct unfavourable hypotheses on the basis of the parallel passages, even this second letter would hardly in itself have justified some of the indignant protests ultimately published on the other side. The ■spiritualists pur sang, eager to seize on an incident w^hich seemed to cast discredit on the Theosophical teachings by which their views had been so seriously compromised, were responsible for handling the “Kiddle incident” in such a
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way as to provoke the vehement rejoinders of some Theoso- phical correspondents writing in the columns of Light and elsewhere. In consideration, however, of the explanations to which it has eventually given rise, and of the further insight thus afforded us into some interesting details connected with the methods under which an adept's correspondence may sometimes be conducted, the whole incident need not altogether- be regretted.
The relations with the “Occult World” that I have been fortunate enough to establish have so greatly expanded during the few years that have elapsed since this volume was written that I must refer my readers to my second book “ Esoteric Buddhism ” for an account of their later development. It may be worth while, however, as directly connected with the main purpose of this earlier narrative, to insert here some papers I wrote quite recently for submission to Theosophical audiences in London on the main question discussed in this volume, the existence and sources of knowledge at the command of the adepts. The evidence on this subject has long since overshadowed in its amplitude and completeness the preliminary testimony afforded by my own experiences in India. I summed up some of this later evidence on one of the occasions just referred to, as. follows : —
All persons who become interested in any of the teachings which have found their way out into the world through the intermediation of the Theo- sophical Society very soon turn to the sanctions on which those teachings rest.
Now the orthodox occult reply hitherto given to inquirers as to the authen- ticity of any small statements in occult science that have hitherto been put forth, has simply been this : — “ Ascertain for yourself.” That is to say, lead the pure spiritual life, cultivate the inner faculties, and by degrees these will be awakened and developed to the extent of enabling you to probe Nature for yourself. But that advice is not of a kind which great numbers of people have ever been ready to take, and hence knowledge concerning the truths of occult science has remained in the hands of a few.
A new departure has now been taken. Certain proficients in occult science have broken through the old restrictions of their order, and have suddenly let out a flood of statements into the woxdd, together with some information con- cerning the attributes and faculties they have themselves acquired, and by means of which they have learned what they now tell us.
It is very widely recognized that the teaching is interesting and coherent, . and even supported by analogies, but every new inquirer in turn must ask what assurance can we have that the persons from whom this teaching emanates, . are in a position to ascertain so much. Most people, I think, would be ready to admit that persons invested, as the Brothers of Theosophy are said to be invested, with abnormal and extraordinary powers over hJature — even in the departments of Nature with which we are familiar — may very probably have faculties which enable them to obtain a deep insight into many of the generally hidden truths of Nature. But then comes the primary question, “What assurance can you give us that there really are behind the few people who stand forward as the visible representatives of the Theosophical Society, any such persons as the Adept Brothers at all ?” This is an old question which is always recurring, and which must go on recurring as long as new comers continue
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to approacli the threshold, of the Theosophical Society. For many of us it has long been settled ; for some new inquirers the existence of psychological Adepts seems so probable that the assurances of the leading representatives of the Society in India are readily accepted; but for others, again, the existence of the Brothers must first be established by altogether plain and unequivocal evidence before it will seem worth while to pay attention to the report some of us may make as to the specific doctrine they teach.
I propose, therefore, to go over the evidence on this main question, which certainly underlies any with which the Theosophical Society, so far as it is concerned with the Indian teachings, can be engaged. Of course, I am not going to trouble you with any repetition of particular incidents already de- scribed in published writings. What I propose to do is briefly to review the whole case as it now stands, very greatly enlarged and strengthened as it has has been during the last two years. The evidence, to begin with, divides itself into two kinds. First, we have the general body of current belief, which in India goes to show that such persons as Mahatmas or Adepts are somewhere in existence ; secondly, the specific evidence which shows that the leaders of the Theosophical Society are in relation with, and in the confidence of, such Adepts.
As to the general body of belief, it would hardly be too much to say that the whole mass of the sacred literature of India rests on belief in the existence of Adepts ; and a very widely-spread belief, covering great areas of space and time, can rarely be regarded as evolved from nothing — as having had no basis of fact. But passing over the Mahabharata and the Puranas and all they tell us concerning “ Bishis” or Adepts of ancient date, I may call your attention to a paper in the TheosopMsl of May, 1882, on some relatively modern popular Indian books, recounting the lives of various “Sadhus,” another word for saint, yogee, or adept, who have lived within the last thousand years. In this article a list is given cf over seventy such persons, whose memory is enshrined in a number of Marathi books, where the miracles they are said to have wrought are recorded. The historical value of there narratives may, of course, be disputed. I mention them merely as illustra- tions of the fact that belief in the persons having the powers now ascribed to the Brothers is no new thing in India. And next we have the testimony of many modern writers concerning the very remarkable occult feats of Indian yogees and fakirs. Such people, of course, are immeasurably below the psychological rank of those whom we speak of as Brothers, but the faculties they possess, sometimes, will be enough to convince anyone who studies the evidence concerning them, that living men can acquire powers and faculties commonly regarded as superhuman.
In Jaccolliot’s books about his experiences in Benares and elsewhere, this subject is fully dealt with, and some facts connected with it have even forced their way into Anglo-Indian official records. The Eeport of an English Besident at the court of Bunjeet Singh describes how he was present at the burial of a yogee who was shut up in a vault, by his own consent, for a con- siderable period, six weeks, I think, but I have not got the report at hand just now to quote in detail — and emerged alive, at the end of that time, which he had spent in Samadhi or trance. Such a man would, of course, be an “Adept” of a very inferior type, but the record of his achievements has the advantage of being very well authenticated as far as it goes. Again, up to within a few years ago, a very highly spiritualized ascetic and gitted seer was living at Agra, where he taught a group of disciples and by their own statement has frequently re-appeared amongst them since his death. This event itself was an effort of will accomplished at an appointed time. I have heard a good deal about him from one of his principal followers, a cultivated and highly respected native Government official, now living at Allahabad. His existence and the fact that he possessed great psychological gifts, are quite beyond question.
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Thus, in India, the fact that there are such people in the world as Adepts is hardly regarded as open to dispute. Most of those, of course, concerning whom one can obtain definite information, turn out on inquiry to be yogees of the inferior type, men who have trained their inner faculties to the extent of possessing various abnormal powers, and even insight into spiritual truths. But none the less do all inquiries after Adepts superior to them in attain- ments provoke the reply that certainly there are such though they live in complete seclusion. The • general vague, indefinite belief, in fact, paves the way to the inquiry with which we are more immediately concerned — whether the leaders of the Theosophical Society are really in relation with some of the higher Adepts who do not habitually live amongst the community at large, nor make known the fact of their adeptship to any but their own regu- larly accepted pupils.
Now the evidence on this point divides itself as follows: —
First, we have the primary evidence of witnesses who have personally seen certain of these Adepts, both in the flesh and out of the flesh, who have seen their powers exercised, and who have obtained certain knowledge as to their existence and attributes.
Secondly, the evidence of those who have seen them in the astral form, identifying them in various ways with the living men others have seen.
Thirdly, the testimony of those who have acquired circumstantial evidence as to their existence.
Foremost among the witnesses of the first group stand Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott themselves. For those who see reason to trust Madame Blavatsky, her testimony is, of course, ample and precise, and altogether satisfactory. She has lived among the Adepts for many years. She has been in almost daily communication with them ever since. She has returned to them, and they have visited her in their natural bodies on several occasions since she emerged from Thibet after her own initiation. There is no inter- mediate alternative between the conclusion that her statements concerning the Brothers are broadly true, and the conclusion that she is what some American enemies have called her, “ the champion impostor of the age.” I am aware of the theory which some Spiritualists entertain to the effect that she may be a medium controlled by spirits whom she mistakes for living men, but this theory can only be held by people who are quite inattentive to nine- tenths of the statements she makes, not to speak yet of the testimony of others. How can she have lived under the roof of certain persons in Thibet for seven years and more, seeing them and their friends and relations going about the business of their daily lives, instructing her by slow degrees in the vast science to which she is devoted, and be in any doubt as to whether they are living men or spirits "i The conjecture is absurd. She is either speaking falsely when she tells us that she has so lived among them, or the adepts who taught her are living men. The Spiritualists’ hypothesis about her supposed “ controls” is built upon the statement she makes, that the adepts appear to her in the astral form when she is at a distance from them. If they had never ap- peared to her in any other form, there would be room to argue the matter from the Spiritualists’ point of view, or there might be, but for other circumstances again. But her astral visitors are identical in all respects with the men she has lived and studied amongst. At intervals, as I have said, she has been enabled to go back again and see them in the flesh. Her astral communica- tion with them merely fills up the gap of her personal intercourse with them, which has extended over a long series of years. Her veracity may, of course, be challenged, though I think it can be shown that it is most unreasonable to challenge this, but we might as reasonably doubt the living reality of our nearest relations, of the people we live amongst most intimately, as suppose that Madame Blavatsky can be herself mistaken in describing the Brothers as living men. Either she must be right, or she has consciously been weaving
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an enormous network of falsehood in all her writings, acts, and conversation for the last eight or nine years. And the plea that she may be a loose talker and given to exaggeration will no more meet the difficulty than the Spirit- ualists’ hypothesis. Pare away as much as you like from the details of Madame Blavatsky’s statement on account of possible exaggeration, and that which remains is a great solid block of residual statement which must be either true, or a structure of conscious falsehood. And even if Madame Blavatsky’s testimony stood alone, we should have the wonderful fact of her total self-sacrifice in the cause of Theosophy to make the hypothesis of her being a conscious impostor one of the most extravagant that could be enter- tained. At first, when we in India who specially became her friends pointed this out, people said, “ But how do you know that she had anything to sacri- fice .P she may have been an adventurer from the beginning.” We proved this conjecture, as I have fully explained in my preface to the second edition of the “ Occult World,” and from some of the foremost people in Russia, her relations and affectionate friends, came abundant assurances of her personal identity. If she had not given up her life to Occultism she might have spent it in luxmy among her own people, and in fact as a member of the aristo- cratic class.
Difficult as the hypothesis of her imposture thus becomes, we next find it in flagrant incompatability with all the facts of Colonel Olcott’s life. As un- deniably as in the case of Madame Blavatsky he has forsaken a life of worldly prosperity to lead the theosophical life, under circumstances of great physical self-denial, in India. And he also tells us that he has seen the Brothers, both in the flesh and in the astral form. By a long series of the most astounding thaumaturgic displays when he was first introduced to the subject in America, he was made acquainted with their powers. He has been visited at Bombay by the living man, his own special master, with whom he had first become acquainted by seeing him in the astral form in America. His life, for years, has been surrounded with the abnormal occurrences which Spiritualists again will sometimes conjecture — so wildly — to be Spiritualism, but which all hinge on to that continuous chain of relationship with the Brothers, which for Colonel Olcott has been partly a matter of occult pheno- mena, and partly a matter of waking intercourse between man and man. Again, in reference to Colonel Olcott, as in reference to Madame Blavatsky, I assert, fearlessly, that there is no compromise possible between the extra- vagant assumption that he is consciously lying in all he says about the Brothers, and the assumption that what he says establishes the existence of the Brothers as a broad fact, for remember that Colonel Olcott has now been a co-worker of Madame Blavatsky’s and in constant intimate association with her for eight years. The notion that she has been able to deceive him all this while by fraudulent tricks, apart from its monstrosity in other ways, is too unreasonable to be entertained. Colonel Olcott, at all events, knows whether Madame Blavatsky is fraudulent or genuine, and he has given up his whole life to the service of the cause she represents in testimony of his conviction that she is genuine. Again the spiritualistic hypothesis comes into play. Madame Blavatsky may be a medium whose presence surrounds Colonel Olcott with phenomena ; but then she is herself deceived by astral influences as to the true nature of the Brothers who are the head and front of the whole phenomenal display, and we have already seen reason, I think, to reject that hypothesis as absurd. There is no logical escape from the conclusion that things are broadly as she and Colonel Olcott say, or they are both conscious impostors, rival champions of the age in this respect, both sacrificing everything that w'orldly-minded people live for, to revel in this life-long imposture which brings them nothing but hard living and hard words.
But the case for the authenticity of their statement, far from ending here, may m one sense be said to begin here. Our native Indian witnesses now
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come to the front. First, Damodar, of whom the well-known writer of “Hints on Esoteric Theosophy” speaks as follows in that pamphlet: —
“ You specially in a former letter referred to Damodar, and you asked how it could be believed that the Brothers would waste time with a half-educated slip of a hoy like him, and yet absolutely refuse to visit and convince men
like and Europeans of the highest education and marked abilities..
But do you know that this slip of a boy has deliberately given up high caste, family and friends, and an ample fortune, all in pursuit of the truth ? That he has for years lived that pure, unworldly, self-denying life which wb are told is essential to direct intercourse with the Brothers ? ‘ Oh, a monomaniac,’
you say ; ‘ of course he sees anything and everything.’ But do not you see whither this leads you ? Men who do not lead the life do not obtain direct proof of the existence of the Brothers. A man does lead the life and avers that he has obtained such proof, and you straightway call him a monomaniac, and refuse his testimony .... quite a ‘ heads I win, tails you lose,’ sort of position.”
Damodar has seen some of the Brothers visit the head-quarters of the Society in the flesh. He has repeatedly been visited by them in the astral shape. He has himself gone through certain initiations ; he has acquired very considerable powers, for he has been rapidly developed as regards these, expressly that he might be an additional link of connection, independently of Madame Blavatsky, between the brothers, his masters, and the Theosophical Society. The whole life he leads is impressive testimony to the fact that he also knows the reality of the Brothers. On any other hypothesis we must include Damodar in the conscious imposture supposed to be carried on by Madame Blavatsky, for he has been her intimate associate and devoted assistant, sharing her meals, doing her work, living imder her roof at Bombay for several years.
Shall we, then, rather than believe in the Brothers, accept the hypothesis that Madame Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott, and Damodar, are a band of con- scious impostors ? In that case Eamaswamy has to be accounted for. Eam- aswamy is a very respectable, educated, English-speaking native of Southern India, in Government service as a registrar of a court in Tinnevelly, I be- lieve. I have met him several times. First, to indicate the course of his experience in a few words, — he sees the astral form of Madame Blavatsky’s Guru, at Bombay; then he gets clairaudient communication with him, while many hundred miles away from all the Theosophists, at his own home in the South of India. Then he travels in obedience to that voice to Darjeeling ; then he plunges wildly into the Sikkim jungles in search of the Guru, whom he has reason to believe in that neighbourhood, and after various adventures meets him, — the same man he has seen before in astral shape, the same man whose portrait Colonel Olcott has, and whom he has seen, the living speaker of the voice that has been leading him on from Southern India. He has a long interview with him, a waking, open-air, daylight interview, with a living man, and returns his devoted chela as he is at this moment, and assm'edly ever will be. Yet his master who called him from Tinnevelly and received him in Sikkim, is of those who on the spiritualistic hypothesis are Madame Blavatsky’s spirit controls.
Two more witnesses who personally know the Brothers next come to me at Simla, in the persons of two regular chelas who have been sent across the mountains on some business, and are ordered en passant to visit me and teU me about their master, my Adept correspondent. These men had just come, when I first saw them, from living with the Adepts. One of them, Dhabagiri Nath, visited me several days running, talked to me for hours about Eoot Hoomi, with whom he had been living for ten years, and impressed me and one or two others who saw him as a very earnest, devoted, and trustworthy person. Later on, dmflng his visit to India, he was associated with many
APPENDIX TO FOURTH EDITION
55
striking occult phenomena directed to the satisfaction of native inquirers. He, of course, must be a false witness, invented to prop up Madame Blavatsky’s vast imposture, if he is anything else than the chela of Koot Hoomi that he declares himself to be.
Another native, Mohini, soon after this begins to get direct communication from Koot Hoomi independently altogether of Madame Blavatsky, and when himdreds of miles away from her. He also becomes a devoted adherent to the Theosophical cause ; but Mohini must, as far as I am aware, be ranked in the second group of our witnesses, those who have had personal astral com- munication with the Brothers, but have not yet seen them in flesh.
Bhavani Bao, a young native candidate for chelaship, who came once in company with Colonel Olcott, but at a time when Madame Blavatsky was in another part of India, to see me at Allahabad, and spent two nights under our roof there, is another witness who has had independent communication with Koot Hoomi, and more than that, who is able himself to act as a link of communication between Koot Hoomi and the outer world. For during the visit I speak of, he was enabled to pass a letter of mine to the master, to re- ceive back his reply, to get off a second note of mine, and to receive back a little note of a few words in reply again. I do not mean that he did alt this of his own power, but that his magnetism was such as to enable Koot Hoomi to do it through him. The experience is valuable because it affords a strik- ing illustration of the fact that Madame Blavatsky is not an essential inter- niediary in the correspondence between myself and my revered friend. Other illustrations are afibrded by the frequent passage of letters between Koot Hoomi and myself through the mediation of Damodar at Bombay, at a time when both Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott were away at Madras, travelling about on a Theosophical tour, in the course of which their presence at various places was constantly mentioned in the local papers. I was at Allahabad, and I used, during that time, to send my letters for Koot Hoomi to Damodor at Bombay, and occasionally receive replies so promptly that it would have been impossible for these to have been furnished by Madame Blavatsky, then four or more days further from me in the course of post than Bombay.
In this way, my very voluminous correspondence is, demonstrably as re- gards portions of it, and therefore by irresistible inference as regards the whole, not the work of Madame Blavatsky, or Colonel Olcott, which, if the Brothers are not a reality, it must be. The correspondence is visible on paper, a considerable mass of it. How has it come into existence ; reaching me at different places and times, and in different countries, and through different people ? I do not quite understand what hypotheses can be framed by a non- believer in the Brothers about my correspondence. I can think of none which are not at once negatived by some of the facts about it.
It would be useless to copy out from statements that from time to time have been published in the TheosopMst the names of native witnesses who have seen the astral forms of the Brothers — spectral shapes which they were informed were such — about the headquarters of the Society at Bombay. Quite a cloud of witnesses would testify to such experiences, and I myself, I may add, saw such an appearance on one occasion at the Society’s present headquarters in Madras. But, of course, it might be suggested of such ap- pearances that they were spiritualistic. On the other hand, in that case the argument travels back to the considerations already pointed out, which show that the occult phenomena surrounding Madame Blavatsky cannot be Spiritualism. They can be, in fact, nothing but what we who know her intimately and are now closely identified with the Society, believe them to be with all conviction — viz., manifestations of the abnormal psychological powers of those whom we speak of as the Brothk’s.
As I write, Colonel Olcott and Mr. Mohini Mohnn Chatter jee.
56
THE OCCULT WORLD.
mentioned above, are in London on a short visit, and many people have heard from their own lips the verification of what I have here stated — as far as it concerns them — and a great deal more besides. For during his recent tour in Northern India, Colonel Olcott had an opportunity of meeting the Mahatma Koothoomi personally in the flesh, and thus iden- tifying his previous ‘‘astral” visitor. At the same time that this meeting took place, Mr. W. T. Brown, a young Scotchman who has recently become a devoted adherent to the Theo- sophical cause, also saw the Mahatma, and Mr. Lane Fox, who has gone out to India to follow up the clue afforded by the Theosophical Society, has been in receipt in India, by abnormal methods, of correspondence from Koothoomi, while Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott have been in Europe. Taking into account, in fact, over and above the evidence collected in these pages, the abundant information connected with the adepts which has latterly been poured out through the pages of the Theosophist, the magazine of the Theosophical Society now published at Madras, the argument in the form in which it is here presented, is really out of date. Any one who may still think with Mr. Kiddle, if he remains of the opinion expressed in his letter to Light, that the allegations of my book concerning the existence of the adepts and the facts of adeptship stiU remain to be proved, must be inaccessible to the force of reason, or still unacquainted with the literature of the subject.
The second of the papers I wish to insert here, read like the first to a meeting of the Theosophists in London, dealt with the considerations which, after the existence of the Brothers, is established, lead us to put confidence in the teaching they convey to us in regard to the origin and destinies of man and the whole problem of Nature. It is as follows : —
Many people who approach the consideration of occult philosophy, are inclined to lay great emphasis on the difference between believing in the existence of those whom we call “ the Brothers,” and believing in the vast and complicated body of teaching which has now been accumulated by their recent pupils. I think it can really be shown that there is no halting place at which a man who sets out on this inquiry can rationally pause and say, “ Thus far will 1 go, and no farther.” The chain of considerations which wili lead any one who has once realised the existence of the Adepts to feel sure that there can be no great error in a conception of nature obtained with their help, consists of many links, but is really unbroken in its continuity, and equally capable of bearing a strain at any point.
It consists of many links, partly because no one at present among those who are in our position as students — who are living, that is to say, an ordinary worldly life all the while that they are intellectually studying Occultism — can ever obtain in his own person a complete knowledge of the Adepts. He can- not, that is to say, come to know of his own personal knowledge all about even any one Adept. The full elucidation of this difficulty leads to a proper compre- hension of the principle on which the Adepts shroud themselves in a partial seclusion, a seclusion which has only become partial within a very recent
APPENDIX TO FOURTH EDITION
57
period, and was so complete until then that the world at large was hardly aware of the existence of any esoteric knowledge from which it could be shut out. This is a matter that is all the more important because experience has shown how the world at large has been quick to take offence at the hesitating and imperfect manner in which the Adepts have hitherto dealt with those who have sought spiritual instruction at their hands. J udging the occult policy pursued by comparison with inquiries on the plane of physical know- ledge, the impatience of inquirers is very natural, but none the less does even a limited acquaintance with the conditions of mystic research show the occult policy to be reasonable likewise.
Of course, every one will admit that Adepts are justified in exercising great caution in regard to communicating any peculiar scientific knowledge which would put what are commonly called magical powers within the reach of persons not morally qualified for their exercise. But the considerations that prescribe this caution do not seem to operate also in reference to the communication of knowledge concerning the spiritual progress of man or the grander processes of evolution. And in truth the Adepts have come to that very conclusion ; they have undertaken the communication to the general public of their safe theoretical knowledge, and the effort they are making merely hangs fire, or may seem to do so to some observers, by reason of the magnitude of the task in hand, and the novel aspect it wears, as well for the teachers as for the students. For remember, if there has been that change of policy on the part of the Adepts to which I have just referred, it has been a change of such recent origin that it may almost be described as only j ust coming on. And if the question be then asked, why has this safe theoretical know- ledge not been communicated soonei*, it seems reasonable to find a reply to that question io the actual state of the intellectual world around us at this moment. The freedom of thought of which English writers often boast, is not very widely diffused over the world as yet, and hardly, at all events, in any generation before this, could the free promulgation of quite revolutionary tenets in religious matters have been safely undertaken in any country. Communities in which such an undertaking would stiU be fraught with peril are even now more numerous than those in which it could be set on foot with any practical advantage. One can thus readily understand how in the occult world the question has been one of debate up to our own time, whether it was desirable as yet to promote the dissemination of Esoteric philosophy in the world at large at the risk of provoking the acrimonious controversies, and even more serious disturbances, liable to arise from the premature disclosure of truths which only a small minority would really be ready to accept. Keeping this in view, the mystery of the Adepts’ reserve, up till recently, can hardly be thought so astounding as to drive us on violent alternative hypotheses at variance with all the plain evidence concerning their present action. There is manifest reason why they should be careful in launching a body of newly- won disciples on to the general stream of human progress ; and added to this, the force of their own training is such as to make them habitually cautious to a far greater extent than the utmost prudence of ordinary life would render ordinary men. “ But,” it will be argued, “ granting all this, but assuming that at last some of the Adepts, at all events, have come to the conclusion that some of their knowledge is ripe for presentation to the world, why do they not present as much as they do present, under guarantees of a more striking, irresistible, and conclusive kind than those which have actually been furnished ? ” I think the answer may be easily drawn from the conside- ration of the way in which it would be natural to expect that a change of policy amongst the Adepts in a matter of this kind, would gradually be introduced. By the hypothesis we conceive them but just coming to the conclusion that it is desirable to teach mankind at large some portions of that spiritual science hitherto conveyed exclusively to those who give tremendous pledges in justifi-
58
THE OCCULT WORLD.
cation of their claim to acquire it. They will naturally advance, in dealing with the world at large, along the same lines they have learned to trust in dealing with aspirants for regular initiation. Never in the history of the world have they sought out such asphants, courted them or advertised for them in any way whatever. It has been found an invariable law of human progress that some small percentage of mankind will always come into the world invested by Nature with some of the attributes proper to adeptship, and with minds so constituted as to catch conviction as to the possibilities of the occult life, from the least little sparks of evidence on the subject that may be floating about. Of persons so constituted some have always been found to press forward into the ranks of chelaship, to resort, that is to say, to any devices or opportunities that circumstances may afford them for fathoming occult knowledge. When thus beseiged by the aspirant the Adept has always, sooner or later, disclosed himself. The change of policy now introduced prescribes that the Adept shall make one step towards the disclosure of himself in advance of the aspirant’s demand upon him, but we can easily understand how the Adept, in fii’st making this change, would argue that if many chelas have hitherto come forward in the absence of any spontaneous action from his side, it might be that an almost dangerous rush of ill-qualified aspirants would be invited by any manifestation from him that should be more than a very shght one. At any rate, the Adept would say it would be premature to begin by too sensational a display of faculties inherent in advanced spiritual knowledge with which the world at large is as yet unfamiliar. It will be better at first to make such an offer as will only be calculated to infiame the imagination of persons only one step removed beyond those whose natural instincts would lead them into the occult life. This appears actually to have been the reasoning on which the Adepts have proceeded so far, and this may help us to understand how it is that, as I began by saying, no one person amongst those outer students, who have been called lay-chelas, has yet been enabled to say that of his own personal knowledge he knows aU about any of the Adepts.
On the other hand, putting together the various scattered revelations con- cerning the Brothers which have been distributed amongst various people in India belonging to the Theosophical Society, so much can be learned about the Adepts as to put us in a very strong position in regard to estimating their qualifications for speaking with confidence as they do about the actual facts of Nature on the superphysical plane. These scattered revelations — if my reasoning in what has gone before may be accepted — have been broken up and thrown about in fragments designedly, in order that as yet it should only be possible to arrive at a full conviction concerning Adeptship after a certain amount of trouble spent in piecing together the disjointed proofs. But when this process is accomplished we are provided with a certain block of knowledge concerning the Adepts, out of which large inferences must necessarily grow. We find, to begin with, that they do unequivocally possess the power of cognizing events and facts on the physical plane of knowledge with which we are familiar, by other means than those connected with the five senses. We find also that they unequivocally possess the power of emerging from their proper bodies and appearing at distant places in more or less ethereal counterparts thereof which are not only agencies for pro- ducing impressions on others, but habitations for the time being of the Adepts’ own thinking principles, and thus in themselves, if the proof went no further, demonstrations of the fact that a human soul is something quite independent of brain matter and nerve centres. I do not stop now to enumerate instances. The record of evidence must be dissociated from its manipulation in arguments like the present, but the records are abundant and accessible for all who will take the trouble of examining them. Now, if we know that the Adept’s soul can pass at his own discretion into that state in which its
APPENDIX TO FOURTH EDITION.
159
perceptive faculties are independent of corporeal machinery, it is not sur- prising that he should be enabled to make, of his own knowledge, a great many statements concerning processes of Nature, reaching far beyond any knowledge that can be obtained by mere physical observation. Take, for example, the Adepts’ statement that certain other planets, besides this earth, are concerned with the growth of the great crop of humanity of which we form a part. This is not advanced as a conjecture or inference. The Adepts tell us that •once out of the body they find they can cognize events on some other planets «.s well as in distant parts of our own. This is not the exceptional belief of an exceptionally organized individual, who may be regarded by doubters as hallucinated ; there is no room for doubting the fact that it is the concurrent testimony of a considerable body of men engaged in the constant experi- mental exercise of similar faculties. In this way the fact becomes as much a fact of true science, as the fact that the great nebula in Orion, for instance, exhibits a gaseous spectrum, and is therefore a true nebula. All of us who have star spectroscopes can ascertain that fact for ourselves, if we make use ■of a clear night when the conditions of observation are possible. To doubt it, would not be to show greater caution than is exercised by those who believe it, but merely an imperfect appreciation of the evidence. It is true that in regard to the condition of the other planets our acceptance of the Adepts’ statement must be governed by our impressions concerning the honajides of then.’ intention in telling us that they have made such and such observations. So far it is a matter of inference with us whether the Adepts are saying what they believe to be true — when they speak of the septenary chain of planets to which the earth belongs — or consciously deluding us with a rigmarole of statements which they know to be false. I think it can be shown in a variety of ways that the latter supposition is absurd. But an exhaustive examina- tion of its absurdity would be a considerable task in itself. For the moment the position I am endeavouring to establish is one which does not depend upon the question whether the Adepts are telling us, in reference to the planets, what they know to be true, or something which they know to be untrue. My present position is that at all events the Adepts themselves know what is true in the matter, and that position, it will be observed, is not vitiated by the fact that, as yet, we, their most recent pupils, are unable to follow in their footsteps and repeat the experiments on which their teaching rests.
The same train of reasoning may be applied to the whole body of teaching which the Theosophical Society is now concerned in endeavouring to assimi- late. As ofiered now to the uninitiated world, it can only take the form of a set of statements on authority. And that sort of statement is not one which is most agreeable to our methods or to the Adepts’ habitual methods of teaching. For there is no chemical laboratory in England where the system of teaching is more rigidly confined to the direction of the learner’s own experiments, than that same system is adopted with occult chelas following the regular course of initiation. Step by step, as the regular chela is told that such and such is the fact in regard to the inner mysteries of Nature, he is shown how to apply his own developing faculties to the direct observation of such facts. But those developing faculties carry with them, as pointed out a while ago, fresh powers over Nature which can only be entrusted to those from whom the Adepts take the recognised pledges. In teaching out- siders as they are trying to do now, the Adepts vmst depart from their own habitual methods, — we must depart, if we wish to understand what they are willing to teach, from our habitual methods of inquh’y. We must suspend our usual demand for proof of each statement made, in turn as it is advanced. We must rest our provisional trust in each statement on our broad general conviction which can be satisfied along familiar lines of demonstration, — that «uch men as the Adepts certainly exist, even though we cannot visit them at
i6o
THE OCCULT WORLD.
pleasure, that they must understand an enormous block of Nature’s laws outside the range of those which the physical senses cognise, that in any statement Ihey make to us, they must be in a position to know absolutely whether that statement is or is not true.
This much fully realized, the truth is that each inquirer in turn becomes- satisfied, pari passu with his realization of the case so far, that reason revolts against the notion that the Adepts can be engaged in their present attempt to convey some of their own knowledge to the world at large in any other than the purest good faith. It may be concluded that we who have come to the conclusion that their teaching is altogether to be accepted, are rearing a large inverted pyramid upon a small base. But the logical strength of our position is not impaired by this objection. In every branch of human knowledge, inferences far transcend the observed facts out of which they grow. And even in the most exact science of all, a theorem is held to be- proved if any alternative hypothesis is found, on examination, to be irrational. Moreover, the doctrine even of legal testimony recognises the value of secondary evidence where in the nature of the case it is impossible that primary evidence can be forthcoming. That is exactly the state of the case in regard to the present attempt to bridge the gulf that separates the school of physical research from the school of spiritual knowledge. As long as we of this side were justified in doubting whether there was anywhere on earth such a thing as a school of spiritual knowledge, it may have been hardly worth while to worry ourselves with the stray fragments of its teaching which now and then broke loose in barely intelligible shapes. But to doubt the existence of such a school now is equivalent, reallv, to doubting the state- ment about the nebula in Orion, according to the illustration I adduced just now. It can only arise from inattention to the facts of the whole case as these now stand, — from reluctance to take that trouble to examine these thoroughly, which still, as a sort of hedge, separates the Theosophical Society from the general community in the midst of which it is planted. Regarded in the light of an occult barrier — as an obstacle which corresponds in the case of the lay-chela, to the really serious ordeals which have to be crossed by the regular chela, — the necessity of taking this trouble can hardly be regarded as a hedge that it is difficult to traverse. And on the other side there lies a wealth of information concerning the mysteries of Nature which clearly lights up vast regions of the past and future hitherto shrouded in total darkness for critical intelligences, and the prey for others of untrustworthy conjecture. For those who once thoroughly go into the matter, and obtain a complete mastery over all the considerations I have put forward, — who thus obtain full conviction the Brothers certainly exist, that they must be acquainted with the actual facts about Nature behind and beyond this life, that they are now ready to convey a considerable block of their knowledge to us, and that it is ridiculous to distrust their bona fides in doing this, — for all such true Theosophists of the Theosophical Society, nothing, at present, connected with spiritual success is comparable in importance with the study of the vast doctrine now in process of delivery into our hands,
THE END.
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ARNOLD. — The Light of Asia ; or. The Great Renunciation (Mah^bhinish- kramana). Being the Life and Teaching of Gautama, Prince of India, and Founder of Buddhism (as told in verse by an Indian Buddhist). By Edwin Arnold, C.S.L, &c. Crown 8vo, pp. xiii. and 238, limp parchment. 1884. 2s. 6d. Library Edition. 1883. 7s. 6d.
ARNOLD.— The Iliad and Odyssey op India. By Edwin Arnold, M.A., F.R.G.S., &c, , &c. Fcap. 8vo, pp. 24, sewed. Is.
ARNOLD. — A Simple Transliteral Grammar op the Turkish Language. Compiled from Various Sources. With Dialogues and Vocabulary. By Edwin Arnold, M.A., C.S.I., F.R.G.S. Post 8vo, pp. 80, cloth. 1877. 2s. 6d.
ARNOLD.— Indian Poetry. See Triibner’s Oriental Series.
ARTOM. — Sermons. By the Rev. B. Artom, Chief Rabbi of the Spanish and Por- tuguese Congregations of England. First Series. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, pp. viii. and 314, cloth. 1876. 6s.
ASHER.— On the Study op Modern Languages in general, and of the English Lan- guage in particular. An Essay. By David Asher, Ph.D. 12nio, pp. viii. and 80, cloth. 1859. 2s.
ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL. List of Publications on application.
ASIATIC SOCIETY. — Journal op the Royal Asiatic Society op Great Britain AND Ireland, from the Commencement to 1863. First Series, complete in 20 Vols. 8vo, with many Plates. £10, or in parts from 4s. to 6s. each.
4
A Catalogue of Important Works,
ASIATIC SOCIETY.— Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britaih AND Ireland. New Series. 8vo. Stitched in wrapper. 1864-84.
PP' 16s.— Vol. II., 2 Parts, pp. 522, 16s.— Vo]. III., 2 Parts,,
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