The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett from the Mahatmas M. & K. H.

not be avoided . . . I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two-thirds of the evils that pursue humanity ever since that cause became a power. It is religion under whatever form and in whatever nation. It is the sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the Churches ; it is in those illusions that man looks upon as sacred, that he has to search out the source of that multitude of evils which is the great curse of humanity, and that almost overwhelms mankind. Ignorance created Gods, and cunning took advantage of opportunity."1 And again " Far from our thoughts may it ever be to create a new hierarchy for the future oppression of a priestridden world."2 The inference and the message of these words in our own times is sufficiently clear.

There has been a noticeable tendency also for sections of the Society to drift towards what Master K.H. calls " that most insane and fatal of superstitions—Spiritualism."3 In another letter he says " a psychic Society is being founded . . . , it will grow and develop and expand and finally the Theos. Soc. of London will be swamped in it, and lose first it's influence then—it's name—until Theosophy in it's very name becomes a thing of the Past." It is regrettable that these words are as true to-day, as when they were written. The whole question is thrashed out from every point of view in these letters, so that no misunderstanding is possible to the mind of the impartial student. The mischief lies, then as now, in the misunderstanding of the real nature of spiritualistic phenomena. Those who adhere to the methods of Spiritualism claim that communication can be established with the souls and spirits of the departed by means of properly qualified mediums. That communication of a kind between the living and the dead can be made, is accepted as a demonstrable fact in these letters, and is not challenged in any way. But communication with what? Here lies the crux of the whole matter. Master K.H. states not once, but over and over again, that communication with the souls and spirits of the dead is an impossibility. At death, consciousness which pertains to the seventh, sixth, and fifth principles of man, (and in these are included the soul, and spirit and all that makes man human) withdraws into an unconscious gestation period which precedes re-birth in the Deva Chan or heaven-world. It leaves behind it, the physical corpse, the etheric counterpart or double, and lastly the emotional and mental shell which is the correspondence in subtler matter of the physical