The Padres.
We pity the poor Padres of the Christian College. Miserable indeed is their
plight when they are compelled to resort to these doubtful means to overcome their
opponents. The Padres never meet the Theosophist’s lecture on the open platform
and defend their sectarian views orally or in writing. They denounce them as
atheists and political humbugs behind their backs, where they have no fear of being
contradicted.
These letters have been published in the name of public morality. If
this is the Padres’ standard of public morality, then public morality becomes
polluted when its name is uttered by the mouths of the Padres. In her name they have
violated sacred rights. In her name they have become willing dupes of a woman who
has lost her ballast in the reverses of fortune, the vile instruments for the perpetration
of a greedy woman’s revenge.
The Occult Room.
There was only one large room upstairs when the Society purchased the Adyar
House. To one end of this room was attached a bed-room with a partition between it
and the sitting room. From the bed-room, a door led to a verandah. This
doorway was shut up and the verandah was converted into a room called the Occult Room.
In closing up the doorway a hollow space was allowed to be left in the middle that the
weight of the new addition upon the beam of the ceiling might be as little as
possible. I have seen both sides of this wall, both when it was being built and when
it was finished. I have seen it also when it was papered.
Originally it had no sliding panels at the back or front. When I saw
it again a few days after the expulsion of the Coulombs, I found in various parts of the
wall in the rooms upstairs small panels recently constructed in places where there were
none before. I know every part of this room, having been in it by day and slept in
it by night during our stay in Madras. The mischief workers were evidently disturbed
in the middle of their work.
The Shrine.
The shrine is a movable cupboard hung on the recently closed up wall of the Occult
room. This portion of the wall is left still intact.
The shrine is something like a psychological telegraph office. It is
connected by a current of akas with the Asram of the Mahatmas. Whatever is put into
it will at once be known to them. But it should be distinctly understood that this
is not the only means of communication; nor, if the shrine were removed to-day, will all
communications be stopped. The shrine is simply a matter of convenience.
The Coulombs.
Out of respect for Mme. Blavatsky, the Coulombs were treated kindly by all
of us. Mme. Coulomb’s numerous peccadilloes were freely forgiven. She was
considered an irresponsible medium, the willing instrument of any strong-willed person
that circumstances may throw in her way. Last December when I gave Mme. Blavatsky a
curiosity in the shape of a petrified plant that we came across in a cave in one of our
rambles in the Papannassum Hills, Mme. Coulomb examined it and pretended to see
clairvoyantly heaps of gold coins treasured up near the place in the cave where we got the
article. We all then had fine jokes on her say. But when a few days later she
took us aside and seriously insisted on her being taken to the spot and asked for a loan
to make the necessary preparations for a journey, we plainly told her we would have
nothing to do with her treasures or her journey.
The Mahatmas.
It is too late in the day for the Padres to deny the existence of the
Mahatmas. There are several Englishmen of the Civil Service, who have had
correspondence with them when Mme. Blavatsky was far away and knew nothing of the matter,
not to speak of scores of other gentlemen, European and native. I too can claim the
honor of having had an interview with one of them in his physical body outside the
precincts of a lamasery near Sikkim on the road leading to it from Darjeeling. The
interview took place at eleven in the forenoon and lasted for about two hours. I
have seen him and several of his pupils in the astral body on many occasions. Many
of our friends who happened to be with us at the time have seen them like ourselves.
Mme. Blavatsky is now in Europe, Colonel Olcott too is there. Our communications
with the Mahatmas still continues uninterrupted. If Madame Blavatsky can do this,
why then, verily she is a Mahatma.
Phenomena.
At this day, only those, who have had neither the time nor the inclination to search
into psychical laws, join with the theologists and raise a feeble cry against the
existence of such powers. The only question is whether such powers are brought into
play in particular occurrences. The best witnesses to prove such things are those
who have seen them and not the Padres who deliberately keep away, attributing them all to
the machinations of their friend, the Devil. The Padres say that all phenomena have
been produced by trickery by Madame Blavatsky with the aid of the Coulombs. I shall
mention two instances, out of several, that have come under my personal experience.
An American gentleman of a well known firm, who is not in any way connected with the
Society, wrote a letter to me asking certain questions in Aryan philosophy. On
opening it as soon as the postman gave it to me at my place in Tinnevelly we found that
the answers to the more intricate questions were already entered opposite each of them,
under the well-known initials of my revered Guru. The letter is still with me and
Madame Blavatsky to this day knows nothing of it. One day in my place at Tinnevelly,
a learned Pandit of the Shaktaya sect was speaking to us in flowing terms of the
advantages of the Shaktaya ceremonials over all others in the development of psychical
powers. I noted down in his presence the salient points of his argument on paper,
put it into an envelope, addressed it to my Guru, and placed it in my box. This
happened in the evening. The next morning I saw on my table, along with other
papers, the same cover unopened but with my address written over the previous
superscription. I opened it and found written between the lines of the original
letter a crushing answer to all the false logic of the Pandit, with quotations in Sanskrit
from the Upanishads neatly written in the Devanagari characters. Madame Blavatsky
was in Madras then and to this day she is ignorant of this letter or its reply.
Scores of letters of this kind received by us from our Venerated Master, when we were far
away from Madame Blavatsky or Colonel Olcott, are in our possession. Many of our
friends have seen several of them. Some of them contain Tamil quotations written in
neat characters.
If the Padres say we and several others, who had the same experience, are labouring
under some hallucination, we may as well retort that the definition of that word will have
to be considerably altered. They cannot under any circumstances, hallucinate away
the letters in our possession. If they question our veracity, not only can we
produce better credentials, but we are in a position to challenge the public to catch us
misrepresenting one fact for the hundred facts about which the Padres have been caught
fibbing deliberately.
The Padres mislead the public when they assert that the Society is founded
on phenomena. No phenomenon is shown for its own sake. The Masters belong to a
higher plane of existence and they get hold of the easiest method in their plane for
communication with their pupils and others.
Conclusion.
Dr. Hunter, the Director-General of Statistics, says that the proportion of jail going
population in Bengal as compared with England for an equal area and population is
one-third for the male and one seventeenth for the female. He does not say how much
of the Bengal crimes are traceable to the influx of evangelical civilization. The
Padres have done many a crime in the name of Evangelical morality. They have torn by
wiles husbands from wives, children from parents. Their Karma now overtakes them and
impels them to do questionable actions like the present publications which will ultimately
result in their going home bag and baggage, leaving the heathen Hindu to the simple,
unsophisticated, sublime morality of his sage forefathers, the authors of the Upanishads.
Madura.
S. Ramaswamier.