While on my tour with Col. Olcott several phenomena occurred, in his
presence as well as in his absence, such as immediate answers to
questions in my Master's handwriting, and over his signature, put by a
number of our Fellows. These occurrences took place before we reached
Lahore, where we expected to meet in the body my Master. There I was
visited by him in the body, for three nights consecutively, for about
three hours every time, while I myself retained full consciousness, and,
in one case, even went to meet him outside the house. To my knowledge
there is no case on the Spiritualist records of a medium remaining
perfectly conscious, and meeting, by previous arrangement, his
spirit-visitor in the compound, re-entering the house with him, offering
him a seat, and then holding a long converse with the "disembodied
spirit" in a way to give him the impression that he is in personal
contact with an embodied entity. Moreover, him whom I saw in person at
Lahore was the same I had seen in astral form at the Headquarters of the
Theosophical Society, and again, the same whom I had seen in visions and
trances at his house, thousands of miles off, which I reached in my
astral Ego by his direct help and protection. In those instances, with
my psychic powers hardly yet developed, I had always seen him as a rather
hazy form, although his features were perfectly distinct and their
remembrance was profoundly graven on my soul's eye and memory, while now
at Lahore, Jummoo, and elsewhere, the impression was utterly different.
In the former cases, when making Pranam (salutation) my hands passed
through his form, while on the latter occasions they met solid garments
and flesh. Here I saw a living man before me, the original of the
portraits in Madame Blavatsky's possession and in Mr. Sinnett's, though
far more imposing in his general appearance and bearing. I shall not
here dwell upon the fact of his having been corporeally seen by both
Col. Olcott and Mr. Brown separately for two nights at Lahore, as they
can do so better, each for himself, if they so choose. At Jummoo again,
where we proceeded from Lahore, Mr. Brown saw him on the evening of the
third day of our arrival there, and from him received a letter in his
familiar handwriting, not to speak of his visits to me almost every day.
And what happened the next morning almost every one in Jummoo is aware
of. The fact is, that I had the good fortune of being sent for, and
permitted to visit a sacred Ashrum, where I remained for a few days in
the blessed company of several of the Mahatmas of Himavat and their
disciples. There I met not only my beloved Gurudeva and Col. Olcott's
master, but several others of the fraternity, including one of the
highest. I regret the extremely personal nature of my visit to those
thrice blessed regions prevents my saying more about it. Suffice it
that the place I was permitted to visit is in the Himalayas, not in any
fanciful Summer Land, and that I saw him in my own sthula sarira
(physical body) and found my Master identical with the form I had seen
in the earlier days of my Chelaship. Thus, I saw my beloved Guru not
only as a living man, but actually as a young one in comparison with
some other Sadhus of the blessed company, only far kinder, and not above
a merry remark and conversation at times. Thus on the second day of my
arrival, after the meal hour, I was permitted to hold an intercourse for
over an hour with my Master. Asked by him smilingly what it was that
made me look at him so perplexed, I asked in my turn:--"How is it,
Master, that some of the members of our Society have taken into their
heads a notion that you were 'an elderly man,' and that they have even
seen you clairvoyantly looking an old man past sixty?" To which he
pleasantly smiled and said that this latest misconception was due to the
reports of a certain Brahmachari, a pupil of a Vedantic Swami in the
Punjab,* who had met last year in Tibet the chief of a sect, an elderly
Lama, who was his (my Master's) traveling companion at that time. The
said Brahmachari, having spoken of the encounter in India, had led
several persons to mistake the Lama for himself. As to his being
perceived clairvoyantly as an "elderly man," that could never be, he
added, as real clairvoyance could lead no one into such mistaken
notions; and then he kindly reprimanded me for giving any importance to
the age of a Guru, adding that appearances were often false, &c., and
explaining other points.
--------
* See infra. Rajani Kanta Brahmachai's "Interview with a Mahatma."
--------
These are all stern facts, and no third course is open to the reader.
What I assert is either true or false. In the former case, no
Spiritualistic hypothesis can hold good, and it will have to be admitted
that the Himalayan Brothers are living men, and neither disembodied
spirits nor creations of the over-heated imagination of fanatics. Of
course I am fully aware that many will discredit my account; but I
write only for the benefit of those few who know me well enough to see
in me neither a hallucinated medium, nor attribute to me any bad motive,
and who have ever been true and loyal to their convictions and to the
cause they have so nobly espoused. As for the majority who laugh at and
ridicule what they have neither the inclination nor the capacity to
understand, I hold them in very small account. If these few lines will
help to stimulate even one of my brother-Fellows in the Society, or one
right-thinking man outside of it, to promote the cause of Truth and
Humanity, I shall consider that I have properly performed my duty.
--Damodar K. Mavalankar
The Himalayan Brothers--Do They Exist?
"Ask and it shall be given unto you; knock and it shall be opened,"
this is an accurate representation of the position of the earnest
inquirer as to the existence of the Mahatmas. I know of none who took
up this inquiry in right earnest and were not rewarded for their labours
with knowledge, certainty. In spite of all this there are plenty of
people who carp and cavil but will not take the trouble of proving the
thing for themselves. Both by Europeans and a section of our own
countrymen--the too Europeanized graduates of Universities--the
existence of the Mahatmas is looked upon with incredulity and distrust,
to give it no harder name. The position of the Europeans is easily
intelligible, for these things are so far removed from their
intellectual horizon, and their self-sufficiency is so great, that they
are almost impervious to these new ideas. But it is much more difficult
to conceive why the people of India, who are born and brought up in an
atmosphere redolent with the traditions of these things, should affect
such scepticism. It would have been more natural for them, on the other
hand, to hail such proofs as those I am now laying before the public
with the same satisfaction as an astronomer feels when a new star, whose
elements he has calculated, swims within his ken. I myself was a
thorough-going disbeliever only two years back. In the first place I
had never witnessed any occult phenomena myself, nor did I find any one
who had done so in that small ring of our countrymen for whom only I was
taught to have any respect--the "educated classes." It was only in the
month of October, 1882, that I really devoted any time and attention to
this matter, and the result is that I have as little doubt with respect
to the existence of the Mahatmas as of mine own. I now know that they
exist. But for a long time the proofs that I had received were not all
of an objective character. Many things which are very satisfactory
proofs to me would not be so to the reader. On the other hand, I have
no right to speak of the unimpeachable evidence I now possess.
Therefore I must do the best I can with the little I am permitted to
give. In the present paper I have brought forward such evidence as
would be perfectly satisfactory to all capable of measuring its
probative force.
The evidence now laid before the public was collected by me during the
months of October and November, 1882, and was at the time placed before
some of the leading members of the Theosophical Society, Mr. Sinnett
among others. The account of Bro. Ramaswamier's interview with his Guru
in Sikkhim being then ready for publication, there was no necessity, in
their opinion, for the present paper being brought to light. But since
an attempt has been made in some quarters to minimize the effect of Mr.
Ramaswamier's evidence by calling it most absurdly "the hallucinations
of a half-frozen strolling Registrar," I think something might be gained
by the publication of perfectly independent testimony of, perhaps,
equal, if not greater, value, though of quite a different character.
With these words of explanation as to the delay in its publication, I
resign this paper to the criticism of our sceptical friends. Let them
calmly consider and pronounce upon the evidence of the Tibetan pedlar at
Darjiling, supported and strengthened by the independent testimony of
the young Brahmachari at Dehradun. Those who were present when the
statements of these persons were taken, all occupy very respectable
positions in life--some in fact belonging to the front ranks of Hindu
Society, and several in no way connected with the Theosophical movement,
but, on the contrary, quite unfriendly to it. In those days I again say
I was rather sceptical myself. It is only since I collected the
following evidence and received more than one proof of the actual
existence of my venerated master, Mahatma Koothoomi, whose presence--
quite independently of Madame Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott or any "alleged"
Chela--was made evident to me in a variety of ways, that I have given up
the folly of doubting any longer. Now I believe no more--I KNOW; and
knowing, I would help others to obtain the same knowledge.
During my visit to Darjiling I lived in the same house with several
Theosophists, all as ardent aspirants for the higher life, and most of
them as doubtful with regard to the Himalayan Mahatmas as I was myself
at that time. I met at Darjiling persons who claimed to be Chelas of
the Himalayan Brothers and to have seen and lived with them for years.
They laughed at our perplexity. One of them showed us an admirably
executed portrait of a man who appeared to be an eminently holy person,
and who, I was told, was the Mahatma Koothoomi (now my revered master),
to whom Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World" is dedicated. A few days after my
arrival, a Tibetan pedlar of the name of Sundook accidentally came to
our house to sell his things. Sundook was for years well-known in
Darjiling and the neighbourhood as an itinerant trader in Tibetan
knick-knacks, who visited the country every year in the exercise of his
profession. He came to the house several times during our stay there,
and seemed to us, from his simplicity, dignity of bearing and pleasant
manners, to be one of Nature's own gentlemen. No man could discover in
him any trait of character even remotely allied to the uncivilized
savages, as the Tibetans are held in the estimation of Europeans. He
might very well have passed for a trained courtier, only that he was too
good to be one. He came to the house while I was there. On the first
occasion he was accompanied by a Goorkha youth, named Sundar Lall, an
employee in the Darjiling News office, who acted as interpreter. But we
soon found out that the peculiar dialect of Hindi which he spoke was
intelligible to some of us without any interpreter, and so there was
none needed on subsequent occasions. On the first day we put him some
general questions about Tibet and the Gelugpa sect, to which he said he
belonged, and his answers corroborated the statements of Bogle, Turnour
and other travelers. On the second day we asked him if he had heard of
any persons in Tibet who possessed extraordinary powers besides the
great lamas. He said there were such men; that they were not regular
lamas, but far higher than they, and generally lived in the mountains
beyond Tchigatze and also near the city of Lhassa. These men, he said,
produce many and very wonderful phenomena or "miracles," and some of
their Chelas, or Lotoos, as they are called in Tibet, cure the sick by
giving them to eat the rice which they crush out of the paddy with their
hands, &c. Then one of us had a glorious idea. Without saying one word,
the above-mentioned portrait of the Mahatma Koothoomi was shown to him.
He looked at it for a few seconds, and then, as though suddenly
recognizing it, he made a profound reverence to the portrait, and said
it was the likeness of a Chohan (Mahatma) whom he had seen. Then he
began rapidly to describe the Mahatma's dress and naked arms; then
suiting the action to the word, he took off his outer cloak, and baring
his arms to the shoulder, made the nearest approach to the figure in the
portrait, in the adjustment of his dress.
He said he had seen the Mahatma in question accompanied by a numerous
body of Gylungs, about that time of the previous year (beginning of
October 1881) at a place called Giansi, two days' journey southward of
Tchigatze, whither the narrator dad gone to make purchases for his
trade. On being asked the name of the Mahatma, he said to our unbounded
surprise, "They are called Koothum-pa." Being cross-examined and asked
what he meant by "they," and whether he was naming one man or many, he
replied that the Koothum-pas were many, but there was only one man or
chief over them of that name; the disciples being always called after
the names of their guru. Hence the name of the latter being Koot-hum,
that of his disciples was "Koot-hum-pa." Light was shed upon this
explanation by a Tibetan dictionary, where we found that the word "pa"
means "man;" "Bod-pa" is a "man of Bod or Thibet," &c. Similarly
Koothum-pa means man or disciple of Koothoom or Koothoomi. At Giansi,
the pedlar said, the richest merchant of the place went to the Mahatma,
who had stopped to rest in the midst of an extensive field, and asked
him to bless him by coming to his house. The Mahatma replied, he was
better where he was, as he had to bless the whole world, and not any
particular man. The people, and among them our friend Sundook, took
their offerings to the Mahatma, but he ordered them to be distributed
among the poor. Sundook was exhorted by the Mahatma to pursue his trade
in such a way as to injure no one, and warned that such was the only
right way to prosperity. On being told that people in India refused to
believe that there were such men as the Brothers in Tibet, Sundook
offered to take any voluntary witness to that country, and convince us,
through him, as to the genuineness of their existence, and remarked that
if there were no such men in Tibet, he would like to know where they
were to be found. It being suggested to him that some people refused to
believe that such men existed at all, he got very angry. Tucking up the
sleeve of his coat and shirt, and disclosing a strong muscular arm, he
declared that he would fight any man who would suggest that he had said
anything but the truth.
On being shown a peculiar rosary of beads belonging to Madame Blavatsky,
the pedlar said that such things could only be got by those to whom the
Tesshu Lama presented them, as they could be got for no amount of money
elsewhere. When the Chela who was with us put on his sleeveless coat
and asked him whether he recognized the latter's profession by his
dress, the pedlar answered that he was a Gylung and then bowing down to
him took the whole thing as a matter of course. The witnesses in this
case were Babu Nobin Krishna Bannerji, deputy magistrate, Berhampore,
M.R. Ry. Ramaswamiyer Avergal, district registrar, Madura (Madras), the
Goorkha gentleman spoken of before, all the family of the first-named
gentleman, and the writer.
Now for the other piece of corroborative evidence. This time it came
most accidentally into my possession. A young Bengali Brahmachari, who
had only a short time previous to our meeting returned from Tibet and
who was residing then at Dehradun, in the North-Western Provinces of
India, at the house of my grandfather-in-law, the venerable Babu
Devendra Nath Tagore of the Brahmo Samaj, gave most unexpectedly, in the
presence of a number of respectable witnesses, the following account:--
On the 15th of the Bengali month of Asar last (1882). being the 12th day
of the waxing moon, he met some Tibetans, called the Koothoompas, and
their guru in a field near Taklakhar, a place about a day's journey from
the Lake of Manasarawara. The guru and most of his disciples, who were
called gylungs, wore sleeveless coats over under-garments of red. The
complexion of the guru was very fair, and his hair, which was not parted
but combed back, streamed down his shoulders. When the Brahmachani
first saw the Mahatma he was reading in a book, which the Brahmachari
was informed by one of the gylungs was the Rig Veda.
The guru saluted him, and asked him where he was coming from. On
finding the latter had not had anything to eat, the guru commanded that
he should be given some ground gram (Sattoo) and tea. As the
Brahmachari could not get any fire to cook food with, the guru asked
for, and kindled a cake of dry cow-dung--the fuel used in that country
as well as in this--by simply blowing upon it, and gave it to our
Brahmachari. The latter assured us that he had often witnessed the same
phenomenon, produced by another guru or chohan, as they are called in
Tibet, at Gauri, a place about a day's journey from the cave of Tarchin,
on the northern side of Mount Kailas. The keeper of a flock, who was
suffering from rheumatic fever came to the guru, who gave him a few
grains of rice, crushed out of paddy, which the guru had in his hand,
and the sick man was cured then and there.
Before he parted company with the Koothumpas and their guru, the
Brahmachari found that they were going to attend a festival held on the
banks of the Lake of Manasarawara, and that thence they intended to
proceed to the Kailas mountains.
The above statement was on several occasions repeated by the Brahmachari
in the presence (among others) of Babu Dwijender Nath Tagore of
Jorasanko, Calcutta; Babu Cally Mohan Ghose of the Trigonometrical
Surcey of India, Dehradun; Babu Cally Cumar Chatterij of the same
place; Babu Gopi Mohan Ghosh of Dacca; Babu Priya Nath Sastri, clerk to
Babu Devender Nath Tagore, and the writer. Comments would here seem
almost superfluous, and the facts might very well have been left to
speak for themselves to a fair and intelligent jury. But the averseness
of people to enlarge their field of experience and the wilful
misrepresentation of designing persons know no bounds. The nature of
the evidence here adduced is of an unexceptional character. Both
witnesses were met quite accidentally. Even if it be granted, which we
certainly do not for a moment grant, that the Tibetan pedlar, Sundook,
had been interviewed by some interested person, and induced to tell an
untruth, what can be conceived to have been the motive of the
Brahmachari, one belonging to a religious body noted for their
truthfulness, and having no idea as to the interest the writer took in
such things, in inventing a romance, and how could he make it fit
exactly with the statements of the Tibetan pedlar at the other end of
the country? Uneducated persons are no doubt liable to deceive
themselves in many matters, but these statements dealt only with such
disunited facts as fell within the range of the narrator's eyes and
ears, and had nothing to do with his judgment or opinion. Thus, when
the pedlar's statement is coupled with that of the Dehradun Brahmachari,
there is, indeed, no room left for any doubt as to the truthfulness of
either. It may here be mentioned that the statement of the Brahmachari
was not the result of a series of leading questions, but formed part of
the account he voluntarily gave of his travels during the year, and that
he is almost entirely ignorant of the English language, and had, to the
best of my knowledge, information and belief, never even so much as
heard of the name of Theosophy. Now, if any one refuses to accept the
mutually corroborative but independent testimonies of the Tibetan pedlar
of Darjiling and the Brahmachari of Dehradun on the ground that they
support the genuineness of facts not ordinarily falling within the
domain of one's experience, all I can say is that it is the very miracle
of folly. It is, on the other hand, most unshakably established upon
the evidence of several of his Chelas, that the Mahatma Koothoomi is a
living person like any of us, and that moreover he was seen by two
persons on two different occasions. This will, it is to be hoped,
settle for ever the doubts of those who believe in the genuineness of
occult phenomena, but put them down to the agency of "spirits." Mark
one circumstance. It may be argued that during the pedlar's stay at
Darjiling, Madame Blavatsky was also there, and, who knows, she might
have bribed him (!!) into saying what he said. But no such thing can be
urged in the case of the Dehradun Brahmachari. He knew neither the
pedlar nor Madame Blavatsky, had never heard of Colonel Olcott, having
just returned from his prolonged journey, and had no idea that I was a
Fellow of the Society. His testimony was entirely voluntary. Some
others, who admit that Mahatmas exist, but that there is no proof of
their connection with the Theosophical Society, will be pleased to see
that there is no a priori impossibility in those great souls taking an
interest in such a benevolent Society as ours. Consequently it is a
gratuitous insult to a number of self-sacrificing men and women to
reject their testimony without a fair hearing.
I purposely leave aside all proofs which are already before the public.
Each set of proofs is conclusive in itself, and the cumulative effect of
all is simply irresistible.
--Mohini M. Chatterji