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The
Occult World
By
Alfred
Percy Sinnett
Theosophy Wales are
pleased to present this
Tour de Force of esoteric writing.
The
Occult World is an treatise on the Occult and Occult Phenomena, presented in
readable style,
by
an early giant of the Theosophical Movement.
Alfred
Percy Sinnett and his wife Patience were personally invited to join the
Theosophical
Society
by the founder of modern Theosophy,
Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky herself
Theosophists nowadays hesitate to use the
word “Occult” as it has been kicked around, adapted
and reworked to suit many purposes and
contexts.
A P Sinnett uses the word to describe the
study
of a deeper spiritual reality that extends
beyond
rigid rational thinking and the accepted
boundaries of the physical sciences.
The Occult
World
By
A P Sinnett
Chapter 3
First Occult
Experiences
It has been
through my connection with the Theosophical Society and my acquaintance with
Madame Blavatsky that I have obtained experiences in connection with occultism,
which have prompted me to undertake my present task. The first problem I had to
solve was whether Madame Blavatsky really did, as I heard, possess the power of
producing abnormal phenomena. And it may be imagined that, on the assumption of
the reality of her phenomena, nothing would have been simpler than to obtain
such satisfaction when once I had formed her acquaintance.
It is, however,
an illustration of the embarrassments which surround all inquiries of this
nature- embarrassments with which so many people grow impatient, to the end
that they cast inquiry altogether aside and remain wholly ignorant of the truth
for the rest of their lives- that although on the first occasion of my making.
Madame BIavatsky's acquaintance she became a guest at
my house at Allahabad and remained there for six
weeks, the harvest of satisfaction I was enabled to obtain during this time was
exceedingly small. Of course I heard a great deal from her during the time
mentioned about occultism and the Brothers, but while she was most anxious that
I should understand the situation thoroughly, and I was most anxious to get at
the truth, the difficulties to be overcome were almost insuperable.
For the
Brothers, as already described, have an unconquerable objection to showing off.
That the person who wishes them to show off is an earnest seeker of truth, and
not governed by mere idle curiosity, is nothing to the purpose. They do not
want to attract candidates for initiation by an exhibition of wonders. Wonders
have a very spirit-stirring effect on the history of every religion founded on
miracles, but occultism is not a pursuit which people can safely take up in
obedience to the impulse of enthusiasm created by witnessing a display of extraordinary
power. There is no absolute rule to forbid the exhibition of powers in presence
of the outsider ; but it is clearly disapproved of by
the higher authorities of occultism on principle, and it is practically
impossible for less exalted proficients to go against
this disapproval.
It was only the
very slightest of all imaginable phenomena that, during her first visit to my
house, Madame Blavatsky was thus permitted to exhibit freely. She was allowed
to show that" raps " like those which
spiritualists attribute to spirit agency, could be produced at will. This was
something, and faute de mieux
we paid great attention to raps.
Spiritualists
are aware that when groups of people sit round a table and put their hands upon
it, they will, if a "medium " be present,
generally hear little knocks which respond to questions and spell out messages.
The large outer circle of persons who do not believe
in spiritualism are fain to imagine that all the millions who do, are duped as
regards this impression. It must sometimes be troublesome for them to account
for the wide development of the delusion, but any theory, they think, is
preferable to admitting the possibility that the spirits of deceased persons
can communicate in this way; or, if they take the scientific view of the
matter, that a physical effect, however slight, can be produced without a
physical cause. Such persons ought to welcome the explanations I am now giving,
tending as these do to show that the theory of universal self-deception as
regards spirit-rapping, which must be rather an awkward theory for anyone but a
ludicrously conceited objector to hold, is not the only one by means of which
the asserted facts of spiritualism- those with which we are now dealing at all
events- can be reconciled with a reluctance to accept the spiritual hypothesis
as the explanation.
Now, I soon
found out not only that raps would always come at a table at which Madame
Blavatsky sat with the view of obtaining such results, but that all conceivable
hypotheses of fraud in the matter were rapidly disposed of by a comparison of
the various experiments we were able to make. To begin with, there was no
necessity for other people to sit at the table at all. We could work with any
table under any circumstances, or without a table at all.
A windowpane
would do equally well, or the wall, or any door, or anything whatever which
could give out a sound if hit. A half glass door put ajar was at once seen to
be a very good instrument to choose, because it was easy to stand opposite
Madame Blavatsky in this case, to see her bare hands or hand (without any
rings) resting motionless on the pane, and to hear the little ticks come
plainly, as if made with the point of a pencil or ,with
the sound of electric sparks passing from one knob of an electrical apparatus
to another.
Another very
satisfactory way of obtaining the raps- one frequently employed in the evening-
was to set down a large glass clock-shade on the hearthrug, and get Madame Blavatsky,
after removing all rings from her hands, and sitting well clear of the shade so
that no part of her dress touched it, to lay her hands on it. Putting a lamp on
the ground opposite, and sitting down on the hearthrug, one could see the under
surfaces of the hands resting on the glass, and still under these perfectly
satisfactory conditions the raps would come, clear and distinct, on the
sonorous surface of the shade.
It was out of
Madame Blavatsky's power to give an exact explanation as to how these raps were
produced. Every effort of occult power is connected with some secret or other,
and slight, regarded in the light of phenomena, as the raps were, they were
physical effects produced by an effort of will, and the manner in which the
will can be trained to produce physical effects may be too uniform, as regards
great and small phenomena, to be made in accordance with the rules of occultism
the subject of exact explanations to uninitiated persons.
But the fact
that the raps were obedient to the will was readily put beyond dispute, in this
way amongst others: working with the windowpane or the clockshade,
I would ask to have a name spelled out, mentioning one at random. Then I would
call over the alphabet, and at the right letters the raps would come. Or I
would ask for a definite number of raps, and they would come. Or for series of raps in some defined rhythmical progression, and
they would come. Nor was this all. Madame
Blavatsky would sometimes put her hands, or one only, on someone else's head,
and make the raps come, audibly to an attentive listener and perceptibly to the
person touched, who would feel each little shock exactly as if he were taking
sparks off the conductor of an electrical machine.
At a later
stage of my inquiries I obtained raps under better circumstances again than
these- namely, without contact between the object on which they were produced
and Madame Blavatsky's hands at all. This was at Simla
in the summer of last year (1880), but I may as well anticipate a little as far
as the raps are concerned. At Simla Madame Blavatsky
used to produce the raps on a little table set in the midst of an attentive
group, with no one touching it at all. After starting it, or of charging it
with some influence by resting her hands on it for a few moments, she would
hold one about a foot above it and make mesmeric passes at it, at each of which
the table would yield the familiar sound. Nor was this done only at our own
house with our own tables.
The same thing
would be done at friends houses, to which Madame Blavatsky accompanied us. And
a further development of the head experiment was this: It was found to be
possible for several persons to feel the same rap simultaneously.
Four or five
persons used sometimes to put their hands in a pile, one on another on a table;
then Madame Blavatsky would put hers on the top of the pile and cause a
current, of whatever it is which produces the sound, to pass through the whole
series of hands, felt by each simultaneously, and record itself in a rap on the
table beneath. Anyone who has ever taken part in forming such a pile of hands
must feel as to some of the hypotheses concerning the raps that have been put
forward in the Indian papers by determined sceptics-
hard-headed persons not to be taken in- to the effect that the raps are
produced by Madame Blavatsky's thumbnails or by the cracking of some joint-
that such hypotheses are rather idiotic.
Summing up the
argument in language which I used in a letter written at the time, it stands as
follows; " Madame Blavatsky puts her hands on a
table and raps are heard on it. Some wiseacre suggests she does it with her
thumbnails; she puts only one hand on the table; the raps
comes still. Does she conceal any artifice under her hand? She lifts her
hand from the table altogether, and merely holding it in the air above, the
raps still come. Has she done anything to the table? She puts her hand on a
windowpane, on a picture frame, on a dozen different places about the room in
succession, and from each in turn come the mysterious raps. Is the house where
she stays with her own particular friends about her prepared all over?
She goes to
half a dozen other houses at Simla and produces raps
at them all. Do the raps really come from somewhere else than where they seem
to come from-are they perhaps ventriloquism ? She puts
her hand on your head, and from the motionless fingers you feel something which
resembles a minute series of electric shocks, and an attentive listener beside
you will hear them producing little raps on your
skull. Are you telling a lie when you say you feel the shocks
? Half a dozen people put their hands one on top of the other in a pile
on the table ; Madame Blavatsky puts hers on the top
of all, and each person feels the little throbs pass through, and hears them
record themselves in faint raps on the table on which the pile of hands is
resting. When a person has seen all these experiments many times, as I have,
what impression do you think is made on his mind by a
person who says. There is nothing in raps but conjuring- Maskelyne
and Cooke can do them for £10 a night . Maskelyne and Cooke cannot do them for £10 a night nor for
ten lakhs a night under the circumstances
I describe."
The raps even
as I heard them during the first visit that Madame Blavatsky paid us at
But it was
mortifying to approach no nearer to absolute certitude concerning the questions
in which we were really interested- namely, whether there did indeed exist men
with the wonderful powers ascribed to the adepts, and whether in this way it
was possible for human creatures to obtain positive knowledge concerning the
characteristics of their own spiritual nature. It must be remembered that
Madame Blavatsky was preaching no specific doctrine on this subject.
What she told
us about the adepts and her own initiation was elicited by questions.
Theosophy, in which she did seek to interest all her friends, did not proclaim
any specific belief on the subject. It simply recommended the theory that
humanity should be regarded as a Universal Brotherhood in which each person
should study the truth as regards spiritual things, freed from the
prepossessions of any specific religious dogma. But although her attitude, as
regards the whole subject, put her under no moral obligation to prove the
reality of occultism, her conversation and her book, " Isis
Unveiled," disclosed a view of things which one naturally desired to
explore further; and it was tantalising to feel that
she could, and yet could not give us the final proofs we so much desired to
have, that her occult training really had invested her with powers over
material things of a kind which, if one could but feel sure they were actually
in her possession, would utterly shatter the primary foundations of
materialistic philosophy.
One conviction
we felt had been fully attained. This was the conviction of her
own good faith. It is disagreeable merely to recognise
that this can be impugned; but this has been done in
I am not, of
course, attributing any scientific value to this sort of testimony as
accrediting the abnormal character of phenomena she may be concerned in
producing. With such a mighty problem at stake as the trustworthiness of the
fundamental theories of modern physical science, it is impossible to proceed by
any other but scientific modes of investigation. In any experiments I have
tried I have always been careful to exclude, not merely the probability, but
the possibility of trickery; and where it has been impossible to secure the
proper conditions, I have not allowed the results of the experiment to enter
into the sum total of my conclusions. But, in its place, it seems only right-
only a slight attempt to redress the scandalous wrong which, as far as mere
insult and slander can do a wrong, has been done to a very high-minded and
perfectly honourable woman - to record the certainty
at which in progress of time both my wife and myself arrived, that Madame
Blavatsky is a lady of absolutely upright nature, who has sacrificed, not
merely rank and fortune, but all thought of personal welfare or comfort in any
shape, from enthusiasm for occult studies in the first instance, and latterly
for the special task she has taken in hand as an initiate in, if relatively a
humble member of, the great occult fraternity- the direction of the Theosophical Society.
Besides the
production of the raps one other phenomenon had been conceded to us during
Madame Blavatsky's first visit. We had gone with her to Benares
for a few days, and were studying at a house lent to us by the Maharajah of Vizianagram - a big, bare, comfortless abode as judged by
European standards-in the central hall of which we were sitting one evening
after dinner. Suddenly three or four flowers-cut roses-fell in the midst of us-
just as such things sometimes fall in the dark at spiritual seances.
But in this case
there were several lamps and candles in the room. The ceiling of the hall
consisted simply of the solid, bare, painted rafters and boards that supported
the flat cement roof of the building. The phenomenon was so wholly
unexpected-as unexpected, I am given to understand, by Madame Blavatsky,
sitting in an armchair reading at the time, as by the rest of us- that it lost
some of the effect it would otherwise have had on our minds. If one could have
been told a moment beforehand " now some flowers are going to fall",
so that we could have looked up and seen them suddenly appear in the air above
our heads, then the impressive effect of an incident so violently out of the
common order of things would have been very great. Even as it was, the incident
has always remained for those who witnessed it one of the stages on their road
to a conviction of the reality of occult powers.
Persons to whom
it is merely related cannot be expected to rely upon it to any great extent.
They will naturally ask various questions as to the construction of the room,
who inhabited the house, etc., and even when all these questions had been
answered, as they truthfully could be in a manner which would shut out any
hypothesis by means of which the fall of the flowers could be explainable by
any conjuring trick, there would still be an uncomfortable suspicion left in
the questioner's mind as to the completeness of the explanation given.
It might hardly
have been worth while to bring the incident on to the present record at all,
but for the opportunity it affords me of pointing out that the phenomena
produced in Madame Blavatsky's presence need not necessarily be of her
producing.
Corning now to
details in connection with some of the larger mysteries of occultism, I am
oppressed by the difficulty of leading up to a statement of what I know now to
be facts-as absolute facts as Charing Cross-which
shall, nevertheless, be gradual enough not to shock the understanding of people
absolutely unused to any but the ordinary grooves of thought as regards
physical phenomena. None the less is it true that any "Brother," as
the adepts in occultism are familiarly referred to, who may have been seized
with the impulse to bestow on our party at Benares
the little surprise described above, may have been in Tibet or in the South of
India, or anywhere else in the world at the time, and yet just as able to make
the roses fall as if he had been in the room with us. I have spoken already of
the adept's power of being present " in spirit " as we should say,
" in astral body " as an occultist would say, at any distant place in
the flash of a moment at will. So present, he can exercise in that distant
place some of the psychological powers which he possesses, as completely as he
can exercise them in physical body wherever he may actually be, as we
understand the expression.
I am not
pretending to give an explanation of how he produces this or that result, nor
for a moment hinting that I know. I am recording merely the certain fact that
various occult results have been accomplished in my presence, and explaining as
much about them as I have been able to find out. But at all events it has long
since become quite plain to me, that wherever Madame Blavatsky is, there the
Brothers, wherever they may be, can and constantly do produce phenomena of the
most overwhelming sort, with the production of which she herself has little or
nothing to do. In reference, indeed, to any phenomenon occurring in her
presence, it must be remembered that one can never have any exact knowledge as
to how far her own powers may have been employed, or how far she may have been
" helped," or whether she has not been quite uninfluential
in the production of the result. Precise explanations of this kind are quite
contrary to the rules of occultism- which, it must always be remembered, is not
trying to convince the world of its existence. In this volume I am trying to
convince the world of its existence, but that is another matter altogether.
Anyone who wishes to know how the truth really stands can only take up the
position of a seeker of truth.
He is not a
judge before whom occultism comes to plead for credibility. It is useless,
therefore, to quarrel with the observations we are enabled to make on the
ground that they are not of the kind one would best like to make. The question
is whether they yield data on which conclusions may safely rest.
And another
consideration claims treatment in connexion with the
character of the observations which, so far, I have been enabled to make-that
is to say, in connexion with any search for proof of
occult power as regards physical phenomena which but for such agency would be
miraculous. I can foresee that, in spite of the abject stupidity of the remark,
many people will urge that the force of the experiments with which I have had
to deal is vitiated because they relate to phenomena which have a certain
superficial resemblance to conjuring tricks. Of course this ensues from the
fact that conjuring tricks all aim at achieving a certain superficial
resemblance to occult phenomena. Let any reader, whatever his present frame of
mind on the subject may be, assume for a moment that he has seen reason to
conceive that there may be an occult fraternity in existence wielding strange
powers over natural forces as yet unknown to ordinary humanity; that this
fraternity is bound by rules which cramp the manifestation of these powers, but
do not absolutely prohibit it; and then let him propose some comparatively
small but scientifically convincing tests which he could ask to have conceded
to him as a proof of the reality of some part, at all events, of these powers:
it will be found that it is impossible to propose any such test that does not
bear a certain superficial resemblance to a conjuring trick. But this will not
necessarily impair the value of the test for people capable of dealing with
those characteristics of experiments that are not superficial.
The gulf of
difference which is really to be observed lying between any of the occult
phenomena I shall have to describe presently and a conjuring trick which might
imitate it, is due to the fact that the conditions would be utterly unlike. The
conjuror would work in his own stage, or in a prepared
room. The most remarkable of the phenomena I have had in the presence of Madame
Blavatsky have taken place away out of doors in fortuitously chosen places in
the woods and on the hills. The conjuror is assisted by any required number of
confederates behind his scenes. Madame Blavatsky comes a stranger to Simla, and is a guest in my own house, under my own
observation, during the whole of her visit.
The conjuror is
paid to incur the expenses of accomplishing this or that deception of the
senses. Madame Blavatsky is, what I have already explained, a lady of honourable character, instrumental in helping her friends -
at their earnest desire wherever phenomena are produced at all-to see some
manifestation of the powers in the acquisition of which (instead of earning
money by them as the conjuror does with his) she has sacrificed everything the
world generally holds dear- station, and so forth, immeasurably above that to
which any conjuror or any impostor could aspire. Pursuing Madame Blavatsky with
injurious suspicions, persons who resent the occult hypothesis will constantly
forget the dictates of common sense in overlooking these considerations.
About the
beginning of September, 1880, Madame Blavatsky came to Simla
as our guest, and in the course of the following six weeks various phenomena
occurred, which became the talk of all Anglo-India for a time, and gave rise to
some excited feeling on the part of persons who warmly espoused the theory that
they must be the result of imposture. It soon became apparent to us that
whatever might have been the nature of the restrictions which operated the
previous winter at Allahabad to prevent our guest
from displaying more than the very least of her powers, these restrictions were
now less operative than before. We were soon introduced to a phenomenon we had
not been treated to previously. By some modification of the force employed to
produce the sound of raps on any object, Madame Blavatsky can produce in the
air, without the intermediation of any solid object whatever, the sound of a
silvery bell-sometimes a chime or little run of three or four bells on
different notes. We had often heard about these bells, but had never heard them
produced before.
They were
produced for us for the first time one evening after dinner while we were still
sitting round the table, several times in , succession
in the air over our heads, and in one instance instead of the single bell-sound
there came one of the chimes of which I speak. Later on I heard them on scores
of occasions and in all sorts of different places-in the open air and at
different houses where Madame Blavatsky went from time to time. As before with
the raps, there is no hypothesis in the case of the bells which can be framed
by an adherent of the imposture theory which does not break down on a
comparison of the different occasions and conditions under which I have heard
them produced. Indeed, the theory of imposture is one which in the matter of
the bells has only one narrow conjecture to rest on. Unlike the sound of a rap,
which in the ordinary way could be produced by many different methods --so that,
to be sure any given example of such a sound is not produced by ordinary means,
one has to procure its repetition under a great variety of conditions-the sound
of a bell can only be made, physically, in a few ways. You must have a bell, or some sonorous object in the nature of a bell, to
make it with. Now, when sitting in a well lighted room, and attentively
watching, you get the sound of a bell up above your heads where there is no
physical bell to yield it- what are the hypotheses which can attribute the
result to trickery. Is the sound really produced outside the room altogether by
some agent or apparatus in another. First of all no rational person who had
heard this sound would advance that theory, because the sound itself is
incompatible with the idea. It is never loud- at least I have never heard it
very loud- but it is always clear and distinct to a remarkable extent. If you
lightly strike the edge of a thin claret glass with a knife you may get a sound
which it would be difficult to persuade anyone had come from another room; but
the occult bell-sound is like that, only purer and clearer, with no sub-sound
of jarring in it whatever.
Independently
of this, I have, as I say, heard the sound in the open air produced up in the
sky in the stillness of evening. In rooms it has not always been overhead, but
sometimes down on the ground amongst the feet of a group of persons listening
for it. Again, on one occasion, when it had been produced two or three times in
the drawing-room of a friend's house where we had all been dining, one
gentlemen of the party went back to the dining-room two rooms off, to get a
finger glass with which to make a sound for the occult bells to repeat- a
familiar form of the experiment. While by himself in the dining-room he heard
one of the bell-sounds produced near him, though Madame Blavatsky had remained
in the drawing-room.
This example of
the phenomenon satisfactorily disposed of the theory, absurd in itself for
persons who frequently heard the bells in all manner of places, that Madame
Blavatsky carried some apparatus about her with which to produce the sound. As
for the notion of confederacy, that is disposed of by the fact that I have
repeatedly heard the sounds when out walking beside Madame Blavatsky's jampan with no other person near us but the jampanees carrying it.
The bell-sounds
are not mere sportive illustrations of the properties of the currents which-
are set in action to produce them. They serve the direct, practical purpose
among occultists of a telegraphic call-bell. It appears that when trained
occultists are concerned, so that the mysterious magnetic connection, whatever
it may be, which enables them to communicate ideas is once established, they
can produce the bell-sounds at any distance in the neighbourhood
of the fellow-initiate whose attention they wish to attract. I have repeatedly
heard Madame Blavatsky called in this way, when our own little party being
alone some evening, we have all been quietly reading. A little " ting " would suddenly sound, and Madame
Blavatsky would get up and go to her room to attend to whatever occult business
may have been the motive of her summons.
A very pretty
illustration of the sound, as thus produced by some brother-initiate at a
distance, was afforded one evening under these circumstances. A lady, a guest
at another house in Simla, had been dining with us,
when about eleven o'clock I received a note from her host, enclosing a letter
which he asked me to get Madame Blavatsky to send on by occult means to a
certain member of the great fraternity to whom both he and I had been writing.
I shall explain
the circumstances of this correspondence more fully later on. We were all
anxious to know at once- before the lady with us that evening returned up the hill,
so that she could take back word to her host- whether the letter could be sent;
but Madame Blavatsky declared that her own powers would not enable her to
perform the feat. The question was whether a certain person, a half-developed
brother then in the neighbourhood of Simla, would give the necessary help. Madame Blavatsky said
she would see if she could " find him," and taking the letter in her
hands, she went out into the veranda, where we all followed her. Leaning on the
balustrade, and looking over the wide sweep of the Simla
valley, she remained for a few minutes perfectly motionless and silent, as we
all were; and the night was far enough advanced for all commonplace sounds to
have settled down, so that the stillness was perfect.
Suddenly, in
the air before us, there sounded the clear note of an occult-bell. " All right," cried Madame, " he will take
it." And duly taken the letter was shortly afterwards. But the phenomenon
involved in its transmission will be better introduced to the reader in connection
with other examples.
I come now to a
series of incidents which exhibit occult power in a more striking light than
any of those yet described. To a scientific mind, indeed, the production of
sounds by means of a force unknown to ordinary science should be as clear a
proof that the power in question is a power, as the more sensational phenomena
which have to do with the transmission of solid objects by occult agency.
The sound can
only reach our ears by the vibration of air, and to set up the smallest
undulation of air as the effect of a thought will appear to the ordinary
understanding as no less outrageous an impossibility than the uprooting of a
tree in a similar way. Still there are degrees in wonderfulness which the
feelings recognise even if such distinctions are
irrational.
The first incident of the kind which I now take up is not one which would in itself be a complete proof of anything for an outsider. I
describe it rather for the benefit of readers who may be, either through
spiritualistic experiences or in any other way, already alive to the
possibility of phenomena as such, and interested rather in experiments which
may throw light on their genesis than in mere texts. Managed a little better,
the occurrence now to be dealt with would have been a beautiful test ; but Madame Blavatsky, left to herself in such
matters, is always the worst devisor of tests imaginable. Utterly out of
sympathy with the positive and incredulous temperament; engaged all her life in
the development amongst Asiatic mystics of the creative rather than the
critical faculties, she never can follow the intricate suspicions with which
the European observer approaches the consideration of the marvellous in its
simplest forms.
The marvellous,
in forms so stupendously marvellous that they almost elude the grasp of
ordinary conceptions, has been the daily food of her life for a great number of
years, and it is easy to realise that, for her, the
jealous distrust with which ordinary people hunt round the slightest manifestation
of occult force to find any loophole through which a suspicion of fraud may
creep, as no less tiresome and stupid, then the ordinary person conceives the
too credulous spirit to be.
About the end
of September my wife went one afternoon with Madame Blavatsky to the top of a neighbouring hill. They were only accompanied by one other
friend. I was not present myself on this occasion. While there Madame Blavatsky
asked my wife, in a joking way, what was her heart's desire.
She said at random and on the spur or the moment, " to
get a note from one of the Brothers." Madame Blavatsky took from her
pocket a piece of blank pink paper that had been torn off a note received that
day. Folding this up into a small compass she took it to the edge of the hill,
held it up for a moment or two between her hands and returned saying that it
was gone. She presently, after communicating mentally by her own occult methods
with the distant Brother, said he asked where my wife would have the letter. At
first she said she should like it to come fluttering down into her lap, but
some conversation ensued as to whether this would be the best way to get it,
and ultimately it was decided that she should find it in a certain tree. Here,
of course, a mistake was made which opens the door to the suspicions of
resolutely disbelieving persons. It will be supposed that Madame Blavatsky had
some reasons of her own for wishing the tree chosen. For readers
who favour that conjecture after all that has gone before, it is only
necessary to repeat that the present story is being told not as a proof, but as
an incident.
At first Madame
Blavatsky seems to have made a mistake as to the description of the tree ,which the distant Brother was indicating as that in
which he was going to put the note, and with some trouble my wife scrambled on
to the lower branch of a bare and leafless trunk on which nothing could be
found. Madame then again got into communication with the Brother and
ascertained her mistake. Into another tree at a little distance, which neither
Madame nor the one other person present had approached, my wife now climbed a
few feet and looked all round among the branches. At first she saw nothing, but
then, turning back her head without moving from the position she had taken up,
she saw on a twig immediately before her face- where a moment previously there
had been nothing but leaves-a little pink note. This was stuck on to the stalk
of a leaf that had been quite freshly torn off, for the stalk was still green
and moist- not withered as it would have been if the leaf had been torn off for
any length of time. The note was found to contain these few words: " I have been asked to leave a note here for you. What
can I do for you?", It was signed by some Tibetan
characters. The pink paper on which it was written appeared to be the same
which Madame Blavatsky had taken blank from her pocket shortly before.
How was it
transmitted first to the Brother who wrote upon it and then back again to the
top of our hill ? not to
speak of the mystery of its attachment to the tree in the way described. So far
as I can frame conjectures on this subject, it would be premature to set them
forth in detail till I have gone more fully into the facts observed. It is no
use to discuss the way the wings of flying-fish are made for people who will
not believe in the reality of flying fish at all, and refuse to accept
phenomena less guaranteed by orthodoxy than Pharaoh's chariot wheels.
I come now to
the incidents of a very remarkable day. The day before, I should explain, we
started on a little expedition which turned out a coup manqué, though,
but for some tiresome mishaps, it might have led, we afterwards had reason to
think, to some very interesting results. We mistook our way to a place of which
Madame Blavatsky had received an imperfect description- or a description she
imperfectly understood- in an occult conversation with one of the Brothers then
actually passing through Simla. Had we gone the right
way that day we might have had the good fortune of meeting him, for he stayed
one night at a certain old Tibetan temple, or rest-house, such as is often
found about the Himalayas, and which the blind apathy of commonplace English
people leads them to regard as of no particular interest or importance. Madame
Blavatsky was wholly unacquainted with Simla, and the
account she gave us of the place she wanted to go to led us to think she meant
a different place. We started, and for a long time Madame declared that we must
be going in the right direction because she felt certain currents. Afterwards
it appeared that the road to the place we were making for, and to that for
which we ought to have made, were coincident for a considerable distance ; but a slight divergence at one point carried us
into a wholly wrong system of hill-paths. Eventually Madame utterly lost her
scent: we tried back; we who knew Simla discussed its
topography and wondered where it could be she wanted to get to, but all to no
purpose. We launched ourselves down a hillside where Madame declared she once
more felt the missing current; but occult currents may flow where travellers cannot pass, and when we attempted this descent.
I knew the case was desperate. After a while the expedition had to be
abandoned, and we went home much disappointed.
Why, some one
may ask, could not the omniscient Brother feel that Madame was going wrong, and
direct us properly in time ? I say this question will
be asked, because I know from experience that people unused to the subject will
not bear in mind the relations of the Brothers to such inquirers as ourselves. In this case, for example, the situation was not one
in which the Brother in question was anxiously waiting to prove his existence
to a jury of intelligent Englishmen. We can learn so little about the daily
life of an adept in occultism, that we who are uninitiated can tell very little
about the interests that really engage his attention; but we can find out this
much - that his attention is constantly engaged on interests connected with his
own work, and the gratification of the curiosity concerning occult matters of
persons who are not regular students of occultism forms no part of that work at
all. On the contrary, unless under very exceptional
conditions, he is even forbidden to make any concessions whatever to such curiosity.
In the case in point the course of events may probably have been something of
this kind :-Madame Blavatsky perceived by her own
occult tentacle that one of her illustrious friends was in the neighbourhood. She immediately - having a sincere desire to
oblige us- may have asked him whether she might bring us to see him.
Probably he
would regard any such request very much as the astronomer royal might regard
the request of a friend to bring a party of ladies to look through his
telescopes; but none the less he might say, to please his half-fledged "
brother " in occultism, Madame Blavatsky, " Very well, bring them, if
you like: I am in such and such a place." And then he would go on with his
work, remembering afterwards that the intended visit had never been paid, and
perhaps turning an occult perception in the direction of the circumstances to
ascertain what had happened.
However this
may have been, the expedition as first planned broke
down. It was not with the hope of seeing the Brother, but on the general
principle of hoping for something to turn up, that we arranged to go for a
picnic the following day in another direction, which, as the first road had
failed, we concluded to be probably the one we ought to have taken previously.
We set out at the
appointed time next morning. We were originally to have been a party of six,
but a seventh person joined us just before we started. After going down the
hill for some hours a place was chosen in the wood near the upper waterfall for
our breakfast: the baskets that had been brought with us were unpacked, and, as
usual at an Indian picnic, the servants at a little distance lighted a fire and
set to work to make tea and coffee. Concerning this some joking arose over the
fact that we had one cup and saucer too few, on account of the seventh person
who joined us at starting, and some one laughingly asked Madame Blavatsky to
create another cup and saucer. There was no set purpose in the proposal at
first, but when Madame Blavatsky said it would be very difficult, but that if
we liked she would try, attention was of course at once arrested. Madame
Blavatsky, as usual, held mental conversation with one of the Brothers, and
then wandered a little about in the immediate neighbourhood
of where we were sitting- that is to say, within a radius of half-a-dozen to a
dozen yards from our picnic cloth- I closely following, waiting to see what
would happen. Then she marked a spot on the ground, and called to one of the
gentlemen of the party to bring a knife to dig with. The place chosen was the
edge of a little slope covered with thick weeds and grass and shrubby
undergrowth. The gentleman with the knife-let us call him X-------------- as I
shall have to refer to him afterwards- tore up these in the first place with
some difficulty, as the roots were tough and closely interlaced. Cutting then
into the matted roots and earth with the knife, and pulling away the débris with his hands, he came at last, on the edge
of something white, which turned out, as it was completely excavated, to be the
required cup. A corresponding saucer was also found after a little more
digging.
Both objects
were in among the roots which spread everywhere through the
ground, so that it seemed as if the roots were growing round them. The
cup and saucer both corresponded exactly, as regards their pattern, with those
that had been brought to the picnic, and constituted a seventh cup and saucer
when brought back to where we were to have breakfast. I may as well add at once
that afterwards, when we got home, my wife questioned our principal khitmutgar as to how many cups and saucers of that
particular kind we possessed. In the progress of years, as the set was an old
set, some had been broken, but the man at once said that nine teacups were
left. When collected and counted that number was found to be right, without
reckoning the excavated cup. That made ten, and as regards the pattern- it was
one of a somewhat peculiar kind, bought a good many years previously in
Now, the notion
that human beings can create material objects by the exercise of mere
psychological power, will of course be revolting to
the understandings of people to whom this whole subject is altogether strange. It
is not making the idea much more acceptable to say that the cup and saucer
appear in this case to have been " doubled " rather than created. The
doubling of objects seems merely another kind of creation- creation according
to a pattern. However, the facts, the occurrences of the morning I have
described, were at all events exactly as I have related them. I have been
careful as to the strict and minute truthfulness of every detail.
If the
phenomenon was not what it appeared to be- a most wonderful display of a power
of which the modern scientific world has no comprehension whatever it was, of
course, an elaborate fraud. That supposition, however, setting aside the moral
impossibility from any point of view of assuming Madame Blavatsky capable of
participation in such an imposture, will only bear to be talked of vaguely. As
a way out of the dilemma it will not serve any person of ordinary intelligence
who is aware of the facts, or who trusts my statement of them. The cup and
saucer were assuredly dug up in the way I describe. If they were not deposited
there by occult agency, they must have been buried there beforehand. Now, I
have described the character of the ground from which they were dug up;
assuredly that had been undisturbed for years by the character of the
vegetation upon it. But it may be urged that from some other part of the
sloping ground a sort of tunnel may have been excavated in the first instance
through which the cup and saucer could have been thrust into the place where
they were found. Now this theory is barely tenable as regards its physical
possibility. If the tunnel had been big enough for the purpose it would have
left traces which were not perceptible on the ground - which were not even
discoverable when the ground was searched shortly afterwards with a view to
that hypothesis. But the truth is that the theory of previous burial is morally
untenable in view of the fact that the demand for the cup and saucer-of all the
myriad things that might have been asked for-could never have been foreseen. It
arose out of circumstances themselves the sport of the moment. If no extra
person had joined us at the last moment the number of cups and saucers packed
up by the servants would have been sufficient for our needs, and no attention
would have been drawn to them. It was by the servants, without the knowledge of
any guest, that the cups taken were chosen from others
that might just as easily have been taken. Had the burial fraud been really
perpetrated it would have been necessary to constrain us to choose the exact
spot we did actually choose for the picnic with a view to the previous
preparations, but the exact spot on which the ladies' jarnpans
were deposited was chosen by myself in concert with the gentleman referred to
above as X-, and it was within a few yards of this spot that the cup was found.
Thus, leaving the other absurdities of the fraud hypothesis out of sight, who
could be the agents employed to deposit the cup and saucer in the ground, and
when did they perform the operation? Madame Blavatsky was under our roof the
whole time from the previous evening when the picnic was determined on to the
moment of starting. The one personal servant she had with her, a Bombay boy and
a perfect stranger to Simla, was constantly about the
house the previous evening, and from the first awakening of the household in
the morning- and as it happened he spoke to my own bearer in the middle of the
night, for I had been annoyed by a loft door which had been left unfastened,
and was slamming in the wind, and called up servants to shut it. Madame
Blavatsky it appears, thus awakened, had sent her servant, who always slept
within call, to inquire what was the matter. Colonel Olcott, the President of
the Theosophical Society, also a guest of ours at the time of which I am
speaking, was certainly with us all the evening from the period of our return
from the abortive expedition of the afternoon, and was also present at the
start. To imagine that he spent the night in going four or five miles down a
difficult khud through forest paths difficult
to find, to bury a cup and saucer of a kind that we were not likely to take in
a place we were not likely to go to, in order that in the exceedingly remote
contingency of its being required for the perpetration of a hoax it might be
there, would certainly be a somewhat extravagant conjecture. Another
consideration- the destination for which we were making can be approached by
two roads from opposite ends of the upper horseshoe of hills on which Simla stands. It was open to us to select either path, and
certainly neither Madame Blavatsky nor Colonel Olcott had any share in the
selection of that actually taken. Had we taken the other, we should never have
come to the spot where we actually picnicked.
The hypothesis
of fraud in this affair is, as I have said, a defiance of common sense when
worked out in any imaginable way. The extravagance of this explanation will,
moreover, be seen to heighten as my narrative proceeds, and as the incident
just related is compared with others which took place later. But I have not yet
done with the incidents of the cup-morning.
The gentleman
called X ---------------------------had been a good deal with us during the
week or two that had already elapsed since Madame Blavatsky's arrival. Like
many of our friends, he had been greatly impressed with much he had seen in her
presence. He had especially come to the conclusion that the Theosophical
Society, in which she was interested, was exerting a good influence with the
natives, a view which he had expressed more than once in warm language in my
presence. He had declared his intention of joining this Society as I had done
myself. Now, when the cup and saucer were found most of us who were present, X
among the number, were greatly impressed, and in the conversation that ensued
the idea arose that X-- might formally become a member of the Society then and
there. I should not have taken part in this suggestion-I believe I originated
it-if X ----------had not in cool blood decided, as I understood, to join the
Society; in itself, moreover, a step which involved no responsibilities
whatever, and simply indicated sympathy with the pursuit of occult knowledge
and a general adhesion to broadly philanthropic doctrines of brotherly
sentiments towards all humanity, irrespective of race and creed. This has to be
explained in view of some little annoyances which followed.
The proposal
that X ------------should then and there formally join the Society was one with
which he was quite ready to fall in. But some documents were required-a formal
diploma, the gift of which to a new member should follow his initiation into
certain little Masonic forms of recognition adopted in the Society. How could
we get a diploma? Of course for the group then present a difficulty of this sort
was merely another opportunity for the exercise of Madame's powers. Could she
get a diploma brought to us by " magic?"
After an occult conversation with the Brother who had then interested himself
in our proceedings,Madame
told us that the diploma would be forthcoming. She described the appearance it
would present- a roll of paper wound round with an immense quantity of string,
and then bound up in the leaves of a creeping plant. We should find it about in
the woods where we were, and we could all look for it, but it would be X-, for
whom it was intended, who would find it. Thus it fell out. We all searched
about in the undergrowth or in the trees, wherever fancy prompted us to look,
and it was X- who found the roll, done up as described.
We had had our breakfast
by this time. X- was formally" initiated " a member of the society by
Colonel Olcott, and after a time we shifted our quarters to a lower place in
the wood where there was the little Tibetan temple, or rest-house, which the
Brother who had been passing through Simla- according
to what Madame Blavatsky told us- had passed the previous night. We amused
ourselves by examining- the little building inside and out, "
bathing in the "good magnetism," as Madame Blavatsky expressed
it, and then, lying on the grass outside, it occurred to someone that we wanted
more coffee. The servants were told to prepare some, but it appeared that they
had used up all our water. The water to be found in the streams near Simla is not of a kind to be used for purposes of this
sort, and for a picnic, clean filtered water is always taken out in bottles, It
appears that all the bottles in our baskets had been exhausted. This report was
promptly verified by the servants by the exhibition of the empty bottles. The
only thing to be done was to send to a brewery, the nearest building, about a
mile oft, and ask for water.
I wrote a
pencil note and a coolie went off with the empty bottles. Time passed, and the
coolie returned, to our great disgust, without the water. There had been no
European left at the brewery that day (It was Sunday) to receive the note, and
the coolie had stupidly plodded back with the empty bottles under his arm,
instead of asking about and finding someone able to supply the required water.
At this time
our party was a little dispersed. X- and one of the
other gentlemen had wandered off. No one of the remainder of the party was
expecting fresh phenomena, when Madame suddenly got up, went over to the
baskets, a dozen or twenty yards off, picked out a bottle- one of those, I
believe, which had been brought back by the coolie empty-and came back to us
holding it under the fold of her dress. Laughingly producing it it was found to be full of water. Just like a conjuring
trick, will some one say ? Just like, except for the
conditions. For such a conjuring trick, the conjurer defines the thing to be
done. In our ease the want of water was as unforeseeable in the first instance
as the want of the cup and saucer. The accident that left the brewery deserted
by its Europeans, and the further accident that the coolie sent up for water
should have been so abnormally stupid even for a coolie as to come back
without, because there happened to be no European to take my note, were
accidents but for which the opportunity for obtaining the water by occult
agency could not have arisen. And those accidents supervened on the fundamental
accident, improbable in itself, that our servants should have sent us out
insufficiently supplied. That any bottle of water could have been left unnoticed
at the bottom of the baskets is a suggestion that I can hardly imagine anyone
present putting forward, for the servants had been found fault with for not
bringing enough; they had just before had the baskets completely emptied out,
and we had not submitted to the situation till we had been fully satisfied that
there really was no more water left.
Furthermore, I
tasted the water in the bottle Madame Blavatsky produced, and it was not water
of the same kind as that which came from our own filters. It was an earthy tasting water, unlike that of the modern Simla supply, but equally unlike, I may add, though in a
different way, the offensive and discoloured water of
the only stream flowing through those woods.
How was it brought ? The how, of course, in all these cases is the
great mystery which I am unable to explain except in general terms; but the
impossibility of understanding the way adepts manipulate matter is one thing;
the impossibility of denying that they do manipulate it in a manner which Western
ignorance would describe as miraculous is another. The fact is there whether we
can explain it or not. The rough, popular saying that :you
cannot argue the hind leg off a cow, embodies a sound reflection ,which our
prudent sceptics in matters of the kind with which I
am now dealing are too apt to overlook. You cannot argue away a fact by
contending that by the lights in your mind it ought to be something different
from what it is. Still less can you argue away a mass of facts like those I am
now recording by a series of extravagant and contradictory hypotheses about
each in turn. What the determined disbeliever so often overlooks is that the scepticism which may show an acuteness of mind up to a
certain point, reveals a deficient intelligence when
adhered to in face of certain kinds of evidence.
I remember when
the phonograph was first invented, a scientific
officer in the service of the Indian Government sent me an article he had
written on the earliest accounts received of the instrument- to prove that the
story must be a hoax, because the instrument described was scientifically
impossible. He had worked out the times of vibrations required to reproduce the
sounds and so on, and very intelligently argued that the alleged result was
unattainable. But when phonographs in due time were imported into India, he did
not continue to say they were impossible, and that there must be a man shut up
in each machine, even though there did not seem to be room. That last is the
attitude of the self-complacent people who get over the difficulty about the
causation of occult and spiritual phenomena by denying, in face of the palpable
experience of thousands- in face of the testimony in shelves- full of books
that they do not read- that any such phenomena take place at all.
X-, I should
add here, afterwards changed his mind about the satisfactory character of the
cup phenomena, and said he thought it vitiated as a scientific proof by the
interposition of the theory that the cup and saucer might have been thrust up
into their places by means of a tunnel cut from a lower part of the bank. I
have discussed that hypothesis already, and mention the fact of X-'s change of
opinion, which does not affect any of the circumstances I have narrated, merely
to avoid the chance that readers, who may have heard or read about the Simla phenomenon in other pages, might think I was treating
the change of opinion in question as something which it was worth while to
disguise. And, indeed, the convictions which I ultimately attained were
themselves the result of accumulated experiences I have yet to relate, so that
I cannot tell how far my own certainty concerning the reality of occult power
rests on anyone example that I have seen.
It was on the
evening of the day of the cup phenomenon that there occurred an incident
destined to become the subject of very wide discussion in all the Anglo-Indian
papers. This was the celebrated " brooch
incident." The facts were related at the time in a little statement drawn
up for publication, and signed by the nine persons who witnessed it. ! This
statement will be laid before the reader directly, but as the comments to which
it gave rise showed that it was too meagre to convey
a full and accurate idea of what occurred, I will describe the course of events
a little more fully. In doing this, I may use names with a certain freedom, as
these were all appended to the published document.
We, that is, my
wife and myself with our guest, had gone up the hill
to dine, in accordance with previous engagements, with Mr. and Mrs. Hume. We dined, a party of eleven, at a round table, and Madame
Blavatsky, sitting next our host, tired and out of spirits as it happened, was
unusually silent. During the beginning of dinner she scarcely said a word, Mr.
Hume conversing chiefly with the lady on his other hand. It is a common trick
at Indian dinner-tables to have little metal plate warmers with hot water
before each guest, on which each plate served remains while in use. Such plate
warmers were used on the evening I am describing, and over hers -in an interval
during which plates had been removed- Madame Blavatsky was absently warming her
hands. Now, the production of Madame Blavatsky's raps and bell-sounds we had
noticed some- times seemed easier and the effects better when her hands had
been warmed in this way ; so some one, seeing her engaged in warming them,
asked her some question, hinting in an indirect way at phenomena. I was very
far from expecting anything of the kind that evening, and Madame Blavatsky was
equally far from intending to do anything herself or from expecting any display
at the hands of one of the Brothers. So, merely in mockery, when asked why she
was warming her hands, she enjoined us all to warm our hands too and see what
would happen. Some of the people present actually did so, a few joking words
passing among them. Then Mrs. Hume raised a little laugh by holding up her
hands and saying, " But I have warmed my hands,
what next". Now Madame Blavatsky, as I have said, was not in a mood for
any occult performances at all, but it appears from what I learned afterwards
that just at this moment, or immediately before, she suddenly perceived by
those occult faculties of which mankind at large have no knowledge, that one of
the Brothers was present " in astral body" invisible to the rest of
us in the room. It was following his indications, therefore, that she acted in
what followed; of course no one knew at the time that she had received any
impulse in the matter external to herself. What took place as regards the
surface of things was simply this: When Mrs. Hume said what I have set down
above, and when the little laugh ensued, Madame Blavatsky put out her hand
across the one person sitting between herself and Mrs. Hume and took one of
that lady's hands, saying, " Well then, do you wish for anything in
particular ? or as the lawyers say, " words to
that effect." I cannot repeat the precise sentences spoken, nor can I say
now exactly what Mrs. Hume first replied before she quite understood the
situation; but this was made clear in a very few minutes. Some of the other
people present catching this first, explained, " Think of something you
would like to have brought to you; anything you like not wanted for any mere
worldly motive ; is there anything you can think of that will be very difficult
to get ?" Remarks of this sort were the only kind that were made in the
short interval that elapsed between the remark by Mrs. Hume about having warmed
her hands and the indication by her of the thing she had thought of. She said
then that she had thought of something that would do. What was it ? An old brooch that her mother had given her long ago
and that she had lost.
Now, when this
brooch, which was ultimately recovered by occult agency, as the rest of my
story will show, came to be talked about, people said :- " Of course
Madame Blavatsky led up the conversation to the particular thing she had
arranged before- hand to produce." I have described all the
conversation which took place on this subject, before the brooch was named.
There was no conversation about the brooch or any other thing of the kind
whatever. Five minutes before the brooch was named, there had been no idea in
the mind of any person present that any phenomenon in the nature of finding any
lost article, or of any other kind, indeed, was going to be performed. Nor
while Mrs. Hume was going over in her mind the things she might ask for, did
she speak any word indicating the direction her thoughts were taking.
From the point
of the story now reached the narrative published at the time tells it almost as
fully as it need be told, and, at all events, with a
simplicity that will assist the reader in grasping all the facts-so I
reprint it here in full-
" On Sunday, the 3rd of October, at Mr. Hume's house at
Simla, there were present at dinner Mr. and Mrs.
Hume, Mr. and Mrs. Sinnett, Mrs. Gordon, Mr. F. Hogg, Captain P.J. Maitland,
Mr. Beatson, Mr. Davidson, Colonel Olcott, and Madame
Blavatsky. Most of the persons present having recently seen many remarkable
occurrences In Madame Blavatsky's presence, conversation turned on occult
phenomena, and in the course of this Madame Blavatsky asked Mrs. Hume if there
was anything she particularly wished for. Mrs. Hume at first hesitated, but in
a short time said there was something she would particularly like to have
brought her, namely, a small article of jewellery
that she formerly possessed, but had given away to a person who had allowed it
to pass out of her possession. Madame Blavatsky then said if she would fix the
image of the article in question very definitely on her mind, she, Madame
Blavatsky, would endeavour to procure It. Mrs. Hume
then said that she vividly remembered the article, and described it as an
old-fashioned breast brooch set round with pearls, With glass at the front, and
the back made to contain hair. She then, on being asked, drew a rough sketch of
the brooch.
Madame
Blavatsky then wrapped up a coin attached to her watch-chain In
two cigarette papers, and put it in her dress, and said that she hoped the
brooch might be obtained in the course of the evening. At the close of dinner
she said to Mr. Hume that the paper in which the corn had been wrapped was
gone. A little later, in the drawing room , she said
that the brooch would not be brought into the house, but that it must be looked
for in the garden, and then as the party went out accompanying her, she said
she had clairvoyantly seen the brooch fall into a star-shaped bed of flowers.
Mr. Hume led the way to such a bed in a distant part of the garden.
A prolonged and
careful search was made with lanterns, and eventually a small paper packet,
consisting of two cigarette papers, was found amongst the leaves by Mrs.
Sinnett. This being opened on the spot was found to contain a brooch exactly
corresponding to the previous description, and which Mrs. Hume Identified as that which she had originally lost. None of
the party, except Mr. and Mrs. Hume, had ever seen or heard of the brooch. Mr.
Hume had not thought of it for years. Mrs. Hume had never spoken of it to
anyone since she parted with it, nor had she, for long, even thought of it. She
herself stated, after it was found, that it was only when Madame asked her
whether there was anything she would like to have, that the remembrance of this
brooch, the gift of her mother, flashed across her mind.
" Mrs. Hume is not a spiritualist, and up to the time of
the occurrence described was no believer either in occult phenomena or in
Madame Blavatsky's powers. The conviction of all present was,
that the occurrence was of an absolutely unimpeachable character, as an
evidence of the truth of the possibility of occult phenomena. The brooch is
unquestionably the one which Mrs, Hume lost. Even supposing, which is
practically impossible, that the article, lost months before Mrs. Hume ever
heard of Madame Blavatsky, and bearing no letters or other indication of
original ownership, could have passed in a natural way into Madame Blavatsky's
possession, even then she could not possibly have foreseen that it would be
asked for, and Mrs. Hume herself had not given it a thought for months
" This narrative, read over to the party, is signed by-
A. 0. HUME,
ALICE GORDON,
M. A. HUME,
P. J. :MAITLAND,
FRED. R. HOGG,
WM. DAVIDSON,
A. P. SINNETT,
STUART BEATSON.
PATIENCE SINNETT.
It is needless to state that when this narrative was published the nine persons
above mentioned were assailed with torrents of ridicule, the effect of which,
however; has not been in any single case to modify, in the smallest degree, the
conviction which their signatures attested at the time, that the incident
related was a perfectly conclusive proof of the reality of occult power. Floods
of more or less imbecile criticism have been directed to show that the whole
performance must have been a trick; and for many persons in India it is now, no
doubt, an established explanation that Mrs. Hume was adroitly led up to ask for
the particular article produced, by a quantity of preliminary talk about a feat
which Madame Blavatsky specially went to the house to perform. A further
established opinion with a certain section of the Indian public is, that the
brooch which it appears Mrs. Hume gave to her daughter, and which her daughter
lost, must have been got from that young lady about a year previously, when she
passed through Bombay, where Madame Blavatsky was living, on her way to
England. The young lady's testimony to the effect that she lost the brooch
before she went to
As regards the
witnesses of the brooch phenomenon the conditions were so perfect that when
they were speculating as to the objections which might be raised by the public
when the story should come to be told, they did not foresee either of the
objections actually raised afterwards- the leading up in conversation theory,
and the theory about Miss Hume having- put Madame Blavatsky in possession of
the brooch. They knew that there had been no previous conversation at all about
the brooch or any other proposed feat, that the idea about getting something
Mrs. Hume should ask for, arose all in a moment, and that almost immediately
afterwards, the brooch was named. As for Miss Hume having unconsciously
contributed to the production of the phenomenon, it did not occur to the
witnesses that this would be suggested, because they did not foresee that
anyone could be so foolish as to shut their eyes to the important
circumstances, to concentrate their attention entirely on one of quite minor
importance. As the statement itself says, even supposing, which is practically
impossible, that the brooch could have passed into Madame Blavatsky's
possession in a natural way, she could not possibly have foreseen that it would
have been asked for.
The only
conjectures the witnesses could frame to explain beforehand the tolerably
certain result that the public at large would refuse to be convinced by the
brooch incident, were that they might be regarded as misstating the facts and
omitting some which the superior intelligence of their critics- as their
critics would regard the matter- would see to upset the significance of the
rest, or that Mrs. Hume must be a confederate. Now, this last conjecture, which
will no doubt occur to readers in England, had only to be stated, to be, for
the other persons concerned in the incident, one of the most amusing results to
which it could give rise. We all knew Mrs. Hume to be as little predisposed
towards any such a conspiracy as she was morally incapable of the wrongdoing it
would involve.
At one stage of
the proceedings, moreover, we had considered the question as to the extent to
which the conditions of the phenomenon were satisfactory. It had often happened
that faults had eventually been found with Madame Blavatsky's phenomena by
reason of some oversight in the conditions that had not been thought of at
first. One of our friends, therefore, on the occasion I am describing, had
suggested, after we rose from the dinner-table, that before going any further
the company generally should be asked whether, if the brooch could be produced,
that would under the circumstances be a satisfactory proof of occult agency in
the matter. We carefully reviewed the matter in which the situation had been
developed and we all came to the conclusion that the test , would be absolutely
complete, and that on this occasion there was no weak place in the chain of the
argument. Then it was that Madame Blavatsky said the brooch would be brought to
the garden, and that we could go out and search for it.
An interesting
circumstance for those who had already watched some of the other phenomena I
have described was this: The brooch, as stated above, was found wrapped up in
two cigarette papers, and these, when examined in a full light in the house,
were found still to bear the mark of the coin attached to Madame Blavatsky's
watch chain, which had been wrapped up in them before they departed on their
mysterious errand. They were thus identified for people who had got over the
first stupendous difficulty of believing in the possibility of transporting
material objects by occult agency as the same papers that had been seen by us
at the dinner-table.
The occult
transmission of objects to a distance not being, "magic', 'as Western
readers understand the word, is susceptible of some partial explanation even
for ordinary readers, for whom the means by which the forces employed are
manipulated must remain entirely mysterious. It is not contended that the
currents which are made use of, convey the bodies transmitted in a solid mass
just as they exist for the senses. The body, to be transmitted, is supposed
first to be disintegrated, conveyed on the currents in infinitely minute
particles, and then reintegrated at its destination. In the case of the brooch,
the first thing to be done must have been to find it. This, however, would
simply be a feat of clairvoyance- the scent of the object, so to speak, being
taken up from the person who spoke of it and had once possessed it- and there
is no clairvoyance of which the western world has any knowledge, comparable in
its vivid intensity to the clairvoyance of an adept in occultism. Its resting- place thus discovered, the disintegration
process would come into play, and the object desired would be conveyed to the
place where the adept engaged with it would choose to have it deposited. The
part played in the phenomenon by the cigarette papers would be this: In order
that we might be able to find the brooch, it was necessary to connect it by an
occult scent with Madame Blavatsky. The cigarette papers, which she always
carried about with her, were thus impregnated with her magnetism, and taken
from her by the Brother, left an occult trail behind them. Wrapped round the
brooch, they conducted this trail to the required spot.
The magnetisation of the cigarette papers always with her,
enabled Madame Blavatsky to perform a little feat with them which was found by
everyone for whom it was done an exceedingly complete bit of evidence ; though
here again the superficial resemblance of the experiment to a conjuring trick
misled the intelligence of ordinary persons who read about the incidents
referred to in the newspapers. The feat itself may be most conveniently
discussed by the quotation of three letters ,which appeared in the Pioneer
of the 23rd of October, and were as follows ;-
"Sir,
-The account of
the discovery of Mrs. Hume's brooch has called forth several letters, and many
questions have been asked, some of which I may answer on a future occasion, but
I think it only right to first contribute further testimony to the occult
powers possessed by Madame Blavatsky. In thus coming before the public, one
must be prepared for ridicule, but it is a weapon which we who know something
of these matters can well afford to despise. On Thursday last, at about
half-past
ALICE GORDON
"Sir,
-I have been
asked to give an account of a circumstance which took place in my presence on
the 13th instant. On the evening of that day I was sitting alone with Madame
Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott in the drawing-room of Mr. Sinnett's
house in Simla. After some conversation on various
matters, Madame Blavatsky said she would like to try an experiment in a manner
which had been suggested to her by Mr. Sinnett. She, therefore, took two
cigarette papers from her pocket and marked on each of them a number of
parallel lines in pencil. She then tore a piece off the end of each paper
across the lines, and gave them to me. At that time Madame Blavatsky was
sitting close to me, and I intently watched her proceedings, my eyes being not
more than two feet from her hands. She declined to let me mark or tear the
papers alleging that if handled by others they would become imbued with their
personal magnetism, which would counterset her own.
However, the torn pieces were handed directly to me, and I could not observe
any opportunity for the substitution of other papers by sleight of hand. The
genuineness or otherwise of the phenomena afterwards presented appears to rest
on this point. The torn off pieces of the paper remained in my closed left hand
until the conclusion of the experiment. Of the larger pieces Madame Blavatsky
made two cigarettes, giving the first to me to hold while the other was being
made up. I scrutinised this cigarette very
attentively, in order to be able to recognise it
afterwards. The cigarettes being finished, Madame Blavatsky stood up, and took
them between her hands, which she rubbed together. After about twenty or thirty
seconds, the grating noise of the paper, at first distinctly audible, ceased.
She then said the current [The
theory is that a current of what can only be called magnetism, can be made to
convey objects, previously dissipated by the same force, to any distance, and
in spite of the Intervention of any amount of matter.] Is passing round this end of the room, and I can only send them
somewhere near here. A moment afterwards she said one had fallen on the piano,
the other near that bracket. As I sat on a sofa with my back to the wall, the
piano was opposite, and the bracket, supporting a few pieces of china, was to
the right, between it and the door. Both were in full view across the rather
narrow room. The top of the piano was covered with piles of music books, and it
was among these Madame Blavatsky thought a cigarette would be found; The books
were removed, one by one, by myself, but without seeing anything. I then opened
the piano, and found a cigarette on a narrow shelf inside it. This cigarette I
took out and recognised as the one I had held in my
hand. The other was found in a covered cup on the bracket. Both cigarettes were
still damp where -they had been moistened at the edges in the process of
manufacture. I took the cigarettes to a table, without permitting them to be
touched or even seen by Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott. On being unrolled
and smoothed out, the torn, jagged edges were found to fit exactly to the
pieces that I had all this time retained in my hand. The pencil marks also
corresponded. It would therefore appear that the papers were actually the same
as those I had seen torn. Both the papers are still in my possession. It may be
added that Colonel Olcott sat near me with his back to Madame Blavatsky during
the experiment, and did not move till it was concluded.
"P. J. MAITLAND, Captain."
" Sir,
- With
reference to the correspondence now filling your columns, on the subject of
Madame Blavatsky's recent manifestations, it may interest your readers if I
record a striking incident which took place last week in my presence. I had
occasion to call on Madame, and in the course of our interview she tore off a
corner from a cigarette paper, asking me to hold the same, which I did. With
the remainder of the paper she prepared a cigarette in the ordinary manner, and
in a few moments caused this cigarette to disappear from her hands. We were
sitting at the time in the drawing-room. I inquired if it were like]y to find
this cigarette again, and after a short pause Madame requested me to accompany
her into the dining-room, where the cigarette would be found on the top of a
curtain hanging over the window. By means of a tab]e
and a chair placed thereon, I was enabled with some difficulty to reach and
take down a cigarette from the place indicated. This cigarette I opened, and
found the paper to correspond exactly with that I had seen a few minutes before
in the drawing-room. That is to say, the corner-piece, which I had retained in
my possession, fitted exactly into the jagged edges of the torn paper in which
the tobacco had been rolled. To the best of my belief, the test was as complete
and satisfactory as any test can be. I refrain from giving my opinion as to the
causes which produced the effect, feeling sure that your readers who take an
interest in these phenomena will prefer exercising their own judgement in the matter. I merely give you an unvarnished
statement of what I saw. I may be permitted to add I am not a member of the
Theosophist Society, nor, so far as I know, am I biassed
in favour of occult science, although a warm sympathiser
with the proclaimed objects of the Society over which Colonel Olcott presides.
" CHARLES FRANCIS MASSY."
Of course, anyone familiar with conjuring will be aware that an imitation of
this" trick " can be arranged by a person
gifted with a little sleight of hand. You take two pieces of paper, and tear
off a corner of both together, so that the jags of both are the same. You make
a cigarette with one piece, and put it in the place where you mean to have it
ultimately found. You then hold the other piece underneath the one you tear in
presence of the spectator, slip in one of the already torn corners into his
hand instead of that he sees you tear, make your cigarette with the other part
of the original piece, dispose of that anyhow you please, and allow the
prepared cigarette to be found. Other variations of the system may be readily
imagined, and for persons who have not actually seen Madame Blavatsky do one of
her cigarette feats it may be useless to point out that she does not do them as
a conjuror would, and that the spectator, if he is gifted with ordinary common
sense, can never have the faintest shadow of a doubt about the corner given to
him being the corner torn off- a certainty which the pencil-marks upon it,
drawn before his eyes, would enhance, if that were necessary. However, as I say,
though experience shows me that the outsider is prone to regard the little
cigarette phenomenon as ''suspicious," it has never failed to be regarded
as convincing by the most acute people among those who have witnessed it. With
all phenomena, however, stupidity on the part of the observer will defeat any
attempt to reach his understanding, no matter how perfect the tests supplied.
I realise this more fully now than at the time of which I am
writing. Then I was chiefly anxious to get experiments arranged
,which should be really complete in their details and leave no opening
for the suggestion even of imposture. It was "an uphill struggle first,
because Madame Blavatsky was intractable and excitable as an experimentalist,
and herself no more than the recipient of favours
from the Brothers in reference to the greater phenomena. And it seemed to me
conceivable that the Brothers might themselves not always realise
precisely the frame of mind in which persons of European training approached
the consideration of such miracles as these with which we were dealing, so that
they did not always make sufficient allowance for the necessity of rendering
their test phenomena quite perfect and unassailable in all minor details. I
knew, of course, that they were not primarily anxious to convince the
commonplace world of anything whatever; but still they frequently did assist
Madame Blavatsky to produce phenomena that had no other motive except the
production of an effect on the minds of people belonging to the outer world; and
it seemed to me that under these circumstances they might just as well do
something that would leave no room for the imputation even of any trickery.
One day,
therefore, I asked Madame Blavatsky whether if I wrote a letter to one of the
Brothers explaining my views, she could get it delivered for me. I hardly
thought this was probable, as I knew how very unapproachable the Brothers
generally are; but as she said that at any rate she would try, I wrote a
letter, addressing it " to the Unknown Brother," and gave it to her
to see if any result would ensue. It was a happy inspiration that induced me to
do this, for out of that small beginning has arisen the most interesting
correspondence in which I have ever been privileged to engage- a correspondence
which, I am happy to say, still promises to continue, and the existence of
which, more than any experiences of phenomena which I have had, though the most
wonderful of these are yet to be described, is the raison d'être of this
little book.
The idea I had
specially in my mind when I wrote the letter above referred to, was that of all
test phenomena one could wish for, the best would be the production in our
presence in India of a copy of the London Times of that day's date. With
such a piece of evidence in my hand, I argued, I would undertake to convert
everybody in Simla who was capable of linking two
ideas together, to a belief in the possibility of obtaining by occult agency
physical results which were beyond the control of ordinary science. I am sorry
that I have not kept copies of the letter itself nor of my own subsequent
letters, as they would have helped to elucidate the replies in a convenient
way; but I did not at the time foresee the developments to which they would
give rise and, after all, the interest of the correspondence turns almost
entirely on the letters I received: only in a very small degree on those I
sent.
A day or two
elapsed before I heard anything of the fate of my letter, but Madame Blavatsky
then informed me that I was to have an answer. I afterwards learned that she
had not been able at first to find a Brother willing to receive the
communication. Those whom she first applied to declined to be troubled with the
matter. At last her psychological telegraph brought her a favourable
answer from one of the Brothers with whom she had not for some time been in
communication. He would take the letter and reply to it.
Hearing this, I
at once regretted that I had not written at greater length, arguing my view of
the required concession more fully. I wrote again, therefore, without waiting
for the actual receipt of the expected letter.
A day or two after I found one evening on my writing-table the first letter
sent me by my new correspondent. I may here explain,
what I learned afterwards, that he was a native of the
My
correspondent is known to me as the Mahatma Koot Hoomi.[See Appendix "C"] .This is his " Tibetan Mystic name " -occultists, it
would seem, taking new names on initiation- a practice which has no doubt given
rise to similar customs which we find perpetuated here and there in ceremonies
of the Roman Catholic church.
The letter I
received began, in medias res, about the
phenomenon I had professed. " Precisely,"
the Mahatma wrote, " because the test of the
" So far for science- as much as we know of it. As for
human nature in general it is the same now as it was a million of years ago.
Prejudice, based upon selfishness, a general unwillingness to give up an
established order of things for new modes of life and thought - and occult
study requires all that and much more- pride and stubborn resistance to truth,
if it but upsets their previous notions of things- such are the characteristics
of your age.........
What, then, would
be the results of the most astounding phenomena supposing we consented to have
them produced ? However successful,
danger would be growing proportionately with success. No choice would
soon remain but to go on, ever crescendo, or to fall in this endless
struggle with prejudice and ignorance, killed by your own weapons. Test after
test would be required, and would have to be furnished; every subsequent
phenomenon expected to be more marvellous than the preceding one. Your daily
remark is, that one cannot be expected to believe
unless he becomes an eyewitness. Would the lifetime of a man suffice to satisfy
the whole world of sceptics ? It may an an easy matter to
increase the original number of believers at Simla to
hundreds and thousands. But what of the hundreds of millions of those who could
not be made eyewitnesses ? The ignorant, unable to
grapple with the invisible operators, might some day vent their rage on the
visible agents at work; the higher and educated classes would go on
disbelieving, as ever, tearing you to shreds as before. In common with many,
you blame us for our great secrecy. Yet we know something of human nature, for
the experience of long centuries- ay, ages, has taught us. And we know that so
long as science has anything to learn, and a shadow of religious dogmatism
lingers in the hearts of the multitude, the world's prejudices have to be
conquered step by step, not at a rush. As hoary antiquity had more than one
Socrates, so the dim future will give birth to more than one martyr. Enfranchised
Science contemptuously turned away her face from the Copernican opinion
renewing the theories of Aristarchus Samius, who 'affirmeth that the
earth moveth circularly about her own centre', years
before the Church sought to sacrifice Galileo as a holocaust to the
Bible. The ablest mathematician at the Court of Edward VI., Robert Recorde, was left to starve in jail by his colleagues, who
laughed at his Castle of Knowledge, declaring his discoveries vain
fantasies All this is old history, you will think. Verily so, but the
chronicles of our modern days do not differ very essentially from their
predecessors. And we have but to bear in mind the recent persecutions of
mediums in England, the burning of supposed witches and sorcerers in South
America, Russia, and the frontiers of Spain, to assure ourselves that the only
salvation of the genuine proficient in occult sciences lies in the scepticism of the public: the charlatans and the jugglers
are the natural shields of the adepts. The public safety is only ensured by our
keeping secret the terrible weapons which might otherwise be used against it,
and which, as you have been told, become deadly in the hands of the wicked and
selfish."
The remainder
of the letter is concerned chiefly with personal matters, and need not be here
reproduced. I shall, of course, throughout my quotations from letters, leave
out passages which, specially addressed to myself, have no immediate bearing on
the public argument. The reader must be fearful to remember, however, as I now
most unequivocally affirm, that I shall in no case alter one syllable of
the passages actually quoted. It is important to make this declaration very
emphatically, because the more my readers may be acquainted with India, the
less they will be willing to believe, except on the most positive testimony,
that the letters from the Mahatma, as I now publish them, have been written by
a native of India. That such is the fact, however, is beyond dispute.
I replied to
the letter above quoted at some length, arguing, if I remember rightly, that
the European mind was less hopelessly intractable than Koot
Hoomi represented it. His second letter was as follows :-
" We will be at cross purposes in our correspondence
until it has been made entirely plain that occult science has its own methods
of research, as fixed and arbitrary as the methods of its antithesis, physical
science, are in their way. If the latter has its dicta, so also have the
former; and he who would cross the boundary of the unseen world can no more prescribe
how he will proceed, than the traveller who tries to
penetrate to the inner subterranean recesses of L'Hassa
the Blessed could show the way to his guide. The mysteries never were, never
can be, put within the reach of the general public, not, at least, until that
longed-for day when our religious philosophy becomes universal. At no time have
more than a scarcely appreciable minority of men possessed Nature's secret,
though multitudes have witnessed the practical evidences of the possibility of
their possession. The adept is the rare efflorescence of a generation of inquirers ; and to become one, he must obey the inward
impulse of his soul, irrespective of the prudential considerations of worldly
science or sagacity. Your desire is to be brought to communicate with one of us
directly, without the agency of either Madame Blavatsky or any medium. Your
idea would be, as I understand it, to obtain such communications, either by
letter, as the present one, or by audible words, so as to be guided by one of us
in the management, and principally in the instruction of the Society. You seek
all this, and yet, as you say yourself, hitherto you have not found sufficient
reasons to even give up your modes of life, directly hostile to such modes of
communication. This is hardly reasonable. He who would lift up high the banner
of mysticism and proclaim its reign near at hand must give the example to
others. He must be the first to change his modes of life, and, regarding the
study of the occult mysteries as the upper step in the ladder of knowledge,
must loudly proclaim it such, despite exact science and the opposition of
society. The '
" My first answer covered, I believe, most of the
questions contained in your second and even third letter. Having, then,
expressed therein my opinion that the world in general was unripe for any too staggering
proof of occult power, there but remains to deal with the isolated individuals
who seek, like yourself, to penetrate behind the veil of matter into the
"world of primal causes ---- i.e., we need only consider now the
cases of yourself and Mr. -----."
I should here
explain that one of my friends at Simla, deeply
interested with me in the progress of this investigation, had, on reading Koot Hoomi's first letter to me,
addressed my correspondent himself. More favourably
circumstanced than I, for such an enterprise, he had even proposed to make a
complete sacrifice of his other pursuits, to pass away into any distant
seclusion ,which might he appointed for the purpose, where he might, if
accepted as a pupil in occultism, learn enough to return to the world armed
with powers which would enable him to demonstrate the realities of spiritual
development and the errors of modern materialism, and then devote his life to
the task of combating modern incredulity and leading men to a practical
comprehension of a better life. I resume the letter:-
" This gentleman also has done me the great honour to
address me by name, offering to me a few questions, and stating the conditions
upon which he would be willing to work for us seriously. But your motives and
aspirations being of diametrically opposite character, and hence leading to
different results, I must reply to each of you separately. "
'The first and
chief consideration in determining us to accept or reject your offer lies in
the inner motive which propels you to seek our instruction and, in a certain
sense, our guidance; the latter in all cases under reserve, as I understand it,
and therefore remaining a question independent of aught else. Now, what are
your motives ? I may try to define them in their
general aspects, leaving details for further consideration. They are-(l ) The
desire to see positive and unimpeachable proofs that there really are forces in
Nature of which science knows nothing; (2) The hope to appropriate them some
day- the sooner the better, for you do not like to wait- so as to enable
yourself ; (a) to demonstrate their existence to a few chosen Western minds;
(b) to contemplate future life as an objective reality built upon the rock of
knowledge, not of faith; and (c) to finally learn -most important this, among
all your motives, perhaps, though the most occult and the best guarded- the
whole truth about our lodges and ourselves; to get, in short, the positive
assurance that the' Brothers,' of whom everyone hears so much and sees so
little, are rare entities, not fictions of a disordered, hallucinated brain.
Such, viewed in their best light, appear to us your motives for addressing me.
And in the same spirit do I answer them, hoping that my sincerity will not be
interpreted in a wrong way, or attributed to anything like an unfriendly
spirit.
" To our minds, then, these motives, sincere and worthy
of every serious consideration from the worldly standpoint, appear selfish.
(You have to pardon me what you might view as crudeness of language, if your
desire is that which you really profess- to learn truth and get instruction
from us who belong to quite a different world from the one you move in.) They
are selfish, because you must be aware that the chief object of the
Theosophical Society is not so much to gratify individual aspirations as to
serve our fellowmen, and the real value of this term' selfish,' which may jar
upon your ear, has a peculiar significance with us which it cannot have with
you; therefore, to begin with, you must not accept it otherwise than in the
former sense. Perhaps you will better appreciate our meaning when told that in
our view the highest aspirations for the welfare of humanity become tainted
with selfishness, if, in the mind of the philanthropist, there lurks the shadow
of a desire for self-benefit, or a tendency to do injustice, even where these
exist unconsciously to himself. Yet you have ever discussed but to put down,
the idea of a Universal Brotherhood, questioned its usefulness, and advised to
remodel the Theosophical Society on the principle of a college for the special
study of occultism...
" Having disposed of personal motives, let us analyse your terms for helping us to do public good.
Broadly stated, these terms are-first, that an independent Anglo -Indian Theosophical
Society shall be founded through your kind services, in the management of which
neither of our present representatives shall have any voice ;
[ In the absence of my own
letter, to which this Is a reply, the reader might think from this sentence that
I had been animated by some unfriendly feeling for the representatives referred
to- Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott. This is far from having been the case;
but, keenly alive to mistakes which had been made up to the time of, which I am
writing, In the management of the Theosophical Society, Mr. ------and myself
were under the impression that better public results might be obtained by
commencing operations de novo, and taking, ourselves, the direction of
the measures which might be employed to recommend the study of occultism to the
modern world. This belief on our part was coexistent In
both cases with a warm friendship based on the purest esteem for both the
persons mentioned. ] And second,
that one of us shall take the new body' under his patronage,' be' in free and
direct communication with its leaders,' and afford them' direct proof that he
really possessed that superior knowledge of the forces of Nature and the
attributes of the human soul which would inspire them with proper confidence in
his leadership.' I have copied your own words so as to avoid inaccuracy in
defining the position.
"From your
point of view, therefore, those terms may seem so very reasonable as to provoke
no dissent, and, indeed, a majority of your countrymen -if not of Europeans-might
share that opinion. What, will you say, can be more reasonable than to ask that
that teacher anxious to disseminate his knowledge, and pupil offering him to do
so, should be brought face to face, and the one give the experimental proof to
the other that his instructions were correct? Man of the world, living in, and
in full sympathy with it, you are undoubtedly right. But the men of this other
world of ours, untutored in your modes of thought, and ,who find it very hard
at times to follow and appreciate the latter, can hardly be blamed for not
responding as heartily to your suggestions as in your opinion they deserve. The
first and most important of our objections is to be found in our rules.
True, we have our schools and teachers, our neophytes and' shaberons'
(superior adepts) and the door is always opened to the right man who knocks.
And we invariably welcome the new comer; only, instead of going over to him, he
has to come to us. More than that, unless he has reached that point in the path
of occultism from which return is impossible by his having irrevocably pledged
himself to our Association, we never - except in cases of utmost moment visit
him or even cross the threshold of his door in visible appearance.
" Is any of you so eager for knowledge and the
beneficent powers it confers, as to be ready to leave your world and come into
ours? Then let him come, but he must not think to return until the seal of the
mysteries has locked his lips even against the chances of his own weakness or
indiscretion. Let him come by all means as the pupil to the master, and without
conditions, or let him wait, as so many others have, and be satisfied with such
crumbs of knowledge as may fall in his way.
" And supposing you were thus to come, as two of your
own countrymen have already-as Madame B. did and Mr. 0. will - supposing you
were to abandon all for the truth; to toil wearily for years up the hard, steep
road, not daunted by obstacles, firm under every temptation ; were to
faithfully keep within your heart the secrets entrusted to you as a trial ; had
worked with all your energies and unselfishly to spread the truth and provoke
men to correct thinking and a correct life -would you consider it just, if,
after all your efforts, we were to grant to Madame B., or Mr. 0. as ' outsiders ' the terms you now ask for yourselves. Of
these two persons, one has already given three-fourths of a life, the other six
years of manhood's prime to us, and both will so labour to the close of their
days; though ever working for their merited reward, yet never demanding it, nor
murmuring when disappointed. Even though they respectively could accomplish far
less then they do, would it not be a palpable injustice to ignore them in an
important field of Theosophical effort? Ingratitude is not among our vices, nor
do we imagine you would wish to advise it.
" Neither of them has the least inclination to interfere
with the management of the contemplated Anglo-Indian Branch, nor dictate its
officers. But the new Society, if formed at all, must, though bearing a
distinctive title of its own, be, in fact, a branch of the parent body, as is
the British Theosophical Society at London, and contribute to its vitality and
usefulness by promoting its leading idea of a Universal Brotherhood, and in other
practicable ways.
" Badly as the phenomena may have been shown, there have
still been, as yourself admit, certain ones that are unimpeachable. The' raps
on the table when no one touches it, , and the' bell
sounds in the air,' have, you say, always been regarded as satisfactory, etc.
etc. From this, you reason that good test phenomena' may easily be multiplied ad
infinitum.' So they can- in any place where our magnetic and other
conditions are constantly offered, and where we do not have to act with and through
an enfeebled female body, in which, as we might say, a vital cyclone is raging
much of the time. But imperfect as may be our visible agent, yet she is the
best available at present, and her phenomena have for about half a century
astonished and baffled some of the cleverest minds of the age...."
"Two or
three little notes which I next received from the Mahatma had reference to an
incident I must now describe, the perfection of which as a test phenomenon
appears to me more complete than that of any other I have yet described. It is
worth notice, by-the-bye, that although the circumstances of this incident were
related in the Indian papers at the time, the happy company of scoffers who
flooded the Press with their simple comments on the brooch phenomenon, never
cared to discuss " the pillow incident."
Accompanied by
our guests, we went to have lunch one day on the top of a neighbouring
hill, The night before, I had had reason to think that my correspondent, Koot Hoomi, had been in what, for
the purpose of the present explanation, I may call subjective communication
with me. I do not go into any details, because it is unnecessary to trouble the
general reader with impressions of that sort, After discussing the subject in
the morning, I found on the hall-table a note from Koot
Hoomi ,
in which he promised to give me something on the hill which should be a token
of his (astral) presence near me the previous night.
We went to our
destination, camped down on the top of the hill, and were engaged on our lunch,
when Madame Blavatsky said Koot Hoomi
was asking where we would like to find the object he was going to send me. Let
it be understood that up to this moment there had been no conversation in
regard to the phenomenon I was expecting. The usual suggestion will, perhaps,
be made that Madame Blavatsky " led up " to
the choice I actually made. The fact of the matter was simply that in the midst
of altogether other talk Madame Blavatsky pricked up her ears on hearing her
occult voice- at once told me what was the question asked, and did not
contribute to the selection made by one single remark on the subject, In fact,
there was no general discussion, and it was by an absolutely spontaneous choice
of my own that I said, after a little reflection, " inside that cushion,"
pointing to one against which one of the ladies present was leaning.
I had no sooner
uttered the words than my wife cried out, " Oh
no, let it be inside mine," or words to that effect. I said, " very well, inside my wife's cushion; " Madame
Blavatsky asked the Mahatma by her own methods if that would do, and received
an affirmative reply. My liberty of choice as regards the place where the
object should be found was thus absolute and unfettered by conditions. The most
natural choice for me to have made under the circumstances, and having regard
to our previous experiences, would have been up some particular tree, or buried
in a particular spot of the ground; but the inside of a sewn-up cushion,
fortuitously chosen on the spur of a moment, struck me, as my eye happened to
fall upon the cushion I mentioned first, as a particularly good place; and when
I had started the idea of a cushion, my wife's amendment to the original
proposal was really an improvement, for the particular cushion then selected had
never been for a moment out of her own possession all the morning.
It was her
usual jampan cushion; she had been leaning against it
all the way from home, and was leaning against it still, as her jampan had been carried right up to the top of the hill, and
she had continued to occupy it. The cushion itself was very firmly made of
worsted work and velvet, and had been in our possession for years. It always
remained, when we were at home, in the drawing-room, in a conspicuous corner of
a certain sofa whence, when my wife went out, it would be taken to her jampan and again brought in on her return.
When the
cushion was agreed to, my wife was told to put it under her rug, and she did
this with her own hands, inside her jampan. It may
have been there about a minute, when Madame Blavatsky said we could set to work
to cut it open. I did this with a penknife, and it was a work of some time, as
the cushion was very securely sewn all round, and very strongly, so that it had
to be cut open almost stitch by stitch, and no tearing was possible. When one
side of the cover was completely ripped up, we found that the feathers of the
cushion were enclosed in a separate inner case, also sewn round all the edges.
There was nothing to be found between the inner cushion and the outer case ; so we proceeded to rip up the inner cushion; and this
done, my wife searched among the feathers.
The first thing
she found was a little three-cornered note, addressed to me in the now familiar
handwriting of my occult correspondent. It ran as follows :
" My dear Brother,
-This brooch, No. 2, is placed in this very strange place, simply to show you
how very easily a real phenomenon is produced, and how still easier it is to
suspect its genuineness. Make of it what you like, even to classing me with
confederates.
" The difficulty you spoke of last night with
respect to the interchange of our letters, I will try to remove. One of our
pupils will shortly visit Lahore and the N. W. P. ; and an address will be sent
to you which you can always use; unless, indeed, you really would prefer
corresponding through -----pillows! Please to remark that the present is not
dated from a Lodge, , but from a Kashmere
valley ."
While I was
reading this note, my wife discovered, by further search among the feathers,
the brooch referred to, one of her own, it very old and very familiar brooch
which she generally left on her dressing-table when it was not in use. It would
have been impossible to invent or imagine a proof of occult power, in the
nature of mechanical proofs, more irresistible and convincing than this
incident was for us who had personal knowledge of the various circumstances
described. The whole force and significance to us of the brooch thus returned,
hinged on to my subjective impressions of the previous night. The reason for
selecting the brooch as a thing to give us, dated no earlier than then. On the
hypothesis, therefore, idiotic hypothesis as it would be on all grounds, that
the cushion must have been got at by Madame Blavatsky, it must have been got at
since I spoke of my impressions that morning, shortly after breakfast; but from
the time of getting up that morning, Madame Blavatsky had hardly been out of
our sight, and had been sitting with my wife in the drawing-room. She had been
doing this, by-the- bye, against the grain, for she had writing which she
wanted to do in her own room, but she had been told by her voices to go and sit
in the drawing-room with my wife that morning, and had done so, grumbling at
the interruption of her work, and wholly unable to discern any motive for the
order.
The motive was
afterwards clear enough, and had reference to the intended phenomenon. It was
desirable that we should have no arrière pensée in our minds as to what Madame Blavatsky might possibly
have been doing during the morning, in the event of the incident taking such a
turn as to make that a factor in determining its genuineness. Of course, if the
selection of the pillow could have been foreseen, it would have been
unnecessary to victimise our "
old Lady, " as we generally called her. The presence of the famous
pillow itself, with my wife all the morning in the drawing-room, would have
been enough. But perfect liberty of choice was to be left to me in selecting a
cache for the brooch; and the pillow can have been in nobody's mind, any more
than in my own, beforehand.
The language of
the note given above embodied many little points which had a meaning for us.
All through, it bore indirect reference to the conversation that had taken place
at our dinner-table the previous evening. I had been talking of the little
traces here and there which the long letters from Koot
Hoomi bore, showing in spite of their splendid
mastery over the language and the vigour of their
style, a turn or two of expression that an Englishman would not have made use
of; for example, in the form of address, which in the two letters already
quoted had been tinged with Orientalism.
" But what should he have written?' somebody asked, and
I had said, " under similar circumstances an Englishman would probably
have written simply: " My dear Brother." Then the allusion to the
Kashmir Valley as the place from which the letter was written, instead of from
a Lodge, was au allusion to the same conversation ; and the underlining of the
" k " was another, as Madame Blavatsky had been saying that Koot Hoomi's spelling of " Scepticism" with a " k " was not an
Americanism in his case, but due to a philological whim of his.
The incidents
of the day were not quite over, even when the brooch was found; for that
evening, after we had gone home, there fell from my napkin, after I had
unfolded it at dinner, a little note, too private and personal to be reprinted
fully, but part of which I am impelled to quote, for the sake of the allusion
it contains, to occult modus operandi. I must explain that, before
starting for the hill, I had penned a few lines of thanks for the promise
contained in the note then received as described. This note I gave to Madame
Blavatsky, to despatch by occult methods if she had an opportunity. And she
carried it in her hand as she and my wife went on in advance, in jampans, along the Simla Mall,
not finding an opportunity until about halfway to our destination. Then she got
rid of the note, occultism only knows how. This circumstance had been spoken of
at the picnic; and as I was opening the note found in the pillow, someone
suggested that it would, perhaps, be found to contain an answer to my note just
sent. It did not contain any allusion to this, as the reader will be already
aware.
The note I received at dinnertime said :-" A few
words more. Why should you have felt disappointed at not receiving a direct
reply to your last note. It was received in my room
about half a minute after the currents for the production of the pillow dak, had been set ready, and in full play. And there
was no necessity for an answer. ..."
It seemed to bring one in imagination one step nearer a realisation
of the state of the facts to hear " the currents
" employed to accomplish what would have been a miracle for all the
science of
A miracle for
all the science of
The next
letter- the third long one-that I received from the Mahatma,
reached me shortly after my return for the cold weather to
But I received
one communication from him- a telegram -before its arrival, on the day of my
own return to
For me, knowing
her as intimately as I did, the inherent evidence of the style was enough to
make the suggestion that she might have written them, a mere absurdity. And, if
it is urged that the authoress of "
But, in
reference to some of them, receiving them as I did while she was in the house
with me, it was not mechanically possible that she might have been the writer.
Now, the
telegram I received at Allahabad, which was wired to
me from Jhelum, was in reply specially to a letter I
addressed to Koot Hoomi
just before leaving Simla, and enclosed to Madame
Blavatsky, who had started some days previously, and was then at Amritsur. She received the letter, with its enclosure, at Amritsur on the 27th of October, as I came to know, not
merely from knowing when I sent it, but positively by means of the envelope
which she returned to me at
Koot Hoomi was probably
himself actually at or near Jhelum at the time, as he
came down into the midst of the world for a few days, under peculiar
circumstances, to see Madame Blavatsky: the letter I received at
Madame Blavatsky had been deeply hurt by the behaviour
of some incredulous persons at Simla whom she had met
at our house and elsewhere, who, being unable to assimilate the experience they
had had of her phenomena, got by degrees into that hostile frame of mind which
is one of the phases of feeling I am now used to seeing developed. Perfectly
unable to show how the phenomena can be the result of fraud, but thinking that,
because they do not understand them, they must be fraudulent, people of a
certain temperament become possessed with the spirit which animated persecution
by religious authorities in the infancy of physical science. And, by a piece of
bad luck, a gentleman who was thus affected was annoyed at a trifling
indiscretion on the part of Colonel Olcott, who, in a letter to one of the
Bombay papers, quoted some expressions he had made use of in praise of the
Theosophical Society and its good influence on the natives. All the irritation
thus set up, worked on Madame Blavatsky's excitable temperament to an extent
which only those who know her will be able to imagine. The allusions in Koot Hoomi 's letter will now be understood. After some reference to
important business with which he had been concerned since writing to me last, Koot Hoomi went on :-
" You see, then, that we have weightier matters than small societies to
think about; yet the Theosophical Society must not be neglected. The affair has
taken an impulse which, if not well guided, might beget very evil issues.
Recall to mind the avalanches of your admired
" What could I do but come. Argument through
space with one who was in cold despair and in a state
of moral chaos, was useless. So I determined to emerge from a seclusion of many
years, and spend some time with her to comfort her as well as I could. But our
friend is not one to cause her mind to reflect the philosophical resignation of
Marcus Aurelius. The Fates never wrote, that she could say :-
'It is a royal thing when one is doing good to hear evil spoken of himself.' I
had come for a few days, but now find that I myself cannot endure for any
length of time the stifling magnetism even of my own countrymen. I have seen
some of our proud old Sikhs drunk and staggering over the marble pavement of
their sacred temple. I have heard an English-speaking Vakil
declaim against Yog Vidya
and Theosophy as a delusion and a lie, declaring that English science had
emancipated them from such degrading superstitions, and saying that it was an
insult to India to maintain that the dirty Yogees and
Sunuyasis knew anything about the mysteries of
Nature, or that any living man can, or ever could, perform any phenomena. I
turn my face homeward tomorrow.
" ........I have telegraphed you my thanks for your obliging
compliance with my wishes in the matter you allude to in your letter of the
24th..... Received at Amritsur, on
the 27th, at
" I could not ask a more judicial frame of mind
in an ally than that in which you are beginning to find yourself. My brother,
you have already changed your attitude toward us in a distinct degree. What is
to prevent a perfect mutual understanding one day?......
It is not possible that there should be much more at
best than a. benevolent neutrality shown by your people towards ours. There is
so very minute a point of contact between the two civilisations
they respectively represent, that one might almost say they could not touch at
all. Nor would they, but for the few- shall I say eccentrics ?-who, like you,
dream better and bolder dreams than the rest, and, provoking thought, bring the
two together by their own admirable audacity."
The letter before me at present is occupied so much with matters personal to
myself, that I can only make quotations here and there; but these are specially interesting, as investing with an air of reality
subjects which are generally treated in "vague and pompous language. Koot Hoomi was anxious to guard
me from idealising the Brothers too much on the
strength of my admiration for their marvellous powers.
" Are you certain," he writes, " that
the pleasant impression you now may have from our correspondence would not instantly
be destroyed upon seeing me. And which of our holy shaberons
has had the benefit of even the little university education and inkling of
European manners that has fallen to my share. An instance: I desired Madame
Blavatsky to select, among the two or three Aryian Punjabees who study Yog Vidya and are natural mystics, one whom, without disclosing
myself to him too much, I could designate as an agent between yourself and us,
and whom I was anxious to despatch to you with a letter of introduction, and
have him to speak to you of Yoga and its practical effects. This young
gentleman, who is as pure as purity itself, whose aspirations and thoughts are
of the most spiritual, ennobling kind, and who, merely through self-exertion,
is able to penetrate into the regions of the formless world - this young man is
not fit for a drawing-room. Having explained to him that the greatest good
might result for his country if he helped you to organise
a branch of English mystics, by proving to them practically to what wonderful
results led the study of Yog, Madame Blavatsky asked
him, in guarded and very delicate terms, to change his dress and turban before
starting for Allahabad ; for-though she did not give
him this reason- they were very dirty and slovenly. You are to tell Mr.
Sinnett, she said, that you bring him a letter from the Brother, with whom he
corresponds ; but if he asks you anything either of him or the other Brothers,
answer him simply and truthfully that you are not allowed to expatiate upon the
subject. Speak of Yog, and prove to him what powers
you have attained. 'This young man who had consented, wrote later on the
following curious letter :- Madame,' he said, you who
preach the highest standard of morality, of truthfulness, etc., you would have
me play the part of an impostor. You ask me to change, my clothes at the risk
of giving a false idea of my personality and mystifying the gentleman you send
me to. Here is an illustration of the difficulties under which we have to
labour. Powerless to send you a neophyte before you have pledged yourself to
us, we have to either keep back or despatch to you one who, at best, would
shock, if not inspire, you at once with disgust."
The present
letter yields only little more that it seems desirable to quote. In a guarded
way, Koot Hoomi said that
as often as it was practicable to communicate with me, "
whether ..........by letters (in or out of pillows) or personal visits
in astral form, it will be done. But remember," he added,
" that Simla is 7,000 feet higher than
I am here enabled to insert the greater part of a letter addressed by Koot Hoomi to the friend referred
to in a former passage, as having opened up a correspondence with him in
reference to the idea which he contemplated under certain conditions, of
devoting himself entirely to the pursuit of occultism. This letter throws a
great deal of light upon some of the metaphysical conceptions of the
occultists, and their metaphysics, be it remembered, are a great deal more than
abstract speculation.
" Dear
Sir-
Availing of the first moments of leisure to formally answer your letter of the
17th ultimo, I will now report the result of my conference with our chiefs upon
the proposition therein contained, trying at the same time to answer all your
questions.
" I am first to thank you on behalf of the whole section of our fraternity
that is especially interested in the welfare of India for an offer of help
whose importance and sincerity no one can doubt. Tracing our lineage through
the vicissitudes of Indian civilization from a remote past, we have a love for
our motherland no deep and passionate that it has survived even the broadening
and cosmopolitanizing (pardon me if that is not an
English word) effect of our studies in the laws of Nature. And so I, and every
other Indian patriot, feel the strongest gratitude for every kind word or deed
that is given in her behalf.
" Imagine, then, that since we are all convinced that the degradation of
India is largely due to the suffocation of her ancient spirituality, and that
whatever helps to restore that higher standard of thought and morals, must be
regenerating in national force, everyone of us would naturally and without
urging, be disposed to push forward a society whose proposed formation is under
debate, especially if it really is meant to become a society untainted by
selfish motive, and whose object is the revival of ancient science, and
tendency, to rehabilitate our country in the world's estimation. Take this for
granted without further asseverations. But you know, as any man who has read
history, that patriots may burst their hearts in vain
if circumstances are against them. Sometimes it has happened that no human
power, not even the fury and force of the loftiest patriotism, has been able to
bend an iron destiny aside from its fixed course, and nations have gone out
like torches dropped into the water in the engulfing blackness of ruin. Thus,
we who have the sense of our country's fall, though not the power to lift her
up at once, cannot do as we would either as to general affairs or this
particular one. And with the readiness, but not the right to meet your advances
more than half way, we are forced to say that the idea entertained by Mr.
Sinnett and yourself is impracticable in part. It is, in a word, impossible for
myself or any Brother, or even an advanced neophyte,
to be specially assigned and set apart as the guiding spirit or chief of the
Anglo-lndian branch. We know it would be a good thing
to have you and a few of your colleagues regularly instructed and shown the
phenomena and their rationale. For though none but you few would be convinced,
still it would be a decided gain to have even a few Englishmen, of first-class
ability, enlisted as students of Asiatic Psychology. We are aware of all this,
and much more; hence we do not refuse to correspond with, and otherwise help
you in various ways. But what we do refuse is, to take any other responsibility
upon ourselves than this periodical correspondence and assistance with our
advice, and, as occasion favours, such tangible,
possibly visible, proofs, as would satisfy you of our presence and interest. To
" guide " you we will not consent. However
much we may be able to do, yet we can promise only to give you the full measure
of your deserts. Deserve much, and we will prove honest debtors; little, and
you need only expect a compensating return. This is not a mere text taken from
a schoolboy's copybook, though it sounds so, but only the clumsy statement of
the law of our order, and we cannot transcend it. Utterly unacquainted with
Western, especially English, modes of thought and action, were we to meddle in
an organization of such a kind, you would find all your fixed habits and traditions
incessantly clashing, if not with the new aspirations themselves, at least with
their modes of realisation as suggested by us. You
could not get unanimous consent to go even the length you might yourself. I
have asked Mr. Sinnett to draft a plan embodying your joint ides for submission
to our chiefs, this seeming the shortest way to a mutual agreement. Under our'
guidance' your branch could not live, you not being men to be guided at all in
that sense. - Hence the society would be a premature birth and a failure,
looking as incongruous as a
" You say there are few branches of science with
which you do not possess more or less acquaintance, and that you believe you
are doing a certain amount of good having acquired the position to do this by
long years of study. Doubtless you do ; but will you
permit me to sketch for you still more clearly the difference between the modes
of physical (called exact out of mere compliment) and metaphysical sciences.
The latter, as you know, being incapable of verification before mixed
audiences, is classed by Mr. Tyndall with the fictions of poetry. The realistic
science of fact on the other hand is utterly prosaic. Now, for us, poor unknown
philanthropists, no fact of either of these sciences is interesting except in
the degree of its potentiality of moral results, and in the ratio of its
usefulness to mankind. And what, in its proud isolation, can be more utterly
indifferent to everyone and everything, or more bound to nothing but the
selfish requisites for its advancement, then, this materialistic science of
fact ? May I ask then, what have the laws of Faraday, Tyndall, or others to do
with philanthropy in their abstract relations with humanity, viewed as an
intelligent whole? What care they for Man as an isolated atom of this
great and harmonious whole, even though they may be sometimes of practical use
to him ? Cosmic energy is something eternal and
incessant; matter is indestructible and there stand the scientific facts. Doubt
them, and you are an ignoramus; deny them, a dangerous
lunatic, a bigot; pretend to improve upon the theories - an impertinent
charlatan. And yet even these scientific facts never suggested any proof to the
word of experimenters that Nature consciously prefers that matter should be
indestructible under organic rather than inorganic forms, and that she works
slowly but incessantly towards the realisation of
this object - the evolution of conscious life out of inert material. Hence,
their ignorance about the scattering and concretion of cosmic energy in its
metaphysical aspects, their division about Darwin's theories, their uncertainty
about the degree of conscious life in separate elements, and, as a necessity,
the scornful rejection of every phenomenon outside their own stated conditions,
and the very idea of worlds of semi-intelligent if not intellectual forces at work
in hidden corners of Nature. To give you another practical illustration- we see
a vast difference between the two qualities of two equal amounts of energy
expended by two men, of whom one, let us suppose, is on his way to his daily
quiet work, and another on his way to denounce a fellow creature at the
police-station, while the men of science see none ;
and we- not they- see a specific difference between the energy in the motion of
the wind and that of a revolving wheel. And why?
Because every thought of man upon being evolved passes into the inner world,
and becomes an active entity by associating itself, coalescing we might term
it, with an elemental- that is to say, with one of the semi-intelligent forces
of the kingdoms. It survives as an active intelligence-a creature of the mind's
begetting-for a longer or shorter period proportionate with the original
intensity of the cerebral action which generated it. Thus, a good thought is
perpetuated as an active, beneficent power, an evil one as a maleficent demon.
And so man is continually peopling his current in space with a world of his
own, crowded with the offsprings of his fancies,
desires, impulses, and passions; a current which reacts upon any sensitive or
nervous organization which comes in contact with it, in proportion to its
dynamic intensity. The Buddhist calls this his 'Skandha
' ; the Hindu gives it the name of 'Karma.' The adept
evolves these shapes consciously; other men throw them off unconsciously. The
adept, to be successful and preserve his power, must dwell in solitude, and
more or less within his own soul. Still less does exact science perceive that
while the building ant, the busy bee, the nidifacient
bird, accumulates each in its own humble way as much cosmic energy in its
potential form as a Haydn, a Plato, or a ploughman turning his furrow, in
theirs; the hunter who kills game for his pleasure or profit, or the positivist
who applies his intellect to proving that + x + =---, are wasting and
scattering energy no less than the tiger which springs upon its prey. They all
rob Nature instead of enriching her, and will all, in the degree of their
intelligence, find themselves accountable.
" Exact experimental science has nothing to do with
morality, virtue, philanthropy- therefore, can make no claim upon our help
until it blends itself with metaphysics. Being but a cold classification of
facts outside man, and existing before and after him, her domain of usefulness
ceases for us at the outer boundary of these facts; and whatever the inferences
and results for humanity from the materials acquired by her method, she little
cares. Therefore, as our sphere lies entirely outside hers- as far as the path
of Uranus is outside the Earth's - we distinctly refuse to be broken on any
wheel of her construction. Heat is but a mode of motion to her, and motion
develops heat, but why the mechanical motion of the revolving wheel should be
metaphysically of a higher value than the heat into which it is gradually
transformed she has yet to discover. The philosophical and transcendental:
(hence absurd) notion of the mediaeval Theosophist that the final progress of
human labour, aided by the incessant discoveries of man, must one day culminate
in a process which, in imitation of the sun energy - in its capacity as a
direct motor-shall result in the evolution of nutritious food out inorganic
matter, is unthinkable for men of science. Were the sun, the great nourishing
father of or planetary system, to hatch granite chickens out of a boulder
'under test conditions' tomorrow, the (the men of science) would accept it as a
scientific fact without wasting a regret that the fowls were not alive so as to
feed the hungry and the starving. But let a shaberon
cross the Himalayas in a time of famine and multiply sacks of rice for the
perishing multitudes-as he could- and your magistrates and collectors would
probably lodge him in jail make him confess what granary he had robbed. This is
exact science and your realistic world. An though, as you say, you are
impressed by the vast extent of the world's ignorance on every subject which
you pertinently designate as a' few palpable facts collected and roughly generalised, and a technical jargon invented to hide man's
ignorance of all that lies behind these facts,' and though you speak of your
faith in the infinite possibilities of Nature, yet you are content to spend
your life in a work which aids only that same exact science.....
" Of your several questions we will first discuss, if
you please, the one relating to the presumed failure of the' Fraternity' to '
leave any mark upon the history of the world.' They ought, you think, to have
been able, with their extraordinary advantages, to have' gathered into their
schools a considerable portion of the more enlightened minds of every race.' How
do you know they have made no such mark ~ Are you acquainted with their
efforts, successes, and failures? Have you any dock upon which to arraign them ? How could your world collect proofs of the doings of
men who have sedulously kept closed every possible door of approach by which
the inquisitive would spy upon them? The prime condition of their success was
that they should never be supervised or obstructed. What they have done they
know; all that those outside their circle could perceive was results, the
causes of which were masked from view. To account for these results, men have,
in different ages, invented theories of the interposition of gods, special
providences, fates, the benign or hostile influence of
the stars. There never was a time within or before the so- called historical
period when our predecessors were not moulding events
and' making history,' the facts of which were subsequently and invariably
distorted by historians to suit contemporary prejudices. Are you quite sure
that the visible heroic figures in the successive dramas were not often but
their puppets? We never pretended to be able to draw nations in the mass to
this or that crisis in spite of the general drift of the world's cosmic
relations. The cycles must run their rounds. Periods of mental and moral light
and darkness succeed each other as day does night. The major and minor yugas must be accomplished according to the established
order of things. And we, borne along on the mighty tide, can only modify and
direct some of its minor currents. If we had the powers of the imaginary
Personal God, and the universal and immutable laws were but toys to play with,
then, indeed, might we have created conditions that would have turned this
earth into an arcadia for lofty souls. But having to deal
with an immutable law, being ourselves its creatures, we have had to do what we
could, and rest thankful. There have been times when a considerable portion of
'enlightened minds' were taught in our schools. Such times there were in
" What good,' you say, ' is to be attained for my
fellows and myself (the two are inseparable) by these occult sciences ? ' When
the natives see that an interest is taken by the English, and even by some high
officials in
" If we look at Ceylon we shall see the most scholarly
priests combining, under the lead of the Theosophical Society, in a new
exegesis of Buddhistic philosophy; and at Galle, on the 15th of September, a secular Theosophical
School for the teaching of Singhalese youth, opened with an attendance of over
three hundred scholars; an example about to be imitated at three other points
in that island. If the Theosophical Society, as at present constituted,' has
indeed no' real vitality,' and yet in its modest way has done so much practical
good, how much greater results might not be anticipated from a body organised upon the better plan you could suggest ?
" The same causes that are materialising
the Hindu mind are equally affecting all Western thought. Education enthrones scepticism, but imprisons spirituality. You can do immense
good by helping to give the Western nations a secure basis upon which to
reconstruct their crumbling faith. And what they need is the evidence that
Asiatic psychology alone supplies. Give this, and you will confer happiness of
mind on thousands. The era of blind faith is gone; that of inquiry is here.
Inquiry that only unmasks error, without discovering anything upon which the
soul can build, will but make iconoclasts. Iconoclasm, from its very
destructiveness, can give nothing; it can only raze. But man cannot rest
satisfied with bare negation. Agnosticism is but a temporary halt. This is the
moment to guide the recurrent impulse which must soon come, and which will push
the age towards extreme atheism, or drag it back to extreme sacerdotalism,
if it is not led to the primitive soul-satisfying philosophy of the Aryans. He
who observes what is going on today, on the one hand among the Catholics, who
are breeding miracles as fast as the white ants do their young, on the other
among the freethinkers, who are converting, by masses, into Agnostics- will see
the drift of things. The age is revelling at a
debauch of phenomena. The same marvels that the spiritualists quote in
opposition to the dogmas of eternal perdition and atonement, the Catholics
swarm to witness as proof of their faith in miracles. The sceptics
make game of both. All are blind and there is no one to lead them. You and your
colleagues may help to furnish the materials for a needed universal religious
philosophy; one impregnable to scientific assault, because itself the finality
of absolute science, and a religion that is indeed worthy of the name since it
includes the relations of man physical to man psychical, and of the two to all
that is above and below them. Is not this worth a slight sacrifice? And if,
after reflection, you should decide to enter this new career, let it be known
that your society is no miracle-mongering or banqueting club, nor specially
given to the study of phenomenalism. Its chief aim is
to extirpate current superstitions and scepticism,
and from long-sealed ancient fountains to draw the proof that man may shape his
own future destiny, and know for a certainty that he can live hereafter, if he
only wills, and that all ' phenomena' , are but
manifestations of natural law, to try to comprehend which is the duty of every
intelligent being."
I have hitherto
said nothing of the circumstances under which these various letters reached my
hands ; nor, in comparison with the intrinsic interest of the ideas they
embody, can the phenomenal conditions under which some of them were delivered,
be regarded as otherwise than of secondary interest for readers who appreciate
their philosophy. But every bit of evidence which helps to exhibit the nature
of the powers which the adepts exercise, is worth
attention, while the rationale of such powers is still hidden from the world.
The fact of their existence can only be established by the accumulation of such
evidence, as long as we are unable to prove their possibility by a priori
analysis of the latent capacities in man.
My friend to whom the last letter was addressed wrote a long reply, and
subsequently an additional letter for Koot Hoomi , which he forwarded to me, asking me to read and
then seal it up and send or give it to Madame Blavatsky for transmission, she
being expected at about that time at my house at Allahabad
on her way down country from Amritsur and Lahore,
where, as I have already indicated, she had stayed for some little time after
our household broke up for the season at Simla. I did
as desired, and gave the letter to Madame Blavatsky, after gumming and sealing
the stout envelope in which it was forwarded. That evening, a few hours
afterwards, on returning home to dinner, I found that the letter had gone, and
had come back again. Madame Blavatsky told me that she had been talking to a visitor
in her own room, and had been fingering a blue pencil on her writing-table
without noticing what she was doing, when she suddenly noticed that the paper
on which she was scribbling was my letter that the addressee had duly taken
possession of, by his own methods, an hour or two before. She found that she
had, while talking about something else, unconsciously written on the envelope
the words which it then bore, " Read and returned with thanks, and a few
commentaries. Please open. " I examined the envelope
carefully, and it was absolutely intact, its very complete fastenings having
remained just as I arranged them. Slitting it open, I found the letter which it
had contained when I sent it, and another from Koot Hoomi to me, criticising the
former with the help of a succession of pencil figures that referred to
particular passages in the original letter- another illustration of the passage
of matter through matter, which, for thousands of people who have had personal
experience of it in Spiritualism, is as certain a fact of nature as the rising
of the sun, and which I have now not only encountered at spiritual séances,
but, as this record will have shown, on many occasions when there is no motive
for suspecting any other agency than that of living beings with faculties of
which we may all possess the undeveloped germs, though it is only in their case
that knowledge has brought these to phenomenal fruition.
Sceptical critics, putting aside the collateral bearing of
all the previous phenomena I have described, and dealing with this letter
incident by itself alone, will perhaps say- of course Madame Blavatsky had
ample time to open the envelope by such means as the mediums who profess to get
answers to sealed letters from the spirit world are in the habit of employing.
But, firstly, the Jhelum telegram proof, and the
inherent evidence of the whole correspondence show that, the letters which come
to me in that which I recognise as Koot Hoomi 's handwriting, are
not the work of Madame Blavatsky, at all events; secondly, let the incident I
have just described be compared with another illustration of an exactly similar
incident which occurred shortly afterwards under different circumstances Koot Hoomi had sent me a letter
addressed to my friend to read and forward on. On the subject of this letter
before sending it I had occasion to make a communication to Koot
Hoomi .
I wrote a note to him, fastened it up in an ordinary adhesive envelope, and
gave it to Madame Blavatsky. She put it in her pocket, went into her own room,
which opened out of the drawing room , and came out
again almost instantly. Certainly she had not been away thirty seconds. She
said " he " had taken it at once. Then she
followed me back through the house to my office room, spoke for a few minutes in
the adjoining room to my wife, and, returning into my office, lay down on a
couch. I went on with my work, and perhaps ten minutes elapsed, perhaps less.
Suddenly she got up. " There's your letter," she said, pointing to
the pillow from which she had lifted her head; and there lay the letter I had
just written, intact as regards its appearance, but with Koot
Hoomi's name on the outside scored out and mine
written over it. After a thorough examination I slit the envelope, and found
inside, on the flyleaf of my note, the answer I required in Koot
Hoomi's handwriting. Now, except for the thirty
seconds during which she retired to her own room, Madame Blavatsky had not been
out of my sight, except for a minute or two in my wife's room, during the short
interval which elapsed between the delivery of the letter by me to her and its
return to me as described. And during this interval no one else had come into
my room. The incident was as absolute and complete a mechanical proof of
abnormal power exercised to produce the result as any conceivable test could
have yielded. Except by declaring that I cannot be describing it correctly, the
most resolute partisan of the commonplace will be unable seriously to dispute
the force of this incident. He may take refuge in idiotic ridicule, or he may
declare that I am misrepresenting the facts. As regards the latter hypothesis I
can only pledge my word, as I do hereby, to the exact accuracy of the
statement.
In one or two
cases I have got back answers from Koot Hoomi to my letters in my own envelopes, these remaining
intact as addressed to him, but with the address changed, and my letter gone
from the inside, his reply having taken its place. In two or three cases I have
found short messages from Koot Hoomi
written across the blank parts of letters from other persons, coming to me
through the post, the writers in these cases being assuredly unaware of the
additions so made to their epistles.
Of course I
have asked Koot Hoomi for
an explanation of these little phenomena, but it is easier for me to ask than
for him to answer, partly because the forces which the adepts bring to bear
upon matter to achieve abnormal results, are of a kind which ordinary science
knows so little about that we of the outer world are not prepared for such explanations;
and partly because the manipulation of the forces employed has to do,
sometimes, with secrets of initiation which an occultist must not reveal.
However, in reference to the subject before us, I received on one occasion this
hint as an explanation.
"
..........Besides, bear
in mind that these my letters are not written, but impressed, or
precipitated, and then all mistakes corrected."
Of course I wanted to know more about such precipitation; was it a process which
followed thought more rapidly than any with which we were familiar? And as
regards letters received, did the meaning of these penetrate the understanding
of an occult recipient at once, or were they read in the ordinary way?
" Of course I have to read every word you write," Koot Hoomi replied, "
otherwise I would make a fine mess of it. And whether it be
through my physical or spiritual eyes, the time required for it is practically
the same. As much may be said of my replies; for whether I precipitate or
dictate them or write my answers myself, the difference in time saved is very
minute. I have to think it over, to photograph every word and sentence
carefully in my brain, before it can be repeated by precipitation. As the
fixing on chemically prepared surfaces of the images formed by the camera
requires a previous arrangement within the focus of the object to be
represented, for otherwise- as often found in bad photographs- the legs of the
sitter might appear out of all proportion with the head, and so on- so we have
to first arrange our sentences and impress every letter to appear on paper in
our minds before it becomes fit to be read. For the present it is all I
can tell you. When science will have learned more about the mystery of the lithophyl (or litho-biblion ), and how the impress of leaves comes originally to take
place on stones, then I will be able to make you better understand the process.
But you must know and remember one thing -we but follow and servilely
copy Nature in her works."
In another
letter Koot Hoomi
expatiates more fully on the difficulty of making occult explanations
intelligible to minds trained only in modern science.
" Only the progress one makes in the study of arcane
knowledge from its rudimental elements brings him gradually to understand our
meaning. Only thus, and not otherwise, does it, strengthening and refining
those mysterious links of sympathy between intelligent men- the temporarily
isolated fragments of the universal soul, and the cosmic soul itself- bring
them into full rapport. Once this established, then only will those awakened
sympathies serve, indeed, to connect Man with- what, for the want of a
European scientific word more competent to express the idea, I am again
compelled to describe as that energetic chain which binds together the material
and immaterial kosmos - Past, Present, and Future,
and quicken his perceptions so as to clearly grasp not merely all things of
matter, but of spirit also. I feel even irritated at having to use the three
clumsy words - Past, Present, and Future. Miserable concepts of the objective
phases of the subjective whole, they are about as ill adapted for the purpose,
as an axe for fine carving. Oh, my poor disappointed friend, that you were
already so far advanced on THE PATH that this simple transmission of ideas
should not be encumbered by the conditions of matter, the union of your mind
with ours prevented by its induced incapabilities.
Such is unfortunately the inherited and self-acquired grossness of the Western
mind, and so greatly have the very phrases expressive of modern thoughts been
developed in the line of practical materialism, that it is now next to
impossible, either for them to comprehend or for us to express in their own
languages anything of that delicate, seemingly ideal, machinery of the occult kosmos. To some little extent that faculty can be acquired
by the Europeans through study and meditation, but- that's all. And here is the
bar which has hitherto prevented a conviction of the theosophical truths from
gaining currency among Western nations - caused theosophical study to be cast
aside as useless and fantastic by Western philosophers. How shall I teach you
to read and write, or even comprehend a language off which no alphabet palpable
or words audible to you have yet been invented. How
could the phenomena of our modern electrical science be explained to --- say a
" Greek philosopher of the days of Ptolemy, were he suddenly recalled to
life - with such an unbridged hiatus in discovery as
would exist between his and our age? Would not the very technical terms be to
him an unintelligible jargon, an abracadabra of meaningless sounds, and the
very instruments and apparatuses used but miraculous monstrosities? And suppose
for one instant I were to describe to you the lines of those colour rays that
lie beyond the so-called visible spectrum - rays invisible to all but a very
few even among us; to explain how we can find in space anyone of the so called
subjective or accidental colours - the complement (to speak
mathematically) moreover' of any other given colour of a dichromatic body
(which alone sounds like an absurdity) could you comprehend, do you think,
their optical effect, or even my meaning? And since you see
them not - such rays - nor can know them, nor have you any names for them as
yet in science, if I were to tell you. .......' without moving from your
writing-desk, try search for, and produce before your eyes the whole solar
spectrum decomposed into fourteen prismatic colour -(seven being complementary)
as it is but with the help of that occult light that you can see me from a
distance as I see you '-what think you would be your answer? What would you
have to reply? Would you not be likely enough to retort by telling me that as
there never ,were but seven (now three) primary colours which, moreover, have
never yet by any known physical process been seen decomposed further than the
seven prismatic hues, my invitation was as unscientific as it was absurd?
Adding that my offer to search for an imaginary solar complement, being no
compliment to your knowledge of physical science- l had better, perhaps, go and
search for my mythical dichromatic and solar 'pairs' in 'Tibet, for modern
science has hitherto been unable to bring under any theory even so simple a
phenomenon as the colours of all such dichromatic bodies. And yet truth knows
these colours are objective enough.
" So you see the insurmountable difficulties in
the way of obtaining not only absolute, but even primary knowledge in
Occult Science, for one situated as you are. How could you make yourself
understood, command in fact, those semi-intelligent forces, whose means
of communicating with us are not through spoken words, but through sounds and
colours in correlations between the vibrations of the two ? For sound, light,
and colour are the main factors in forming those grades of intelligences, these
beings of whose very existence you have no conception, nor are you allowed to
believe in them - Atheists and Christians, Materialists and Spiritualists, all
bringing forward their respective arguments against such a belief-Science
objecting stronger than either of these to such a degrading superstition.
" Thus, because they cannot with one leap over the boundary walls attain
to the pinnacles of Eternity- because we cannot take a savage from the centre
of Africa and make him comprehend at once the' Principia' of Newton, or the'
Sociology' of Herbert Spencer, or make an unlettered child write a new "
Iliad in old Achaian Greek, or an ordinary painter
depict scenes in Saturn, or sketch the inhabitants of Arcturus-
because if all this our very existence is denied. Yes, for this reason are
believers in us pronounced impostors and fools, and the very science which
leads to the highest goal of the highest knowledge, to the real tasting of the
Tree of Life and Wisdom - is scouted as a wild flight of imagination."
The following
passage occurs in another letter, but it adheres naturally enough to the
extract just concluded.
" The truths and mysteries of occultism constitute,
indeed, a body of the highest spiritual importance, at once profound and
practical for the world at large. Yet it is not as an addition to the tangled
mass of theory or speculation that they are being given to you, but for their
practical bearing on the interests of mankind. The terms Unscientific,
Impossible, Hallucination, Imposture, have hitherto been used in a very loose,
careless way, as implying in the occult phenomena something either
mysterious and abnormal, or a premeditated imposture. And this is why
our chiefs have determined to shed upon a few recipient minds more light upon
the subject, and to prove to them that such manifestations are as reducible to
law as the simplest phenomena in the physical universe. The wiseacres say,' the
age of miracles is past', but we answer, ' it never existed.' While not
unparalleled or without their counterpart in universal history, these phenomena
must and will come with an overpowering influence upon the world of sceptics and bigots. They have to prove both destructive
and constructive - destructive in the pernicious errors of the past, in the old
creeds and superstitions which suffocate in their poisonous embrace, like the
Mexican weed, nigh all mankind ; but constructive of new institutions of a
genuine, practical Brotherhood of Humanity, where all will become co-workers of
Nature, will work for the good of mankind, with and through the
higher planetary spirits, the only spirits we believe in. Phenomenal
elements previously unthought of, undreamed of, will
soon begin manifesting themselves day by day with constantly augmented force,
and disclose at last the secrets of their mysterious workings. Plato was right.
[See Appendix
D.] Ideas rule the world ; and as men's
minds will receive new ideas, leaving aside the old and effete, the world will
advance, mighty revolutions will spring from them, creeds and even powers will
crumble before their onward march, crushed by their Irresistible force. It will
be just as impossible to resist their influence when the time comes as to stay
the progress of the tide. But all this will come gradually on, and before it
comes we have a duty set before us: that of sweeping away as much as possible
the dross left to us by our pious forefathers. New ideas have to be planted on
clean places, for these ideas touch upon the most momentous subjects. It is not
physical phenomena, but these universal ideas, that we study; as to comprehend
the former, we have first to understand the latter.
They touch
man's true position in the universe in relation to his previous and future
births, his origin and ultimate destiny; the relation of the mortal to the
immortal, of the temporary to the eternal, of the finite to the infinite; ideas
larger, grander, more comprehensive, recognising the
eternal reign of immutable law, unchanging and unchangeable, in regard to which
there is only an ETERNAL Now : while to uninitiated mortals, time is past or
future, as related to their finite existence on this material speck of dirt.
This is what we study and what many have solved........ Meanwhile, being human,
I have to rest. I took no sleep for over sixty hours."
Here are It few lines from Koot Hoomi's hand, in a letter not addressed to me, It fall
conveniently into the present series of extracts.
" Be it as it may, we are content to live as we do,
unknown and undisturbed by a civilization which rests so exclusively upon
intellect. Nor do we feel in any way concerned about the revival of our ancient
art and high civilization, for these are as sure to come back in their time,
and in a higher form, as the Plesiosaurus and the Megatherium
in theirs.
We have the
weakness to believe in ever-recurrent cycles, and hope to quicken the
resurrection of what is past and gone. We could not impede it, even if we
would. The new civilization will be but the child of the old one, and we have
but to leave the eternal law to take its own course, to have our dead ones come
out of their graves; yet we are certainly anxious to hasten the welcome event.
Fear not, although we do 'cling superstitiously to the relics of the past', our
knowledge will not pass away from the sight of man. It is ,
the gift of the gods,' and the most precious relic of all. The keepers of the
sacred light did not safely cross so many ages but to find themselves wrecked
on the rocks of modern scepticism. Our pilots are too
experienced sailors to allow us to fear any such disaster. We will always find
volunteers to replace the tired sentries, and the world, bad as it is in its
present state of transitory period, can yet furnish us
with a few men now and then."
Turning back to
my own correspondence, and to the latest letter I received from Koot Hoomi before leaving India
on the trip home during which I am writing these pages, I read :-
" I hope that at least you will understand that
we ( or most of us) are far from being the heartless morally dried-up mummies
some would fancy us to be. Mejnour is very well where
he is-as an ideal character of a thrilling, in many respects truthful story.
Yet, believe me, few of us would care to play the part
in life of a desiccated pansy between the leaves of a volume of solemn poetry.
We may not be quite' the boys' to quote -----'s irreverent expression when
speaking of us, yet none of our degree are like the stern hero of Bulwer's romance. While the facilities of observation
secured to some of us by our condition certainly give a greater breadth of
view, a more pronounced and impartial, a more widely spread humaneness- for
answering Addison, we might justly maintain that it is the business of
"magic " to humanize our natures with compassion' -for the whole
mankind as all living beings, instead of concentrating and limiting our
affections to one predilected race- yet few of us
(except such as have attained the final negation of Moksha)
can so far enfranchise ourselves from the influence of our earthly connection
as to be unsusceptible in various degrees to the higher pleasures, emotions,
and interests of the common run of humanity.
Of course the
greater the progress towards deliverance, the less this will be the case,
until, to crown all, human and purely individual personal feelings, blood-ties
and friendship, patriotism and race predilection, will all give way to become
blended into one universal feeling, the only true and holy, the only unselfish
and eternal one - Love, an Immense Love for humanity as a whole. For it is
humanity which is the great orphan, the only disinherited one upon this earth,
my friend. And it is the duty of every man who is capable of an unselfish
impulse to do something, however little, for its welfare. It reminds me of the
old fable of the war between the body and its members ; here, too, each limb of
this huge' orphan,' fatherless and motherless, selfishly cares but for itself,
The body, uncared for, suffers eternally whether the limbs are at war or at
rest. Its suffering and agony never cease; and who can blame it-as your
materialistic philosophers do- if, in this everlasting isolation and neglect,
it has evolved gods into whom 'it ever cries for help, but is not heard.' Thus-
'Since
there is hope for man only in man,
I would not let one cry whom I could save. '
Yet I confess
that I individually am not yet exempt from some of the terrestrial attachments.
I am still attracted toward some men more than towards others, and philanthropy
as preached by our great Patron
"...................The Saviour of the world,
The teacher of Nirvana and the Law
'.,; has never
killed in me either individual preferences of friendship, love for my next of
kin, or the ardent feeling of patriotism for the country in which I was last
materially individualised."
I had asked Koot Hoomi how far I was at
liberty to use his letters in the preparation of this volume, and, a few lines
after the passage just quoted, he says :-
" I lay no restrictions upon your making use of
anything I may have written to you or Mr. ----- having full confidence in your
tact and judgment as to what should be printed, and how it should be presented.
I must only ask you. ..." and then he goes on to indicate one letter which
he wishes me to withhold......" As to the rest, I relinquish it to the
mangling tooth of criticism."
______________________
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Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man? Body and Soul
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What Theosophy Is From the Absolute to Man
The Formation of a Solar System The Evolution of Life
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The Purpose of Life The Planetary Chains
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General Principles The Three Great Truths The Deity
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Concerns about the fate of the
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Concerns are raised
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Confusion as the Theoversity
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Chorley in
Lancashire while the leadership claim
that the Theosophical
Society will carry on using
Tekels Park despite its sale to a developer
Anyone planning a
“Spiritual” stay at the
Tekels Park Guest
House should be aware of the sale.
Future
of Tekels Park Badgers in Doubt
Party On!
Tekels Park Theosophy NOT
Tekels Park & the Loch Ness Monster
A Satirical view of
the sale of Tekels Park
in Camberley, Surrey
to a developer
The Toff’s Guide to the Sale of Tekels
Park
What the men in top
hats have to
say about the sale of
Tekels Park
____________________
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General pages
about Wales, Welsh History
and The History of
Theosophy in Wales
Wales is a
Principality within the United Kingdom and has an eastern
border with England.
The land area is just over 8,000 square miles.
Snowdon in North Wales is the highest mountain at 3,650 feet.
The coastline is
almost 750 miles long. The population of Wales
as at the 2001 census is 2,946,200.
________________
Bangor Conwy & Swansea Lodges are members
of the Welsh Regional
Association (Formed 1993).
Theosophy Cardiff
separated from the Welsh Regional
Association in
March 2008 and became an independent
body within the Theosophical Movement in March 2010
High
Drama & Worldwide Confusion
as
Theosophy Cardiff Separates from the
Welsh Regional Association (formed 1993)
Theosophy Cardiff Cancels its Affiliation
to the Adyar Based Theosophical Society