Mahatma Letter No. 139

Quick Facts
People involved
Written by:	H. P. Blavatsky
Received by:	A. P. Sinnett
Sent via:	unknown
Dates
Written on:	unknown
Received on:	January 6, 1886
Other dates:	unknown
Places
Sent from:	Würzburg
Received at:	London
Via:	unknown

This is Letter No. 139 in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 4th chronological edition. It corresponds to Letter No. 140 in Barker numbering. See below for Context and background.

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Page 1 transcription, image, and notes

Jan. 6. 1886. Wurzburg.

My dear Mr. Sinnett,

I am impressed to give you the following: First let me tell you that the dear Countess went off to Munich like a shot to try and save Hubbe from his weakness and the Society from crumbling down. She was the whole evening in a trance, getting out and in from her body. She saw Master and felt him all the night. She is a great clairvoyant. Well, after reading a few pages of the Report I was so disgusted with Hume's gratuitous lies and Hodgson's absurd inferences that I nearly gave up all in despair. What could I do or say against evidence on the natural worldly plane! Everything went against me and I had but to die. I went to bed and I had the most extraordinary vision. I had vainly called upon the Masters — who came not during my waking state, but now in my sleep I saw them both, I was again (a scene of years back) in Mah. K.H.'s house. I was sitting in a corner on a mat and he walking about the room in his riding dress, and Master was talking to someone behind the door. "I remind can't" — I pronounced in answer to a question of His about a dead aunt. — He smiled and said "Funny English you use." Then I felt ashamed, hurt in my vanity, and began thinking (mind you, in my dream or vision which was the exact reproduction of what had taken place word for word 16 years ago) "now I am here and speaking nothing but English in verbal phonetic language I can perhaps learn to speak better with Him." (To make it clear with Master I also used English, which whether bad or good was the same for Him as he does not speak it but understands every word I say out of my head; and I am made to understand Him — how I could never tell or explain if I were killed but I do. With D.K. I also spoke English, he speaking it better even than Mah. K.H.) Then, in my dream still, three months after as I was made to feel in that vision — I was standing before Mah. K.H. near

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the old building taken down he was looking at, and as Master was not at home, I took to him a few sentences I was studying in Senzar in his sister's room and asked him to tell me if I translated them correctly — and gave him a slip of paper with these sentences written in English. He took and read them and correcting the interpretation read them over and said "Now your English is becoming better — try to pick out of my head even the little I know of it." And he put his hand on my forehead in the region of memory and squeezed his fingers on it (and I felt even the same trifling pain in it, as then, and the cold shiver I had experienced) and since that day He did so with my head daily, for about two months. Again, the scene changes and I am going away with Master who is sending me off, back to Europe. I am bidding good-bye to his sister and her child and all the chelas. I listen to what the Masters tell me. And then come the parting words of Mah. K.H. laughing at me as He always did and saying "Well, if you have not learned much of the Sacred Sciences and practical Occultism — and who could expect a WOMAN to — you have learned, at any rate, a little English. You speak it now only a little worse than I do!" and he laughed.

Again the scene changes I am 47th St. New York writing Isis and His voice dictating to me. In that dream or retrospective vision I once more rewrote all Isis and could now point out all the pages and sentences Mah. K.H. dictated — as those that Master did — in my bad English, when Olcott tore his hair out by handfuls in despair to ever make out the meaning of what was intended. I again saw myself night after night in bed — writing Isis in my dreams, at New York, positively writing it in my sleep and felt sentences by Mah. K.H. impressing themselves on my memory. Then, as I was awakening from that vision (in Wurzburg now) I heard Mah. K. H.'s voice — "and now put two and two together, poor blind woman. The bad English and the construction of sentences you do know, even that you have learned from me . . . take off the slur thrown upon you by that misguided, conceited man (Hodgson): explain the truth to the few

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friends who will believe you — for the public never will to that day that the Secret Doctrine comes out." I awoke, and it was like a flash of lightning; but I still did not understand what it referred to. But an hour after, there comes Hübbe Schleiden's letter to the Countess, in which he says, that unless I explain how it is that such a similarity is found and proven by Hodgson between my faulty English and Mah. K.H.'s certain expressions, the construction of sentences and peculiar Gallicisms — I stand accused for ever of deceit forgery (!!) and what not. Of course I have learned my English from Him! This Olcott even shall understand. You know and I told it to many friends and enemies — I was taught dreadful Yorkshire by my nurse called Governess. From the time my father brought me to England, when fourteen, thinking I spoke beautiful English — and people asked him if he had me educated in Yorkshire or Ireland — and laughed at my accent and way of speaking — I gave up English altogether trying to avoid speaking it as much as I could. From fourteen till I was over forty I never spoke it, let alone writing and forgot it entirely I could read — which I did very little in English — I could not speak it. I remember how difficult it was for me to understand a well written book in English so far back only as 1867 in Venice. All I knew when I came to America in 1873 was to speak a little and this Olcott and Judge and all who knew me then can testify to. I wish people saw an article I once attempted to write for the Banner of Light when instead of sanguine I put sanguinary, etc. I learned to write it through Isis, that's sure and Prof. A. Wilder who came weekly to help Olcott arranging chapters and writing Index can testify to it. When I had finished it (and this Isis is the third part only of what I wrote and destroyed) I could write as well as I do now not worse nor better. My memory and its capacities seem gone since then.

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What wonder then that my English and the Mahatma's show similarity! Olcott's and mine do also in our Americanisms that I picked up from him these ten years. I translating mentally all from the French would not have written sceptic with a k, though Mahat. K.H. did and when I put it with a c Olcott and Wilder and the proof reader corrected it. Now Mah. K.H. has preserved the habit and stuck to it and I never did since I went to India. I would have never put carbolic instead of "carbonic" — and I was the first to remark the mistake when Hume Mahatma's letter, at Simla, in which it occurs. It is mean and stupid of him to publish it, for, if he says this referred to a sentence found in some magazine, then the word correctly written was there before my eyes or those of any chela who precipitated the letter, and therefore it is evidently a lapsus calami if there were any calamni in precipitation. "Difference in handwriting" — oh the great wonder! Has Master K.H. written himself all His letters? How many chelas have been precipitating and writing them — heaven only knows. Now if there is such a marked difference between letters written by the same identical person mechanically, (as the case with me for instance who never had a steady handwriting) how much more in precipitation, which is the photographic reproduction from one's head, and I bet anything that no chela (if Masters can) is capable of precipitating his own handwriting twice over in precisely the same way — a difference and a marked one there shall always be, as no painter can paint twice over the same likeness (see Schmiechen with his (Master's) portraits). Now all this shall be easily understood by theosophists (not all) and those who have thought over deeply and know something of the

NOTES:

• Lapsus calami is a Latin expression meaning "a slip of the pen."

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philosophy. Who shall believe all I say in this letter outside of the few? No one. And yet, I am demanded an explanation and when it comes out (if you write it out from facts I can give you) no one shall believe it. Yet you have to show at least one thing: occult transactions, letters handwriting etc. cannot be judged by the daily standard, experts, this that and the other. There are no three solutions but two: Either I have invented the Masters, their philosophy, written their letters etc. or, I have not. If I have and the Masters do not exist, then their handwritings could not have existed, either: I have invented them also; and if I have — how can I be called a "forger"? They are my handwritings and I have the right to use them if I am so clever. As for philosophy and doctrine invented the S.D. shall show. Now I am here alone with the Countess for witness. I have no books no one to help me. And I tell you that the Secret Doctrine will be 20 times as learned, philosophical and better than Isis which will be killed by it. Now there are hundreds of things I am permitted to say and explain. It will show what a Russian spy can do, an alleged forger plagiarist etc. The whole Doctrine is shown the mother stone the foundation of all the religions including Xty, and on the strength of exoteric published Hindu books, with their symbols explained esoterically. The extreme lucidity of "Esoteric Buddhism" will also be shown and its doctrines proven correct mathematically, geometrically logically and scientifically. Hodgson is very clever, but he is not clever enough for truth and it shall triumph after which I can die peacefully.

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Babula writing my Master's letters indeed! Hume finding out five years later that the envelope from the municipality had been "tampered" by me brought by Babula. What good memory his Mahomedan bearer must have, to remember that it was precisely that envelope! And Garstin's letter taken to him by Mohini 2 1/2 hours after his letter had been placed inside and disappeared from the shrine. His letter sealed glued with every precaution bearing no such marks as now described on the night of the delivery, and now two years later, after having passed through 1000 hands, been tampered by Garstin and experts themselves, trying to see how it could have been opened — now it all goes against me! And Hume's lies. Such Tibetan or Nepaul paper he learned could be procured near Darjeeling. Masters never wrote he said on such paper before I had gone to Darjeeling. Indeed. Now I enclose a slip of such paper for your perusal, that with your memory you are sure to recognise. It is the original bit from which the first lessons of Master were given to you and Hume in his Museum at Simla. You looked at it many times. Please when recognised send it back to me. It is private and confidential and I ask you on your honour not to let it go out of your hands not to give it to any one. No expert or Orientalist would find or understand anything in it but letters which have a meaning for me for no one else. But what I want you to see and remember that I went to Darjeeling a year later after Hume had quarrelled with K.H. and this paper I had at Simla when the first lessons were begun. And all throughout the whole Report the same lies, false testimony etc.

Yours — No more broken down.

H. P. Blavatsky.

]

NOTES:

Context and background

H. P. Blavatsky was "impressed" to give A. P. Sinnett certain information. She was in Würzburg, Germany, where she was working on The Secret Doctrine). She had been joined in December by the Countess Constance Wachtmeister, a Swedish countess who was a member of the Theosophical Society, a natural clairvoyant, and a loyal friend to H.P.B.

The report from the Society for Psychical Research based on Richard Hodgson’s investigation had been issued in December of 1885. It crushed H.P.B., who knew how false it was. Then the Countess received a letter from Dr. Hübbe Schleiden, President of the German Theosophical Society. He had just read the report and had written to say that unless H.P.B. could explain how such a similarity could be found and proven between H.P.B.’s English and that of the Mahatma K.H., she would stand accused forever of deceit and forgery. H.P.B. describes what the Countess did about the situation and what happened to herself after she read the Report.

Physical description of letter

The original is in the British Library, Folio unknown. George Linton and Virginia Hanson described the letter in this way:

In HPB's handwriting on both sides of three sheets of regular note paper, in black ink.