The Sages of the Himavat
While on my tour with Col. Olcott several phenomena occurred, in his presence as well as in his absence, such as immediate answers to questions in my Master’s handwriting, and over his signature, put by a number of our Fellows. These occurrences took place before we reached Lahore, where we expected to meet in the body my Master. There I was visited by him in the body, for three nights consecutively, for about three hours every time, while I myself retained full consciousness, and, in one case, even went to meet him outside the house. To my knowledge there is no case on the Spiritualist records of a medium remaining perfectly conscious, and meeting, by previous arrangement, his spirit-visitor in the compound, re-entering the house with him, offering him a seat, and then holding a long converse with the “disembodied spirit” in a way to give him the impression that he is in personal contact with an embodied entity. Moreover, him whom I saw in person at Lahore was the same I had seen in astral form at the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society, and again, the same whom I had seen in visions and trances at his house, thousands of miles off, which I reached in my astral Ego by his direct help and protection. In those instances, with my psychic powers hardly yet developed, I had always seen him as a rather hazy form, although his features were perfectly distinct and their remembrance was profoundly graven on my soul’s eye and memory, while now at Lahore, Jummoo, and elsewhere, the impression was utterly different. In the former cases, when making Pranam (salutation) my hands passed through his form, while on the latter occasions they met solid garments and flesh. Here I saw a living man before me, the original of the portraits in Madame Blavatsky’s possession and in Mr. Sinnett’s, though far more imposing in his general appearance and bearing. I shall not here dwell upon the fact of his having been corporeally seen by both Col. Olcott and Mr. Brown separately for two nights at Lahore, as they can do so better, each for himself, if they so choose. At Jummoo again, where we proceeded from Lahore, Mr. Brown saw him on the evening of the third day of our arrival there, and from him received a letter in his familiar handwriting, not to speak of his visits to me almost every day. And what happened the next morning almost every one in Jummoo is aware of. The fact is, that I had the good fortune of being sent for, and permitted to visit a sacred Ashrum, where I remained for a few days in the blessed company of several of the Mahatmas of Himavat and their disciples. There I met not only my beloved Gurudeva and Col. Olcott’s master, but several others of the fraternity, including one of the highest. I regret the extremely personal nature of my visit to those thrice blessed regions prevents my saying more about it. Suffice it that the place I was permitted to visit is in the Himalayas, not in any fanciful Summer Land, and that I saw him in my own sthula sarira (physical body) and found my Master identical with the form I had seen in the earlier days of my Chelaship. Thus, I saw my beloved Guru not only as a living man, but actually as a young one in comparison with some other Sadhus of the blessed company, only far kinder, and not above a merry remark and conversation at times. Thus on the second day of my arrival, after the meal hour, I was permitted to hold an intercourse for over an hour with my Master. Asked by him smilingly what it was that made me look at him so perplexed, I asked in my turn:—“How is it, Master, that some of the members of our Society have taken into their heads a notion that you were ‘an elderly man,’ and that they have even seen you clairvoyantly looking an old man past sixty?” To which he pleasantly smiled and said that this latest misconception was due to the reports of a certain Brahmachari, a pupil of a Vedantic Swami in the Punjab,* who had met last year in Tibet the chief of a sect, an elderly Lama, who was his (my Master’s) traveling companion at that time. The said Brahmachari, having spoken of the encounter in India, had led several persons to mistake the Lama for himself. As to his being perceived clairvoyantly as an “elderly man,” that could never be, he added, as real clairvoyance could lead no one into such mistaken notions; and then he kindly reprimanded me for giving any importance to the age of a Guru, adding that appearances were often false, &c., and explaining other points.
———— * See infra. Rajani Kanta Brahmachai’s “Interview with a Mahatma.” ————
These are all stern facts, and no third course is open to the reader. What I assert is either true or false. In the former case, no Spiritualistic hypothesis can hold good, and it will have to be admitted that the Himalayan Brothers are living men, and neither disembodied spirits nor creations of the over-heated imagination of fanatics. Of course I am fully aware that many will discredit my account; but I write only for the benefit of those few who know me well enough to see in me neither a hallucinated medium, nor attribute to me any bad motive, and who have ever been true and loyal to their convictions and to the cause they have so nobly espoused. As for the majority who laugh at and ridicule what they have neither the inclination nor the capacity to understand, I hold them in very small account. If these few lines will help to stimulate even one of my brother-Fellows in the Society, or one right-thinking man outside of it, to promote the cause of Truth and Humanity, I shall consider that I have properly performed my duty.
—Damodar K. Mavalankar