Statement By H.P.B
[ The statement is preceded by these words in Mrs. Gebhard’s handwriting: “Extracts from a letter from H.P.Blavatsky dated Wurzburg 24-1-86, copied by Mrs. Gebhard. The contents were confirmed verbally by H.P.B. To Mr. and Mrs. Gebhard in Elberfeld in June, 1886.”]
This morning before the receipt of your letter at 6 o’clock, I was permitted and told by Master to make you understand at last, you and all the sincere, truly devoted Theosophists, “as you sow, so you will reap”, the personal and private questions and prayers, answers framed in the mind of those whom such matters can yet interest, whose minds are not yet entirely blank to such worldly terrestrial questions, answers by chelas and novices, often something reflected from my own mind, for the Masters would not stoop for one moment to give a thought to individual, private matters relating but to one or even ten persons, their welfare, woes and blisses in this world of Maya, to nothing except questions of really universal importance. It is all you Theosophists who have dragged down in your minds the ideals of our Masters; you who have unconsciously and with the best of intentions and full sincerity of good purpose, desecrated Them, by thinking for one moment, and believing that They would trouble Themselves with your business matters, sons to be born, daughters to be married, houses to be built, etc. etc. And yet, all those of you who have received such communications, being nearly all sincere (those who were not have been dealt with according to other special laws) you had a right, knowing of the existence of Beings Who you thought could easily help you, to seek help from Them, to address Them once that a monotheist addresses his personal God, desecrating the Great Unknown a million of times above the Masters, by asking Him (or It) to help him with a good crop, to slay his enemy and send him a son or a daughter; and having such a right in the abstract sense, They could not spurn you off, and refuse answering you if not Themselves, then by ordering a chela to satisfy the addresses to the best of his or her’s (the chela’s) ability.
How many a time was I (no Mahatma) shocked and startled, burning with shame when shown notes written in Their (two) handwritings (a form of writing adopted for the T.S. And used by chelas, only never without Their special permission or order to that effect) exhibiting mistakes in science, grammar and thoughts, expressed in such language that it perverted entirely the meaning originally intended, and sometimes expressions that in Tibetan Sanskrit or any other Asiatic language had quite a different sense, as in one instance I will give. In answer to Mr. Sinnett’s letter referring to some apparent contradictions in ISIS, the chela who was made to precipitate Mahatma K.H.’s reply put, “I had to exercise all my ingenuity to reconcile the two things”. Now the term ingenuity to reconcile the two things”. Now the term ingenuity, used for meaning candour, fairness, an obsolete word in this sense and never used now, but one meaning this perfectly as even I find in Webster, was misconstrued by Massey, Hume, and I believe even Mr. Sinnett, to mean “cunning”, “cleverness”, “acuteness”, to form a new combination so as to prove there was no contradiction. Hence: “the Mahatma confesses most unblushingly to ingenuity, to using craft to reconcile things, like an astute tricky lawyer”, etc. etc. Now had I been commissioned to write or precipitate the letter, I would have translated the Master’s thought by using the word “ingenuousness”, “openness of heart, frankness, fairness, freedom from reserve and dissimulation”, as Webster gives it, and opprobrium thrown on Mahatma K.H.’s character would have been avoided. It is not I who would have used carbolic acid instead of carbonic acid, etc. It is very rarely that Mahatma K.H. dictated verbatim; and when He did there remained the few sublime passages found in Mr. Sinnett’s letters from Him. The rest, He would say, write so and so, and the chela wrote, often without knowing one word of English, as I am now made to write Hebrew and Greek and Latin, etc. Therefore the only thing I can be reproached with - a reproach I am ever ready to bear though I have not deserved it, having been simply the obedient and blind tool of our occult laws and regulations - is of having (1) used Master’s name when I thought my authority would go for nought, when I sincerely believed acting agreeably to Master’s intentions,[ Found myself several times mistaken and now I am punished for it with daily and hourly crucifixion. Pick up stones, Theosophists, pick them up, brothers and kind sisters, and stone me to death with them for trying to make you happy with one word of the Masters!.] and for the good of the cause; and (2) of having concealed that which the laws and regulations of my pledges did not permit me so far to reveal; (3) perhaps (again for the same reason) of having insisted that such and such a note was from Master written in His own handwriting, all the time thinking Jesuitically, I confess, “Well, it is written by His order and in His handwriting, after all, why shall I go and explain to these, who do not, cannot understand the truth, and perhaps only make matters worse.”
Two or three times, perhaps more, letters were precipitated in my presence, by chelas who could not speak English, and who took ideas and expressions out of my head. The phenomena in truth and solemn reality were greater at those times than ever! Yet they often appeared the most suspicious, and I had to hold my tongue, to see suspicion creeping into the minds of those I loved best and respected, unable to justify myself or to say one word. What I suffered Master only knew! Think only (a case with Solovioff at Elberfeld) I sick in my bed; a letter of his, an old letter of his received in London and torn by me, rematerialised in my own sight, I looking at the thing; five or six times in the Russian language, in Mahatma K.H.’s handwriting in blue, the words taken from my head, the letter old and crumpled travelling slowly alone (even I could not see the astral hand of the chela performing the operation) across the bedroom, then slipping into and among Solovioff’s papers who was writing in the little drawing-room, correcting my manuscripts; Olcott standing closely by him and having just handled the papers looking over them with Solovioff. The latter finding it, and like a flash I see in his head in Russian the thought: “The old impostor (meaning Olcott) must have put it there!”, and such things by hundreds.
Well, this will do. I have told you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so far as I am allowed to give it. Many are the things I have no right to explain, if I had to be hung for it.
Reprinted from: http://www.theosophical.ca/EarlyTeachings.htm