———- * Not only are the Upanishads a secret doctrine, but in dozens of other works as, for instance, in the Aitareya Aranyaka, it is plainly expressed that they contain secret doctrines, that are not to be imparted to any one but a Dwija (twice-born, initiated) Brahman. ————

I fully perceive the difficulty of satisfying European philologists of a fact which, upon my own statement, they are debarred from verifying. We know that from the present mental condition of our Brahmans. But I hope to be able to group together a few admitted circumstances which will aid, at least, to show the Western theory untenable, if not to make a base upon which to rest our claim for the antiquity of Sanskrit writing. Three good reasons may be adduced in support of the claim—though they will be regarded as circumstantial evidence by our opponents.

I.—It can be shown that writing was known in Phoenicia from the date of the acquaintance of Western history with her first settlements; and this may be dated, according to European figures, 2760 B.C., the age of the Tyrian settlement.

II.—Our opponents confess to ignorance of the source whence the Phoenicians themselves got their alphabet.

III.—It can be proved that before the final division and classification of languages, there existed two languages in every nation: (a) the profane or popular language of the masses; (b) the sacerdotal or secret language of the initiates of the temples and mysteries—the latter being one and universal. Or, in other, words, every great people had, like the Egyptians, its Demotic and its Hieratic writing and language, which had resulted first in a pictorial writing or the hieroglyphics, and later on in a phonetic alphabet. Now it requires a stretch of prejudice, indeed, to assert upon no evidence whatever that the Brahman Aryans—mystics and metaphysicians above everything—were the only ones who had never had any knowledge of either the sacerdotal language or the characters in which it was recorded. To contradict this gratuitous assumption, we can furnish a whole array of proofs. It can be demonstrated that the Aryans no more borrowed their writing from the Hellenes, or from the Phoenicians, than they were indebted to the influence of the former for all their arts and sciences. (Even if we accept Mr. Cunningham's "Indo-Grecian Period," for it lasted only from 250-57 B.C., as he states it.) The direct progenitor of the Vedic Sanskrit was the sacerdotal language (which has a distinct name among the initiates). The Vach—its alter ego or the "mystic self," the sacerdotal speech of the initiated Brahman—became in time the mystery language of the inner temple, studied by the initiates of Egypt and Chaldea; of the Phoenicians and the Etruscans; of the Pelasgi and Palanquans; in short, of the whole globe. The appellation DEVANAGARI is the synonym of, and identical with, the Hermetic and Hieratic NETER-KHARI (divine speech) of the Egyptians.

As the discussion divides naturally into two parts as to treatment— though a general synthesis must be the final result—we will proceed to examine the first part—namely, the charge that the Sanskrit alphabet is derived from the Phoenicians. When a Western philologer asserts that writing did not exist before a certain period, we assume that he has some approximate certitude as to its real invention. But so far is this from the truth, that admittedly no one knows whence the Phoenicians learned the characters, now alleged (by Gesenius first) to be the source from which modern alphabets were directly derived. De Rouge's investigations make it extremely probable that "they were borrowed, or rather adapted from certain archaic hieroglyphics of Egypt:" a theory which the Prisse Papyrus, "the oldest in existence," strongly supports by its "striking similarities with the Phoenician characters." But the same authority traces it back one step farther. He says that the ascription (by the myth-makers) of the art of writing to Thoth, or to Kadmos, "only denotes their belief in its being brought from the East (Kedem), or being perhaps primeval." There is not even a certainty whether, primevally or archaically, "there were several original alphabetical systems, or whether one is to be assumed as having given rise to the various modes of writing in use." So, if conjecture has the field, it is no great disloyalty to declare one's rebellion against the eminent Western gentlemen who are learnedly guessing at the origin of things. Some affirm that the Phoenicians derived their so-called Kadmean or Phoenician writing-characters from the Pelasgians, held also to have been the inventors, or at least the improvers, of the so-called Kadmean characters. But, at the same time, this is not proven, they confess, and they only know that the latter were in possession of the art of writing "before the dawn of history." Let us see what is known of both Phoenicians and Pelasgians.

If we inquire who were the Phoenicians, we learn as follows:—From having been regarded as Hamites on Bible testimony, they suddenly became Semites—on geographical and philological evidence(?). Their origin begins, it is said, on the shores of the Erythrian Sea; and that sea extended from the eastern shores of Egypt to the western shores of India. The Phoenicians were the most maritime nation in the world. That they knew perfectly the art of writing no one would deny. The historical period of Sidon begins 1500 B.C. And it is well ascertained that in 1250 Sanchoniathon had already compiled from annals and State documents, which filled the archives of every Phoenician city, the full records of their religion. Sanchoniathon wrote in the Phoenician language, and was mis-translated later on into Greek by Philo of Byblus, and annihilated bodily—as to his works—except one small fragment preserved by Eusebius, the literary Siva, the Destroyer of nearly all heathen documents that fell in his way. To see the direct bearing of the alleged superior knowledge of the Phoenicians upon the alleged ignorance of the Aryan Brahmans, one has but to turn to "European Universal History," meagre though its details and possible knowledge, yet I suppose no one would contradict the historical facts given. Some fragments of Dius, the Phoenician who wrote the history of Tyre, are preserved in Josephus; and Tyre's activity begins 1100 B.C., in the earlier part of the third period of Phoenician history, so called. And in that period, as we are told, they had already reached the height of their power; their ships covered all seas, their commerce embraced the whole earth, and their colonies flourished far and near. Even on Biblical testimony they are known to have come to the Indies by the Red Sea, while trading on Solomon's account about a millennium before the Western era. These data no man of science can deny. Leaving entirely aside the thousand-and-one documentary proofs that could be given on the evidence of our most ancient texts on Occult Sciences, of inscribed tablets, &c., those historical events that are accepted by the Western world are alone here given. Turning to the Mahabharata, the date of which—on the sole authority of the fancy lore drawn from the inner consciousness of German scholars, who perceive in the great epic poem proofs of its modern fabrication in the words "Yavana" and others—has been changed from 3300 years to the first centuries after Christ (!!), we find: (1) ample evidence that the ancient Hindus had navigated (before the establishment of the caste system) the open seas to the regions of the Arctic Ocean and held communication with Europe; and (2) that the Pandus had acquired universal dominion and taught the sacrificial mysteries to other races (see Mahabharata, book xiv,). With such proofs of international communication, and more than proved relations between the Indian Aryans and the Phoenicians, Egyptians and other literate people, it is rather startling to be told that our forefathers of the Brahmanic period knew nothing of writing.

Admitting, for the argument only, that the Phoenician were the sole custodians of the glorious art of writing, and that as merchants they traded with India, what commodity, I ask, could they have offered to a people led by the Brahmans so precious and marketable as this art of arts, by whose help the priceless lore of the Rishis might be preserved against the accidents of imperfect oral transmission? And even if the Aryans learned from Phoenicians how to write—to every educated Hindu an absurdity—they must have possessed the art 2,000 or at least 1,000 years earlier than the period supposed by Western critics. Negative proof, perhaps? Granted: yet no more so than their own, and most suggestive.

And now we may turn to the Pelasgians. Notwithstanding the rebuke of Niebuhr, who, speaking of the historian in general, shows him as hating "the spurious philology, out of which the pretences to knowledge on the subject of such extinct people arise," the origin of the Pelasgians is conjectured to have been from—(a) swarthy Asiatics (Pellasici) or from some (b) mariners—from the Greek Pelagos, the sea; or again to be sought for in the (c) Biblical Peleg! The only divinity of their Pantheon well known to Western history is Orpheus, also the "swarthy," the "dark-skinned;" represented for the Pelasgians by Xoanon, their "Divine Image." Now if the Pelasgians were Asiatics, they must have been Turanians, Semites or Aryans. That they could not have been either of the two first, and must have been the last named, is shown on Herodotus' testimony, who declared them the forefathers of the Greeks— though they spoke, as he says, "a most barbarous language." Further, unerring philology shows that the vast number of roots common both to Greek and Latin, are easily explained by the assumption of a common Pelasgic linguistic and ethnical stock in both nationalities. But then how about the Sanskrit roots traced in the Greek and Latin languages? The same roots must have been present in the Pelasgian tongues? We who place the origin of the Pelasgian far beyond the Biblical ditch of historic chronology, have reasons to believe that the "barbarous language" mentioned by Herodotus was simply "the primitive and now extinct Aryan tongue" that preceded the Vedic Sanskrit. Who could they be, these Pelasgians? They are described generally on the meagre data in hand as a highly intellectual, receptive, active and simple people, chiefly occupied with agriculture; warlike when necessary, though preferring peace. We are told that they built canals, subterranean water-works, dams, and walls of astounding strength and most excellent construction. And their religion and worship originally consisted in a mystic service of those natural powers—the sun, wind, water, and air (our Surya, Maruts, Varuna, and Vayu), whose influence is visible in the growth of the fruits of the earth; moreover, some of their tribes were ruled by priests, while others stood under the patriarchal rule of the head of the clan or family. All this reminds one of the nomads, the Brahmanic Aryas of old under the sway of their Rishis, to whom were subject every distinct family or clan. While the Pelasgians were acquainted with the art of writing, and had thus "a vast element of culture in their possession before the dawn of history," we are told (by the same philologists) that our ancestors knew of no writing until the dawn of Christianity!

Thus the Pelasgianic language, that "most barbarous language" spoken by this mysterious people, what was it but Aryan; or rather, which of the Aryan languages could it have been? Certainly it must have been a language with the same and even stronger Sanskrit roots in it than the Greek. Let us bear in mind that the Aeolic was neither the language of Aeschylus, nor the Attic, nor even the old speech of Homer. As the Oscan of the "barbarous" Sabines was not quite the Italian of Dante nor even the Latin of Virgil. Or has the Indo-Aryan to come to the sad conclusion that the average Western Orientalist will rather incur the blame of ignorance when detected than admit the antiquity of the Vedic Sanskrit and the immense period which separated this comparatively rough and unpolished language, compared with the classical Sanskrit, and the palmy days of the "extinct Aryan tongue?" The Latium Antiquum of Pliny and the Aeolic of the Autochthones of Greece present the closest kinship, we are told. They had a common ancestor—the Pelasgian. What, then, was the parent tongue of the latter unless it was the language "spoken at one time by all the nations of Europe—before their separation?" In the absence of all proofs, it is unreasonable that the Rik-Brahmanas, the Mahabharata and every Nirukti should be treated as flippantly as they now are. It is admitted that, however inferior to the classical Sanskrit of Panini, the language of the oldest portions of Rig Veda, notwithstanding the antiquity of its grammatical forms, is the same as that of the latest texts. Every one sees—cannot fail to see and to know—that for a language so old and so perfect as the Sanskrit to have survived alone, among all languages, it must have had its cycles of perfection and its cycles of degeneration. And, if one had any intuition, he might have seen that what they call a "dead language" being an anomaly, a useless thing in Nature, it would not have survived, even as a "dead" tongue, had it not its special purpose in the reign of immutable cyclic laws; and that Sanskrit, which came to be nearly lost to the world, is now slowly spreading in Europe, and will one day have the extension it had thousands upon thousands of years back—that of a universal language. The same as to the Greek and the Latin: there will be a time when the Greek of Aeschylus (and more perfect still in its future form) will be spoken by all in Southern Europe, while Sanskrit will be resting in its periodical pralaya; and the Attic will be followed later by the Latin of Virgil. Something ought to have whispered to us that there was also a time—before the original Aryan settlers among the Dravidian and other aborigines, admitted within the fold of Brahmanical initiation, marred the purity of the sacred Sanskrita Bhasha—when Sanskrit was spoken in all its unalloyed subsequent purity, and therefore must have had more than once its rise and fall. The reason for it is simply this: classical Sanskrit was only restored, if in some things perfected, by Panini. Panini, Katyayana or Patanjali did not create it; it has existed throughout cycles, and will pass through other cycles still.

Professor Max Miller is willing to admit that a tribe of Semitic nomads—fourteen centuries before the year 1 of the Westerns—knew well the art of writing, and had their historically and scientifically proven "book of the covenant and the tables 'with the writing of God upon them.'" Yet the same authority tells us that the Aryans could neither read nor write until the very close of the Brahmanic period. "No trace of writing can be discovered (by the philologists) in the Brahmanical literature before the days of Panini." Very well, and now what was the period during which this Siva-taught sage is allowed to have flourished? One Orientalist (Bohtlingk) refers us to 350 B.C., while less lenient ones, like Professor Weber, land the grammarian right in the middle of the second century of the Christian era! Only, after fixing Panini's period with such a remarkable agreement of chronology (other calculations ranging variously between 400 B.C. and 460 A.D.), the Orientalists place themselves inextricably between the horns of a dilemma. For whether Panini flourished 350 B.C. or 180 A.D., he could not have been illiterate; for firstly, in the Lalita Vistara, a canonical book recognized by the Sanskritists, attributed by Max Muller to the third Buddhist council (and translated into Tibetan), our Lord Buddha is shown as studying, besides Devanagari, sixty-three other alphabets specified in it as being used in various parts of India; and secondly, though Megasthenes and Nearchus do say that in their time the laws of Manu were not (popularly) reduced to writing (Strabo, xv. 66 and 73) yet Nearchus describes the Indian art of making paper from cotton. He adds that the Indians wrote letters on cotton twisted together (Strabo, xv. 53 and 67). This would be late in the Sutra period, no doubt, according to Professor Miller's reasoning. Can the learned gentleman cite any record within that comparatively recent period showing the name of the inventor of that cotton-paper, and the date of his discovery? Surely so important a fact as that, a novelty so transcendently memorable, would not have passed without remark. One would seem compelled, in the absence of any such chronicle, to accept the alternative theory—known to us Aryan students as a fact—that writing and writing materials were, as above remarked, known to the Brahmans in an antiquity inconceivably remote—many centuries before the epoch made illustrious by Panini.

Attention has been asked above to the interesting fact that the god Orpheus, of "Thracia" (?) is called the "dark-skinned." Has it escaped notice that he is "supposed to be the Vedic Ribhu or Abrhu, an epithet both of Indra and the Sun."* And if he was "the inventor of letters," and is "placed anterior to both Homer and Hesiod," then what follows? That Indra taught writing to the Thracian Pelasgians under the guise of Orpheus,** but left his own spokesmen and vehicles, the Brahmans, illiterate until "the dawn of Christianity?" Or, that the gentlemen of the West are better at intuitional chronology than conspicuous for impartial research?

———- * "Chamber's Encyclopedia," vii. 127.

** According to Herodotus the Mysteries were actually brought from India by Orpheus. ———-

Orpheus was—in Greece—the son of Apollo or Helios, the sun-god, according to corrected mythology, and from him received the phorminx or lyre of seven strings, i.e.—according to occult phraseology—the sevenfold mystery of the Initiation. Now Indra is the ruler of the bright firmament, the disperser of clouds, "the restorer of the sun to the sky." He is identified with Arjuna in the Samhita Satapatha Brahmana (although Prof. Weber denies the existence of any such person as Arjuna, yet there was indeed one), and Arjuna was the Chief of the Pandavas;* and though Pandu the white passes for his father, he is yet considered the son of Indra. As throughout India all ancient cyclopean structures are even now attributed to the Pandavas, so all similar structures in the West were anciently ascribed to the Pelasgians. Moreover, as shown well by Pococke—laughed at because too intuitional and too fair though, perchance less, philologically learned—the Pandavas were in Greece, where many traces of them can be shown.

———- * Another proof of the fact that the Pandavas were, though Aryans, not Brahmans, and belonged to an Indian tribe that preceded the Brahmans, and were later on Brahmanized, and then out-casted and called Mlechhas, Yavanas (i.e., foreign to the Brahmans), is afforded in the following: Pandu has two wives; and "it is not Kunti, his lawful wife, but Madri, his most beloved wife," who is burnt with the old King when dead, as well remarked by Prof Max Muller, who seems astonished at it without comprehending the true reason. As stated by Herodotus (v. 5), it was a custom amongst the Thracians to allow the most beloved of a man's wives to be sacrificed upon his tomb; and Herodotus (iv. 17) asserts a similar fact of the Scythians, and Pausanias (iv. 2) of the Greeks. ("Hist. Sans. Lit." p. 48). The Pandavas and the Kauravas are called esoterically cousins in the Epic poem because they were two distinct yet Aryan tribes, and represent two peoples, not simply two families. ————

In the Mahabharata, Arjuna is taught the occult philosophy by Krishna (personification of the universal Divine Principle); and the less mythological view of Orpheus presents him to us as "a divine bard or priest in the service of Zagreus .... founder of the Mysteries .... the inventor of everything, in fact, that was supposed to have contributed to the civilization and initiation into a more humane worship of the deity." Are not these striking parallels; and is it not significant that, in the cases of both Arjuna and Orpheus, the sublimer aspects of religion should have been imparted along with the occult methods of attaining it by masters of the mysteries? Real Devanagari—non-phonetic characters—meant formerly the outward symbols, so to say, the signs used in the intercommunication between gods and initiated mortals. Hence their great sacredness and the silence maintained throughout the Vedic and the Brahmanical periods about any object concerned with, or referring to, reading and writing. It was the language of the gods. If our Western critics can only understand what the Ancient Hindu writers meant by Rhutaliai, so often mentioned in their mystical writings, they will be in a position to ascertain the source from which the Hindus first derived their knowledge of writing.

A secret language, common to all schools of occult science once prevailed throughout the world. Hence Orpheus learnt "letters" in the course of his initiation. He is identified with Indra; according to Herodotus he brought the art of writing from India; his complexion swarthier than that of the Thracians points to his Indo-Aryan nationality—supposing him to have been "a bard and priest," and not a god; the Pelasgians are said to have been born in Thracia; they are believed (in the West) to have first possessed the art of writing, and taught the Phoenicians; from the latter all modern alphabets proceed. I submit, then, with all these coincidences and sequences, whether the balance of proof is on the side of the theory that the Aryans transmitted the art of writing to the people of the West; or on the side which maintains that they, with their caste of scholarly Brahmans, their noble sacerdotal tongue, dating from high antiquity, their redundant and splendid literature, their acquaintance with the most wonderful and recondite potentialities of the human spirit, were illiterate until the era of Panini, the grammarian and last of the Rishis. When the famous theorists of the Western colleges can show us a river running from its mouth back to its source in the feeble mountain spring, then may we be asked to believe in their theory of Aryan illiteracy. The history of human intellectual development shows that humanity always passes through the stage of ideography or pictography before attaining that of cursive writing. It therefore remains with the Western critics who oppose the antiquity of Aryan Scriptures to show us the pictographic proofs which support their position. As these are notoriously absent, it appears they would have us believe that our ancestors passed immediately from illiteracy to the Devanagari characters of Panini's time.

Let the Orientalists bear in mind the conclusions drawn from a careful study of the Mahabharata by Muir in his "Sanskrit Texts" (vol. I. pp. 390,480 and 482). It may be conclusively proven on the authority of the Mahabharata that the Yavanas (of whom India, as alleged, knew nothing before the days of Alexander!) belong to those tribes of Kshatriyas who, in consequence of their non-communication with, and in some cases rejection by, the Brahmins, had become from twice-born, "Vrishalas,"— i.e., outcasts (Mahabharata Anusasanaparvam, vv. 2103 F.): "Sakah Yavana-Kambojas tastah kshattriya jatayah Vrishalatvam parigatah Brahmananam adarsana. Dravidas cha Kalindas cha Pulindas chapy Usinarah Kalisarpa Mahishakas tastah kshattriya jatayah," &c. &c. The same reference may be found in verses 2158-9. The Mahabharata shows the Yavanas descended from Turvasu—once upon a time Kshatriya, subsequently degraded into Vrishala. Harivamsa shows when and how the Yavanas were excommunicated. It may be inferred from the account therein contained of the expedition against Ayodhya by the Yavanas, and the subsequent proceedings of Sagara, that the Yavanas were, previous to the date of the expedition, Kshatriyas subject to the government of the powerful monarchs who reigned at Ayodhya. But on account of their having rebelled against their sovereign, and attacked his capital, they were excommunicated by Sagara who successfully drove them out of Ayodhya, at the suggestion of Vasishtha who was the chief minister and guru of Sagara's father. The only trouble in connecting the Pelasgians with, and tracing their origin to, the Kshatriyas of Rajputana, is created by the Orientalist who constructs a fanciful chronology, based on no proof, and showing only unfamiliarity with the world's real history, and with Indian history even within historical periods.

The value of that chronology—which places virtually the "primitive Indo-Germanic-period" before the ancient Vedic period (!)—may, in conclusion, be illustrated by an example. Rough as may be the calculations offered, it is impossible to go deeper into any subject of this class within the narrow limits prescribed, and without recourse to data not generally accessible. In the words of Prof. Max Muller:—"The Code of Manu is almost the only work in Sanskrit literature which, as yet, has not been assailed by those who doubt the antiquity of everything Indian. No historian has disputed its claim to that early date which had from the first been assigned to it by Sir William Jones" ("Hist. Sans, Lit." p. 61). And now, pray, what is this extremely "early date?" "From 880 to 1200 B.C.," we are told. We will then, for the present purpose, accept this authoritative conclusion. Several facts, easily verifiable, have to be first of all noticed:—(1) Manu in his many enumerations of Indian races, kingdoms and places, never once mentions Bengal; the Aryan Brahmans had not yet reached, in the days when his Code was compiled, the banks of the Ganges nor the plains of Bengal. It was Arjuna who went first to Banga (Bengal) with his sacrificial horse. [Yavanas are mentioned in Rajdharma Anasasanika Parva as part of the tribes peopling it.] (2) In the Ayun a list of the Hindu kings of Bengal is given. Though the date of the first king who reigned over Banga cannot be ascertained, owing to the great gaps between the various dynasties; it is yet known that Bengal ceased to be an independent Hindu kingdom from 1203 after Christ. Now if, disregarding these gaps, which are wide and many, we make up the sum of only those chronological periods of the reign of the several dynasties that are preserved by history, we find the following:—

24 Kshatriya families of kings reigned for a period of 2,418 years 9 Kaista kings " " " " 250 " 11 Of the Adisur families " " " 714 " 10 Of the Bhopal family " " " 689 " 10 Of the Pala dynasty (from 855 to 1040 A.D.) " " 185 " 10 The Vaidya Rajahs reigned for a period of " " 137 " ———— Years . . . . 4,393 "

If we deduct from this sum 1,203, we have 3,190 years B.C. of successive reigns. If it can be shown on the unimpeachable evidence of the Sanskrit texts that some of the reigns happened simultaneously, and the line cannot therefore be shown as successive (as was already tried), well and good. Against an arbitrary chronology set up with a predetermined purpose and theory in view, there will remain but little to be said. But if this attempt at reconciliation of figures and the surrounding circumstances are maintained simply upon "critical, internal evidence," then, in the presence of these 3,190 years of an unbroken line of powerful and mighty Hindu kings, the Orientalists will have to show a very good reason why the authors of the Code of Manu seem entirely ignorant even of the existence of Bengal—if its date has to be accepted as not earlier than 1280 B.C.! A scientific rule which is good enough to apply to the case of Panini ought to be valid in other chronological speculations. Or, perhaps, this is one of those poor rules which will not "work both ways?"

—A Chela



THEOSOPHICAL

What is Theosophy?

According to lexicographers, the term theosophia is composed of two Greek words—theos "god," and sophas "wise." So far, correct. But the explanations that follow are far from giving a clear idea of Theosophy. Webster defines it most originally as "a supposed intercourse with God and superior spirits, and consequent attainment of superhuman knowledge by physical processes, as by the theurgic operations of some ancient Platonists, or by the chemical processes of the German fire-philosophers."

This, to say the least, is a poor and flippant explanation. To attribute such ideas to men like Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Jamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus, shows either intentional misrepresentation, or ignorance of the philosophy and motives of the greatest geniuses of the later Alexandrian School. To impute to those, whom their contemporaries as well as posterity styled "theodidaktoi," god-taught, a purpose to develop their psychological, spiritual perceptions by "physical processes," is to describe them as materialists. As to the concluding fling at the fire-philosophers, it rebounds from them upon some of the most eminent leaders of modern science; those in whose mouths the Rev. James Martineau places the following boast: "Matter is all we want; give us atoms alone, and we will explain the universe."

Vaughan offers a far better, more philosophical definition. "A Theosophist," he says, "is one who gives you a theory of God or the works of God, which has not revelation, but inspiration of his own for its basis." In this view every great thinker and philosopher, especially every founder of a new religion, school of philosophy, or sect, is necessarily a Theosophist. Hence, Theosophy and Theosophists have existed ever since the first glimmering of nascent thought made man seek instinctively for the means of expressing his own independent opinions.

There were Theosophists before the Christian era, notwithstanding that the Christian writers ascribe the development of the Eclectic Theosophical system to the early part of the third century of their era. Diogenes Laertius traces Theosophy to an epoch antedating the dynasty of the Ptolemies; and names as its founder an Egyptian Hierophant called Pot-Amun, the name being Coptic, and signifying a priest consecrated to Amun, the god of Wisdom. But history shows its revival by Ammonius Saccas, the founder of the Neo-Platonic School. He and his disciples called themselves "Philaletheians"—lovers of the truth; while others termed them the "Analogists," on account of their method of interpreting all sacred legends, symbolical myths, and mysteries, by a rule of analogy or correspondence so that events which had occurred in the external world were regarded as expressing operations and experiences of the human soul. It was the aim and purpose of Ammonius to reconcile all sects, peoples, and nations under one common faith—a belief in one Supreme, Eternal, Unknown, and Unnamed Power, governing the universe by immutable and eternal laws. His object was to prove a primitive system of Theosophy, which, at the beginning, was essentially alike in all countries: to induce all men to lay aside their strifes and quarrels, and unite in purpose and thought as the children of one common mother; to purify the ancient religions, by degrees corrupted and obscured, from all dross of human element, by uniting and expounding them upon pure philosophical principles. Hence, the Buddhistic, Vedantic and Magian, or Zoroastrian systems were taught in the Eclectic Theosophical School along with all the philosophies of Greece. Hence also, that pre-eminently Buddhistic and Indian feature among the ancient Theosophists of Alexandria, of due reverence for parents and aged persons, a fraternal affection for the whole human race, and a compassionate feeling for even the dumb animals. While seeking to establish a system of moral discipline which enforced upon people the duty to live according to the laws of their respective countries, to exalt their minds by the research and contemplation of the one Absolute Truth; his chief object, in order, as he believed, to achieve all others, was to extract from the various religious teachings, as from a many-chorded instrument, one full and harmonious melody, which would find response in every truth-loving heart.

Theosophy is, then, the archaic Wisdom-Religion, the esoteric doctrine once known in every ancient country having claims to civilization. This "Wisdom" all the old writings show us as an emanation of the Divine Principle; and the clear comprehension of it is typified in such names as the Indian Buddh, the Babylonian Nebo, the Thoth of Memphis, the Hermes of Greece; in the appellations, also, of some goddesses—Metis, Neitha, Athena, the Gnostic Sophia; and, finally, the Vedas, from the word "to know." Under this designation, all the ancient philosophers of the East and West, the Hierophants of old Egypt, the Rishis of Aryavart, the Theodidaktoi of Greece, included all knowledge of things occult and essentially divine. The Mercavah of the Hebrew Rabbis, the secular and popular series, were thus designated as only the vehicle, the outward shell, which contained the higher esoteric knowledges. The Magi of Zoroaster received instruction and were initiated in the caves and secret lodges of Bactria; the Egyptian and Grecian hierophants had their apporiheta, or secret discourses, during which the Mysta became an Epopta—a Seer.

The central idea of the Eclectic Theosophy was that of a single Supreme Essence, Unknown and Unknowable; for "how could one know the knower?" as inquires Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Their system was characterized by three distinct features, the theory of the above-named Essence: the doctrine of the human soul; an emanation from the latter, hence of the same nature; and its theurgy. It is this last science which has led the Neo-Platonists to be so misrepresented in our era of materialistic science. Theurgy being essentially the art of applying the divine powers of man to the subordination of the blind forces of Nature, its votaries were first decisively termed magicians—a corruption of the word "Magh," signifying a wise or learned man. Sceptics of a century ago would have been as wide of the mark if they had laughed at the idea of a phonograph or telegraph. The ridiculed and the "infidels" of one generation generally become the wise men and saints of the next.

As regards the Divine Essence and the nature of the soul and spirit, modern Theosophy believes now as ancient Theosophy did. The popular Dev of the Aryan nations was identical with the Iao of the Chaldeans, and even with the Jupiter of the less learned and philosophical among the Romans; and it was just as identical with the Jahve of the Samaritans, the Tiu or "Tiusco" of the Northmen, the Duw of the Britons, and the Zeus of the Thracians. As to the Absolute Essence, the One and All, whether we accept the Greek Pythagorean, the Chaldean Kabalistic, or the Aryan philosophy in regard to it, it will all lead to one and the same result. The Primeval Monad of the Pythagorean system, which retires into darkness and is itself Darkness (for human intellect), was made the basis of all things; and we can find the idea in all its integrity in the philosophical systems of Leibnitz and Spinoza. Therefore, whether a Theosophist agrees with the Kabala which, speaking of En-Soph, propounds the query; "Who, then, can comprehend It, since It is formless, and non-existent?" or, remembering that magnificent hymn from the Rig Veda (Hymn 129, Book x.), inquires:

"Who knows from whence this great creation sprang? Whether his will created or was mute. He knows it—or perchance even He knows not."

Or, again, he accepts the Vedantic conception of Brahma, who, in the Upanishads, is represented as "without life, without mind, pure," unconscious, for Brahma is "Absolute Consciousness." Or, even finally, siding with the Svabhavikas of Nepaul, maintains that nothing exists but "Svabhavat" (substance or nature) which exists by itself without any creator—he is the true follower of pure and absolute Theosophy. That Theosophy which prompted such men as Hegel, Fichte and Spinoza to take up the labours of the old Grecian philosophers and speculate upon the One Substance—the Deity, the Divine All proceeding from the Divine Wisdom—incomprehensible, unknown and unnamed by any ancient or modern religious philosophy, with the exception of Judaism, including Christianity and Mohammedanism. Every Theosophist, then, holding to a theory of the Deity "which has not revelation but an inspiration of his own for its basis," may accept any of the above definitions or belong to any of these religions, and yet remain strictly within the boundaries of Theosophy. For the latter is belief in the Deity as the ALL, the source of all existence, the infinite that cannot be either comprehended or known, the universe alone revealing It, or, as some prefer it, Him, thus giving a sex to that, to anthropomorphize which is blasphemy. True Theosophy shrinks from brutal materialization; it prefers believing that, from eternity retired within itself, the Spirit of the Deity neither wills nor creates; but from the infinite effulgence everywhere going forth from the Great Centre, that which produces all visible and invisible things is but a ray containing in itself the generative and conceptive power, which, in its turn, produces that which the Greeks called Macrocosm, the Kabalists Tikkun or Adam Kadmon, the archetypal man, and the Aryans Purusha, the manifested Brahm, or the Divine Male. Theosophy believes also in the Anastasis, or continued existence, and in transmigration (evolution) or a series of changes of the personal ego, which can be defended and explained on strict philosophical principles by making a distinction between Paramatma (transcendental, supreme spirit) and Jivatma (individual spirit) of the Vedantins.

To fully define Theosophy, we must consider it under all its aspects. The interior world has not been hidden from all by impenetrable darkness. By that higher intuition acquired by Theosophia, or God-knowledge, which carries the mind from the world of form into that of formless spirit, man has been sometimes enabled, in every age and every country, to perceive things in the interior or invisible world. Hence, the "Samadhi," or Dhyan Yog Samadhi, of the Hindu ascetics; the "Daimonlonphoti," or spiritual illumination of the Neo-Platonists; the "sidereal confabulation of soul," of the Rosicrucians or Fire-philosophers; and, even the ecstatic trance of mystics and of the modern mesmerists and spiritualists, are identical in nature, though various as to manifestation. The search after man's diviner "self," so often and so erroneously interpreted as individual communion with a personal God, was the object of every mystic; and belief in its possibility seems to have been coeval with the genesis of humanity, each people giving it another name. Thus Plato and Plotinus call "Noetic work" that which the Yogi and the Shrotriya term Vidya. "By reflection, self-knowledge and intellectual discipline, the soul can be raised to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty—that is, to the Vision of God. This is the epopteia," said the Greeks. "To unite one's soul to the Universal Soul," says Porphyry, "requires but a perfectly pure mind. Through self contemplation, perfect chastity, and purity of body, we may approach nearer to It, and receive, in that state, true knowledge and wonderful insight." And Swami Dayanund Saraswati, who has read neither Porphyry nor other Greek authors, but who is a thorough Vedic scholar, says in his "Veda Bhashya" (opasna prakaru ank. 9)—"To obtain Diksha (highest initiation) and Yog, one has to practise according to the rules..... The soul in the human body can perform the greatest wonders by knowing the Universal Spirit (or God) and acquainting itself with the properties and qualities (occult) of all the things in the universe. A human being (a Dikshit or initiate) can thus acquire a power of seeing and hearing at great distances." Finally, Alfred R. Wallace, F.R.S., a spiritualist and yet a confessedly great naturalist, says, with brave candour: "It is spirit that alone feels, and perceives, and thinks, that acquires knowledge, and reasons and aspires..... There not unfrequently occur individuals so constituted that the spirit can perceive independently of the corporeal organs of sense, or can, perhaps, wholly or partially quit the body for a time and return to it again; the spirit communicates with spirit easier than with matter." We can now see how, after thousands of years have intervened between the age of the Gymnosophists* and our own highly civilized era, notwithstanding, or, perhaps, just because of such an enlightenment which pours its radiant light upon the psychological as well as upon the physical realms of Nature, over twenty millions of people today believe, under different form, in those same spiritual powers that were believed in by the Yogis and the Pythagoreans, nearly 3,000 years ago.

———— * The reality of the Yog-power was affirmed by many Greek and Roman writers, who call the Yogis Indian Gymnosophists—by Strabo, Lucan, Plutarch, Cicero (Tusculum), Pliny (vii. 2), &c. ————

Thus, while the Aryan mystic claimed for himself the power of solving all the problems of life and death, when he had once obtained the power of acting independently of his body, through the Atman, "self," or "soul;" and the old Greeks went in search of Atmu, the Hidden one, or the God-Soul of man, with the symbolical mirror of the Thesmophorian mysteries; so the spiritualists of today believe in the capacity of the spirits, or the souls of the disembodied persons, to communicate visibly and tangibly with those they loved on earth. And all these, Aryan Yogis, Greek philosophers, and modern spiritualists, affirm that possibility on the ground that the embodied soul and its never embodied spirit—the real self—are not separated from either the Universal Soul or other spirits by space, but merely by the differentiation of their qualities, as in the boundless expanse of the universe there can be no limitation. And that when this difference is once removed—according to the Greeks and Aryans by abstract contemplation, producing the temporary liberation of the imprisoned soul, and according to spiritualists, through mediumship—such a union between embodied and disembodied spirits becomes possible. Thus was it that Patanjali's Yogis, and, following in their steps, Plotinus, Porphyry and other Neo-Platonists, maintained that in their hours of ecstasy, they had been united to, or rather become as one with, God several times during the course of their lives. This idea, erroneous as it may seem in its application to the Universal Spirit, was, and is, claimed by too many great philosophers to be put aside as entirely chimerical. In the case of the Theodidaktoi, the only controvertible point, the dark spot on this philosophy of extreme mysticism, was its claim to include that which is simply ecstatic illumination, under the head of sensuous perception. In the case of the Yogis, who maintained their ability to see Iswara "face to face," this claim was successfully overthrown by the stern logic of the followers of Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya philosophy. As to the similar assumption made for their Greek followers, for a long array of Christian ecstatics, and, finally, for the last two claimants to "God-seeing" within these last hundred years—Jacob Bohme and Swedenborg—this pretension would and should have been philosophically and logically questioned, if a few of our great men of science, who are spiritualists, had had more interest in the philosophy than in the mere phenomenalism of spiritualism.

The Alexandrian Theosophists were divided into neophytes, initiates and masters, or hierophants; and their rules were copied from the ancient Mysteries of Orpheus, who, according to Herodotus, brought them from India. Ammonius obligated his disciples by oath not to divulge his higher doctrines, except to those who were proved thoroughly worthy and initiated, and who had learned to regard the gods, the angels, and the demons of other peoples, according to the esoteric hyponia, or under-meaning. "The gods exist, but they are not what the hoi polloi, the uneducated multitude, suppose them to be," says Epicurus. "He is not an atheist who denies the existence of the gods, whom the multitude worship, but he is such who fastens on these gods the opinions of the multitude." In his turn, Aristotle declares that of the "Divine Essence pervading the whole world of Nature, what are styled the gods are simply the first principles."

Plotinus, the pupil of the "God-taught" Ammonius, tells us that the secret gnosis or the knowledge of Theosophy, has three degrees-opinion, science, and illumination. "The means or instrument of the first is sense, or perception; of the second, dialectics; of the third, intuition. To the last, reason is subordinate; it is absolute knowledge, founded on the identification of the mind with the object known." Theosophy is the exact science of psychology, so to say; it stands in relation to natural, uncultivated mediumship, as the knowledge of a Tyndall stands to that of a school-boy in physics. It develops in man a direct beholding; that which Schelling denominates "a realization of the identity of subject and object in the individual;" so that under the influence and knowledge of hyponia man thinks divine thoughts, views all things as they really are, and, finally, "becomes recipient of the Soul of the World," to use one of the finest expressions of Emerson. "I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect," he says in his superb "Essay on the Oversoul." Besides this psychological, or soul state, Theosophy cultivated every branch of sciences and arts. It was thoroughly familiar with what is now commonly known as mesmerism. Practical theurgy or "ceremonial magic," so often resorted to in their exorcisms by the Roman Catholic clergy, was discarded by the Theosophists. It is but Jamblichus alone who, transcending the other Eclectics, added to Theosophy the doctrine of Theurgy. When ignorant of the true meaning of the esoteric divine symbols of Nature, man is apt to miscalculate the powers of his soul, and, instead of communing spiritually and mentally with the higher celestial beings, the good spirits (the gods of the theurgists of the Platonic school), he will unconsciously call forth the evil, dark powers which lurk around humanity, the undying, grim creations of human crimes and vices, and thus fall from theurgia (white magic) into goetia (or black magic, sorcery). Yet, neither white nor black magic are what popular superstition understands by the terms. The possibility of "raising spirits," according to the key of Solomon, is the height of superstition and ignorance. Purity of deed and thought can alone raise us to an intercourse "with the gods" and attain for us the goal we desire. Alchemy, believed by so many to have been a spiritual philosophy as well as a physical science, belonged to the teachings of the Theosophical School.

It is a noticeable fact that neither Zoroaster, Buddha, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Confucius, Socrates, nor Ammonius Saccas, committed anything to writing. The reason for it is obvious. Theosophy is a double-edged weapon and unfit for the ignorant or the selfish. Like every ancient philosophy it has its votaries among the moderns; but, until late in our own days, its disciples were few in numbers, and of the most various sects and opinions. "Entirely speculative, and founding no schools, they have still exercised a silent influence upon philosophy; and no doubt, when the time arrives, many ideas thus silently propounded may yet give new directions to human thought," remarks Mr. Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, himself a mystic and a Theosophist, in his large and valuable work, "The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia" (articles "Theosophical Society of New York," and "Theosophy," p. 731).* Since the days of the fire-philosophers, they had never formed themselves into societies, for, tracked like wild beasts by the Christian clergy, to be known as a Theosophist often amounted, hardly a century ago, to a death-warrant.

————— * "The Royal Masonic Cycloptedia of History, Rites, Symbolism, and Biography." Edited by Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie IX. (Cryptonymus) Hon. Member of the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge, No. 2, Scotland. New York J. W. Bouton, 706, Broadway. 1877. ————

The statistics show that, during a period of 150 years, no less than 90,000 men and women were burned in Europe for alleged witchcraft. In Great Britain only, from A.D. 1640 to 1660, but twenty years, 3,000 persons were put to death for compact with the "Devil." It was but late in the present century—in 1875—that some progressed mystics and spiritualists, unsatisfied with the theories and explanations of Spiritualism started by its votaries, and finding that they were far from covering the whole ground of the wide range of phenomena, formed at New York, America, an association which is now widely known as the Theosophical Society.

(—H.P. Blavatsky)



How a "Chela" Found his "Guru"

[Being Extracts from a private letter to Damodar K. Mavalankar, Joint Recording Secretary of the Theosophical Society.]

....When we met last at Bombay I told you what had happened to me at Tinnevelly. My health having been disturbed by official work and worry, I applied for leave on medical certificate and it was duly granted. One day in September last, while I was reading in my room, I was ordered by the audible voice of my blessed Guru, M—-Maharsi, to leave all and proceed immediately to Bombay, whence I was to go in search of Madame Blavatsky wherever I could find her and follow her wherever she went. Without losing a moment, I closed up all my affairs and left the station. For the tones of that voice are to me the divinest sound in Nature, its commands imperative. I traveled in my ascetic robes. Arrived at Bombay, I found Madame Blavatsky gone, and learned through you that she had left a few days before; that she was very ill; and that, beyond the fact that she had left the place very suddenly with a Chela, you knew nothing of her whereabouts. And now, I must tell you what happened to me after I had left you.

Really not knowing whither I had best go, I took a through ticket to Calcutta; but, on reaching Allahabad, I heard the same well-known voice directing me to go to Berhampore. At Azimgunge, in the train, I met, most providentially I may say, with some Bengali gentlemen (I did not then know they were also Theosophists, since I had never seen any of them), who were also in search of Madame Blavatsky. Some had traced her to Dinapore, but lost her track and went back to Berhampore. They knew, they said, she was going to Tibet and wanted to throw themselves at the feet of the Mahatmas to permit them to accompany her. At last, as I was told, they received from her a note, permitting them to come if they so desired it, but saying that she herself was prohibited from going to Tibet just now. She was to remain, she said, in the vicinity of Darjiling and would see the Mahatma on the Sikkhim Territory, where they would not be allowed to follow her .... Brother Nobin K. Bannerji, the President of the Adhi Bhoutic Bhratru Theosophical Society, would not tell me where Madame Blavatsky was, or perhaps did not then know himself. Yet he and others had risked all in the hope of seeing the Mahatmas. On the 23rd, at last he brought me from Calcutta to Chandernagore, where I found Madame Blavatsky, ready to start by train in five minutes. A tall, dark-looking hairy Chela (not Chunder Cusho), but a Tibetan I suppose by his dress, whom I met after I had crossed the river Hugli with her in a boat, told me that I had come too late, that Madame Blavatsky had already seen the Mahatmas and that he had brought her back. He would not listen to my supplications to take me with him, saying he had no other orders than what he had already executed—namely, to take her about twenty-five miles beyond a certain place he named to me, and that he was now going to see her safe to the station and return. The Bengali brother Theosophists had also traced and followed her, arriving at the station half an hour later. They crossed the river from Chandernagore to a small railway station on the opposite side. When the train arrived, she got into the carriage, upon entering which I found the Chela! And, before even her own things could be placed in the van, the train, against all regulations and before the bell was rung, started off, leaving the Bengali gentlemen and her servant behind, only one of them and the wife and daughter of another—all Theosophists and candidates for Chelaship—having had time to get in. I myself had barely the time to jump into the last carriage. All her things, with the exception of her box containing Theosophical correspondence, were left behind with her servant. Yet, even the persons that went by the same train with her did not reach Darjiling. Babu Nobin Banerjee, with the servant, arrived five days later; and those who had time to take their seats, were left five or six stations behind, owing to another unforeseen accident (?), reaching Darjiling also a few days later. It required no great stretch of imagination to conclude that Madame Blavatsky was, perhaps, being again taken to the Mahatmas, who, for some good reasons best known to them, did not want us to be following and watching her. Two of the Mahatmas, I had learned for a certainty, were in the neighbourhood of British territory; and one of them was seen and recognized, by a person I need not name here, as a high Chutukla of Tibet.

The first days of her arrival Madame Blavatsky was living at the house of a Bengali gentleman, a Theosophist, refusing to see any one, and preparing, as I thought, to go again somewhere on the borders of Tibet. To all our importunities we could get only this answer from her: that we had no business to stick to and follow her, that she did not want us, and that she had no right to disturb the Mahatmas with all sorts of questions that concerned only the questioners, for they knew their own business best. In despair, I determined, come what might, to cross the frontier, which is about a dozen miles from here, and find the Mahatmas or—DIE. I never stopped to think that what I was going to undertake would be regarded as the rash act of a lunatic. I had no permission, no "pass" from the Sikkhim Rajah, and was yet decided to penetrate into the heart of a semi-independent State where, if anything happened, the Anglo-Indian officials would not—if even they could—protect me, since I should have crossed over without their permission. But I never even gave that a thought, but was bent upon one engrossing idea—to find and see my Guru. Without breathing a word of my intentions to any one, one morning, namely, October 5, I set out in search of the Mahatma. I had an umbrella and a pilgrim's staff for sole weapons, with a few rupees in my purse. I wore the yellow garb and cap. Whenever I was tired on the road, my costume easily procured for me for a small sum a pony to ride. The same afternoon I reached the banks of the Rungit River, which forms the boundary between British and Sikkhimese territories. I tried to cross it by the aerial suspension bridge constructed of canes, but it swayed to and fro to such an extent that I, who have never known in my life what hardship was, could not stand it. I crossed the river by the ferry-boat, and this even not without much danger and difficulty. That whole afternoon I traveled on foot, penetrating further and further into the heart of Sikkhim, along a narrow footpath. I cannot now say how many miles I traveled before dusk, but I am sure it was not less than twenty or twenty-five miles. Throughout, I saw nothing but impenetrable jungles and forests on all sides of me, relieved at very long intervals by solitary huts belonging to the mountain population. At dusk I began to search around me for a place to rest in at night. I met on the road, in the afternoon, a leopard and a wild cat; and I am astonished now to think how I should have felt no fear then nor tried to run away. Throughout, some secret influence supported me. Fear or anxiety never once entered my mind. Perhaps in my heart there was room for no other feeling but an intense anxiety to find my Guru. When it was just getting dark, I espied a solitary hut a few yards from the roadside. To it I directed my steps in the hope of finding a lodging. The rude door was locked. The cabin was untenanted at the time. I examined it on all sides and found an aperture on the western side. It was small indeed, but sufficient for me to jump through. It had a small shutter and a wooden bolt. By a strange coincidence of circumstances the hillman had forgotten to fasten it on the inside when he locked the door. Of course, after what has subsequently transpired, I now, through the eye of faith, see the protecting hand of my Guru everywhere around me. Upon getting inside I found the room communicated, by a small doorway, with another apartment, the two occupying the whole space of this sylvan mansion. I laid down, concentrating every thought upon my Guru as usual, and soon fell into a profound sleep. Before I went to rest, I had secured the door of the other room and the single window. It may have been between ten and eleven, or perhaps a little later, that I awoke and heard sounds of footsteps in the adjoining room. I could plainly distinguish two or three people talking together in a dialect unknown to me. Now, I cannot recall the same without a shudder. At any moment they might have entered from the other room and murdered me for my money. Had they mistaken me for a burglar the same fate awaited me. These and similar thoughts crowded into my brain in an inconceivably short period. But my heart did not palpitate with fear, nor did I for one moment think of the possibly tragical chances of the moment. I know not what secret influence held me fast, but nothing could put me out or make me fear; I was perfectly calm. Although I lay awake staring into the darkness for upwards of two hours, and even paced the room softly and slowly without making any noise, to see if I could make my escape, in case of need, back to the forest by the same way I had effected my entrance into the hut—no fear, I repeat, or any such feeling ever entered my heart. I recomposed myself to rest. After a sound sleep, undisturbed by any dream, I awoke at daybreak. Then I hastily put on my boots, and cautiously got out of the hut through the same window. I could hear the snoring of the owners of the hut in the other room. But I lost no time, and gained the path to Sikkhim (the city) and held on my way with unflagging zeal. From the inmost recesses of my heart I thanked my revered Guru for the protection he had vouchsafed me during the night. What prevented the owners of the hut from penetrating to the second room? What kept me in the same serene and calm spirit, as if I were in a room of my own house? What could possibly make me sleep so soundly under such circumstances,—enormous, dark forests on all sides abounding in wild beasts, and a party of cut-throats—as most of the Sikkhimese are said to be—in the next room, with an easy and rude door between them and me?

When it became quite light, I wended my way on through hills and dales. Riding or walking, the journey was not a pleasant one for any man not as deeply engrossed in thought as I was then myself, and quite oblivious to anything affecting the body. I have cultivated the power of mental concentration to such a degree of late that, on many an occasion, I have been able to make myself quite unconscious of anything around me when my mind was wholly bent upon the one object of my life, as several of my friends will testify; but never to such an extent as in this instance.

It was, I think, between eight and nine A.M. I was following the road to the town of Sikkhim, whence, I was assured by the people I met on the road, I could cross over to Tibet easily in my pilgrim's garb, when I suddenly saw a solitary horseman galloping towards me from the opposite direction. From his tall stature and skill in horsemanship, I thought he was some military officer of the Sikkhim Rajah. Now, I thought, I am caught! He will ask me for my pass and what business I have in the independent territory of Sikkhim, and, perhaps, have me arrested and sent back, if not worse. But, as he approached me, he reined up. I looked at and recognized him instantly.... I was in the awful presence of him, of the same Mahatma, my own revered Guru, whom I had seen before in his astral body on the balcony of the Theosophical Headquarters. It was he, the "Himalayan Brother" of the ever-memorable night of December last, who had so kindly dropped a letter in answer to one I had given but an hour or so before in a sealed envelope to Madame Blavatsky, whom I had never lost sight of for one moment during the interval. The very same instant saw me prostrated on the ground at his feet. I arose at his command, and, leisurely looking into his face, forgot myself entirely in the contemplation of the image I knew so well, having seen his portrait (the one in Colonel Olcott's possession) times out of number. I knew not what to say: joy and reverence tied my tongue. The majesty of his countenance, which seemed to me to be the impersonation of power and thought, held me rapt in awe. I was at last face to face with "the Mahatma of the Himavat," and he was no myth, no "creation of the imagination of a medium," as some sceptics had suggested. It was no dream of the night; it was between nine and ten o'clock of the forenoon. There was the sun shining and silently witnessing the scene from above. I see him before me in flesh and blood, and he speaks to me in accents of kindness and gentleness. What more could I want? My excess of happiness made me dumb. Nor was it until some time had elapsed that I was able to utter a few words, encouraged by his gentle tone and speech. His complexion is not as fair as that of Mahatma Koothoomi; but never have I seen a countenance so handsome, a stature so tall and so majestic. As in his portrait, he wears a short black beard, and long black hair hanging down to his breast; only his dress was different: Instead of a white, loose robe he wore a yellow mantle lined with fur, and on his head, instead of the turban, a yellow Tibetan felt cap, as I have seen some Bhootanese wear in this country. When the first moments of rapture and surprise were over, and I calmly comprehended the situation, I had a long talk with him. He told me to go no further, for I should come to grief. He said I should wait patiently if I wanted to become an accepted Chela; that many were those who offered themselves as candidates, but that only a very few were found worthy; none were rejected, but all of them tried, and most found to fail signally, as for example—-and—-. Some, instead of being accepted and pledged this year, were now thrown off for a year. The Mahatma, I found, speaks very little English—or at least it so seemed to me—and spoke to me in my mother-tongue—Tamil. He told me that if the Chohan permitted Madame Blavatsky to visit Parijong next year, then I could come with her. The Bengali Theosophists who followed the "Upasika" (Madame Blavatsky) would see that she was right in trying to dissuade them from following her now. I asked the blessed Mahatma whether I could tell what I saw and heard to others. He replied in the affirmative, and that moreover I would do well to write to you and describe all.

I must impress upon your mind the whole situation, and ask you to keep well in view that what I saw was not the mere "appearance" only, the astral body of the Mahatma, as we saw him at Bombay, but the living man, in his own physical body. He was pleased to say when I offered my farewell namaskarams (prostration) that he approached the British territory to see the Upasika. Before he left me, two more men came on horseback, his attendants I suppose, probably Chelas, for they were dressed like lama-gylungs, and both, like himself, with long hair streaming down their backs. They followed the Mahatma, when he left, at a gentle trot. For over an hour I stood gazing at the place that he had just quitted, and then I slowly retraced my steps. Now it was that I found for the first time that my long boots had pinched my leg in several places, that I had eaten nothing since the day before, and that I was too weak to walk further. My whole body was aching in every limb. At a little distance I saw petty traders with country ponies, carrying burdens. I hired one of these animals. In the afternoon I came to the Rungit River and crossed it. A bath in its cool waters revived me. I purchased some fruit in the only bazaar there and ate heartily. I took another horse immediately and reached Darjiling late in the evening. I could neither eat, nor sit, nor stand. Every part of my body was aching. My absence had seemingly alarmed Madame Blavatsky. She scolded me for my rash and mad attempt to try to go to Tibet after that fashion. When I entered the house I found with Madame Blavatsky, Bahu Parbati Churn Roy, Deputy Collector of Settlements and Superintendent of Dearah Survey, and his assistant, Babu Kanty Bhushan Sen, both members of our Society. At their prayer and Madame Blavatsky's command, I recounted all that had happened to me, reserving of course my private conversation with the Mahatma. They were all, to say the least, astounded. After all, she will not go this year to Tibet; for which I am sure she does not care, since she has seen our Masters and thus gained her only object. But we, unfortunate people! we lose our only chance of going and offering our worship to the "Himalayan Brothers," who, I know, will not soon cross over to British territory, if ever, again.

And now that I have seen the Mahatma in the flesh, and heard his living voice, let no one dare say to me that the Brothers do not exist. Come now whatever will, death has no fear for me, nor the vengeance of enemies; for what I know, I know!

—S. Ramaswamier, F.T.S.



The Sages of the Himavat

While on my tour with Col. Olcott several phenomena occurred, in his presence as well as in his absence, such as immediate answers to questions in my Master's handwriting, and over his signature, put by a number of our Fellows. These occurrences took place before we reached Lahore, where we expected to meet in the body my Master. There I was visited by him in the body, for three nights consecutively, for about three hours every time, while I myself retained full consciousness, and, in one case, even went to meet him outside the house. To my knowledge there is no case on the Spiritualist records of a medium remaining perfectly conscious, and meeting, by previous arrangement, his spirit-visitor in the compound, re-entering the house with him, offering him a seat, and then holding a long converse with the "disembodied spirit" in a way to give him the impression that he is in personal contact with an embodied entity. Moreover, him whom I saw in person at Lahore was the same I had seen in astral form at the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society, and again, the same whom I had seen in visions and trances at his house, thousands of miles off, which I reached in my astral Ego by his direct help and protection. In those instances, with my psychic powers hardly yet developed, I had always seen him as a rather hazy form, although his features were perfectly distinct and their remembrance was profoundly graven on my soul's eye and memory, while now at Lahore, Jummoo, and elsewhere, the impression was utterly different. In the former cases, when making Pranam (salutation) my hands passed through his form, while on the latter occasions they met solid garments and flesh. Here I saw a living man before me, the original of the portraits in Madame Blavatsky's possession and in Mr. Sinnett's, though far more imposing in his general appearance and bearing. I shall not here dwell upon the fact of his having been corporeally seen by both Col. Olcott and Mr. Brown separately for two nights at Lahore, as they can do so better, each for himself, if they so choose. At Jummoo again, where we proceeded from Lahore, Mr. Brown saw him on the evening of the third day of our arrival there, and from him received a letter in his familiar handwriting, not to speak of his visits to me almost every day. And what happened the next morning almost every one in Jummoo is aware of. The fact is, that I had the good fortune of being sent for, and permitted to visit a sacred Ashrum, where I remained for a few days in the blessed company of several of the Mahatmas of Himavat and their disciples. There I met not only my beloved Gurudeva and Col. Olcott's master, but several others of the fraternity, including one of the highest. I regret the extremely personal nature of my visit to those thrice blessed regions prevents my saying more about it. Suffice it that the place I was permitted to visit is in the Himalayas, not in any fanciful Summer Land, and that I saw him in my own sthula sarira (physical body) and found my Master identical with the form I had seen in the earlier days of my Chelaship. Thus, I saw my beloved Guru not only as a living man, but actually as a young one in comparison with some other Sadhus of the blessed company, only far kinder, and not above a merry remark and conversation at times. Thus on the second day of my arrival, after the meal hour, I was permitted to hold an intercourse for over an hour with my Master. Asked by him smilingly what it was that made me look at him so perplexed, I asked in my turn:—"How is it, Master, that some of the members of our Society have taken into their heads a notion that you were 'an elderly man,' and that they have even seen you clairvoyantly looking an old man past sixty?" To which he pleasantly smiled and said that this latest misconception was due to the reports of a certain Brahmachari, a pupil of a Vedantic Swami in the Punjab,* who had met last year in Tibet the chief of a sect, an elderly Lama, who was his (my Master's) traveling companion at that time. The said Brahmachari, having spoken of the encounter in India, had led several persons to mistake the Lama for himself. As to his being perceived clairvoyantly as an "elderly man," that could never be, he added, as real clairvoyance could lead no one into such mistaken notions; and then he kindly reprimanded me for giving any importance to the age of a Guru, adding that appearances were often false, &c., and explaining other points.

———— * See infra. Rajani Kanta Brahmachai's "Interview with a Mahatma." ————

These are all stern facts, and no third course is open to the reader. What I assert is either true or false. In the former case, no Spiritualistic hypothesis can hold good, and it will have to be admitted that the Himalayan Brothers are living men, and neither disembodied spirits nor creations of the over-heated imagination of fanatics. Of course I am fully aware that many will discredit my account; but I write only for the benefit of those few who know me well enough to see in me neither a hallucinated medium, nor attribute to me any bad motive, and who have ever been true and loyal to their convictions and to the cause they have so nobly espoused. As for the majority who laugh at and ridicule what they have neither the inclination nor the capacity to understand, I hold them in very small account. If these few lines will help to stimulate even one of my brother-Fellows in the Society, or one right-thinking man outside of it, to promote the cause of Truth and Humanity, I shall consider that I have properly performed my duty.

—Damodar K. Mavalankar



The Himalayan Brothers—Do They Exist?

"Ask and it shall be given unto you; knock and it shall be opened," this is an accurate representation of the position of the earnest inquirer as to the existence of the Mahatmas. I know of none who took up this inquiry in right earnest and were not rewarded for their labours with knowledge, certainty. In spite of all this there are plenty of people who carp and cavil but will not take the trouble of proving the thing for themselves. Both by Europeans and a section of our own countrymen—the too Europeanized graduates of Universities—the existence of the Mahatmas is looked upon with incredulity and distrust, to give it no harder name. The position of the Europeans is easily intelligible, for these things are so far removed from their intellectual horizon, and their self-sufficiency is so great, that they are almost impervious to these new ideas. But it is much more difficult to conceive why the people of India, who are born and brought up in an atmosphere redolent with the traditions of these things, should affect such scepticism. It would have been more natural for them, on the other hand, to hail such proofs as those I am now laying before the public with the same satisfaction as an astronomer feels when a new star, whose elements he has calculated, swims within his ken. I myself was a thorough-going disbeliever only two years back. In the first place I had never witnessed any occult phenomena myself, nor did I find any one who had done so in that small ring of our countrymen for whom only I was taught to have any respect—the "educated classes." It was only in the month of October, 1882, that I really devoted any time and attention to this matter, and the result is that I have as little doubt with respect to the existence of the Mahatmas as of mine own. I now know that they exist. But for a long time the proofs that I had received were not all of an objective character. Many things which are very satisfactory proofs to me would not be so to the reader. On the other hand, I have no right to speak of the unimpeachable evidence I now possess. Therefore I must do the best I can with the little I am permitted to give. In the present paper I have brought forward such evidence as would be perfectly satisfactory to all capable of measuring its probative force.

The evidence now laid before the public was collected by me during the months of October and November, 1882, and was at the time placed before some of the leading members of the Theosophical Society, Mr. Sinnett among others. The account of Bro. Ramaswamier's interview with his Guru in Sikkhim being then ready for publication, there was no necessity, in their opinion, for the present paper being brought to light. But since an attempt has been made in some quarters to minimize the effect of Mr. Ramaswamier's evidence by calling it most absurdly "the hallucinations of a half-frozen strolling Registrar," I think something might be gained by the publication of perfectly independent testimony of, perhaps, equal, if not greater, value, though of quite a different character. With these words of explanation as to the delay in its publication, I resign this paper to the criticism of our sceptical friends. Let them calmly consider and pronounce upon the evidence of the Tibetan pedlar at Darjiling, supported and strengthened by the independent testimony of the young Brahmachari at Dehradun. Those who were present when the statements of these persons were taken, all occupy very respectable positions in life—some in fact belonging to the front ranks of Hindu Society, and several in no way connected with the Theosophical movement, but, on the contrary, quite unfriendly to it. In those days I again say I was rather sceptical myself. It is only since I collected the following evidence and received more than one proof of the actual existence of my venerated master, Mahatma Koothoomi, whose presence— quite independently of Madame Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott or any "alleged" Chela—was made evident to me in a variety of ways, that I have given up the folly of doubting any longer. Now I believe no more—I KNOW; and knowing, I would help others to obtain the same knowledge.

During my visit to Darjiling I lived in the same house with several Theosophists, all as ardent aspirants for the higher life, and most of them as doubtful with regard to the Himalayan Mahatmas as I was myself at that time. I met at Darjiling persons who claimed to be Chelas of the Himalayan Brothers and to have seen and lived with them for years. They laughed at our perplexity. One of them showed us an admirably executed portrait of a man who appeared to be an eminently holy person, and who, I was told, was the Mahatma Koothoomi (now my revered master), to whom Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World" is dedicated. A few days after my arrival, a Tibetan pedlar of the name of Sundook accidentally came to our house to sell his things. Sundook was for years well-known in Darjiling and the neighbourhood as an itinerant trader in Tibetan knick-knacks, who visited the country every year in the exercise of his profession. He came to the house several times during our stay there, and seemed to us, from his simplicity, dignity of bearing and pleasant manners, to be one of Nature's own gentlemen. No man could discover in him any trait of character even remotely allied to the uncivilized savages, as the Tibetans are held in the estimation of Europeans. He might very well have passed for a trained courtier, only that he was too good to be one. He came to the house while I was there. On the first occasion he was accompanied by a Goorkha youth, named Sundar Lall, an employee in the Darjiling News office, who acted as interpreter. But we soon found out that the peculiar dialect of Hindi which he spoke was intelligible to some of us without any interpreter, and so there was none needed on subsequent occasions. On the first day we put him some general questions about Tibet and the Gelugpa sect, to which he said he belonged, and his answers corroborated the statements of Bogle, Turnour and other travelers. On the second day we asked him if he had heard of any persons in Tibet who possessed extraordinary powers besides the great lamas. He said there were such men; that they were not regular lamas, but far higher than they, and generally lived in the mountains beyond Tchigatze and also near the city of Lhassa. These men, he said, produce many and very wonderful phenomena or "miracles," and some of their Chelas, or Lotoos, as they are called in Tibet, cure the sick by giving them to eat the rice which they crush out of the paddy with their hands, &c. Then one of us had a glorious idea. Without saying one word, the above-mentioned portrait of the Mahatma Koothoomi was shown to him. He looked at it for a few seconds, and then, as though suddenly recognizing it, he made a profound reverence to the portrait, and said it was the likeness of a Chohan (Mahatma) whom he had seen. Then he began rapidly to describe the Mahatma's dress and naked arms; then suiting the action to the word, he took off his outer cloak, and baring his arms to the shoulder, made the nearest approach to the figure in the portrait, in the adjustment of his dress.

He said he had seen the Mahatma in question accompanied by a numerous body of Gylungs, about that time of the previous year (beginning of October 1881) at a place called Giansi, two days' journey southward of Tchigatze, whither the narrator dad gone to make purchases for his trade. On being asked the name of the Mahatma, he said to our unbounded surprise, "They are called Koothum-pa." Being cross-examined and asked what he meant by "they," and whether he was naming one man or many, he replied that the Koothum-pas were many, but there was only one man or chief over them of that name; the disciples being always called after the names of their guru. Hence the name of the latter being Koot-hum, that of his disciples was "Koot-hum-pa." Light was shed upon this explanation by a Tibetan dictionary, where we found that the word "pa" means "man;" "Bod-pa" is a "man of Bod or Thibet," &c. Similarly Koothum-pa means man or disciple of Koothoom or Koothoomi. At Giansi, the pedlar said, the richest merchant of the place went to the Mahatma, who had stopped to rest in the midst of an extensive field, and asked him to bless him by coming to his house. The Mahatma replied, he was better where he was, as he had to bless the whole world, and not any particular man. The people, and among them our friend Sundook, took their offerings to the Mahatma, but he ordered them to be distributed among the poor. Sundook was exhorted by the Mahatma to pursue his trade in such a way as to injure no one, and warned that such was the only right way to prosperity. On being told that people in India refused to believe that there were such men as the Brothers in Tibet, Sundook offered to take any voluntary witness to that country, and convince us, through him, as to the genuineness of their existence, and remarked that if there were no such men in Tibet, he would like to know where they were to be found. It being suggested to him that some people refused to believe that such men existed at all, he got very angry. Tucking up the sleeve of his coat and shirt, and disclosing a strong muscular arm, he declared that he would fight any man who would suggest that he had said anything but the truth.

On being shown a peculiar rosary of beads belonging to Madame Blavatsky, the pedlar said that such things could only be got by those to whom the Tesshu Lama presented them, as they could be got for no amount of money elsewhere. When the Chela who was with us put on his sleeveless coat and asked him whether he recognized the latter's profession by his dress, the pedlar answered that he was a Gylung and then bowing down to him took the whole thing as a matter of course. The witnesses in this case were Babu Nobin Krishna Bannerji, deputy magistrate, Berhampore, M.R. Ry. Ramaswamiyer Avergal, district registrar, Madura (Madras), the Goorkha gentleman spoken of before, all the family of the first-named gentleman, and the writer.

Now for the other piece of corroborative evidence. This time it came most accidentally into my possession. A young Bengali Brahmachari, who had only a short time previous to our meeting returned from Tibet and who was residing then at Dehradun, in the North-Western Provinces of India, at the house of my grandfather-in-law, the venerable Babu Devendra Nath Tagore of the Brahmo Samaj, gave most unexpectedly, in the presence of a number of respectable witnesses, the following account:—

On the 15th of the Bengali month of Asar last (1882). being the 12th day of the waxing moon, he met some Tibetans, called the Koothoompas, and their guru in a field near Taklakhar, a place about a day's journey from the Lake of Manasarawara. The guru and most of his disciples, who were called gylungs, wore sleeveless coats over under-garments of red. The complexion of the guru was very fair, and his hair, which was not parted but combed back, streamed down his shoulders. When the Brahmachani first saw the Mahatma he was reading in a book, which the Brahmachari was informed by one of the gylungs was the Rig Veda.

The guru saluted him, and asked him where he was coming from. On finding the latter had not had anything to eat, the guru commanded that he should be given some ground gram (Sattoo) and tea. As the Brahmachari could not get any fire to cook food with, the guru asked for, and kindled a cake of dry cow-dung—the fuel used in that country as well as in this—by simply blowing upon it, and gave it to our Brahmachari. The latter assured us that he had often witnessed the same phenomenon, produced by another guru or chohan, as they are called in Tibet, at Gauri, a place about a day's journey from the cave of Tarchin, on the northern side of Mount Kailas. The keeper of a flock, who was suffering from rheumatic fever came to the guru, who gave him a few grains of rice, crushed out of paddy, which the guru had in his hand, and the sick man was cured then and there.

Before he parted company with the Koothumpas and their guru, the Brahmachari found that they were going to attend a festival held on the banks of the Lake of Manasarawara, and that thence they intended to proceed to the Kailas mountains.

The above statement was on several occasions repeated by the Brahmachari in the presence (among others) of Babu Dwijender Nath Tagore of Jorasanko, Calcutta; Babu Cally Mohan Ghose of the Trigonometrical Surcey of India, Dehradun; Babu Cally Cumar Chatterij of the same place; Babu Gopi Mohan Ghosh of Dacca; Babu Priya Nath Sastri, clerk to Babu Devender Nath Tagore, and the writer. Comments would here seem almost superfluous, and the facts might very well have been left to speak for themselves to a fair and intelligent jury. But the averseness of people to enlarge their field of experience and the wilful misrepresentation of designing persons know no bounds. The nature of the evidence here adduced is of an unexceptional character. Both witnesses were met quite accidentally. Even if it be granted, which we certainly do not for a moment grant, that the Tibetan pedlar, Sundook, had been interviewed by some interested person, and induced to tell an untruth, what can be conceived to have been the motive of the Brahmachari, one belonging to a religious body noted for their truthfulness, and having no idea as to the interest the writer took in such things, in inventing a romance, and how could he make it fit exactly with the statements of the Tibetan pedlar at the other end of the country? Uneducated persons are no doubt liable to deceive themselves in many matters, but these statements dealt only with such disunited facts as fell within the range of the narrator's eyes and ears, and had nothing to do with his judgment or opinion. Thus, when the pedlar's statement is coupled with that of the Dehradun Brahmachari, there is, indeed, no room left for any doubt as to the truthfulness of either. It may here be mentioned that the statement of the Brahmachari was not the result of a series of leading questions, but formed part of the account he voluntarily gave of his travels during the year, and that he is almost entirely ignorant of the English language, and had, to the best of my knowledge, information and belief, never even so much as heard of the name of Theosophy. Now, if any one refuses to accept the mutually corroborative but independent testimonies of the Tibetan pedlar of Darjiling and the Brahmachari of Dehradun on the ground that they support the genuineness of facts not ordinarily falling within the domain of one's experience, all I can say is that it is the very miracle of folly. It is, on the other hand, most unshakably established upon the evidence of several of his Chelas, that the Mahatma Koothoomi is a living person like any of us, and that moreover he was seen by two persons on two different occasions. This will, it is to be hoped, settle for ever the doubts of those who believe in the genuineness of occult phenomena, but put them down to the agency of "spirits." Mark one circumstance. It may be argued that during the pedlar's stay at Darjiling, Madame Blavatsky was also there, and, who knows, she might have bribed him (!!) into saying what he said. But no such thing can be urged in the case of the Dehradun Brahmachari. He knew neither the pedlar nor Madame Blavatsky, had never heard of Colonel Olcott, having just returned from his prolonged journey, and had no idea that I was a Fellow of the Society. His testimony was entirely voluntary. Some others, who admit that Mahatmas exist, but that there is no proof of their connection with the Theosophical Society, will be pleased to see that there is no a priori impossibility in those great souls taking an interest in such a benevolent Society as ours. Consequently it is a gratuitous insult to a number of self-sacrificing men and women to reject their testimony without a fair hearing.