Mahatma Letter No. 117

This is Letter No. 93 in Barker numbering. See below for Context and background.

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Cover sheet

Received in London 1883-84.

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My good and faithful friend — the explanation herein contained would have never been made but that I have of late perceived how troubled you were during your conversations upon the subject of "plagiarism" with some friends — C.C.M. particularly. Now especially that I have received your last in which you mention so delicately "this wretched little Kiddle incident," to withhold truth from you — would be cruelty; nevertheless, to give it out to the world of prejudiced and malignantly disposed Spiritualists, would be sheer folly. Therefore, we must compromise: I must lay both yourself and Mr. Ward, who shares my confidence, under a pledge never to explain without special permission from me the facts hereinafter stated by me to anyone — not even to M. A. Oxon and C. C. Massey included for reasons I will mention presently and that you will readily understand. If pressed by any of them you may simply answer that the "psychological mystery" was cleared up to yourself and some others; and — IF satisfied — you may add, that "the parallel passages" cannot be called plagiarism or words to this effect. I give to you carte blanche to say anything you like — even the reason why I rather have the real facts withheld from the general public and most of the London Fellows — all except the details you alone with a few others will know. As you will perceive, I do not even bind you to defend my reputation —

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unless you feel yourself satisfied beyond any doubt, and have well understood the explanation yourself. And now I may tell you why I prefer being regarded by your friends an "ugly plagiarist."

Having been called repeatedly a "sophist," a "myth," a "Mrs. Harris" and a "lower intelligence" by the enemies, I rather not be regarded as a deliberate artificer and a liar by bogus friends — I mean those who would accept me reluctantly even were I to rise to their own ideal in their estimation instead of the reverse — as at present. Personally, I am indifferent, of course, to the issue. But for your sake and that of the Society I may make one more effort to clear the horizon of one of its "blackest" clouds. Let us then recapitulate the situation and see what your Western sages say of it. "K.H." — it is settled — is a plagiarist — if it be, after all a question of K.H. and not of the "two Occidental Humourists." In the former case, an alleged "adept" unable to evolve out of his "small oriental brain" any idea or words worthy of Plato turned to that deep tank of profound philosophy, the Banner of Light, and drew therefrom the sentences best fitted to express his rather entangled ideas, which had fallen from the inspired lips of Mr. Henry Kiddle! In the other alternative, the case becomes still more difficult to comprehend — save on the theory

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of the irresponsible mediumship of the pair of Western jokers. However startling and impracticable the theory, that two persons who have been clever enough to carry on undetected the fraud of personating for five years several adepts — not one of whom resembles the other; — two persons, of whom one, at any rate, is a fair master of English and can hardly be suspected of paucity of original ideas, should turn for a bit of plagiarism to a journal as the Banner, widely known and read by most English knowing Spiritualists; and above all, pilfer their borrowed sentences from the discourse of a conspicuous new convert, whose public utterances were at the very time being read and welcomed by every medium and Spiritualist; however improbable all this and much more, yet any alternative seems more welcome than simple truth. The decree is pronounced; "K.H.," whoever he is, has stolen passages from Mr. Kiddle. Not only this, but as shewn by "a Perplexed Reader" — he has omitted inconvenient words and has so distorted the ideas he has borrowed as to divert them from their original intention to suit his own very different purpose."

Well, to this, if I had any desire to argue out the question I might answer that of what constitutes plagiarism, being a borrowing of ideas

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rather than of words and sentences, there was none in point of fact, and I stand acquitted by my own accusers. As Milton says — "such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrower is accounted plagiary." Having distorted the ideas "appropriated," and, as now published — diverted them from their original intention to suit my own "very different purpose," on such grounds my literary larceny does not appear very formidable after all? And even, were there no other explanation offered, the most that could be said is, that owing to the poverty of words at the command of Mr. Sinnett's correspondent, and his ignorance of the art of English composition, he has adapted a few of innocent Mr. Kiddle's effusions, some of his excellently constructed sentences — to express his own contrary ideas. The above is the only line of argument I have given to, and permitted to be used in, an editorial by the "gifted editor" of the Theosophist, who has been off her head since the accusation. Verily woman — is a dreadful calamity in this fifth race! However, to you and some few, whom you have permission to select among your most trusted theosophists, taking first care to pledge them by word of honour to keep the little revelation to themselves, I will now explain the real facts of this "very puzzling" psychological mystery. The solution is so

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simple, and the circumstances so amusing, that I confess I laughed when my attention was drawn to it, some time since. Nay, it is calculated to make me smile even now, were it not the knowledge of the pain it gives to some true friends.

The letter in question was framed by me while on a journey and on horse-back. It was dictated mentally, in the direction of, and "precipitated" by, a young chela not yet expert at this branch of Psychic chemistry, and who had to transcribe it from the hardly visible imprint. Half of it, therefore, was omitted and the other half more or less distorted by the "artist." When asked by him at the time, whether I would look it over and correct I answered, imprudently, I confess — "anyhow will do, my boy — it is of no great importance if you skip a few words." I was physically very tired by a ride of 48 hours consecutively, and (physically again) — half asleep. Besides this I had very important business to attend to psychically and therefore little remained of me to devote to that letter. It was doomed, I suppose. When I woke I found it had already been sent on, and, as I was not then anticipating its publication, I never gave it from that time a thought. — Now, I had never evoked spiritual Mr. Kiddle's physiognomy, never had heard of his existence, was not aware of his name.

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Having — owing to our correspondence and your Simla surroundings and friends — felt interested in the intellectual progress of the Phenomenalists which progress by the bye, I found rather moving backward in the case of American Spiritualists — I had directed my attention some two months previous to the great annual camping movement of the latter, in various directions, among others to Lake or Mount Pleasant. Some of the curious ideas and sentences representing the general hopes and aspirations of the American Spiritualists remained impressed on my memory, and I remembered only these ideas and detached sentences quite apart from the personalities of those who harboured or pronounced them. Hence, my entire ignorance of the lecturer whom I have innocently defrauded as it would appear, and who now raises the hue and cry. Yet, had I dictated my letter in the form it now appears in print, it would certainly look suspicious, and, however far from what is generally called plagiarism, yet in the absence of any inverted commas, it would lay a foundation for censure. But I did nothing of the kind, as the original impression now before me clearly shows. And before I proceed any further, I must give you some explanation of this mode of precipitation. The recent experiments of the Psychic Research Society will help you greatly to comprehend

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the rationale of this "mental telegraphy." You have observed in the Journal of that body how thought transference is cumulatively affected. The image of the geometrical or other figure which the active brain has had impressed upon it, is gradually imprinted upon the recipient brain of the passive subject — as the series of reproductions illustrated in the cuts show. Two factors are needed to produce a perfect and instantaneous mental telegraphy — close concentration in the operator, and complete receptive passivity in the "reader" — subject. Given a disturbance of either condition, and the result is proportionately imperfect. The "reader" does not see the image as in the "telegrapher's" brain, but as arising in his own. When the latter's thought wanders, the psychic current becomes broken, the communication disjointed and incoherent. In a case such as mine, the chela had, as it were, to pick up what he could from the current I was sending him and, as above remarked, patch the broken bits together as best he might. Do not you see the same thing in ordinary mesmerism — the maya impressed upon the subject's imagination by the operator becoming, now stronger, now feebler, as the latter keeps the intended illusive image more or less steadily before his own fancy? And how often the clairvoyants reproach the magnetiser for

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taking their thoughts off the subject under consideration? And the mesmeric healer will always bear you witness that if he permits himself to think of anything but the vital current he is pouring into his patient, he is at once compelled to either establish the current afresh or stop the treatment. So I, in this instance, having at the moment more vividly in my mind the psychic diagnosis of current Spiritualistic thought, of which the Lake Pleasant speech was one marked symptom, unwittingly transferred that reminiscence more vividly than my own remarks upon it and deductions therefrom. So to say, (the "despoiled victim's" — Mr. Kiddle's — utterances) came out as a "high light" and were more sharply photographed (first in the chela's brain and thence on the paper before him, a double process and one far more difficult than "thought reading" simply) while the rest, — my remarks thereupon and arguments — as I now find, are hardly visible and quite blurred on the original scraps before me. Put into a mesmeric subject's hand a sheet of blank paper, tell him it contains a certain chapter of some book that you have read, concentrate your thoughts upon the words, and see how — provided that he has himself not read the chapter, but only takes it from your memory —

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his reading will reflect your own more or less vivid successive recollections of your author's language. The same as to the precipitation by the chela of the transferred thought upon (or rather, into) paper: if the mental picture received be feeble his visible reproduction of it must correspond. And the more so in proportion to the closeness of attention he gives. He might — were he but merely a person of the true mediumistic temperament — be employed by his "Master" as a sort of psychic printing machine producing lithographed or psychographed impressions of what the operator had in mind; his nerve-system, the machine, his nerve-aura the printing fluid, the colours drawn from that exhaustless storehouse of pigments (as of everything else) the Akasa. But the medium and the chela are diametrically dissimilar and the latter acts consciously, except under exceptional circumstances during development not necessary to dwell upon here.

Well, as soon as I heard of the charge — the commotion among my defenders having reached me across the eternal snows — I ordered an investigation into the original scraps of the impression. At the first glance I saw that it was I, the only and most guilty party, — the poor little boy

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having done but that which he was told. Having now restored the characters and the lines — omitted and blurred beyond hope of recognition by anyone but their original evolver — to their primitive colour and places, I now find my letter reading quite differently as you will observe. Turning to the Occult World — the copy sent by you — to the page cited, (namely p. 149 in the first edition) I was struck, upon carefully reading it, by the great discrepancy between the sentences. A gap, so to say, of ideas between part 1 (from line 1 to line 25) and part 2 — the plagiarized portion so-called. There seems no connection at all between the two; for what has, indeed, the determination of our chiefs (to prove to a skeptical world that physical phenomena are as reducible to law as anything else) to do with Plato's ideas which "rule the world" or "practical Brotherhood of Humanity?" I fear that it is your personal friendship alone for the writer that has blinded you to the discrepancy and disconnection of ideas in this abortive "precipitation," even until now. Otherwise you could not have failed to perceive that something was wrong on that page; that there was a glaring defect in the connection. Moreover, I have to plead guilty to another sin: I have never so much as looked at my letters in print — until the day of the forced investigation. I had read only your own original matter, feeling it a loss of time to go over my hurried bits

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hurried bits and scraps of thought. But now, I have to ask you to read the passages as they were originally dictated by me, and make the comparison with the Occult World before you.

I transcribe them with my own hand this once, whereas the letter in your possession was written by the chela. I ask you also to compare this hand-writing with that of some of the earlier letters you received from me. Bear in mind, also the "O.L.'s" emphatic denial at Simla that my first letter had ever been written by myself. I felt annoyed at her gossip and remarks then; it may serve a good purpose now. Alas! by no means are we all "gods"; especially when you remember that since the palmy days of the "impressions" and "precipitations" — "K.H." has been born into a new and higher light, and even that one, in no wise the most dazzling to be acquired on this earth. Verily the Light of Omniscience and infallible Prevision on this earth — that shines only for the highest CHOHAN alone is yet far away from me!

I enclose the copy verbatim from the restored fragments underlining in red [these passages are printed in italics. — ED.] the omited sentences for easier comparison.

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