Mahatma Letter to Leadbeater - LMW 1 No. 50

Quick Facts
People involved
Written by:	Koot Hoomi
Received by:	Charles Webster Leadbeater
Sent via:	post
Dates
Written on:	unknown
Received on:	23 June 1886
Other dates:	unknown
Places
Sent from:	Elberfeld
Received at:	Ceylon
Via:	unknown

This letter is Letter No. 50 in Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, First Series. Mahatma Koot Hoomi gives reassurance to Charles Webster Leadbeater. This message was precipitated in green ink across the last page of a letter written by Madame Blavatsky to Leadbeater. In all editions before the First Series was resequenced in 1988, this was called Letter 37.

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Envelope

British India
via Brindisi

Charles W. Leadbeater, Esq.
61 Maliban St.
Colombo
Isl. of Ceylon

NOTES:

Page 1 transcription, image, and notes

Elberfeld, June 23/86

My dearest Leadbeater, I was glad – sincerely – to receive your welcome letter. As to the enclosure I really do not take upon myself to send it. I cannot do it, my dear friend ; I swore not to deliver any more letters and Master has given me the right and privilege to refuse it. So that I have put it aside and send it to you back as I received it. If Mahatma К H had accepted or wanted to read the letter he would have taken it away from my box, and it remaining in its place shows to me that he refuses it.

Now learn new developments. Bawajee is entirely against us and bent on the ruin of the T. S. A month ago he was in London and ready to sail back to India. Now, he is here — heaven knows when he will go away for he lives with Frank Gebhard (the elder son who sides with him and whom he has utterly psychologized) and he has sown dissension and strife in the Gebhard family, the mother, father, and two sons Arthur and Rudolph remaining true to the teachings of Masters and me and Frank siding with him. He never comes to us

Postscript written across top of Page 1:

My love and blessings to Don David and all the Brethren. My greatest respectful salams to the High Priest Rev. Sumangala. Ask his blessing to me.

NOTES:

• Don David was the Anagarika Dharmapala, whose birth name was Don David Hewavitharane.
• salams means greetings.
• the High Priest Rev. Sumangala was the Venerable Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala Thero, Buddhist high priest of Ceylon.

Page 2

though he lives over the way — and he writes and writes volumes of teachings against our doctrines. He does more; he declared to all that he was going to publish a manifesto in which he will express regret at having contributed for food to bamboozle the public as to the character of the Masters and what They will and can do. He maintains that he was for five years under maya, a psychological illusion. He firmly believed during that time that all the phenomena were produced by the Masters, that he himself was in direct communication with Them, and received letters and Orders, etc.; but now he (Bawajee) knows better. Since he came to Europe he has learned the truth having been illuminated (!!!) He learned that the Masters could NEVER, in no case communicate with us, not even with their chelas; They could never write themselves or even cause to be precipitated letters or notes by Their chelas. All such were the production of Maya, Elementals, spooks, when not “frauds,” he says. "Esoteric Buddhism” is all nonsense and hallucination. Nothing what is given out in the Theosophist is true.

NOTES:

Page 3

My “ Isis ” and even the Secret Doctrine may he said have been dictated to me by some occultist or “spirits” — never by Masters. When asked how is it that he came with me to Europe on an Order from his Master as he said — he now declares cooly that he was mistaken; he has, " changed his mind ” and knows now it was an illusion of his own. Olcott has never, never healed anyone with mesmerism, never was helped by Masters, etc. etc.

Moreover, he has slandered persistently Subba Row, Damodar, Olcott and everyone at Adyar. He made many Europeans lose confidence in them. Subba Row, he says, never said a truth in his life to a European; he bamboozles them always and is a liar; Damodar is a great liar also; he alone (Bawajee) knows the Masters, and what They are. In short, he makes of our Mahatmas inaccessible, impersonal Beings, so far away that no one can reach Them!!! At the same time he contradicts himself; to one he says he was 10 y. with Mahatma К H; to another 3 years, again he went

NOTES:

Page 4

several times to Tibet and saw the Master only from afar when He entered and came out of the temple. He lies most awfully. The truth is that he (B.) has never been tc Tibet and has never seen his Master 100 miles off. NOW, I have the assurance of it from my Master Himself. He was a chela on probation. When he came to Bombay to the Headquarters, your Master ordered me to tell all He accepted Krishna Swami, and had sent him to live with us and work for the T.S. He was sent to Simla to Mr. S. that is to say, he gave up his personality to a real chela, Dharbagiri Nath, and assumed his name since then. As I was under pledge of silence I could not contradict him when I heard him bragging that he had lived with his Master in Tibet and was an accepted regular chela. But now when, he failed as а " probationary ” owing to personal ambition, jealousy of Mohini and а suddenly developed rage and envy even to hatred of Colonel and myself — now

NOTES:

Page 5

Master ordered me to say the truth. What do you think he did? Why, he looked me in the face and asked me what I knew of his past life ? That certainly he did not go to Master during the five years he was with us, but that he knew Mahatma К H 12 years before he had heard of the T.S.!!! When I showed him Master’s writing in which your Mahatma corroborated my Statement and affirmed that he (Bawajee) “ had never seen HIM or go to Tibet ” — Mr B. cooly said it was a spook letter; for the Mahatma could neither write letters, nor would He ever say anything about his chelas. Thus he hides himself behind a triple armour of non responsibility — and it is impossible to catch him for him, who, like Frank Gebhard believes that every word of B's is gospel. B. denies nothing ; admits everything, every phenomenon, and gets out of it by saying that it was an illusion, his Karma. When

NOTES:

Page 6

caught in a flagrant contradiction, he gets out of it by saying that no chela has any recollection of time, space, or figures (!!) hence the contradiction. When shown over his own signature that he defended phenomena and preached the doctrines of the Society and the Masters, he answers, “ Oh, yes; but I was under an illusion. Now I have CHANGED MY MIND.” What can you do? He is bent upon the destruction of our Society and when he returns to India he will throw doubts into every Hindu’s mind. Damodar who knows the truth about him and could expose him is far away and has no desire to return. Thus, unless Subba Row and a few earnest Hindus help Colonel to expose him (and Subbaya Chetty) knows <>he never was in Tibet) the Society is lost, or will have another tremendous convulsion. Good bye my dear fellow don’t lose courage however. The Masters are with us and will protect all those who stand firm by Them. Write to Ostende, poste restante to me. I will be there tomorrow.]

Your ever faithfully and fraternally,

H. P. BLAVATSKY

Note to Leadbeater precipitated by K. H. across page:

Take courage. I am pleased with you. Keep your own counsel, and believe in your better intuitions. The little man has failed and will reap his reward. Silence meanwhile.

K.H.

1925 glass plate
of KH message

NOTES:

• Ostende is a city in Belgium to which H.P.B. was traveling.
• poste restante is a service where the post office holds the mail until the recipient calls for it; also called "general delivery."
• the little man was Babaji.

Context and background

Mr. Jinarajadasa provided these notes about this letter:

Transcribed from the original at Adyar. This occurs written across a folded letter written by H.P.B. at Elberfeld, 23 June 1886, to C.W. Leadbeater then in Ceylon. The Master’s message was precipitated in transit. The letter of H.P.B. to Mr Leadbeater was about an Indian chela of the Master, S. Krishnamachri, who was in Germany with her, but who turned against her. ‘The little man has failed’ refers to this individual, who thus ‘dropped out’. I have given a reproduction of H.P.B.’s letter and of the Master’s message to Mr Leadbeater precipitated in blue across it in my book, The K.H. Letters to C. W. Leadbeater.

Physical description of letter

The original letter is preserved at the Adyar headquarters of the Theosophical Society.

Publication history

Initially this letter was printed (with the Master's permission) in the January, 1908 issue of The Theosophist after C. Jinarajadasa copied it from the original during a visit to Taormina, as mentioned above.

This letter was published in 1919 as Letter 37 in the first edition of Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, 1881-1888, later known as the First Series.

Commentary about this letter

C. Jinarājadāsa devoted an entire book, The "K. H." Letters to C. W. Leadbeater, to an intensive analysis of the three letters received by C. W. Leadbeater. At the beginning of the commentary for the first letter he wrote:

As this letter of the Master is full of illumination to students of Occultism, I propose, after the manner of the commentators of old of the Vedas and the Upanishads, to comment on all phrases in it which require elucidation, in order to bring out the full significance of the Master's thought.

This third message, written at the end of a letter of Madame Blavatsky's, is quite brief and to the point. In his commentary, Mr. Jinarājadāsa emphasized how heartening the words must have been to CWL, who was living in very unpleasant conditions in Ceylon, away from all other Theosophists, working to establish Ananda College. Leadbeater received letters from few people other than the Sinnetts and the Founders.