Whatever happens, I hope you may not resent the friendly truths you have heard from us. Why should you? Would you resent the voice of your conscience whispering to you that you are at times unreasonably impatient, and not at all as forbearing as you yourself should like to be? True, you have been labouring for the cause without remission for many months and in many directions; but you must not think that because we have never shown any knowledge of what you have been doing, nor that, because we have never acknowledged or thanked you for it in our letters — that we are either ungrateful for, or ignore purposely or otherwise what you have done, for it is really not so. For, though no one ought to be expecting thanks, for doing his duty by humanity and the cause of truth, — since, after all, he who labours for others, labours but for himself — nevertheless, my Brother I feel deeply grateful to you for what you have done. I am not very demonstrative by nature but I do hope to prove to you some day, that I am not an ingrate, as you think. And you yourself, though you have been, indeed, forbearing in your letters to me, in not complaining about what you call the flaws and inconsistencies in our letters, yet you have not carried so far that forbearance, as to leave to time and further explanations the task of deciding whether such flaws were real or only apparently so upon their surface. You have always complained to Sinnett and even, in the beginning, to Fern. If you but consented for five minutes or so to fancy yourself in the position of a native guru and a European chela, you would soon perceive how monstrous must appear any such relations as ours to a native mind; and you would blame no one for disrespect. Now, pray, understand me; I do not complain; but the bare fact of your addressing me as "Master" in your letters — makes me the laughing-stock of all our Tchutuktus who know anything of our mutual relations. I would never have mentioned this fact, but that I am in a position to demonstrate to you by enclosing here a letter from Subba Row to myself — full of excuses, and another to H.P.B. — as full of sincere truths, — since they are both chelas, or rather disciples. I hope I am not committing an indiscretion — in the Western sense. You will please return to me both after reading them and noting what they say. This is sent to you in strict confidence and only for your personal instructions. You will perceive therein, how much you English have to undo in India, before you can hope to do anything good in the country. Meanwhile, I must close, reiterating to you once more the assurance of my sincere regards and esteem.
Yours,
K. H.
Believe me you are too severe upon and — unjust to Fern.
Letter No. 75 (ML-53) Rec. August 23, 1882
This letter is written on the day following that on which he posted his note enclosing the long letter to Hume.
The Mahatma, in taking on the "sins" of the Brotherhood, likens himself to Warren Hastings who apparently had to bear the brunt of any abuses committed by the East India Company. Hastings was the first Governor-General of British India, who began his career as a clerk for the East India Company in the late 1700s. This is the "Company" referred to in the Mahatma's comment. Hasting's aggressive policy of judicial and financial reform rebuilt British prestige in India but met with opposition when he returned to England. He was charged by Edmund Burke with high crimes and was impeached. Later, however, he was acquitted.
Strictly private and confidential
My patient — friend: — Yesterday, I had a short note posted to you, and it accompanied a long letter to Hume — I had it registered somewhere in Central P. by a happy, free friend; to-day, it is a long letter to yourself, and it is intended to be accompanied by a tolling of jeremiads, a doleful story of a discomfiture, which may or may not make you laugh as it does that bulky Brother of mine — but which makes me feel like the poet who could not sleep aright,
"For his soul kept up too much light
Under his eyelids for the night."
I hear you uttering under breath: "Now what in the world does he mean!" Patience, my best Anglo-Indian friend, patience; and when you have heard of the disreputable conduct of my wicked, more than ever laughing Brother, you will plainly see why I come to regret, that instead of tasting in Europe of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil — I have not remained in Asia, in all the sancta simplicitas of ignorance of your ways and manners, for then — I would be now grinning too!
I wonder what you will say when you will have learned the dreadful secret! I long to know it, to be delivered of a nightmare. Were you to meet me now, for the first time, in the shadowy alleys of your Simla, and demanded of me the whole truth, you would hear me tell it to you, most unfavourably for myself. My answer to you would remind the world — if you were cruel enough to repeat it — of the famous answer given by Warren Hastings to "dog Jennings" on his first meeting with the ex-governor after his return from India! "My dear Hastings" — asked Jennings — "is it possible you are the great rascal Burke says, and the whole world is inclined to believe?" — "I can assure you, Jennings," was the sad and mild reply, "that though sometimes obliged to appear rascal for the Company, I was never one for myself." I am the W.H. for the sins of the Brotherhood. But to facts.
Of course you know — the "O.L." told you I think — that when we take candidates for chelas, they take the vow of secrecy and silence respecting every order they may receive. One has to prove himself fit for chelaship, before he can find out whether he is fit for adeptship. Fern is under such a probation; and a nice mess they have prepared for me between the two! As you already know from my letter to Hume, he did not interest me, I knew nothing of him, beyond his remarkable faculties, his powers for clairaudience and clairvoyance, and his still more remarkable tenacity of purpose, strong will, and other etcs. A loose, immoral character for years, — a tavern Pericles182 with a sweet smile for every street Aspasia, he had entirely and suddenly reformed after joining the Theosoph: Society, and "M." took him seriously in hand. It is no business of mine to tell even yourself, how much of his visions is truth and how much hallucination, or even perchance — fiction. That he bamboozled our friend Hume considerably, must be so, since Mr. Hume tells me the most marvellous yarns of him. But the worst of all this business is the following. He bamboozled him so well, indeed, that whereas H. did not believe one word when Fern was speaking the truth, nearly every lie uttered by F. was accepted by our respected Prest. of the Eclectic — as gospel truth.
Now you will readily understand, that it is impossible for me to try and set him (H) right, since F. is M.'s chela, and that I have no right whatever — either legal, or social, according to our code — to interfere between the two. Of the several grievances, however, it is the smallest. Another of our customs, when corresponding with the outside world, is to entrust a chela with the task of delivering the letter or any other message; and if not absolutely necessary — to never give it a thought. Very often our very letters — unless something very important and secret — are written in our handwritings by our chelas. Thus, last year, some of my letters to you were precipitated, and when sweet and easy precipitation was stopped — well I had but to compose my mind, assume an easy position, and — think, and my faithful "Disinherited"the"[the] had but to copy my thoughts, making only occasionally a blunder. Ah, my friend, I had an easy life of it unto the very day when the Eclectic sprung into its checkered existence. . . . Anyhow, this year, for reasons we need not mention, I have to do my own work — the whole of it, and I have a hard time of it sometimes, and get impatient over it. As Jean Paul Richter says somewhere, the most painful part of our bodily pain is that which is bodiless or immaterial, namely our impatience, and the delusion that it will last for ever. . . Having one day permitted myself to act as though I were labouring under such a delusion, in the innocence of my unsophisticated soul, I trusted the sacredness of my correspondence into the hands of that alter ego of mine, the wicked and "imperious" chap, your "Illustrious," who took undue advantage of my confidence in him and — placed me in the position I am now in! The wretch laughs since yesterday, and to confess the truth I feel inclined to do the same. But as an Englishman, I am afraid you will be terror-struck at the enormity of his crime. You know, that notwithstanding his faults Mr. Hume is absolutely necessary, so far, to the T.S. I grow sometimes very irritated at his petty feelings and spirit of vindictiveness; yet withal, I have to put up with his weaknesses, which lead him at one moment to vex himself that it is not yet — and at another that it is already mid-day. But our "Illustrious" is not precisely of that opinion. Mr. Hume's pride and self-opinion — he argues — wish as our saying goes — that all mankind had only two bent knees, to make puja to him; and he M. is not going to humour him. He will do nothing, of course, to harm or even to vex him purposely; on the contrary, he means to always protect him as he has done until now; but — he will not lift his little finger to disabuse him.