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The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett - 1923
By A. T. Barker
Letter No IX
From K.H., first letter received on return to India, July 8th, 1881, whilestaying with Madame B. at Bombay for a few days.
Welcome good friend and brilliant author, welcome back! Your letter at hand, and I am happy to see your personal experi-ence with the " Elect" of London proved so successful. ButIforesee, that more than ever now, you will become an incarnatenote of interrogation. Beware ! If your questions are foundpremature by the powers that be, instead of receiving my answersin their pristine purity you may find them transformed into yardsof drivel. I am too far gone to feel a hand on my throat whenever trenching on the limits of forbidden topics ; not enoughtoavoid feeling myself—uncomfortably so—like a worm of yesterdaybefore our " Rock of Ages." My Cho-Khan. We must all beblind-folded before we can pass onward ; or else, we have to re-main outside.
And now, what about the book? Le quart d'heure de Rabelaisis striking, and, finds me, if not quite insolvent, yet quasitrembling at the idea that the first instalment offered may be foundbelow the mark ; the price claimed—inadequate with mypoorresources ; myself led pro bono publico to trespass beyondtheterrible—" hitherto shalt thou go, and no further," and the angrywave of the Cho-Khan's wrath swamping me blue ink and all ! Ifondly hope you will not make me lose *' my situation."
Quite so. For, I have a dim notion that you will be veryimpatient with me. I have a very clear notion that you neednotbe. It is one of the unfortunate necessities of life that imperialneeds do sometimes force one apparently to ignore the claimsoffriendship, not to violate one's word, but to put off and lay asidefor a while the too impatient expectations of neophytes asofinferior importance. One such need that I call imperial is theneed of your future welfare ; the realization of the dream dreamtby you in company with S.M. That dream—shall we call it avision?—was, that you, and Mrs. K.—why forget the Theos.Soc. ?—"are all parts of a large plan for the manifestationsof occult philosophy to the world." Yes; the time must come, and it is not far—when all of you will comprehend aright the apparently contradictory phases of such manifestations ; forced by the evidence to reconcile them. The case not being so at present, meanwhile—remember : it is because we are playing a risky game and the stakes are human souls that I ask you to possess yours in patience. Bearing in mind that I have to look after your *' Soul " and mine too, I propose to do so at whatever cost. Even at the risk of being misunderstood by you as I was by Mr. Hume. The work is made the more difficult by my being a lonely labourer in the field, and that, as long as I fail to prove to my superiors that you, at least—mean business ; that you are in right good earnest. As I am refused higher help, so will you fail to easily find help in that Society in which you move, and which you try to move. Nor will you find, for a certain time much joy in those directly concerned. Our old lady is weak and her nerves are worked to a fiddle string; so is her jaded brain. H.S.O. is far away—in exile—fighting his way back to salvation—compromised more than you imagine by his Simla indiscretions—and establish- ing theosoph. schools. Mr. Hume—who once promised to be- come a champion fighter in that Battle of Light against Darkness —now preserves a kind of armed neutrality wondrous to behold. Having made the mirific discovery that we are a body of anti- diluvian Jesuits of fossiles—self-crowned with oratorial flourishes, he rested but to accuse us of intercepting his letters to H.P.B. ! However, he finds some comfort by thinking " what a jolly argument he shall have elsewhere (Angel Linnean ornithological Society, perhaps) with the entity which is represented by the name Koothoomi." Verily has our very intellectual, once mutual friend, a flood of words at his command which would suffice to float a troop ship of oratorious fallacies. Nevertheless—I respect him. . . . But who next? C. C. Massey? But then he is the hapless parent of about half a dozen of illegitimate brats. He is a most charming, devoted friend ; a profound mystic ; a generous, noble-minded man, a gentleman—as they say—every inch of him ; tried as gold ; every requisite for a student of occultism, but none for an adept, my good friend. Be it as it may, his secret is his own, and I have no right to divulge it. Dr. Wyld?—a christian to the back-bone. Hood?—a sweet nature, as you say ; a dreamer, and an idealist in mystic matters, yet—no worker. S. Moses? Ah ! here we are. S.M. has nearly upset the theosoph. ark set afloat three years back : and, he will do his level best to do it over again—our Imperator notwithstanding. You doubt? Listen.
His is a weird, rare nature. His occult psychical energies are tremendous ; but they have lain dormant, folded up within him and unknown to himself, when, some eight years or so, Imperatorthrew his eye upon him and bid his spirit soar. Since then, a newlife has been in him, a dual existence, but his nature could notbe changed. Brought up as a theological Student, his mind wasdevoured by doubts. Earher, he betook himself to Mount Athos,where, immuring himself in a monastery, he studied GreekEastern religion, and it is there that he was first noticed byhis'* Spirit guide " ( ! !) Of course, Greek casuistry failed to solvehis doubts, and he hurried on to Rome,—popery satisfying himaslittle. From thence he wandered to Germany with the samenegative results. Giving up dry christian theology he did not giveup its presumable founder with all that. He needed an ideal andhe found it in the latter. For him Jesus is a reality, a onceembodied, now a disembodied Spirit, who, " furnished him withan evidence of his personal identity "—he thinks,—in no lessadegree than other ** Spirits "—Imperator among the rest—have.Nevertheless, neither the religions of Jesus nor yet his words,asrecorded in the Bible and believed by S.M. authentic—are fullyaccepted by that restless Spirit of his. Imperator, on whomthesame fate devolved later on, fares no better. His mind is toopositive. Once impressed it becomes easier to efface charactersengraved upon titanium than impressions made upon his brain.
Whenever under the influence of Imperator—he is all alivetothe realities of Occultism, and the superiority of our Science overSpiritualism. As soon as left alone and under the perniciousguidance of those he firmly believes having identified with dis-embodied Souls—all becomes confusion again ! His mind willyield to no suggestions, no reasonings but his own, and thoseareall for Spiritualistic theories. When the old theological fettershad dropped off, he imagined himself a free man. Some monthslater he became the humble slave and tool of the ** Spirits " ! Itis but when standing face to face with his inner Self that herealizes the truth that there is something higher and nobler thanthe prittle-prattle of pseudo Spirits. It was at such a momentthat he heard for the first the voice of Imperator, and it was,ashe himself puts it : "as the voice. of God speaking to his innerSelf." That voice has made itself familiar to him for years, andyet he very often heeds it not. A simple query : Were Imper.what he believes, nay—knows him to be, he thinks,—wouldnothe have made S.M.'s will completely subservient to his ownbythis time? Alone the adepts, i.e. the embodied spirits—are for-bidden by our wise and intransgressible laws to completely subjectto themselves another and weaker will, —that of free born man.The latter mode of proceeding is the favourite one resortedtoby the " Brothers of the Shadow," the Sorcerers, the ElementarySpooks, and as an isolated exception—by the highest Planetary Spirits, those, who can no longer err. But these appear on Earth but at the origin of every new human kind ; at the junction of, and close of, the two ends of the great cycle. And, they re- main with man no longer than the time required for the eternal truths they teach to impress themselves so forcibly upon the plastic mind of the new races as to warrant them from being lost or entirely forgotten in ages hereafter ; by the forthcoming generations. The mission of the planetary Spirit is but to strike the Key-Note of Truth. Once he has directed the vibration of the latter to run its course uninterruptedly along the catenation of that race and to the end of the cycle—the denizen of the highest in- habited sphere disappears from the surface of our planet—till the following " resurrection of flesh." The vibrations of the Primitive Truth are what your philosophers name " innate ideas."
ive Truth are what your philosophers name " innate ideas." Imperator, then, had repeatedly told him that " in occultism alone he should seek for, and will find a phase of truth not yet known to him." But that did not prevent S.M. at all from turn- ing his back upon occultism whenever a theory of it clashed with one of his own preconceived Spiritualistic ideas. To him mediumship appeared as the Charter of his Soul's freedom, as resurrection from Spiritual death. He had been allowed to enjoy it only so far as it was necessary for the confirmation of his faith ; promised that the abnormal would yield to the normal ; ordered to prepare for the time when the Self within him will become conscious of its spiritual, independent existence, will act and talk face to face with its Instructor, and will lead its life in Spiritual Spheres normally and without external or internal mediumship at all. And yet once conscious of what he terms " external Spirit action " he recognised no more hallucination from truth, the false from the real : confounding at times Elementals and Elementaries, embodied from disembodied Spirits, though he had been oft enough told of, and warned against " those spirits that hover about the Earth's sphere"—by his "Voice of God." With all that he firmly believes to have invariably acted under Imper's direction, and that such spirits as have come to him came by his " guide's " permission. In such a case H.P.B. was there by Imper's consent? and how do you reconcile the following contradictions. Ever since 1876, acting under direct orders, she tried to awaken him to the reality of what was going on around and in him. That she must have acted either according to or against Imper's will—he must know, as in the latter case she might boast of being stronger, more powerful than his ** guide " who never yet protested against the intrusion? Now, what happens? Writing to her from Isle of Wight, in 1876, of a vision lasting for over 48 consecutive hours he had, and during which he walked about, talked as usual, but did not preserve the slightest remem- brance of anything external, he asks her to tell him whetheritwas a vision or a hallucination. Why did he not ask +I-R?** You can tell me for you were there/' he says. ..."You—changed, yet yourself—if you have a Self. ... I supposeyou have, but into that I do not pry." ... At another timehe saw her in his own library looking at him, approaching, andgiving him some masonic signs of the Lodge he knows. Headmits that he " saw her as clearly as he saw Massey—whowasthere." He saw her on several other occasions, and sometimesknowing it was H.P.B. he could not recognise her. " You seemto me from your appearance as from your letters so different attimes, the mental attitudes so various that it is quite conceivableto me, as I am authoritatively told, that you are a bundleofEntities. ... I have absolute faith in you." In every letterof his he clamoured for a " living Brother " to her unequivocalstatement that there was one already having charge of him, hestrongly objected. When helped to get free from his too materialbody, absent from it for hours and days sometimes his emptymachine run during that period from afar and by external, livinginfluence, —as soon as back, he would begin labouring under theirradicable impression of having been all that time the vehicle foranother intelligence, a disembodied not embodied Spirit, truthnever once flashing across his mind. " Imperator," he wrotetoher, ** traverses your idea about mediumship. He says thereshould be no real antagonism between the medium and the adept."Had he used the word *' Seer " instead of " medium " the ideawould have been rendered more correctly, for a man becomesrarely an adept without being born a natural Seer. Then again.In September, 1875, he knew nothing of the Brothers of theShadow—our greatest, most cruel, and—why not confess it—ourmost potential Enemies. In that year he actually asked the oldlady whether Bulwer had been eating underdone pork chops anddreaming when he described ** that hideous Dweller of theThreshold." " Make yourself ready," she answered—" in abouttwelve months more you will have to face and fight with them."In October, 1876, they had begun their work upon him. " I amfighting "—he wrote—" a hand to hand battle with all the legionsof the Fiend for the past three weeks my nights are made hideouswith their torments, temptations and foul suggestions. I seethem all around glaring at me, gabbling, howling, grinning! Every form of filthy suggestion, of bewildering doubt, of madandshuddering fear is upon me—I can understand Zanoni's Dwellernow—I have not wavered yet—and their temptations are fainter,the presence less near, the horror less. .
One night she had prostrated herself before her Superior, oneof the few things they fear, praying him to wave his hand across the ocean, lest wS.M. should die, and the Theos. Soc. lose its best subject. " He must be tried " was the answer. He imagines that + Imper. had sent the tempters because he S.M. was one of those Thomases who must see; he would not believe that + could not help their coming. Watch over him he did—he could not drive them away unless the victim, the neophyte himself, proved the strongest. But did these human fiends in league with the Elementaries prepare him for a new life as he thought they would ? Embodiments of those adverse influences which beset the inner Self struggling to be free and to progress, they would never have returned had he successfully conquered them by asserting his own independent will, by giving up his mediumship, his passive will. Yet they did.
You say of 1 " Imperator—is certainly not his (S.M.'s) astral soul, and assuredly, also, he is not from a lower world than our own—not an earth-bound Spirit." No one ever said he was anything of the kind. H.P.B. never told you he was S.M.'s astral soul, but that what he often mistook for 4- was his own higher Self, his divine atma—not linga Sarira or astral Soul, or the Kama rupa the independent doppelganger—again. + cannot contradict himself; -}- cannot be ignorant of the truth, so often misrepresented by S.M. ; + cannot preach the occult Sciences and then defend mediumship, not even in that highest form described by his pupil. Mediumship is abnormal. When in further development the abnormal has given way to the natural, the controls are shaken off, and passive obedience is no longer required, then the medium learns to use his will, to exercise his own power, and be- comes an adept. The process is one of development and the neophyte has to go to the end. As long as he is subject to occasional trance—he cannot be an adept. S.M. passes the two-thirds of his life in Trance.
To your question—Is Imperator " a Planetary Spirit " and " may a Planetary Spirit have been humanly incarnated? " I will first say that there can be no Planetary Spirit that was not once material or what you call human. When our great Buddha—the patron of all the adepts, the reformer and the codifier of the occult system, reached first Nirvana on earth, he became a ** Planetary Spirit " ; i.e. —his spirit could at one and the same time rove the interstellar spaces in full consciousness, and continue at will on Earth in his original and individual body. For the divine Self had so completely disfranchised itself from matter that it could create at will an inner substitute for itself, and leaving it in the human form for days, weeks, sometimes years, afi^ect in no wise by the change either the vital principle or the physical mind of its body. By the way that is the highest form of adeptship man can hope for on our planet. But it is as rare as the Buddahs themselves, the last Khobilgan who reached it being Sang-Ko-Pa of Kokonor(XIV Century), the reformer of esoteric as well as of vulgarLamaism. Many are those who "break through the egg-shell,"few who, once out are able to exercise their Nirira namastakafully, when completely out of the body. Conscious life in Spiritis as difficult for some natures as swimming, is for some bodies.Though the human frame is lighter in its bulk than water, andthat every person is born with the faculty, so few develop in themselves the art of treading water that death by drowning is themost frequent of accidents. The planetary Spirit of that kind (theBuddah like) can pass at will into other bodies—of more or lessetherialised matter, inhabiting other regions of the universe.There are many other grades and orders, but there is no separateand eternally constituted order of Planetary Spirits. WhetherIniperator is a ** planetary " embodied or disembodied, whetherhe is an adept in flesh or out of it, I am not at liberty to say, anymore than he would himself be to tell S.M. who I am, or maybe,or even who H.P.B. is. If he himself chooses to be silent on thatsubject S.M. has no right to ask me. But then our friend, S.M.ought to know. Nay : he firmly believes he does. For in hisintercourse with that personage there came a time when not satisfied with -'r assurances, or content to respect his wishes that he,Imperator & Co. should remain impersonal and unknown savebytheir assumed titles, S.M. wrestled with him, Jacob like, formonths on the point of that spirit's identity. He was the Biblicalflim-flam all over again. ** I pray thee tell me thy name "—andthough answered : ** Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after myname? "—what's in a name? He allowed S.M. to label himlikea portmanteau. And so, he is at rest now, for he has ** seen Godface to face ' ' ; who, after wrestling, and seeing that he prevailednot, said ** let me go " and was forced to come to the termsoffered by Jacob. S. Moses. I strongly advise you for your owninformation to put that question to your friend. Why shouldhebe " anxiously awaiting " my reply, since he knows all about -f ?Did not that ** Spirit " tell him a story one day,—a queer story,something what he may not divulge about himself and forbid himever mentioning it? What more does he want? The fact, thathe seeks to learn through me the true nature of + , is a prettygood proof in itself that he is not as sure of his identity ashebelieves he is, or rather would make believe he is. Or is thequestion a blind?—which?
I I may answer you, what I said to G. H. Fechner? one day,when he wanted to know the Hindoo view on what he had written" You are right;—every diamond, every crystal, every plant andstar has its own individual soul, besides man and animal—" and," there is a hierarchy of souls fiom the lowest forms of matter up to the World Soul "; but you are mistaken when adding to the above the assurance that " the spirits of the departed hold direct psychic communication with Souls that are still connected with a human body—for, they do not." The relative position of the inhabited worlds in our Solar System would alone preclude such a possibility. For I trust you have given up the queer idea —a natural result of early Xtian training—that there can possibly be human intelligences inhabiting purely spiritual regions? You will then as readily understand the fallacy of the christians —who would burn immaterial in a material physical hell—as the mistake of the more educated spiritualists, who lullaby themselves with the thought that any other but the denizens of the two worlds immediately interlinked with our own can possibly communicate with them? However etherial and purified of gross matter they may be, the pure Spirits are still subject to the physical and uni- versal laws of matter. They cannot if even they would span the abyss that separates their worlds from ours. They can he visited in Spirit, their Spirit cannot descend and reach us. They attract, they cannot be attracted, their Spiritual polarity being an insuperable difficulty in the way. (By-the-bye you must not trust Isis literally. The book is but a tentative effort to divert the attention of the Spiritualists from their preconceptions to the true state of things. The author was made to hint and point out the true direction, to say what things are not, not what they are. Proof readers helping, a few real mistakes have crept in as on page i, chapter i, volume i, where divine Essence is made emanating from Adam instead of the reverse.)
Once fairly started upon that subject ; I will endeavour to explain to you still clearer where lies the impossibility. You will thus be answered in regard to both Planetary Spirits and—seance room ** Spirits.'*
The cycle of intelligent existences commences at the highest worlds or planets—the term " highest " meaning here the most spiritually perfect. Evoluting from cosmic matter—which is akasa, the primeval not the secondary plastic medium, or Ether of Science instinctively suspected, unproven as the rest—man first evolutes from this matter in its most sublimated state, appearing at the threshold of Eternity as a perfectly Etherial— not Spiritual Entity, say—a Planetary Spirit. He is but one remove from the universal and Spiritual World Essence—the Anima Mundi of the Greeks, or that which humanity in its spiritual decadence has degraded into a mythical personal God. Hence, at that stage, the Spiritman is at best an active Power, an immutable, therefore, an unthinking Principle (the term " immutable " being again used here but to denote that state for the time being, the immutability applying here but to the inner principle which will vanish and disappear as soon as the speckof the material in him will start on its cyclic work of Evolutiorand transformation). In his subsequent descent, and in proportion of the increase of matter he will assert more and morehisactivity. Now, the congeries of the star-worlds (includingouiown planet inhabited by intelligent beings may be likened toarorb or rather an epicycloid formed of rings like a chain—worldsinter-linked together, the totaHty representing an imaginary,endless ring, or circle. The progress of man throughout the whole—from its starting to its closing points meeting on the highestpoint of its circumference—is what we call the Maha YugoiGreat Cycle, the Kuklos, whose head is lost in a crown of AbsoluteSpirit, and its lowset point of circumference in absolute matter—to viz. the point of cessation of action of the active principle.IJusing a more familiar term we call the Great Cycle the Macrokosm and its component parts or the inter-linked star worldsMicrokosms, the occultists' meaning in representing each ofthelatter as perfect copies of the former will become evident. TheGreat is the Prototype of the smaller cycles : and as such,eaclstar world has in its turn its own cycle of Evolution whichstartswith a purer and ends with a grosser or more material nature,As they descend, each world presents itself naturally moreancmore shadowy, becoming at the ** antipodes " absolute matter,Propelled by the irresistible cyclic impulse the Planetary Spiriihas to descend before he can reascend. On his way he hastcpass through the whole ladder of Evolution, missing no rung,tchalt at every star world as he would at a station ; and, besidestheunavoidable cycle of that particular and every respectivestaiworld to perform in it his own ** life cycle " to, viz. —returningand reincarnating as many times as 'he fails to complete his rouncof life in it, as he dies on it before reaching the age of reasonascorrectly stated in Isis. Thus far Mrs. Kingsford's idea thatthehuman Ego is being reincarnated in several successive humarbodies is the true one. As to its being reborn " in animalformsafter human incarnation it is the result of her loose wayofex-pressing things and ideas. Another woman—all over againWhy, she confounds " Soul and Spirit," refuses to discriminatebetween the animal and the spiritual Egos the ]iv-atma (or LingaSharir) and the Kama-Rupa (or Atma-Rupa), two as differenthings as body and mind, and^mmd and thought are ! Thatiiwhat happens. After circling, so to say, along the arc ofthecycle, circling along and within it (the daily and yearly rotatiorof the Earth is as good an illustration as any) when the Spirit-marreaches our planet, which is one of the lowest, having lost at ever}station some of the etherial and acquired an increase of materianature, both spirit and matter have become pretty muchequi librized in him. But then, he has the Earth's cycle to perform; and, as in the process of involution and evolution downward, matter is ever striving to stifle spirit, when arrived to the lowest point of his pilgrimage, the once pure Planetary Spirit will be found dwindled to—what Science agrees to call a primitive or Primordial man—amidst a nature as primordial—speaking geologically, for physical nature keeps pace with the physiological as well as the spiritual man in her cyclic career. At that point the great Law begins its work of selection. Matter found entirely divorced from spirit is thrown over into the still lower worlds— into the sixth ** Gate " or ** way of rebirth " of the vegetable and mineral worlds, and of the primitive animal forms. From thence, matter ground over in the workshop of nature proceeds soulless back to its Mother Fount ; while the Egos purified of their dross are enabled to resume their progress once more onward. It is here, then, that the laggard Egos perish by the millions. It is the solemn moment of the " survival of the fittest,'* the annihilation of those unfit. It is but matter (or material man) which is compelled by its own weight to descend to the very bottom of the "circle of necessity" to there assume animal form; as to the winner of that race throughout the worlds—the Spiritual Ego, he will ascend from star to star, from one world to another, circling onward to rebecome the once pure planetary Spirit, then higher still, to finally reach its first starting point, and from thence —to merge into mystery. No adept has ever penetrated beyond the veil of primitive Kosmic matter. The highest, the most perfect vision is limited to the universe of Form and Matter.
But my explanation does not end here. We want to know why it is deemed supremely difficult if not utterly impossible for pure disembodied Spirits to communicate with men through mediums or Phantomosophy. I say, because : —
(a) On account of the antagonistic atmospheres respectively surrounding these worlds ;
(h) Of the entire dissimilarity of physiological and spiritual conditions ; and—
(c) Because that chain of worlds I have just been telling you about, is not only an epicycloid but an elliptical orbit of existences, having, as every ellipse, not one but two points—two focij which can never approach each other ; Man being at one focus of it and pure Spirit at the other.
To this you might object. I can neither help it, nor change the fact, but there is still another and far mightier impediment. Like a rosary composed of white and black beads alternating with each other, so that concatenation of worlds is made up of worlds of causes and worlds of effects, the latter—the direct result pro- duced by the former. Thus it becomes evident that every sphere
of Causes and our earth is one—is not only inter-linked with,andsurrounded by, but actually separated from its nearest neighbour—the higher sphere of Causality—by an impenetrable atmosphere(in its spiritual sense) of effects bordering on, and even inter-linking, never mixing with—the next sphere ; for one is active,the other—passive, the world of causes positive, that of effects—negative. This passive resistance can be overcome but underconditions, of which your most learned spiritualists have notthefaintest idea. All movement is, so to say polar. It is verydiffi-cult to convey my meaning to you at this point ; but I will gotothe end. I am aware of my failure to bring before you these—tous—axiomatical truths—in any other form but that of a simplelogical postulate—if so much—they being capable of absoluteandunequivocal demonstration, but to the highest Seers. But,I'llgive you food for thought if nothing else.
The intermediary spheres, being but the projected shadowsofthe Worlds of Causes—are negatived by the last. They arethegreat halting places, the stations in which the new Self-ConsciousEgos to be—the Self-begotten progeny of the old and disembodiedEgos of our planet—are gestated. Before the new phoenix,re-born of the ashes of its parent can soar higher, to a better, morespiritual, and perfect world—still a world of matter—it hastopass through the process of a new birth, so to say ; and, as onourearth, where the two-thirds of infants are either still-born ordiein infancy, so in our ** worlds of effects." On earth it is still thephysiological and mental defects, the sins of the progenitors whichare visited upon the issue : in that land of shadows, the newandyet unconscious Ego—foetus becomes the just victim of the trans-gressions of its old Self, whose karma—merit and demerit—willalone weave out its future destiny. In that world, mygoodfriend, we find but unconscious, self-acting, ex-human machines,souls in their transition state, whose dormant faculties andindi-viduality lie as a butterfly in its chrysalis ; and Spiritualists wouldyet have them talk sense ! Caught at times, into the vortexofthe abnormal '* mediumistic " current, they become the unconscious echoes of thoughts and ideas crystallized around thosepresent. Every positive, well-directed mind is capableofneutralizing such secondary effects in a seance room. Theworldbelow ours is worse yet. The former is harmless at least ; itismore sinned against by being disturbed, than sinning ; the latterallowing the retention of full consciousness as being a hundredfold more material, is positively dangerous. The notions ofhelland purgatory, of paradise and resurrections are all caricatured,distorted echoes of the primeval one Truth, taught humanityinthe infancy of its races by every First Messenger—the Planetary Spirit mentioned on the reverse of page the third—^aod whose remembrance lingered in the memory of man, as EIu of the Chaldees, Osiris the Egyptian, Vishnu, the first Buddahs and so on.
The lower world of effects is the sphere of such distorted Thoughts ; of the most sensual conceptions, and pictures ; of anthropomorphic deities, the out-creations of their creators, the sensual human minds of people who have never out-grown their brutehood on earth. Remembering thoughts are things—have tenacity, coherence, and life, that they are real entities—the rest will become plain. Disembodied, the creator is attracted naturally to its creation and creatures ; sucked in—by the Maelstrom dug out by his own hands. . . . But I must pause, for volumes would hardly suffice to explain all that was said by me in this letter.
In reference to your wonder that the views of the three mystics '* are far from being identical," what does the fact prove? Were they instructed by disembodied, pure, and wise Spirits—even by those of one remove from our earth on the higher plane—would not the teachings be identical? the question arising: ** May not Spirits as well as men differ in ideas? " Well, then, their teach- ing—aye—of the highest of them since they are the ** guides " of the three great London Seers—will not be more authoritative than those of mortal men. ** But, they may belong to different spheres ? * ' Well ; if in the different spheres contradictory doctrines are propounded, these doctrines cannot contain the Truth, for Truth is One, and cannot admit of diametrically opposite views ; and pure Spirits who see it as it is with the veil of matter entirely withdrawn from it—cannot err. Now, if we allow of different aspects or portions of the Whole Truth being visible to different agencies or intelligences, each under various conditions, as for example various portions of the one landscape develop themselves to various persons, at various distances and from various standpoints—if we admit the fact of various or different agencies (individual Brothers for instance) endeavouring to de- velop the Egos of different individuals, without subjecting entirely their wills to their own (as it is forbidden) but by availing themselves of their physical, moral, and intellectual idiosyncracies ; if we add to this the countless cosmical influences which distort and deflect all efforts to achieve definite purposes : if we remember, moreover, the direct hostility of the Brethren of the Shadow always on the watch to perplex and haze the neophyte's brain, I think we shall have no difficulty in understanding how even a definite spiritual advance may to a certain extent lead different individuals to apparently different conclusions and theories.
Having confessed to you, that I had no right to interfere with Imperator's secrets and plans, I must say that so far, however, he has proved the wisest of us. Had our policy been the same,had I, for instance allowed you to infer and then believe (withoutstating- anything positive myself) that I was a *' disembodiedangel "—a Spirit of pellucid electroidal essence, from the SuperStellar phantasmatical zone—we would both be happier. You—you would not have worried your head as to " whether agenciesof that sort will always remain necessary ' ' and I —wouldnotfind myself under the disagreeable necessity of having to refusea friend a ** personal interview and direct communication." Youmight have implicitly believed anything coming from me; andIwould have felt less responsible for you before my '* guides."However, time will show what may or may not be done in thatdirection. The book is out, and we have to patiently waitforthe results of that first serious shot at the enemy. Art magicandIsis emanating from women and as it was believed Spiritualists—could never hope for a serious hearing. Its effects will at firstbe disastrous enough, for the gun will recoil and the shotre-bounding will strike the author and his humble hero, who arenotlikely to flinch. But it will also graze the old lady, revivinginthe Anglo-Indian press last year's outcry. The Hersites andliterary Phihstines will go hard to work, the flings, squibs andcoups de bee falling thick upon her—though aimed at you aloneas the Editor of the Pioneer is far from being beloved byhiscolleagues of India, Spiritualistic papers have already openedthecampaign in London and the Yankee editors of the Organsof" Angels " will follow suit, the heavenly " Controls " ejaculatingtheir choicest scandalum magnatum. Some men of science—leastof all their admirers—the parasites who bask in the sun anddream they are themselves that sun—are not likely to forgiveyou the sentence—really much too flattering—which rangesthecomprehension of a poor, unknown Hindoo " So far beyondthescience and philosophy of Europe, that only the broadest mindedrepresentatives of either will be able to realize the existenceofsuch powers in man, etc." But what of that? It was all fore-seen and was to be expected. When the first hum and dingdong of adverse criticism is hushed, thoughtful men will readand ponder over the book, as they have never pondered overthemost scientific efforts of Wallace and Crookes to reconcile modernscience with Spirits, and—the little seed will grow and thrive.
In the meantime I do not forget my promises to you. Assoonas installed in your sleeping chamber I will try and^ ....I hope to be permitted to do so much for you. If, for generations we have ** shut out the world from the Knowledge of ourKnowledge," it is on account of its absolute unfitness; andif notwithstanding- proofs given, it still refuses yielding to evidence, then will we at the End of this cycle retire into solitude and our kingdom of silence once more. . . . We have offered to exhume the primeval strata of man's being, his basic nature, and lay bare the wonderful complications of his inner Self—something never to be achieved by physiology or even psychology in its ultimate expression—and demonstrate it scientifically. It matters not to them, if the excavations be so deep, the rocks so rough and sharp, that in diving into that, to them, fathomless ocean, most of us perish in the dangerous exploration ; for it is we who were the divers and the pioneers and the men of science have but to reap where we have sown. It is our mission to plunge and bring the pearls of Truth to the surface ; theirs—to clean and set them into scientific jewels. And, if they refuse to touch the ill- shapen, oyster-shell, insisting that there is, nor cannot be any precious pearl inside it, then shall we once more wash our hands of any responsibility before human-kind. For countless generations hath the adept builded a fane of imperishable rocks, a giant's Tower of Infinite Thought, wherein the Titan dwelt, and will yet, if need be, dwell alone, emerging from it but at the end of every cycle, to invite the elect of mankind to co-operate with him and help in his turn enlighten superstitious man. And we will go on in that periodical work of ours ; we will not allow ourselves to be baffled in our philanthropic attempts until that day when the foundations of a new continent of thought are so firmly built that no amount of opposition and ignorant malice guided by the Brethren of the Shadow will be found to prevail.
But until that day of final triumph someone has to be sacrificed —though we accept but voluntary victims. The ungrateful task did lay her low and desolate in the ruins of misery, misapprehension, and isolation : but she will have her reward in the hereafter for we never were ungrateful. As regards the Adept—not one of my kind, good friend, but far higher—you might have closed your book with those lines of Tennyson's ** Wakeful Dreamer "—you knew him not—
" How could ye know him? Ye were yet within The narrower circle ; he had well nigh reached The last, which, with a region of white flame, Pure without heat into a larger air Up-burning, and an ether of black blue. Invests and ingirds all other lives.
I'll close. Remember then on the 17th of July and^ . . . , to you will become the sublimest of realities. Farewell.
Sincerely yours, K. H.
