Theos-Talk Archives (April 2004 Message tt00613)

I give an excerpt from Sinnett's OCCULT WORLD:

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We set out at the appointed time next morning. 
We were originally to have been a party of six, 
but a seventh person joined us just before we 
started. After going down the hill for SOME HOURS 
a place was chosen in the wood near the upper 
waterfall for our breakfast: the baskets that 
had been brought with us were unpacked, and, 
as usual at an Indian picnic, the servants at 
a little distance lighted a fire and set to work 
to make tea and coffee. Concerning this some 
joking arose over the fact that we had one cup 
and saucer too few, on account of the seventh 
person who joined us at starting, and some one 
laughingly asked Madame Blavatsky to create 
another cup and saucer. There was no set purpose 
in the proposal at first, but when Madame Blavatsky 
said it would be very difficult, but that if we 
liked she would try, attention was of course at 
once arrested. Madame Blavatsky, as usual, held 
mental conversation with one of the Brothers, and 
then wandered a little about in the immediate 
neighbourhood of where we were sitting- that is 
to say, within a radius of half-a-dozen to a 
dozen yards from our picnic cloth- I closely 
following, waiting to see what would happen. 
Then she marked a spot on the ground, and 
called to one of the gentlemen of the party 
to bring a knife to dig with. The place chosen 
was the edge of a little slope covered with 
thick weeds and grass and shrubby undergrowth. 
The gentleman with the knife-let us call him 
X-------------- as I shall have to refer to 
him afterwards- tore up these in the first place 
with some difficulty, as the roots were tough 
and closely interlaced. Cutting then into the 
matted roots and earth with the knife, and 
pulling away the débris with his hands, he came 
at last, on the edge of something white, which 
turned out, as it was completely excavated, to 
be the required cup. A corresponding saucer was 
also found after a little more digging. Both objects 
were in among the roots which spread everywhere 
through the ground, so that it seemed as if the 
roots were growing round them. The cup and saucer 
both corresponded exactly, as regards their 
pattern, with those that had been brought to 
the picnic, and constituted a seventh cup and 
saucer when brought back to where we were to 
have breakfast. I may as well add at once that 
afterwards, when we got home, my wife questioned 
our principal khitmutgar as to how many cups and 
saucers of that particular kind we possessed. In 
the progress of years, as the set was an old set, 
some had been broken, but the man at once said 
that nine teacups were left. When collected and 
counted that number was found to be right, without 
reckoning the excavated cup. That made ten, and 
as regards the pattern- it was one of a somewhat 
peculiar kind, bought a good many years previously 
in London, and which assuredly could never have 
been matched in Simla. 

Now, the notion that human beings can create material objects by the 
exercise of mere psychological power, will of course be revolting to 
the understandings of people to whom this whole subject is altogether 
strange. It is not making the idea much more acceptable to say that 
the cup and saucer appear in this case to have been " doubled " 
rather than created. The doubling of objects seems merely another 
kind of creation- creation according to a pattern. However, the 
facts, the occurrences of the morning I have described, were at all 
events exactly as I have related them. I have been careful as to the 
strict and minute truthfulness of every detail. If the phenomenon was 
not what it appeared to be- a most wonderful display of a power of 
which the modern scientific world has no comprehension whatever it 
was, of course, an elaborate fraud. That supposition, however, 
setting aside the moral impossibility from any point of view of 
assuming Madame Blavatsky capable of participation in such an 
imposture, will only bear to be talked of vaguely. As a way out of 
the dilemma it will not serve any person of ordinary intelligence who 
is aware of the facts, or who trusts my statement of them. The cup 
and saucer were assuredly dug up in the way I describe. If they were 
not deposited there by occult agency, they must have been buried 
there beforehand. Now, I have described the character of the ground 
from which they were dug up; assuredly that had been undisturbed for 
years by the character of the vegetation upon it. But it may be urged 
that from some other part of the sloping ground a sort of tunnel may 
have been excavated in the first instance through which the cup and 
saucer could have been thrust into the place where they were found. 
Now this theory is barely tenable as regards its physical 
possibility. If the tunnel had been big enough for the purpose it 
would have left traces which were not perceptible on the ground - 
which were not even discoverable when the ground was searched shortly 
afterwards with a view to that hypothesis.
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