Theosophists should haste to see that this false impression created at large, that it is a dangerous study, or that it is in any way dangerous, or that we conceal our reasons for what we are doing, is done away with. There is proof enough to their hand. India has nearly 120 branches, all studying freely and openly how best to purify their own lives, while they bring to others a knowledge of right doctrine. America has a dozen branches, nearly all of which know that the impressions referred to are ridiculous. If one or two persons in the Society imagine that the pursuit of psychical phenomena is its real end and aim and so declare, that weighs nothing against the immense body of the membership or against its widespread literature; it is merely their individual bias.
But at the same time, this imagination and misstatement are dangerous, and insidiously so. It is just the impression which the Jesuit college desires to be spread abroad concerning us, so that in one place ridicule may follow, and in another a superstitious dread of the thing; which ever of those may happen to obtain, they would be equally well pleased.
Let Theosophists attend to this, and let them not forget, that the only authoritative statement of what are the ends and objects of the Society, is contained in those printed in its by-laws. No amount of assertion to the contrary by any officer or member can change that declaration.
“Last Words” of Moncure D. Conway.—We do not refer to a book, but to an article written by Mr. Conway in the Forum upon the subject of Theosophy. He declares to those who are honored by his personal acquaintance, that that article is really “the last word to be said on the subject,” and he desires all people to read it, so that their delusions may be dispelled. In this he is wise, because certain delusions held by some people would be at once dispelled upon reading his lucubrations.
Mr. Conway has been excessively bitter against Theosophy ever since he went to the headquarters in Madras, and was well treated and entertained by the unsuspecting Theosophists there. Almost in the same hour that he was being housed and fed there, he was writing to the Glasgow Herald—he had not yet got into the Forum—an article abusing those who extended to him their hospitality. He had been there but a few hours, and so great was his penetration, that in that short time, he had succeeded, as he said, in unravelling the whole mystery, in pricking the bubble. But how he grew so wise in such short space, we do not know. His solution was and is, that Madame Blavatsky produced Mahatmas, Aryan literature, Sanscrit language, Astral bodies and all the rest, by means of a curious thing called “glamour,” which is vulgarly called “pulling the wool.” But Conway gives a little more power to this glamour than the vulgar phrase, for he ascribes to it some power over the imagination. He does not say how we are to know whether or not his own perceptions were “glamoured”; for he has the hardihood to assert that Madame Blavatsky, the arch conspirator, was fool enough to unburden her heart to him, a decaying English divine, and to weakly confess upon a mere plain interrogation put by him, that “it is all glamours.” For our part, we are led to believe, from certain information and after having, subsequent to Mr. Conway’s return to London, conversed with him, that the “glamour” used on the occasion, was so powerful as to affect Mr. Conway’s perception to such an extent, that he is willing to accuse himself of such a foolish thing as trying to make us believe that Blavatsky made a full confession to him. It is really “all glamours”; but after all, the Forum is not a bad sort of a magazine for Theosophy to get into, even through the instrumentality of this “glamoured” clergyman.
However, as Theosophy sometimes has prophets, we hope and trust, that his own entitlement of his thoughts on the subject may not be fateful, and not be his “last words.”
Sinnett.—In our July issue a printer’s error gave the wrong title to Mr. Sinnett’s new book. It is called “United” and not Union, as was printed in July.