"Common people" are the masses as different from those who are distinguished. Your methods were not abandoned, it was only sought to show a drift of cyclic change no doubt that is helped by you too. Are you not man of the world enough to bear the small defects of young disciples? In their way they also help — and greatly. In you is also concealed a power to help from your side, for the poor Society will even yet need all it can get. It is good that you have seen the work of a noble woman, who has left all for the cause. Other ways and times will appear for your help, for you are a single witness and well knowing the facts that will be challenged by traitors.
We cannot alter Karma, my "good friend" or we might lift the present cloud from your path. But we do all that is possible in such material matters. No darkness can stay for ever. Have hope and faith and we may disperse it. There are not many left true to the "original program"! And you have been taught much and have much that is, and will be, useful.
M.
Letter No. 138 (ML-145) Rec. Fall 1885
This is the last letter to be received directly from the Mahatma.
Courage, patience and hope, my brother.
K. H.
Letter No. 139 (ML-140) Dated January 6, 1886
H.P.B. was "impressed" to give Sinnett certain information. She was in Würzburg, Germany, where she was working on The Secret Doctrine. She had been joined in December by the Countess Constance Wachtmeister, a Swedish countess who was a member of the Theosophical Society, a natural clairvoyant, and a loyal friend to H.P.B. Shortly after H.P.B.'s death she wrote a small book entitled Reminiscences of H.P. Blavatsky and the Secret Doctrine. It is a fascinating story and can be recommended to anyone interested in this phase of H.P.B.'s career.
The SPR Report on Richard Hodgson's investigation had been issued in December of 1885. It crushed H.P.B. who knew in the roots of her being how false it was. Then the Countess received a letter from Dr. Hübbe Schleiden, President of the German Theosophical Society. He had just read the report and had written to say that unless H.P.B. could explain how such a similarity could be found and proven between H.P.B.'s English and that of the Mahatma K.H., she would stand accused forever of deceit and forgery. H.P.B. describes what the Countess did about the situation and what happened to herself after she read the Report.
Jan. 6. 1886. Wurzburg.
My dear Mr. Sinnett,
I am impressed to give you the following: First let me tell you that the dear Countess went off to Munich like a shot to try and save Hübbe from his weakness and the Society from crumbling down. She was the whole evening in a trance, getting out and in from her body. She saw Master and felt him all the night. She is a great clairvoyant. Well, after reading a few pages of the Report I was so disgusted with Hume's gratuitous lies and Hodgson's absurd inferences that I nearly gave up all in despair. What could I do or say against evidence on the natural worldly plane! Everything went against me and I had but to die. I went to bed and I had the most extraordinary vision. I had vainly called upon the Masters — who came not during my waking state, but now in my sleep I saw them both. I was again (a scene of years back) in Mah. K.H.'s house. I was sitting in a corner on a mat and he walking about the room in his riding dress, and Master was talking to someone behind the door. "I remind can't" — I pronounced in answer to a question of His about a dead aunt. — He smiled and said "Funny English you use." Then I felt ashamed, hurt in my vanity, and began thinking (mind you, in my dream or vision which was the exact reproduction of what had taken place word for word 16 years ago) "now I am here and speaking nothing but English in verbal phonetic language I can perhaps learn to speak better with Him." (To make it clear with Master I also used English, which whether bad or good was the same for Him as he does not speak it but understands every word I say out of my head; and I am made to understand Him — how I could never tell or explain if I were killed but I do. With D.K. I also spoke English, he speaking it better even than Mah. K.H.) Then, in my dream still, three months after as I was made to feel in that vision — I was standing before Mah. K.H. near the old building taken down he was looking at, and as Master was not at home, I took to him a few sentences I was studying in Senzar in his sister's room and asked him to tell me if I translated them correctly — and gave him a slip of paper with these sentences written in English. He took and read them, and correcting the interpretation read them over and said "Now your English is becoming better — try to pick out of my head even the little I know of it." And he put his hand on my forehead in the region of memory and squeezed his fingers on it (and I felt even the same trifling pain in it, as then, and the cold shiver I had experienced) and since that day He did so with my head daily, for about two months. Again, the scene changes and I am going away with Master who is sending me off, back to Europe. I am bidding good-bye to his sister and her child and all the chelas. I listen to what the Masters tell me. And then come the parting words of Mah. K.H. laughing at me as He always did and saying "Well, if you have not learned much of the Sacred Sciences and practical Occultism — and who could expect a WOMAN to — you have learned, at any rate, a little English. You speak it now only a little worse than I do!" and he laughed.
Again the scene changes. I am 47th St. New York writing Isis and His voice dictating to me. In that dream or retrospective vision I once more rewrote all Isis and could now point out all the pages and sentences Mah. K.H. dictated — as those that Master did — in my bad English, when Olcott tore his hair out by handfuls in despair to ever make out the meaning of what was intended. I again saw myself night after night in bed — writing Isis in my dreams, at New York positively writing it in my sleep and felt sentences by Mah. K.H. impressing themselves on my memory. Then, as I was awakening from that vision (in Wurzburg now) I heard Mah. K.H.'s voice — "and now put two and two together, poor blind woman. The bad English and the construction of sentences you do know, even that you have learned from me. . . take off the slur thrown upon you by that misguided, conceited man (Hodgson): explain the truth to the few friends who will believe you — for the public never will to that day that the Secret Doctrine comes out." I awoke, and it was like a flash of lightning; but I still did not understand what it referred to. But an hour after, there comes Hübbe Schleiden's letter to the Countess, in which he says that unless I explain how it is that such a similarity is found and proven by Hodgson between my faulty English and Mah. K.H.'s certain expressions, the construction of sentences and peculiar Gallicisms — I stand accused for ever of deceit forgery (!!) and what not. Of course I have learned my English from Him! This Olcott even shall understand. You know and I told it to many friends and enemies — I was taught dreadful Yorkshire by my nurse called Governess. From the time my father brought me to England, when fourteen, thinking I spoke beautiful English — and people asked him if he had me educated in Yorkshire or Ireland — and laughed at my accent and way of speaking — I gave up English altogether, trying to avoid speaking it as much as I could. From fourteen till I was over forty I never spoke it, let alone writing and forgot it entirely. I could read — which I did very little — in English — I could not speak it. I remember how difficult it was for me to understand a well written book in English so far back only as 1867 in Venice. All I knew when I came to America in 1873 was to speak a little, and this Olcott and Judge and all who knew me then can testify to. I wish people saw an article I once attempted to write for the Banner of Light when instead of sanguine I put sanguinary, etc. I learned to write it through Isis, that's sure, and Prof. A. Wilder who came weekly to help Olcott arranging chapters and writing Index can testify to it. When I had finished it (and this Isis is the third part only of what I wrote and destroyed) I could write as well as I do now, not worse nor better. My memory and its capacities seem gone since then.