Mahatma Letter to H. S. Olcott - LMW 2 No. 33

Quick Facts
People involved
Written by:	Morya
Received by:	Henry Steel Olcott
Sent via:	unknown
Dates
Written on:	unknown
Received on:	1880/81
Other dates:	unknown
Places
Sent from:	unknown
Received at:	Bombay
Via:	unknown

This is Letter No. 33 in Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, Second Series. In it Mahatma Morya rebukes Henry Steel Olcott about something he said.

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Page 1 transcription, image, and notes

Sir,

The night before last will prove a memorable one for you. Not just because of the brother, but simply because with your infernal tongue, irresistible passion for patronizing criticism, and usual indelicacy you have alienated from yourself another brother — though a woman — and that, I am afraid, for ever. What possessed you to speak in the way you did of a friend, a woman, one to whom you owe all you know, and even the possibilities of the future for she was the first to show you the way — is more than all the occult sciences are able to explain! To speak of her in terms as you would of a slut, to recall trifles having importance but in society and the world and none at all with the inner self – and before a man whose ties of friendship for you and us all are very slender shows not alone that

NOTES:

• woman refers to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

Page 2

your powers of discrimination stand at a very low rate, but that you are perfectly at sea in all that concerns delicacy and judgment. She may have been "dirty" and "filthy" but she never will be either one or the other to the extent of some of our best and most sainted yogis.

She went to Maha Sahib the same night and proved to him she had been all the time right and He wrong when he thought and hoped to be able to stifle in you this overgrowth of indelicacy by planting and activating in your inner self other "germs" of nobler plants. It is not her "vanity" – as you are but too likely to think – that is hurt, (of vanity she has none) – but her feelings of friendship for you, your cool ingratitude, and the idea that of all she has done for you you remember but her dust!

The Maha Sahib had nothing to say — neither have I or any of us, but to regret, and that very deeply, that want of discrimination and tact so prominent in a man of your intellect and sense.

M.

NOTES:

Page 2 back

Written on back:

Colonel H. S. Olcott

NOTES:

Context and background

Mr. Jinarājadāsa made no specific comments about this brief letter.

Physical description of letter

The original of this letter is preserved at the Theosophical Society, Adyar, Chennai, India.

Commentary about this letter

Mr. Jinarājadāsa provided this foreword on the series of letters numbered 28-45:

I have arranged the letters which follow, so far as possible, in the order in which they were received. On some, Colonel Olcott has made a memorandum of the date. For others, I have been able to get the date from his Diaries. There are a few, however, of which I am fairly certain as to the year, because of the first script of Master M. referred to already [see Morya:Writing style], but there is no indication anywhere as to the month. Some of the letters bear no signature.