Mahatma letters

There are three publications of letters written by H. P. Blavatsky's Teachers, variously referred as, "Brothers," "Mahatmas," or "Masters." In 1880 A. P. Sinnett, an Englishman living in India entered into correspondence with This correspondence took place over the years 1880 to 1884, where Mr. Sinnett received many letters from two of the Mahatmas known as Morya and Koot Hoomi. The letters are now kept in the British Library, and were published by A. Trevor Barker in 1923 as a book entitled The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett from the Mahatmas M. & K. H.. The other two publications are known as Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, First and Second Series, and were published in ... respectively by C. Jinarajadasa. These books are collections of letters received by a number of Theosophists and chelas over the years.......

Letters written by chelas

The majority of the letters were not written physically by the Masters. Mme. Blavatsky, in a letter to Mr. Sinnett wrote: "Has Master K.H. written himself all His letters? How many chelas have been precipitating and writing them——heaven only knows." Mahatma K.H. explained this custom as follows:

Another of our customs, when corresponding with the outside world, is to entrust a chela with the task of delivering the letter or any other message; and if not absolutely necessary — to never give it a thought. Very often our very letters — unless something very important and secret — are written in our handwritings by our chelas. Thus, last year, some of my letters to you were precipitated, and when sweet and easy precipitation was stopped — well I had but to compose my mind, assume an easy position, and — think, and my faithful “Disinherited” had but to copy my thoughts, making only occasionally a blunder.

In fact, this method was sometimes a source of errors. Mahatma Letter No. 17 is an example of how mistakes can creep in:

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.”

In answer to accusations that said the handwriting of the Masters was (subtly) different along the letters, Mme. Blavatsky wrote:

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. . .

Precipitation

Some of the letters were produced by an occult method called precipitation. In one of his letters, Mahatma K.H. tells Mr. Sinnett: ". . . bear in mind, that these my letters, are not written but impressed or precipitated and then all mistakes corrected." He explains it in the following way:

. . .[W]hether I “precipitate” or dictate them or write my answers myself, the difference in time saved is very minute. I have to think it over, to photograph every word and sentence carefully in my brain before it can be repeated by “precipitation.” As the fixing on chemically prepared surfaces of the images formed by the camera requires a previous arrangement within the focus of the object to be represented, for otherwise — as often found in bad photographs — the legs of the sitter might appear out of all proportion with the head, and so on, so we have to first arrange our sentences and impress every letter to appear on paper in our minds before it becomes fit to be read. For the present, it is all I can tell you. When science will have learned more about the mystery of the lithophyl (or lithobiblion) and how the impress of leaves comes originally to take place on stones, then will I be able to make you better understand the process. But you must know and remember one thing: we but follow and servilely copy nature in her works.

In a report of a conversation that Charles Johnston maintained with H. P. Blavatsky we read:

[C. Johnston] "They say that you wrote them yourself, and that they bear evident marks of your handwriting and style. What do you say to that?"

"Let me explain it this way", she [H. P. Blavatsky] answered, after a long gaze at the end of her cigarette. "Have you ever made experiments in thought-transference? If you have, you must have noticed that the person who receives the mental picture very often colours it, or even changes it slightly, with his own thought, and this where perfectly genuine transference of thought takes place. Well, it is something like that with the precipitated letters. One of our Masters, who perhaps does not know English, and of course has no English handwriting, wishes to precipitate a letter in answer to a question sent mentally to him. Let us say he is in Tibet, while I am in Madras or London. He has the answering thought in his mind, but not in English words. He has first to impress that thought on my brain, or on the brain of someone else who knows English, and then to take the word-forms that rise up in that other brain to answer the thought. Then he must form a clear mind-picture of the words in writing, also drawing on my brain, or the brain of whoever it is, for the shapes. Then either through me or some Chela with whom he is magnetically connected, he has to precipitate these word-shapes on paper, first sending the shapes into the Chela’s mind, and then driving them into the paper, using the magnetic force of the Chela to do the printing, and collecting the material, black or blue or red, as the case may be, from the astral light. As all things dissolve into the astral light, the will of the magician can draw them forth again. So he can draw forth colours of pigments to mark the figure in the letter, using the magnetic force of the Chela to stamp them in, and guiding the whole by his own much greater magnetic force, a current of powerful will."

[C. Johnston] "That sounds quite reasonable," I answered. "Won’t you show me how it is done?"

"You would have to be clairvoyant," she answered, in a perfectly direct and matter-of-fact way, "in order to see and guide the currents. But this is the point: Suppose the letter precipitated through me; it would naturally show some traces of my expressions, and even of my writing; but all the same, it would be a perfectly genuine occult phenomenon, and a real message from that Mahatma. . .

[C. Johnston] "Mr. Sinnett showed me about a ream of them; the whole series that the Occult World and Esoteric Buddhism are based on. Some of them are in red, either ink or pencil, but far more are in blue. I thought it was pencil at first, and I tried to smudge it with my thumb; but it would not smudge."

"Of course not!" she smiled; "the colour is driven into the surface of the paper. . ."