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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