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THE BROOCH THAT MASTER KUTHUMI MATERIALIZED INSIDE A CUSHION

 
 
This phenomenon was related by Mr. Sinnett in his book "The Occult World" and below I transcribe you what he wrote about it:
 
 
 
Three little notes which I next received from Koot Hoomi had reference to an incident I must now describe, the perfection of which as a test phenomenon appears to me more complete than that of any other I have yet described. It is worth notice, by-the-by, that although the circumstances of this incident were related in the Indian papers at the time, the happy company of scoffers who flooded the Press with their simple comments on the brooch phenomenon, never cared to discuss “the pillow incident.”
 
Accompanied by our guests, we went to have lunch one day on the top of a neighbouring hill. The night before, I had had reason to think that my correspondent, Koot Hoomi, had been in what, for the purpose of the present explanation, I may call subjective communication with me. I do not go into any details, because it is unnecessary to trouble the general reader with impressions of that sort.
 
 
Here Mr. Sinnett is referring to an encounter that he had with Master Kuthumi in the night, and that the master described in a note that he sent to Sinnett the next morning, and this note Mr. Sinnett did not publish in his book, but it is found in the Mahatma Letters, and it says the following:
 
« My Good "Brother,"
 
In dreams and visions at least, when rightly interpreted there can hardly be an "element of doubt." .... I hope to prove to you my presence near you last night by something I took away with me. Your lady will receive it back on the hill. I keep no pink paper to write upon, but I trust modest white will do as well for what I have to say»
(ML 3A, p.10)
 
 
And Mr. Sinnett wrote as an attached note the following:
 
« I saw K.H. in astral form on the night of 19th of October, 1880 — waking up for a moment but immediately afterwards being rendered unconscious again (in the body) and conscious out of the body in the adjacent dressing-room where I saw another of the Brothers afterwards identified with one called "Serapis" by Olcott, — "the youngest of the chohans [chiefs]."
 
The note about the vision came the following morning, and during that day, the 20th, we went for a picnic to Prospect Hill, when the "pillow incident" occurred»
(ML 3A, p.10)
 
The object that Master Kuthumi took with him was a breast pin belonging to Mrs. Sinnett and which she had left on her dresser. And in his book "The Occult World" Mr. Sinnett continued recounting what happened the next day:
 
 
After discussing the subject in the morning, I found on the hall-table a note from Koot Hoomi, in which we promised to give me something on the hill which should be a token of his (astral) presence near me the previous night.
 
We went to our destination, camped down on the top of the hill, and were engaged on our lunch, when Madame Blavatsky said Koot Hoomi was asking where we would like to find the object he was going to send me. Let it be understood that up to this moment there had been no conversation in regard to the phenomenon I was expecting.
 
The usual suggestion will, perhaps, he made that Madame Blavatsky “led up” to the choice I actually made. The fact of the matter was simply that in the midst of altogether other talk Madame Blavatsky pricked up her ears on hearing her occult voice — at once told me what was the question asked, and did not contribute to the selection made by one single remark on the subject.
 
In fact, there was no general discussion, and it was by an absolutely spontaneous choice of my own that I said, after a little reflection, “inside that cushion,” pointing to one against which one of the ladies present was leaning. I had no sooner uttered the words than my wife cried out, “Oh, no, let it be inside mine” or words to that effect. I said, “very well, inside my wife’s cushion;” Madame Blavatsky asked Koot Hoomi by her own methods if that would do, and received an affirmative reply. My liberty of choice as regards the place where the object should be found was thus absolute and unfettered by conditions.
 
The most natural choice for me to have made under the circumstances, and having regard to our previous experiences, would have been up some particular tree, or buried in a particular spot of the ground; but the inside of a sewn-up cushion, fortuitously chosen on the spur of a moment, struck me, as my eye happened to fall upon the cushion I mentioned first, as a particularly good place; and when I had started the idea of a cushion, my wife’s amendment to the .original proposal was really an improvement, for the particular cushion then selected had never been for a moment out of her own possession all the morning. It was her usual jampan cushion; she had been leaning against it all the way from home, and was leaning against it still, as her jampan had been carried right up to the top of the hill, and she had continued to occupy it.
 
The cushion itself was very firmly made of worsted work and velvet, and had been in our possession for years. It always remained, when we were at home, in the drawing-room, in a conspicuous corner of a certain sofa whence, when my wife went out, it would be taken to her jampan and again brought in on her return.
 
 
When the cushion was agreed to, my wife was told to put it under her rug, and she did this with her own hands, inside her jampan. It may have been there about a minute, when Madame Blavatsky said we could set to work to cut it open. I did this with a penknife, and it was a work of some time, as the cushion was very securely sewn all round, and very strongly, so that it had to be cut open almost stitch by stitch, and no tearing was possible.
 
When one side of the cover was completely ripped up, we found that the feathers of the cushion were enclosed in a separate inner case, also sewn round all the edges. There was nothing to be found between the inner cushion and the outer case; so we proceeded to rip up the inner cushion; and this done, my wife searched among the feathers.
 
The first thing she found was a little three-cornered note, addressed to me in the now familiar handwriting of my occult correspondent. It ran as follows:
 
 
« My "Dear Brother,"
 
This brooch Number 2 — is placed in this very strange place simply to show to you how very easily a real phenomenon is produced and how still easier it is to suspect its genuineness. Make of it what you like even to classing me with confederates.
 
The difficulty you spoke of last night with respect to the interchange of our letters I will try to remove. One of our pupils will shortly visit Lahore and the N.W.P. and an address will be sent to you which you can always use; unless, indeed, you really would prefer corresponding through — pillows. Please to remark that the present is not dated from a "Lodge" but from a Kashmir valley»
 
Master Kuthumi wrote “this brooch No. 2” because he had previously also materialized a brooch belonging to Mrs. Hume, and this second note is also found in the Mahatma Letters, No. 3B, p.10.
 
 
While I was reading this note, my wife discovered, by further search among the feathers, the brooch referred to, one of her own, a very old and very familiar brooch which she generally left on her dressing-table when it was not in use.
 
It would have been impossible to invent or imagine a proof of occult power, in the nature of mechanical proofs, more irresistible and convincing than this incident was for us who had personal knowledge of the various circumstances described. The whole force and significance to us of the brooch thus returned, hinged on to my subjective impressions of the previous night. The reason for selecting the brooch as a thing to give us dated no earlier than then.
 
On the hypothesis, therefore, idiotic hypothesis as it would be on all grounds, that the cushion must have been got at by Madame Blavatsky, it must have been got at since I spoke of my impressions that morning, shortly after breakfast; but from the time of getting up that morning, Madame Blavatsky had hardly been out of our sight, and had been sitting with my wife in the drawing-room. She had been doing this, by-the-by, against the grain, for she had writing which she wanted to do in her own room, but she had been told by her voices to go and sit in the drawing-room with my wife that morning, and had done so, grumbling at the interruption of her work, and wholly unable to discern any motive for the order.
 
The motive was afterwards clear enough, and had reference to the intended phenomenon. It was desirable that we should have no arrière pensée in our minds as to what Madame Blavatsky might possibly have been doing during the morning, in the event of the incident taking such a turn as to make that a factor in determining its genuineness. Of course, if the selection of the pillow could have been foreseen, it would have been unnecessary to victimize our “old Lady,” as we generally called her. The presence of the famous pillow itself, with my wife ail the morning in the drawing-room, would have been enough. But perfect liberty of choice was to be left to me in selecting a cache for the brooch: and the pillow can have been in nobody’s mind, any more than in my own, beforehand.
 
The language of the note given above embodied many little points which had a meaning for us. All through, it bore indirect reference to the conversation that had taken place at our dinner-table the previous evening. I had been talking of the little traces here and there which the long letters from Koot Hoomi bore, showing, in spite of their splendid mastery over the language and the vigour of their style, a turn or two of expression that an Englishman would not have made use of; for example, in the form of address, which in the two letters already quoted had been tinged with Orientalism.
 
“But what should he have written?” somebody asked, and I had said, “under similar circumstances an Englishman would probably have written simply: 'My dear Brother.’” Then the allusion to the Kashmir Valley as the place from which the letter was written, instead of from a Lodge, was an allusion to the same conversation; and the underlining of the “k” was another, as Madame Blavatsky had been saying that Koot Hoomi’s spelling of “Skepticism” with a “k” was not an Americanism in his case, but due to a philological whim of his.
 
 
 
 
The incidents of the day were not quite over, even when the brooch was found; for that evening, after we hail gone home, there fell from my napkin, after I had unfolded it at dinner, a little note, too private and personal to be reprinted fully, but part of which I am impelled to quote, for the sake of the allusion it contains to occult modus operandi. I must explain that, before starting for the hill, I had penned a few lines of thanks for the promise contained in the note then received as described.
 
This note I gave to Madame Blavatsky, to despatch by occult methods if she had an opportunity. And she canned it in her hand as she and my wife went on in advance, in jampans, along the Simla Mall, not finding an opportunity until about half-way to our destination. Then she got rid of the note, occultism only knows how. This circumstance had been, spoken of at the picnic; and as I was opening the note found in the pillow, some one suggested that it would, perhaps, be found to contain an answer to my note just sent. It did not contain any illusion to this, as the reader will be already aware.
 
The note I received at dinner-time said:
 
 
« A few words more:
 
Why should you have felt disappointed at not receiving a direct reply to your last note?
 
It was received in my room about half a minute after the currents for the production of the pillow dak had been set ready and in full play. And — unless I had assured you that a man of your disposition need have little fear of being "fooled" — there was no necessity for an answer»
 
This third note is also found in the Mahatma Letters, No. 3C, p.11, and I did not put the rest of the note because it is not relevant.
 
 
It seemed to bring one in imagination one step nearer a realization of the state of the facts to hear “the currents” employed to accomplish what would have been a miracle for all the science of Europe, spoken of thus familiarly,
 
A miracle for all the science of Europe, and as hard fact for us, nevertheless, as the room in winch we sat. We knew that the phenomenon we had seen was a wonderful reality; that the thought-power of a man in Kashmir had picked up a material object from a table in Simla, and, disintegrating it by some process of which Western science does not yet dream, had passed it through other matter, and had there restored it to its original solidarity, the dispersed particles resuming their precise places as before, and reconstituting the object down to every line or scratch upon its surface. (By-the-by, it bore some scratches when it emerged from the pillow which it never bore before — the initials of our friend.)
 
And we knew that written notes on tangible paper had been flashing backwards and forwards that day between our friend and ourselves, though hundreds of miles of Himalayan Mountains intervened between us, and had been flashing backwards and forwards with the speed of electricity. And yet we knew that an impenetrable wall, built up of its own prejudice and obstinacy, of its learned ignorance and, polished dullness, was established round the minds of scientific men in the West, as a body, across which we should never be able to carry our facts and our experience.
 
And it is with a greater sense of oppression than people who have never been in a similar position will realize, that I now tell the story I have to tell, and know all the while that the solemn accuracy of its minutest detail, the utter truthfulness of every syllable in this record, is little better than incense to my own conscience — that the scientific minds of the West with which of all cultivated minds my own has hitherto been most in sympathy, will be closed to my testimony most hopelessly.
 
(The Occult World, p.108-115)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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