Read Ebook: Isis very much unveiled being the story of the great Mahatma hoax by Garrett Fydell Edmund

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Ebook has 518 lines and 55491 words, and 11 pages

"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 s?ance 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 a?rial post.

Occasionally they would make the assurance of the faithful doubly sure by artlessly "precipitating" the message inside a sealed envelope ; 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. I tell you that since Madame Blavatsky left I have had letters in the same handwriting as the letters which she received. 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."

"'These letters are from a Mahatma whose pupil you are?'

"Mrs. Besant nodded assent.

"'Did they just come through the post?' our representative asked.

"But here he had hit the mystery.

"'No, I did not receive the letters through the post,' the lady replied. 'They did come in what some would call a miraculous fashion, though to us Theosophists it is perfectly natural. The letters I receive from the Mahatmas are "precipitated."'

"'How "precipitated"?' ...

"Mrs. Besant was quite ready to explain.

"'Well,' she said, 'you can hear voices by means of the telephone, and receive a telegram which is actually written by the needle, not merely indicated by its ticks. The Mahatmas go a step further. With their great knowledge of natural laws they are able to communicate with us without using any apparatus at all.'

"'But can you give me any details of the precipitation?'

"'No; the Mahatmas only communicate with pupils who will not unwisely divulge anything. You can easily imagine the reason why this knowledge should be kept so secret. Were it possessed by a criminal it might be put to dreadful purposes.' ...

"Mrs. Besant repeated that she had made her startling statement in the lecture deliberately, adding that there were many persons who knew her and would accept her statements as true, but who might not believe in Madame Blavatsky, because, Mrs. Besant was careful to add, they had not enjoyed the advantage of knowing that lady."

But, as we have seen, what Mrs. Besant did divulge was enough to convey to the public certain definite impressions: to wit, that she had received letters in a certain handwriting, which did not come through the post, but "in what some would call a miraculous fashion," and that these letters were, in fact, "precipitated" by the Mahatmas out of thin air. Also that she had satisfied herself of the above propositions by evidential processes as certain as the assurance of her own "sense" and "reasoning faculty" that her audience were before her as she spoke.

And now let us see what were the facts on the strength of which Mrs. Besant made these astonishing statements. So far, I have been occupied necessarily with putting on record matters of history open to any careful student of the subject. From this point I shall be dealing with a side of Isis which up to this moment has been kept closely veiled indeed.

"Answer the question I've put you so oft.... Give us a colloquy, something to quote. Make the world prick up its ear!"--MASTER HUGUES, of Saxegotha.

The brief and late character of her acquaintance with Madame was rather in her favour than otherwise, since it had left undisturbed in her ardent mind a loftier conception of Madame's ethical character than had been affected for some time past by some who had known her longer. Mrs. Besant was even understood to be in some sense designate for the succession.

Officially, however, she was subordinate to Colonel Olcott, the president, then in India, and to Mr. William Q. Judge, vice-president, and head of the faithful in America.

It soon appeared that the latter gentleman, at any rate, did not mean his claims to Theosophical prominence to be ignored.

In reply to the announcement of "H.P.B.'s" death Mr. Judge promptly cabled to

Avenue-road was at first inclined to resent this ukase.

But Mr. Judge soon put a new face on matters when he arrived. That was a time of sore searchings of heart. With "H.P.B.'s" death the society's one link with its unseen guides was broken, and "Masters" had let a fortnight elapse without giving any sign that they survived the decease of their high-priestess. William Q. Judge was to change all that.

On the evening of May 23 , Mr. Judge suggested to Mrs. Besant that as they were in sore need of some assurance from Masters, they should repeat an old recipe of Madame Blavatsky's for bringing those august beings to a point. He proposed that they should write a certain question on paper, put it in an envelope, shut that into a certain cabinet in "H.P.B.'s" room at Avenue-road, and invite the Masters to "precipitate" replies.

Mrs. Besant agreed. Mr. Judge himself wrote the question and closed the envelope, and put it into the cabinet.

Mrs. Besant did not stay in the room through the process of incubation. For "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," the Theosophic scripture reads, "He that hath eyes to see, let him put his Head in a Bag."

After due delay, Mr. Judge took the letter out again. On his showing it to Mrs. Besant, judge of that lady's emotion at the discovery that at the end of the question stood the word

"YES"

traced apparently in red chalk; also, a little lower down, the words

"AND HOPE,"

with the impression, in black carbon, of a peculiar seal, representing a cryptograph M.

THE "MAHATMA'S SEAL." IMPRESSION SHOWING CRYPTOGRAPH.

What need of further witness that the thing was the result of psychic "precipitation" from Madame Blavatsky's "Mahatma M," away in Tibet? If that gentleman had not, in his communications to Madame, been observed to use a seal, still he certainly used to scribble them in the same sort of red chalk, and he certainly used to sign himself similarly M.

Note one point here. It was not Mahatma M, but Mahatma K.H., who used to be the more prolix correspondent in Madame Blavatsky's time, and whose handwriting appeared accordingly in copious specimens and comparisons with her own, in the published Report of the Psychical Research Committee.

No specimens were there given of the writing which Madame called Mahatma M's: there were but a few scraps of it available.

It is true that a few months later Mrs. Besant felt able to affirm with the utmost confidence that the handwriting was "the same as that which Madame Blavatsky was accused of producing," and this at first sight appears to refer to the "K.H." script, which afforded the gravamen of Mr. Hodgson's Report. In that case what Mrs. Besant asserted was that the writing was the same as that which was not even supposed to be by the same person.

To which end he produced not only a letter from Madame Blavatsky, but one from Mahatma M, which he had personally received in America, he said. Its contents he did not feel able to communicate to others who could not yet aspire to be on corresponding terms with the Great Unseen: what he did show was the signature and seal impression . He specially begged those present to take note of the seal; "for," said Mr. Judge, "they might have need to recognise it on some future occasion."

Three days after this there was a meeting of the Esoteric Section Council, to decide how the section should in future be governed, its head being gone.

As Mrs. Besant, who took the chair and expounded the new scheme, was turning over her papers on the table, there fluttered out a little slip of paper, at which she just glanced, and was about to put it by, when William Q. Judge pointedly asked her what it was?

The slip of paper bore the words in red pencil--

"JUDGE'S PLAN IS RIGHT."

Signature and seal as before.

Tableau!

Round it went from hand to hand. None questioned that paper and script alike had just been "precipitated" into their midst by "the Master." Thanks to Mr. Judge's foresight, as we have just seen, all were in a position to recognise the seal.

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