Well, as soon as I heard of the charge — the commotion among my defenders having reached me across the eternal snows — I ordered an investigation into the original scraps of the impression. At the first glance I saw that it was I, the only and most guilty party, the poor little boy having done but that which he was told. Having now restored the characters and the lines — omitted and blurred beyond hope of recognition by anyone but their original evolver — to their primitive colour and places, I now find my letter reading quite differently as you will observe. Turning to the Occult World — the copy sent by you — to the page cited, (namely p. 149 in the first edition) I was struck, upon carefully reading it, by the great discrepancy between the sentences. A gap, so to say, of ideas between part 1 (from line 1 to line 25) and part 2 — the plagiarized portion so-called. There seems no connection at all between the two; for what has, indeed, the determination of our chiefs (to prove to a skeptical world that physical phenomena are as reducible to law as anything else) to do with Plato's ideas which "rule the world" or "practical Brotherhood of Humanity?" I fear that it is your personal friendship alone for the writer that has blinded you to the discrepancy and disconnection of ideas in this abortive "precipitation," even until now. Otherwise you could not have failed to perceive that something was wrong on that page; that there was a glaring defect in the connection. Moreover, I have to plead guilty to another sin: I have never so much as looked at my letters in print — until the day of the forced investigation. I had read only your own original matter, feeling it a loss of time to go over my hurried bits and scraps of thought. But now, I have to ask you to read the passages as they were originally dictated by me, and make the comparison with the Occult World before you.
I transcribe them with my own hand this once, whereas the letter in your possession was written by the chela. I ask you also to compare this hand-writing with that of some of the earlier letters you received from me. Bear in mind, also the "O.L.'s" emphatic denial at Simla that my first letter had ever been written by myself. I felt annoyed at her gossip and remarks then; it may serve a good purpose now. Alas! by no means are we all "gods"; especially when you remember that since the palmy days of the "impressions" and "precipitations" — "K.H." has been born into a new and higher light, and even that one, in no wise the most dazzling to be acquired on this earth. Verily the Light of Omniscience and infallible Prevision on this earth — that shines only for the highest CHOHAN alone — is yet far away from me!
I enclose the copy verbatim from the restored fragments, underlining in red232 the omitted sentences for easier comparison.
(Page 149. — First Edition.)
. . . . . Phenomenal elements previously unthought of, . . . will disclose at last the secrets of their mysterious workings. Plato was right to readmit every element of speculation which Socrates had discarded. The problems of universal being are not unattainable or worthless if attained. But the latter can be solved only by mastering those elements that are now looming on the horizons of the profane. Even the Spirits. with their mistaken, grotesquely perverted views and notions are hazily realizing the new situation. They prophesy and their prophecies are not always without a point of truth in them, of intuitional pre-vision, so to say. Hear some of them reasserting the old, old axiom that "Ideas rule the world"; and as men's minds receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete the world (will) advance; mighty revolutions (will) spring from them; institutions (aye, and even creeds and powers, they may add) — WILL crumble before their onward march crushed by their own inherent force not the irresistible force of the "new ideas" offered by the Spiritualists! Yes; they are both right and wrong. It will be just as impossible to resist their influence when the time comes as to stay the progress of the tide, — to be sure. But what the Spiritualists fail to perceive, I see, and their "Spirits" to explain (the latter knowing no more than what they can find in the brains of the former) is, that all this will come gradually on; and that before it comes they as well as ourselves have all a duty to perform, a task set before us: that of sweeping away as much as possible the dross left to us by our pious forefathers. New ideas have to be planted on clean places, for these ideas touch upon the most momentous subjects. It is not physical phenomena or the agency called Spiritualism but these universal ideas that we have precisely to study; the noumenon not the phenomenon, for, to comprehend the LATTER we have first to understand the FORMER. They do touch man's true position in the Universe, to be sure, but only in relation to his FUTURE not PREVIOUS births. It is not physical phenomena however wonderful that can ever explain to man his origin let alone his ultimate destiny, or as one of them expresses it — the relation of the mortal to the immortal, of the temporary to the eternal, of the finite to the Infinite, etc., etc. They talk very glibly of what they regard as new ideas "larger, more general, grander, more comprehensive, and at the same time, they recognise instead of the eternal reign of immutable law, the universal reign of law as the expression of a divine will (!). Forgetful of their earlier beliefs, and that "it repented the Lord that he had made Man" these would-be philosophers and reformers would impress upon their hearers that the expression of the said divine Will "is unchanging and unchangeable — in regard to which there is only an ETERNAL NOW, while to mortals (uninitiated?) time is past or future as related to their finite existence on this material plane" — of which they know as little as of their spiritual spheres — a speck of dirt they have made the latter like our own earth, a future life that the true philosopher would rather avoid than court. But I dream with my eyes open. . . . At all events this is not any privileged teachings of their own. Most of these ideas are taken piece-meal from Plato and the Alexandrian Philosophers. It is what we all study and what many have solved. . . . . etc., etc.