—­Damodar K. Mavalankar

The Himalayan Brothers—­Do They Exist?

“Ask and it shall be given unto you; knock and it shall be opened,” this is an accurate representation of the position of the earnest inquirer as to the existence of the Mahatmas.  I know of none who took up this inquiry in right earnest and were not rewarded for their labours with knowledge, certainty.  In spite of all this there are plenty of people who carp and cavil but will not take the trouble of proving the thing for themselves.  Both by Europeans and a section of our own countrymen—­the too Europeanized graduates of Universities—­the existence of the Mahatmas is looked upon with incredulity and distrust, to give it no harder name.  The position of the Europeans is easily intelligible, for these things are so far removed from their intellectual horizon, and their self-sufficiency is so great, that they are almost impervious to these new ideas.  But it is much more difficult to conceive why the people of India, who are born and brought up in an atmosphere redolent with the traditions of these things, should affect such scepticism.  It would have been more natural for them, on the other hand, to hail such proofs as those I am now laying before the public with the same satisfaction as an astronomer feels when a new star, whose elements he has calculated, swims within his ken.  I myself was a thorough-going disbeliever only two years back.  In the first place I had never witnessed any occult phenomena myself, nor did I find any one who had done so in that small ring of our countrymen for whom only I was taught to have any respect—­the “educated classes.”  It was only in the month of October, 1882, that I really devoted any time and attention to this matter, and the result is that I have as little doubt with respect to the existence of the Mahatmas as of mine own.  I now know that they exist.  But for a long time the proofs that I had received were not all of an objective character.  Many things which are very satisfactory proofs to me would not be so to the reader.  On the other hand, I have no right to speak of the unimpeachable evidence I now possess.  Therefore I must do the best I can with the little I am permitted to give.  In the present paper I have brought forward such evidence as would be perfectly satisfactory to all capable of measuring its probative force.

The evidence now laid before the public was collected by me during the months of October and November, 1882, and was at the time placed before some of the leading members of the Theosophical Society, Mr. Sinnett among others.  The account of Bro.  Ramaswamier’s interview with his Guru in Sikkhim being then ready for publication, there was no necessity, in their opinion, for the present paper being brought to light.  But since an attempt has been made in some quarters to minimize the effect of Mr. Ramaswamier’s evidence by calling it most absurdly “the hallucinations