The following are extracts of correspondence and records of esoteric experience between a Theosophist simply referred to here as “Mrs. S.” and Genevieve Griscom, the esoteric head of The Theosophical Society headquartered in New York (and which is now sadly defunct; see The Forgotten Theosophical Society) whose exoteric and particularly esoteric Theosophical work was mostly carried on anonymously under the pseudonym Cavé. The correspondence that will be quoted dates from 1903 to 1905. There are firm historical reasons (given in the article just linked to) to believe that Cavé – who with her husband Clement A. Griscom, Jr., were recognised as the closest friends and most trusted allies of William Q. Judge in the USA – was Judge’s choice to succeed him in responsibility for the Society’s Esoteric Section or Esoteric School after his death. Following the issues with Katherine Tingley, she did so, albeit so quietly and anonymously that barely any Theosophists in more recent times have even heard of her, nor had the majority of Theosophists in her own era.

Anyone closely familiar with the writings, methods, and general approach of H. P. Blavatsky will notice that Cavé’s methods, style, and approach are quite different. For one thing, they were respectively disciples of different Masters from different branches or divisions of the one Great Lodge or Brotherhood of the Masters of Wisdom. HPB and her Guru (the Master Morya) belong to the Trans-Himalayan Lodge, with its thoroughly Eastern and Buddhistic approach. Cavé belongs to the Egyptian Lodge and is a disciple of the Master Hilarion, whose approach is known to have more similarity and affinity with that of the typically Western mind. If one accepts as valid Hilarion’s revelation to Cavé that he is the Master who had incarnated as Jesus Christ and that his own fraternity is known as The Order of the Living Christ (the name then adopted for itself by this Theosophical Society’s Esoteric School around 1908), one can more readily understand the strong strains of Christian Mysticism that will come to light in what follows. And for another thing, Genevieve Griscom was much more feminine in character than Helena Blavatsky who, despite being physically a woman, was very much a “man” inwardly.

If one is not already familiar with Cavé and the work and thought of what has been called the Griscom/Hargrove/Johnston Theosophical Society, it may be helpful to read beforehand or afterwards The Forgotten Theosophical Society, Occultism and Mysticism, The Master Who Stands At The Head of Your Ray (this one is particularly important in relation to the present article), The Egyptian Lodge and the Secret Wisdom, Chelaship, Meditation, and The Master, Two Little-Known Letters from The Master Hilarion, and Theosophy is ONE with the Christianity of Christ.

This material which we will be sharing was originally published in three installments under the title “Practical Occultism” in the July 1913, October 1913, and April 1914 issues of “The Theosophical Quarterly,” the magazine of The Theosophical Society headquartered in New York. It was introduced by Ernest Hargrove, who wrote:

“I . . . have had the great good fortune to have placed in my hands a record, unique in exoteric literature so far as I am aware, which should be of immense service to those who are interested in discipleship whether theoretically or practically.

“Not long ago a woman, a member of the Theosophical Society, died. She had been a member for a great many years, and at one time had been effectively active on behalf of the Society. She had known Mr. Judge and had been helped greatly by him. Not long after his death, her activity ceased. She allowed herself, as she afterwards realized, to be washed onto a sand-bank in the river of life, and to lie there, gasping, for as long a period as she had before given to working for Theosophy.

“She had been a disciple “on probation.” She had done splendid work. She forced herself forward where the fire was hottest: and she failed. But she was brought back to life, and to a more complete discipleship — was “raised from the dead” as she expressed it to me later — through the instrumentality of the individual known to readers of the QUARTERLY as “Cavé.” For this she was boundlessly grateful, and, before her actual death, instructed her heirs to loan me her papers and records, believing that I might be able to extract material which would help others.

“Not more than half a dozen members of the Society ever knew her, even by name. She wrote for the magazines, but always under noms-de-plume. Her husband was a great traveller and, with him, she roamed the world — Europe and Asia and Africa — many times over.

“Among the papers loaned to me are a number of letters to her, written by Cavé, and the record of her daily meditation with comments by Cavé. She showed and explained these to me when I last saw her, so that I am able to some extent to speak of the preliminaries as well as to elucidate the sequence of the letters, whenever that seems necessary. . . .

“Finally it dawned on her that while she had known the Masters outwardly, as the supreme Workers, and herself as one of their instruments, she had not known them at all in the deeper sense, and that she had never given them her heart. It was example, she said, that taught her this; it was observation of one disciple in particular whose love seemed centered in them. Her desire to help returned with increasing intensity. She was told that she must learn to love if truly she would serve; and she, this woman of forty, set her will grimly to the task of learning how to love!”

To avoid the present article being even longer than it already is, we will begin by quoting only the extracts from Cavé’s side of the correspondence, which contains practical advice and guidance that any serious aspirant to the Masters can benefit from. Towards the end, when Mrs. S.’s own progress makes some significant advances, we will include her own notations and records.

It will be seen that by meditating at the same time as one another, Mrs. S. was greatly benefited from perceiving and hearing (with increasing clarity and accuracy as time went on) what Cavé was transmitting to her, in words as well as thoughts and feelings. Cavé, as an advanced disciple of the Master Hilarion and a capable practical occultist in her own right, served as the mediator or intermediary, or in one sense the midwife, to enable Mrs. S. to have a successful and efficacious birth . . . the spiritual rebirth of herself, into the light, life, and love of the Master, one of the greatest of all.

~ * ~

EXCERPTS (IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER) FROM LETTERS AND NOTES SENT BY CAVÉ TO “MRS. S.”

“My dear friend — I want to thank you with sincere gratitude and affection for your most kind letter. I have taken it deeply to heart, and feel the seriousness and responsibility of the trust you place in me. I shall do all in my power to justify it, and aid you in every way I can. . . . I am not going to send you to South America! — not yet, at any rate: but ask of you the far harder task of taking yourself steadfastly in hand, cultivating confidence that you can do it — lean on my faith there, when you lose your own  in other words devoting yourself chiefly to that branch of the work which has never appealed to you nor awakened your enthusiasm: — your own training. But it will interest you when I assure you that that is your path to the Master. There always is one path for each of us, and usually it is the one way we do not care to go.

“I do not think you in any sense lethargic, only your great mental activity has dulled and deadened your inner faculties. Here is something for immediate attack.

“Please remember that when you want to talk to me I am here, waiting. I shall speak, of course, when I see need; but usually I shall wait for you. That is my way.”

“If you do not already keep a Diary, please do so, not merely the ordinary kind, but what is called a ‘Chela’s Log Book.’ Note in it the inner events, and, as far as you can perceive them, the inner meaning of outer events. This will keep your attention upon that side of your daily happenings and occupations; and putting them down every night before sleeping, will give them sequence, and, in the course of time, coherence and a consecutive meaning. In this you will find the guidance of your life, — not flash-lights out of the darkness now and again, which bewilder as often as they illumine, and which, thus torn from the context as it were, one is more often than not prone to misinterpret; but a steady, even light, which though very small at first, if we follow after with eyes steadfastly fixed upon it, grows brighter and brighter. (This Ledger should be referred to often and re-read at regular intervals.)

“Try therefore to notice things. Realize all the time, and try to see them. You have to be steadily on the lookout to do this. You cannot expect much if you only try at intervals during the day, with your mind full of a thousand details of outer work and outer things between. Do not force; do not strain; do not get out of breath; keep down anxiety; leave results alone. Remember, results belong to the Master, and that the disciple must never take what does not belong to him. The disciple has no ‘rights’ (save to be tried) — not even the right to himself.

“By an effort of will you should keep the doubt, distrust, ridicule and cynicism of the mind, down and away. No difference whatever that these are turned against yourself, since you are no different from the rest, and must eliminate that which is due, partly to the sense of separateness in a larger way, and, in a smaller way, to a subtler form of self-love and vanity. These feelings, if not kept at bay, lead always to discouragement and despair. So sharpen the blade of your will upon these inevitable defects, which must, however, be completely eradicated. Make it a point of honour. You cannot realize — no one can before a certain stage—how insulting such feelings are towards the Master. How often we place him upon a throne, with purple robe and sceptre and a crown (a crown of thorns alas!), and then bend the knee and mock and buffet him! And his prayer is always the same — Father, forgive them for they know not what they do [i.e. as in the Crucifixion narrative and Luke 23:34]. This may seem exaggeration, but it is not: it is the same thing on a higher plane.

“Occultly speaking your mind is undisciplined. Your first task therefore is to discipline it, and you will do this by your will. Say to it first — So far and no further! And never let it cross the line.

“If you can arrange it, I should like you to fix an hour when you can meditate with me, daily. Of course, I do not mean that we should be together. The morning is a better time, and I can arrange for any hour save _____. Take five minutes, if possible. Insist upon yourself as a disciple, and then turn to the Higher Self by way of the Master. Sometimes I shall try to speak to you at such times, and please keep careful notes of any impressions you have, which I would like to see.

“One personal matter. Be always simple and direct with me. I shall make it a point to accept what you say just as you say it — not looking under or behind your words for your meaning. So you must be careful, or you might unintentionally mislead me. You are shy, and so am I. We must both try to get over this with each other. It is foolish and a barrier. Let us be frank and simple and trust each other and ourselves. . . . You know most of these things: have taught them many times. Now you must do them.”

“My very dear friend, . . . But above all I must thank you for your Christmas letter, which meant a great deal to me. Your personal expressions of trust and affection are dear to my heart — the love of my friends and fellow-workers is something I am very dependent upon. But above all I see you turning with strong faith and effort to the Master: turning, so that I do not believe you could ever again under any delusion whatever, turn away. O do not be discouraged! We must all feel our failings and inadequacies, but what do they matter. Press on! After all, that is the Master’s concern, not ours. If we were worthy of his choice, then he knows that we have within us the possibilities of what he desires. And he loves us! Surely we can never disappoint that marvellous love. And we can cling to that and forget about results. After what we know of the difference in his outlook and ours, we must realize that his results are far other than ours, even ours at their best; and that our safety — for ourselves and for his work — lies in leaving them absolutely alone.

“Can you doubt that I, who require so much patience, would not find it for you? What would keep me humble, were there nothing else to do so, is that I can see so clearly how much more is shown me than I have ever need to show.”

“These ‘meditations of love and worship’ are the best of all.”

“Many years ago, ______ taught me (inside) to go to him and talk to him just as if he were standing right there before me. It was an old habit of childhood, which, in my years of green fruitage, I considered foolish and looked back upon with indulgent amusement. ______ showed me that the child’s instinct and method was the true one. It took a little time, and both my faith and patience were tested: but I know from experience that it is an unfailing method.”

“. . . remember the Manas of the Master and chela is one — that is to say, all the Manas of the chela is the Master’s, and the chela has as much of the Master’s as he can reach and assimilate. So of his other qualities, since the chela lives in the Master’s aura.”

“Have more faith in your [inner] impressions. Better to go it blind and be deceived, than to chill everything with doubt. Purification casts out doubt: it really has nothing to do with others or with circumstances.”

“Sometimes our minds extinguish spiritual ideas as a burning torch is extinguished by plunging it in water — this when psychic (astral or emotional) influences dominate the mind. Or again, in the aridity of over-activity in outer events (lack of Detachment), the Divine Spark goes out as a hot coal is smothered by ashes. . . . There is much meaning in your message of today. For if joy be the very heart and essence of life, as the Master has told us, then his love is the road to it in being one with it. Thus he becomes truly our Mediator: Love, the essence of Life as of the Master, being the Way, the Truth, and the Life — universal and individual.”

“When you grow into close communion with the Master (your own Master), you can always distinguish his voice from that of any other Master because it will speak in your heart.”

“When you cannot meditate because of mental distractions, pray by all means, but I would not say ‘not to try to meditate’; because I would keep the idea, the desire for meditation in the back part of my consciousness, realizing that the prayers are a means to this end (which, in fact, we should always try to do in prayer). My idea of prayer, personally, is conversation with the Master — very intimate, adoring conversation, which leads to communion with him: an interchange, and then a sense of union. When self-consciousness is lost in the union, that is the highest stage I know. ____u ____l [i.e. Haru T___l, a close disciple of the Master Hilarion, referred to only, and very fleetingly, in the literature of the so-called Griscom/Johnston/Hargrove Theosophical Society] tells me that Communion is one of the things I seem to understand about: so I think this is not misleading.”

“I am thinking many thoughts your way tonight, and trying to keep the wonderful hush and darkness of Christmas Eve in my heart, in the midst of all the glare and noise about us. May you find its peace, and thus the divine Light of Christmas.”

“. . . It is the old, old lesson which we need so much to learn: to have patience, to wait. Some day I shall learn that lesson — even the little brother’s grave eyes promise me that, and ____u ____l never lets me voice the least doubt of it. . . . We cannot ask for easier circumstances in which to accomplish our purposes: the test of success will be, can we accomplish it in these? And something in the depths of me stirs when I think of that, crying ‘Yes, it shall be done, in the hardest; and so, greater force, greater momentum.’ What can the Dark Powers do against the Soul that has faced all odds — and won! And I know that no less sure victory than this would ever satisfy me.”

“My very dear friend, I cannot let another mail go without sending you a line. I had intended a letter, but all day I have been rushed, and now there remains but a brief moment in which to write. I must trust your understanding; your indulgence I can trust, but what I want you to know and believe is that I want to write: it is no task of friendship and courtesy that impels me, but the very deep and genuine desire to have you know something of what lies so truly and so steadfastly in my mind and heart. First then I thank you for your beautiful and most kind letter. What you tell me in it must indeed make me glad, even through the great sense of unworthiness which humbles me. These are the things in life which make life truly worthwhile, and make its sorrows and burdens easy, and are ample compensation for its pains. I am going to tell you simply and frankly that when you went away and left us [i.e. shortly after W. Q. Judge’s death, which was in 1896], was one of the very great pains of my life, but that I always was determined you should come back and that I would never, never surrender that determination: that somehow, some way you must come back — I would make you — and I realized that the first thing I must learn for that was patience, to wait the time and opportunity, and the tented faith that would not waver meanwhile. I hope you do not mind my saying this, for by saying it you will have a better appreciation of the great joy you have given me — what it really means to me to have so much reward; and I hope you will not mind my feeling it to be a reward. After all, we belong together in this work, in its wonderful tie of Brotherhood, and to the same Master. . . . Way in the back part of Judge’s mind was the possibility of just the work we shall be trying to do during our remaining years of life, though he never spoke to me of it in detail, only warning me always to be ‘ready’ and to ‘miss nothing,’ and to keep my ‘eyes open,’ and sometimes testing me with questions and problems which at the moment I only half understood, but later understood so well! But though he never spoke, it was from him I learned it, in that wonderful way in which one learns through association and love, with a great soul like his. And so, dear friend, as long ago, not knowing, you brought the pain, so today you bring a great joy and reward, and I am deeply grateful to you, and pray the Master’s blessing may be upon you for it.”

“Your note books I have gone over carefully. I am glad you have let me see them, for it helps me, and I believe will help you. . . . Three things I have tried to impress — not mentally, but into your inmost nature. First, love of the Master, opening out of your heart to him. You have great powers of loving, but they are like a frozen Niagara — frozen by your mind. Second, true self-confidence, not the false kind of the past, which you have now learned can snap under you, but the kind shadowed forth in St. Paul’s expression of a life hid with Christ in God. Third, to forge ahead, which means that making haste slowly which is the only haste the Master knows. Have you ever watched a great snow plough going through a drift in advance of a train? That is to my mind a picture of the will.

“So there is a trinity of effort, a noble three-fold path, and like all genuine trinities, a unity, for each one is an aspect of the first, the Love of the Master, which alone makes the others exist, or possible of realization. This explanation may aid you in getting a certain coherence out of your meditations: but I wanted you to work at it unaided first, for you must do it from the inside now. Do it with your heart: you have a fatal facility for doing it with your head!”

“Of course until you have had some vision of yourself as the disciple, you will find it most difficult to blend it and the personality. And this can only be done (I mean the having of this vision) in the light of the Higher Self, for we only see the disciple in true proportion and colour in that light. All mental images are distortions more or less, as is a picture reflected in even the clearest pool.”

“The desire for formlessness had nothing in itself of wrong. It springs from a depth of fundamental reality within us. But we must not leap for it: that is only to come back and do properly what otherwise is really not done at all. Nor must there be any shade of revolt. There could be no genuine formlessness without complete resignation of will and desire, and so the world of form, in all its planes, is to be accepted, as every other condition must be accepted. How can we ever expect to impress the modern socialist, for instance, with the need of rising above the idea of material conditions, until we, with fine comprehension, accept serenely the conditions of personality, mental barriers, emotional obscurations! This is a practical view of the matter, the inner aspect of which is that what is usually called ‘seeking after formlessness’ — even in would-be disciples — is a turning back from that which they seek, instead of a working towards it. These matters are all questions of growth, and we must accept, joyfully and gratefully, our means of growing. Not only the soil and climate the Master has provided for us particularly, but those general laws of soil and climate and gardening which the Great Master of the universe in His unspeakable Wisdom has ordained. Forcing may often produce wonderful flowers. But in _____u ____l’s lily garden we shall learn that the bulb dies. Then, as to ‘longing to escape,’ have you ever had a wonderful thought that has given me hours of ecstasy, — of Christ as a prisoner in the Tabernacle of our hearts?”

“Your emotional nature is not what you need be afraid of. Trust yourself. Fear rather the coldness which freezes your spontaneity and natural warmth, and makes a thin coating of frost between you and others and every other influence. Do not hold yourself in: let yourself out. I want you to melt, to thaw, to expand, to bask in the sunshine yourself and to let others bask in yours. If some one be so mistaken as to take advantage of it, forgive them in the Master’s name, even as he forgives all the advantage we take of him, since he will bear anything for the sake of love. I ask hard things of you, but oh! the rewards. . . . And you must be happy, too; you must cultivate it. Joy is the fruit of love, and you have had your vision of love — of what the Master’s love can be.”

“I want to make some notes on your last letter. Your way of being happy (‘I just sit quietly and silently and am happy’) is a very good way. I could not suggest anything to improve it. That is to bask in the sunshine and to bring sunshine to others; for you will radiate it, fill the atmosphere with it. What I want is that you should feel that way oftener, until after a while you feel so continuously; and I want you to let me help you to feel so. The Master’s disciple should be the most joyous of creatures in the depths of his consciousness. I want your aura to be radiant with colour and not so grey.

“When I wrote of taking advantage, I was thinking of what you had said about familiarity. I sympathize so warmly with your feeling about that. I detest it, for it cheapens everything. Close intimacy with those I love is something I prize and desire: and to my thought familiarity deprives intimacy of all charm and meaning — almost vulgarizes it. Very few people indeed seem to appreciate this. They tarnish and bruise with rude touches the most beautiful flowers of life, and then mourn that their bouquet is scentless and faded. But it is ignorance — lack of perception and understanding — and one must accept a certain amount of it with patience and sweetness. To forbid oneself expansion to avoid it, were to commit the graver error; for so long as one does not descend to the level of familiarity oneself, one is not contaminated by it, and by keeping always one’s own true sense of value, one can preserve fresh and pure the precious fragrance of intimate affection and intercourse. It is one of the lessons we have to learn — an essential lesson in discipleship, where the disciples must become as the fingers of one hand.

“And how right you are about reverence. What is love without it! For no matter how clear the personality may be (and no one realizes that more keenly than I to whom absence is such a bitter pain), yet any one even half awake comprehends that the true bond, the real object of our affection, lies deeper than that, and that we are really one in the Master’s love, for us and in us, and each to each must make obeisance ‘to the dim star that burns within.’ ‘Steadily as we watch and worship, its light will grow stronger’ [i.e. quotes from “Light on The Path”] — one of the highest services of love. How could all this be without the deepest reverence? Still the eternal paradox of all human life and endeavour is here also, and this deepest reverence is in no wise incompatible with — nay, is at the very heart of, the closest intimacy — and both should be. You know as well as I that one of the gravest American defects is lack of reverence. That they have it, deep hidden in their natures somewhere, is shown by their magnificent chivalry to their women, — but in their manners! . . . Do not be disturbed over your longing for silence. Ours is the Lodge of Silence, and that longing is the nostalgia of the Lodge. A certain amount of silence we need: the rest we must train ourselves to relinquish with sweetness, for there is no value in the renunciation which is not made sweetly.”

“Oh! if you would realize what a precious gift love is — and so its least expression.”

“What havens of peace lie in the depths of divine consciousness; what security from the world’s tumult, which beats unheard against its doors. Close thy ears and enter in. There in utter forgetting find the calm of unending union, and that radiance of joy which no outer circumstance can dim. You know to whom this should go.” [Note: This was a message or note received by Cavé from the Master and passed on to Mrs. S., at this stage in the correspondence.]

“I cannot thank you for your kindness, because there are no words deep enough — only prayers and prayers in my heart. Oh! my dear ______, if you could know how happy you are making me. Never mind what I was; let it rest at what I am, save as one may hope into that future of deeper and deeper understanding and communion with the Master. At least that is as it is to me. For you, know or find out what you will. I do not mean to shut you out from anything. And at the fire of my love yours shall be warmed, if ever there be need. Sometimes I feel as if I had enough for the whole world, and yet I know that I have not even enough to be worthy to offer him of myself. The only love ever worthy to offer is his love in us. So we pray him to teach us to love, to consume our souls in the fire of his love. — As ever, ________ [i.e. signed as Genevieve]

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“Since you seem to think you would like some of my prayers, here are some I constantly use. For the most part they are adaptations.”

PRAYERS.

“Dear Lord, grant me always to desire and will that which is most acceptable to thee and which pleaseth thee best. Let thy will be mine,  and let my will always follow thine and agree perfectly with it. I desire to do thy will with the same love and perfection as the angels and saints do it in heaven.” —

“Do thou, oh! my Master, establish in my soul thy kingdom, that thy image may be perfectly formed in me, and the virtues of thy sacred heart shine forth in all my actions.” —

“When our hearts are heavy and oppressed, when the waves of bewilderment and discouragement go over us, O sacred heart of the Master, have compassion and strengthen us!

“When life is easy and pleasant and our days are full of agreeable occupation, O sacred heart of the Master, have compassion and strengthen us!” —

“O most compassionate Master, who art our salvation, our life, and our resurrection, we implore thee do not forsake us in our needs and afflictions, and by the agony of thy most sacred heart, succour thy servants whom thou hast redeemed.” —

“Beloved Master, grant me an increase of faith, hope and charity, and a contrite and humble heart!”

“Master, I consecrate to thee my heart with all its affections; my soul with all its powers; my body with all its senses. In union with thee, I will live and labour and suffer to do the heavenly Father’s will. I will ever be mindful of thy presence and strive to be perfect.” —

“My Lord and my Master! Thou didst suffer and suffer far more than this. To thee suffering was familiar. Thou didst choose it for thy lot and thy inheritance, and I — I dread it and refuse it! By thy loving acceptance of pain, give me the courage to accept all I have to suffer. By thy meekness, extinguish my natural disturbance against them that injure me. By thy lifting up of thy heart, teach me how to make use of physical pain. By thy silence, help me to repress murmurs and complainings. By thy ardent love of thy heavenly Father, enable me to understand how affliction may intensify my love of God.”

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“It is all a battle, but the Master’s battle in actual fact, which makes us love even that: and we have the satisfaction now of knowing that we fight it together, shoulder to shoulder. I want you to get the happiness from that fact that I am getting.”

“. . . For all night long and all this morning, it was not only you that were calling me to help, but the Master, upon whom had come a grave anxiety which I sensed the more in contrast to the joy of these past weeks.

“. . . Does what I have written leave you cold? Have I failed to make you feel that which is consuming me now? the sense of the Master’s unutterable love for you; of what would be his desolation to lose you again; of the chill fear that you lay on his heart at any hint of coldness or turning away? . . . You must hear me, you must feel, you must understand: that shadow of his anguish is more than I can bear!”

“The main thing for you is to feel — Heavens, Yes! to feel, feel, feel. But if you find, as you seem to be finding, that you react with equal violence from your early morning prayers, then that certainly is not leading you where you want to go, and I would try all methods so as to attain the goal.”

“Yes, I think more than half the trouble comes from not knowing how to manage yourself. You are quite out of hand. How else could it be when you have cultivated this, so as to get what you fancied you wanted, so as to enjoy it when you got it — and to forget.

“It is natural for you to be stormy, to blaze: you have always been like that. It is the natural result — these violent changes and oscillations, when such a nature as yours is out of hand. But certainly a steady fire is what you want — a steadfast passion, and while I can understand that your dread of coldness (a dread I share, as you well know) makes you wish this positive and almost violent feeling as an assurance that you can feel (and indeed makes me wish it too for you for the same reason), yet I know that storm and tempest are not the Master’s way. He is intense; burns always at white heat, yet with absolute quietude and calm, with a marvelous power of stillness and silence. That is our model. . . . I know the weakness in a blaze. Passion and force that are poised and well in hand are the strong and enduring ones, and I care much for simple and natural things, so be that the force underlies them. I do not like surface things, small feelings, miniature feelings. I like heights and depths, but of force of which the man is master, not that which masters him.”

After asking for the return of some of her old letters to Cavé, so as to give her some hope and comfort during what presently seemed to be an arid and ineffective period in her progress toward the Master, “Mrs. S.” received them back, with this note:

“These letters you must keep with the greatest care, please. And not for too long! I prize them as we prize the things we have had to suffer to obtain. And have I not suffered for them? tell me! And through many years, in the present and in the past; for I never, never would let you go, and I never, never shall.”

THE REMAINDER OF THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE IN ITS ENTIRETY, WITH EXPLANATORY COMMENTS AND CONTEXT PROVIDED BY ERNEST HARGROVE

Mrs. S. told me that she had shut herself in her room when she received Cavé’s letter, vowing that she would neither eat nor sleep until she had “broken through” — until she could again feel that sense of the Master’s love which she had had and had lost; and that it came at last with an inexpressible outpouring that seemed nearly to tear her soul from her body.

Evidently she wrote Cavé at once, for the answer came back:

“Your letter has made me very happy. You can and will do this thing, — that I know; and in the doing will give a joy, not only to me, but to him, greater than you yet can dream of. And still I do not wish to minimize by a word my own joy, and all it means to me: only the infinitely important thing is his joy, to us both.

“You must trust, and think constantly of, two things: his unutterable love for you, and your own tremendous power of loving. For though you do not realize it as yet, that is your power, and not these mental things with which you have hitherto been concerned. But the kind of life and training you have had has suppressed this side of you, and now it will come out, and in it you will find yourself. But you must be patient with yourself meanwhile: simply forcing yourself to realize that this seeming cold, mental person is not you, but a false you, and that the real you, the disciple, is this _____ of the flaming heart.

“He told you once, in the old days, that you would conquer the world, but by love: do you remember? And with him. Meanwhile I love both (yous!), and would gladly give my life to aid you. And you will, I know, in your goodness, let me aid you all I can. You could not do me greater service. Never, so long as I have life, could I forget the way he opened his arms to you today.

“I wish this were better, but I have just snatched a minute from packing. . . . You will make all allowances and feel what I mean, for it is here, flowing out of my hand and pen, from my heart.”

At about this time, though without date, Mrs. S. received another letter:

“Remember that we do not face merely spans of years, but Eternity, and in that, all, all must come to fulfilment, everything be completely worked out. And so sorrow must come to us, but also joy.

“And must it not be that the desires that spring from Master should often lie outside the sphere of personal consciousness? none the less real and there? We know of something here, something there, we want: wayside flowers — very sweet often. I would not belittle them, believe me, for I love flowers; but the essence of the longing — what you call the ‘vision’ of it — seems ‘lost’ perhaps, because far, far beyond; closer it may be to him. To me this would prove its truth and genuineness. For after all, the loveliest flowers must fade at last, but if their roots lie in Eternity, more and more beautiful flowers will bloom as time goes on. Let us trust life for this, and the compassionate Law, and he who stands to us as its administrator. So we can be happy in it, taking gladly our flowers as they come to us; patient with the thorns when they wound us. This is a child’s point of view perhaps? Yet even here it may be that it is well to be like unto a child. [Note: One may here remember with profit the famous saying of Jesus that unless one radically changes and becomes “like a little child” one will never be able to enter the Kingdom of God.] God is Love, and so love must be forever its own exceeding great reward. Such has ever been my faith, and that faith I shall keep to the end, wherever it leads, to death in flames or to heaven.”

Then came Easter. Mrs. S. had caught, during her meditation, and had adopted as her own, an exclamation of Cavé — “Heart of my King, it is thy loveliness which draws us!” She had written of this, and for Easter received a card on which those words were inscribed, with this added: “Across the grey of Easter dawn a glorious hope smiles into coming day, for me. I hardly dare believe as yet. I hope. Master hear my prayer. . . . ‘Loveliness’; yes, that is my word. His unspeakable loveliness. Do you not feel it? And how true it is today!”

Mrs. S. told me that that Easter Day had in some sense marked a turning point. There had been another, several days earlier. Her entry to which Cavé had added “Praise God,” had been the last on which direct comment had been made. Letters had been written, but as these contained references to matters of very intimate spiritual experience — to matters ordinarily called “occult” — Cavé had requested that they be destroyed. Only a few were preserved.

On the day following that last of the annotated records, there is this brief note: “March 30th. My discovery of Cavé.” It meant that she had to some extent become conscious in the inner world, and that with that consciousness, for special reasons and purposes, the Master had given her memory of certain past lives, or of incidents in those lives, with appalling vividness, so that she lived them over again with an immediate intensity of thought and feeling. It did not happen all at once. It only began at the end of March. She had prayed passionately for repentance, and all that was given to her from the past brought home to her such depths of sin and weakness; proved so overwhelmingly the miracle of her Master’s love and wide forgiveness, that at last she began to understand something, though not much she said, of what it means to have a contrite heart.

She who, although kind in a worldly sense, had been congealed in an occult sense, and who had scarcely ever wept, “sobbed her soul out,” morning after morning, at the time of her meditation, for love and sorrow, during a period of nearly two years. Looking back upon it, in the light of later and wider experience, she could see that she had indulged herself. It had been such an ecstasy of relief; such a luxury of self-surrender. There had been too much of that, and not enough of stern self-discipline; not enough of particular resolution and of penance for failure to carry such resolutions into effect.

It had been a Purgatory of the emotions rather than a Purgatory of the will. None the less from first to last she moved forward, for this process had been essential to her growth: the flood-gates had been thrown wide open and all the back-waters drawn upon the freed. When the time came, it had not been difficult to readjust and to restore a balance. In all ways she was sincerely trying, the circumstances of her life providing her with constant opportunities for modification, — compelling it in many cases, while other opportunities she deliberately sought. Further, there was no concealing her intensity of nature, and she did desire with everything in her to give her life, her “heart, mind, will, understanding, memory,” everything she was, had or could be, to the service of the Master.

She wrote to Cavé fully and freely in regard to her inner experience at that time, but made only the briefest and most hurried notes of her daily meditations. Thus:

“This was an effort to follow ‘the flame’ of love beyond the mind and to the Master. It was quiet enough. And I did catch a flicker, a glimpse of his face — not clear, but real so far as it went. Still, I cannot count this as a ‘good’ meditation.”

A day or two later:

“This was not what it should have been. I had just written to Cavé, and had said truly that I felt as if in a battle. So I took to this meditation some of the feverishness of battle, and could not quite get rid of it. Yet there was aspiration and even a sense of communion, my mind interpreting it at the time in words like these: ‘Little lamb, who wandered, but who returned, — do not wander again: rest in my arms’ — the idea being that every time I allow myself to be drawn off by this sense of pressure, of things to do, and of their urgency, I do, as I well know, leave his arms.”

A few days later: “6 a.m.: O Master, dear Master, thou art so kind! How I thank thee for the suffering thou hast allowed me to suffer.” Then: “From 7 to 7.30: I could not feel — I felt as if I could not suffer; and although I prayed to Master, I could not feel him. So, after ten minutes, I got up from my knees and began to read Cavé’s letter of April 11th: and still I could not feel — until the word ‘desolation’ as what might be the Master’s feeling. Then I tried to jump to ∴ [i.e. the Master M. or Morya] and demanded help from Him to love His son [i.e. his Spiritual Son, the Master Hilarion or Christ]; and that moved me, and with tears streaming fast I seemed to be turned over to H. P. B. (not the outer, but the Lion [i.e. the real, inner “HPB,” a male Adept who is a disciple – another Spiritual Son – of Mahatma M.]), or to switch onto him; and it seemed that he said something to this effect, pointing with scorn at my tears and choking voice — ‘A lot of use that is!’ So I drew on all I could get from my past and hurled myself at him (dear H. P. B.), with outstretched arm and pointed finger, and shouted at him: ‘Then I demand it of you — you used me, you used me — and you shall pay back! I demand of you your adoration of him — your power for me to give to him.’ And then, really meaning it — ‘Jeer at me all you choose, dear H. P. B., but give me that!’

“And now I can say and feel ‘Heart of my King, it is thy loveliness which draws us.’ But having so appealed to H. P. B., what will happen next?!”

Another entry: “I was reading [i.e. in the Gospels of the New Testament] — how he wept over Jerusalem; and I loved him. And suddenly it came over me that he was glad that I love him. And I went on my knees and said — ‘Is it possible? Is it possible?’”

And again: “Sing, sing, sing, for the Love of the World has found lodgment in your heart, and you cannot die.”

Then this: “One of the most wonderful experiences of my life. Written in letter — ‘So terrible was Cavé’s prayer’ — and with one heart and will and prayer, and with arms outstretched to him — an utter melting. It came through from the night before, when Master talked with me alone.”

On April 23rd, Mrs. S. made this entry:

“8 a.m. Cavé said to Master: ‘This is beyond me — take it.’ And this very attitude gave me a certain sort of self-confidence, and I seemed to take hold and to claim Cavé’s love for him as my own, at one in that passion to be his. So it was as if Purity and Passion joined in yearning for him — ‘whose loveliness draws us’ — which did not bring sobs, but a curious tearing, like a tree struck by lightning and trembling — upward to him. And I held on to where I was kneeling and grasped so hard that I wondered if there were anything there to break.”

Mrs. S. notes at this point that she seems unable to meditate any longer in “the ordinary sense.” But this “ordinary sense” was that of past habit, and her further notes show more, not less, of genuine communion. In other words, her meditation was becoming more dynamic; the general level of consciousness had been raised; the high watermark of previous meditation, having become the average level of daily life, meditation itself flooded over all limitations of past experience or conception. At every stage this is necessary and inevitable. It is as fatal in these as in other matters to get into a rut. We cannot stand still. There must be movement from height to height — or from depth to depth. In this light the following entry will be more easily understood.

Mrs. S. writes: “I seem to have lost the power to meditate in the ordinary sense. I tried to pass to union with the Master, through Cavé. It seemed at one moment as ‘not a good meditation,’ when suddenly something struck me: a sense of Master’s love for me; the consciousness, ‘I too am his child, in some way his child — part of himself.’ It was overwhelming, and yet, with it, came a sense of self-confidence such as I have never known before.”

She makes this entry in some moment of deep realization: “Instead of punishment he gives us love; and that love is our punishment”; — upon which the following note of a few days later makes an admirable commentary: “Pain, suffering, which has in it no element of joy, is pure evil — is as evil as joy which has in it no element of pain. It is evidence of non-acceptance, of a rebellious will. To accept pain is to find in it the joy which makes it curative and divine. To carry his cross in our hearts is to find that joy.”

Another extract, showing how her experience was deepening: “A storm, a tempest of love; and a wild rush to Master with the thought, ‘It is thy loveliness which draws us.’ A plunge into his divine love — and some sense of calm — rather, perhaps, an imperfect ecstasy.”

Again: “An intensity of yearning to give to Master utterly, like the drawing of pith from fibre.” A week later: “O my child, is it so hard a thing to love me, that you needs must flog yourself to the point of it?”

“Friday: I felt myself inside made of spring steel, but in my mind this reflected itself as something tense, which must be wrong. There was immense tensity and spring and impetuosity; but I compared it with how I felt in Paradise, and there was none of this tenseness, only complete self-confidence, and power with repose.”

This reference to some experience of Paradise, of which there is no description in her note-book (she told me she had written of it to Cavé), may remind us of St. Paul: “I knew such a man (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” [i.e. found in 2 Corinthians 12:2-4]

Saturday seems to have been uneventful. Her next note reads: “Sunday: flat on my face, with that terrible sense of the Master’s love, and the longing that I might remain for ever in tears of repentance; but that he must live in me, and that I must forget myself. Then came Cavé ‘like an arrow from the bow,’ and I stood upright to receive of Master — drawn into the flame of his heart.”

“He has shown me one thing after another — Purity and Peace — as eternal memories, and for temporary purposes too. Then he showed me his humility, and it crushed me. But when shall I learn that!”

As the fruit of some meditation, Mrs. S. writes: “We must acquire that perfectly simple confidence which springs from knowledge of fact and not from self-assertion — that sort of confidence with humility which the Master showed when he said [i.e. in John 8:24]: ‘If ye believe not that I am he (for us, ‘his messengers’), ye shall die in your sins.’ It will be true of others. To some extent it is now.”

She follows this with the record of an experience, which, although expressed in few words, contains a lesson vital to every would-be disciple.

“I thought that I must make myself at peace in order to find the Master, and then I realized suddenly that all I had to do was to fling myself into his arms in any mood or in any condition, and that those arms are always open.”

This interjection is dated a day or two later: “But it is pain that I would not change for all the happiness I have ever known in my life.”

She spoke to me, in after years, of the joy of that purgation — of the joy and pain in one. I asked her if she had read the Treatise on Purgatory, usually attributed to St. Catherine of Genoa. She told me she had not. All the more reason, perhaps, to quote it at this point, as showing that the experience of Mrs. S. was one which many other mystics have had, and that in every case, like Dante, instead of misunderstanding Purgatory as a state to be entered after death only, one and all of them have discovered that Hell and Purgatory and Heaven are knowable here and now.

St. Catherine says: “For the least vision they [the souls in Purgatory] have of God overbalances all woes and all joys that can be conceived. Yet their joy in God does by no means abate their pain. . . . This process of purification to which I see the souls in Purgatory subjected, I have felt within myself during the past two years.”

So we pass to this entry: “Friday, 6.45 a.m. The anguish of Master’s love — like liquid flame in my veins and in my blood. Shaking with it, as with fiery hunger for him. And I think of his love, and of his longing to give it — to find hearts to accept it. If some hearts were not open to him, some fearful thing would happen: he, as person, would be consumed. It is his disciples who enable him to remain as man, because they at least a little can receive.”

Many of these things I shall not attempt to explain, for much that she told me was for my better understanding and not for publication. Yet the words themselves have so much atmosphere, so much concealed within them of soul experience, that I give them from her note-book, leaving it to the intuition of the reader to get from them what he can.

Thus:

“The King’s salute. Egypt at your feet. ‘Would to God that in that bitter day, he might have done this thing!’”

“As if all the passion of the world were lifted to him with love. . . . In that world and also in this, I raised the crucifix in both hands far above my head and said: A thing of gloom no longer, but in Egypt’s light.”

Finally, for our purposes, there is this:

“In all the tears of my repentance I did not reach a point at which sobs could not break — at which they almost choked me: yet this morning that is how I pray. And it is his loveliness which draws us. It is a beauty intolerable and blinding. Others have revealed his purity and his tenderness. Perhaps he will some day give it to me to show, darkly as must be through this glass, the passion, the unspeakable, agonizing yearning of his love for you, his children.”

That is enough, I think, to give some idea of the place she reached. There were further stages, and consolidation between each stage. But it would be impossible in the QUARTERLY [i.e. the “Theosophical Quarterly” magazine] to speak of these things. It is for us to profit from the records of past experience such as these pages have revealed. They will not then have been given in vain.

~ * ~

“When thou hast tasted somewhat of my comfort, and, leaning on my heart, hast learnt some secret of its passion, then again I must depart, or, weak and treacherous still, thou wouldst betray us both. Yet in that inner place where pride is dead (though fear be still enough alive to suffer), there, in its death, and in thy desolation at my loss, commingled, thou shalt find some whisper of the truth: that as thy love reflects my own, so also does thy sorrow; that our cross is borne together; that in it is an eternal comradeship; — till, nailed thereon by thy complete consent to my least will for thee, thou shalt find thy spirit lifted on its arms above that level of an earthly consciousness to one of paradise, where there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.

“Again and again the battle must be fought and won. It is only for an interval that Nature can be still. To learn is impossible until the first great battle has been won: then it is always possible to learn, for the Voice of the Silence remains within him — my voice — and one day it will resound and separate his divine possibilities from himself. O would-be disciple, hear my call! There is need of men. Who will lay down his life that he may find it?”
(Master Hilarion, in “Fragments” by Cavé, Vol. 2, p. 122-123)

~ * ~

This article may have raised more questions about various things. Please make use of the site search function (the magnifying glass symbol at the top of the page) and visit the Articles page to see the complete list of over 400 articles covering all aspects of Theosophy and the Theosophical Movement. Those articles linked to near the start of this article may also prove helpful and informative, so we list them again here: The Forgotten Theosophical Society, Occultism and Mysticism, The Master Who Stands At The Head of Your Ray (this one is particularly important in relation to the present article), The Egyptian Lodge and the Secret Wisdom, Chelaship, Meditation, and The Master (by Cavé), Two Little-Known Letters from The Master Hilarion, and Theosophy is ONE with the Christianity of Christ.

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