The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett

Letter No. 67

Written to Colonel Olcott {received Madras, May 26, 1883; received by A.P.S., London June 16-20}

You have been ordered home for a rest that you need — so, you should decline any further healings until you hear from M⸫ The Maha Chohan will intimate when you are to go to the Punjab. As the English mail goes tomorrow, you might do well to give Mr. Sinnett a friendly caution against being surprised if his paper project should have checks upon checks. The state of India is just now almost comparable to a great body of dry matter in which sparks are smouldering. Agitators of both races have been and are doing their best to stir up a great flame. In the mad fanaticism of the hour there is hardly patience enough to think soberly upon any matter, least of all one that appeals like this to conservative men. Capitalists are more ready — like Holkar — to horde away their rupees than put them into share companies. So — "miracles" being barred from the first as you and Mr. Sinnett know — I see delays, disappointments, trials of patience, but — (as yet) no failure. The lamentable issue of Bishenlal's rapid scramble up the Himalayas as would be Chela has sadly complicated matters. And your eminent Simla correspondent has made matters worse. Though unaware of it he has helped precipitate Bishenlal's insanity and (here, consciously) is plotting and scheming in many ways to make us all into a holocaust from out whose vapours may loom the giant Spectre of the Jakko. Already he tells you that Sinnett is a credulous imbecile to be led by the nose (pardon my worthy friend the bad taste which compelled me to duplicate for my "ward" A. P. Sinnett that last long letter of Mr. H. to yourself which you have at the bottom of your dispatch box and did not intend H.P.B. to see in full). I had it neatly copied and for your fiery colleague he has had a deadly mine long prepared. Mr. Sinnett is now able to verify my old warning that he meant to set all your friends in London against the Society. The turn of the Kingsford-Maitland party has come. The diabolical malice which breathes through his present letter comes straight from the Dugpas who provoke his vanity and blind his reason. When you open M⸫'s letter of 1881 you will find the key to many mysteries — this included. Intuititve as you naturally are — chelaship is yet almost — a complete puzzle for you — as for my friend Sinnett and the others they have scarcely an inkling of it yet. Why must I even now (to put your thoughts in the right channel) remind you of the three cases of insanity within seven months among "lay chelas," not to mention one's turning a thief? Mr. Sinnett may consider himself lucky that his lay chelaship is in "fragments" only, and that I have so uniformly discouraged his desires for a closer relationship as an accepted chela. Few men know their inherent capacities — only the ordeal of crude chelaship develops them. (Remember these words: they have a deep meaning.)

M⸫ sends you through me these vases as a home greeting.

You had better say plainly to Mr. Sinnett that his quondam friend of Simla has — no matter under what influence — distinctly injured the newspaper project not only with the Maharajah of Cashmere but with many more in India. All he hints at in his letter to you and more he has done or is preparing to do.

This is "a K.H. letter" and you may say to Mr. S. from —

K. H.



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