Mahatma

“ 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 Gray Mahatma said something in a surly undertone and the golden light turned itself on again, flooding the whole chamber. King nodded to me.
"You can speak into a phonograph and reproduce your voice. There's no reason why you can't think and reproduce that too, if you know how," he said.
"Aye!" the Mahatma interrupted. "If you know how! India has always known how! India can teach these sciences to all the world when she comes into her freedom." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Mahatma is indeed a "great soul," but it was illiterate millions who had the discernment to bestow the title. This gentle prophet is honored in his own land. The lowly peasant has been able to rise to Gandhi's high challenge. The Mahatma wholeheartedly believes in the inherent nobility of man. The inevitable failures have never disillusioned him. "Even if the opponent plays him false twenty times," he writes, "the SATYAGRAHI is ready to trust him the twenty-first time, for an implicit trust in human nature is the very essence of the creed." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The irony that Mahatma Gandhi, the supreme preacher and practitioner, not only in our time but in all the ages gone by, of the great principle of nonviolence, should himself be called upon to fall as the victim of outrageous violence. The irony again, that with his life purpose accomplished, with India free and India’s people, after an initial ordeal of wild bloodshed, entering under his guidance upon the sure pathways of reconciliation and peace, he should he struck down on the very threshold of his sublime triumph. ”

“ To-day is Mahatma Gandhi's day. To-day is the day for us to express the afflictions of our heart. In days of prosperity we forget ourselves, but on evil days when fallen we realise ourselves and hear the message of God.
To-day at this national crisis we must search for the soul of the nation. This soul is to be attained by strength. What is that strength? It is not brute force, but the force of love. This is what Mahatma teaches us and this is the message of all India. The realisation of this message requires the abandonment of selfishness, envy, malice, and hatred. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That Mahatma Gandhi, of all men living in the world, should have to die this way! The irony, for example, that Gandhi, who never cherished an unkind thought, and never did an unkind deed, who fought England for forty years with never a feeling of bitterness toward any Englishman anywhere, who forgave Moslems and Hindus alike for the injury they were doing to one another, and asked them only to love one another as he loved them both—that this man should die beneath the stroke of hate and vengeance! ”

“ We are met together today to honor one of the greatest men of human history. The world has been aware of Mahatma Gandhi for scores of years. While he was living, people did not always understand him, nor appreciate him, but they always knew that he was a force in our times, indomitable in his high purpose, unshakable in his integrity, persistently undefeated. ”

“ The death of Mahatma Gandhi is a catastrophe, not only for India, but for people of good will everywhere, and I know that countless numbers are sharing our deep regret at his passing and of the loss of wide influence which he has exercised for good and for peace. ”

“ And by then it was a day and a half since we had seen the Gray Mahatma.
The best part of another day was wasted in consulting and convincing men on whose knees the peace of India rested. They were naturally nervous about invading the sacred privacy of Hindu temples, and still more so of investigating Yasmini's doings in that nest of hers. There were men among them who took no stock in such tales as ours anyhow—hard and fast Scotch pragmatists, who doubted the sanity of any man who spoke seriously of anything that they themselves had not heard, seen, smelt, felt and tasted. ”

“ When we establish our independent kingdom, the very news of it will win us the allegiance of our fellow countrymen in the distant provinces and states.' They all bowed at the Mahatma's feet.
'Master,' Jiban said, 'we bow before you. Master, if you so desire, we shall build a throne for you here.'
For the first time in many years Mahatma Satya showed anger and said: 'Shame on all of you. Do you think I am such an empty-headed person? None of us may be king. We all are ascetics. The king of the country is God himself. He is our Protector. After we capture the capital, you may crown a king. ”

“ What is it that the Indians see when they look upon this man, and hail him as Mahatma? Not a great physical presence, not a gigantic intellect, not an inspired orator, but a personality or charater of transcendent spiritual beauty. What they see, first of all, is a man who has made his life to be at one with the great masses of the people. Gandhi was well born, of a family with ample means, and was given the best educational advantages both in his own country and in England. ”

“ The real MAHATMA is then not his physical body but that higher Manas which is inseparably linked to the Atma and its vehicle (the sixth principle) —a union effected by him in a comparatively very short period by passing through the process of self-evolution laid down by Occult Philosophy. When therefore, people express a desire to "see a MAHATMA," they really do not seem to understand what it is they ask for. How can they, with their physical eyes, hope to see that which transcends that sight? Is it the body—a mere shell or mask—they crave or hunt after? ”

“ It is for us to be profoundly grateful that once in a great while, in many centuries of history, some Mahatma Gandhi is given to us, and it is for us to be thankful that in our weakness and in our uncertainty, in the fury of our passion, it is yet given us to admire goodness and perhaps in admiring it, to learn more and more to copy it. ”

“ Greater than all that we have yet mentioned in the character of Gandhi, is the love with which his entire being is saturated. No man of our time, few men of any time, have risen to such heights of tenderness and compassion for mankind as this Mahatma of India. ”

“ I say this in justice to the latter, who, I think, may fairly complain of the unkind criticisms passed on his Mahatma-missives by colleagues who still cherish those produced under the auspices of Madame Blavatsky.
It is true that the society does not officially vouch for Mahatmas. It is careful not to demand belief in them as a condition of membership ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 I have insisted from the beginning, as I would insist today, that this last period in Gandhi’s life was the greatest period of all. In my last letter to the Mahatma, written just as I was leaving India, I put it this way—and you will pardon me if I read my words. “Of course,” I said, “you have been sad, wellnigh overborne by the tragedies of recent months, but you must never feel that this involves any breakdown of your life work. Human nature cannot bear too much, it cracks under too great a strain, and the strain in this case was as terrific as it was sudden. ”

“ I was quite prepared for this particular Theosophistry. That was why I started, at the very beginning of my story (Chapter II.) , by showing what an enormous practical part the Mahatmas and their miracles have played in the movement. It is easy for this Theosophist or that to protest that they never attracted him. The fact remains that the big accessions to the society’s numbers have always followed on the miracle “booms,” alike under Madame Blavatsky and under Mrs. Besant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There Mahendra saw a map of India in rags and tatters. The gloom over this map was beyond description.
'This is what our Mother India is today,' the Mahatma said. 'She is in the gloom of famine, disease, death, humiliation and destruction.'
'Why does a sword hang over Mother India of today?' Mahendra asked.
'Because the British keep India in subjection by the sword. And she can be freed only by the sword. Those who talk of winning India's independence by peaceful means do not know the British, I am sure. ”

“ And now, there was to go with the hum of the charka, the [169] faint fragrance of dried fruit in the air, or that sweetness one breathes in the altitudes where the sun is shining upon the great conifers.
“The world has talked much of the omnipotence of God,” Mahatma-ji went on. “India, at last, is preparing to put her faith to test. Passive resistance has been called the weapon of the weak; if this is so, the Soul is weaker than the flesh. Passive resistance calls upon its devotees to endure great suffering, even martyrdom and death. ”

“ Ladies and gentlemen, it is superfluous for me or any other speaker to introduce the greatness of Mahatma Gandhi to any audience over the whole world. The 20th century has produced so many big names who have achieved great things in the world — statesmen, invaders, defenders, scientists, discoverers, inventors of all sorts — hut none of them occupies the place which Mahatma Gandhi occupies in the hearts of the world, and none of them got the fame, the undying fame and the noble name which Mahatma Gandhi obtained. ”