Ghosts I Have Seen Part 5

I asked her to explain her new religion, and she answered that hers was the very oldest extant, and formed the belief of five hundred million souls. I inquired how it was that this stupendous fact had not yet touched Christendom, and her reply was that there had never been any interference with Christian thought. Though judge of all, Christianity had been judged by none. The rise of j.a.pan was a factor of immense potency, and in time would open out a new era in the comprehension of East by West. Then the meaning would flash upon the churches of the words, "Neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem."

I explained to her my difficulties, which she proceeded to solve by expounding the doctrines of reincarnation and Karma. They jumped instantly to my reason. I there and then found the Just G.o.d, of whom I had been in search. From that day to this I have never had reason to swerve from those beliefs. The older I grow, the more experience I gather, the more I read, the more confirmed do I become in the belief that such provide the only rational explanation of this life, the only natural hope in the world to come.

I have offered those beliefs to very many people whom I discovered to be on the same quest as I had been. I have never once had them rejected by any serious truth-seeker, and I have seen them pa.s.sed on and on by these people to others, forming enormous ramifications which became lost to view in the pa.s.sage of time and their own magnitude.

In these early days there was little literature available for the student, but the circle of clever brains which rapidly surrounded Blavatsky set to work with a will under her guidance, and now, after the lapse of thirty years, there is an enormous literature always commanding a wide sale, and the little circle that gathered round "the old lady"

has swollen into very many thousands.

What was the secret of Helena Petrovski Blavatsky's instant success? I have no doubt that it lay in her power to give to the West the Eastern answers to those problems which the Church has lost.

In her way Blavatsky was a true missioner. "Go forth on your journey for the weal and the welfare of all people, out of compa.s.sion for the world and the welfare of angels and mortals," was the command given by the Lord Buddha to his disciples, and Christ, following the universal ideal, five hundred years later, commanded, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel of the whole Creation."

I began to study those, to me, new doctrines at once, and I also took up their occult side, no light task, but one of absorbing interest. Not till then did I fully realize that in no one human life could that long, long path be trodden, in no new-born soul could be developed those divine possibilities of which I could catch but a fleeting illusive vision.

"Thou canst not travel in the Path before thou hast become the Path itself." Did not the Christ warn his followers that the Path must be trodden more or less alone? "Forsake all and follow Me." So, also in the Bhagavad Gita it is written: "Abandoning all duties come unto me alone for shelter. Sorrow not, I will liberate thee from thy sins."

"The secret doctrine" written by Blavatsky proved a mine of wealth, and I read the volumes through seven times in seven different keys. The works of A. P. Sinnett, text books then, and now brought up to date by expanding knowledge, were extremely helpful. For advanced students "The Growth of the Soul" is unsurpa.s.sed. A very short time elapsed before mental food was supplied for practically every branch of mysticism and occult development, and students flocked into headquarters from all parts of the world.

It is interesting to remember the two adjoining villas in Avenue Road, St. John's Wood, where we used to congregate to study, and hear lectures thirty years ago, and to look now on the stately buildings in Tavistock Square. They are designed by the great architect Lutyens, whose wife, Lady Emily, is an ardent theosophist. I am glad that I have lived to see these doctrines take firm root in the West, and grow so amazingly that in all cities they are now held by vast numbers, and even in cases where they have not been finally adopted they are acknowledged to be the only logical conclusion for those who desire to possess a rational belief. I am glad that I can look back with love and profound grat.i.tude to Helena P. Blavatsky, the woman who grafted on the West the wisdom of the ages.

I have no doubt that she is enabled to see the mighty structure raised on her small beginnings, and doubtless she has met on "the other side"

men and women whose debt to her is equally as great as mine.

Blavatsky began by exploding the theory that men are born equal. If this one life were all, then this great error ought, in common justice, to be absolute truth, and every man should possess common rights in the community, and one man ought to be as good as another. If every soul born to-day is a fresh creation, who will in the course of time pa.s.s away from this life for ever, then why is it that one is only fitted to obey, whilst another is eminently fitted to rule? One is born with a tendency to vice and crime, another to virtue and honesty. One is born a genius, another is born to idiocy. How, she asked, could a firm social foundation ever be built up on this utter disregard of nature? How treat, as having right to equal power, the wise and the ignorant, the criminal and the saint? Yet, if man be born but once it would be very unjust to build on any other foundation.

Re-incarnation implies the evolution of the soul, and it makes the equality of man a delusion. In evolution time plays the greatest part, and through evolution humanity is climbing. "Souls while eternal in their essence are of different ages in their individuality."

Many of us must know people who though quite old in years are children in mind. Men and women who having arrived at three score years and ten are still utterly childish and inconsequent. They are young souls who have had the experiences of very few earth lives. Again, we all know children who seem born abnormally old. Infant prodigies, musicians, calculators, painters who have brought over their genius from a former life.

I remember once meeting with a curious experience, which is not very easy to describe. It was an experience more of feeling than of seeing.

I was standing in Milan Cathedral. In front of me and behind was gathered a crowd of peasants. High Ma.s.s was being celebrated, and all the seats were occupied.

After a few moments I began to feel a curious sensation of being intently watched. Some penetrating influence was probing me through and through, with a quiet but intensely powerful directness. I had the sensation that my soul was being stripped bare. I looked round, but could see nothing to account for my sensation. Every one seemed intent on their devotions. I began to wonder if some malicious old peasant was throwing over me the spell of the evil eye, but again my feelings were not conscious of an evil intent; it was more an absorbed speculation directed towards me. Some one was probing my soul, speculating on my spiritual worth or worthlessness, with an intensely earnest yet cold calculation.

Just in front of me stood a peasant woman of the poorest cla.s.s. Her back was towards me, and over her shoulder hung a baby of not more than a year old. Suddenly I met the eyes of the child full. Then I knew. As a psychological experience it was most interesting, but it sent a little thrill of creepiness through me.

The baby did not withdraw its gaze, but continued leisurely to look me through and through. The eyes were large and gray, the expression that of a contemplative savant, with a faint dash of irony in their glance. I do not pretend to be anything but what is now called "psychic," but I am certain that those windows of the soul, with that age-long experience flooding out of them, would have arrested the most material person. My husband, who is accustomed to my "flights of imagination," was very much struck by that look of maturity, that suggestion of aeonic knowledge.

Blavatsky taught me to look on man as an evolving ent.i.ty, in whose life career births and deaths are recurring incidents. Birth and death begin and end only a single chapter in the book of life. She taught me that we cannot evade inexorable destiny. I made my present in my past. To-day I am making my future. In proportion as I outwear my past, and change my present abysmal ignorance into knowledge, so shall I become free.

I have often heard Blavatsky called a charlatan, and I am bound to say that her impish behavior often gave grounds for this description. She was foolishly intolerant of the many smart West End ladies who arrived in flocks, demanding to see spooks, masters, elementals, anything, in fact, in the way of phenomena.

Madame Blavatsky was a born conjuror. Her wonderful fingers were made for jugglers' tricks, and I have seen her often use them for that purpose. I well remember my amazement upon the first occasion on which she exhibited her occult powers, spurious and genuine.

I was sitting alone with her one afternoon, when the cards of Jessica, Lady Sykes, the late d.u.c.h.ess of Montrose and the Honorable Mrs. S.---- (still living) were brought in to her. She said she would receive the ladies at once, and they were ushered in. They explained that they had heard of her new religion, and her marvelous occult powers. They hoped she would afford them a little exhibition of what she could do.

Madame Blavatsky had not moved out of her chair. She was suavity itself, and whilst conversing she rolled cigarettes for her visitors and invited them to smoke. She concluded that they were not particularly interested in the old faith which the young West called new; what they really were keen about was phenomena.

That was so, responded the ladies, and the burly d.u.c.h.ess inquired if Madame ever gave racing tips, or lucky numbers for Monte Carlo?

Madame disclaimed having any such knowledge, but she was willing to afford them a few moments' amus.e.m.e.nt. Would one of the ladies suggest something she would like done?

Lady Sykes produced a pack of cards from her pocket, and held them out to Madame Blavatsky, who shook her head.

"First remove the marked cards," she said.

Lady Sykes laughed and replied, "Which are they?"

Madame Blavatsky told her, without a second's hesitation. This charmed the ladies. It seemed a good beginning.

"Make that basket of tobacco jump about," suggested one of them.

The next moment the basket had vanished. I don't know where it went, I only know it disappeared by trickery, that the ladies looked for it everywhere, even under Madame Blavatsky's ample skirts, and that suddenly it reappeared upon its usual table. A little more jugglery followed and some psychometry, which was excellent, then the ladies departed, apparently well satisfied with the entertainment.

When I was once more alone with Madame Blavatsky, she turned to me with a wry smile and said, "Would you have me throw pearls before swine?"

I asked her if all she had done was pure trickery.

"Not all, but most of it," she unblus.h.i.+ngly replied, "but now I will give you something lovely and real."

For a moment or two she was silent, covering her eyes with her hand, then a sound caught my ear. I can only describe what I heard as fairy music, exquisitely dainty and original. It seemed to proceed from somewhere just between the floor and the ceiling, and it moved about to different corners of the room. There was a crystal innocence in the music, which suggested the dance of joyous children at play.

"Now I will give you the music of life," said Madame Blavatsky.

For a moment or two there fell a trance-like silence. The twilight was creeping into the room, and seemed to bring with it a tingling expectancy. Then it seemed to me that something entered from without, and brought with it utterly new conditions, something incredible, unimagined and beyond the bounds of reason.

Some one was singing, a distant melody was creeping nearer, yet I was aware it had never been distant, it was only becoming louder.

I suddenly felt afraid of myself. The air about me was ringing with vibrations of weird, unearthly music, seemingly as much around me as it was above and behind me. It had no whereabouts, it was unlocatable. As I listened my whole body quivered with wild elation, and the sensation of the unforeseen.

There was rhythm in the music, yet it was unlike anything I had ever heard before. It sounded like a Pastorale, and it held a call to which my whole being wildly responded.

Who was the player, and what was his instrument? He might have been a flautist, and he played with a catching lilt, a luxurious abandon that was an incarnation of Nature. It caught me suddenly away to green Sicilian hills, where the pipes of unseen players echo down the mountain sides, as the pipes of Pan once echoed through the rugged gorges and purple vales of h.e.l.las and Thrace.

Alluring though the music was, and replete with the hot fever of life, it carried with it a thrill of dread. Its sweetness was cloying, its tenderness was sensuous. A balmy scent crept through the room, of wild thyme, of herbs, of asphodel and the muscadine of the wine press. It enwrapt me like an odorous vapor.

The sounds began to take shape, and gradually mold themselves into words. I knew I was being courted with subtlety, and urged to fly out of my house of life and join the Saturnalia Regna. The player was speaking a language which I understood, as I had understood no tongue before. It was my true native tongue that spoke in the wild ringing lilt, and I could not but give ear to its enchantments and the ecstasy of its joy.

My soul seemed to strain at the leash. Should I let go? Like a powerful opiate the allurement enfolded me, yet from out its thrall a small insistent voice whispered "Caution! Where will you be led: supposing you yield your will, would it ever be yours again?"

Now my brain was seized with a sense of panic and weakness. The music suddenly seemed replete with gay sinfulness and insolent conquest. It spoke the secrets which the nature myth so often murmurs to those who live amid great silences, of those dread mysteries of the spirit which yet invest it with such glory and wonderment.

With a violent reaction of fear I rose suddenly, and as I did so the whole scene was swept from out the range of my senses. I was back once more in Blavatsky's room with the creeping twilight and the far off hoa.r.s.e roar of London stealing in at the open window. I glanced at Madame Blavatsky. She had sunk down in her chair, and she lay huddled up in deep trance. She had floated out with the music into a sea of earthly oblivion. Between her fingers she held a small Russian cross.

I knew that she had thrust me back to the world which still claimed me, and I went quietly out of the house into the streets of London.

On another occasion when I was alone with Madame Blavatsky she suddenly broke off our conversation by lapsing into another language, which I supposed to be Hindustanee. She appeared to be addressing some one else, and on looking over my shoulder I saw we were no longer alone. A man stood in the middle of the room. I was sure he had not entered by the door, window or chimney, and as I looked at him in some astonishment, he salaamed to Madame Blavatsky, and replied to her in the same language in which she had addressed him.