Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett - 1923
By A. T. Barker
Letter No. LV
And now, friend, you have completed one of your minor cycles; have suffered, struggled, triumphed. Tempted, you have notfailed, weak you have gained strength, and the hard nature ofthe lot and ordeal of every aspirant after occult knowledge is nowbetter comprehended by you, no doubt. Your flight from Londonfrom yourself was necessary ; as was also your choice of thelocalities where you could best shake off the bad influences ofyour social *' season " and of your own house. It was not bestthat you should have come to Elberfeld sooner ; it is best thatyou should have come now. For you are better able now to bearthe strain of the present situation. The air is full of the pestilenceof treachery ; unmerited opprobrium is showering upon theSociety and falsehood and forgery have been used to overthrowit. Ecclesiastical England and official Anglo India have secretlyjoined hands to have their worst suspicions verified if possible andat the first plausible pretext to crush the movement. Every in-famous device is to be employed in the future as it has in thepresent to discredit us—as its promoters and yourselves as itssupporters. For the opposition represents enormous vestedinterests, and they have enthusiastic help from the Dugpas—inBhootan and the Vatican !
Among the ** shining marks" at which the conspirators aim,you stand. Tenfold greater pains than heretofore will be takento cover you with ridicule for your credulity, your belief in me—especially, and to refute your arguments in support of the esotericteaching. They may try to shake still more than they alreadyhave your confidence with pretended letters alleged to have comefrom H.P.B.'s laboratory, and others, or with forged documentsshowing and confessing fraud and planning to repeat it. It hasever been thus. Those who have watched mankind through thecenturies of this cycle, have constantly seen the details of thisdeath-struggle between Truth and Error repeating themselves.Some of you Theosophists are now only wounded in your** honour " or your purses, but those who held the lamp in pre-ceding generations paid the penalty of their lives for their knowledge.
Courage then, you all, who would be warriors of the one divineVerity ; keep on boldly and confidently ; husband your moralstrength not wasting it upon trifles but keeping it against greatoccasions like the present one. I warned you all through Olcottin April last of what was ready to burst at Adyar, and told himnot to be surprised when the mine should be fired. All will comeright in time—only you, the great and prominent heads of the movement be steadfast, wary and united. We have gained our object as regards L.C.H. She is much improved, and her whole life hereafter will be benefited by the training she is passing thro'. To have stopped with you would have been to her an irreparable psychic loss. She had this shown her, before I actually consented to interfere at her own passionate prayer, between you ; she was ready to fly to America, and but for my intervention would have done so. Worse than that ; her mind was being rapidly unsettled and made useless as an occult instrument. False teachers were getting her into their power and false revelations misled her and those who consulted her. Your house, good friend, has a colony of Elementaries quartering in it, and to a sensitive like her, it was as dangerous an atmosphere to exist in as would be a fever cemetery to one subject to morbific physical influences. You should be more than ordinarily careful when you get back not to encourage sensitiveness in your household, not to admit more than can he helped the visits of known mediumistic sensitives. It would be well also to burn wood-fires in the rooms now and then, and carry about as fumigators open vessels (braziers?) with burning wood. You might also ask Damodar to send you some bundles of incense-stick for you to use for this purpose. These are helps, but the best of all means to drive out unwelcome guests of this sort, is to live purely in deed and thought. The talismans you have had given you, will also powerfully aid you if you keep your confidence in them and in us unbroken. ( ?)
You have heard of the step H.P.B. was permitted to take. A fearful responsibility is cast upon Mr. Olcott ; a still greater—owing to 0,W. and Esot: Buddhisin—upon you. For this step of hers is in direct relation with and as direct a result of the appearance of these two works. Your Karma, good friend, this time. I hope you will understand my meaning rightly. But if you remain true to and stand faithfully by the T.S. you may count upon our aid and so may all others to the full extent that they shall deserve it. The original policy of the T.S. must be vindi- cated, if you would not see it fall into ruin and bury your reputations under it. I have told you long ago. For years to come the Soc. will be unable to stand, when based upon "Tibetan Brothers " and phenomena alone. All this ought to have been limited to an inner and very secret circle. There is a hero-worshipping tendency clearly showing itself, and you, my friend, are not quite free from it yourself. I am fully aware of the change that has lately come over you, but this does not change the main question. If you would go on with your occult studies and literary work—then learn to be loyal to the Idea, rather than to my poor self. When something is to be done never think whether I wish it, before acting : I wish everything that can, in great or small degree, push on this agitation. But I am far from being perfecthence infallible in all I do; tho' it is not quite as you imaginehaving now discovered. For you know—or think you know, ofone K.H. —and can know but of one, whereas there are two dis- tinct personages answering to that name in him you know. Theriddle is only apparent and easy to solve, were you only to knowwhat a real Mahatma is. You have seen by the Kiddle incident—perchance allowed to develop to its bitter end for a purpose—thateven an '* adept " when acting in his body is not beyond mistakesdue to human carelessness. You now understand that he is aslikely as not to make himself look absurd in the eyes of thosewho have no right understanding of the phenomena of thoughttransference and astral precipitations—and all this, thro' lack ofsimple caution. There is always that danger if one has neglectedto ascertain whether the words and sentences rushing into themind have come all from within or whether some may have beenimpressed from without. I feel sorry to have brought you intosuch a false position before your many enemies and even yourfriends. That was one of the reasons why, I had hesitated togive my consent to print my private letters and specifically excludeda few of the series from the prohibition. I had no time to verifytheir contents—nor have I now. I have a habit of often quoting,minus quotation marks—from the maze of what I get in thecountless folios of our Akasic libraries, so to say—with eyes shut.Sometimes I may give out thoughts that will see light years later ; at other times what an orator, a Cicero may have pronounced agesearlier, and at others, what was not only pronounced by modernlips but already either written or printed—as in the Kiddle case.All this I do (not being a trained writer for the Press) without thesmaller concern as to where the sentences and strings of wordsmay have come from, so long as they sen^e to express, and fit in with my own thoughts. I have received a lesson now on theEuropean plane on the danger of corresponding with westernliterati! But my ** inspirer " Mr. Kiddle is none the less ungrateful, since to me alone he owes the distinguished honour ofhaving become known by name, and having his utterancesrepeated even by the grave lips of Cambridge ** Dons." If fameis sweet to him why will he not be consoled with the thought, thatthe case of the "Kiddle—K.H. parallel passages" has nowbecome as much a cause celehre in the department of " whois who '*—and *' which plagiarized from the other? " as the BaconShakespeare mystery ; that in intensity of scientific research if notof value, our case is on a par with that of our two great pre-decessors.
But the situation—however amusing in one way—is moreserious for the Society; and the " parallel passages " must yield first place to the " Christian-mission-Coulomb " conspiracy. Turn then to the latter all your thoughts, good friend—if friend all not- withstanding. You are very wrong to contemplate absence from London the coming winter. But I shall not urge you, if you do not feel equal to the situation. At any rate, if you do desert the '• Inner Circle" some other arrangement has to be mad^: it is out of question for me to be corresponding with, and teaching both. Either you have to be my mouthpiece and secretary in the Circle, or I shall have to use somebody else as my delegate, and thus have positively no time to correspond with you. They have pledged themselves—(most of them) to me for life and death—the copy of the pledge is in the hands of Maha-Chohan—and I am bound to them.
I can now send my occasional instructions and letters with any certainty only thro' Damodar. But before I can do even so much the Soc. especially the H.Qrs, will have to pass first thro' the coming crisis. If you still care to renew the occult teachings save first our post-office. H.P.B. —^I say again is not to be approached any longer without her full consent. She has earned so much, and has to be left alone. She is permitted to retire for three reasons (i) to disconnect the T.S. from her phenomena now tried to be represented all fraudulent ; (2) to help it by removing the chief cause of the hatred against it ; (3) to try and restore the health of the body, so it may be used for some years longer. And now as to the details consult all of you together : for that I have asked them to send for you. The sky is black now, but for- get not the hopeful motto ''Post nubila Phoebus!" Blessings uf>on you, and your ever loyal lady.
K.H.
