Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett - 1923
By A. T. Barker
Letter No CXL
Jan. 6. 1886. Wurzburg.
My dear Mr. Sinnett,
y dear Mr. Sinnett, I am impressed to give you the following : First let me tell youthat the dear Countess went off to Munich like a shot to try andsave Hubbe from his weakness and the Society from crumblingdown. She was the whole evening in a trance, getting out andin from her body. She saw Master and felt him all the night.She is a great clairvoyant. Well, after reading a few pages ofthe Report I was so disgusted with Hume's gratuitous lies andHodgson's absurd inferences that I nearly gave up all in despair.What could I do or say against evidence on the natural worldlyplane ! Everything went against me and I had but to die. I went to bed and had the most extraordinary vision. I had vainlycalled upon the Masters—who came not during my waking state,but now in my sleep I saw them both, I was again (a scene ofyears back) in Mah. K.H.'s house. I was sitting in a corner ona mat and he walking about the room in his riding dress, andMaster was talking to someone behind the door. " I remindcan't "—I pronounced in answer to a question of His about a deadaunt.—He smiled and said " Funny English you use." ThenI felt ashamed, hurt in my vanity, and began thinking (mind you,in my dream or vision which was the exact reproduction of whathad taken place word for word 16 years ago) ** now I am hereand speaking nothing but English in verbal phonetic languageI can perhaps learn to speak better with Him." (To makeit clear with Master I also used English, which whether bad or goodwas the same for Him as he does not speak it but understandsevery word I say out of my head ; and I am made to understandHim—how I could never tell or explain if I were killed but I do.With D.K. I also spoke English, he speaking it better even thanMah. K.H.) Then, in my dream still, three months after asI was made to feel in that vision—I was standing before Mah. K.H.near the old building taken down he w^as looking at, and asMaster was not at home, I took to him a few sentences I wasstudying in Senzar in his sister's room and asked him to tell meif I translated them correctly—and gave him a slip of f)aper withthese sentences written in English. He took and read them andcorrecting the interpretation read them over and said " Now yourEnglish is becoming better—try to pick out of my head even thelittle I know of it." And he put his hand on my forehead in theregion of memory and squeezed his fingers on it (and I felt eventhe same trifling pain in it, as then, and the cold shiver I hadexperienced) and since that day He did so with my head daily, forabout two months. Again, the scene changes and I am going away with Master who is sending me off, back to Europe. I am bidding- good-bye to his sister and her child and all the chelas. I listen to what the Masters tell me. And then come the parting works of Mah. K.H. laughing at me as He always did and saying " Well, if you have not learned much of the Sacred Sciences and practical Occultism—and who could expect a woman to—you have learned, at any rate, a little English. You speak it now only a little worse than I do ! " and he laughed.
Again the scene changes I am 47th St. New York writing Isiis and His voice dictating to me. In that dream or retrospective vision I once more rewrote all Isis and could now point out all the pages and sentences Mah. K.H. dictated—as those that Master did—in my bad English, when Olcott tore his hair out by handfuls in despair to ever make out the meaning of what was intended. I again saw myself night after night in bed—^writing Isis in my dreams, at New York, positively writing it in my sleep and felt sentences by Mah. K.H. impressing themselves on my memory. Ihen, as I was awakening from that vision (in Wurzburg now) I heard Mah. K.H.'s voice—'* and now put two and two together, pKX>r blind woman. The bad English and the construction of sentences you do know, even that you have learned from me . . . take off the slur thrown uf)on you by that misguided, conceited man (Hodgson) : explain the truth to the few friends who will believe you—for the public never will to that day that the Secret Doctrine comes out."—I awoke, and it was like a flash of lightning; but I still did not understand what it referred to. But an hour after, there comes Hubbe Schleiden's letter to the Countess, in which he says, that unless I explain how it is that such a similarity is found and proven By Hodgson between my faulty English and Mah. K.H.'s certain expressions, the construction of sentences and peculiar Gallicisms—I stand for ever accused of deceit forgery ( ! !) and what not. Of course I have learned my English from Him ! This Olcott even shall understand. You know and I told it to many friends and enemies—^I was taught dreadful Yorkshire by my nurse called Governess. From the time my father brought me to England, when fourteen, thinking I spoke beautiful English—and people asked him if he had me educated in Yorkshire or Ireland—and laughed at my accent and way of speaking—I gave up English altogether trying to avoid speaking it as much as I could. From fourteen till I was over forty I never spoke it, let alone writing and forgot it entirely I could read—which I did very little in English—I could not speak it. I remember how difficult it was for me to understand a well- written book in English so far back only as 1867 in Venice. All I knew when I came to America in 1873 was to speak a little and this Olcott and Judge and all who knew me then can testify to. I wish people saw an article I once attempted to write for theBanner of Light when instead of sanguine I put sanguinary, etc. I learned to write it through Isis, that's sure and Prof. A. Wilderwho came weekly to help Olcott arranging chapters and writingIndex can testify to it. When I had finished it (and this Isis is the third part only of what I wrote and destroyed) I could write aswell as I do now not worse not better. My memory and its capacities seem gone since then.
What wonder then that my English and the Mahatma's showsimilarity ! Olcott's and mine do also in our Americanisms thatI picked up from him these ten years. I translating mentally all from the French would not have written sceptic with a k, thoughMahat. K.H, did and when I put it with a c Olcott and Wilderand the proof reader corrected it. Now Mah. K.H. has preservedthe habit and stuck to it and I never did since I went to India.I would have never put carbolic instead of ** carbonic "—andI was the first to remark the mistake when Hume Mahatma'sletter, at Simla, in which it occurs. It is mean and stupid ofhim to publish it, for if he says, this referred to a sentence foundin some magazine then the word correctly written was there beforemy eyes or those of any chela who precipitated the letter andtherefore it is evidently a lapsus calami if there were any calamiin precipitation. " Difference in handwriting "—oh the greatwonder ! Has Master K.H. written himself all His letters? Howmany chelas have been precipitating and writing them—heavenonly knows. Now if there is such a marked difference betweenletters v^ritten by the same identical person mechanically (as thecase with me for instance who never had a steady handwriting)how much more in precipitation, which is the photographic repro-duction from one's head, and I bet anything that no chela (if Masters can) is capable of precipitating his own handwriting twiceover in precisely the same way—a difference and a marked onethere shall always be, as no painter can paint twice over the samelikeness (see Schmichen with his (Master's) portraits). Nowall this shall be easily understood by theosophists (not all) and thosewho have thought over deeply and know something of thephilosophy. Who shall believe all I say in this letter outside ofthe few? No one. And yet, I am demanded an explanation andwhen it comes out (if you write it out from facts I can give you)no one shall believe it. Yet you have to show at least one thing : occult transactions, letters handwriting etc. cannot be judged bythe daily standard, experts, this that and the other. There areno three solutions but two: Either I have invented the Masters,their philosophy, written their letters etc. or, / have not. If I have and the Masters do not exist, then their handwritings couldnot have existed, either : I have invented them also ; and if I have —how can I be called a *' forger "? They are my handwritings and I have the right to use them if I am so clever. As for philosophy and doctrine invented the S.D. shall show. Now I am here alone with the Countess for witness. I have no books no one to help me. And I tell you that the Secret Doctrine will be 20 times as learned, philosophical and better than Isis which will be killed by it. Now there are hundreds of things I am per- mitted to say and explain. It will show what a Russian spy can do, an alleged forger plagiarist etc. The whole Doctrine is shown the mother stone the foundation of all the religions including Xty and on the strength of exoteric published Hindu books with their symbols explained esoterically. The extreme lucidity of " Esoteric Buddhism " will also be shown and its doctrine proven correct mathematically, geometrically logically and scientifically. Hodgson is very clever, but he is not clever enough for truth and it shall triumph after which I can die peacefully.
Babula writing my Master's letters indeed ! Hume finding out five years later that the envelope from the municipality had been *' tampered " by me brought by Babula. What good memory his Mahomedan bearer must have, to remember that it was precisely that envelope! And Garstin's letter taken to him by Mohini 2^ hours after his letter had been placed inside and disappeared from the shrine. His letter sealed glued with every precaution bearing no such marks as now described on the night of the delivery, and now two years later, after having passed through 1000 hands, been tampered by Garstin and experts themselves, trying to see how it could have been opened—now it all goes against me ! And Hume's lies. Such Tibetan or Nepaul paper he learned could be procured near Darjeeling. Masters never wrote he said on such paper before I had gone to Darjeeling. Indeed. Now I enclose a slip of such paper for your perusal, that with your memory you are sure to recognise. It is the original bit from which the first lessons of Master were given to you and Hume in his Museum at Simla. You looked at it many times. Please when recognised send it back to me. It is private and confidential and I ask you on your honour not to let it go out of your hands not to give it to any one. No exi>ert or Orientalist would find or understand anything in it but letters which have a meaning for me for no one else. But what I want you to see and remember that I went to Darjeeling a year later after Hume had quarrelled with K.H. and this paper I had at Simla when the first lessons were begun. And all throughout the whole Report the same lies, false testimony etc.
Yours—No more broken down.
H. P. Blavatsky.
