. . . You want to acquire gifts. Set to work and try to develop lucidity. The latter is no gift but a universal possibility common to all. As Luke Burke puts it, "idiots and dogs have it, and to a more remarkable degree often than the most intellectual men." It is because neither idiots nor dogs use their reasoning faculties but allow their natural instinctive perceptions to have full play.
. . . You use too much sugar in your food. Take fruit, bread, tea, coffee and milk and use them as freely as you would like to, but no chocolate, fat, pastry and but very little sugar. The fermentation produced by it especially in that climate of yours is very injurious. The methods used for developing lucidity in our chelas may be easily used by you. Every temple has a dark room, the north wall of which is entirely covered with a sheet of mixed metal, chiefly copper, very highly polished with a surface capable of reflecting in it things, as well as a mirror. The chela sits on an insulated stool, a three-legged bench placed in a flat-bottomed vessel of thick glass, — the lama operator likewise, the two forming with the mirror wall a triangle. A magnet with the North Pole up is suspended over the crown of the chela's head without touching it. The operator having started the thing going leaves the chela alone gazing on the wall, and after the third time is no longer required.
Letter No. 73 (ML-113) Rec. August 1882
Edmund W. Fern was serving as a secretary to Hume and probably living in his home. He was somewhat of a psychic and the Mahatmas considered that he might have some valuable potential for the transmission of messages. He joined the Theosophical Society and was elected secretary of the Simla Eclectic Theosophical Society. The Mahatma M. took an interest in him and accepted him as a chela on probation.
Evidently, Fern annoyed Hume and the latter wrote to the Mahatma K.H. about it and undertook to instruct the Mahatmas as to what they should do about it. His letter to the Mahatma K.H. put the latter in a somewhat embarrassing position.
The Mahatma K.H. answers Hume (in the letter next to be considered) and sends his letter to Sinnett to read before passing on to Hume.
Fern failed his probation later on and was expelled from the Theosophical Society.
On August 18 (1882) while Olcott was in Ceylon, he notes: "Night visit from M . . . orders me to expel Fern. Reasons not given. What' s up?" On Dec. 6, Fern himself came to see Olcott and explained certain matters which the Colonel saw necessitated his expulsion. These reasons were not of a psychic nature but concerned business transactions, perhaps in connection with the Simla Eclectic TS. At one time, before Fern' s final failure, the Mahatma M. wrote him a warning letter, apparently the second warning he had given him. (Letters from the Masters of Wisdom, Series II: pp. 142-45)
Private.
My dearest Friend,
Please pardon me for troubling you with my own business — but though I am forced by the Chohan to answer I really do not know whether I am within the limits of your code of politeness or outside of it. I have a long letter to write to you upon something that troubles me and I want you to advise me. I am in a most disagreeable position, placed as I am between the risk of betraying a friend and — your code of honour (the friend is not yourself.) I hope I may place entire confidence in your personal friendship and of course honour.
Honour! What funny, very funny notions you seem to have about that sacred thing! Do not be frightened for indeed the whole thing is more ludicrous than dangerous. Yet there is a danger in losing Mr. Hume.
To-morrow I will write more fully. Fern is a little ass but he is a clairvoyant and likewise a little hallucinated. But Mr. H. is too severe upon him. The boy hopes that if we are myths or frauds he will find us out. Well, where is the harm in such a hallucination? Yet H. betrays his confidence and sends me a letter three yards long with advice how to get out of our difficulties! He wants to be our benefactor and place us under an eternal obligation for saving M. from falling once more into Fern's trap. I would have sent you on his letter but it is superscribed "private and confidential" and I would be in his eyes no gentleman were he [to] find out such a breach of confidence. Well I want you to read this letter at any rate and leave it at your option to be either sent or destroyed. If you do not want him to know you have read it — well put a stamp on it and throw it into the letterbox. I do not think he will take you into his confidence this once. However, I may be mistaken. Soon you will learn more.
Yours affectionately,
K. H.
Letter No. 74179 (ML-30) Rec. August, 1882
This is the letter enclosed in Letter No. 73. It is the Mahatma K.H.'s response to Hume's letter to him complaining about Fern. At the beginning of Letter No. 73, he says that he is "forced" by the Chohan to answer Hume's letter, but he does not know whether he is "within the limits of your code of politeness." So he sends this answer to Hume for Sinnett to read before forwarding it.
Several letters received in this particular span of time are closely related, and at the end of the next letter to be considered (No. 75), the Mahatma M. appends a note asking Sinnett not to give this letter (No. 74) to Hume. Probably Sinnett followed this advice; otherwise the original (since it is to Hume) would not be in the British Museum with the other letters from the Mahatmas. It is an important letter, setting forth as it does very clearly the attitude of the Mahatmas toward chelaship and those who aspire toward that goal. Obviously, Sinnett kept it with his own letters. It deals mostly with the difficulties the Mahatmas were having with Hume and particularly those connected with his secretary, Fern. Apparently Hume had written a previous letter to the Mahatma K.H. about Fern, which the latter did not answer.
The letter refers to a "trap" which Hume thought Fern had devised for the Mahatma M. (and which, in Hume's opinion, M. fell into) had to do with an article that Fern had written about some "vision" he had had (or fancied he had had) some time earlier. Hume wrote that in order to test the Mahatma M. Fern wanted to know "if Morya wished it (his article) to be published and Morya replies quite falling into the trap, that he did wish it." In this vision, there were three mysterious beings — the "guru" — the "Mighty One" and the "Father," the last one being the Mahatma Morya. After some further comments, Morya (in K.H.'s rendition of his reaction) says it is all ridiculous and "we will talk no more of it."
Private.
My dear Brother.
Perhaps, a week ago, I would have hardly failed to embrace this available opportunity and say that your letter concerning Mr. Fern is as complete a misrepresentation of the spirit, and above all, of the attitude of M. towards the said young gentleman, as your complete ignorance of the aim he is pursuing could produce — and I would have said no more. But now, things have changed; and though you have "come to know" that we "did not really possess the power of reading minds" as had been pretended, nevertheless, we know enough of the spirit in which my last letters were received, and of the dissatisfaction produced, — to suspect, if not to know that unwelcome as truth may often come, yet the time has arrived for me to speak frankly and openly with you. Lying is a refuge to the weak, and we are sufficiently strong, even with all the shortcomings you are pleased to discover in us, to dread truth very little; nor are we likely to lie, only because it is to our interest to appear wise concerning matters of which we are ignorant. Thus, perchance it might have been more prudent to remark that you knew that we did not really possess the power of reading minds, unless we brought ourselves thoroughly en rapport with, and concentrated an undivided attention on, the person whose thoughts we wanted to know — since that would be an undeniable fact, instead of a gratuitous assumption as it now stands in your letter. However it may be, I now find but two ways before us, with not the smallest path for compromise.