Isis Very Much Unveiled/Part 3
PART III.
LAST SHREDS OF THE VEIL OF ISIS.
A REVIEW OF SOME THEOSOPHISTRIES.
As yet, “Isis Very Much Unveiled” remains very much unanswered. The oracles are dumb. “No Dolphin rose, no Nereid stirred”; no Mahatma “precipitated” a reply (as one of them did with such edifying results in the case of the Kiddle plagiarism), nor disintegrated by psychic force the damaging documents in my possession; Mrs. Besant, whose “astral body” has flitted across oceans to visit Mr. Herbert Burrows “on pre-arranged evenings,” gave no sign from Australia; Colonel Olcott, president, in India, disdained the more commonplace agency of the cable; and Mr. William Q. Judge, vice-president, whose official adytum is but five days away at New York, neglected to avail himself of the ordinary post, whatever he may have done about the astral one.
Moreover, accustomed as are all these three officials to scouring the earth, with all expenses paid, no intimation has been made public as to the date when we may expect to receive anyone of them back from the various regions to which they sped immediately after launching the report of their peculiar “Enquiry.” Their colleagues in England continue to speak as if a trip to New York carried one to the bourn from which no traveller returns.
But what of these colleagues themselves? Where is the “Voice of the Silence” of Avenue-road, St. John’s Wood? At point after point, the Story of the Great Mahatma Hoax touched matters to which one or other or all of them must have been privy. It told of missives which they had accepted as genuine, orders which they had acted upon, decisions in which they had agreed, fact after fact of which they had full cognisance. When Mr. Mead, the European secretary, gave out that he did not reply because he was not attacked, I did my best to oblige him; I began at the beginning, and challenged him at once as having been present and taken part in the “Judge’s-plan-is-right” decision; and I added that when he had denied my version of that I would supply him with further matter for denial. Whereupon the discreet European secretary subsided altogether. The “Sacred Oath” Humbug. Of course, some excuse had to be offered, and we have been told that what happens at meetings of the Esoteric Section is sacredly secret. Now, first, that only covers a small part of my story, some of which dealt with circumstances surrounding official acts of the society or its three sections. Secondly, the excuse is eminently one that accuses, by implying that what I say happened at those meetings did happen; for presumably members take no oath to keep secret what does not occur? But, thirdly, this alleged secrecy is a mere pretext; else how could Mrs. Besant publicly refer on platforms to “supernatural” experiences at those meetings; and Messrs. Old and Edge (the latter to this day holding office) raise questions about one such matter in print in Colonel Olcott’s journal; and Mrs. Besant, the Colonel, and a full council of officials notify Mr. Judge that in a certain eventuality (which did afterwards occur) they would make a “full publication covering all the details” of that matter, and others concerning the sacred Mahatma messages?
Whatever may be the “quasi-Masonic oath” of which we now hear, they evidently held that it did not bind them to conceal, with their eyes open, a fraud upon their fellow-members; and those who do so interpret it only throw a very suggestive light on their own action in willingly taking such an oath. Was Mrs. Besant quite right when she gave the public what she confesses was a “misleading account” of these secrets, and only in the wrong when, along with Colonel Olcott and the rest, she proposed to give what she now knew to be the correct one? Is the position that a Theosophist may “tell”—anything he likes, except the truth? A Survey of the Present Situation. The absence of Colonel Olcott and Mrs. Besant does not alter the fact that he with others made, and she publicly adopted, certain charges against Mr. Judge, vice-president. And the silence of their colleagues in England does not disguise the fact that my account of the details has not been challenged as to one single event, letter, or facsimile. The published “Report of an Enquiry” cries aloud for some explanation: the explanation of “Isis Very Much Unveiled” holds the field untouched. It leaves the vice-president only able to exculpate himself, if at all, by further inculpating them. The “full rebuttal evidence held in reserve,” therefore, at which his professed representative in England hints, can be formidable only to the Theosophical Society, not to its critics. I am bound to say, however, that if the would-be impressive fragments of it which have been privately adumbrated to me are fair samples of the rest, it is not calculated to be formidable to anybody. When the “affidavits” hinted at have been published, or otherwise submitted to examination, I can promise them all the attention they deserve. To say that any affidavit, until cross-examined upon, is worth exactly as much as the paper it is written on would be an uncalled-for slight upon the paper-maker. The Excommunication of “Brother Old.” A word or two about the attempt to create a diversion by attacking the character of the one Theosophical official who has had the honesty to resign office rather than shut his eyes to a fraud on the public. The attack on Mr. Old cannot in any case discredit the story I have narrated. First, because the largest and most important part of that story is from the undenied written evidence of persons still holding office in the society, and especially of its “President-Founder.” Secondly, because, even as regards Mr. Old’s part, the character of a witness is only a relevant consideration where the truth of his testimony is disputed. What I am now about to say is said, therefore, merely in justice to Mr. Old himself. The attack on him has two lines. It is said that he had to perjure himself to give any information whatever. It is hinted that what information he did give was given for money. The former charge turns entirely on the “sacred oath” humbug, which I have discussed already. As to the latter, it is true to my knowledge that for the part he has taken in fulfilling what he regards as a public duty to truth, Mr. Old neither asked nor received any consideration whatever. My own acquaintance with Mr. Old began in an odd way, not without bearing on the question of his sincerity. At the time of the Salvation Army riots at Eastbourne, a gallant old Englishman, who could not bear that women, under any provocation, should be publicly assaulted in English streets, went down there to stand up for the “Hallelujah lasses.” He asked, through the Pall Mall Gazette, for five hundred Englishmen to help. He got five. This Quixotic gentleman, this modern Sieur de Marsac, was my friend Mr. Charles Money, of Petersfield. I went myself to see that he did not get his head broken more than was necessary. His company, as seedy a lot of knights-errant as ever I saw, consisted mainly of Cockney journalists who did not believe in God. But one—a spruce, slight youth—declared himself a Theosophist. The adventurers spouted to a yelling mob, got off with whole skins, and by testimony of the local police actually achieved their end. But Mr. Money and one other were knocked about a bit in the crowd. That other—he quitted himself like a man—was Mr. W. R. Old, Theosophist. I may be wrong: it was but a street row; but I regard that as a more practical service on Mr. Old’s part to the “Universal Brotherhood of Humanity” than all the hundredweights of vapid moralising on the subject ever vomited from “The H.P.B. Press.”
Stewing in the Judge Juice. Except Mr. Old, one prominent Theosophist, and one alone, has so far publicly faced the facts. Mr. Herbert Burrows has had the honesty and the courage to say out that this thing must be answered by Mr. Judge, and fully, or he for one will quit the society. Mr. Burrows forgets that others besides Mr. Judge have made themselves answerable. Other correspondents, again, represented other factions, and showed how the society is seething with distrust and shame. But the mass of the letters only serve to prove that, whatever else the “occult powers” of the Theosophists may be, they do not include a command either of plain English or of straight argument. If “Isis” does not yet stand before us absolutely like Hans Breitmann’s “maiden mit nodings on,” it is a painfully thin fabric of Theosophistries which alone shelters her from the cold wind of public contempt. Jet us examine it. The Theosophistry about Proving a Negative. “After all, you have not proved that Mahatmas do not exist, nor that occult phenomena cannot occur.”
Certainly I have not, nor did I ever propose to try. I am quite prepared to believe in both when evidence for them has been produced, and has stood the test of such ordinary evidential canons as have been applied to kindred subjects—for instance, by the Psychical Research Society. All that I have said is that certain evidence on which the Theosophical Society has been building proves nothing whatever, except the existence of a hotbed of humbug within the society itself. As for the Mahatmas, there is no difficulty about conceiving that illiterate, twaddling, and mendacious beings of a second-rate order of intelligence, such as those reflected in the “missives” which I have reproduced, may exist in Tibet as they unhappily do elsewhere. But when we are told that these beings have acquired powers which rise superior to time and space, and that they use these for communicating “in a quasi-miraculous manner” with the Theosophical Society, we ask for facts; and we get—such facts as were investigated by Dr. Hodgson and his colleagues, and such facts as have been exposed in “Isis Very Much Unveiled.” What else is there? One Theosophist directs me to “our literature on the subject, which is copious.” I don’t doubt it; but it is not “literature” that I am in search of. Another declares “it does not all depend on Madame Blavatsky and Mr. Judge; others have seen Mahatmas.” It seems that Mrs. Besant has been telling her Australian audiences that she herself has been so favoured (just as she told the Hall of Science audience that she had been favoured with supernatural missives). Well, how did Mrs. Besant know her Mahatma? By his “portrait,” I suppose, as others have done. And how was that portrait produced? When Madame Blavatsky began to spell spiritualism “Theosophy,” and turned her “spirit-control” “John King,” of whom Colonel Olcott tells, into Master Koot Hoomi—whom she again subordinated, after the Kiddle exposure, to Mahatma Morya, whom she, in turn, after the S.P.R. Report, left over for exploitation by Mr. Judge—when Madame started the Mahatma on this chequered career, it was one of her earliest steps to secure a counterfeit presentment of her creation. Various artists and amateurs were set to paint portraits under occult inspiration. The results may all have resembled the Protean Mahatma; some of them were strikingly unlike each other. The two best were done by Mr. Schmiechen, now a society portrait-painter, partly out of his head, partly from directions given by Madame, and partly from a photograph of a typical Hindu which she gave him for the purpose. Madame identified one as Koot and the other as Morya, and declared they were speaking likenesses—an opinion which nobody else was in a position to contradict. They hang to-day in the “Occult Room” at Adyar, and are declared to have been painted from the respective “astral bodies” of their subjects. Colonel Olcott, president, who knows their origin perfectly well, exhibits them reverently to barefoot disciples doing “puja.” Photographs from the fancy portrait of “M,” in locked cases, have been distributed to the Esoteric few; Mrs. Besant always works with one facing her; Madame Blavatsky made it part of a chela’s course to spend some time daily staring at the image, and deliberately trying to “visualise” it in corners of the room. What wonder if some of them have succeeded? It would have been contrary to all experience of the phenomena of self-hypnotic hallucination if they had not. The thing only begins to call for examination when the figure thus “visualised” leaves something not entirely psychic behind him. The Master who left a shower of roses once at Adyar turned out to have been M. Coulomb, eked out with a mask, a bladder, and some white muslin; and the roses were traced elsewhere than to Tibet. And the Master who precipitated the Judge missives?But perhaps the Theosophists would prefer not to put him forward. When they have something better, I shall be glad to hear of it. The Theosophistry of Throwing Over the Mahatmas.
“What matter even if the Mahatmas do not exist, and the phenomena are frauds? There still remain those sublime ideas which,” &c., &c.
I was quite prepared for this particular Theosophistry. That was why I started, at the very beginning of my story (Chapter II.), by showing what an enormous practical part the Mahatmas and their miracles have played in the movement. It is easy for this Theosophist or that to protest that they never attracted him. The fact remains that the big accessions to the society’s numbers have always followed on the miracle “booms,” alike under Madame Blavatsky and under Mrs. Besant. Moreover, it is not possible, even argumentatively, to dissociate “those sublime ideas,” &c., from the Mahatmas on whose authority Madame Blavatsky gave them out. If she spoke truth, they were the real authors of “Isis Very Much Unveiled” and of “The Secret Doctrine.” If she lied, and the authority for those teachings is her own, what is that lying authority worth? I need not labour the point, as it was conclusively proved long ago by Mrs. Besant herself. In an article in Lucifer of December, 1890, addressed apparently to certain Theosophical schismatics who showed a tendency to throw over alike their foundress and her “Masters,” Mrs. Besant accomplished the easy task of showing that the society was tied hand and foot to both. It was founded by Her at the bidding of “Them”; They have been the deus ex machinâ whenever She was in a fix, and the society has so accepted Them. It can be “neutral” about Them, and Their miracles, and Their prophetess, only when an heir is neutral about his own title-deeds. As Mrs. Besant puts it in a nutshell: “If there are no Masters, then the Theosophical Society is an absurdity.” The Theosophistry of Throwing Over the “Inner Group.”
“The Esoteric Section is a private body, not officially connected with the Theosophical Society; so the Society is not responsible for miracle-mongering in the Section.”
The so-called Esoteric Section or E.S.T. (“Eastern School of Theosophy”), of which the High-priesters and the Vice-President are now quarrelling for the headship, and, in the words of the latter official, “the core of the Theosophical Society.” The Inner Group, again, is the core of the E.S.T. Both were the special creation of the Society’s foundress. The Group was to contain her top pupils. The members of the group are almost to a man officials of the Society, living at the Society’s expense. With the one exception of Colonel Olcott, practically all the high panjandrums are included in it. Lastly, if it has been the centre of the Mahatma communications, it is a centre that has radiated them in all directions to the society’s circumference. The plop of a missive sends a ripple from the Inner Group to the Esoteric Section, from the Esoteric Section to the society at large, and from the society to the public.
Well, the yolk of an egg is not officially connected with the outer portion; but when the yolk is bad, we call it a rotten egg without further parley. The Theosophistry of Throwing Over the Society’s Personnel. But that brings me to the most barefaced Theosophistry of all: “Even if all our officials be proved to have lied and cheated, there still remains untouched their grand ethical teaching”!
I simply state this, and leave it. Like the coster when his barrow broke down, “Friends, I ain’t ekal to it.” I cannot do justice to such colossal impudence. “Truth survives all attacks”; she does; she will even survive Theosophical defences. “The noble religions and philosophies of the East exist”; they do, as they did long centuries before the Theosophical Society was heard of, and will do long centuries after it has been forgotten. But when Mahatmas, and miracles, and the founders, and the officials, and the official acts of the Theosophical Society are all thrown over—What remains of the society? “We have absolutely no creed,” the European secretary told an interviewer the other day—(all unfettered by the fact that he distributes broadcast Mrs. Besant’s “Introduction to Theosophy” with a complete pseudo-Buddhistic cosmology about the Seven Planes, &c., authenticated by direct reference to the Masters, and particularising, for instance, that “Devachan” lasts “for average persons some fifteen centuries” !)—“Absolutely no creed.” “You would simply call yours a moral or religious society, then?” asked the puzzled interviewer. To which Mr. Mead naïvely replies, “I don’t exactly know what you would call it.”—(Sunday Times, Nov. 11.)
Since scholarship has opened the stores of the East to Western culture, there has been a natural awakening of popular interest in Eastern directions. While that lasts, people discussing each other’s souls will continue to sprinkle their remarks, harmlessly enough, with those mingled jargons which make a true Orientalist smile. If “Theosophy” means that, “Theosophy” has certainly some life before it; but as for the Theosophical Society—“why cumbereth it the ground?” It is an organised machine for taking in the Honest Enthusiast at one end, passing him through the stages of the Willing Dupe and the Conscientious Humbug, and turning him out at the other end at worst a conscious fraud, at best a dreary and disillusioned cynic.
Enough of the logical and ethical fog that Theosophy diffuses!—the Mahatmosphere, as one might call it. It is a relief to escape from it into the fresh air of common honesty and common sense.