to the reason only, and not to the senses, claiming
its authority on grounds which appeal to the consciousness in man, as
far as is practicable divorced from matter, or to that consciousness
working through comparatively thick and gross veils of matter. After
the Coulomb difficulty there was a cessation almost entirely of these
phenomena in the Theosophical Society. Two reasons led up to that:
first, the utter disinclination of H.P.B. herself to continue to
expose herself to the attacks of people with regard to her good faith.
She was so maligned and slandered, so many friends turned against her
and spoke of the powers she possessed as fraudulent and as tricks,
that when her Master raised her from the bed that might have been her
death-bed, and would have been, save for His coming to her at
Adyar, she made the condition that she should not be forced to
produce phenomena in the way she had been forced before; that she
should be allowed to put that aside. The consent was given.
Lion-hearted as she was, she shrank from the storm of slander that
broke on her. The other reason was that people belonging to the
Society took fright. The pressure of public reprobation was so strong,
the force of unbelief so crushing, that the members of the Society
itself shrank back and were afraid to face public opinion, ignorant
and persecuting as it was; and it is pathetic and interesting to read
the letters she wrote in the years immediately succeeding the Coulomb
difficulty, in which she pointed out that those to whom she had
brought the light were ashamed to stand beside her under the
conditions to which she was then exposed. She complained that the
writings in the Society were changing their character; that they were
no longer occult and full of teaching of the unseen, but had become
purely philosophical and metaphysical; that her own journal had
turned aside from its earlier occultism, and confined itself to
articles addressed only to the intellect; and she says in one of these
letters: "Say what you may, it was my phenomena on which the
Theosophical Society was founded. It is my phenomena by which that
Society has been built up." It was a natural feeling of half
resentment against the policy of the time, that had left her in the
lurch, and put the Society upon a different footing. It was in
connection with that terrible time, in the turmoil and whirl of
conflicting opinions, that those words recorded of her Master, spoken
to herself, i