ny bad motive,
and who have ever been true and loyal to their convictions and to the
cause they have so nobly espoused. As for the majority who laugh at and
ridicule what they have neither the inclination nor the capacity to
understand, I hold them in very small account. If these few lines will
help to stimulate even one of my brother-Fellows in the Society, or one
right-thinking man outside of it, to promote the cause of Truth and
Humanity, I shall consider that I have properly performed my duty.

--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