Regarding these phenomena, Colonel Olcott in his "Old Diary Leaves I" reported the following:
« Readers of Lane's Modern Egyptians, will recall the story of a young man who, upon visiting a certain wonder-working sheikh, obtained some marvelous proofs of his occult powers.
His father, then at a distant place, being somewhat ailing, the son asked that he might have news of his condition. The sheikh consenting, told him to write the father a note of enquiry; which was done, handed him by the anxious son, and by the sheikh placed under the back-pillow against which he was leaning.
Presently, the sheikh drew from the same place a letter answering the young man's enquiries. It was written by the father's own hand, and, if my memory serves — for I am trusting to recollection only — stamped with his seal.
At his request, also, coffee was served to the company in the father's own cups (fingdn), which he had every reason to believe had been at the moment of asking in the paternal house in that far-off village.
H.P.B. gave me one evening, without fuss or parade, a fact of the first of these two orders. I wished to hear from a certain Adept upon a certain subject. She made me write my questions, put them in a sealed envelope, and place the letter where I could watch it for the time being.
This was even better than the Egyptian sheikh incident, for in that case the letter was hidden from the enquirer by the back-pillow. As I was sitting at the moment before the grate, I put my letter behind the clock on the mantel, leaving just one edge of the envelope projecting far enough for me to see it.
My colleague [H.P.B.] and I went on talking about a variety of things for perhaps an hour, when she said my answer had come. I drew out the letter, found my own envelope with its seal unbroken, inside it my own letter, and inside that the answer in the Adept's familiar manuscript, written upon a sheet of green paper of peculiar make, the like of which — I have every reason to believe — was not in the house. We were in New York, the Adept in Asia.
This phenomenon was, I submit, of a class to which the theory of trickery could not apply, and therefore has much weight. There is just one explanation possible — a very lame one — besides that which I conceive to be the true theory.
Granting H.P.B. to be possessed of extraordinary hypnotic power, she might have instantaneously benumbed my waking faculties, so as to prevent my seeing her rise from her chair, take my letter from behind the clock, steam the gum, open the cover, read my letter, write the reply in forged hand-writing, replace the contents of the envelope, refasten it, place it back again on the mantel-shelf, and then restore me to the waking state without leaving in my memory the least trace of my experiences!
But I had and still preserve a perfect consciousness of having carried on the hour's conversation, of her moving about hither and thither, of her making and smoking a number of cigarettes, of my filling, smoking, and refilling my pipe, and, generally, doing what any waking person might do when his senses were alert as to a psychical phenomenon then in progress.
If some forty years of familiarity with hypnotic and mesmeric phenomena and their laws go for anything, then I can positively declare that I was fully conscious of what was going on, and that I have accurately stated the facts.
Perhaps even twice forty years' experience on the plane of physical Maya [illusion] would not qualify one to grasp the possibilities in Oriental hypnotic science. Perhaps I am no more capable than the tyro of knowing what really passed between the times of writing my note and getting the answer.
That is quite possible. But in such case what infinitesimally little weight should be given to the aspersions of H.P.B.'s several hostile critics, learned and lay, who have judged her an unmitigated trickster, without having had even a fourth of my own familiarity with the laws of psychical phenomena!
In the (London) Spiritualist for January 28, 1876, I described this incident with other psychical matters, and the reader is referred to my letter for the particular. »
(Chapter 23)
William Judge said that Blavatsky could hypnotize without people realizing, but this phenomenon where the Master responds inside a closed envelope was carried out on multiple occasions, with other people, and sometimes without Blavatsky being present.
And in the Spiritualist magazine the following text appeared about these phenomena:
« In more than twenty cases, found the familiar writing of a certain spirit friend inside letters delivered to me by the postman, upon my opening the envelopes—the letters coming from correspondents in various parts of the world, and some from persons who knew nothing and cared less about Spiritualistic phenomena.
(Cid's note: Colonel Olcott initially believed that the Adepts were spirits.)
In Lane’s Modern Egyptian you will find an account of the experience which two visitors had with a famous sheikh, part of which bears upon this question. One of them desired an answer to a sealed letter, which he handed the sheikh and which was addressed to his own father, then living in a place far distant from the locality when the seance was occurring. The sheikh placed the letter behind one of the cushions of his divan, and shortly after turning down the cushion the visitor found his own letter gone and another addressed to himself, in his father’s familiar handwriting, replying to his questions and giving him unsought information about things that moment transpiring at home.
Once this happened to me. I wrote a letter to a dear • friend of mine who resided several thousand miles away from here—in India. I laid it, sealed, upon the mantel-shelf, where I could have it under my eye the whole time. In about an hour I looked and found my own envelope with unbroken seal, my own note inside, and inside that, and upon a sheet of coloured paper unlike anything in my own possession, and nulike anything that I ever saw letters written upon in America, was a reply from my correspondent, in his own handwriting. »
(p.45)
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