Mahatma Letter No. 13
This is Letter No. 7 in Barker numbering. See below for Context and background.
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Cover sheet
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Enclosed in Mad. B.'s from Bombay. Received January 30th, 1881. |
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Page 1 transcription, image, and notes
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There is no fault on your part in the whole matter. I am sorry you should think I am imputing any fault to you. If anything, you might almost feel you had to blame me for giving you hopes without having the shadow of such a right. I ought to have been less optimistic and then you would have been less sanguine in your expectations. I really feel as if I had wronged you! Happy, thrice happy and blessed are they, who have never consented to visit the world beyond their snow-capped mountains; whose physical eyes have never lost sight of for one day of the endless ranges of hills, and the long unbroken line of eternal snows! Verily and indeed, do they live in, and have found their Ultima Thule. . . . Why say, you are a victim of circumstances, since nothing is yet seriously changed and that much, if not all, depends upon future developments? You were not asked or expected to revolutionise your life habits, but at the same time you were warned not to expect |
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Page 2
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too much as you are. If you read between the lines you must have remarked what I said about the very narrow margin left to me for doing as I choose in the matter. But despond not, for it is all but a matter of time. The world was not evolved between two monsoons, my good friend. If you had come to me as a boy of 17, before the world had put its heavy hand upon you, your task would have been twenty-fold easier. And now, we must take you, and you must see yourself as you are, not as the ideal human image which our emotional fancy always projects for us upon the glass. Be patient, friend and brother; and I must repeat again — be our helpful co-worker; but in your own sphere, and according to your ripest judgment. Since our venerable Hobilgan has decreed in his wise prevision that I had no right to encourage you to enter a path, where you would have to roll the stone of Sisyphus, held back as you surely would be by your previous and most sacred duties — we really must wait. I know your motives are sincere and true, and that |