From K.H. Received at Umballa on the way to Simla, August 5, 1881.
{Olcott being in Ceylon, H.P.B. left Bombay July 22 to visit Hume at Simla. A. P. Sinnett arrived at Hume’s home as a guest early in August. The 21st the Simla Eclectic T.S. was formed with Hume as President, A.P.S., Vice-president, Ross Scott, Secretary.}
“Your two letters to S.M. will lead to no result whatever. He will remain as immovable and your trouble will have been taken in vain. You will receive a letter from him full of suspicion and with no few unkind remarks. You cannot persuade him that + is a living Brother for that was tried and — failed; unless, indeed, you convert him to popular exoteric Lamaism; which regards our “Byang-tzyoobs” and “Tchang-chubs” — the Brothers who pass from the body of one great Lama to that of another — as Lhas or disembodied Spirits. Remember what I said in my last of Planetary Spirits. The Tchang-chub (an adept who has, by the power of his knowledge and Soul-enlightenment, become exempt from the curse Of unconscious transmigration) — may, at his will and desire, and instead of reincarnating himself only after bodily death, do so, and repeatedly — during his life if he chooses. He holds the power of choosing for himself new bodies — whether on this or any other planet — while in possession of his old form, that he generally preserves for purposes of his own. Read the book of Khiu-tee and you will find in it these laws. She might translate for you some paras as she knows them by rote. To her you may read the present.
Do I often laugh at “the helpless way in which you grope in the dark?” Most decidedly not. That would be as unkind and about as foolish for me to do as for you to laugh at a Hindu for his pidgin English, in a district, where your Govt. will not teach people English. Whence such a thought? And whence that other to have my portrait? Never had but one taken, in my whole life; a poor ferrotype produced in the days of the “Gaudeamus” by a travelling female artist — (some relative, I suppose, of the Munich Beer-Hall beauties that you have interviewed of late) — and from whose hands I had to rescue it. The ferrotype is there, but the image itself has vanished: the nose peeled off and one of the eyes gone. No other to offer. I dare not promise for I never break my word. Yet — I may try — some day to get you one.”
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Yours faithfully,
K. H.
In October I will be in Bhutan. I have a favour to ask of you: try and make friends with Ross Scott. I need him.
Byang-tzyoobs and Tchang-chubs. Usually spelled changchub (Tib. byang chub) the term is a translation of the Sanskrit word bodhi, meaning enlightenment or awakening. In Tibetan, Chang (byang) means purified and chub means replete.
Traou an Dour 