{Received London, mid-January 1884.}
Adyar.
My dear Mr. Sinnett,
I am very sick, suffering agony, and nearly killed two days ago with injected morphia. This accounts for my silence. It is with the greatest pain that I can write; ailing for the last month and more, and walking during Anniversary on crutches. Yesterday received a three yard long letter from Mrs. K. and her confidential address; first fruit of the kindness of K.H.! Well this is the Chohan's Karma. However it may be, from Subba Row down to Brown everyone is inexpressibly shocked here with this most impertinent, insolent pamphlet or criticism of Maitland. She demands of K.H. to make her "the Apostle in Europe of Eastern and Western Esoteric Philosophy"!!!!! She has divined she says, the allegory. Everything including Atlantis (!) is an allegory. I am too sick to bother myself with her flapdoodle interpretations. But she can hardly be an infallible Seer, or else Maitland would not have attributed to "Mad. Blavatsky" a sentence written by the Tiravellum Mahatma in Reply No. 2 of October page 3, I have his MSS. I must be deuced clever to have written the "Replies" in the Theosophist, I do not understand ten lines in that occult and scientific jibberish. If it is true — as she complains, that you insist having given in Esoteric Buddhism the whole Esoteric doctrine (which I do not believe) and that you would "force the London Theosophists to accept it au pied de la lettre" then of course she has a semblance of right in what she says. But I do not believe you ever did such a thing. You must know that instead of Esoteric Doctrine you have but half-a-dozen of stray pages, picked at random out of the six-and-thirty volumes of the secret books of Khiuti; that there are gaps between every tenet none of which is complete; and you have been told by the Mahatma in letters you showed us and told by me many times that you could not expect to be given that which pertains only to initiation. No Lay chela can get it nor can one understand the thing properly. Even about Devachan, something you have been explained more thoroughly than anything else, you have very vague ideas about it, I see. As "Fragments" of Occult Science you have succeeded admirably and can claim to have given out to the world crumbs of genuine occult doctrines. As a whole — Esoteric Buddhism cannot of course be considered such, nor have you ever claimed it as far as I know to be the alpha and the omega of our Doctrine. All this is very sad and perplexing. And now the outcome of it is, that I, crippled down and half dead, am to sit up nights again and rewrite the whole of Isis Unveiled, calling it The Secret Doctrine and making three if not four volumes out of the original two, Subba Row helping me and writing most of the commentaries and explanations. Why Mahatma K.H. should have inflicted upon your Society such a plaster as Mrs. K. seems to be, a haughty, imperious, vain and self-opinionated creature, a bag of Western conceit — "God" knows, I do not. My belief is that the Chohan has interfered suddenly as he often does. And now there will be a fine row. But what of the following? On December 7th, Mahatma K.H. sent a letter from Sanangerri to his chelas Damodar and Dharani Dhar Kauthumi with a copy of some passages from his big letter to you. In it He said — that he had notified you and those followers of his who had remained faithful to him that unless the L.L. Society should create a secret section with yourself at the head, while Mrs. K. would be the fair and glittering sign-board of the "Lodge" representing Esoteric Christianity or any other flapdoodle — they (the Mahatmas) would have nothing to do any more with the English Fellows. All Branches to be notified of the same and no chelas to write letters to her or the Lodge without the sanction of the Masters. My boss nailed me down very kindly in my effusion No. 2 to her, again, and entrusted Subba Row with the work — a humiliation to which I am becoming accustomed. Subba Row is mad and feels ferocious. He is preparing a pamphlet for private circulation addressed to the Fellows of the London Lodge and the esoteric students of all others. It will be sent to you next week. Pralaya, pralaya! a regular obscuration of the Secret Doctrine. As to the final conclusion of Maitland's onslaught, delivered to you on Dec. 16th it is the faithful echo that has reached him from the Simla heights, the secret voice of Djoota-Sing — as it was prophesied to you that he should do, his gushing and sweet letters to me now — notwithstanding. Consummatum est.
On February 17th Olcott will probably sail for England on various business, and Mahatma K.H. sends his chela, under the guise of Mohini Mohun Chatterjee, to explain to the London Theosophists of the Secret Section — every or nearly every mooted point and to defend you and your assumptions. You better show Mohini all the Master's letters of a non-private character — saith the Lord, my Boss — so that by knowing all the subjects upon which he wrote to you he might defend your position the more effectually — which you yourself cannot do, not being a regular chela. Do not make the mistake, my dear boss, of taking the Mohini you knew for the Mohini who will come. There is more than one Maya in this world of which neither you nor your friends and critic Maitland is cognisant. The ambassador will be invested with an inner as well as with an outer clothing. Dixit.
As for me let me die in peace among my household gods. I have become too old, too sick and broken down to be of any use. I am dying by inches in my harness. Adieu and my love to Mrs. Sinnett.
Yours ever, here and — there,
H. P. Blavatsky.
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