About this event, Colonel Olcott in chapter 12 of his book Old Diary Leaves, 3rd Series, told the
following:
On 13th June [1884] I returned to
London in company with Mr. Judge, who had come over from New York to see us on
his way out to India, his intended future field of work.
A little while before this I had
instituted a friendly competition between certain of our London associates who
were either professional or amateur artists, to try an important psychical
experiment.
My earlier readers will recall my
description (see London edition, Old
Diary Leaves, 1st Series, ch. xxiii, pp. 370-373) of the way in which my
adept Guru [Morya] redeemed his promise that he would give me his portrait at a
convenient time.
This was a profile likeness,
drawn by an amateur who was not an occultist, either trained or untrained, and
so, while the resemblance was unquestionable —as I verified later in personal
intercourse— it did not show the soul-splendor that lights up an adept's
countenance.
Naturally, I wanted to get a
better portrait if possible, and bethought me to try whether my sympathetic
artistic colleagues in London could get clearer, more life-like, spiritual
glimpses of this divine face.
Upon broaching the subject, the
five—three professionals and two amateurs—whom I addressed, very kindly and
willingly consented, and I lent each in turn the photographic copy of the
original crayon sketch that I had with me. The results were very instructive. One had
got the right idea of his complexion, another of his profile and a third, my
respected friend Mme. De Steiger, of the luminous aura that shimmers about his
head. But neither of the five was, on the whole, a better
likeness than the New York sketch by Monsieur Harrisse.
Before this competition was
finished, Herr Hermann Schmiechen, a very well-known German portrait-painter,
domiciled in London, joined the Society and, to my great delight, at once
agreed to have the inspirational test tried with him. The photograph was handed
him with no suggestion as to how the subject should be treated.
He began work on 19th June and
finished it on 9th July.
Meanwhile I visited his studio
four times alone and once with H.P.B., and was enchanted with the gradual
development of the mental image which had been vividly impressed upon his
brain, and which resulted in as perfect a portrait of my Guru as he could have
painted from life.
Unlike the others, who all copied
the profile idea of Harrisse, Schmiechen gave the face in full front view, and
poured into the eyes such a flood of life and sense of the indwelling soul as
to fairly startle the spectator. It was as dear a work of genius and proof of
the fact of thought transference as I can imagine. In the picture he has got all — the face, complexion, size, shape and
expression of eyes, natural pose of head, shining aura, and majestic character.
This is also true of the
companion portrait which Schmiechen painted of our other chief Guru [Khuyumi],
and one feels as if the grand eyes were searching his very heart. I have
noticed the signs of this first impression in nearly every case, and the
feeling of awe is enhanced by the way in which the two pairs of eyes follow one
about the room, still seemingly reading one, no matter where he may take his
stand.
Then, again, by some trick of the
artist's brush, the shining aura about the two heads seems to be actually in a
shimmery motion, just as it is in nature. No wonder the religiously-minded
visitor finds himself, as it were, impressed with a sense of the holiness of
the room where the two portraits hang, and meditative introspection is easier
there than elsewhere.
(Note: After Schmiechen
finished the two original portraits, Colonel Olcott took them to Adyar.)
Grand as they are by day, the
pictures are even more striking by night, when properly lighted, and the
figures seem as if ready to step out of their frames and approach one.
The artist has made two or more
copies of the portraits, but they lack the life-like character of the original;
he evidently lacking the stress of inspiration under which the latter were
produced.
As for the photographs which were
—against my passionate protest— permitted to be made from the copies, they are
as inferior to the originals at Adyar, as a tallow candle to the electric
light. And
it has made me inexpressibly sad that these glorious faces, in cheap
photographs, have been sold over the counter by Judgeites, and published in a
magazine and a book by Dr. Hartmann.
Does it not seem as if this foregoing experiment threw a great light on
the mystery of art-inspiration, and helped us to see what makes the difference
between a great painter or sculptor and the general rabble of the professions?
The great artist must be a man
whose lower mind is sensitive to the impressions that can be impressed on it by
his higher, or spiritual, consciousness, and his best works would be produced
in those so-called moments of "inspiration," when this transfer of
consciousness is going on.
Is it not illustrated in the case
in point, when the artist, guided and fired by an influx from without, paints
such pictures as he cannot duplicate in his normal state of independent
mortality? And is not the Titian, Rubens, Claude, Cellini, Leonardo,
Praxiteles, or Pheidias, one who is open to the guidance of the Higher Self,
capable of receiving in "flashes" those race-lifting glimpses of the
divine reality behind these walls of flesh?
A point of interest in this
instance is that the Schmiechen portrait of my Guru was the seventh attempt to
get a worthy reflection of his image, for the helping of those who cannot as
yet go in sukshma sharira [subtle body] to the Ashram and converse with him
face to face.
(p.162-166)
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