Theosophical Society and the Mahatma letters

by Patrick Marsolek (2/2103)

The Sanskrit word “mahatma” means great soul. This term has been applied to recent historical figures such as Mohandas Ghandi, due to his public work and apparent spiritual development. Such great souls have been part of the founding of many of the worlds wisdom and spiritual traditions. In the 1880’s, the two mahatmas Morya and Koot Hoomi are supposed to have communicated a whole body of esoteric knowledge to the early founders of the Theosophical society through a large collection of “transmitted” letters. There has been much debate about the origin of the Mahatma Letters and they remain an enigmatic mystery surrounding the origins of the Theosophical movement. Over a thousand pages of these letters reside today in the British museum.

The Theosophical society was formed in 1875 to advance the spiritual principles of Theosophy, which is an esoteric philosophy seeking direct knowledge of the mysteries of being, nature and spirituality. The founders of this organization, Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott, and William Judge founded the organization to discover the purpose and origin of the universe through direct apprehension, and as an alternative to the trend of materialistic science. Their quite progressive intentions in forming the society were to cultivate a universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color that would study religion, philosophy and science and investigate unexplained laws of nature and unexpressed powers in man. Theosophy is active today, though it has morphed into several different groups and inspired many other modern spiritual movements.

The theosophists believe mahatmas are high-ranking students in life’s school. They are like us, but more evolved and have attained direct knowledge of and mastery over the laws of the universe. They are not Gods, but mortals who have evolved into an awareness of their spiritual potential and other planes of being. Moved by compassion for the whole human race they have chosen to be in touch with mankind in order to further the progress of humanity. It should be said that these mahatmas are not the same as what some later schools referred to as “ascended masters”. Literally, mahatmas are not ascended, have not left their bodies. The mahatmas who communicated with the early Theosophists were in human form and interested in communicating their knowledge to the world. (image)

Madam Blavatsky said she first met the mahatmas Morya and Koot Hoomi, also known as Kuthumi or K.H., during her travels throughout asia in the mid 1800’s seeking wisdom and ancient knowledge. In a letter to a friend, Blavatsky wrote: “Now Morya lives generally with Koot Hoomi who has his house in the direction of the Kara Korum Mountains, beyond Ladak, which is in Little Tibet and belongs now to Kashmir. It is a large wooden building in the Chinese fashion pagoda-like, between a lake and a beautiful mountain.” Blavatsky felt she had known Morya since she was a little girl and had been receiving teachings from him by psychic means her whole life. When she met him in the flesh for the first time she fell into an ecstatic rapture.

Though skeptics of the mahatmas and their letters, claim these masters never even existed, there were others who reported physical meetings with them. Other people in the theosophical society such as Annie Besant, Henry Olcott, and Franz Hartmann claim to have encountered them, as well as other individuals including as Blavatsky’s mother. The challenge to the skeptics is that many people only saw the mahatmas in an ‘astral’ form, in dreams, or perceived their presence in more subtle ways, which couldn’t be replicated or substantiated.

Alfred Percey Sinnett became interested in spiritualism in the late 1870’s and wanted to meet Blavatsky, due to her mediumistic and psychic abilities. At the time Blavatsky was living in Madras, in Southern india. In 1880, Sinnett and his wife invited Blavatsky to come visit them at their summer-home in Simla, in Northern India. Sinnett wrote that many wonderful phenomena took place at the time, which Mr. Sinnett described in his book The Occult World. Having heard of Blavatsky’s relations with the mahatmas, Sinnett asked her if she would deliver a letter to the Mahatmas for him. He wrote, “I hardly thought this was probable, as I knew how very unapproachable the Brothers generally are; but as she said that at any rate she would try, I wrote a letter, addressing it ‘to the Unknown Brother,’ and gave it to her to see if any result would ensue.” In the letter, he asked for the Brother to give him that day’s copy of the london paper, as proof of his psychic abilities.

He had to wait two days until Blavatsky gave him the letter in reply. She said that it took time to find someone interested in answering, and Koot Hoomi responded. His first response stated, “Precisely because the test of the London Newspaper would close the mouths of the skeptics – it is unthinkable”, because of certain consequences. His letter goes into a deeper explanation of why he was unable to answer Sinnett’s request. This was the beginning of a long conversation between Sinnett and the two mahatmas, Koot Hoomi and Morya. In these letters, the fundamentals of the theosophical beliefs and views were lucidly and clearly expressed as well as their day-to-day conversations.

To believers, the content of these letters is the most important part, as they reveal an important body of knowledge that is still at the core of the Theosophical beliefs. But the way in which this communication occurred is also quite remarkable. Replies from the brothers came in the form of long letters which literally dropped into Sinnett’s possession. Sinnett took advantage of as many opportunities as he could to assure himself that Blavatsky was not herself writing the letters. Frequently replies came, containing specific reference to detailed matters in his own letters, or they came when she had not been out of his sight during the interim between the dispatch and the return. The letters also came and went when Blavatsky was hundreds of miles away. The answers would often be found in his locked desk drawer, in a coat pocket, under a pillow, or even inside his own letter, the seal of which had not been broken.

In The Occult World Sinnett writes, “The following morning, after breakfast, I was sitting talking with Madame Blavatsky in the room that had been allotted to me. We were sitting at different sides of a large square table in the middle of the room, and the full daylight was shining. There was no one else in the room. Suddenly, down upon the table before me, but to my right hand, madame Blavatsky being to my left, there fell a thick letter. It fell “out of nothing” so to speak; it was materialized, or reintegrated in the air before my eyes.” In another example he described how he was in a conversation with Blavatsky, at her desk. As they were talking, words appeared on a blank sheet of paper which lay before her, which was a reply their conversation.

As this phenomena continued, Madame Blavatsky and mahatmas explained the method by which the letters were written. (image) Theoretically, they were not written, but “precipitated” through a kind of “telegraphy”. One of the siddhis, or magical powers, a spiritual adept develops is the ability to impress upon a sheet of paper the images he holds vividly before his mind. These images could be a photograph, an image, words or sentences. Apparently this telegraphy also included the compositional qualities of the materials, such as ink or pencil, so that the finished product has the qualities of a normal, physical document. This process physically deposits ink or graphite onto a physical sheet of paper, and, as was described above, can also materialize the paper as well.  Each of the mahatmas apparently had their own style of writing and preferred choice of ink. Koot Hoomi, we are told, always used blue ink or blue pencil. Morya’s letters usually came in red.

To add to the complexity, Blavatksy also related that the mahatmas frequently used other students or chelas to do the actual precipitation of the letters. The mahatma simply created a vivid mental image of the letter he wanted written, in his own handwriting, which he would send to one of his students. The student caught the image and finished the process, in what some have described as a kind of psychic fax process. If the receptivity was good, the student would get the message clearly from the mahatma’s mind and the resulting production would be exactly the mahatma’s own words and handwriting. If receptivity on the part of the student was less perfect, the letter would be influenced by the student’s mental idiosyncrasies, ways of phrasing and even writing technique. This apparently explained some of the anomalies and mistakes that did show up in some of the letters, such as the variations of Koot Hoomi’s signature. Some of the students had difficulty learning the system.

As a short side note, the mahatmas didn’t just write letters to A.P. Sinnett. Henry Olcott, Blavatsky, and a few others also received letters. After Blavatsky’s death, Annie Besant took over the Theosophical society and she received letters as well. After that, many others have also claimed to have received similar transmissions from the mahatmas and other ascended masters. Also, it is thought that Blavatsky and Damodar K. Mavalankar, another member of the Indian Theosophical society, my have received and precipitated some of the letters from the masters, since they were the mahatmas students. This would partially explain the letters appearing in front of Blavatsky during her conversation with Sinnett.

In 1883, Sinnett published the book, The Occult World, which was based on these letters with the mahatmas. In the book, he outlines the philosophy and world view of the mahatmas as well as describing the form of his communication with them. This publication drew a lot of worldwide attention, both praise and skepticism. A skeptically minded person today would easily find issue with the whole nature of these letters. Not only could one easily see the danger for error in the transmission, one might also question if the mahatmas might just be a personality of the individual doing the writing. The amazing phenomena of how the letters appeared would have to be studied to be understood and the mahatmas would have to be met, neither of which occurred.

The book and the popularity of the Theosophists attracted the interest of the recently founded, Society for Psychical Research (SPR). This organization was created to understand and research psychic and paranormal phenomena and examine this phenomena in a scientific and unbiased way. Richard Hodgson was send by SPR to determine if the mode of appearance attributed to the Mahatma Letters was a genuine psychical phenomena. After interviewing witnesses and the physical places where some of the phenomena had been reported, Hodgson wrote a 200 page report which was highly critical of Blavatsky and the letters.  His most famous quote from the report claimed that Blavatsky, “was neither the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor… a mere vulgar adventuress; we think she has achieved title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious and interesting impostors in history.”

Needless to say, this report, and its support by the SPR seriously damaged the reputation of Blavatsky and the Theosophical society from that time onward. In response, Blavatsky wrote, “That Mr. Hodgson's elaborate but misdirected inquiries, his affected precision, which spends infinite patience over trifles and is blind to facts of importance, his contradictory reasoning and his manifold incapacity to deal with such problems as those he endeavored to solve, will be exposed by other writers in due course — I make no doubt.”

Over the years, many in the Theosophical society have defended Blavatsky and the others involved while many also have been more critical. Though the letters continued to be valued for the material they contain, their creation and authenticity is still questioned. Handwriting studies have also been done, comparing the writing in the Mahatma letters to Blavatskys, though the results have been inconclusive. To many, the authors of the letters do come across as real, yet distinct, human beings.

In 1986, a century after Blavatsky’s reply, Vernon Harrison, past president of the Royal Photographic Society, and a professional researcher of disputed documents, studied the Hodgson report in an attempt to verify if they were authentic. He pointed out some of the interesting qualities of the documents, “I draw attention to curious and unexplained features of the K.H. letters, namely the clear, regular striations of some of the writing apparently made with blue pencil, the small amount of ink penetration even when thin “rice” paper was used, the unexplained features of the erasures seemingly made with ink eradicator yet without staining or roughening of the paper, the variability of some (but not all) of the characters and the (at times) grossly exaggerated t-bars. These features suggest that the documents preserved in the British Library may be copies, made by some unknown process, of originals which we do not possess.” It is interesting to note that he’s studying and describing the original letters which were created in the early 1880’s, long before any kind of electronic duplication was possible.

Overall, Harrison described the report as “flawed and untrustworthy” and said, “whereas Hodgson was prepared to use any evidence, however trivial or questionable to implicate HPB (Blavatsky), he ignored all evidence that could be used in her favor. He concluded that there was no evidence that the Mahatma Letters were written by her. After the release of Vernon’s report, the SPR submitted a press release in Great Britain, Canada and the USA, retracting the Hodgson report saying, “Madame Blavatsky, cofounder of the Theosophical Society, was unjustly condemned.”

Today the debate about their authenticity continues, with writers such as K. Paul Johnson continuing to be very critical of Blavastky and her involvement. What makes this case interesting is that the documents are still available to be studied. They are still in the British Museum and you can view all the letters yourself online at the Theosophical Society Wiki: http://www.tswiki.net/

The letters portray the everyday communication from the mahatmas and are interesting reading. They also described some aspects of our world that were well ahead of the science of the late 1800’s. For example, a hundred years ago it was believed that the universe was made up of ultimate, indivisible particles.  The mahatmas on the other hand said that matter was composed entirely of energy and consciousness and was continually evolving. Today, modern physics is more supportive of this view.

The mahatmas described Jupiter as being composed of metallic substances which were expanding and transforming themselves into aeriform fluids, becoming atmosphere. This concept couldn’t be confirmed until 1973, when the Pioneer spacecraft passed by Jupiter and collected data on the composition of its atmosphere. Jupiter is now thought to be composed of mainly hydrogen and helium gasses surrounding a large inner sphere of “liquid metallic hydrogen”.

Queried by Sinnett whether magnetic conditions and the sun affect earth's weather, Koot Hoomi referred to the “meteoric continent above our heads”. The letter says, “High above our earth's surface the air is impregnated and space filled with magnetic, or meteoric, dust, which does not even belong to our solar system. . . . [there are] strong magnetic poles above the surface of the earth . . . and one of these poles revolves around the north pole in a periodical cycle of several hundred years.” The words of Koot Hoomi strongly suggest the Van Allen radiation belts. Or, more accurately, the cause of those belts: enormous relatively permanent strata of magnetized meteoric matter or dust that function as traps for radiation from the sun and outer space.

The overall message in the letters is still consistent with Theosophy today, encouraging open-minded inquiry into world religions, philosophy, science, while respecting the unity of all life and the potential for directly experiencing self-awareness and understanding. Though the mahatmas emphasize a scientific approach, spiritual science is more important that physical science. They recommend practices devoted to the science of metaphysical energy and to the development of faculties in man, not instruments outside him, which will yield him actual experimental knowledge of the subtle powers in nature. The enigma of the letters remains as a testament to the accomplishments of the mahatmas and their adepts and also to the significance of the Theosophical society.

Patrick Marsolek is a writer, dancer, facilitator, clinical hypnotherapist and the director of Inner Workings Resources. He leads groups and teaches classes in extended human capacities, consciousness exploration, personal development, and  compassionate communication. He offers his services to businesses, individuals and families and in self-empowerment seminars. He is the author of Transform Yourself: A Self-hypnosis manual and A Joyful Intuition. See www.PatrickMarsolek.com for more information.