THE SISTERS OF THIBET.
It is now nearly twenty-seven years ago—long before the Theosophical Society was founded, or Esoteric Buddhism was known to exist in the form recently revealed to us by Mr Sinnett[{81}]—that I became the chela, or pupil, of an adept of Buddhist occultism in Khatmandhu. At that time Englishmen, unless attached to the Residency, were not permitted to reside in that picturesque Nepaulese town. Indeed I do not think that they are now; but I had had an opportunity during the Indian Mutiny, when I was attached to the Nepaulese contingent, of forming an intimacy with a “Guru” connected with the force. It was not until our acquaintance had ripened into a warm friendship
that I gradually made the discovery that this interesting man held views which differed so widely from the popular conception of Buddhism as I had known it in Ceylon—where I had resided for some years—that my curiosity was roused,—the more especially as he was in the habit of sinking off gradually, even while I was speaking to him, into trance-conditions, which would last sometimes for a week, during which time he would remain without food; and upon more than one occasion I missed even his material body from my side, under circumstances which appeared to me at the time unaccountable. The Nepaulese troops were not very often engaged with the rebels during the Indian Mutiny; but when they were, the Guru was always to be seen under the hottest fire, and it was generally supposed by the army that his body, so far from being impervious to bullets, was so pervious to them that they could pass through it without producing any organic disturbance. I was not aware of this fact at first; and it was not until I observed that, while he stood directly in the line of fire, men were killed immediately behind him, that I ceased to accompany him into
action, and determined, if possible, to solve a mystery which had begun to stimulate my curiosity to the highest pitch. It is not necessary for me to enter here into the nature of the conversations I had with him on the most important and vital points affecting universal cosmogony and the human race and its destiny. Suffice it to say, that they determined me to sever my connection with the Government of India; to apply privately, through my friend the Guru, to the late Jung Bahadoor for permission to reside in Nepaul; and finally, in the garb of an Oriental, to take up my residence in Khatmandhu, unknown to the British authorities. I should not now venture on this record of my experiences, or enter upon the revelation of a phase hitherto unknown and unsuspected, of that esoteric science which has, until now, been jealously guarded as a precious heritage belonging exclusively to regularly initiated members of mysteriously organised associations, had not Mr Sinnett, with the consent of a distinguished member of the Thibetan brotherhood, and, in fact, at his dictation, let, if I may venture to use so profane an expression in connection with such a sacred subject,
“the cat out of the bag.” Since, however, the arhats, or illuminati, of the East, seem to have arrived at the conclusion that the Western mind is at last sufficiently prepared and advanced in spiritual knowledge to be capable of assimilating the occult doctrines of Esoteric Buddhism, and have allowed their pupil to burst them upon a thoughtless and frivolous society with the suddenness of a bomb-shell, I feel released from the obligations to secrecy by which I have hitherto felt bound, and will proceed to unfold a few arcana of a far more extraordinary character than any which are to be found even in the pages of the ‘Theosophist’ or of ‘Esoteric Buddhism.’
Owing to certain conditions connected with my linga sharira, or “astral body”—which it would be difficult for me to explain to those who are not to some extent initiated—I passed through the various degrees of chela-ship with remarkable rapidity. When I say that in less than fifteen years of spiritual absorption and profound contemplation of esoteric mysteries I became a mahatma, or adept, some idea may be formed by chelas who are now treading that path of severe
ordeal, of the rapidity of my progress: indeed, such extraordinary faculty did I manifest, that at one time the Guru, my master, was inclined to think that I was one of those exceptional cases which recur from time to time, where a child-body is selected as the human tenement of a reincarnated adept; and that though belonging by rights to the fourth round, I was actually born into the fifth round of the human race in the planetary chain. “The adept,” says an occult aphorism, “becomes; he is not made.” That was exactly my case. I attribute it principally to an overweening confidence in myself, and to a blind faith in others. As Mr Sinnett very properly remarks—
“Very much further than people generally imagine, will mere confidence carry the occult neophyte. How many European readers who would be quite incredulous if told of some results which occult chelas in the most incipient stages of their training have to accomplish by sheer force of confidence, hear constantly in church, nevertheless, the familiar Biblical assurances of the power which resides in faith, and let the words pass by like the wind, leaving no impression!”
It is true that I had some reason for this confidence—which arose from the fact that prior to my initiation into Buddhist mysteries,
and before I left England, I had developed, under the spiritual craze which was then prevalent in society, a remarkable faculty of clairvoyance. This gave me the power not merely of diagnosing the physical and moral conditions of my friends and acquaintances, and of prescribing for them when necessary, but of seeing what was happening in other parts of the world; hence my organism was peculiarly favourable for initiation into occult mysteries, and naturally—or rather spiritually—prepared for that method in the regular course of occult training by which adepts impart instruction to their pupils.
“They awaken,” as we are most accurately informed by Mr Sinnett, “the dormant sense in the pupil, and through this they imbue his mind with a knowledge that such and such a doctrine is the real truth. The whole scheme of evolution infiltrates into the regular chela’s mind, by reason of the fact that he is made to see the process taking place by clairvoyant vision. There are no words used in his instruction at all. And adepts themselves, to whom the facts and processes of nature are as familiar as our five fingers to us, find it difficult to explain in a treatise which they cannot illustrate for us, by producing mental pictures in our dormant sixth sense, the complex anatomy of the planetary system.”
I have always felt—and my conviction on
the subject has led to some painful discussions between myself and some of my mahatma brothers—that the extreme facility with which I was enabled to perceive at a glance “the complex anatomy of the planetary system,” and the rapid development of my “dormant sixth sense,” was due mainly to the fact that I was nothing more nor less than what spiritualists call a highly sensitive medium. Meantime this premature development of my sixth sense forced me right up through the obstacles which usually impede such an operation in the case of a fourth-round man, into that stage of evolution which awaits the rest of humanity—or rather, so much of humanity as may reach it in the ordinary course of nature—in the latter part of the fifth round. I merely mention this to give confidence to my readers, as I am about to describe a moral cataclysm which subsequently took place in my sixth sense, which would be of no importance in the case of an ordinary chela, but which was attended with the highest significance as occurring to a mahatma who had already attained the highest grade in the mystic brotherhood. It was not to be wondered at that when I arrived at this advanced
condition, Khatmandhu, though a pleasant town, was not altogether a convenient residence for an occultist of my eminence. In the first place, the streets were infested with dugpas, or red-caps, a heretical sect, some members of which have arhat pretensions of a very high order—indeed I am ready to admit that I have met with Shammar adepts, who, so far as supernatural powers were concerned, were second to none among ourselves. But this was only the result of that necromancy which Buddha in his sixth incarnation denounced in the person of Tsong-kha-pa, the great reformer. They even deny the spiritual supremacy of the Dalai Lama at Lhassa, and own allegiance to an impostor who lives at the monastery of Sakia Djong.
The presence of these men, and the presumption of their adepts, who maintained that through subjective or clairvoyant conditions, which they asserted were higher than ours, they had attained a more exalted degree of illumination which revealed a different cosmogony from that which has been handed down to us through countless generations of adepts, were a perpetual annoyance to me;
but perhaps not greater than the proximity of the English Resident and the officers attached to him, the impure exhalations from whose rupas, or material bodies, infected as they were with magnetic elements drawn from Western civilisation, whenever I met them, used to send me to bed for a week. I therefore strongly felt the necessity of withdrawal to that isolated and guarded region where the most advanced adepts can pursue their contemplative existence without fear of interruption, and prepare their karma, or, in other words, the molecules of their fifth principle, for the ineffable bliss of appropriate development in devachan—a place, or rather “state,” somewhat resembling Purgatory with a dash of heaven in it; or even for the still more exquisite sensation which arises from having no sensations at all, and which characterises nirvana, or a sublime condition of conscious rest in Omniscience.
That I am not drawing upon my imagination in alluding to this mysterious region, or imposing upon the credulity of my readers, I will support my assertion by the high authority of Mr Sinnett, or rather of his Guru; and here I may remark incidentally,
that after a long experience of Gurus, I have never yet met one who would consciously tell a lie.
“From time immemorial,” says Mr Sinnett’s Guru, “there has been a certain region in Thibet, which to this day is quite unknown to and unapproachable by any but initiated persons, and inaccessible to the ordinary people of the country, as to any others, in which adepts have always congregated. But the country generally was not in Buddha’s time, as it has since become, the chosen habitation of the great brotherhood. Much more than they are at present, were the mahatmas in former times distributed throughout the world.
“The progress of civilisation engendering the magnetism they find so trying, had, however, by the date with which we are now dealing—the fourteenth century—already given rise to a very general movement towards Thibet on the part of the previously dissociated occultists. Far more widely than was held to be consistent with the safety of mankind was occult knowledge and power then found to be disseminated. To the task of putting it under a rigid system of rule and law did Tsong-kha-pa address himself.”
Of course, before transferring my material body to this region, I was perfectly familiar with it by reason of the faculty which, as Mr Sinnett very truly tells us, is common to all adepts, of being able to flit about the world at will in your astral body; and here I would
remark parenthetically, that I shall use the term “astral body” to save confusion, though, as Mr Sinnett again properly says, it is not strictly accurate under the circumstances. In order to make this clear, I will quote his very lucid observations on the subject:—
“During the last year or two, while hints and scraps of occult science have been finding their way out into the world, the expression ‘astral body’ has been applied to a certain semblance of the human form, fully inhabited by its higher principles, which can migrate to any distance from the physical body—projected consciously and with exact intention by a living adept, or unintentionally by the accidental application of certain mental forces to his loosened principles by any person at the moment of death. For ordinary purposes, there is no practical inconvenience in using the expression ‘astral body’ for the appearance so projected—indeed any more strictly accurate expression, as will be seen directly, would be cumbersome, and we must go on using the phrase in both meanings. No confusion need arise; but strictly speaking, the linga sharira, or third principle, is the astral body, and that cannot be sent about as the vehicle of the higher principles.”
As, however, “no confusion need arise” from my describing how I went about in my linga sharira, I will continue to use it as the term for my vehicle of transportation. Nor need there be any difficulty about my being in two
places at once. I have the authority of Mr Sinnett’s Guru for this statement, and it is fully confirmed by my own experience. For what says the Guru?—“The individual consciousness, it is argued, cannot be in two places at once. But first of all, to a certain extent it can.” It is unnecessary for me to add a word to this positive and most correct statement; but what the Guru has not told us is, that there is a certain discomfort attending the process. Whenever I went with my astral body, or linga sharira, into the mysterious region of Thibet already alluded to, leaving my rupa, or natural body, in Khatmandhu, I was always conscious of a feeling of rawness; while the necessity of looking after my rupa—of keeping, so to speak, my astral eye upon it, lest some accident should befall it, which might prevent my getting back to it, and so prematurely terminate my physical or objective existence—was a constant source of anxiety to me. Some idea of the danger which attends this process may be gathered from the risks incidental to a much more difficult operation which I once attempted, and succeeded, after incredible effort, in accomplishing; this was the passage of my fifth
principle, or ego-spirit, into the ineffable condition of nirvana.
“Let it not be supposed,” says Mr Sinnett,—for it is not his Guru who is now speaking,—“that for any adept such a passage can be lightly undertaken. Only stray hints about the nature of this great mystery have reached me; but, putting these together, I believe I am right in saying that the achievement in question is one which only some of the high initiates are qualified to attempt, which exacts a total suspension of animation in the body for periods of time compared to which the longest cataleptic trances known to ordinary science are insignificant; the protection of the physical frame from natural decay during this period by means which the resources of occult science are strained to accomplish; and withal it is a process involving a double risk to the continued earthly life of the person who undertakes it. One of these risks is the doubt whether, when once nirvana is attained, the ego will be willing to return. That the return will be a terrible effort and sacrifice is certain, and will only be prompted by the most devoted attachment, on the part of the spiritual traveller, to the idea of duty in its purest abstraction. The second great risk is that of allowing the sense of duty to predominate over the temptation to stay—a temptation, be it remembered, that is not weakened by the motive that any conceivable penalty can attach to it. Even then it is always doubtful whether the traveller will be able to return.”
All this is exactly as Mr Sinnett has described it. I shall never forget the struggle
that I had with my ego when, ignoring “the idea of duty in its purest abstraction,” it refused to abandon the bliss of nirvana for the troubles of this mundane life; or the anxiety both of my manas, or human soul, and my buddhi, or spiritual soul, lest, after by our combined efforts we had overcome our ego, we should not be able to do our duty by our rupa, or natural body, and get back into it.
Of course, my migrations to the mahatma region of Thibet were accompanied by no such difficulty as this—as, to go with your linga sharira, or astral body, to another country, is a very different and much more simple process than it is to go with your manas, or human soul, into nirvana. Still it was a decided relief to find myself comfortably installed with my material body, or rupa, in the house of a Thibetan brother on that sacred soil which has for so many centuries remained unpolluted by a profane foot.
Here I passed a tranquil and contemplative existence for some years, broken only by such incidents as my passage into nirvana, and disturbed only by a certain subjective sensation of aching or void, by which I was occasionally attacked, and which I was finally
compelled to attribute, much to my mortification, to the absence of women. In the whole of this sacred region, the name of which I am compelled to withhold, there was not a single female. Everybody in it was given up to contemplation and ascetic absorption; and it is well known that profound contemplation, for any length of time, and the presence of the fair sex, are incompatible. I was much troubled by this vacuous sensation, which I felt to be in the highest degree derogatory to my fifth principle, and the secret of which I discovered, during a trance-condition which lasted for several months, to arise from a subtle magnetism, to which, owing to my peculiar organic condition, I was especially sensitive, and which penetrated the mahatma region from a tract of country almost immediately contiguous to it in the Karakorum Mountains, which was as jealously guarded from foreign intrusion as our own, and which was occupied by the “Thibetan Sisters,” a body of female occultists of whom the Brothers never spoke except in terms of loathing and contempt. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that no mention is made either of them, or the lovely highland district they occupy, in Mr Sinnett’s
book. The attraction of this feminine sphere became at last so overpowering, that I determined to visit it in my astral body; and now occurred the first of many most remarkable experiences which were to follow. It is well known to the initiated, though difficult to explain to those who are not, that in a sense space ceases to exist for the astral body. When you get out of your rupa, you are out of space as ordinary persons understand it, though it continues to have a certain subjective existence.
I was in this condition, and travelling rapidly in the desired direction, when I became conscious of the presence of the most exquisitely lovely female astral body which the imagination of man could conceive; and here I may incidentally remark, that no conception can be formed of the beauty to which woman can attain by those who have only seen her in her rupa—or, in other words, in the flesh. Woman’s real charm consists in her linga sharira—that ethereal duplicate of the physical body which guides jiva, or the second principle, in its work on the physical particles, and causes it to build up the shape which these assume in the material. Sometimes
it makes rather a failure of it, so far as the rupa is concerned, but it always retains its own fascinating contour and deliciously diaphanous composition undisturbed. When my gaze fell upon this most enchanting object, or rather subject—for I was in a subjective condition at the time—I felt all the senses appertaining to my third principle thrill with emotion; but it seemed impossible—which will readily be understood by the initiated—to convey to her any clear idea of the admiration she excited, from the fact that we were neither of us in natural space. Still the sympathy between our linga shariras was so intense, that I perceived that I had only to go back for my rupa, and travel in it to the region of the sisterhood, to recognise her in her rupa at once.
Every chela even knows how impossible it is to make love satisfactorily in nothing but your linga sharira. It is quite different after you are dead, and have gone in your fourth principle, or kama rupa, which is often translated “body of desire,” into devachan; for, as Mr Sinnett most correctly remarks, “The purely sensual feelings and tastes of the late personality will drop off from it in devachan;
but it does not follow that nothing is preservable in that state, except feelings and thoughts having a direct reference to religion or spiritual philosophy. On the contrary, all the superior phases, even of sensuous emotion, find their appropriate sphere of development in devachan.” Until you are obliged to go to devachan—which, in ordinary parlance, is the place good men go to when they die—my advice is, stick to your rupa; and indeed it is the instinct of everybody who is not a mahatma to do this. I admit—though in making this confession I am aware that I shall incur the contempt of all mahatmas—that on this occasion I found my rupa a distinct convenience, and was not sorry that it was still in existence. In it I crossed the neutral zone still inhabited by ordinary Thibetans, and after a few days’ travel, found myself on the frontiers of “the Sisters’” territory. The question which now presented itself was how to get in. To my surprise, I found the entrances guarded not by women, as I expected, but by men. These were for the most part young and handsome.
“So you imagined,” said one, who advanced to meet me with an engaging air,
“that you could slip into our territory in your astral body; but you found that all the entrances in vacuo”—I use this word for convenience—“are as well guarded as those in space. See, here is the Sister past whom you attempted to force your way: we look after the physical frontier, and leave the astral or spiritual to the ladies,”—saying which he politely drew back, and the apparition whose astral form I knew so well, now approached in her substantial rupa—in fact, she was a good deal stouter than I expected to find her; but I was agreeably surprised by her complexion, which was much fairer than is usual among Thibetans—indeed her whole type of countenance was Caucasian, which was not to be wondered at, considering, as I afterwards discovered, that she was by birth a Georgian. She greeted me, in the language common to all Thibetan occultists, as an old acquaintance, and one whose arrival was evidently expected—indeed she pointed laughingly to a bevy of damsels whom I now saw trooping towards us, some carrying garlands, some playing upon musical instruments, some dancing in lively measures, and singing their songs of welcome as they drew
near. Then Ushas—for that was the name (signifying “The Dawn”) of the illuminata whose acquaintance I had first made in vacuo—taking me by the hand, led me to them, and said—
“Rejoice, O my sisters, at the long-anticipated arrival of the Western arhat, who, in spite of the eminence which he has attained in the mysteries of Esoteric Buddhism, and his intimate connection during so many years with the Thibetan fraternity, has yet retained enough of his original organic conditions to render him, even in the isolation of (here she mentioned the region I had come from) susceptible to the higher influence of the occult sisterhood. Receive him in your midst as the chela of a new avatar which will be unfolded to him under your tender guidance. Take him in your arms, O my sisters, and comfort him with the doctrines of Ila, the Divine, the Beautiful.”
Taking me in their arms, I now found, was a mere formula or figure of speech, and consisted only in throwing garlands over me. Still I was much comforted, not merely by the grace and cordiality of their welcome, but by the mention of Ila, whose name will
doubtless be familiar to my readers as occurring in a Sanscrit poem of the age immediately following the Vedic period, called the Satapathabrahmana, when Manu was saved from the flood, and offered the sacrifice “to be the model of future generations.” By this sacrifice he obtained a daughter named Ila, who became supernaturally the mother of humanity, and who, I had always felt, has been treated with too little consideration by the mahatmas—indeed her name is not so much as even mentioned in Mr Sinnett’s book. Of course it was rather a shock to my spiritual pride, that I, a mahatma of eminence myself, should be told that I was to be adopted as a mere chela by these ladies; but I remembered those beautiful lines of Buddha’s—I quote from memory—and I hesitated no longer:—
“To be long-suffering and meek,
To associate with the tranquil,
Religious talk at due seasons;
This is the greatest blessing.”
“To be long-suffering”—this was a virtue I should probably have a splendid opportunity of displaying under the circumstances,—“and meek”; what greater proof of meekness could
I give than by becoming the chela of women? “To associate with the tranquil.” I should certainly obey this precept, and select the most tranquil as my associates, and with them look forward to enjoying “religious talk at due seasons.” Thus fortified by the precepts of the greatest of all teachers, my mind was at once made up, and, lifting up my voice, I chanted, in the language of the occult, some beautiful stanzas announcing my acceptance of their invitation, which evidently thrilled my hearers with delight. In order to save unnecessary fatigue, we now transferred ourselves through space, and, in the twinkling of an eye, I found myself in the enchanting abode which they called their home, or dama. Here a group of young male chelas were in waiting to attend to our wants; and the remarkable fact now struck me, that not only were all the women lovely and the men handsome, but that no trace of age was visible on any of them. Ushas smiled as she saw what was passing in my mind, and said, without using any spoken words, for language had already become unnecessary between us, “This is one of the mysteries which will be explained to you when you
have reposed after the fatigues of your journey; in the meantime Asvin,”—and she pointed out a chela whose name signified “Twilight,”—“will show you to your room.” I would gladly linger, did my space allow, over the delights of this enchanting region, and the marvellously complete and well-organised system which prevailed in its curiously composed society. Suffice it to say, that in the fairy-like pavilion which was my home, dwelt twenty-four lovely Sisters and their twenty-three chelas—I was to make the twenty-fourth—in the most complete and absolute harmony, and that their lives presented the most charming combination of active industry, harmless gaiety, and innocent pleasures. By a proper distribution of work and proportionment of labour, in which all took part, the cultivation of the land, the tending of the exquisite gardens, with their plashing fountains, fragrant flowers, and inviting arbours, the herding of the cattle, and the heavier part of various handicrafts, fell upon the men; while the women looked after the domestic arrangements—cooked, made or mended and washed the chelas’ clothes and their own (both men and women were dressed
according to the purest principles of æsthetic taste), looked after the dairy, and helped the men in the lighter parts of their industries.
Various inventions, known only to the occult sisterhood by means of their studies in the esoteric science of mechanics, contributed to shorten these labours to an extent which would be scarcely credited by the uninitiated; but some idea of their nature may be formed from the fact that methods of storing and applying electricity, unknown as yet in the West, have here been in operation for many centuries, while telephones, flying-machines, and many other contrivances still in their infancy with us, are carried to a high pitch of perfection. In a word, what struck me at once as the fundamental difference between this sisterhood and the fraternity of adepts with which I had been associated, was that the former turned all their occult experiences to practical account in their daily life in this world, instead of reserving them solely for the subjective conditions which are supposed by mahatmas to attach exclusively to another state of existence.
Owing to these appliances the heavy work of the day was got through usually in time
for a late breakfast, the plates and dishes being washed up and the knives cleaned by a mechanical process scarcely occupying two minutes; and the afternoon was usually devoted to the instruction of chelas in esoteric branches of learning, and their practical application to mundane affairs, until the cool of the evening, when parties would be made up either for playing out-of-door games, in the less violent of which the women took part, or in riding the beautiful horses of the country, or in flying swiftly over its richly cultivated and variegated surface, paying visits to other damas or homes, each of which was occupied on the same scale and in the same manner as our own. After a late dinner, we usually had concerts, balls, and private theatricals.
On the day following my arrival, Ushas explained to me the relationship in which we were to stand towards each other. She said that marriage was an institution as yet unknown to them, because their organisms had not yet attained the conditions to which they were struggling. They had progressed so far, however, that they had discovered the secret of eternal youth. Indeed, Ushas herself was 590 years old. I was not surprised at this, as
something of the same kind has occurred more than once to rishis or very advanced mahatmas. As a rule, however, they are too anxious to go to nirvana, to stay on earth a moment longer than necessary, and prefer rather to come back at intervals: this, we all know, has occurred at least six times in the case of Buddha, as Mr Sinnett so well explains. At the same time Ushas announced without words, but with a slight blush, and a smile of ineffable tenderness, that from the day of my birth she knew that I was destined to be her future husband, and that at the appointed time we should be brought together. We now had our period of probation to go through together, and she told me that all the other chelas here were going through the necessary training preparatory to wedlock like myself, and that there would be a general marrying all round, when the long-expected culminating epoch should arrive.
Meantime, in order to enter upon the first stage of my new chela-ship, it became necessary for me to forget all the experiences which I had acquired during the last twenty years of my life, as she explained that it
would be impossible for my mind to receive the new truths which I had now to learn so long as I clung to what she called “the fantasies” of my mahatma-ship. I cannot describe the pang which this announcement produced. Still I felt that nothing must impede my search after truth; and I could not conceal from myself that, if in winning it I also won Ushas, I was not to be pitied. Nor to this day have I ever had reason to regret the determination at which I then arrived.
It would be impossible for me in the compass of this article to describe all my experiences in the new life to which I dedicated myself, nor indeed would it be proper to do so; suffice it to say, that I progressed beyond my Ushas’ most sanguine expectations. And here I would remark, that I found my chief stimulus to exertion to be one which had been completely wanting in my former experience. It consisted simply in this, that altruism had been substituted for egotism. Formerly, I made the most herculean spiritual effort to tide myself over the great period of danger—the middle of the fifth round. “That,” as Mr Sinnett correctly says, “is the stupendous achievement of the adept as regards
his own personal interests;” and of course our own interests were all that I or any of the other mahatmas ever thought of. “He has reached,” pursues our author, “the farther shore of the sea in which so many of mankind will perish. He waits there, in a contentment which people cannot even realise without some glimmering of spirituality—the sixth sense—themselves, for the arrival of his future companions.” This is perfectly true. I always found that the full enjoyment of this sixth sense among mahatmas was heightened just in proportion to the numbers of other people who perish, so long as you were safe yourself.
Here among the Sisters, on the other hand, the principle which was inculcated was, “Never mind if you perish yourself, so long as you can save others;” and indeed the whole effort was to elaborate such a system by means of the concentration of spiritual forces upon earth, as should be powerful enough to redeem it from its present dislocated and unhappy condition. To this end had the efforts of the Sisters been directed for so many centuries, and I had reason to believe that the time was not far distant
when we should emerge from our retirement to be the saviours and benefactors of the whole human race. It followed from this, of course, that I retained all the supernatural faculties which I had acquired as a mahatma, and which I now determined to use, not for my own benefit as formerly, but for that of my fellow-creatures, and was soon able—thanks to additional faculties, acquired under Ushas’ tutorship—to flit about the world in my astral body without inconvenience.
I happened to be in London on business the other day in this ethereal condition, when Mr Sinnett’s book appeared, and I at once projected it on the astral current to Thibet. I immediately received a communication from Ushas to the effect that it compelled some words of reply from the sisterhood, and a few days since I received them. I regret that it has been necessary to occupy so much of the reader’s time with personal details. They were called for in order that he should understand the source of my information, and my peculiar qualifications for imparting it. It will be readily understood, after my long connection with the Thibetan brotherhood, how painful it must be to me to be the
instrument chosen not merely of throwing a doubt upon “the absolute truth concerning nature, man, the origin of the universe, and the destinies toward which its inhabitants are tending,” to use Mr Sinnett’s own words, but actually to demolish the whole structure of Esoteric Buddhism! Nor would I do this now were it not that the publication of the book called by that name has reluctantly compelled the sisterhood to break their long silence. If the Thibetan Brothers had only held their tongues and kept their secret as they have done hitherto, they would not now be so rudely disturbed by the Thibetan Sisters.
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“The Sisters of Thibet,” writes Ushas, of course with an astral pen in astral ink, “owe their origin to a circumstance which occurred in the time of Sankaracharya, erroneously supposed by the initiated to be an incarnation of Buddha. This teacher, who lived more than a century before the Christian era, dwelt chiefly upon the necessity of pursuing gnyanam in order to obtain moksha—that is to say, the importance of secret knowledge to spiritual progress, and the consummation
thereof. And he even went so far as to maintain that a man ought to keep all such knowledge secret from his wife. Now the wife of Sankaracharya, whose name was Nandana, ‘she who rejoices,’ was a woman of very profound occult attainments; and when she found that her husband was acquiring knowledges which he did not impart to her, she did not upbraid him, but laboured all the more strenuously in her own sphere of esoteric science, and she even discovered that all esoteric science had a twofold element in it—masculine and feminine—and that all discoveries of occult mysteries engaged in by man alone, were, so to speak, lop-sided, and therefore valueless. So she conveyed herself secretly, by processes familiar to her, away from her husband, and took refuge in this region of Thibet in which we now dwell, and which, with all his knowledges, Sankaracharya was never able to discover, for they were all subjective, and dealt not with the material things of this world. And she associated herself here in the pursuit of knowledge with a learned man called Svasar, ‘he who is friendly,’ who considered secret knowledge merely the means to an end, and even spiritual
progress valuable only in so far as it could be used to help others; and they studied deep mysteries as brother and sister together—and he had been a mahatma or rishi of the highest grade—and, owing to the aid he derived from his female associate, he discovered that the subjective conditions of nirvana and devachan were the result of one-sided male imaginings which had their origin in male selfishness; and this conviction grew in him in the degree in which the Parthivi Mutar, or ‘Earth Mother,’ became incarnated in Nandana. Thus was revealed to him the astounding fact that the whole system of the occult adepts had originated in the natural brains of men who had given themselves up to egotistical transcendental speculation—in fact, I cannot better describe the process than in the words of Mr Sinnett himself, where he alludes to ‘the highly cultivated devotees to be met with occasionally in India, who build up a conception of nature, the universe and God, entirely on a metaphysical basis, and who have evolved their systems by sheer force of transcendental thinking—who will take some established system of philosophy as its groundwork, and
amplify on this to an extent which only an oriental metaphysician could dream of.’
“This, Mr Sinnett chooses to assume, was not the fact with the Thibet Brothers; but, in reality, this was just what they did. The fact that they have outstripped other similar transcendentalists is due to the circumstance that the original founders of the system were men of more powerful will and higher attainments than any who have succeeded them. And on their death they formed a compact spiritual society in the other world, impregnating the wills and imaginations of their disciples still on earth with their fantastic theories, which they still retain there, of a planetary chain, and the spiral advance of the seven rounds, and the septenary law, and all the rest of it. In order for human beings to come into these occult knowledges, it is necessary, as Mr Sinnett admits, for the adepts to go into trance-conditions—in other words, to lose all control of their normal, or as they would probably call them, their objective faculties. While in this condition, they are the sport of any invisible intelligences that choose to play upon them; but fearing lest they may be accused of this, they
erroneously assert that no such intelligences of a high order have cognisance of what happens in this world. The fact that mahatmas have powers which appear supernatural proves nothing, as Mr Sinnett also admits that innumerable fakirs and yojis possess these as well, whose authority on occultism he deems of no account, when he says that ‘careless inquirers are very apt to confound such persons with the great adepts of whom they vaguely hear.’ There can be no better evidence of the falsity of the whole conception than you are yourself. For to prove to you that you were the sport of a delusion, although your own experience as a mahatma in regard to the secret processes of nature, and the sensations attendant upon subjective conditions, exactly corresponded to those of all other mahatmas, you have, under my tutelage, at various times allowed yourself to fall into trance-conditions, when, owing to occult influences which we have brought to bear, a totally different idea concerning ‘nature, man, the origin of the universe, and the destinies toward which its inhabitants are tending,’ was presented to your sixth sense, which appeared ‘absolute
truth’ at the time, and which would have continued to seem so, had I not had the power of intromitting you through trance-conditions into a totally different set of apparent truths on the same subject, which were no more to be relied upon than the other. The fact is, that no seer, be he Hindoo, Buddhist, Christian, or of any other religion, is to be depended upon the moment he throws himself into abnormal organic conditions. We see best, as you have now learnt, into the deepest mysteries with all our senses about us. And the discovery of this great fact was due to woman; and it is for this reason that mahatmas shrink from female chelas—they are afraid of them. According to their philosophy, women play a poor part in the system of the universe, and their chances of reaching the blissful condition of nirvana are practically not to be compared with those of the men.
“There is no such thing as subjectivity apart from objectivity. Mr Sinnett very properly tells you ‘that occult science regards force and matter as identical, and that it contemplates no principle in nature as wholly immaterial. The clue to the mystery
involved,’ he goes on to say, ‘lies in the fact, directly cognisable by occult experts, that matter exists in other states than those which are cognisable by the five senses;’ but it does not become only cognisable subjectively on that account. You know very well, as an old mahatma, that you can cognise matter now with your sixth sense as well as with your five while in a perfectly normal condition, that you could not cognise except in trance-conditions before, and which even then you could only cognise incorrectly. The much-vaunted sixth sense of mahatmas needs sharpening as much as their logic, for you can no more separate subjectivity from objectivity than you can separate mind from matter. Christians, if they desire it, have a right to a heaven of subjective bliss, because they consider that they become immaterial when they go there; but Buddhists, who admit that they are in a sense material while in devachan or nirvana, and deny that their consciousness in that condition is in the same sense objective as well as subjective, talk sheer nonsense.” Ushas used a stronger expression here, but out of consideration for my old mahatma friends, I suppress it.
“‘Devachan’, says our Guru—speaking through his disciple in order to escape from this dilemma—‘will seem as real as the chairs and tables round us; and remember that above all things, to the profound philosophy of occultism, are the chairs and tables, and the whole objective scenery of the world, unreal and merely transitory delusions of sense.’ If, as he admits, they are material, why should they be more unreal than the chairs and tables in devachan, which are also material, since occult science contemplates no principle in nature as wholly immaterial? The fact is, that there is no more unreal and transitory delusion of sense than those ‘states’ known to the adepts as devachan or nirvana; they are mere dreamlands, invented by metaphysicians, and lived in by them after death—which are used by them to encourage a set of dreamers here to evade the practical duties which they owe to their fellow-men in this world. ‘Hence it is possible,’ says our author, ‘for yet living persons to have visions of devachan, though such visions are rare and only one-sided, the entities in devachan, sighted by the earthly clairvoyant, being quite unconscious themselves of undergoing
such observation.’ This is an erroneous and incorrect assumption on the Guru’s part. ‘The spirit of the clairvoyant,’ he goes on, ‘ascends into the condition of devachan in such rare visions, and thus becomes subject to the vivid delusions of that existence.’ Vivid delusions indeed, the fatal consequences of which are, that they separate their votaries from the practical duties of life, and create a class of idle visionaries who, wrapping themselves in their own vain conceits, would stand by and allow their fellow-creatures to starve to death, because, as Mr Sinnett frankly tells us, ‘if spiritual existence, vivid subjective consciousness, really does go on for periods greater than the periods of intellectual physical existence, in the ratio, as we have seen in discussing the devachanic condition, of 80 to 1 at least, then surely man’s subjective existence is more important than his physical existence and intellect in error, when all its efforts are bent on the amelioration of the physical existence.’
“This is the ingenious theory which the Brothers of Thibet have devised to release them from acknowledging that they have any other Brothers in this world to whom they
are under sacred obligations besides themselves, and which, owing to the selfish principle that underlies it, has a tendency to sap the foundations of all morality. So that we have this nineteenth-century apostle of Esoteric Buddhism venturing to assert to his Western readers that ‘it is not so rough a question as that—whether man be wicked or virtuous—which must really, at the final critical turning-point, decide whether he shall continue to live and develop into higher phases of existence, or cease to live altogether.’ We, the Sisters of Thibet, repudiate and denounce in the strongest terms any such doctrine as the logical outcome either of the moral precepts of Buddha or of the highest esoteric science. Let the Brothers of Thibet beware of any longer cherishing the delusion that the Sisters of Thibet, because their existence is purely objective, ‘are therefore unreal and merely transitory delusions of sense.’ We also have a secret to reveal—the result of twenty centuries of occult learning—and we formally announce to you, the so-called adepts of occult science, that if you persist in disseminating any more of your deleterious metaphysical compounds in this
world under the name of Esoteric Buddhism, we will not only no longer refrain, as we have hitherto done, from tormenting you in your subjective conditions while still in your rupas, but, by virtue of the occult powers we possess, will poison the elements of devachan until subjective existence becomes intolerable there for your fifth and sixth principles,—your manas and your buddhis,—and nirvana itself will be converted into hell.”