The Theosophical Society,
The Writings of Alfred Percy Sinnett
Alfred
Percy Sinnett
1840
-1921
The Occult World
By
A P Sinnett
Chapter 3
First
Occult Experiences
It has been through my connection with the
Theosophical Society and my acquaintance with Madame Blavatsky that I have
obtained experiences in connection with occultism, which have prompted me to
undertake my present task. The first problem I had to solve was whether Madame
Blavatsky really did, as I heard, possess the power of producing abnormal
phenomena. And it may be imagined that, on the assumption of the reality of her
phenomena, nothing would have been simpler than to obtain such satisfaction
when once I had formed her acquaintance. It is, however, an illustration of the
embarrassments which surround all inquiries of this nature- embarrassments with
which so many people grow impatient, to the end that they cast inquiry
altogether aside and remain wholly ignorant of the truth for the rest of their
lives- that although on the first occasion of my making. Madame BIavatsky's
acquaintance she became a guest at my house at
Spiritualists are aware that when groups
of people sit round a table and put their hands upon it, they will, if a
"medium " be present, generally hear little knocks which respond to
questions and spell out messages. The large outer circle of persons who do not
believe in spiritualism are fain to imagine that all the millions who do, are
duped as regards this impression. It must sometimes be troublesome for them to
account for the wide development of the delusion, but any theory, they think,
is preferable to admitting the possibility that the spirits of deceased persons
can communicate in this way; or, if they take the scientific view of the
matter, that a physical effect, however slight, can be produced without a
physical cause. Such persons ought to welcome the explanations I am now giving,
tending as these do to show that the theory of universal self-deception as
regards spirit-rapping, which must be rather an awkward theory for anyone but a
ludicrously conceited objector to hold, is not the only one by means of which
the asserted facts of spiritualism- those with which we are now dealing at all
events- can be reconciled with a reluctance to accept the spiritual hypothesis
as the explanation.
Now, I soon found out not only that raps
would always come at a table at which Madame Blavatsky sat with the view of
obtaining such results, but that all conceivable hypotheses of fraud in the
matter were rapidly disposed of by a comparison of the various experiments we
were able to make. To begin with, there was no necessity for other people to
sit at the table at all. We could work with any table under any circumstances,
or without a table at all. A windowpane would do equally well, or the wall, or
any door, or anything whatever which could give out a sound if hit. A half
glass door put ajar was at once seen to be a very good instrument to choose,
because it was easy to stand opposite Madame Blavatsky in this case, to see her
bare hands or hand (without any rings) resting motionless on the pane, and to
hear the little ticks come plainly, as if made with the point of a pencil or
,with the sound of electric sparks passing from one knob of an electrical
apparatus to another. Another very satisfactory way of obtaining the raps- one
frequently employed in the evening- was to set down a large glass clock-shade
on the hearthrug, and get Madame Blavatsky, after removing all rings from her
hands, and sitting well clear of the shade so that no part of her dress touched
it, to lay her hands on it. Putting a lamp on the ground opposite, and sitting
down on the hearthrug, one could see the under surfaces of the hands resting on
the glass, and still under these perfectly satisfactory conditions the raps
would come, clear and distinct, on the sonorous surface of the shade.
It was out of Madame Blavatsky's power to
give an exact explanation as to how these raps were produced. Every effort of
occult power is connected with some secret or other, and slight, regarded in
the light of phenomena, as the raps were, they were physical effects produced
by an effort of will, and the manner in which the will can be trained to
produce physical effects may be too uniform, as regards great and small
phenomena, to be made in accordance with the rules of occultism the subject of
exact explanations to uninitiated persons. But the fact that the raps were
obedient to the will was readily put beyond dispute, in this way amongst
others: working with the windowpane or the clockshade, I would ask to have a
name spelled out, mentioning one at random. Then I would call over the alphabet,
and at the right letters the raps would come. Or I would ask for a definite
number of raps, and they would come. Or for series of raps in some defined
rhythmical progression, and they would come. Nor was this all. Madame Blavatsky
would sometimes put her hands, or one only, on someone else's head, and make
the raps come, audibly to an attentive listener and perceptibly to the person
touched, who would feel each little shock exactly as if he were taking sparks
off the conductor of an electrical machine.
At a later stage of my inquiries I
obtained raps under better circumstances again than these- namely, without
contact between the object on which they were produced and Madame Blavatsky's
hands at all. This was at Simla in the summer of last year (1880), but I may as
well anticipate a little as far as the raps are concerned. At Simla Madame
Blavatsky used to produce the raps on a little table set in the midst of an
attentive group, with no one touching it at all. After starting it, or of
charging it with some influence by resting her hands on it for a few moments,
she would hold one about a foot above it and make mesmeric passes at it, at
each of which the table would yield the familiar sound. Nor was this done only
at our own house with our own tables. The same thing would be done at friends
houses, to which Madame Blavatsky accompanied us. And a further development of
the head experiment was this: It was found to be possible for several persons
to feel the same rap simultaneously. Four or five persons used sometimes to put
their hands in a pile, one on another on a table; then Madame Blavatsky would
put hers on the top of the pile and cause a current, of whatever it is which
produces the sound, to pass through the whole series of hands, felt by each
simultaneously, and record itself in a rap on the table beneath. Anyone who has
ever taken part in forming such a pile of hands must feel as to some of the
hypotheses concerning the raps that have been put forward in the Indian papers
by determined sceptics- hard-headed persons not to be taken in- to the effect
that the raps are produced by Madame Blavatsky's thumbnails or by the cracking
of some joint- that such hypotheses are rather idiotic.
Summing up the argument in language which
I used in a letter written at the time, it stands as follows; " Madame
Blavatsky puts her hands on a table and raps are heard on it. Some wiseacre
suggests she does it with her thumbnails; she puts only one hand on the table;
the raps comes still. Does she conceal any artifice under her hand? She lifts
her hand from the table altogether, and merely holding it in the air above, the
raps still come. Has she done anything to the table? She puts her hand on a
windowpane, on a picture frame, on a dozen different places about the room in succession,
and from each in turn come the mysterious raps. Is the house where she stays
with her own particular friends about her prepared all over? She goes to half a
dozen other houses at Simla and produces raps at them all. Do the raps really
come from somewhere else than where they seem to come from-are they perhaps
ventriloquism ? She puts her hand on your head, and from the motionless fingers
you feel something which resembles a minute series of electric shocks, and an
attentive listener beside you will hear them producing little raps on your
skull. Are you telling a lie when you say you feel the shocks ? Half a dozen
people put their hands one on top of the other in a pile on the table ; Madame
Blavatsky puts hers on the top of all, and each person feels the little throbs
pass through, and hears them record themselves in faint raps on the table on
which the pile of hands is resting. When a person has seen all these
experiments many times, as I have, what impression do you think is made on his
mind by a person who says. There is nothing in raps but conjuring- Maskelyne
and Cooke can do them for £10 a night . Maskelyne and Cooke cannot do them for
£10 a night nor for ten lakhs a night under the circumstances I describe."
The raps even as I heard them during the
first visit that Madame Blavatsky paid us at
One conviction we felt had been fully
attained. This was the conviction of her own good faith. It is disagreeable
merely to recognise that this can be impugned; but this has been done in
Besides the production of the raps one
other phenomenon had been conceded to us during Madame Blavatsky's first visit.
We had gone with her to
Corning now to details in connection with
some of the larger mysteries of occultism, I am oppressed by the difficulty of
leading up to a statement of what I know now to be facts-as absolute facts as
Charing Cross-which shall, nevertheless, be gradual enough not to shock the
understanding of people absolutely unused to any but the ordinary grooves of
thought as regards physical phenomena. None the less is it true that any
"Brother," as the adepts in occultism are familiarly referred to, who
may have been seized with the impulse to bestow on our party at Benares the
little surprise described above, may have been in Tibet or in the South of
India, or anywhere else in the world at the time, and yet just as able to make
the roses fall as if he had been in the room with us. I have spoken already of
the adept's power of being present " in spirit " as we should say,
" in astral body " as an occultist would say, at any distant place in
the flash of a moment at will. So present, he can exercise in that distant
place some of the psychological powers which he possesses, as completely as he
can exercise them in physical body wherever he may actually be, as we
understand the expression. I am not pretending to give an explanation of how he
produces this or that result, nor for a moment hinting that I know. I am
recording merely the certain fact that various occult results have been
accomplished in my presence, and explaining as much about them as I have been able
to find out. But at all events it has long since become quite plain to me, that
wherever Madame Blavatsky is, there the Brothers, wherever they may be, can and
constantly do produce phenomena of the most overwhelming sort, with the
production of which she herself has little or nothing to do. In reference,
indeed, to any phenomenon occurring in her presence, it must be remembered that
one can never have any exact knowledge as to how far her own powers may have
been employed, or how far she may have been " helped," or whether she
has not been quite uninfluential in the production of the result. Precise
explanations of this kind are quite contrary to the rules of occultism- which,
it must always be remembered, is not trying to convince the world of its existence.
In this volume I am trying to convince the world of its existence, but that is
another matter altogether. Anyone who wishes to know how the truth really
stands can only take up the position of a seeker of truth. He is not a judge
before whom occultism comes to plead for credibility. It is useless, therefore,
to quarrel with the observations we are enabled to make on the ground that they
are not of the kind one would best like to make. The question is whether they
yield data on which conclusions may safely rest.
And another consideration claims treatment
in connexion with the character of the observations which, so far, I have been
enabled to make-that is to say, in connexion with any search for proof of
occult power as regards physical phenomena which but for such agency would be
miraculous. I can foresee that, in spite of the abject stupidity of the remark,
many people will urge that the force of the experiments with which I have had
to deal is vitiated because they relate to phenomena which have a certain
superficial resemblance to conjuring tricks. Of course this ensues from the
fact that conjuring tricks all aim at achieving a certain superficial
resemblance to occult phenomena. Let any reader, whatever his present frame of
mind on the subject may be, assume for a moment that he has seen reason to
conceive that there may be an occult fraternity in existence wielding strange
powers over natural forces as yet unknown to ordinary humanity; that this
fraternity is bound by rules which cramp the manifestation of these powers, but
do not absolutely prohibit it; and then let him propose some comparatively
small but scientifically convincing tests which he could ask to have conceded
to him as a proof of the reality of some part, at all events, of these powers:
it will be found that it is impossible to propose any such test that does not
bear a certain superficial resemblance to a conjuring trick. But this will not
necessarily impair the value of the test for people capable of dealing with
those characteristics of experiments that are not superficial.
The gulf of difference which is really to
be observed lying between any of the occult phenomena I shall have to describe
presently and a conjuring trick which might imitate it, is due to the fact that
the conditions would be utterly unlike. The conjuror would work in his own
stage, or in a prepared room. The most remarkable of the phenomena I have had
in the presence of Madame Blavatsky have taken place away out of doors in
fortuitously chosen places in the woods and on the hills. The conjuror is
assisted by any required number of confederates behind his scenes. Madame
Blavatsky comes a stranger to Simla, and is a guest in my own house, under my
own observation, during the whole of her visit. The conjuror is paid to incur
the expenses of accomplishing this or that deception of the senses. Madame
Blavatsky is, what I have already explained, a lady of honourable character,
instrumental in helping her friends - at their earnest desire wherever
phenomena are produced at all-to see some manifestation of the powers in the
acquisition of which (instead of earning money by them as the conjuror does
with his) she has sacrificed everything the world generally holds dear-
station, and so forth, immeasurably above that to which any conjuror or any
impostor could aspire. Pursuing Madame Blavatsky with injurious suspicions,
persons who resent the occult hypothesis will constantly forget the dictates of
common sense in overlooking these considerations.
About the beginning of September, 1880,
Madame Blavatsky came to Simla as our guest, and in the course of the following
six weeks various phenomena occurred, which became the talk of all Anglo-India
for a time, and gave rise to some excited feeling on the part of persons who
warmly espoused the theory that they must be the result of imposture. It soon
became apparent to us that whatever might have been the nature of the
restrictions which operated the previous winter at Allahabad to prevent our
guest from displaying more than the very least of her powers, these
restrictions were now less operative than before. We were soon introduced to a
phenomenon we had not been treated to previously. By some modification of the
force employed to produce the sound of raps on any object, Madame Blavatsky can
produce in the air, without the intermediation of any solid object whatever,
the sound of a silvery bell-sometimes a chime or little run of three or four
bells on different notes. We had often heard about these bells, but had never
heard them produced before. They were produced for us for the first time one
evening after dinner while we were still sitting round the table, several times
in , succession in the air over our heads, and in one instance instead of the
single bell-sound there came one of the chimes of which I speak. Later on I
heard them on scores of occasions and in all sorts of different places-in the
open air and at different houses where Madame Blavatsky went from time to time.
As before with the raps, there is no hypothesis in the case of the bells which
can be framed by an adherent of the imposture theory which does not break down
on a comparison of the different occasions and conditions under which I have
heard them produced. Indeed, the theory of imposture is one which in the matter
of the bells has only one narrow conjecture to rest on. Unlike the sound of a
rap, which in the ordinary way could be produced by many different methods --so
that, to be sure any given example of such a sound is not produced by ordinary
means, one has to procure its repetition under a great variety of
conditions-the sound of a bell can only be made, physically, in a few ways. You
must have a bell, or some sonorous object in the nature of a bell, to make it
with. Now, when sitting in a well lighted room, and attentively watching, you
get the sound of a bell up above your heads where there is no physical bell to
yield it- what are the hypotheses which can attribute the result to trickery.
Is the sound really produced outside the room altogether by some agent or apparatus
in another. First of all no rational person who had heard this sound would
advance that theory, because the sound itself is incompatible with the idea. It
is never loud- at least I have never heard it very loud- but it is always clear
and distinct to a remarkable extent. If you lightly strike the edge of a thin
claret glass with a knife you may get a sound which it would be difficult to
persuade anyone had come from another room; but the occult bell-sound is like
that, only purer and clearer, with no sub-sound of jarring in it whatever.
Independently of this, I have, as I say, heard the sound in the open air
produced up in the sky in the stillness of evening. In rooms it has not always
been overhead, but sometimes down on the ground amongst the feet of a group of
persons listening for it. Again, on one occasion, when it had been produced two
or three times in the drawing-room of a friend's house where we had all been
dining, one gentlemen of the party went back to the dining-room two rooms off,
to get a finger glass with which to make a sound for the occult bells to
repeat- a familiar form of the experiment. While by himself in the dining-room
he heard one of the bell-sounds produced near him, though Madame Blavatsky had
remained in the drawing-room. This example of the phenomenon satisfactorily
disposed of the theory, absurd in itself for persons who frequently heard the
bells in all manner of places, that Madame Blavatsky carried some apparatus
about her with which to produce the sound. As for the notion of confederacy,
that is disposed of by the fact that I have repeatedly heard the sounds when
out walking beside Madame Blavatsky's jampan with no other person near us but
the jampanees carrying it.
The bell-sounds are not mere sportive
illustrations of the properties of the currents which- are set in action to
produce them. They serve the direct, practical purpose among occultists of a
telegraphic call-bell. It appears that when trained occultists are concerned,
so that the mysterious magnetic connection, whatever it may be, which enables
them to communicate ideas is once established, they can produce the bell-sounds
at any distance in the neighbourhood of the fellow-initiate whose attention
they wish to attract. I have repeatedly heard Madame Blavatsky called in this
way, when our own little party being alone some evening, we have all been
quietly reading. A little " ting " would suddenly sound, and Madame
Blavatsky would get up and go to her room to attend to whatever occult business
may have been the motive of her summons. A very pretty illustration of the
sound, as thus produced by some brother-initiate at a distance, was afforded
one evening under these circumstances. A lady, a guest at another house in
Simla, had been dining with us, when about
I come now to a series of incidents which
exhibit occult power in a more striking light than any of those yet described.
To a scientific mind, indeed, the production of sounds by means of a force
unknown to ordinary science should be as clear a proof that the power in
question is a power, as the more sensational phenomena which have to do with
the transmission of solid objects by occult agency. The sound can only reach
our ears by the vibration of air, and to set up the smallest undulation of air
as the effect of a thought will appear to the ordinary understanding as no less
outrageous an impossibility than the uprooting of a tree in a similar way.
Still there are degrees in wonderfulness which the feelings recognise even if
such distinctions are irrational.
The first incident of the kind which I now take up is not one which would in
itself be a complete proof of anything for an outsider. I describe it rather
for the benefit of readers who may be, either through spiritualistic
experiences or in any other way, already alive to the possibility of phenomena
as such, and interested rather in experiments which may throw light on their
genesis than in mere texts. Managed a little better, the occurrence now to be
dealt with would have been a beautiful test ; but Madame Blavatsky, left to
herself in such matters, is always the worst devisor of tests imaginable.
Utterly out of sympathy with the positive and incredulous temperament; engaged
all her life in the development amongst Asiatic mystics of the creative rather
than the critical faculties, she never can follow the intricate suspicions with
which the European observer approaches the consideration of the marvellous in
its simplest forms. The marvellous, in forms so stupendously marvellous that
they almost elude the grasp of ordinary conceptions, has been the daily food of
her life for a great number of years, and it is easy to realise that, for her,
the jealous distrust with which ordinary people hunt round the slightest
manifestation of occult force to find any loophole through which a suspicion of
fraud may creep, as no less tiresome and stupid, then the ordinary person
conceives the too credulous spirit to be.
About the end of September my wife went
one afternoon with Madame Blavatsky to the top of a neighbouring hill. They
were only accompanied by one other friend. I was not present myself on this
occasion. While there Madame Blavatsky asked my wife, in a joking way, what was
her heart's desire. She said at random and on the spur or the moment, " to
get a note from one of the Brothers." Madame Blavatsky took from her
pocket a piece of blank pink paper that had been torn off a note received that
day. Folding this up into a small compass she took it to the edge of the hill,
held it up for a moment or two between her hands and returned saying that it
was gone. She presently, after communicating mentally by her own occult methods
with the distant Brother, said he asked where my wife would have the letter. At
first she said she should like it to come fluttering down into her lap, but
some conversation ensued as to whether this would be the best way to get it,
and ultimately it was decided that she should find it in a certain tree. Here,
of course, a mistake was made which opens the door to the suspicions of
resolutely disbelieving persons. It will be supposed that Madame Blavatsky had
some reasons of her own for wishing the tree chosen. For readers who favour
that conjecture after all that has gone before, it is only necessary to repeat
that the present story is being told not as a proof, but as an incident.
At first Madame Blavatsky seems to have
made a mistake as to the description of the tree ,which the distant Brother was
indicating as that in which he was going to put the note, and with some trouble
my wife scrambled on to the lower branch of a bare and leafless trunk on which
nothing could be found. Madame then again got into communication with the
Brother and ascertained her mistake. Into another tree at a little distance,
which neither Madame nor the one other person present had approached, my wife
now climbed a few feet and looked all round among the branches. At first she
saw nothing, but then, turning back her head without moving from the position
she had taken up, she saw on a twig immediately before her face- where a moment
previously there had been nothing but leaves-a little pink note. This was stuck
on to the stalk of a leaf that had been quite freshly torn off, for the stalk
was still green and moist- not withered as it would have been if the leaf had
been torn off for any length of time. The note was found to contain these few
words: " I have been asked to leave a note here for you. What can I do for
you?", It was signed by some Tibetan characters. The pink paper on which
it was written appeared to be the same which Madame Blavatsky had taken blank
from her pocket shortly before.
How was it transmitted first to the
Brother who wrote upon it and then back again to the top of our hill ? not to
speak of the mystery of its attachment to the tree in the way described. So far
as I can frame conjectures on this subject, it would be premature to set them
forth in detail till I have gone more fully into the facts observed. It is no
use to discuss the way the wings of flying-fish are made for people who will
not believe in the reality of flying fish at all, and refuse to accept
phenomena less guaranteed by orthodoxy than Pharaoh's chariot wheels.
I come now to the incidents of a very
remarkable day. The day before, I should explain, we started on a little
expedition which turned out a coup manqué, though, but for some tiresome
mishaps, it might have led, we afterwards had reason to think, to some very
interesting results. We mistook our way to a place of which Madame Blavatsky
had received an imperfect description- or a description she imperfectly
understood- in an occult conversation with one of the Brothers then actually
passing through Simla. Had we gone the right way that day we might have had the
good fortune of meeting him, for he stayed one night at a certain old Tibetan
temple, or rest-house, such as is often found about the
Why, some one may ask, could not the
omniscient Brother feel that Madame was going wrong, and direct us properly in
time ? I say this question will be asked, because I know from experience that
people unused to the subject will not bear in mind the relations of the
Brothers to such inquirers as ourselves. In this case, for example, the
situation was not one in which the Brother in question was anxiously waiting
to prove his existence to a jury of intelligent Englishmen. We can learn so
little about the daily life of an adept in occultism, that we who are
uninitiated can tell very little about the interests that really engage his
attention; but we can find out this much - that his attention is constantly
engaged on interests connected with his own work, and the gratification of the
curiosity concerning occult matters of persons who are not regular students of
occultism forms no part of that work at all. On the contrary, unless under very
exceptional conditions, he is even forbidden to make any concessions whatever
to such curiosity. In the case in point the course of events may probably have
been something of this kind :-Madame Blavatsky perceived by her own occult
tentacle that one of her illustrious friends was in the neighbourhood. She
immediately - having a sincere desire to oblige us- may have asked him whether
she might bring us to see him. Probably he would regard any such request very
much as the astronomer royal might regard the request of a friend to bring a
party of ladies to look through his telescopes; but none the less he might say,
to please his half-fledged " brother " in occultism, Madame
Blavatsky, " Very well, bring them, if you like: I am in such and such a
place." And then he would go on with his work, remembering afterwards that
the intended visit had never been paid, and perhaps turning an occult
perception in the direction of the circumstances to ascertain what had
happened.
However this may have been, the expedition
as first planned broke down. It was not with the hope of seeing the Brother,
but on the general principle of hoping for something to turn up, that we
arranged to go for a picnic the following day in another direction, which, as
the first road had failed, we concluded to be probably the one we ought to have
taken previously.
We set out at the appointed time next
morning. We were originally to have been a party of six, but a seventh person
joined us just before we started. After going down the hill for some hours a
place was chosen in the wood near the upper waterfall for our breakfast: the
baskets that had been brought with us were unpacked, and, as usual at an Indian
picnic, the servants at a little distance lighted a fire and set to work to
make tea and coffee. Concerning this some joking arose over the fact that we
had one cup and saucer too few, on account of the seventh person who joined us
at starting, and some one laughingly asked Madame Blavatsky to create another
cup and saucer. There was no set purpose in the proposal at first, but when
Madame Blavatsky said it would be very difficult, but that if we liked she
would try, attention was of course at once arrested. Madame Blavatsky, as
usual, held mental conversation with one of the Brothers, and then wandered a
little about in the immediate neighbourhood of where we were sitting- that is
to say, within a radius of half-a-dozen to a dozen yards from our picnic cloth-
I closely following, waiting to see what would happen. Then she marked a spot
on the ground, and called to one of the gentlemen of the party to bring a knife
to dig with. The place chosen was the edge of a little slope covered with thick
weeds and grass and shrubby undergrowth. The gentleman with the knife-let us
call him X-------------- as I shall have to refer to him afterwards- tore up
these in the first place with some difficulty, as the roots were tough and
closely interlaced. Cutting then into the matted roots and earth with the
knife, and pulling away the débris with his hands, he came at last, on
the edge of something white, which turned out, as it was completely excavated,
to be the required cup. A corresponding saucer was also found after a little
more digging. Both objects were in among the roots which spread everywhere
through the ground, so that it seemed as if the roots were growing round them.
The cup and saucer both corresponded exactly, as regards their pattern, with
those that had been brought to the picnic, and constituted a seventh cup and
saucer when brought back to where we were to have breakfast. I may as well add
at once that afterwards, when we got home, my wife questioned our principal
khitmutgar as to how many cups and saucers of that particular kind we
possessed. In the progress of years, as the set was an old set, some had been
broken, but the man at once said that nine teacups were left. When collected
and counted that number was found to be right, without reckoning the excavated
cup. That made ten, and as regards the pattern- it was one of a somewhat
peculiar kind, bought a good many years previously in London, and which
assuredly could never have been matched in Simla.
Now, the notion that human beings can
create material objects by the exercise of mere psychological power, will of
course be revolting to the understandings of people to whom this whole subject
is altogether strange. It is not making the idea much more acceptable to say
that the cup and saucer appear in this case to have been " doubled "
rather than created. The doubling of objects seems merely another kind of
creation- creation according to a pattern. However, the facts, the occurrences
of the morning I have described, were at all events exactly as I have related
them. I have been careful as to the strict and minute truthfulness of every
detail. If the phenomenon was not what it appeared to be- a most wonderful
display of a power of which the modern scientific world has no comprehension
whatever it was, of course, an elaborate fraud. That supposition, however,
setting aside the moral impossibility from any point of view of assuming Madame
Blavatsky capable of participation in such an imposture, will only bear to be
talked of vaguely. As a way out of the dilemma it will not serve any person of
ordinary intelligence who is aware of the facts, or who trusts my statement of
them. The cup and saucer were assuredly dug up in the way I describe. If they
were not deposited there by occult agency, they must have been buried there
beforehand. Now, I have described the character of the ground from which they
were dug up; assuredly that had been undisturbed for years by the character of
the vegetation upon it. But it may be urged that from some other part of the
sloping ground a sort of tunnel may have been excavated in the first instance
through which the cup and saucer could have been thrust into the place where
they were found. Now this theory is barely tenable as regards its physical
possibility. If the tunnel had been big enough for the purpose it would have
left traces which were not perceptible on the ground - which were not even
discoverable when the ground was searched shortly afterwards with a view to
that hypothesis. But the truth is that the theory of previous burial is morally
untenable in view of the fact that the demand for the cup and saucer-of all the
myriad things that might have been asked for-could never have been foreseen. It
arose out of circumstances themselves the sport of the moment. If no extra
person had joined us at the last moment the number of cups and saucers packed
up by the servants would have been sufficient for our needs, and no attention
would have been drawn to them. It was by the servants, without the knowledge of
any guest, that the cups taken were chosen from others that might just as
easily have been taken. Had the burial fraud been really perpetrated it would
have been necessary to constrain us to choose the exact spot we did
actually choose for the picnic with a view to the previous preparations, but
the exact spot on which the ladies' jarnpans were deposited was chosen by
myself in concert with the gentleman referred to above as X-, and it was within
a few yards of this spot that the cup was found. Thus, leaving the other
absurdities of the fraud hypothesis out of sight, who could be the agents employed
to deposit the cup and saucer in the ground, and when did they perform the
operation? Madame Blavatsky was under our roof the whole time from the previous
evening when the picnic was determined on to the moment of starting. The one
personal servant she had with her, a Bombay boy and a perfect stranger to
Simla, was constantly about the house the previous evening, and from the first
awakening of the household in the morning- and as it happened he spoke to my
own bearer in the middle of the night, for I had been annoyed by a loft door
which had been left unfastened, and was slamming in the wind, and called up
servants to shut it. Madame Blavatsky it appears, thus awakened, had sent her
servant, who always slept within call, to inquire what was the matter. Colonel
Olcott, the President of the Theosophical Society, also a guest of ours at the
time of which I am speaking, was certainly with us all the evening from the
period of our return from the abortive expedition of the afternoon, and was
also present at the start. To imagine that he spent the night in going four or
five miles down a difficult khud through forest paths difficult to find,
to bury a cup and saucer of a kind that we were not likely to take in a place
we were not likely to go to, in order that in the exceedingly remote
contingency of its being required for the perpetration of a hoax it might be
there, would certainly be a somewhat extravagant conjecture. Another
consideration- the destination for which we were making can be approached by
two roads from opposite ends of the upper horseshoe of hills on which Simla
stands. It was open to us to select either path, and certainly neither Madame
Blavatsky nor Colonel Olcott had any share in the selection of that actually
taken. Had we taken the other, we should never have come to the spot where we
actually picnicked.
The hypothesis of fraud in this affair is,
as I have said, a defiance of common sense when worked out in any imaginable
way. The extravagance of this explanation will, moreover, be seen to heighten
as my narrative proceeds, and as the incident just related is compared with
others which took place later. But I have not yet done with the incidents of
the cup-morning.
The gentleman called X
---------------------------had been a good deal with us during the week or two
that had already elapsed since Madame Blavatsky's arrival. Like many of our
friends, he had been greatly impressed with much he had seen in her presence.
He had especially come to the conclusion that the Theosophical Society, in which
she was interested, was exerting a good influence with the natives, a view
which he had expressed more than once in warm language in my presence. He had
declared his intention of joining this Society as I had done myself. Now, when
the cup and saucer were found most of us who were present, X among the number,
were greatly impressed, and in the conversation that ensued the idea arose that
X-- might formally become a member of the Society then and there. I should not
have taken part in this suggestion-I believe I originated it-if X ----------had
not in cool blood decided, as I understood, to join the Society; in itself,
moreover, a step which involved no responsibilities whatever, and simply
indicated sympathy with the pursuit of occult knowledge and a general adhesion
to broadly philanthropic doctrines of brotherly sentiments towards all
humanity, irrespective of race and creed. This has to be explained in view of
some little annoyances which followed.
The proposal that X ------------should
then and there formally join the Society was one with which he was quite ready
to fall in. But some documents were required-a formal diploma, the gift of
which to a new member should follow his initiation into certain little Masonic
forms of recognition adopted in the Society. How could we get a diploma? Of
course for the group then present a difficulty of this sort was merely another
opportunity for the exercise of Madame's powers. Could she get a diploma
brought to us by " magic?" After an occult conversation with the Brother
who had then interested himself in our proceedings,Madame told us that the
diploma would be forthcoming. She described the appearance it would present- a
roll of paper wound round with an immense quantity of string, and then bound up
in the leaves of a creeping plant. We should find it about in the woods where
we were, and we could all look for it, but it would be X-, for whom it was
intended, who would find it. Thus it fell out. We all searched about in the
undergrowth or in the trees, wherever fancy prompted us to look, and it was X-
who found the roll, done up as described.
We had had our breakfast by this time. X-
was formally" initiated " a member of the society by Colonel Olcott,
and after a time we shifted our quarters to a lower place in the wood where
there was the little Tibetan temple, or rest-house, which the Brother who had
been passing through Simla- according to what Madame Blavatsky told us- had
passed the previous night. We amused ourselves by examining- the little
building inside and out, " bathing in the "good magnetism," as
Madame Blavatsky expressed it, and then, lying on the grass outside, it
occurred to someone that we wanted more coffee. The servants were told to
prepare some, but it appeared that they had used up all our water. The water to
be found in the streams near Simla is not of a kind to be used for purposes of
this sort, and for a picnic, clean filtered water is always taken out in
bottles, It appears that all the bottles in our baskets had been exhausted.
This report was promptly verified by the servants by the exhibition of the
empty bottles. The only thing to be done was to send to a brewery, the nearest
building, about a mile oft, and ask for water. I wrote a pencil note and a
coolie went off with the empty bottles. Time passed, and the coolie returned,
to our great disgust, without the water. There had been no European left at the
brewery that day (It was Sunday) to receive the note, and the coolie had
stupidly plodded back with the empty bottles under his arm, instead of asking
about and finding someone able to supply the required water.
At this time our party was a little
dispersed. X- and one of the other gentlemen had wandered off. No one of the
remainder of the party was expecting fresh phenomena, when Madame suddenly got
up, went over to the baskets, a dozen or twenty yards off, picked out a bottle-
one of those, I believe, which had been brought back by the coolie empty-and
came back to us holding it under the fold of her dress. Laughingly producing it
it was found to be full of water. Just like a conjuring trick, will some one
say ? Just like, except for the conditions. For such a conjuring trick, the
conjurer defines the thing to be done. In our ease the want of water was as
unforeseeable in the first instance as the want of the cup and saucer. The
accident that left the brewery deserted by its Europeans, and the further
accident that the coolie sent up for water should have been so abnormally
stupid even for a coolie as to come back without, because there happened to be
no European to take my note, were accidents but for which the opportunity for
obtaining the water by occult agency could not have arisen. And those accidents
supervened on the fundamental accident, improbable in itself, that our servants
should have sent us out insufficiently supplied. That any bottle of water could
have been left unnoticed at the bottom of the baskets is a suggestion that I
can hardly imagine anyone present putting forward, for the servants had been
found fault with for not bringing enough; they had just before had the baskets
completely emptied out, and we had not submitted to the situation till we had
been fully satisfied that there really was no more water left. Furthermore, I
tasted the water in the bottle Madame Blavatsky produced, and it was not water
of the same kind as that which came from our own filters. It was an earthy
tasting water, unlike that of the modern Simla supply, but equally unlike, I
may add, though in a different way, the offensive and discoloured water of the
only stream flowing through those woods.
How was it brought ? The how, of course,
in all these cases is the great mystery which I am unable to explain except in
general terms; but the impossibility of understanding the way adepts manipulate
matter is one thing; the impossibility of denying that they do manipulate it in
a manner which Western ignorance would describe as miraculous is another. The
fact is there whether we can explain it or not. The rough, popular saying that
:you cannot argue the hind leg off a cow, embodies a sound reflection ,which
our prudent sceptics in matters of the kind with which I am now dealing are too
apt to overlook. You cannot argue away a fact by contending that by the lights
in your mind it ought to be something different from what it is. Still less can
you argue away a mass of facts like those I am now recording by a series of
extravagant and contradictory hypotheses about each in turn. What the
determined disbeliever so often overlooks is that the scepticism which may show
an acuteness of mind up to a certain point, reveals a deficient intelligence
when adhered to in face of certain kinds of evidence.
I remember when the phonograph was first
invented, a scientific officer in the service of the Indian Government sent me
an article he had written on the earliest accounts received of the instrument-
to prove that the story must be a hoax, because the instrument described was
scientifically impossible. He had worked out the times of vibrations required
to reproduce the sounds and so on, and very intelligently argued that the
alleged result was unattainable. But when phonographs in due time were imported
into India, he did not continue to say they were impossible, and that there
must be a man shut up in each machine, even though there did not seem to be
room. That last is the attitude of the self-complacent people who get over the
difficulty about the causation of occult and spiritual phenomena by denying, in
face of the palpable experience of thousands- in face of the testimony in
shelves- full of books that they do not read- that any such phenomena take
place at all.
X-, I should add here, afterwards changed
his mind about the satisfactory character of the cup phenomena, and said he
thought it vitiated as a scientific proof by the interposition of the theory
that the cup and saucer might have been thrust up into their places by means of
a tunnel cut from a lower part of the bank. I have discussed that hypothesis
already, and mention the fact of X-'s change of opinion, which does not affect
any of the circumstances I have narrated, merely to avoid the chance that
readers, who may have heard or read about the Simla phenomenon in other pages,
might think I was treating the change of opinion in question as something which
it was worth while to disguise. And, indeed, the convictions which I ultimately
attained were themselves the result of accumulated experiences I have yet to
relate, so that I cannot tell how far my own certainty concerning the reality
of occult power rests on anyone example that I have seen.
It was on the evening of the day of the
cup phenomenon that there occurred an incident destined to become the subject
of very wide discussion in all the Anglo-Indian papers. This was the celebrated
" brooch incident." The facts were related at the time in a little
statement drawn up for publication, and signed by the nine persons who
witnessed it. ! This statement will be laid before the reader directly, but as
the comments to which it gave rise showed that it was too meagre to convey a
full and accurate idea of what occurred, I will describe the course of events a
little more fully. In doing this, I may use names with a certain freedom, as
these were all appended to the published document.
We, that is, my wife and myself with our guest,
had gone up the hill to dine, in accordance with previous engagements, with Mr.
and Mrs. Hume. We dined, a party of eleven, at a round table, and Madame
Blavatsky, sitting next our host, tired and out of spirits as it happened, was
unusually silent. During the beginning of dinner she scarcely said a word, Mr.
Hume conversing chiefly with the lady on his other hand. It is a common trick
at Indian dinner-tables to have little metal plate warmers with hot water
before each guest, on which each plate served remains while in use. Such plate
warmers were used on the evening I am describing, and over hers -in an interval
during which plates had been removed- Madame Blavatsky was absently warming her
hands. Now, the production of Madame Blavatsky's raps and bell-sounds we had
noticed some- times seemed easier and the effects better when her hands had
been warmed in this way ; so some one, seeing her engaged in warming them,
asked her some question, hinting in an indirect way at phenomena. I was very
far from expecting anything of the kind that evening, and Madame Blavatsky was
equally far from intending to do anything herself or from expecting any display
at the hands of one of the Brothers. So, merely in mockery, when asked why she
was warming her hands, she enjoined us all to warm our hands too and see what
would happen. Some of the people present actually did so, a few joking words
passing among them. Then Mrs. Hume raised a little laugh by holding up her
hands and saying, " But I have warmed my hands, what next". Now
Madame Blavatsky, as I have said, was not in a mood for any occult performances
at all, but it appears from what I learned afterwards that just at this moment,
or immediately before, she suddenly perceived by those occult faculties of
which mankind at large have no knowledge, that one of the Brothers was present
" in astral body" invisible to the rest of us in the room. It was
following his indications, therefore, that she acted in what followed; of
course no one knew at the time that she had received any impulse in the matter
external to herself. What took place as regards the surface of things was
simply this: When Mrs. Hume said what I have set down above, and when the
little laugh ensued, Madame Blavatsky put out her hand across the one person sitting
between herself and Mrs. Hume and took one of that lady's hands, saying, "
Well then, do you wish for anything in particular ? or as the lawyers say,
" words to that effect." I cannot repeat the precise sentences
spoken, nor can I say now exactly what Mrs. Hume first replied before she quite
understood the situation; but this was made clear in a very few minutes. Some
of the other people present catching this first, explained, " Think of
something you would like to have brought to you; anything you like not wanted
for any mere worldly motive ; is there anything you can think of that will be
very difficult to get ?" Remarks of this sort were the only kind that were
made in the short interval that elapsed between the remark by Mrs. Hume about
having warmed her hands and the indication by her of the thing she had thought
of. She said then that she had thought of something that would do. What was it
? An old brooch that her mother had given her long ago and that she had lost.
Now, when this brooch, which was
ultimately recovered by occult agency, as the rest of my story will show, came
to be talked about, people said :- " Of course Madame Blavatsky led up the
conversation to the particular thing she had arranged before- hand to
produce." I have described all the conversation which took place on
this subject, before the brooch was named. There was no conversation about the
brooch or any other thing of the kind whatever. Five minutes before the brooch
was named, there had been no idea in the mind of any person present that any
phenomenon in the nature of finding any lost article, or of any other kind,
indeed, was going to be performed. Nor while Mrs. Hume was going over in her
mind the things she might ask for, did she speak any word indicating the
direction her thoughts were taking.
From the point of the story now reached
the narrative published at the time tells it almost as fully as it need be
told, and, at all events, with a simplicity that will assist the reader in
grasping all the facts-so I reprint it here in full-
" On Sunday, the 3rd of October, at
Mr. Hume's house at Simla, there were present at dinner Mr. and Mrs. Hume, Mr.
and Mrs. Sinnett, Mrs. Gordon, Mr. F. Hogg, Captain P.J. Maitland, Mr. Beatson,
Mr. Davidson, Colonel Olcott, and Madame Blavatsky. Most of the persons present
having recently seen many remarkable occurrences In Madame Blavatsky's
presence, conversation turned on occult phenomena, and in the course of this
Madame Blavatsky asked Mrs. Hume if there was anything she particularly wished
for. Mrs. Hume at first hesitated, but in a short time said there was something
she would particularly like to have brought her, namely, a small article of
jewellery that she formerly possessed, but had given away to a person who had
allowed it to pass out of her possession. Madame Blavatsky then said if she
would fix the image of the article in question very definitely on her mind,
she, Madame Blavatsky, would endeavour to procure It. Mrs. Hume then said that
she vividly remembered the article, and described it as an old-fashioned breast
brooch set round with pearls, With glass at the front, and the back made to
contain hair. She then, on being asked, drew a rough sketch of the brooch.
Madame Blavatsky then wrapped up a coin
attached to her watch-chain In two cigarette papers, and put it in her dress,
and said that she hoped the brooch might be obtained in the course of the
evening. At the close of dinner she said to Mr. Hume that the paper in which
the corn had been wrapped was gone. A little later, in the drawing room , she
said that the brooch would not be brought into the house, but that it must be
looked for in the garden, and then as the party went out accompanying her, she
said she had clairvoyantly seen the brooch fall into a star-shaped bed of flowers.
Mr. Hume led the way to such a bed in a distant part of the garden. A prolonged
and careful search was made with lanterns, and eventually a small paper packet,
consisting of two cigarette papers, was found amongst the leaves by Mrs.
Sinnett. This being opened on the spot was found to contain a brooch exactly
corresponding to the previous description, and which Mrs. Hume Identified as
that which she had originally lost. None of the party, except Mr. and Mrs.
Hume, had ever seen or heard of the brooch. Mr. Hume had not thought of it for
years. Mrs. Hume had never spoken of it to anyone since she parted with it, nor
had she, for long, even thought of it. She herself stated, after it was found,
that it was only when Madame asked her whether there was anything she would
like to have, that the remembrance of this brooch, the gift of her mother,
flashed across her mind.
" Mrs. Hume is not a spiritualist,
and up to the time of the occurrence described was no believer either in occult
phenomena or in Madame Blavatsky's powers. The conviction of all present was,
that the occurrence was of an absolutely unimpeachable character, as an
evidence of the truth of the possibility of occult phenomena. The brooch is
unquestionably the one which Mrs, Hume lost. Even supposing, which is
practically impossible, that the article, lost months before Mrs. Hume ever
heard of Madame Blavatsky, and bearing no letters or other indication of
original ownership, could have passed in a natural way into Madame Blavatsky's
possession, even then she could not possibly have foreseen that it would be
asked for, and Mrs. Hume herself had not given it a thought for months
" This narrative, read over to the
party, is signed by-
A. 0. HUME,
ALICE GORDON,
M. A. HUME,
P. J. :MAITLAND,
FRED. R. HOGG,
WM. DAVIDSON,
A. P. SINNETT,
STUART BEATSON.
PATIENCE SINNETT.
It is needless to state that when this narrative was published the nine persons
above mentioned were assailed with torrents of ridicule, the effect of which,
however; has not been in any single case to modify, in the smallest degree, the
conviction which their signatures attested at the time, that the incident
related was a perfectly conclusive proof of the reality of occult power. Floods
of more or less imbecile criticism have been directed to show that the whole
performance must have been a trick; and for many persons in India it is now, no
doubt, an established explanation that Mrs. Hume was adroitly led up to ask for
the particular article produced, by a quantity of preliminary talk about a feat
which Madame Blavatsky specially went to the house to perform. A further
established opinion with a certain section of the Indian public is, that the
brooch which it appears Mrs. Hume gave to her daughter, and which her daughter
lost, must have been got from that young lady about a year previously, when she
passed through Bombay, where Madame Blavatsky was living, on her way to
England. The young lady's testimony to the effect that she lost the brooch
before she went to Bombay, or ever saw Madame Blavatsky, is a little feature of
this hypothesis which its contented framers do not care to enquire into. Nor do
persons who think the fact that the brooch once belonged to Mrs. Hume's
daughter, and that this young lady once saw Madame Blavatsky at Bombay,
sufficiently " suspicious " to wipe out the effect of the whole
incident as described above- ever attempt, as far as I have discerned, to trace
out a coherent chain of events as illuminated by their suspicions, or to
compare these with the circumstances of the brooch's actual recovery. No care,
however, to arrange the circumstances of an occult demonstration so that the
possibility of fraud and delusion may really be excluded, is sufficient to
exclude the imputation of this afterwards by people for whom any argument,
however illogical really, is good enough to attack a strange idea with.
As regards the witnesses of the brooch
phenomenon the conditions were so perfect that when they were speculating as to
the objections which might be raised by the public when the story should come
to be told, they did not foresee either of the objections actually raised
afterwards- the leading up in conversation theory, and the theory about Miss
Hume having- put Madame Blavatsky in possession of the brooch. They knew that
there had been no previous conversation at all about the brooch or any other
proposed feat, that the idea about getting something Mrs. Hume should ask for,
arose all in a moment, and that almost immediately afterwards, the brooch was
named. As for Miss Hume having unconsciously contributed to the production of
the phenomenon, it did not occur to the witnesses that this would be suggested,
because they did not foresee that anyone could be so foolish as to shut their
eyes to the important circumstances, to concentrate their attention entirely on
one of quite minor importance. As the statement itself says, even supposing,
which is practically impossible, that the brooch could have passed into Madame
Blavatsky's possession in a natural way, she could not possibly have foreseen
that it would have been asked for.
The only conjectures the witnesses could
frame to explain beforehand the tolerably certain result that the public at
large would refuse to be convinced by the brooch incident, were that they might
be regarded as misstating the facts and omitting some which the superior
intelligence of their critics- as their critics would regard the matter- would
see to upset the significance of the rest, or that Mrs. Hume must be a
confederate. Now, this last conjecture, which will no doubt occur to readers in
England, had only to be stated, to be, for the other persons concerned in the
incident, one of the most amusing results to which it could give rise. We all
knew Mrs. Hume to be as little predisposed towards any such a conspiracy as she
was morally incapable of the wrongdoing it would involve.
At one stage of the proceedings, moreover,
we had considered the question as to the extent to which the conditions of the
phenomenon were satisfactory. It had often happened that faults had eventually
been found with Madame Blavatsky's phenomena by reason of some oversight in the
conditions that had not been thought of at first. One of our friends,
therefore, on the occasion I am describing, had suggested, after we rose from the
dinner-table, that before going any further the company generally should be
asked whether, if the brooch could be produced, that would under the
circumstances be a satisfactory proof of occult agency in the matter. We
carefully reviewed the matter in which the situation had been developed and we
all came to the conclusion that the test , would be absolutely complete, and
that on this occasion there was no weak place in the chain of the argument.
Then it was that Madame Blavatsky said the brooch would be brought to the
garden, and that we could go out and search for it.
An interesting circumstance for those who
had already watched some of the other phenomena I have described was this: The
brooch, as stated above, was found wrapped up in two cigarette papers, and
these, when examined in a full light in the house, were found still to bear the
mark of the coin attached to Madame Blavatsky's watch chain, which had been
wrapped up in them before they departed on their mysterious errand. They were
thus identified for people who had got over the first stupendous difficulty of
believing in the possibility of transporting material objects by occult agency
as the same papers that had been seen by us at the dinner-table.
The occult transmission of objects to a
distance not being, "magic', 'as Western readers understand the word, is
susceptible of some partial explanation even for ordinary readers, for whom the
means by which the forces employed are manipulated must remain entirely
mysterious. It is not contended that the currents which are made use of, convey
the bodies transmitted in a solid mass just as they exist for the senses. The
body, to be transmitted, is supposed first to be disintegrated, conveyed on the
currents in infinitely minute particles, and then reintegrated at its
destination. In the case of the brooch, the first thing to be done must have
been to find it. This, however, would simply be a feat of clairvoyance- the
scent of the object, so to speak, being taken up from the person who spoke of
it and had once possessed it- and there is no clairvoyance of which the western
world has any knowledge, comparable in its vivid intensity to the clairvoyance
of an adept in occultism. Its resting- place thus discovered, the
disintegration process would come into play, and the object desired would be
conveyed to the place where the adept engaged with it would choose to have it
deposited. The part played in the phenomenon by the cigarette papers would be
this: In order that we might be able to find the brooch, it was necessary to
connect it by an occult scent with Madame Blavatsky. The cigarette papers,
which she always carried about with her, were thus impregnated with her
magnetism, and taken from her by the Brother, left an occult trail behind them.
Wrapped round the brooch, they conducted this trail to the required spot.
The magnetisation of the cigarette papers
always with her, enabled Madame Blavatsky to perform a little feat with them
which was found by everyone for whom it was done an exceedingly complete bit of
evidence ; though here again the superficial resemblance of the experiment to a
conjuring trick misled the intelligence of ordinary persons who read about the
incidents referred to in the newspapers. The feat itself may be most
conveniently discussed by the quotation of three letters ,which appeared in the
Pioneer of the 23rd of October, and were as follows ;-
"Sir,
-The account of the discovery of Mrs.
Hume's brooch has called forth several letters, and many questions have been
asked, some of which I may answer on a future occasion, but I think it only
right to first contribute further testimony to the occult powers possessed by
Madame Blavatsky. In thus coming before the public, one must be prepared for
ridicule, but it is a weapon which we who know something of these matters can
well afford to despise. On Thursday last, at about half-past
ALICE GORDON
"Sir,
-I have been asked to give an account of a
circumstance which took place in my presence on the 13th instant. On the
evening of that day I was sitting alone with Madame Blavatsky and Colonel
Olcott in the drawing-room of Mr. Sinnett's house in Simla. After some
conversation on various matters, Madame Blavatsky said she would like to try an
experiment in a manner which had been suggested to her by Mr. Sinnett. She,
therefore, took two cigarette papers from her pocket and marked on each of them
a number of parallel lines in pencil. She then tore a piece off the end of each
paper across the lines, and gave them to me. At that time Madame Blavatsky was
sitting close to me, and I intently watched her proceedings, my eyes being not
more than two feet from her hands. She declined to let me mark or tear the
papers alleging that if handled by others they would become imbued with their
personal magnetism, which would counterset her own. However, the torn pieces
were handed directly to me, and I could not observe any opportunity for the
substitution of other papers by sleight of hand. The genuineness or otherwise
of the phenomena afterwards presented appears to rest on this point. The torn
off pieces of the paper remained in my closed left hand until the conclusion of
the experiment. Of the larger pieces Madame Blavatsky made two cigarettes,
giving the first to me to hold while the other was being made up. I scrutinised
this cigarette very attentively, in order to be able to recognise it
afterwards. The cigarettes being finished, Madame Blavatsky stood up, and took
them between her hands, which she rubbed together. After about twenty or thirty
seconds, the grating noise of the paper, at first distinctly audible, ceased.
She then said the current [The theory is that a current of what can only
be called magnetism, can be made to convey objects, previously dissipated by
the same force, to any distance, and in spite of the Intervention of any amount
of matter.] Is passing round this end of the room, and I can only send
them somewhere near here. A moment afterwards she said one had fallen on the
piano, the other near that bracket. As I sat on a sofa with my back to the
wall, the piano was opposite, and the bracket, supporting a few pieces of
china, was to the right, between it and the door. Both were in full view across
the rather narrow room. The top of the piano was covered with piles of music
books, and it was among these Madame Blavatsky thought a cigarette would be
found; The books were removed, one by one, by myself, but without seeing
anything. I then opened the piano, and found a cigarette on a narrow shelf
inside it. This cigarette I took out and recognised as the one I had held in my
hand. The other was found in a covered cup on the bracket. Both cigarettes were
still damp where -they had been moistened at the edges in the process of
manufacture. I took the cigarettes to a table, without permitting them to be
touched or even seen by Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott. On being unrolled
and smoothed out, the torn, jagged edges were found to fit exactly to the
pieces that I had all this time retained in my hand. The pencil marks also
corresponded. It would therefore appear that the papers were actually the same
as those I had seen torn. Both the papers are still in my possession. It may be
added that Colonel Olcott sat near me with his back to Madame Blavatsky during
the experiment, and did not move till it was concluded.
"P. J. MAITLAND, Captain."
" Sir,
- With reference to the correspondence now
filling your columns, on the subject of Madame Blavatsky's recent
manifestations, it may interest your readers if I record a striking incident
which took place last week in my presence. I had occasion to call on Madame,
and in the course of our interview she tore off a corner from a cigarette
paper, asking me to hold the same, which I did. With the remainder of the paper
she prepared a cigarette in the ordinary manner, and in a few moments caused
this cigarette to disappear from her hands. We were sitting at the time in the
drawing-room. I inquired if it were like]y to find this cigarette again, and
after a short pause Madame requested me to accompany her into the dining-room,
where the cigarette would be found on the top of a curtain hanging over the
window. By means of a tab]e and a chair placed thereon, I was enabled with some
difficulty to reach and take down a cigarette from the place indicated. This
cigarette I opened, and found the paper to correspond exactly with that I had
seen a few minutes before in the drawing-room. That is to say, the
corner-piece, which I had retained in my possession, fitted exactly into the
jagged edges of the torn paper in which the tobacco had been rolled. To the
best of my belief, the test was as complete and satisfactory as any test can
be. I refrain from giving my opinion as to the causes which produced the
effect, feeling sure that your readers who take an interest in these phenomena
will prefer exercising their own judgement in the matter. I merely give you an
unvarnished statement of what I saw. I may be permitted to add I am not a
member of the Theosophist Society, nor, so far as I know, am I biassed in
favour of occult science, although a warm sympathiser with the proclaimed
objects of the Society over which Colonel Olcott presides.
" CHARLES FRANCIS MASSY."
Of course, anyone familiar with conjuring will be aware that an imitation of
this" trick " can be arranged by a person gifted with a little
sleight of hand. You take two pieces of paper, and tear off a corner of both
together, so that the jags of both are the same. You make a cigarette with one
piece, and put it in the place where you mean to have it ultimately found. You
then hold the other piece underneath the one you tear in presence of the
spectator, slip in one of the already torn corners into his hand instead of
that he sees you tear, make your cigarette with the other part of the original
piece, dispose of that anyhow you please, and allow the prepared cigarette to
be found. Other variations of the system may be readily imagined, and for
persons who have not actually seen Madame Blavatsky do one of her cigarette
feats it may be useless to point out that she does not do them as a conjuror
would, and that the spectator, if he is gifted with ordinary common sense, can
never have the faintest shadow of a doubt about the corner given to him being
the corner torn off- a certainty which the pencil-marks upon it, drawn before
his eyes, would enhance, if that were necessary. However, as I say, though
experience shows me that the outsider is prone to regard the little cigarette
phenomenon as ''suspicious," it has never failed to be regarded as
convincing by the most acute people among those who have witnessed it. With all
phenomena, however, stupidity on the part of the observer will defeat any
attempt to reach his understanding, no matter how perfect the tests supplied.
I realise this more fully now than at the
time of which I am writing. Then I was chiefly anxious to get experiments
arranged ,which should be really complete in their details and leave no opening
for the suggestion even of imposture. It was "an uphill struggle first,
because Madame Blavatsky was intractable and excitable as an experimentalist,
and herself no more than the recipient of favours from the Brothers in
reference to the greater phenomena. And it seemed to me conceivable that the
Brothers might themselves not always realise precisely the frame of mind in
which persons of European training approached the consideration of such
miracles as these with which we were dealing, so that they did not always make
sufficient allowance for the necessity of rendering their test phenomena quite
perfect and unassailable in all minor details. I knew, of course, that they
were not primarily anxious to convince the commonplace world of anything
whatever; but still they frequently did assist Madame Blavatsky to produce
phenomena that had no other motive except the production of an effect on the
minds of people belonging to the outer world; and it seemed to me that under
these circumstances they might just as well do something that would leave no
room for the imputation even of any trickery.
One day, therefore, I asked Madame
Blavatsky whether if I wrote a letter to one of the Brothers explaining my
views, she could get it delivered for me. I hardly thought this was probable,
as I knew how very unapproachable the Brothers generally are; but as she said
that at any rate she would try, I wrote a letter, addressing it " to the
Unknown Brother," and gave it to her to see if any result would ensue. It
was a happy inspiration that induced me to do this, for out of that small
beginning has arisen the most interesting correspondence in which I have ever
been privileged to engage- a correspondence which, I am happy to say, still
promises to continue, and the existence of which, more than any experiences of
phenomena which I have had, though the most wonderful of these are yet to be described,
is the raison d'être of this little book.
The idea I had specially in my mind when I
wrote the letter above referred to, was that of all test phenomena one could
wish for, the best would be the production in our presence in
A day or two elapsed before I heard
anything of the fate of my letter, but Madame Blavatsky then informed me that I
was to have an answer. I afterwards learned that she had not been able at first
to find a Brother willing to receive the communication. Those whom she first
applied to declined to be troubled with the matter. At last her psychological
telegraph brought her a favourable answer from one of the Brothers with whom
she had not for some time been in communication. He would take the letter and
reply to it.
Hearing this, I at once regretted that I
had not written at greater length, arguing my view of the required concession
more fully. I wrote again, therefore, without waiting for the actual receipt of
the expected letter.
A day or two after I found one evening on my writing-table the first letter
sent me by my new correspondent. I may here explain, what I learned afterwards,
that he was a native of the
My correspondent is known to me as the
Mahatma Koot Hoomi.[See Appendix "C"] .This is his
" Tibetan Mystic name " -occultists, it would seem, taking new names
on initiation- a practice which has no doubt given rise to similar customs
which we find perpetuated here and there in ceremonies of the Roman Catholic
church.
The letter I received began, in medias
res, about the phenomenon I had professed. " Precisely," the
Mahatma wrote, " because the test of the
" So far for science- as much as we
know of it. As for human nature in general it is the same now as it was a
million of years ago. Prejudice, based upon selfishness, a general
unwillingness to give up an established order of things for new modes of life
and thought - and occult study requires all that and much more- pride and
stubborn resistance to truth, if it but upsets their previous notions of
things- such are the characteristics of your age.........
What, then, would be the results of the
most astounding phenomena supposing we consented to have them produced ?
However successful, danger would be growing proportionately with success. No
choice would soon remain but to go on, ever crescendo, or to fall in
this endless struggle with prejudice and ignorance, killed by your own weapons.
Test after test would be required, and would have to be furnished; every
subsequent phenomenon expected to be more marvellous than the preceding one.
Your daily remark is, that one cannot be expected to believe unless he becomes
an eyewitness. Would the lifetime of a man suffice to satisfy the whole world
of sceptics ? It may an an easy matter to increase the original number of
believers at Simla to hundreds and thousands. But what of the hundreds of
millions of those who could not be made eyewitnesses ? The ignorant, unable to
grapple with the invisible operators, might some day vent their rage on the
visible agents at work; the higher and educated classes would go on
disbelieving, as ever, tearing you to shreds as before. In common with many,
you blame us for our great secrecy. Yet we know something of human nature, for
the experience of long centuries- ay, ages, has taught us. And we know that so
long as science has anything to learn, and a shadow of religious dogmatism
lingers in the hearts of the multitude, the world's prejudices have to be
conquered step by step, not at a rush. As hoary antiquity had more than one
Socrates, so the dim future will give birth to more than one martyr.
Enfranchised Science contemptuously turned away her face from the Copernican
opinion renewing the theories of Aristarchus Samius, who 'affirmeth that the
earth moveth circularly about her own centre', years before the Church sought
to sacrifice Galileo as a holocaust to the Bible. The ablest
mathematician at the Court of Edward VI., Robert Recorde, was left to starve in
jail by his colleagues, who laughed at his Castle of Knowledge,
declaring his discoveries vain fantasies All this is old history, you will
think. Verily so, but the chronicles of our modern days do not differ very
essentially from their predecessors. And we have but to bear in mind the recent
persecutions of mediums in England, the burning of supposed witches and sorcerers
in South America, Russia, and the frontiers of Spain, to assure ourselves that
the only salvation of the genuine proficient in occult sciences lies in the
scepticism of the public: the charlatans and the jugglers are the natural
shields of the adepts. The public safety is only ensured by our keeping secret
the terrible weapons which might otherwise be used against it, and which, as
you have been told, become deadly in the hands of the wicked and selfish."
The remainder of the letter is concerned
chiefly with personal matters, and need not be here reproduced. I shall, of
course, throughout my quotations from letters, leave out passages which,
specially addressed to myself, have no immediate bearing on the public
argument. The reader must be fearful to remember, however, as I now most
unequivocally affirm, that I shall in no case alter one syllable of the
passages actually quoted. It is important to make this declaration very
emphatically, because the more my readers may be acquainted with India, the less
they will be willing to believe, except on the most positive testimony, that
the letters from the Mahatma, as I now publish them, have been written by a
native of India. That such is the fact, however, is beyond dispute.
I replied to the letter above quoted at
some length, arguing, if I remember rightly, that the European mind was less
hopelessly intractable than Koot Hoomi represented it. His second letter was as
follows :-
" We will be at cross purposes in our
correspondence until it has been made entirely plain that occult science has
its own methods of research, as fixed and arbitrary as the methods of its
antithesis, physical science, are in their way. If the latter has its dicta, so
also have the former; and he who would cross the boundary of the unseen world
can no more prescribe how he will proceed, than the traveller who tries to
penetrate to the inner subterranean recesses of L'Hassa the Blessed could show
the way to his guide. The mysteries never were, never can be, put within the
reach of the general public, not, at least, until that longed-for day when our
religious philosophy becomes universal. At no time have more than a scarcely
appreciable minority of men possessed Nature's secret, though multitudes have
witnessed the practical evidences of the possibility of their possession. The
adept is the rare efflorescence of a generation of inquirers ; and to become
one, he must obey the inward impulse of his soul, irrespective of the
prudential considerations of worldly science or sagacity. Your desire is to be
brought to communicate with one of us directly, without the agency of either
Madame Blavatsky or any medium. Your idea would be, as I understand it, to
obtain such communications, either by letter, as the present one, or by audible
words, so as to be guided by one of us in the management, and principally in
the instruction of the Society. You seek all this, and yet, as you say
yourself, hitherto you have not found sufficient reasons to even give up your
modes of life, directly hostile to such modes of communication. This is hardly
reasonable. He who would lift up high the banner of mysticism and proclaim its
reign near at hand must give the example to others. He must be the first to
change his modes of life, and, regarding the study of the occult mysteries as
the upper step in the ladder of knowledge, must loudly proclaim it such,
despite exact science and the opposition of society. The '
" My first answer covered, I believe,
most of the questions contained in your second and even third letter. Having,
then, expressed therein my opinion that the world in general was unripe for any
too staggering proof of occult power, there but remains to deal with the
isolated individuals who seek, like yourself, to penetrate behind the veil of
matter into the "world of primal causes ---- i.e., we need only
consider now the cases of yourself and Mr. -----."
I should here explain that one of my
friends at Simla, deeply interested with me in the progress of this
investigation, had, on reading Koot Hoomi's first letter to me, addressed my
correspondent himself. More favourably circumstanced than I, for such an
enterprise, he had even proposed to make a complete sacrifice of his other
pursuits, to pass away into any distant seclusion ,which might he appointed for
the purpose, where he might, if accepted as a pupil in occultism, learn enough
to return to the world armed with powers which would enable him to demonstrate
the realities of spiritual development and the errors of modern materialism,
and then devote his life to the task of combating modern incredulity and
leading men to a practical comprehension of a better life. I resume the
letter:-
" This gentleman also has done me the
great honour to address me by name, offering to me a few questions, and stating
the conditions upon which he would be willing to work for us seriously. But your
motives and aspirations being of diametrically opposite character, and hence
leading to different results, I must reply to each of you separately. "
'The first and chief consideration in
determining us to accept or reject your offer lies in the inner motive which
propels you to seek our instruction and, in a certain sense, our guidance; the
latter in all cases under reserve, as I understand it, and therefore remaining
a question independent of aught else. Now, what are your motives ? I may try to
define them in their general aspects, leaving details for further
consideration. They are-(l ) The desire to see positive and unimpeachable
proofs that there really are forces in Nature of which science knows nothing;
(2) The hope to appropriate them some day- the sooner the better, for you do
not like to wait- so as to enable yourself ; (a) to demonstrate their existence
to a few chosen Western minds; (b) to contemplate future life as an objective
reality built upon the rock of knowledge, not of faith; and (c) to finally
learn -most important this, among all your motives, perhaps, though the most
occult and the best guarded- the whole truth about our lodges and ourselves; to
get, in short, the positive assurance that the' Brothers,' of whom everyone
hears so much and sees so little, are rare entities, not fictions of a
disordered, hallucinated brain. Such, viewed in their best light, appear to us
your motives for addressing me. And in the same spirit do I answer them, hoping
that my sincerity will not be interpreted in a wrong way, or attributed to
anything like an unfriendly spirit.
" To our minds, then, these motives,
sincere and worthy of every serious consideration from the worldly standpoint,
appear selfish. (You have to pardon me what you might view as crudeness
of language, if your desire is that which you really profess- to learn truth
and get instruction from us who belong to quite a different world from the one
you move in.) They are selfish, because you must be aware that the chief object
of the Theosophical Society is not so much to gratify individual aspirations as
to serve our fellowmen, and the real value of this term' selfish,' which may
jar upon your ear, has a peculiar significance with us which it cannot have
with you; therefore, to begin with, you must not accept it otherwise than in
the former sense. Perhaps you will better appreciate our meaning when told that
in our view the highest aspirations for the welfare of humanity become tainted
with selfishness, if, in the mind of the philanthropist, there lurks the shadow
of a desire for self-benefit, or a tendency to do injustice, even where these
exist unconsciously to himself. Yet you have ever discussed but to put down,
the idea of a Universal Brotherhood, questioned its usefulness, and advised to
remodel the Theosophical Society on the principle of a college for the special
study of occultism...
" Having disposed of personal
motives, let us analyse your terms for helping us to do public good. Broadly
stated, these terms are-first, that an independent Anglo -Indian Theosophical
Society shall be founded through your kind services, in the management of which
neither of our present representatives shall have any voice ; [ In the
absence of my own letter, to which this Is a reply, the reader might think from
this sentence that I had been animated by some unfriendly feeling for the
representatives referred to- Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott. This is far
from having been the case; but, keenly alive to mistakes which had been made up
to the time of, which I am writing, In the management of the Theosophical
Society, Mr. ------and myself were under the impression that better public
results might be obtained by commencing operations de novo, and taking,
ourselves, the direction of the measures which might be employed to recommend
the study of occultism to the modern world. This belief on our part was
coexistent In both cases with a warm friendship based on the purest esteem for
both the persons mentioned. ] And second, that one of us shall take the
new body' under his patronage,' be' in free and direct communication with its
leaders,' and afford them' direct proof that he really possessed that superior
knowledge of the forces of Nature and the attributes of the human soul which
would inspire them with proper confidence in his leadership.' I have copied
your own words so as to avoid inaccuracy in defining the position.
"From your point of view,