Theos-Talk Archives (February 1997 Message tl00550)

        The following is a very interesting letter that was first published
in 1882.

        Apart from the personal experience of Olcott described in it, it is
very significant that when Olcott was chosen as one of the founders of TS,
he was not a holy man in the traditional sense - teetotaler, vegetarian,
etc. that some recent traditionalists tend to imagine.

        But one thing that comes out in the historical material is that he
was a man of his word and had very great integrity in all he dealt with. No
wonder he was able to open up lodges all over the world.

MKR

========================

No. 3. ( Letter from Col. Olcott to Mr. H_________X_____).



DEAR Mr. X.,               Colombo, CEYLON,
                           30th September, 1881.

        The enclosed card, to the Spiritualist, I had written and put under
cover to as early as, the 27th instant-post-dating, so as to correspond with
the P. and 0. mail-day--and  meant it to go straight to London by this post.
But on the night of that day I was awakened from sleep by my Chohan (or
Guru, the Brother whose immediate pupil I am) and ordered to send it via
Simla so that you might read it. He said that it would serve a useful
purpose in helping to settle your mind about the objective reality of the
Brothers, as you had confidence in my veracity, and, next to seeing them
yourself, would as soon take my word as any other man's to the fact. I have
to ask the favor, therefore, of your sending the letter on by the next
succeeding post, readdressed to ___________.

        I can well understand the difficulty of your position-far better I
think than H. P. B., who, woman. like, hates to reason. 1 have only to go
back to the point where I was in 1874, when 1 first met her, to feel what
you require to satisfy you. And so going back, I know that, as I would never
have taken anybody's evidence to so astounding a claim as the existence of
the Brothers, but required personal experience before I would head the new
movement, so must you, a person far more cautious and able than myself, feel
now.

        I got that proof in due time; but for months I was being gradually
led out of my spiritualistic Fool's Paradise, and forced to abandon my
delusions one by one. My mind was not prepared to give up ideas that had
been the growth of 22 years' experiences with mediums and circles. I had a
hundred questions to ask and difficulties to be solved. It was not unfit a
full year had passed by that I had dug out of the bed-rock of common sense
the Rosetta stone that showed me how to read the riddle of direct
intercourse with the Brothers. Until then 1 had been provoked and
exasperated by the-as I thought-selfish and cruel indifference of H. P. B.
to my yearnings after the truth, and the failure of the Brothers to come and
instruct me. But now it was all made clear. I had got just as much as I
deserved, for I had been ignorantly looking for extraneous help to achieve
that which no man ever did achieve except by his own self-development.

        So as the sweetness of common life had all gone out from me, as I
was neither hungry for fame nor money, nor love, and as the gaining of this
knowledge and the doing good to my fellow men appeared the highest of all
aims to which I could devote my remaining years of life, 1 adopted those
habits and encouraged those thoughts that were conducive to the attainment
of my ends.

        After that I had all the proofs I needed, alike of the existence of
the Brothers, their wisdom, their psychical powers, and their unselfish
devotion to humanity. For six years have I been blessed with this
experience, and I am telling you the exact truth in saying that all this
time I have known perfect happiness. It has seemed to you "the saddest thing
of all" to see me giving up the world and everything that makes the
happiness of those living in the world; and yet, after all these years, not
only not made an adept, but hardly having achieved one step towards
adeptship. These were your words to me and others last year; but if you will
only reflect for one moment what it is to transform a worldly man,such as I
was in 1874 - a man of clubs, drinking parties, mistresses, a man absorbed
in all sorts of worldly public and private undertakings and speculations -
into that purest, wisest, noblest and most spiritual of human beings, a
BROTHER, you will cease to wonder, or rather you will wonder, how I could
ever have struggled out of the swamp at all, and how I could have ever
succeeded in gaining the firm straight road.

        No one knows, until he really tries it, how awful a task it is to
subdue all his evil passions and animal instincts, and develop his higher
nature. Talk of conquering intemperance or a habit of opium-eating-this
self-conquest is a far harder task,

        I have seen, been taught by, been allowed to visit, and have
received visits from the Brothers, but there have been periods when,
relapsing into a lower moral state (interiorly) as the result of most
unfavourable external conditions, I have for long neither seen them nor
received a line from them. From time to time one or another Brother who had
been on friendly terms with me (I am acquainted with about a dozen in all )
has become disgusted with me and left me to others, who kindly took their
places. Most of all, I regret a certain Magyar philosopher, who had begun to
give me a course of instruction in occult dynamics, but was repelled by an
outbreak of my old earthly nature.

        But I shall win him back and the others also, for I have so
determined; and whatever a man really WILLS, that he has. No power in the
universe, but one, can prevent our seeing whomsoever we will, or knowing
whatsoever we desire, and that power is-SELF!

        Throughout my studies I have tried to obtain my proofs in a valid
form. I have known mesmerism for a quarter of a century or more, and make
every allowance for self deception and external mental impressions. What I
have seen and experienced is, therefore, very satisfactory to myself, though
mainly valueless to others.

        Let me give you one instance:

        One evening, at New York, after bidding H. P. B. good night, I sat
in my bedroom, finishing a cigar and thinking. Suddenly there stood my
Chohan beside me. The door had made no noise in opening, if it had been
opened, but at any rate there he was. He sat down and conversed with me in
subdued tones for some time, and as he seemed in an excellent humor towards
me, I asked him a favor. I said I wanted some tangible proof that he had
actually been there, and that I had not been seeing a mere illusion or maya
conjured up by H. P. B. He laughed, unwound the embroidered Indian cotton
fehta he wore on his head, flung it to me, and-was gone. That cloth I still
possess, and it bears in one corner the initials ( #) of my Chohan in
thread-work.

        This at least was no hallucination, and so of several other
instances I might relate.

        This same Brother once visited me in the flesh at Bombay, coming in
full daylight, and on horse. back. He had me called by a servant into the
front room of H. P. B.'s bungalow [she being at the time in the other
bangalow talking with those who were there]. He came to scold me roundly for
something I had done in T. S. matters, and as H. B. P. was also to blame, he
telegraphed to her to come; that is to say, he turned his face and extended
his finger in the direction of the place she was in. She came over at once
with a rush, and, seeing him, dropped on her knees and paid him reverence.
My voice and his had been - heard by those in the other bangalow, but only
H. P. B. and I, and the servant, saw him.

        Another time, two, if not three, persons, sitting in the verandah of
my bangalow in the Girgaum compound, saw a Hindu gentleman ride in, dismount
under H. P. B.'s portico, and enter her study. They called me, and I went
and watched the horse until the visitor came out, remounted and rode off,
That also was a Brother, in flesh and bones; but what proof is there of it
to offer even to a friend like yourself ? There are many Hindus and many horses.

        You will find in an old number of the N. Y. World a long account of
a reporter's experiences at our headquarters in 47th Street. Among the
marvels witnessed, by the eight or ten persons present, was the apparition
of a Brother who passed by the window and returned. The room was on the
second storey of the house, and there was no balcony to walk on.

        But this, it may be said, was all an- illusion; that is the trouble
of the whole matter; everything of the kind seen by one person is a
delusion, if not a lie, to those who did not see it, Each must see for
himself, and can alone convince himself.

        Feeling this, while obeying my Chohan, as I try to do in little as
well as great things, and sending you these writings, I do so in the hope,
though by no means in the certainty, that your present reliance on my
veracity will survive their perusal.

        I have never, I should mention, kept a diary of my experiences with
the Brothers or even of the phenomena I witnessed in connexion with them,
There were two reasons for this-first, I have been taught to maintain the
closest secrecy in regard to all I saw and heard, except when specially
authorised to speak about any particular thing; second, never expecting to
be allowed to publish my experiences, I have felt that the less I put on
paper the safer.

        You may possibly glean, if not from personal observation, at any
rate from the printed record of my American services of one kind or another,
that I am not the sort of man to give up everything,  come out as I did, and
keep working on as I have done, without having obtained a superabundance of
good proofs of the truth of the cause in which I am embarked. And you may
possibly say to yourself: " Why should not I, who am more capable of doing
good to this cause than a dozen Olcotts, be also favored with proofs ? " The
answer you must seek from another quarter; but if my experience is worth
anything, I should say that that answer would be in substance however great
a man may be at this side of the Himalayas, he begins his relationship with
the Brothers on exactly the same terms as the humblest Chela whoever tried
to scale their Parnassus; he must "win his way."

        If you only know how often, within my time even, a deaf ear has been
turned to the importunities, both of influential outsiders professing
readiness to do everything in the way of personal exertion and liberal
gifts, and of our own Fellows, who pretended to be ready to sacrifice the
world if the Brothers would only come to them and teach them, you would
perhaps be less surprised at their failure to visit you.

        Events have always proved their wisdom, and so it will be in your
case, I fancy; for, if you do see, them, as I hope and trust you may, it
will be because you have earned the right to command their presence.

        The phenomena they have done have all had a purpose, and good has
eventually come even from those which brought down upon us for the moment
the greatest contumely. As for my mistakes o judgment and H. P. B.'s
occasional tom fooleries that is a different affair, and the debits are
charged to our respective accounts.

        My teachers have always told me that the danger of, giving the world
complete assurance of their existence is so great, by reason of the low
spiritual tone of society, and the ruthless selfishness with which it would
seek to drag them, from their seclusion, that it is better to tell only so
much as will, excite the curiosity and stimulate the zeal of the worthy
minority of metaphysical students, If they can keep just enough oil in the
lamp to feed the flame it is all that is required.

        I do not know whether or not there is any significance  in the fact
of my Chohan's Visiting me on the night of the 27th, but you may. He made me
rise, sit at my table and write from his dictation for an hour or more.
There was an expression of anxiety mingled with sternness on his noble face,
as there always is when the matter concerns H. P. B., to whom for many years
he has been at once father and a devoted guardian. How I do hope you may see
him! You would confess, I am sure, that he was the finest possible type of man.

        I have also personally known-since 1875. He is of quite a different,
a gentler, type, yet the bosom friend of the other. They live near each
other with a small Buddhist Temple about midway between their houses.

        In New York, I  had ___________'s portrait; my Chohan's; that of
another Brother, a Southern Indian Prince; and a colored sketch on China
silk of the landscape near ____________'s and my Chohan's residences with a
glimpse of the latter's house and of part of the little temple. But the
portraits of and the Prince disappeared form the frames one night just
before I left for India.

        I had still another picture, that remarkable port trait of a Yogi
about which so much was said in the papers. It too disappeared in New York,
but one evening tumbled down through the air before our very eyes, as H. P.
B., Damodar and I were conversing in my office at Bombay with (if I remember
aright) the Dewan Sankariah of Cochin.

        You and I will never see Jesus in the flesh, but if you should ever
meet, or one or two others whom I might mention, I think you will say that
they are near enough our ideal "to satisfy one's longing for the tree of
humanity to put forth such a flower."

        I am ordered to say that you may use this letter as your judgment
may dictate after noting carefully its contents. With sincere regards and
best wishes,

        Yours,


        H. S. OLCOTT.