HPB-SB-14-36: Difference between revisions

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{{Style S-HPB SB. Archivist note|1=October 28<ref name="editor-date-36">A red handwritten date above the first letter; its upper edge is clipped. The writer has not been identified.<!-- HANDWRITING-ATTRIBUTION-RECHECK --></ref>}}

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{{Style P-Title|MADAME BLAVATSKY AND THE HIMALAYAN BROTHERS.}}

{{Style S-Small capitals|Sir,}}—In your issue of the 9th inst. just to hand, I find the following sentence in a letter from Mr. Frank Podmore:—

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{{Style S-Small capitals|Sir,}}—I am very sorry that any words of mine should have given pain to your correspondent, “A Hindu.” But, indeed, his own letter is the best refutation of the calumny which he supposes me to have uttered. The sophisticated European intellect need not, assuredly, dread corruption from such tutors as these. To anyone of less native simplicity than your correspondent, it must, I think, have been obvious that my allusion to Madame Blavatsky and the Brothers was a harmless jest; and my remarks upon Oriental subtlety a reminiscence of trivial newspaper comment upon the ruse by which the Egyptians were hoodwinked in the late war, and the Suez Canal secured. That my light words should be construed into a serious imputation upon Madame Blavatsky and the Hindoo Theosophists never occurred to me. Still less did I intend to sneer at the Brothers, for whom I entertain a respect which is quite independent of any belief in their existence. As history, it is fine: as fiction, it is magnificent.

{{Style P-Title|MADAME BLAVATSKY AND THE HIMALAYAN BROTHERS.}}

{{Style S-Small capitals|Sir,}}—Perhaps the expression of a sister’s sympathy with the Hindu gentleman whose letter appears in “{{Style S-Small capitals|Light}}” of October 28th may not come amiss. I, also a believer in, and reverential admirer, of the Himalayan Brothers, was pained by the flippant expression he quotes, in regard to those he appropriately terms “great souls.” I beg to assure him there are ''some'' English gentlemen, as well as ladies, of whom I am one, who are deeply interested in the noble work of Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott, and would join with them did they feel qualified for the great work they, under the direction of the Brothers, are endeavouring to carry out—the elevation of humanity. Surely it is time for the “enlightened West” (?) to cease expressing doubts as to the existence of these disciples of a pure spiritual life, from whose calm and wise retreat from a lower disturbing world emanates a power which Spiritualists, at least, already feel, and in some instances respond to; a power which is destined to uplift Spiritualism to the place it should hold, and to which it is surely advancing, following out its most natural and inevitable unfoldment. This, Mr. Editor, is not merely the opinion of one individual, but is a conviction shared by many of your readers.

{{Style S-Small capitals|The}} perusal of Fechner’s “Life after Death” led me to look up some unpublished parts of my translation of Zöllner’s “Transcendentale Physik,” which I remembered to have reference to Fechner’s speculations. The following fragments may interest the readers of “{{Style S-Small capitals|Light}}”:—

Then the so-called ''Far-Seeing'' (Clairvoyance) of somnambulists is treated of; and Fechner himself remarks here (p. 95) as follows:—