The Theosophistry about Proving a Negative.
“After all, you have not proved that Mahatmas do not exist, nor that occult phenomena cannot occur.”
Certainly I have not, nor did I ever propose to try. I am quite prepared to believe in both when evidence for them has been produced, and has stood the test of such ordinary evidential canons as have been applied to kindred subjects—for instance, by the Psychical Research Society. All that I have said is that certain evidence on which the Theosophical Society has been building proves nothing whatever, except the existence of a hotbed of humbug within the society itself. As for the Mahatmas, there is no difficulty about conceiving that illiterate, twaddling, and mendacious beings of a second-rate order of intelligence, such as those reflected in the “missives” which I have reproduced, may exist in Tibet as they unhappily do elsewhere. But when we are told that these beings have acquired powers which rise superior to time and space, and that they use these for communicating “in a quasi-miraculous manner” with the Theosophical Society, we ask for facts; and we get—such facts as were investigated by Dr. Hodgson and his colleagues, and such facts as have been exposed in “Isis Very Much Unveiled.” What else is there? One Theosophist directs me to “our literature on the subject, which is copious.” I don’t doubt it; but it is not “literature” that I am in search of. Another declares “it does not all depend on Madame Blavatsky and Mr. Judge; others have seen Mahatmas.” It seems that Mrs. Besant has been telling her Australian audiences that she herself has been so favoured (just as she told the Hall of Science audience that she had been favoured with supernatural missives). Well, how did Mrs. Besant know her Mahatma? By his “portrait,” I suppose, as others have done. And how was that portrait produced? When Madame Blavatsky began to spell spiritualism “Theosophy,” and turned her “spirit-control” “John King,” of whom Colonel Olcott tells, into Master Koot Hoomi—whom she again subordinated, after the Kiddle exposure, to Mahatma Morya, whom she, in turn, after the S.P.R. Report, left over for exploitation by Mr. Judge—when Madame started the Mahatma on this chequered career, it was one of her earliest steps to secure a counterfeit presentment of her creation. Various artists and amateurs were set to paint portraits under occult inspiration. The results may all have resembled the Protean Mahatma; some of them were strikingly unlike each other. The two best were done by Mr. Schmiechen, now a society portrait-painter, partly out of his head, partly from directions given by Madame, and partly from a photograph of a typical Hindu which she gave him for the purpose. Madame identified one as Koot and the other as Morya, and declared they were speaking likenesses—an opinion which nobody else was in a position to contradict. They hang to-day in the “Occult Room” at Adyar, and are declared to have been painted from the respective “astral bodies” of their subjects. Colonel Olcott, president, who knows their origin perfectly well, exhibits them reverently to barefoot disciples doing “puja.” Photographs from the fancy portrait of “M,” in locked cases, have been distributed to the Esoteric few; Mrs. Besant always works with one facing her; Madame Blavatsky made it part of a chela’s course to spend some time daily staring at the image, and deliberately trying to “visualise” it in corners of the room. What wonder if some of them have succeeded? It would have been contrary to all experience of the phenomena of self-hypnotic hallucination if they had not. The thing only begins to call for examination when the figure thus “visualised” leaves something not entirely psychic behind him. The Master who left a shower of roses once at Adyar turned out to have been M. Coulomb, eked out with a mask, a bladder, and some white muslin; and the roses were traced elsewhere than to Tibet. And the Master who precipitated the Judge missives?——But perhaps the Theosophists would prefer not to put him forward. When they have something better, I shall be glad to hear of it.
The Theosophistry of Throwing Over the Mahatmas.
“What matter even if the Mahatmas do not exist, and the phenomena are frauds? There still remain those sublime ideas which,” &c., &c.
I was quite prepared for this particular Theosophistry. That was why I started, at the very beginning of my story (Chapter II.), by showing what an enormous practical part the Mahatmas and their miracles have played in the movement. It is easy for this Theosophist or that to protest that they never attracted him. The fact remains that the big accessions to the society’s numbers have always followed on the miracle “booms,” alike under Madame Blavatsky and under Mrs. Besant. Moreover, it is not possible, even argumentatively, to dissociate “those sublime ideas,” &c., from the Mahatmas on whose authority Madame Blavatsky gave them out. If she spoke truth, they were the real authors of “Isis Very Much Unveiled” and of “The Secret Doctrine.” If she lied, and the authority for those teachings is her own, what is that lying authority worth? I need not labour the point, as it was conclusively proved long ago by Mrs. Besant herself. In an article in Lucifer of December, 1890, addressed apparently to certain Theosophical schismatics who showed a tendency to throw over alike their foundress and her “Masters,” Mrs. Besant accomplished the easy task of showing that the society was tied hand and foot to both. It was founded by Her at the bidding of “Them”; They have been the deus ex machinâ whenever She was in a fix, and the society has so accepted Them. It can be “neutral” about Them, and Their miracles, and Their prophetess, only when an heir is neutral about his own title-deeds. As Mrs. Besant puts it in a nutshell: “If there are no Masters, then the Theosophical Society is an absurdity.”
The Theosophistry of Throwing Over the “Inner Group.”
“The Esoteric Section is a private body, not officially connected with the Theosophical Society; so the Society is not responsible for miracle-mongering in the Section.”
The so-called Esoteric Section or E.S.T. (“Eastern School of Theosophy”), of which the High-priesters and the Vice-President are now quarrelling for the headship, and, in the words of the latter official, “the core of the Theosophical Society.” The Inner Group, again, is the core of the E.S.T. Both were the special creation of the Society’s foundress. The Group was to contain her top pupils. The members of the group are almost to a man officials of the Society, living at the Society’s expense. With the one exception of Colonel Olcott, practically all the high panjandrums are included in it. Lastly, if it has been the centre of the Mahatma communications, it is a centre that has radiated them in all directions to the society’s circumference. The plop of a missive sends a ripple from the Inner Group to the Esoteric Section, from the Esoteric Section to the society at large, and from the society to the public.
Well, the yolk of an egg is not officially connected with the outer portion; but when the yolk is bad, we call it a rotten egg without further parley.