And now, my good friend and co-worker — an irremediable paperless condition obliges me to close. Farewell, until your return, unless you will be content, as hitherto, to pass our correspondence through the accustomed channel. Neither of us would prefer this. But until authority is given to change it must be even so. Were she to die to-day — and she is really sick — you would not receive more than two, or at most three more letters from me (through Damodar or Olcott, or through already established emergent agencies), and then, that reservoir of force being exhausted — our parting would be FINAL. However, I will not anticipate; events might bring us together somewhere in Europe. But whether we meet or not, during your trip, be assured that my personal good wishes will attend you. Should you actually need now and again the help of a happy thought as your work progresses, it may, very likely, be osmosed into your head — if sherry bars not the way, as it has already done at Allahabad.
May the "deep Sea" deal gently with you and your house.
Ever yours,
K. H.
P.S. — The "friend" of whom the Lord Lindsay speaks in his letter to you, is, I am sorry to say, a true skunk mephitis, who managed to perfume himself with ess-bouquet in his presence during their palmy days of friendship, and so avoided being recognised by his natural stench. It is Home42 — the medium, a convert to Roman Catholicism, then to Protestantism, and finally to the Greek Church. He is the bitterest and most cruel enemy O. and Mad. B. have, though he has never met either of them. For a certain time he succeeded in poisoning the Lord's mind, and prejudiced him against them. I do not like saying anything behind a man's back, for it looks like backbiting. Yet in view of some future events I feel it my duty to warn you, for this one is an exceptionally bad man — hated by the Spiritualists and mediums as much as he is despised by those who have learned to know him. Yours is a work which clashes directly with his. Though a poor sickly cripple, a paralysed wretch, his mental faculties are as fresh and as alive as ever to mischief. He is no man to stop before a slanderous accusation — however vile and lying. So — beware.
K. H.
Letter No. 16 (ML-107) Rec. Mar. 1, 1881
My dear Ambassador —
To quiet the anxiety I see lurking within your mind, and which has even a more definite form than you have expressed, let me say that I will use my best endeavours to calm our highly sensitive — not always sensible old friend,43 and make her stop at her post. Ill health resulting from natural causes, and mental anxiety have made her nervous to an extreme degree and sadly impaired her usefulness to us. For a fortnight past she has been all but useless, and her emotions have sped along her nerves like electricity thro' a telegraphic wire. All has been chaos. I am sending these few lines by a friend to Olcott so that they may be forwarded without her knowledge.
Consult freely with our friends in Europe and return with a good book44 in your hand and a good plan in your head. Encourage the sincere brethren at Galle to persevere in their work of education. Some cheering words from you will give them heart. Telegraph to Nicolas Dias Inspector of Police Galle that you, a member of the Council of the T.S. are coming (the date and name of steamer given) and I will cause H.P.B. to do the same to another person. Think on the way of your true friend.
K. H. and ———.
Letter No. 17 (ML-31) Rec. Mar. 26, 1881
This appears to be the only letter received by Sinnett from the Mahatma while he was in England. The envelope in which it was enclosed is with the original letter in the British museum.
Geoffrey Barborka suggests that the Mahatma composed the letter and transmitted it from Terich-Mir, where he was at the time, to an adept member of the Fraternity somewhere in France. This adept then, Mr. Barborka believes, put it in an envelope to which he affixed a French postage stamp and mailed it by regular post.
Another possibility is that it was transmitted telepathically to a chela living in France, who wrote it out and posted it to Sinnett.
Terich-Mir is a mountain at the terminating point of the Hindu Kush Mountains, which lie mainly in Afghanistan; it has an elevation of 25,426 feet.
Received London, March 26th, 1881.
It is from the depths of an unknown valley, amid the steep crags and glaciers of Terich-Mir — a vale never trodden by European foot since the day its parent mount was itself breathed out from within our Mother Earth's bosom — that your friend sends you these lines. For, it is there K.H. received your "Affectionate homages," and there he intends passing his "summer vacations." A letter "from the abodes of eternal snow and purity" sent to and received — "At the abodes of vice"! . . . Queer, n'est-ce pas? Would, or rather could I be with you at those "abodes"? No; but I was at several different times, elsewhere, though neither in "astral" nor in any other tangible form, but simply in thought. Does not satisfy you? Well, well, you know the limitations I am subjected to in your case, and you must have patience.
Your future book45 is a little jewel; and, small and tiny as it is, it may, one day, be found to soar as high as Mount Everest over your Simla hills. Among all other works of that class, in the wild jungle of Spiritualistic literature, it shall undoubtedly prove the Redeemer, offered as a sacrifice for the sin of the world of Spiritualists. They will begin by rejecting — nay — vilifying it; but, it will find its faithful twelve and — the seed thrown by your hand into the soil of speculation will not grow up as a weed. So far may be promised. You are oft too cautious. You remind too often the reader of your ignorance; and presenting but as a modest theory that which at the bottom of your heart you know and feel to be an axiom, a primary truth — instead of helping, you but perplex him and — create doubt. But it is a spirited and discriminative little memoir, and as a critical estimate of the phenomena witnessed by you personally, far more useful than Mr. Wallace's work. It is at this sort of spring that Spiritualists ought to be compelled to slake their thirst for phenomena and mystic knowledge instead of being left to swallow the idiotic gush they find in the Banners of Light and others. The world — meaning that of individual existences — is full of those latent meanings and deep purposes which underlie all the phenomena of the Universe, and Occult Sciences — i.e., reason elevated to supersensuous Wisdom — can alone furnish the key wherewith to unlock them to the intellect. Believe me, there comes a moment in the life of an adept, when the hardships he has passed through are a thousandfold rewarded. In order to acquire further knowledge, he has no more to go through a minute and slow process of investigation and comparison of various objects, but is accorded an instantaneous, implicit insight into every first truth. Having passed that stage of philosophy which maintains that all fundamental truths have sprung from a blind impulse — it is the philosophy of your Sensationalists or Positivists; and left far behind him that other class of thinkers — the Intellectualists or Skeptics — who hold that fundamental truths are derived from the intellect alone, and that we, ourselves, are their only originating causes, the adept sees and feels and lives in the very source of all fundamental truths — the Universal Spiritual Essence of Nature, SHIVA the Creator, the Destroyer, and the Regenerator. As Spiritualists of today have degraded "Spirit," so have the Hindus degraded Nature by their anthropomorphic conceptions of it. Nature alone can incarnate the Spirit of limitless contemplation. "Absorbed in the absolute self-unconsciousness of physical Self, plunged in the depths of true Being, which is no being but eternal, universal Life," his whole form as immoveable and white as the eternal summits of snow in Kailasa46 where he sits, above care, above sorrow, above sin and worldliness, a mendicant, a sage, a healer, the King of Kings, the Yogi of Yogis, such is the ideal Shiva of Yoga Shastras, the culmination of Spiritual Wisdom. . . . Oh, ye Max Müllers47 and Monier Williamses,48 what have ye done with our Philosophy!