Mahat

“ Everyone has seen a hare, either crouched or running in the fields, or hanging dead in a poulterer’s shop, or lastly pathetic, even dreadful-looking and in this form almost indistinguishable from a skinned cat, on the domestic table. But not many people have met a Mahatma, at least to their knowledge. Not many people know even who or what a Mahatma is. ”

“ On vainest knowledge, senselessly they seek
An evil way, the way of brutes and fiends.
But My Mahatmas, those of noble soul
Who tread the path celestial, worship Me
With hearts unwandering,--knowing Me the Source,
Th' Eternal Source, of Life. Unendingly
They glorify Me; seek Me; keep their vows
Of reverence and love, with changeless faith
Adoring Me. Yea, and those too adore,
Who, offering sacrifice of wakened hearts,
Have sense of one pervading Spirit's stress,
One Force in every place, though manifold!
I am the Sacrifice! I am the Prayer! ”

“ I am no member of any mystic brotherhood, and, as I have explained, no Mahatma, although I have called myself thus for present purposes because the name is a convenient cloak. I repeat that I am ignorant if there are such people as Mahatmas, though if so I think Jorsen must be one of them. Still he never told me this. What he has told is that every individual spirit must work out its own destiny quite independently of others. ”

“ Had I my way no hunt establishment should be without its own accredited Mahatma. He should be entitled to the letters M.F.H. as unquestioningly as the Master. I would blazon them on his broad back (the Mahatma's figure is wont to be a fine one) , plain for all men to see, and brand them on his ample sandwich-case. "Mahatma to the Meaths!" Any man might be pleased to have some such an inscription on his tombstone. ”

“ A Mahâtma is not only an Adept, but much more. The etymology of it will make the matter clearer, the word being strictly Sanskrit, from mahâ, great, and âtmâ, soul—hence Great Soul. This does not mean a noble-hearted man merely, but a perfected being, one who has attained to the state often described by mystics and held by scientific men to be an impossibility, when time and space are no obstacles to sight, to action, to knowledge or to consciousness. ”

“ We draw to us the attention of the Mahatma by a purified heart and a right development of will. From his heights he sees the valleys below and reaches out to give to him who is straining every faculty to receive.
Agitation that comes from mortal qualities affects the physical body alone: this deep unrest is not felt by the Atma, for the Atma is Spirit or pure bliss. But the ocean of matter, which includes the Soul, feels these waves of trouble and thus is the soul bewildered, ignorantly imagining that the spirit is affected. ”

“ His life has given to the world a grand demonstration that even in this age Divinity can be reached and Divine perfection can be acquired by one who is pure, chaste, simple and whose devotion is whole-hearted and whole-souled. We have neither seen nor heard of a character purer, simpler, more chaste, more truthful and more godly than that of this ideal Mahâtman. ”

“ For what could be a greater joy than to join hands in the field of work with one for whom one has such love and reverence? Nothing is more wonderful to me than Mahatmaji’s great moral personality, In him divine providence has given us a burning thunderbolt of shakti. May this shakti give power to India — not overwhelm her — that is my prayer! ”

“ Never was a new religion more industriously supplied with miracles—those coups de main célestes, as a witty Frenchman has defined them. Wherever Madame happened to be with a select circle of friends, disciples, or laymen worth impressing, but especially in and about the bungalow at Adyar, near Madras, the society’s headquarters, the invisible Mahatmas were never tired of exhibiting their astonishing psychic powers over ponderable matter. The two who were especially at Madame’s disposal went by the names (reverently breathed) of Mahatma Morya and Mahatma Koot Hoomi Lal Sing. ”

“ SAYS BLOKER. "BREEDING SHOWS ITSELF IN THE EAR, AND NOWHERE ELSE!" MORE MESSAGES FROM THE MAHATMA.
1. I AM KOOT HOOMIBOOG. There are more things in my philosophy than were ever dreamed of in heaven or earth. You are POONSH. You are a Thrupni but you are not a Mahatma. Be a Mahatma, and save your postage expenses. But you must be discreet; and you must be exceeding vague. A Mahatma is nothing if he is not vague. You must also be elusive. Can you elude? It is no light matter to prove one's spiritual capacity by materialising a cigarette inside a grand piano. ”

“ I was calling on the One who is the only source of all strength. Do not stand in the way of the inevitable. Rather, let us watch where they take us. God will arrange things properly on all sides.'
With no further attempt at escape Mahendra and the Mahatma followed the sepoys. As they were being taken along the street, Mahatma Satya said to the lieutenant, 'Gentleman, sir, I am very fond of singing devotional songs. ”

“ A Mahatma endowed with power over space, time, mind, and matter, is a possibility just because he is12 a perfected man. Every human being has the germ of all the powers attributed to these great Initiates, the difference lying solely in the fact that we have in general not developed what we possess the germ of, while the Mahatma has gone through the training and experience which have caused all the unseen human powers to develop in him, and conferred gifts that look god-like to his struggling brother below. ”

“ The members of the group are almost to a man officials of the Society, living at the Society’s expense. With the one exception of Colonel Olcott, practically all the high panjandrums are included in it. Lastly, if it has been the centre of the Mahatma communications, it is a centre that has radiated them in all directions to the society’s circumference. The plop of a missive sends a ripple from the Inner Group to the Esoteric Section, from the Esoteric Section to the society at large, and from the society to the public. ”

“ But whatever the plan the Mahatma puts forth as an effective means to free the masses from the teachings of the Shastras, he must accept that the pious life led by one good Samaritan may be very elevating to himself but in India, with the attitude the common man has to saints and to Mahatmas—to honour but not to follow—one cannot make much out of it. ”

“ This influence may be conceived of as invisible spiritual grace that descends from heaven, and it is showered down upon humanity, as it were, whenever any great Mahāṭma unites his soul with the Logos. Every Mahāṭma who joins his soul with the Logos is thus a source of immense power for the good of humanity in after generations. It is said that the Mahāṭmas, living as they do apart from the world, are utterly useless so far as humanity is concerned when they are still living, and are still more so when they have reached Nirvāṇa. ”

“ You may not see her.'
'Why such cruel laws, Mahatma?'
'The duty of the Children is hard. He alone is worthy of this duty who has renounced everything for the sake of Mother India. The man whose heart is tied with the strings of human attachment is like a kite that is tied to the reel ”

“ Kiddle's language in the passage in question which show that the Mahatma never intended to borrow Mr. Kiddle's ideas and phrases, but that he rather intended to say something against them. "Where the Spiritualistic lecturer says that "the world advances," the Mahatma says that "the world will advance" for the purpose of showing that this change in ideas must iuevitably take place by reason of the great cyclic Law to which the Universe is subject. ”

“ When all the kings and princes and great captains of our time, who make so much noise and occupy so central a place upon the stage, when these have long since been forgotten, every one of them, the Mahatma will still be known and revered as the greatest Indian since Gautama the Buddha, and as the greatest man since Jesus Christ. ”

“ Mahatma, one who, according to the Theosophists, has passed through the complete cycle of incarnation, has thereby attained perfection of being, and acquired the rank of high priesthood and miraculous powers in the spirit world, one, it would seem, of "the spirits of just men made perfect."
Mahdi (i. e. religious leader) , a name given to any Mohammedan fanatic who arises in the interest of the Mohammedan faith, summons the Moslems to war, and leads them to repel the infidel; a kind of Mohammed Messiah armed with the sword for the conquest of the world to the faith. ”

“ The pundits, or learned class, and educated Hindus in general, have a different view; they say that Mahâtmas are men or souls with unlimited knowledge of natural laws and of man's history and development. They claim also that the Mahâtmas—or Rishees, as they sometimes call them—have preserved the knowledge of all natural laws for ages, not only by tradition among their disciples, but also by actual records and in libraries existing somewhere in the many underground temples and passages in India. ”

“ When the inner struggles of one still bound by ties of earth suggest such thoughts as these, surely the isolation from contact with the rude world of the most spiritual men, those who have achieved the sublime heights of Mahatmaship, is no longer a thing to wonder at, but becomes apparent as an absolute necessity. ”

“ The development, conditions, powers, and function of these beings carry with them the whole scheme of evolution; for, as said by the mystics, the Mahâtma is the efflorescence of an age. The Adepts may be dimly understood to-day, the Nirmânakâyas have as yet been only passingly mentioned, and the Mahâtmas are misconceived by believers and deniers alike. ”

“ Not only must such a person be deemed to be bankrupt of all spiritual treasures but for him to practice so elevating a profession as that of a priest simply because it is ancestral, without faith, without belief, merely as a mechanical process handed down from. father to son, is not a conservation of virtue; it is really the prostitution of a noble profession which is no other than the service of religion.
VIII Why does the Mahatma cling to the theory of every one following his or her ancestral calling? ”

“ He has never touched trading which is his ancestral calling. His youngest son—I take one who is a faithful follower of his father—born a Vaishya has married a Brahmin's daughter and has chosen to serve a newspaper magnate. The Mahatma is not known to have condemned him for not following his ancestral calling. It may be wrong and uncharitable to judge an ideal by its worst specimens. But surely the Mahatma as a specimen has no better and if he even fails to realize the ideal then the ideal must be an impossible ideal quite opposed to the practical instincts of man. ”

“ Readers of Theosophical literature will be aware how bitterly our adept Brothers have been criticized for choosing to take their own time and methods in the task of partially communicating their knowledge to the world. Here in India these criticisms have been indignantly resented by the passionate loyalty to the Mahatmas that is so widely spread among Hindus—resented more by instinct than reason in some cases perhaps, though in others, no doubt, as a consequence of a full appreciation of all that is being now explained, and of other considerations beside. ”

“ She at first located them in the recesses of the Himalayas; but one of her most zealous disciples lately stated in the Daily Chronicle that “the two principal Mahatmas now reside in an oasis of the Desert of Gobi.” At any rate, these “adepts” prefer a sequestered spot, and remain occult in the strictest sense of the word.
But on some points Madame was unequivocal about them. She declared that she had sat at the feet of one of them as his chela (pupil) ; that the Theosophical Society was founded under his distinct inspiration; and that he and his brothers continued to intervene in its affairs. ”

“ Sinnett in the objection that exoteric Indian thought and religion led to error. In complete knowledge of this second declaration of the Mahatma, we read and printed Murdhna Joti’s paper, as we have “Theosophic Morals.” We see in the paper criticised high aspiration and excellent precepts.
There are many modes of life; there are lower and higher planes. No man in one short article can write away all possible future misconceptions; both sides must be presented, and they shall be in this Magazine. ”

“ They still have a mystic respect for the earlier forms which make them disinclined—nay opposed to any examination of the foundations of their Society. The Hindu masses are cf course incredibly heedless in the formation of their beliefs. But so are the Hindu leaders. And what is worse is that. These Hindu leaders become filled with an illicit passion for their beliefs when any one proposes to rob them of their companionship. The Mahatma. is no exception. The Mahatma appears not to believe in thinking He prefers to follow the saints. ”

“ What is the difference between Caste and Varna as understood by the Mahatma? I find none. As defined by the Mahatma, Varna becomes merely a different name for Caste for the simple reason that it is the same in essence—namely pursuit of ancestral calling. Far from making progress the Mahatma has suffered retrogression. By putting this interpretation upon the Vedic conception of Varna he has really made ridiculous what was sublime. ”

“ As Mahaut had no biographer, and contemporary history merely treats her as if she were one of many pawns on a chess-board, her stewards’ entries furnish the only materials from which we can weave some outline of her life, an outline, nevertheless, which enables us to reason somewhat concerning her inner life, the pattern, as it were, that is not wrought for the world. ”