“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”—Hamlet.
I have said that the Psychical Research Report put a stop to most of the Theosophic miracles. But there were obvious reasons why the Mahatmas should continue to “precipitate” letters, even when the scoffs of a hard, cold world drove them to restrain their wonder-working propensities in other respects. The business was so beautifully safe and simple. It defied “tests.” The task of proving that a scribble in red chalk on a scrap of paper found in a disciple’s pocket is not the authentic handwriting of an inaccessible teacher, whose devotees have doubtless the best reason for knowing that he can never be produced as a witness—this is a task from which the boldest sceptic might well recoil.
But what of the actual process of “precipitation”? Alas, it appears to be surrounded by disappointingly obscure conditions. It is not given to see the scrap of psychically-manufactured notepaper glimmer into being and become cream-laid out of nothing before one’s eyes, nor to watch the mystic characters form themselves in lines along it like the writing on Belshazzar’s wall. It is always the finished result that is discovered ready-made, and this precisely resembles what is produced if you or I write it in the ordinary way. The “precipitation,” in fact, is a deed of darkness, and can only be done concealed from view, just as mediums are wont to declare at a séance that the spirits are prevented from manifesting themselves by the mere presence of a sceptical inquirer with a box of wax vestas. Perhaps it is another side of the same retiring instinct which impels the Mahatmas to live only in parts of the earth not penetrated to by vulgar explorers. Theosophists sometimes speak as if they had seen the actual precipitation; but cross-examine any credible witness, and he will reluctantly admit that he has not. This is a point to note and bear in mind.
The Mahatma missive only becomes a matter of difficulty when it has to be made to drop from the ceiling into the recipient’s hands, or spirited into a cupboard found one moment before to be as empty as Mother Hubbard’s. Those were stirring days for Theosophic neophytes when that kind of thing was a common incident. But, ichabod! that glory is departed! Its departure precisely synchronised with that of the nimble-fingered Coulombs. Their graceless avowal that both special plant and skilful confederates were required for this kind of miracle may have been a gross calumny on their employer; but the fact remains that with the removal of the panel-backed Shrine at Adyar and the dismissal of its custodians, the Masters abruptly ceased to resort to these more surprising methods of aërial post.
Occasionally they would make the assurance of the faithful doubly sure by artlessly “precipitating” the message inside a sealed envelope (a species of “test” of which more anon); but for the most part they were content to endorse letters passing through the ordinary post or discovered by the recipient in his blotting-pad under circumstances equally consistent with a commonplace human agency.
Such was the state of things till Madame Blavatsky’s death.
But then came the rub. What the Psychical Research Committee held to be proven was that Madame had written practically the whole body of these documents with her own hand. What, then, if after her decease in May, 1891, the same missives continued to be received?
Before the controversy which sprang up again over her ashes had well died down, the public was asked to believe that this was indeed the case, on the word of a woman whom it believed incapable of making a statement of the kind without having first proved it to the uttermost and found it true.
Speaking in the Hall of Science on August 30, 1891, three months after Madame Blavatsky’s death, Mrs. Besant said:—
“You have known me in this hall for sixteen and a half years. You have never known me tell a lie. (‘No, never,’ and loud cheers.) I tell you that since Madame Blavatsky left I have had letters in the same handwriting as the letters which she received. (Sensation.) Unless you think dead persons can write, surely that is a remarkable fact. You are surprised; I do not ask you to believe me; but I tell you it is so. All the evidence I had of the existence of Madame Blavatsky’s teachers of the so-called abnormal powers came through her. It is not so now. Unless even sense can at the same time deceive me, unless a person can at the same time be sane and insane, I have exactly the same certainty for the truth of the statements I have made as I know that you are here. I refuse to be false to the knowledge of my intellect and the perceptions of my reasoning faculties.”