H.P.B. ON MESSAGES FROM MASTERS

 SOME years ago H.P.B. was charged with misuse of Mahatmas names and handwritings, with forgery of messages from the Mahatmas, and with humbugging the public and the T.S. therewith. Those charges had floated vaguely about for sometime and at last came the explosion. Afterward when writing on the subject of "Lodges of Magic" in Lucifer ¹ the question of the genuineness or the opposite of such messages was dealt with, and what she wrote is here presented for reconsideration. It covers two matters.

 First, it proves out of her own mouth what the PATH not long ago said that "if one letter has to be doubted then all have" to be doubted. Hence, if the Letter to some Brahmans is a fraud, as Col. Olcott and another say, then all the rest are, also.

 Second, it applies precisely to the present state of affairs in respect to messages from Masters, just as if she had so long ago foreseen the present and left the article so that tyros in occultism, such as the present agitators are, might have something to show them how to use their judgment. The portion selected from her article reads:

 We have been asked by a correspondent why he should not "be free to suspect some of the so-called 'precipitated' letters as being forgeries," giving as his reason for it that while some of them bear the stamp of (to him) undeniable genuineness, others seem from their contents and style, to be imitations. This is equivalent to saying that he has such an unerring spiritual insight as to be able to detect the false from the true, though he has never met a Master, nor been given any key by which to test his alleged communications. The inevitable consequence of applying his untrained judgment in such cases, would be to make him as likely as not to declare false what was genuine and genuine what was false. Thus what criterion has any one to decide between one "precipitated" letter, or another such letter? Who except their authors, or those whom they employ as their amanuenses (the chelas and disciples) can tell? For it is hardly one out of a hundred "occult" letters that is ever written by the hand of the Master, in whose name and whose behalf they are sent, as the Masters have neither need nor leisure to write them; and when a Master says "I wrote that letter" it means only that every word in it was dictated by him and impressed under his direct supervision. Generally they make their chela, whether near or far away, write (or precipitate) them, by impressing upon his mind the ideas they wish expressed, and if necessary aiding him in the picture-printing process of precipitation. It depends entirely upon the chela's state of development, how accurately the ideas may be transmitted and the writing-model imitated. Thus the non-adept recipient is left in the dilemma of uncertainty, whether if one letter is false all may not be, for as far as intrinsic evidence goes, all come from the same source, and all are brought by the same mysterious means. But there is another and far worse condition implied. All the so-called occult letters being supported by identical proofs, they have all to stand or fall together. if one is to be doubted, then all have, and the series of letters in the Occult World, Esoteric Buddhism, etc., etc., may be, and there is no reason why they should not be in such a case, - frauds, "clever impostures," and "forgeries" such as the ingenuous though stupid agent of the "S.P.R." has made them out to be, in order to raise in the public estimation the scientific acumen and standard of his "Principles." .....

 Path, July, 1895

 ¹ Vol. III, p. 92-93.