. . . . . . but the effect of early training as you will say, intuition as I claim, does not allow me to accept your view as proved. . . . . . . . . . . . . I cannot truly say that
I believe that there is no God. I believe rather that there is a God.(7)
(7)"I am more of an Adwaitee than M. or K.H." he wrote but yesterday.
. . . I do not think you are correct in the view that you take of my changeableness — I am manysided and as I travel on I revolve and you see different sides at different times — but you will find that my orbit barring minor mutations is direct enough, and any apparent retrogressions are optical delusions due to your standpoint. — At any rate that is an extremely ingenious explanation.
Yours ever sincerely,
A. O. HUME.
Of course, no doubt he is very "ingenious."
LBS-156258 Jan. 4, 1881
A letter from Hume to H.P.B., with comments by M.
SIMLA.
Jan. 4th, 1881.
MY DEAR OLD LADY
And tho' I am desperately inclined at times to believe that you are an impostor I believe I love you more than any of them.
I have just got off the last pages of a pamphlet I am preparing. These last pages are an extract from your letter about Madame* Thekla Lebendorff.† But your explanation in this case is not intelligible — so after trying to make out what you meant — I have entirely rewritten this out of my inner consciousness — Buddha knows if I have got on the right scent — / do not — but you will see the proofs and you or the Brothers,? must correct any blunders.
* As there are perverted natures which come to love physical deformity as a contrast to beauty, so also there are those who find a rest in the moral depravity of vitiated persons. Such would consider imposture as cleverness.
† Mr. Sinnett has to use his influence to forbid such breach of trust. Her letter to Mr. Hume was a private one. The case may be given fully. The publishing of names — names of persons whose kin survive and live to the present day in Russia must be forbidden by M.B.
This pamphlet consists of (l) a long letter denouncing theosophy as a sham, and setting forth all the objections to it and the Brothers, put forward by the more intelligent men who do not disbelieve in the facts of spiritualism.
Such as Mr. Chatterjei — for instance?
(2) A very much longer letter alas, an awfully long letter, picking the first to pieces and turning it inside out.
I have in this done my very best. I think it reads fairly well — it is not conclusive — (for that you must thank the Brothers) (1) but it puts the very best face possible on every awkward fact, and gives the fullest view of all the favourable ones. The facts being as they are I defy anyone to do more. I mean anyone short of a brother, and my hope is that if there are brothers, some of them may when the proofs are before you favour us with some hints by which I may strengthen the case. I have taken this opportunity to let in a lot of light upon the principles of Esoteric Theosophy and on matters connected with the Brothers and their modi operandi etc. etc. There is a areas deal in this letter (2).
But tho' I think I have made out a good case, though I may convince others — I have almost unconvinced myself (3). Never till I came to defend it, did I realise the extreme weakness of our position. You, you dear old sinner (and wouldn't you have been a reprobate under normal conditions?) are the worst breach of all — your entire want of control of temper — your utterly un-Buddha and un-Christlike manner of speaking of all who offend you — your reckless statements form together an indictment that it is hard to meet — I have I think not round it (4). But though I may stop others' mouths, I personally am not satisfied. Now perhaps you will say "Are you any better?" "l shall reply at once certainly not — probably in other ways ten times worse." But then I am not the chosen messenger of the embodiment of all purity and virtue — I am a mudstained soul that, though a cat may look at a king, may not even look at a Brother. (5) Now I know all about the Brothers' supposed explanation (6), that you are a psychological cripple one of your seven principles being in pawn in Tibet — if so more shame to them keeping other people's property to the great detriment of the owner. But grant it so, then I ask my friends the Brothers to "precisez" as the French say — which principle have you got old chaps?
It ain't the Hoola sariram, the body — that's clear for you might truly say with Hamlet "Oh that this too solid flesh would melt!"
And it can't be the linga sariram, as that can't part from the body, and it ain't the kama rupa and if it were, its loss would not account for your symptoms.
Neither assuredly is it the Jivatma, you have plenty of life in you. Neither is it the fifth principle or mind, for without this you would be "quo ad" the external world, an idiot. Neither is it the sixth principle for without this you would be a devil, intellect without conscience, while as for the seventh that is universal and can be captured by no Brother and no Buddha, but exists for each precisely to the degree that the eyes of the sixth principle are open.
Therefore to me this explanation is not only not satisfactory — but its having been offered — throws suspicion on the whole thing.
Very clever — but suppose it is neither one of the seven particularly but all? Every one of them a "cripple" and forbidden the exercise of its full powers? And suppose such is the wise law of a far foreseeing power!
And so in many cases the more one looks into things, the less they seem to hold water. The more they bear the look of contrivances thrown out on the spur of the moment to meet an immediate difficulty.
If as is quite possible, everything could be explained — then I only deplore the fatuity of the superior beings who send you to fight the world armed with only a part of your faculties, and carefully surround you with a network of such contradictory and compromising facts, as to render it impossible for your most loving and by no means least intelligent friend to avoid at times grave doubts not only as to their existence but also as to your good faith. (7)
In letter No. 2 I have doubtless answered every objection — after a fashion — but if I was to write a No. 3 on the other side couldn't I make mincemeat of some at least of No. 2's arguments. No one outside can perhaps.
As said before — a good reason for it. For the arguments on both sides are faulty and easily made "mincemeat" of.
All I can say is — if as I still believe on the balance of evidence the Brothers do exist — entreat and pray them so to strengthen you as to make you more what a -treat moral reformer — should be — and so strengthen our hands to defend you and advance their cause. (8)
Well No. 3 is Olcott's letter from Ceylon — with one passage left out and a few words modified — to me an excellent letter — the passage which the world would at once hit upon as pointing to a transcendental flirtation between Morier and his "most exquisite specimen of perfect womanhood" K.H.'s sister, I have naturally elided — also the one about his supposed exit from the body in New York, which is weak and explicable as simple somnambulism.259
Mr. Hume acted judiciously in eliding that passage in O.'s letter though the writing of the three words would not be covered by the theory of somnambulism, as somnambulists do not pass through solid walls. As for the sentence about my brother's sister, no one with any delicacy would have thought of giving it to the public. The public, represented so brutally indecent in thought, that even one of its most accomplished leaders could not read of the pure sisterly friendship of a holy woman for her brother's lifelong brother in occult research without descending to the grovelling thought of a sensual relationship, must be but a herd of swine. And still that same leader wonders that we do not come to his study and prove we are not fictions of a mad fancy!