(To A.P.S. (5).) The "obscuration" comes on only when the last man of whatever Round has passed into the sphere of effects. Nature is too well, too mathematically adjusted to cause mistakes to happen in the exercise of her functions. The obscuration of the planet on which are now evoluting the races of the fifth Round men — will, of course "be behind the few avant couriers" who are now here. But before that time comes we will have to part, to meet no more, as the Editor of the Pioneer and his humble correspondent.
And now having shewn that the October Number of the Theosophist was not utterly wrong, nor was it at "variance with the later teaching," may K.H. set you to "reconcile the two"?
To reconcile you still more with Eliphas, I will send you a number of his MSS. that have never been published, in a large, clear, beautiful handwriting with my comments all through. Nothing better than that can give you a key to Kabalistic puzzles. I have to write to Mr. Hume this week; to give him consolation, and to show, that unless he has a strong desire to live, he need not trouble himself about Devachan. Unless a man loves well or hates as well, he will be neither in Devachan nor in Avitchi. "Nature spews the luke-warm out of her mouth" means only that she annihilates their personal Egos (not the shells, nor yet the sixth principle) in the Kama Loka and the Devachan. This does not prevent them from being immediately reborn — and, if their lives were not very bad, there is no reason why the eternal Monad should not find the page of that life intact in the Book of Life.
K. H.
Letter No. 71176 (ML-19) Rec. August 12, 1882
The "Letter on Theosophy" to which these two notes are attached is addressed to Stainton Moses in London, intended for publication in the magazine Light, a journal of the Spiritualists in that city. Sinnett had sent the proofs to the Mahatma K.H. for his comments.
In the proof of the second of the letters meant for Stainton Moses, Sinnett makes the statement: "I find it difficult to explain a condition of things under examination . . . for want of a previous acquaintance on your part with the occult doctrine . . . regarding the mode in which Nature rewards and punishes her children for their acts in this life. . ." At the point of mention that Moses does not have a "previous acquaintance" with the occult doctrine, Sinnett has inserted a parenthetical comment: "(the actual state of the facts, that is to say, as known to the adepts and affirmed by them with as much confidence as the motions of the planets are affirmed by astronomers to be what they are). . ." In the marginal comment by the Mahatma K.H., following the words "as known to the adepts. . ." he has added the words which open this Letter No. 71. "Yes, verily known and as confidently affirmed by the adepts from whom. . ."
Sinnett wrote further in his letter: "Now the victims of accident sometimes though rarely, and those of suicide, can communicate with us through mediums, and that which communicates is the real entity of the once living man, barring a few exceptional circumstances, of which hereafter. . ." At this point appears the Mahatma' s marginal comment: "Exceptional cases my friend. . ."
A further interesting item is a short letter in K.H.' s handwriting, addressed to Sinnett and received by him on August 22, 1882, about ten days after No. 71 was received. It is found in LBS on p. 365, Letter 201. The Mahatma says: "I have made a few alterations and caused a footnote to be appended to your 'Letters.' Anyhow, there is always danger, I see, of finding our ideas substituted by concrete and false images in the minds of your readers. If you succeed in giving them only relative, not absolute, truth, you will have conferred upon the public a great boon."
Attached to Proofs of Letter on Theosophy. Received August 12th, 1882.
Yes; verily known and as confidently affirmed by the adepts from whom —
"No curtain hides the spheres Elysian,
Nor these poor shells of half transparent dust;
For all that blinds the spirit's vision
Is pride and hate and lust. . . ."
(Not for publication)
Exceptional cases, my friend. Suicides can and generally do, but not so with the others. The good and pure sleep a quiet blissful sleep, full of happy visions of earth-life, and have no consciousness of being already for ever beyond that life. Those who were neither good nor bad, will sleep a dreamless, still a quiet sleep; while the wicked will in proportion to their grossness suffer the pangs of a nightmare lasting years: their thoughts become living things; their wicked passions — real substance, and they receive back on their heads all the misery they have heaped upon others. Reality and fact if described would yield a far more terrible Inferno than even Dante had imagined!
Letter No. 72177 (ML-127) Rec. August 13, 1882
This letter is a copy in Sinnett's handwriting of extracts from a letter to him and Hume. It may be assumed that Sinnett passed the original letter on to Hume.
Extracts from Letters of K.H. to A.O.H. and A.P.S. Received by A.P.S. August 13th, 1882.
One of your letters begins with a quotation from one of my own:
"Remember that there is within man no abiding principle" — which sentence I find followed by a remark of yours, "How about the sixth and seventh principles?" To this I answer, neither Atma nor Buddhi ever were within man, — a little metaphysical axiom that you can study with advantage in Plutarch and Anaxagoras.The latter made his νους αυτοχρατης178 the spirit self-potent, the nous that alone recognised noumena while the former taught on the authority of Plato and Pythagoras that the demonium or this nous always remained without the body; that it floated and overshadowed, so to say, the extreme part of man's head, it is only the vulgar who think it is within them. Says Buddha, "you have to get rid entirely of all the subjects of impermanence composing the body that your body should become permanent. The permanent never merges with the impermanent although the two are one. But it is only when all outward appearances are gone that there is left that one principle of life which exists independently of all external phenomena. It is the fire that burns in the eternal light, when the fuel is expended and the flame is extinguished; for that fire is neither in the flame nor in the fuel, nor yet inside either of the two but above beneath and everywhere — (Parinirvana Sutra kuan XXXIX).