Written to Colonel Olcott.
You have been ordered home for a rest that you need — so you should decline any further healings until you hear from M. The Maha-Chohan will intimate when you are to go to the Punjab. As the English mail goes to-morrow, you might do well to give Mr. Sinnett a friendly caution against being surprised if his paper project should have checks upon checks. The state of India is just now almost comparable to a great body of dry matter in which sparks are smouldering. Agitators of both races have been and are doing their best to stir up a great flame. In the mad fanaticism of the hour there is hardly patience enough to think soberly upon any matter, least of all one that appeals like this to conservative men. Capitalists are more ready — like Holkar — to hoard away their rupees than put them into share companies. So — "miracles" being barred from the first as you and Mr. Sinnett know — I see delays, disappointments, trials of patience, but — (as yet) no failure. The lamentable issue of Bishenlal's220 rapid scramble up the Himalayas as would-be chela has sadly complicated matters. And your eminent Simla correspondent221 has made matters worse. Tho' unaware of it he has helped precipitate Bishenlal's insanity and (here, consciously) is plotting and scheming in many ways to make us all into a holocaust from out whose vapours may loom the giant spectre of the Jakko. Already he tells you that Sinnett is a credulous imbecile to be led by the nose (pardon, my worthy friend, the bad taste which compelled me to duplicate for my "ward" A.P. Sinnett that last long letter of Mr. H. to yourself which you have at the bottom of your dispatch box and did not intend H.P.B. to see in full). I had it neatly copied and for your fiery colleague he has had a deadly mine long prepared. Mr. Sinnett is now able to verify my old warning that he meant to set all your friends in London against the Society. The turn of the Kingsford-Maitland party has come. The diabolical malice which breathes thro' his present letter comes straight from the Dugpas who provoke his vanity and blind his reason. When you open M.'s letter of 1881 you will find the key to many mysteries — this included. Intuitive as you naturally are — chelaship is yet almost a complete puzzle for you as for my friend Sinnett and the others they have scarcely an inkling of it yet. Why must I even now — (to put your thoughts in the right channel) remind you of the three cases of insanity within seven months among "lay chelas," not to mention one's turning a thief? Mr. Sinnett may consider himself lucky that his lay chelaship is in "fragments" only, and that I have so uniformly discouraged his desires for a closer relationship as an accepted chela. Few men know their inherent capacities — only the ordeal of crude chelaship develops them. (Remember these words: they have a deep meaning.)
M. sends you thro' me these vases as a home greeting.
You had better say plainly to Mr. Sinnett that his quondam friend of Simla222 has — no matter under what influence — distinctly injured the newspaper project not only with the Maharajah of Cashmere but with many more in India. All he hints at in his letter to you and more he has done or is preparing to do.
This is "a K.H. letter" and you may say to Mr. S. from —
K. H.
Letter No. 111 (ML-59) Rec. July 1883
We come now to two rather long letters which probably were written and mailed at the same time. Letter No. 111 is designed to be read by Sinnett (if he wishes) to the members of the London Branch. The other (Letter No. 112) is more personal.
Sinnett's second book, Esoteric Buddhism had come off the press on June 10.
Received London about July, 1883.
With whatever shortcomings my always indulgent "lay-chela" may have to charge me, he will, it appears, credit me with having given him a new source of enjoyment. For even the sombre prophecy of Sir Charles Turner (a recent obscuration of his) that you would fall into Roman Catholicism as the inevitable outcome of your dabbling in Theosophy and believing in the "K.H." maya — has not dampened the ardour of your propaganda in the gay world of London. If this zeal should be cited by the Altruist of Rothney, in support of his declaration that your grey vesicles are surcharged with Shigatse Akâsa, it will still doubtless be balm to your wounded feelings to know that you are essentially aiding to build the bridge over which the British metaphysicians may come within thinking distance of us!
It is the custom among some good people to glance back at their life's path from the hillocks of time they annually surmount. So, if my hope has not betrayed me you must have been mentally comparing your present "greatest pleasure" and "constant occupation" with that which was so in the olden time, when you threaded the streets of your metropolis, where the houses are as if "painted in Indian ink," and a day's sunshine is an event to remember. You have measured yourself against yourself, and found the Theosophist an "Anak" morally, as compared with the "old man " (the beau valseur); is it not so? Well, this is, perhaps, your reward — the beginning of it: the end you will realize in Devachan, when "floating along" in the circumambient ether, instead of the circummuded British Channel — foggy though that state may now appear to your mind's eye. Then only will you "see thyself by thyself" and learn the true meaning of Atmânam, âtmanâ pasya: —
"To know itself e'en as a shining light
Requires no light to make itself perceived. . . ."
of the great Vedanta Philosophy.
Again and once more, an attempt has been made to dispel some of that great mist that I find in Mr. Massey's Devachan. It will appear as a contribution to the August number of the Theosophist, and to that I shall refer Mr. Massey and yourself. Quite possibly even then the "obscuration" will not be removed and it may be thought that the intended explanation is nothing of the kind; and that, instead of winding the clock, a clumsy hand has but broken out some cogs. This is our misfortune, and I doubt if we shall ever get quite free of this obscurities and alleged contradictions; since there is no way to bring the askers and respondents face to face. Still, at the worst it must be conceded that there is some satisfaction in the fact that there is now a ford across this river and you are building spans for a royal bridge. It is quite right that you should baptize your new brain-babe with the waters of Hope; and, within the limits of possibility that by it "a further and very sensible impulse will be imparted to the present movement." But, friend, even the "green cheese" of the shining moon is periodically lunched upon by Rahu; so do not think yourself altogether about the contingency of popular fickleness, that would put out your light in favour of some new man's "farthing dip." The culture of Society more often inclines to lawn-tennis philosophy than to that of the banned "adepts," whose wider game has worlds for balls, and etheric space for its shaven lawn. The plât of your first book was spiced with phenomena to tickle the spiritualistic palate: the second one is a dish of cold philosophy, and in your "large section of London Society" you scarcely find enough of the wine of sympathy to wash it down. Many, who now think you mildly mad will buy the book to find out if a commission De lunatico should issue to prevent your doing more damage; but of all your readers few are likely to follow your lead towards our ashram. Still the theosophist's duty is like that of the husbandman; to turn his furrows and sow his grains as best he can: the issue is with nature, and she, the slave of Law.