The Chosen “Vessels of Election”

A friendly correspondent “8111,” has sent to us a severe rebuke embodied in a long letter. Received after the 20th of last month, it could not appear in our April number. Better late than never. We give it now the respectful and serious notice it deserves.

It is not very often that an editor is found ready to publish remonstrances whether to his personal address or that of the policy pursued by his publication. The general reader being little concerned with, and still less interested in, individual opinions about the conductors of magazines and papers he subscribes to, the first duty of an editor before the public is to remain entirely impersonal. Thus, when a correspondent takes exception to this or that article or editorial, unless his objections have a direct bearing upon some topic of interest to the public generally, the opening of polemics on that account has no raison d’etre. Offering on the whole, we think, such a feature of general interest—at any rate in India—we give room to, and answer willingly, “8111’s” protest. Only our friend must pardon us if instead of publishing his long letter in unbroken form we prefer to give it, so to say, piecemeal, quoting from it by fragments and as occasion requires. This is done for the following good reasons:—Firstly, for the convenience of answering his objections as they come; secondly, because to give all would be tedious to the reader—much in his protest being addressed rather to the individual called Madame Blavatsky and the Founder of the Theosophical Society than the editor of the Theosophist; and thirdly, because, as already shown, the above-named three characters, though blended in one and the same personage, have to keep themselves entirely distinct from each other—the personal feelings of the “Founder,” for instance, having no right to encroach upon the duties of the impersonal editor. With these few preliminary remarks we proceed to quote the first lines from “8111’s” letter.

“In the two last numbers of the Theosophist you have taken poor Babu Keshub Chunder Sen severely to task, apparently for no other reason than that he has the misfortune to hold different religious opinions from your own.”

Is our critic in a position to find throughout the whole series of the four volumes of the Theosophist one single passage in which there is one word said against any other prominent member or teacher either of the “Adi” or even the “Sadharan Brahmo Samaj;” or any other mystic, whether Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan or Spiritualist ridiculed and laughed at, although each and every one of the said personages holds opinions quite different from our own? If not, then his opening remark—he must pardon us—is as illogical as it is uncalled for. It would have been only fair in the absence of such proof that our critic should have sought for a more likely, if not a more dignified reason for our taking “so severely to task” the minister of the New Dispensation.

And now, after quoting a few more sentences from “8111’s” letter, we will, with his permission, show him the true reason why we think it our duty to criticize the Calcutta “Seer.”

“That narrow-minded sectarians, true to the bigotry of their creed, should sneer at and revile him (Keshub C. Sen) is not to be wondered at; but it cannot fail to pain your friends and admirers to find you descending from the lofty platform on which you have taken your stand, to swell the insensate cry against the distinguished Brahmo. His religious views may be peculiar, wild, if you like, and may fail to find universal acceptance; but the thorough earnestness and sincerity which pervade his acts and utterances are beyond question and cannot but enlist for him and for the cause he has espoused the appreciative sympathy of all true lovers of humanity. Let others laugh, if they will, at his so-called extravagances; it ill-becomes you (pardon me) to join the chorus, holding as you do, on things beyond mortal ken views which, to the large world outside the influence of your teachings, appear equally extravagant and fanciful.¹

The “lofty platform” is very flattering, though our modesty urges us to regard it as a mirage developed within the limitless area of our kind “friends and admirers’” fancy. But, supposing it had any independent existence of its own, we would far rather descend from and abandon it forever, than accept the passive role of a dumb old idol, alike indifferent to the happiness as to the misery and woes of the surrounding world. We decline the exalted position if we have to secure it at the price of our freedom of thought and speech. Besides, not only the “large world outside,” but even those within the influence of our “teachings” (though we deny having ever assumed personally the duties of a teacher) are cordially welcome to their own opinions, being as much at liberty to express them as anyone else. Those who regard our views as “extravagant and fanciful” need lose no time over them. The Theosophical Society “representing no religious creed, being entirely unsectarian and including professors of all faiths,” there is a vast choice in it for one who would learn something new besides the merely personal fancies of one of its founders. But, since the present question involves but the responsibility of the editor of this magazine, perhaps, the “friends and admirers” may derive some consolation in their “pain” upon being assured that the said editor is only doing a duty in exposing and showing in its true light one of the most coolly impudent and absurd claims of this age—that of proclaiming oneself, upon one’s own authority, and with no better warrant than blind faith—the chosen vessel of election, the direct mouthpiece of God! Our magazine was started with the distinct and well-defined policy as expressed in the Rules of the Society: to uphold and advocate only facts and Truth and nothing but the Truth whencesoever and from whomsoever it may come. Its motto is “There is no Religion higher than Truth;” and it “appeals for support to all who truly love their fellow men and desire the eradication of those hateful barriers created by creed, etc.;” and, as no officer of the society, nor any member, has the right to preach “his own sectarian views and beliefs,” so no officer or member has the right to ignore and pass over in silence such monstrous outbursts of sectarian fanaticism as the New Year’s Proclamation, by the self-assumed “Apostle of God,” Babu K. C. Sen, the more so since the latter is one of the declared enemies of the T.S. Nor is “8111’s” parallel between Keshub C. Sen’s and our own views, a happy one. The “Minister” would force his new sectarian doctrines every one of which is evolved out of his own feverish brain—as a direct revelation and a command to him from God; while our expositions belong to a doctrine as old as the world. They are simply the rendering in a more clear and comprehensible language of the tenets of the esoteric science as once universally taught and practised; and though we do claim to receive them from adepts and initiates, yet, as we call neither the teaching, nor the Teachers absolutely infallible—the comparison falls to the ground. Our “views” have to stand or fall upon their own merit, since we claim neither divine revelation nor infallibility, and that no one of us regards his MASTER as an Almighty God. The following tirade therefore, though very impressive, entirely lacks logic—we regret to say:

“You who advocate the wonders of occultism, and the incredibly large powers which adeptship confers; you who believe in the temporary disenthralment of the spirit from its fleshly prison, and in the possibility of its soaring aloft into unknown regions to drink of the forbidden knowledge of life and death at fountains inaccessible but to the favoured few; you who believe in the existence of Mahatmas, who, to credit all that is said of them, are little short of Gods in human form; it is open to you to doubt that this man, so good and great, so eternally wedded to virtue, and so avowed an enemy to vice, has really seen and heard the sights and sounds, which he publishes to the world in such evident good faith?”

Now it so happens that we do not in the least doubt that the Babu “really sees and hears the sights and sounds,” nor that he publishes them in “good faith.” “The way to hell is paved with good intentions,” says a very brutal, nevertheless a very just proverb. Every medium, nay every delirious patient, really sees and hears what no one else near him does, and sees and hears it in “good faith.” But this is no reason why the world should be expected to receive the said sights and sounds as coming from God; for in such case it would have to regard every lunatic hallucination as a divine revelation; or that we should be bound to preserve a solemn silence upon the alleged “revelations” and utter no criticism upon them under the penalty of being kicked off our “lofty platform.” They too have to stand or fall upon their own merits, and it is this merit that we claim the right to criticize as freely as are our own views. Let it be well understood that we neither quarrel with the personal religious views of the Babu nor doubt their “earnestness.” The “distinguished Brahmo”—who by the way is no more a Brahmo, being denounced and most vehemently repudiated by the Sadharan Brahmos—has as good a right to publish his opinions as we have to publish ours. But he has neither the right nor the commission to denounce the views of all those who disagree with him as “imposture” and “blasphemy against the holy ghost,” and that is precisely what he is doing.

We are asked: “Why not leave the poor persecuted Salvation Army and the gifted Babu Missionary of Calcutta alone?” We answer. Let both leave their aggressive policy and their insulting ways of forcing upon people their respective sectarian views, and we promise never to pronounce their names. But so long as they will do it, so long shall we denounce them. Indeed, to ask us to “leave alone” both Keshub and Tucker, is equivalent to expecting that we shall give up all search for truth and yield our tacit if not expressed consent to the unimpeded propagation of what—at any rate in one of the two cases under consideration—must be hallucination if not direct imposition. Is “8111” prepared to show which of the two, Major Tucker or Keshub, is less “good and great;” and whether, it is the Salvationist or the Dispensationist who, though “eternally wedded to virtue and so avowed an enemy to vice,” bamboozles himself and the public the most? Suffice for us to know that both, claiming to act under the direct divine command of what they proclaim the one and same living God, preach at the same time two diametrically conflicting doctrines, to have the right to denounce one of them, at any rate. Behold, the “distinguished Babu” making the pompous announcement from Calcutta that he, the chosen apostle of God, is commanded by the Almighty to preach to the whole world the truths of the New Dispensation; and Major Tucker proclaiming before the Court and Chief Justice “that he had received the Divine command to preach in the streets and lanes of Bombay, the Gospel.” Who, of these two paragons of virtue is labouring under a fit of religious enthusiasm, can “8111” tell? or shall he defend them both, and say of Major Tucker also, that it is not open to us “to doubt that this man so good and great, etc. . . . has really seen and heard”—God commanding him to parade in masquerade dresses in the streets and lanes of Bombay?

The said accusation being flung at us, “in the name of many of our readers” it is time we should answer them explicitly. Being prepared to face the whole world, and as convinced of the necessity and the undeniably good results of our Mission—a self-imposed one and having nought to do with Divine command—as the Babu and the Salvationist Major are of theirs, we are resolved to meet every charge and answer every accusation. We care little for the opinion of the masses. Determined to follow but one voice—that of our conscience and reason—we will go on searching for truth, and fearlessly analysing and even laughing at everything that claims to be divine truth notwithstanding that it is stamped, for all but the incurably blind, with every sign of falsification. Let the wily Christian missionary who, while never scrupling to insult the gods of the poor, the uneducated, and especially the helpless “heathen” (conveniently forgetting that from the strictly Christian standpoint Babu K. C. Sen is as much of a heathen as any other idolater)—carry him high above the heads of his brethren—the Hindus. Let him, we say, encourage in his Christian lectures and his missionary periodicals the vagaries of the highly intellectual and cultured Babu—simply because those vagaries are so strongly peppered, not with Christianity, but only with the name of Jesus strung on with those of Durga and Chaitanya. Let him do so by all means on the very equivocal principle of Paul as announced in Romans, chap. iii, 3-7,² we shall not follow the pernicious example. We will not serve God (or Truth) and Mammon (the Lie) at the same time. Methinks, had not the “saintly Minister” been allowed once upon a time to interview the Queen Empress, and were he, instead of being the welcome visitor to palaces, but a poor, unknown man, those same padris would not find words of curse enough in their vast encyclopedia of clerical abuse to fling at the presumptuous heathen who would thus mix in his religious parodies the sacred name of their Jesus!

Then why should we, who thirst and hunger but for truth, and claim naught but our birthright, that of every biped—to think for himself, why should we alone be treated as an iconoclast for daring to lay a sacrilegious hand upon those tinselled rags of human workmanship, all called “divine inspiration,” all mutually conflicting, whether they be revealed and declared to the world by a Moses, a St. Augustine, a Luther or a Keshub? Is the latter, in the words of Macaulay defining Southey’s opinion about toleration—the only one “that everybody is to tolerate, and he is to tolerate nobody?” And why should we not be permitted to laugh at the thousands of self-evident errors of the human brain? Most, if not all, of them are the fruits of innate human selfishness, and of that irrepressible ambition to rule over one’s fellow men under the convenient—if self-delusive—mask of religious fervour. Most decidedly we do advocate “the wonders of occultism,” i.e., the search into the hidden laws of nature—advocating them, therefore, as a science, based upon experimental research and observation, not as a knowledge to be acquired through “divine inspiration,” direct revelation from God, or any such supernatural means. Thus, when we are asked:

“And can you find none but words of ridicule for the imposing spectacle of this frail human creature (for the best of us are frail), rapt in silent communion with the Holy of Holies, leading hundreds of his fellow mortals, by the hand, out of the darkness of unbelief which kills, unto the saving light of Faith?”

—we answer most emphatically in the affirmative; and, true to the principles of Theosophy, we certainly find the pretentious claim supremely ridiculous! We do not oppose the saintly procession of the “hundreds of his fellow mortals” being led by the Babu by the hand. If he can really show us that it is into light and not into darkness tenfold intensified that he leads them—we will be the first to join in the procession, but this is precisely what he can never do. Hence, we prefer “unbelief which kills”—(only credulity) to the “saving light of Faith,” which may save agreeably to Methodist gush, but in reality transforms people into idiots. We take nothing on faith, and would feel extremely mortified were any of our Theosophists to accept the smallest phenomenon on second-hand evidence. The “saving light of Faith” is responsible for fifty millions of martyrs put to death during the Middle Ages by the Christian Church. Human nature has hardly changed since the days of the opponents of Christ who asked him for “a sign.” We too want a sign and a proof that the Babu’s “silent communion with the Holy of Holies” is not an effect of the moon, or worse than that—a farce. We invite “8111’s” attention to the Babu’s last device—that of proving the existence of God by conjuring tricks in his dramatic performances: See further Art (The Magic of the New Dispensation). The world teems with prophets, and since we neither tolerate nor believe in them, it is as false as it is unjust to say that we—

“are so intolerant of this great seer, Babu Keshub, as to discredit all he sees beyond the veil, simply because his revelations do not fit in with your (our) notions of things, or perchance because you (we) will have no prophets outside the pale of your (our) society.”

Had “8111” said that we will have no prophets either within or without “the pale” of our society, then would the sentence have a ring of truth in it. Ever impartial, we reject both the old as the modern Balaam, and would as soon believe his ass talking Latin to us. We have no faith in divinely inspired prophets, but if “8111” has, he is welcome to it. We firmly believe in the reality of clairvoyance, prevision and even spiritual illumination, from its highest degree of development—as in adeptship, down to its lowest form—as found in mediumship. But we as firmly discard the idea of infallibility. It is our unalterable conviction that there never was such a thing as an absolutely infallible prophet, not since the beginning of our race, at any rate—not even among the highest adepts, a limitation they are always the first to confess to, and this is one of the reasons why our Society was established. We are all liable to err, all fallible; hence no religion, or sect, least of all one isolated individual, however superior to others, has a right to claim recognition for his doctrines only, and reject all others on the fallacious and arrogant claim that he holds his particular tenets from God. It is the greatest mistake to assert that because we oppose and criticize the New Dispensation—the latest folly, and missionary or dogmatic Christianity—the earlier one, we, therefore, exhibit hostile feelings to Brahmoism and the Christianity of Christ. Brahmoism proper, as taught by Raja Ram Mohun Roy, or the respected and venerable Babu Debendranath Tagore, we have never ridiculed nor deprecated, nor ever will. Our correspondent has but to refer to the earlier portion of the Theosophist to find a corroboration in it of what we say. Nor had we ever one word to say against the pure ethics of the Founder of Christianity, but only against the mutilation by his professed followers of the great truths enunciated by himself. But then between the primitive Brahmoism of Raja Mohun Roy and the New Dispensation on the one hand, and the said ethics of Christ and the political gigantic sham now sailing under the false colours of Christianity the world over on the other, with its persecution of free thought and its Salvation Armies—there is an impassable chasm which we refuse to bridge.

“Do unto others, etc.,” although a Christian truth, may be studied and followed by others than Christians with advantage—“

—we are sententiously told. We regret to find that our critic only preaches but does not practice that saying, at any rate not in the present case. We may leave unnoticed his mistake in calling it “a Christian truth” (since it was pronounced by Confucius 600 B.C. and by others still earlier); but we cannot pass in silence the evident fact that he judges and condemns before having thoroughly tested and examined. Moreover, “8111” does not seem to be aware that our articles against the Calcutta Apostle were the legitimate results of the most unprovoked and unmerited attacks upon ourselves and our Society—in the Liberal and still earlier in the defunct Sunday Mirror. The Babu was never called in our journal “an impostor” or an “adventurer,” not even a “pretender;” and this man, so good and great, so eternally wedded to virtue claiming, perchance, to have received a direct command from God to that effect, has not scrupled in the least to daub us with such and even worse appellations in his Liberal organ. Let it not be understood, however, that our articles were written in any spirit of retaliation and revenge unworthy of the cause we advocate; they were simply and entirely due to a direct necessity of, and were penned in perfect accord with, the declared policy of our Society and paper: war to death to every unproved human dogma, superstition, bigotry, and intolerance. Our Society is a nucleus, around which cluster only those who, besides appreciating the theoretical importance, as the philosophical significance, of the Idea of a strongly united intellectual Brotherhood, are ready to carry out this idea practically: to concede to others all that they would claim for themselves; to regard as a brother any man, whether he be white, black or yellow, heathen or Christian, theist or atheist; to show, at least, an outward regard for the respective religions not only of our members, but of any man; and, to protect, in case of need, the creeds of the former from the unjust assault and persecution of other religionists. Finally, never to preach to, or force upon an unwilling ear our own personal, least of all sectarian, views. The success of our mission depends upon the crushing down, and the complete extirpation of that spirit of intolerance. And those who know anything of the New Dispensation and its organ, the Liberal—a misnomer like the rest—need not be reminded of the disgusting spirit of dogmatism upon which it is based. Keshub Babu may preach and be—

“doing all he can to establish a universal brotherhood and to harmonize the different scriptures of the world”—

—it is all in theory. In practice, that Brotherhood exists for him only within the small area of his followers; the Brahmos of the Sadharan Samaj are there to tell how even they, theists and his late co-religionists, have been treated by their self-appointed Pope for refusing to accept his dicta and bulls as the word of God. Therefore, our Brotherhood being possible only when men are gradually made to rise above any personal ambition and that narrow-minded sectarianism that dwarfs the area of their mental vision and, keeping man aloof from man, gives birth only to a host of Cains pouncing upon the weaker Abels—it becomes the imperative duty of us, who are the professed leaders and pioneers of the movement, to smooth the path for those who may succeed us in our work. Tolerant of everything, in every other respect we are uncompromisingly intolerant of—Intolerance and—aggression.

Such is our programme and the simple secret of our apparent—

“inconsistency which has appeared strange and unaccountable even to your (our) warmest friends, i.e., that rejecting of the religion of Christ alone as worthless, accepting every other system under the sun as deserving of study.”

The accusation being already answered, we can only express our regret that “8111” should not have read Isis Unveiled, half of which, at least, is devoted to explanations in the light of esoteric philosophy of the otherwise absurd and meaningless texts in the Bible. Nor has he, it seems, appreciated the delicacy that forbade us out of pure regard for the feelings of our Christian members to autopsize and dissect too much the Gospels as often as we do other Scriptures; for while giving us carte blanche to expose Missionary dogmatic Christianity, they feel pained whenever they find the name of Christ handled merely for literary and scientific purposes.

Thus, we see that it is our “best friends” who oppose and try the most to impede the progress of our movement. It is they who remain the most blind to the necessity of breaking the outward shell that is represented by the dogmas of every religion, in order to get at its kernel—the concealed truth; and who obstinately refuse to understand that, unless the outward covering is removed, no one can tell whether the fruit is a healthy one, or but a “Dead Sea fruit,” the apple of Sodom, the outward appearance of which is bright and attractive, while within all is bitter rottenness and decay. Therefore, when our friend “8111” assures us that both Colonel Olcott (or his Society rather) and the Babu “are striving, although in opposite directions, to reach the same goal,” i.e., Universal Brotherhood, it certainly only “appears” to him and no more. For while our Society is open to every sincere honest man, regardless of his religion, the New Dispensation would view even a Brahmo from another Samaj as an heretic, and never admit him unless he subscribed blindly to all and every decree of the “Minister.” Let us bear in mind that hardly a year ago the Sunday Mirror in an editorial, every line of which breathed bigotry and intolerance, prided itself on its adhesion to blind faith in the following strains:

“We, the new Apostles, attach very little weight to the testimony of our reason, for reason is fallible.”

And again:

“We did not care to consult our intellect when we accepted the New Dispensation.”

Evidently not, and this is perhaps the greatest truth ever uttered in their organ. Having thus stigmatized the Nitesastra or the “Science of Reason,” how can Babu Keshub be said to pursue the same goal as a Society which takes nothing on faith, but seeks for natural causes to be explained by reason and science in every phenomenon in nature?

“What is truth?” was the passionate demand of a Roman procurator on one of the most momentous occasions in history. And the Divine Person who stood before him made no reply—unless, indeed, silence contained the reply. Often and vainly had that demand been made before—often and vainly has it been made since. No one has yet given a satisfactory answer. (Conflict between Religion and Science, p. 201-2). And we are asked to suppose it in the hands of a Babu Keshub, or a Major Tucker. Then comes the Parthian arrow—

“Like your own Col. Olcott, the Brahmo Missionary is aiming at proving the ‘common foundation’ of all known religious systems; and he does this in a more comprehensive manner and in a more catholic spirit than you.”

—adds our severe critic. The “catholic spirit” of the Babu is news indeed. While his aim “at proving the common foundation of all known religions” may be admitted from the fact as given by the Dharma Tattwa (their recognized organ), that in their temple “on a table covered with red cloth are placed the four chief Shasters of the world—the Rig-veda, the Lalitavistar, the Bible, and the Koran,” we fail to see how or when such a reconciliation was ever achieved by the Babu. With the exception of making the Vedas “dance” with the Bible, the Koran with the Jatakas, and Moses with Chaitanya and Durga in the great “mystic dance,” the Quadrille of imperishable memory, we are not aware that the said reconciliation was ever demonstrated by the “mighty Prophet before the Lord.” A tree is never better known than by its fruits. Where are the fruits of Babu Keshub’s constant “interviews” and dialogues with God? Colonel Olcott has never had any such heavenly visits, nor does he boast of being divinely inspired; yet the living fruits of his labour and untiring efforts are there in over three score and ten of cripples cured, of deaf men restored to hearing, of paralytics having the use of their hitherto dead limbs, and of young children saved from the jaws of death, aye, more than that—from years of agony. But enough of this lest we should tire our readers’ patience.

And now we must be permitted to conclude with the following observations. It is not because we reject personally that much-abused term “God,” or that we ever claimed to possess the whole truth ourselves that we object to the claims of the holy Calcutta choreographer or those of Major Tucker. Nor is it simply to carry out our combined duties of a Theosophist and the editor to whom this magazine is entrusted that we record their combined eccentricities expressing our honest opinion thereon. That which forces us to such an expression is rather a kind of morbid shame for the moral cowardice of mankind, for its weakness—that weakness which ever needs a prop and a screen, something to support, and at the same time to hide itself in days of temptation and sin. It is that weakness that is the true creator of such abnormal characters, the real cause that the recognition of such supernatural claims is yet considered possible in our century. Hence our objection to those self-made “vessels of election” and “of divine grace.” We have the greatest contempt for the so-called “modern prophets” of racial and tribal gods, that remain themselves so far an unproven and unprovable hypothesis. “God” is here but a pretext, but another name for human SELFISHNESS; and Selfishness and Ambition have been ever since the first dawn of history the greatest curses of Humanity. Plenty were the avatars since the first man looked up into empty space for help, instead of trying his own intellect, and relying upon his own omnipotent spirit. Has any one of those “prophets” ever benefited mankind, assuaged its social wrongs and miseries, alleviated its mental and physical woes, or lightened in any way for it the heavy burden of life? No! On the contrary, each of them has dug for those who believed in him one more deep chasm to separate his own followers from their brothers, the apostles of some other rival prophet; each chasm weakening still more mankind, breaking it up as a strong unit into isolated weak units, dividing it into inimical ever-fighting factions. And thus it went on until humanity is now absolutely honeycombed with such chasms—regular pitfalls for the weak in intellect, full of sectarian gall and bitterness, prolific of hatred, every group ever ready to pounce upon its neighbours to either exterminate or drag them down into its own pitfall. Who will fill up those accursed pits? How many are there of absolutely unsectarian, unselfish reformers, who having neither personal ambition, nor any other aim in view but the practical good of mankind, are ready to sacrifice themselves for the great and holy task? At one end the bloody-handed anarchists, nihilists, the so-called socialists, and, at the other, religious sectarian bigots, intolerant enthusiasts and dogmatists, each and every one of those an enemy to any man but his own co-workers. Verily, it is easy to undergo any sacrifice and physical torture of limited duration to secure to oneself an eternity of joy and bliss. It is still easier especially for an immortal God to die to save mankind. Many were the so-called Saviours of Humanity, and still more numerous the pretenders. But where is he who would damn himself for ever to save mankind at large? Where is that being who, in order to make his fellow creatures happy and free on earth, would consent to live and suffer hour after hour, day after day, aeon upon aeon and never die, never get release from his nameless sufferings, until the great day of the Maha-pralaya? Let such a man appear; and then when he does and proves it, we shall worship him as our Saviour, the God of gods, the only TRUE AND LIVING GOD.

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