Theos-Talk Archives (December 1996 Message tt00090)

[The word "New" is in quotes because half of this letter will be
new to most theosophists.  Part of it appeared (as two letters)
in LETTERS FROM THE MASTERS OF THE WISDOM, First Series, pages
201-04.  It was written by KH in 1884 (after August) to Laura C.
Holloway.  The new portions are surrounded by {{{triple curly
brackets}}}.]

> When you are older in your chela life you will not be surprised
> if no notice is taken of your wishes, and even birthdays and
> other feasts and fasts.  For you will have then learned to put a
> proper value on the carcass-sheath of the Self and all its
> relations.  To the profane a birthday is but a twelve-months
> stride toward the grave.  When each new year marks for you a step
> of evolution, all will be ready with their congratulations; there
> will be something real to felicitate you upon.  But, so far, you
> are not even one year old -- and you would be treated as an
> adult! Try to learn to stand firm on your legs, child, before you
> venture walking.  It is because you are so young and ignorant in
> the ways of occult life that you are so easily forgiven.  But you
> have to attend your ways and put ----- and her caprices and whims
> far in the background before the expiration of the *first year*
> of your life as a chela if you would see the dawn of the second
> year.
>
> Now, the lake in the mountain heights of your being is one day a
> tossing waste of waters, as the gust of caprice or temper sweeps
> through your soul; the next a mirror as they subside and peace
> reigns in the "house of life." One day you win a step forward;
> the next you fall two back.  Chelaship admits none of these
> transitions; its prime and constant qualification is a calm,
> even, contemplative state of mind (not the mediumistic passivity)
> fitted to receive psychic impressions from without, and to
> transmit one's own from within.  The mind can be made to work
> with electric swiftness in a high excitement; but the Buddhi --
> *never*.  To its clear region, calm must ever reign.  It is
> foolish to be thinking of outward Upasika in this connection.
> She is not a "chela".
>
> {{{You wish confirmation of what has been told you about the
> cause and effect of your transfer from London to Elberfeld.  Take
> it.  The fact is as explained.}}}
>
> You cannot acquire psychic power until the causes of psychic
> debility are removed.  {{{Your trouble is, that you "cannot take
> in" the doctrine of shells.}}} You have scarcely learned the
> elements of self-control in psychism; your vivid creative
> imagination evokes illusive creatures, coined the instant before
> in the mint of your mind, unknown to yourself.  As yet you have
> not acquired the exact method of detecting the false from the
> true, since you have not yet comprehended the doctrine of shells.
> {{{Nevertheless it is not unreasonable emotionalism that can
> remove a *fact* from Nature.  Your ex-friend *is a shell*, and
> one more dangerous for you than ten other shells -- for his
> feeling for you was intense and earthly.  The little of the
> spirituality in it is now in Devachan -- and there remains in
> Kama-Loka but the dross he tried so vainly to repress.  And now
> listen and remember:
>
> Whether you *sit* for friends in America or London, or elsewhere
> as medium -- though you now hate the word -- or seeress, or
> revelator, since you have scarcely learned the elements of self-
> control, in psychism, you must suffer bad consequences.  You draw
> to yourself the nearest and strongest influences -- often evil --
> and absorb them, and are psychically stifled or narcotised by
> them.  The airs become peopled with resuscitated phantoms.  They
> give you false tokens, misleading revelations, deceptive images.
> Your vivid creative fancy evokes illusive Gurus and chelas, and
> puts into their mouths words coined the instant before in the
> mint of your mind, unknown to yourself.  The false appear as
> real, as the true, and you have no *exact method* of detection
> since you are yet prone to force your communications to agree
> with your preconceptions.
>
> Mr.  Sinnett against his own wish and unconsciously to himself
> has attracted about him a cloud of elementaries whose power is
> such over him as to make him miserably unhappy for the moment and
> shake his constance.  He is actually in danger of losing all he
> has gained, and of cutting himself off from me forever.  Worse
> than all -- he has severed himself from his protecting shield,
> his sweet child, through whom I could have acted (and have done
> so for a long time) to shelter him from the malignant influences
> about him.  The pure boy is far away and no direct influence of
> mine can reach him.  I cannot help him; he must help himself.  I
> shall rejoice if he conquers; for by this practical experience
> his intuitions will have become sharpened and help him to
> distinguish truth from falsehood.  At this moment he is enwrapped
> in a mist of maya, and whenever he approached you, you too were
> lost in it.  I have denied -- black on white -- communicating
> with him through you.  I have never done so, and this I repeat;
> but he clings to his unwholesome illusion and by implication
> makes me a *falsifier*.  Poor friend, of India, to have been told
> such a great deal and -- learnt so little! (You may copy this and
> send *her* this if you like.)}}}
>
> How can you know the real from the unreal, the true from the
> false? Only by self-development.  How get that? By first
> carefully guarding yourself against the causes of self-deception,
> {{{and chief among them, the holding of intercourse with
> elementaries as before, whether to please friends(?), or gratify
> your own curiosity.}}} And then by spending a certain fixed hour
> or hours each day, all alone in self-contemplation, writing,
> reading, the purification of your motives, the study and
> correction of your faults, the planning of your work in the
> external life.  These hours should be sacredly reserved for this
> purpose, and no one, not even your most intimate friend or
> friends, should be with you then.  Little by little your sight
> will clear, you will find the mists pass away, your interior
> faculties strengthen, your attraction toward us gain force, and
> certainty replace doubts.  But beware of seeking or leaning too
> much upon direct authority.  *Our* ways are not your ways.  We
> rarely show any outward signs by which to be recognized or
> sensed.  Do you think H.S.O., and Mohini, and Mad.  Gebhard have
> been counselling you entirely without prompting from us? As for
> U., you love her more than you respect her advice.  You do not
> realize that when speaking of, or as from us, she dares not mix
> up her own personal opinions with those she tells you are ours.
> None of us would dare do so, for we have a code that is not to be
> transgressed.  Learn, child, *to catch a hint through whatever
> agency it may be given*.  {{{You were told ere now *never to
> touch* Mohini; you have done so out of sheer malice and brought
> upon yourself the displeasure of one of our chiefs.}}} "Sermons
> may be preached even through stones." {{{You will not be
> unwatched and uncared for, but you have to attract not to repel
> us and our chelas.  Mohini's ideas about "judgement" etc., may
> sound unpleasant to the ears of Miss Arundale; but she has to
> accept things as *he* does if she would be taken notice of, at
> all.}}} Do not be too eager for "instructions" {{{*any of
> you.*}}} You will always get what you need as you shall deserve
> them, but no more than you deserve or are able to assimilate.
> {{{*Your book is a good test in this direction.*}}}
>
> And now the battle is set in array: fight a good fight {{{even
> with your old friend, General H.[oward}}}] and may you win.