Let me echo your sigh for the poor Society, and before fading away again into the foggy distance between Simla and Phari Jong192 assure you of my ever friendly feelings for yourself,
K. H.
Mr. W. Oxley wants to join the Eclectic. I'll tell her to send on to you his letter. Kindly write to him to say that he must not feel vexed at my denial. I know he is thoroughly sincere and as incapable of a deception or even exaggeration as you are. But he trusts too much to his subjects. Let him be cautious and very guarded; and, if he joins the Society I may help and even correspond with him through you. He is a valuable man, and indeed, more worthy of sincere respect than any other Spiritualistic mystic I know of. And though I have never approached him astrally or conversed with [him] I have often examined him in thought. Do not fail to write to him with the first steamer.
K. H.
Letter No. 87 (ML-34) Undated
It is impossible to determine the exact date of this letter, but it belongs to this sequence somewhere.
It is positively distressing to find oneself so systematically misunderstood, one's intentions misconceived, and the whole plan imperilled by this endless hurrying on. Are we never then to be granted any credit for knowing what we are about, or allowed the benefit of the doubt in the absence of any reasonable proof whatever that we have determined to "bar the progress" of the Theos.: Society? Mr. Hume maintains that he does not say — "K.H. or any other brother is wrong" — withal every line of his numerous letters to myself and H.P.B. breathes the spirit of complaint and bitter accusation. I tell you, my good friend, he will never be satisfied do what we may! And as we cannot consent to over-flood the world at the risk of drowning them, with a doctrine that has to be cautiously given out, and bit by bit like a too powerful tonic which can kill as well as cure — the result will be a reaction in that insatiable craving of his, and then — well you yourself know the consequences. Enclosed two letters written and addressed to her with an eye to myself. Well, we can do no better for the present. The Society will never perish as an institution, although branches and individuals in it may. I have done to humour him lately more than I have ever done for you; and you may judge of the situation in the chaotic but on the whole reasonable remarks that H.P.B. addresses to-day to Mr. H.
We must be left to judge for ourselves and be permitted to be the best judges. Everything will be explained and given out, in good time if we are but allowed our own ways. Otherwise, rather give up the Eclectic. I had volumes from him during the past week! I send you a few notes through her. Keep this confidential.
Yours,
K.H.
Letter No. 88193 (ML-10) Copied by APS Sept. 28, 1882
Now we come to what is probably the most controversial letter in the volume. Actually, it is not a letter but some notes made by the Mahatma K.H. on what Hume called a "Preliminary Chapter on God," intended as a preface to a book he was writing on Occult Philosophy. The copy in the British Museum is in Sinnett's handwriting.
These "Notes" have caused some people to reject the whole occult philosophy because of the denial of the traditional concept of God. The student is therefore asked to withhold judgment.
NOTES BY K.H. ON A "PRELIMINARY CHAPTER" HEADED "GOD" BY HUME, INTENDED TO PREFACE AN EXPOSITION OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY (ABRIDGED).
Received at Simla, Sept. 1882.
Neither our philosophy nor ourselves believe in a God, least of all in one whose pronoun necessitates a capital H. Our philosophy falls under the definition of Hobbes. It is preeminently the science of effects by their causes and of causes by their effects, and since it is also the science of things deduced from first principle, as Bacon defines it, before we admit any such principle we must know it, and have no right to admit even its possibility. Your whole explanation is based upon one solitary admission made simply for argument's sake in October last. You were told that our knowledge was limited to this our solar system: ergo as philosophers who desired to remain worthy of the name we could not either deny or affirm the existence of what you termed a supreme, omnipotent, intelligent being of some sort beyond the limits of that solar system. But if such an existence is not absolutely impossible, yet unless the uniformity of nature's law breaks at those limits we maintain that it is highly improbable. Nevertheless we deny most emphatically the position of agnosticism in this direction, and as regards the solar system. Our doctrine knows no compromises. It either affirms or denies, for it never teaches but that which it knows to be the truth. Therefore, we deny God both as philosophers and as Buddhists. We know there are planetary and other spiritual lives, and we know there is in our system no such thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm is not a God, but absolute immutable law, and Iswar is the effect of Avidya and Maya, ignorance based upon the great delusion. The word "God" was invented to designate the unknown cause of those effects which man has either admired or dreaded without understanding them, and since we claim and that we are able to prove what we claim — i.e. the knowledge of that cause and causes — we are in a position to maintain there is no God or Gods behind them.
The idea of God is not an innate but an acquired notion, and we have but one thing uncommon with theologies — we reveal the infinite. But while we assign to all the phenomena that proceed from the infinite and limitless space, duration and motion, material, natural, sensible and known (to us at least) causes, the theists assign them spiritual, super-natural and unintelligible and un-known causes. The God of the Theologians is simply an imaginary power, un loup garou as d'Holbach expressed it — a power which has never yet manifested itself. Our chief aim is to deliver humanity of this nightmare, to teach man virtue for its own sake, and to walk in life relying on himself instead of leaning on a theological crutch, that for countless ages was the direct cause of nearly all human misery. Pantheistic we may be called — agnostic NEVER. If people are willing to accept and to regard as God our ONE LIFE immutable and unconscious in its eternity they may do so and thus keep to one more gigantic misnomer. But then they will have to say with Spinoza that there is not and that we cannot conceive any other substance than God; or as that famous and unfortunate philosopher says in his fourteenth proposition, "praeter Deum neque dari neque concipi potest substantia" — and thus become Pantheists . . . who but a Theologian nursed on mystery and the most absurd supernaturalism can imagine a self-existent being of necessity infinite and omnipresent outside the manifested boundless universe. The word infinite is but a negative which excludes the idea of bounds. It is evident that a being independent and omnipresent cannot be limited by anything which is outside of himself; that there can be nothing exterior to himself — not even vacuum, then where is there room for matter? for that manifested universe even though the latter [be] limited? If we ask the theist is your God vacuum, space or matter, they will reply no. And yet they hold that their God penetrates matter though he is not himself matter. When we speak of our One Life we also say that it penetrates, nay is the essence of every atom of matter; and that therefore it not only has correspondence with matter but has all its properties likewise, etc. — hence is material, is matter itself. How can intelligence proceed or emanate from non-intelligence — you kept asking last year. How could a highly intelligent humanity, man the crown of reason, be evolved out of blind unintelligent law or force! But once we reason on that line, I may ask in my turn, how could congenital idiots, non-reasoning animals, and the rest of "creation" have been created by or evoluted from, absolute Wisdom, if the latter is a thinking intelligent being, the author and ruler of the Universe? How? says Dr. Clarke in his examination of the proof of the existence of the Divinity. "God who hath made the eye, shall not see? God who hath made the ear shall he not hear?" But according to this mode of reasoning they would have to admit that in creating an idiot God is an idiot; that he who made so many irrational beings, so many physical and moral monsters, must be an irrational being. . .