A Document Not Included in the
Initial Editions of The Mahatma Letters
Initial Editions of The Mahatma Letters
A Master of the Wisdom
Allan Octavian Hume (1829-1912) and the “Combined Chronology”
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A 2021 Editorial Note:
The following Letter from a Mahatma is
reproduced from “Combined Chronology for
‘The Letters of H.P. Blavatsky to A.P. Sinnett’”, by
pp. 28-38. It is also published at “The Mahatma Letters
Most of this Letter from Master K.H. can be found in the
book “The Occult World”, by Alfred P. Sinnett, pp. 85-95.
We reproduce the introductory Note by Grace F.
Knoche, published in the “Combined Chronology”.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
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NOTE BY GRACE F. KNOCHE
The original of
this letter is not extant, although the major portion of it did appear in The
Occult World. Why it was omitted in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
is not known. We can only suppose that the copy that Patience Sinnett had made
of it was not to hand when Trevor Barker was transcribing the Mahatma letters,
otherwise he undoubtedly would have included it in his published volume. It
follows K. H.’s letter of October 29 (1880) to Mr. Sinnett (Mahatma Letters, Letter IV).
We reproduce the letter in its entirety, checked
against Mrs. Sinnett’s handwritten copy in the British Museum (Mahatma Papers,
Vol. VII, Additional MS. 45289 B). The copy is liberally blue pencilled,
indicating A.P.S.’s editing prior to publication, and in three places several
sentences deleted - appropriately so at the time. As stated, the text used here
is verbatim with Patience Sinnett’s copy.
It is of note that despite later difficulties which
ended in the final breach between Mr. Hume and the Brothers, his “first letter
was so sincere, its spirit so promising, the possibilities it opened for doing
general good seemed so great, that… I carried it to our venerable Chief” (K.H.
to A.O.H., Mahatma Letters, p. 210).
(Grace F. Knoche)
First Letter of K.H. to A.O. Hume
Amritsur Nov. 1st
[1880]
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 to a remote past, we have
a love for our motherland so deep and passionate, that it has survived even the
broadening and cosmopolitanizing (pardon me if this is not an English word)
effect of our studies in the hidden 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 convinced that the
degradation of India is largely due to the suffocation of her ancient
spirituality; and that, whatever helps restore that higher standard of thought
and morals must be a regenerating national force; every one 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 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, can not 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-Indian Branch. We know it would be a
good thing to have you and a few of your selected 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 school boy’s copybook, though it sounds
so, but only the clumsy statement of the law of our order; and we can not
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 ideas 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 Paris Daumont drawn
by a team of Indian yaks or camels. You ask us to teach you true Science, the
occult aspect of the known side of nature: and this you think can be as easily
done as asked. You do not seem to realize the tremendous difficulties in the
way of imparting even the rudiments of our Science to those who have
been trained in the familiar methods of yours. You do not see that the
more you have of the one the less capable you are of intuitively comprehending
the other, for a man can only think in his worn grooves, and unless he has the
courage to fill up these and make new ones for himself he must perforce travel
on the old lines. Allow me a few instances.
In conformity with exact modern Science you would
define but one cosmic energy, and see no difference between the energy expended
by the traveller who pushes aside the bush that obstructs his path, and the
scientific experimenter who expends an equal amount of energy in setting a
pendulum in motion! We do. For we know there is a world of difference between
the two. The one uselessly dissipates or scatters force, the other concentrates
and stores it. And here please understand that I do not refer to the relative
utility of the two as one might imagine; but only to the fact, that in the one
case, there is but brute force flung out without any transmutation of that
brute energy into the higher potential form of spiritual dynamics, and, in the
other there is just that. Please do not consider me vaguely metaphysical. The
idea I wish to convey is, that the result of the highest intellection in the
scientifically occupied brain is the evolution of a sublimated form of
spiritual energy, which, in the cosmic action, is productive of illimitable
results, while the automatically acting brain holds or stores up in itself only
a certain quantum of brute force that is unfruitful of benefit for the individual
or humanity. The human brain is an exhaustless generator of the most refined
quality of cosmic force, out of the low, brute energy of nature; and the
complete adept has made himself a centre from which irradiate potentialities
that beget correlations upon correlations through Aeons to come. This is the
key to the mystery of his being able to project into and materialise in the
visible world the forms that his imagination has constructed out of inert
cosmic matter in the invisible world. The adept does not create anything new,
but only utilises and manipulates materials which nature has in store around
him; a material which throughout eternities has passed through all the forms;
he has but to choose the one he wants and recall it into objective existence.
Would not this sound to one of your “learned” biologists like a madman’s dream?
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 -
often out of mere politeness - 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 and 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
every one and everything, or more bound to nothing, but the selfish requisites
for its advancement than this materialistic and realistic science of fact? May
I not ask then without being taxed with a vain “display of science” what have
the laws of Faraday, Tyndall, or others to do with philanthropy in their
abstract relations with humanity viewed as an integral whole? What care they
for MAN as an isolated atom of this great and harmonious Whole, even though
they may sometimes be 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
world of experimenters, that nature consciously prefers that matter should be
indestructible under organic rather than under 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 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 and
nervous organisation 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 accumulate, each in their 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 the 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 methods, 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 but transcendental
(hence absurd?) notion of the mediaeval theosophists 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’s energy - in its capacity of a
direct motor - shall result in the evolution of nutritious food out of
inorganic matter - is unthinkable for men of science. Were the sun, the great
nourishing father of our planetary System, to hatch granite chickens out of a
boulder “under test conditions” tomorrow, they (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, to make him confess what granary he had robbed.
This is exact science and your realistic world. And 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
generalized 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. You cause a waste of cosmic energy by
tons, to accumulate hardly a few ounces in your volumes - to speak
figuratively. And despite your intuitive perceptions of the boundless reaches
of nature, you take up the position that unless a proficient in arcane
knowledge will waste upon your embryonic Society an energy which without moving
from his place he can usefully distribute among millions, you, with your great
natural powers will refuse to give a helping hand to humanity by beginning the
work single handed, and trusting to time and the great Law to reward your
labour. [1]
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 could 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 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, and the benign or
hostile influences 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 India, Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome. But, as I remarked
in a letter to Mr. Sinnett, the adept is the efflorescence of his age, and
comparatively few ever appear in a single century. Earth is the battle ground
of moral no less than of physical forces; and the boisterousness of animal
passions under the stimulus of the rude energies of the lower group of etheric
agents, always tends to quench spirituality.
What else could one expect of men so nearly related to
the lower kingdom from which they evolved? True also, our numbers are just now
diminishing but this is because, as I have said, we are of the human race,
subject to its cyclic impulse and powerless to turn that back upon itself. Can
you turn the Gunga or the Brahmaputra back to its sources; can you even dam it
so that its piled up waters will not overflow the banks? No, but you may draw
the stream partly into canals and utilize its hydraulic power for the good of
mankind. So we, who can not stop the world from going in its destined
direction, are yet able to divert some part of its energy into useful channels.
Think of us as demi-gods and my explanation will not satisfy you; view us as
simple men - perhaps a little wiser as the result of special study - and it
ought to answer your objection.
“What good”, say you, “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 India in their ancestral science and philosophies, they will
themselves take openly to their study. And when they come to realise that the
old “divine” phenomena were not miracles, but scientific effects, superstition
will abate. Thus the greatest evil that now oppresses and retards the
revival of Indian civilisation will in time disappear. The present tendency of
education is to make them materialistic and root out spirituality. With a
proper understanding of what their ancestors meant by their writings and
teachings, education would become a blessing whereas now it is often a curse.
At present the non-educated as much as the learned natives regard the English
as too prejudiced, because of their Christian religion and modern science, to
care to understand them or their traditions. They mutually hate and mistrust each
other. This changed attitude toward the older philosophy would influence the
native Princes and wealthy men to endow normal schools for the education of
pundits; and old MSS. hitherto buried out of the reach of the Europeans would
again come to light, and with them the key to much of that which was hidden for
ages from the popular understanding; for which your skeptical Sanscritists do
not care, which your religious missionaries do not dare, to understand.
Science would gain much - humanity every thing. Under the stimulus of the Anglo
Indian Theosophical Society, we might in time see another golden age of
Sanscrit literature. Such a movement would have the entire approbation of the
Home Government as it would act as a preventive against discontent; and the
sympathy of European Sanscritists who, in their divisions of opinion need the
help of native pundits, now beyond their reach in the present state of mutual
misunderstanding. They are even now bidding for such help. At this moment two
educated Hindus of Bombay are assisting Max Müller; and a young Pundit of
Guzerat a Fellow of the T.S. is aiding Prof. Monier Williams at Oxford and
living in his house. The first two are materialists and do harm; the latter
single handed can do little, because the man whom he is serving is a prejudiced
Christian. [2]
If we look to Ceylon we shall see the most scholarly
priests combining under the lead of the Theos. 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 300 scholars: an example about to be imitated at three other
points in that island. If the T.S. “as at present constituted”, has indeed no
“real vitality” and yet in its modest way has done so much of practical good,
how much greater results might not be anticipated from a body organized upon
the better plan you could suggest!
The same causes that are materialising the Hindu mind
are equally affecting all Western thought. Education enthrones skepticism but
imprisons spiritualism. You can do immense good by helping to give the Western
nations a secure basis upon which to reconstruct their crumbling faith. 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 enquiry is here. Enquiry 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 can
not 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 toward extreme atheism, or
drag it back to extreme sacerdotalism, if it is not led to the primitive and
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 free thinkers, 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 the strongest proof of their faith in miracles.
The skeptics make game of both. All are blind and there is no one to lead them!
You and your colleagues may help 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 skepticism, 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. [3] You have personally devoted
many years to a labour benevolently conceived and conscientiously carried out.
Give to your fellow creatures half the attention you have bestowed on your “little
birds”, and you will round off a useful life with a grand and noble work.
Sincerely your friend
[K.H.]
NOTES:
[1] The last several
lines of this paragraph were omitted in “The Occult World”. (Note from
“Combined Chronology”)
[2] The last several
lines of this paragraph were omitted in “The Occult World”. (Note from
“Combined Chronology”)
[3] In “The Occult World”, the letter
ends here. (Note from “Combined Chronology”)
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The above text was
published in the associated websites on 18 August 2021.
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Helena Blavatsky (photo) wrote these words: “Deserve, then desire”.
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