Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/97

 objects and finally determined to devote all his efforts, and concentrate all his hopes, in what faute de mieux, I may call, spiritual development. All Chelas are bound by vows and conditions, over and above those of ordinary initiates of low grade. No Chela would, I may almost say can deceive his Guru, in whom centre all his hopes of advancement ; no teacher will take on the Chela cast off by another. What a real Chela says to his Guru you may accept as the absolute truth, so far as the speaker is concerned. He may be mistaken, he cannot lie." Apparently some of the reporters, from being Chelas in their earlier years, had afterwards returned to ordinary secular life : " Many were respectable worldly men (a few of whom, in my part of the country, I actually knew), but these were all men who had gone through some initiations, and taken binding vows in earlier life, though from one cause or another they had given up the path. But the majority, I was told, were devotees, men of every sect and creed in the country, all initiates in some of the many branches of the secret knowledge, and all bound by vows, they can not practically break, to some farther advanced seeker than themselves, who again must obey others, and so on, until you come to the leaders who are of no sect and no religion, but of all sects and all religions." He further explains that absolute secrecy is an essential feature in the life of these de- votees ; and this accounts for the fact that ordinarily even the existence of these religious sects is unknown to the best informed Europeans, and to the majority of the educated Indians themselves. It was only under the stress of peculiar circumstances, and to avert calamity, that the leaders opened communications with Mr. Hume, although he always refused to come under their special pledges. His attitude of co-operation was thus defined : " I have promised always to do what I am asked, when