A Few Remarks Suggested by the Article The Collapse of Koot Hoomi. by S.
by S. Ramaswamier.
The Padres.
We pity the poor Padres of the Christian College. Miserable indeed is their plight when they are compelled to resort to these doubtful means to overcome their opponents. The Padres never meet the Theosophist’s lecture on the open platform and defend their sectarian views orally or in writing. They denounce them as atheists and political humbugs behind their backs, where they have no fear of being contradicted.
These letters have been published in the name of public morality. If this is the Padres’ standard of public morality, then public morality becomes polluted when its name is uttered by the mouths of the Padres. In her name they have violated sacred rights. In her name they have become willing dupes of a woman who has lost her ballast in the reverses of fortune, the vile instruments for the perpetration of a greedy woman’s revenge.
The Occult Room.
There was only one large room upstairs when the Society purchased the Adyar House. To one end of this room was attached a bed-room with a partition between it and the sitting room. From the bed-room, a door led to a verandah. This doorway was shut up and the verandah was converted into a room called the Occult Room.
In closing up the doorway a hollow space was allowed to be left in the middle that the weight of the new addition upon the beam of the ceiling might be as little as possible. I have seen both sides of this wall, both when it was being built and when it was finished. I have seen it also when it was papered.
Originally it had no sliding panels at the back or front. When I saw it again a few days after the expulsion of the Coulombs, I found in various parts of the wall in the rooms upstairs small panels recently constructed in places where there were none before. I know every part of this room, having been in it by day and slept in it by night during our stay in Madras. The mischief workers were evidently disturbed in the middle of their work.
The Shrine.
The shrine is a movable cupboard hung on the recently closed up wall of the Occult room. This portion of the wall is left still intact.
The shrine is something like a psychological telegraph office. It is connected by a current of akas with the Asram of the Mahatmas. Whatever is put into it will at once be known to them. But it should be distinctly understood that this is not the only means of communication; nor, if the shrine were removed to-day, will all communications be stopped. The shrine is simply a matter of convenience.
The Coulombs.
Out of respect for Mme. Blavatsky, the Coulombs were treated kindly by all of us. Mme. Coulomb’s numerous peccadilloes were freely forgiven. She was considered an irresponsible medium, the willing instrument of any strong-willed person that circumstances may throw in her way. Last December when I gave Mme. Blavatsky a curiosity in the shape of a petrified plant that we came across in a cave in one of our rambles in the Papannassum Hills, Mme. Coulomb examined it and pretended to see clairvoyantly heaps of gold coins treasured up near the place in the cave where we got the article. We all then had fine jokes on her say. But when a few days later she took us aside and seriously insisted on her being taken to the spot and asked for a loan to make the necessary preparations for a journey, we plainly told her we would have nothing to do with her treasures or her journey.
The Mahatmas.
It is too late in the day for the Padres to deny the existence of the Mahatmas. There are several Englishmen of the Civil Service, who have had correspondence with them when Mme. Blavatsky was far away and knew nothing of the matter, not to speak of scores of other gentlemen, European and native. I too can claim the honor of having had an interview with one of them in his physical body outside the precincts of a lamasery near Sikkim on the road leading to it from Darjeeling. The interview took place at eleven in the forenoon and lasted for about two hours. I have seen him and several of his pupils in the astral body on many occasions. Many of our friends who happened to be with us at the time have seen them like ourselves. Mme. Blavatsky is now in Europe, Colonel Olcott too is there. Our communications with the Mahatmas still continues uninterrupted. If Madame Blavatsky can do this, why then, verily she is a Mahatma.
Phenomena.
At this day, only those, who have had neither the time nor the inclination to search into psychical laws, join with the theologists and raise a feeble cry against the existence of such powers. The only question is whether such powers are brought into play in particular occurrences. The best witnesses to prove such things are those who have seen them and not the Padres who deliberately keep away, attributing them all to the machinations of their friend, the Devil. The Padres say that all phenomena have been produced by trickery by Madame Blavatsky with the aid of the Coulombs. I shall mention two instances, out of several, that have come under my personal experience. An American gentleman of a well known firm, who is not in any way connected with the Society, wrote a letter to me asking certain questions in Aryan philosophy. On opening it as soon as the postman gave it to me at my place in Tinnevelly we found that the answers to the more intricate questions were already entered opposite each of them, under the well-known initials of my revered Guru. The letter is still with me and Madame Blavatsky to this day knows nothing of it. One day in my place at Tinnevelly, a learned Pandit of the Shaktaya sect was speaking to us in flowing terms of the advantages of the Shaktaya ceremonials over all others in the development of psychical powers. I noted down in his presence the salient points of his argument on paper, put it into an envelope, addressed it to my Guru, and placed it in my box. This happened in the evening. The next morning I saw on my table, along with other papers, the same cover unopened but with my address written over the previous superscription. I opened it and found written between the lines of the original letter a crushing answer to all the false logic of the Pandit, with quotations in Sanskrit from the Upanishads neatly written in the Devanagari characters. Madame Blavatsky was in Madras then and to this day she is ignorant of this letter or its reply. Scores of letters of this kind received by us from our Venerated Master, when we were far away from Madame Blavatsky or Colonel Olcott, are in our possession. Many of our friends have seen several of them. Some of them contain Tamil quotations written in neat characters.
If the Padres say we and several others, who had the same experience, are labouring under some hallucination, we may as well retort that the definition of that word will have to be considerably altered. They cannot under any circumstances, hallucinate away the letters in our possession. If they question our veracity, not only can we produce better credentials, but we are in a position to challenge the public to catch us misrepresenting one fact for the hundred facts about which the Padres have been caught fibbing deliberately.
The Padres mislead the public when they assert that the Society is founded on phenomena. No phenomenon is shown for its own sake. The Masters belong to a higher plane of existence and they get hold of the easiest method in their plane for communication with their pupils and others.
Conclusion.
Dr. Hunter, the Director-General of Statistics, says that the proportion of jail going population in Bengal as compared with England for an equal area and population is one-third for the male and one seventeenth for the female. He does not say how much of the Bengal crimes are traceable to the influx of evangelical civilization. The Padres have done many a crime in the name of Evangelical morality. They have torn by wiles husbands from wives, children from parents. Their Karma now overtakes them and impels them to do questionable actions like the present publications which will ultimately result in their going home bag and baggage, leaving the heathen Hindu to the simple, unsophisticated, sublime morality of his sage forefathers, the authors of the Upanishads.