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The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett - 1923

By A. T. Barker

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Letter No XXa

My dear Master, 

In speaking of Fragments No. Ill of which you will receive proofs soon, I said it was far from satisfactory though I had done my best.

It was necessary to advance the doctrine of the Society another stage. So as gradually to open the eyes of the spiritualists—so I introduced as the most pressing matter the Suicide etc. view given in your last letter to S-.

Well it is this that seems to me most unsatisfactory and it wiU lead to a number of questions that I shall feel puzzled to reply to them.

Our first doctrine is that the majority of objective phenomena were due to shells, i^ and 2^ principled shells, i.e. principles entirely separated from their sixth and seventh principles.

But as a further (i) development we admit that there are some spirits, i.e. 5th and 4th principles not wholly dissevered from their sixth and seventh which also may be potent in the seance room. These are the spirits of suicides and the victims of accident or violence. Here the doctrine is that each particular wave of life must run on to its appointed shore and with the exception of the very good, that all spirits prematurely divorced from the lower principles, must remain on earth, until the foredestined hour of what would have been the natural death strikes.

Now this is all very well but this being so, it is clear that in opposition to our former doctrine, shells will be few and spirits many (2).

For what difference can there be to take the case of suicides, whether these be conscious or unconscious, whether the man blowshis brains out, or only drinks or womanizes himself to death, orkills himself by over-study? In each case equally the normalnatural hour of death is anticipated and a spirit and not a shell the result—or again what difference does it make whether a manis hung for murder, killed in battle, in a railway train or a powderexplosion, or drowned or burnt to death, or knocked over bycholera or plague, or jungle fever or any of the other thousandand one epidemic diseases of which the seeds were not ab initio in his constitution, but when introduced there in consequence ofhis happening to visit a particular locality or undergo a givenexperience, both of which he might have avoided? Equally in all cases the normal death hour is anticipated and a spirit insteadof a shell the result.

In England it is calculated that not 15% of the population reachtheir normal death period—and what with fevers and famines andtheir sequels, I fear the percentage is not much larger here even—where the people are mostly vegetarian and as a rule live underless unfavourable sanitary conditions. 

So then the great bulk of all the physical phenomena ofspiritualists ought apparently to be due to these spirits and notto shells. I should be glad to have further information on thispoint.

There is a second pK>int (3) very often as I understand the spiritsof very fair average good people dying natural deaths remain sometime in the earth atmosphere—from a few days to a few years—why cannot such as these communicate? And if they can this is a most important point that should not have been overlooked. 
(4) And thirdly it is a fact that thousands of spirits do appearin pure circles and teach the highest morality and moreover tell very closely the truths as to the unseen world (witness AlanKardec's books pages and pages of which are identical with whatyou yourself teach) and it is unreasonable to suppose that such areeither shells or bad spirits. But you have not given us any opening for any large number of pure high spirits—and until the wholetheory is properly set forth and due place made for these whichseem to me a thoroughly well established fact, you will never winover the spiritualists. I dare say it is the old story—only part ofthe truth being told to us and the rest reserved—if so it is merelycutting the Society's throat. Better tell the outside world nothing—than to tell them half truths and incompleteness of which theydetect at once, the result being a contemptuous rejection of whatis truth and though they cannot accept it in this fragmentary state. 

Yours affectionately, 
A. O. Hume.