Theos-Talk Archives (December 1996 Message tl00786)

[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.
                                   K.H.

--
Nicholas <> am455@lafn.org <> Los Angeles <> The wisdom of Buddha is in
the minds of all beings; enshrouded with false thoughts, they are not
aware of it. The great compassion of all Buddhas induces them to renounce
false thoughts, so that wisdom can manifest and benefit all beings.