< The Occult World (continued from page 11-113) >
that await him during the period of his development, it will be obvious that I can have no accurate knowledge, and conjectures based on fragmentary revelations picked up here and there are not worth recording, but as for the nature of the life led by the mere candidate for admission as a neophyte it will be equally plain that no secret is involved. The ultimate development of the adept requires amongst other things a life of absolute psychical purity, and the candidate must, from the beginning give practical evidence of his willingness to adopt this. He must, that is to say, for all the years of his probation, be perfectly chaste, A perfectly abstemious, and indifferent to physical luxury of every sort. This regimen does not involve any fantastic discipline or obtrusive asceticism, nor withdrawal from the world. There would be nothing to prevent a gentleman in London society from being in full training for occult candidature without anybody about him being the wiser.”
Of the history of the Theosophical Society, Mr. Sinnett testifies:—
“That history has been a chequered one, because the phenomena that have been displayed have often failed of their effect, have sometimes become the subject of a premature publicity, and have brought down on the study of occult philosophy as regarded from the point of view of the outer world, and on the devoted persons who have been chiefly identified with its encouragement by means of the Theosophical Society, a great deal of stupid ridicule and some malevolent persecution. It may be asked why the Brothers, if they are really the great and all-powerful persons I represent them, have permitted indiscretions of the kind referred to, but the inquiry is not so embarrassing as it may seem at the first glance. If the picture of the Brothers that I have endeavoured to present to the reader has been A appreciated rightly, it will show them less accurately qualified, in spite of their powers, than persons of lesser occult development, to carry on any undertaking which involves direct relations with a multiplicity of ordinary people in the common-place world.”
Thus the unseen Brothers who live in an unspecified part of the Himalayas, are remarkably like ordinary mediums in their characteristics. They finally accepted the Theosophical Society as the best agency available for the propagation of occult truths, and their sole link of communication with it is through Madame Blavatsky, who is not a “Brother” or Sister; she has advanced but to the rank of “Initiate,” and has not carried her occult training farther. Our author states:—
“It is obvious that to give any countenance or support at all to a society concerned with the promulgation of occult philosophy, it was necessary for the Brothers to be in occult communication with it in some way or other. For it must be remembered that though it may seem to us a very amazing and impossible thing to sit still at home and impress our thoughts upon the mind of a distant friend by an effort of will, a Brother living in an unknown Himalayan retreat is not only able to converse as freely as ho likes with any of his friends who are initiates like himself, in whatever part of the world they may happen to be, but would find any other modes of communication, such as those with which the crawling faculties of the outer world have to be content; simply intolerable in their tedium and inefficacy.”
He adds that,
“After a course of occult study carried on for seven years in a Himalayan retreat, and crowning a devotion to occult pursuits extending over five-and-thirty or forty years, Madame Blavatsky reappeared in the world, dazed, as she met ordinary people going about in common-place, benighted ignorance concerning the wonders of occult science, at the more thought of the stupendous gulf of experience that separated her from them. She could hardly at first bear to associate with them, for thinking of all she knew that they did not know and that she was bound not to reveal. Anyone can understand the burden of a great secret, but the burden of such s secret as occultism, and the burden of great powers only conferred on condition that their exercise should be very strictly circumscribed by rule, must have been trying indeed.”
Madame Blavatsky went to America, founded the Theosophical Society there, and subsequently a branch in England, then return to India. Says Mr. Sinnett,
“Here, however, began the practical blunders in the management of the Theosophical Society which led to the incidents referred to above, as having given it, so far a chequered career. Madame Blavatsky, to begin with, was wholly unfamiliar with the everyday side of Indian life, her previous visits having brought her only into contact with groups of people utterly unconnected with the current social system and characteristics of the country. Nor could she have undertaken a worse preparation for Indian <... continues on page 11-115 >