Blavatsky Blogger
Taking Theosophical
ideas
into the 21st
century
Indian Metaphysics
By
H
P Blavatsky
First Published in the
TWO peas
in the same pod are the traditional symbol of mutual resemblance, and the time-honoured simile forced itself upon me when I read the twin
letters of our two masked assailants in your paper of Feb. 22nd. In substance
they are so
identical
that one would suppose the same person had written them simultaneously with his
two hands, as Paul Morphy will play you two games of
chess, or Kossuth dictate two letters at once. The only difference between
these two letters—lying
beside each other on the same page, like two babes
in one crib—is, that "M.A. Cantab’s" is
brief and courteous, while "Scrutator’s" is
prolix and uncivil.
By a
strange coincidence both these sharp-shooters fire from behind their secure ramparts
a shot at a certain "learned Occultist" over the head of Mr. C. C. Massey,
who quoted some of that personage’s views, in a letter published May 10th,
1876. Whether in irony or otherwise, they hurl the views of this "learned Occultist"
at the heads of Col. Olcott and myself, as though they were missiles
that would floor us completely. Now the
"learned Occultist" in question is not a whit more, or less, learned
than your humble servant, for the very simple reason that we are identical. The
extracts published by Mr. Massey, by permission, were
contained in a letter from myself to him. Moreover it
is now before me, and, save one misprint of no consequence, I do not find in it
a word that I would
wish changed. What is said there I repeat now over
my signature—the theories of 1876 do not contradict those of 1878 in any
respect, as I shall endeavour to prove, after
pointing out to the impartial reader the quaking ground upon which
our two critics stand. Their arguments against
Theosophy—certainly "Scrutator’s"—are like
a verdant moss, which displays a velvety carpet of green without roots and with
a deep bog below.
When a
person enters on a controversy over a fictitious signature, he should be doubly
cautious, if he would avoid the accusation of abusing the opportunity of the
mask to insult his opponents with impunity. Who or what is "Scrutator"? A
clergyman, a medium, a lawyer, a philosopher, a
physician (certainly not a metaphysician), or what? Quien sabe?
He seems to partake of the flavour of all, and yet to
grace none. Though his arguments are all interwoven with sentences quoted from
our letters, yet in no case does he criticize merely what is written by us, but
what he thinks we may have meant, or what the sentences might imply.
Drawing
his deductions, then, from what existed only in the depths of his own consciousness,
he invents phrases, and forces constructions, upon which he proceeds to pour
out his wrath. Without meaning to be in the least personal—for,
though propagating "absurdities" with the
"utmost effrontery," I should feel sorry and ashamed to be as
impertinent with "Scrutator" as he is with
us—yet, hereafter, when I see a dog chasing the shadow of his own tail, I will
think of his letter.
In my
doubts as to what this assailant might be, I invoked the help of Webster to
give me a possible clue in the pseudonym. "Scrutator,"
says the great
lexicographer, is "one who scrutinizes," and
"scrutiny" he derives from the Latin scrutari,
"to search even to the rags"; which scrutari
itself he traces back to a Greek root, meaning "trash, trumpery." In
this ultimate analysis, therefore, we must regard the nom de plume, while very
applicable to his letter of February 22nd, as very unfortunate for himself;
for, at best, it makes him a
sort of literary chiffonnier, probing in the dust-heap
of the language for bits of hard adjectives to fling at us. I repeat that, when
an anonymous critic
accuses two persons of "slanderous imputations"
(the mere reflex of his own imagination), and of "unfathomable
absurdities," he ought, at least, to make sure
(1) that he has thoroughly grasped what he is pleased to call
the "teachings" of his adversaries;
(2) that his own philosophy is infallible. I may add,
furthermore, that when that critic permits himself to call the views of other
people—not yet half digested by himself—"unfathomable absurdities,"
he ought to be mighty careful about introducing as arguments into the
discussion sectarian absurdities far more "unfathomable" and which
have nothing to do with either Science or Philosophy.
I suppose
[gravely argues "Scrutator"] a babe’s brain
is soft and a quite unfit tool for intelligence, otherwise Jesus could not have
lost His intelligence when He took upon Himself the body and the brain of a
babe [!!?]. The very opposite of Oliver Johnson evidently, this Jesus-babe of " Scrutator’s."
Such an
argument might come with a certain force in a discussion between two conflicting
dogmatic sects, but if picked "even to rags" it seems but
"utmost effrontery"—to use "Scrutator’s"
own complimentary expression—to employ it in a
philosophical debate, as if it were either a scientific or
historically proved fact! If I refused, at the very start, to argue with our
friend "M.A. Oxon.," a
man whom I
esteem and respect as I do few in this world, only because he put forward a
"cardinal dogma," I shall certainly lose no time in debating
Theosophy with a tattering Christian, whose scrutinizing faculties have not
helped him beyond the acceptance of the latest of the world’s
Avataras, in all its unphilosophical
dead-letter meaning, without even suspecting its
symbolical
significance. To parade in a would-bephilosophical
debate the exploded dogmas of any Church, is most ineffectual, and shows, at
best, a great poverty of
resource. Why does not "Scrutator"
address his refined abuse, ex cathedrâ, to the Royal
Society, whose Fellows doom to annihilation every human being, Theosophist or
Spiritualist, pure or impure?
With
crushing irony he speaks of us as "our teachers." Now I remember
having distinctly stated in a previous letter that we have not offered
ourselves as teachers, but, on the contrary, decline any such office —whatever
may be the superlative panegyric of my esteemed friend, Mr. O. Sullivan, who
not only sees in me "a Buddhist priestess" (!), but, without a shadow
of warrant of fact, credits me with the foundation of the Theosophical Society
and its Branches! Had Colonel Olcott been half as "psychologized"
by me as a certain American
Spiritualist
paper will have it, he would have followed my advice
and refused to make public our "views," even though so much and so
often importuned in different quarters.
With
characteristic stubbornness, however, he had his own way, and now reaps the
consequence of having thrown his bomb into a hornet’s nest. Instead of being
afforded opportunity for a calm debate, we get but abuse, pure and simple—the
only weapon of partisans. Well, let us make the best of it, and join our
opponents in picking the question "to rags." Mr. C. C. Massey comes
in for his share, too, and though fit to be a
leader himself, is given by " Scrutator" a
chief!
Neither of
our critics seems to understand our views (or his own) so
little as "Scrutator." He misapprehends the
meaning of Elementary, and makes a sad mess of Spirit and Matter. Hear him say
that Elementary is a new-fangled and ill-defined term . . . not yet two years
old.
This
sentence alone proves that he forces himself into the discussion, without any
comprehension of the subject at issue. Evidently, he has neither read the mediaeval
nor modern Kabalists. Henry Kunrath
is as unfamiliar to him as the Abbe Constant. Let him
go to the
become as beasts. After reading this volume, "Scrutator" may profitably consult Éliphas
Lévi, whom he will find using the words " Elementary Spirits" throughout his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, in both senses in which we have employed it. This is
especially the case where (vol. i. p. 262, seq.) he
speaks of the evocation of Apollonius of Tyana by
himself. Quoting from the greatest Kabalistic authorities, he says:
When a man
has lived well, the astral cadaver evaporates like a pure incense, as it mounts
towards the higher regions; but if a man has lived in crime, his astral
cadaver, which holds him prisoner, seeks again the objects of his passions and
desires to resume its earthly life. It torments the dreams of young girls,
bathes in the vapour of spilt blood, and wallows
about the places where the pleasures of his life flitted by; it watches without
ceasing over the treasures which it possessed and buried; it wastes itself in
painful efforts to make for itself material organs [materialize itself] and
live again. But the astral elements attract and absorb it; its memory is
gradually lost, its intelligence weakens, all its being dissolves. . . .
The
unhappy wretch loses thus in succession all the organs which served its sinful appetites.
Then it [this astral body, this "soul," this all that is left of
the once living man] dies a second time and for
ever, for it then loses its personality and its memory. Souls which are
destined to live, but which are not yet entirely purified, remain for a longer
or shorter time captive in the astral cadaver, where they are refined by the odic light, which seeks to assimilate them to itself and
dissolve. It is to rid themselves of this cadaver that suffering souls
sometimes enter the bodies of living persons, and remain there for a time in a
state which the Kabalists call embryonic
[embryonnat].
These are
the aerial phantasmas evoked by necromancy [and I may
add, the "materialized Spirits" evoked by the unconscious necromancy
of
incautious mediums, in cases where the forms are not
transformations of their own doubles]; these are larvae, substances dead or
dying with which one places himself en rapport.
Further, Lévi says (Op. cit., p. 164):
The astral
light is saturated with elementary souls. . . . Yes, yes, these spirits of the
elements do exist. Some wandering in their spheres, others trying to incarnate
themselves, others, again already incarnated and living on earth; these are
vicious and imperfect men.
And in the
face of this testimony—which he can find in the
Theosophists
for their ‘effrontery" in foisting upon Spiritualists a "new-fangled
and ill-defined term"
which is "not yet two years old"!
In truth,
we may say that the idea is older than Christianity, for it is found in the
ancient Kabalistic books of the Jews. In the olden time they defined three
kinds of "souls"—the daughters of Adam, the daughters of the angels
and
those of sin; and in the book of The Revolution of
the Souls three kinds of "Spirits" (as
distinct from material bodies) are shown—the captive, the
wandering and the free Spirits. If "Scrutator" were acquainted with the literature of Kabalism, he would know that the term Elementary applies
not only to one principle or constituent part, to an elementary primary
substance, but also embodies the idea which we express by the term
elemental—that which pertains to the four elements of the material world, the
first principles or primary ingredients.
The word
"elemental" as defined by Webster, was not current at the time of Kunrath, but the idea was perfectly understood. The
distinction has been made, and the term adopted by Theosophists for the sake of
avoiding confusion. The thanks we get are that we are charged with propounding,
in 1878,
a different theory of the "Elementaries" from that of 1876!
Does
anything herein stated either as from ourselves, or Kunrath, or Lévi, contradict the
statement of the "learned Occultist" that:
Each atom,
no matter where found, is imbued with that vital principle called spirit. . . .
Each grain of sand, equally with each minutest atom of the human body, has its
inherent latent spark of the divine light?
Italicizing
some words of the above, but omitting to emphasize the one important word of
the sentence, i.e., "latent," which contains the key to the whole
mystery, our critic mars the sense. In the grain of
sand, and each atom of the human material body, the Spirit is latent, not
active; hence being but a
correlation
of the highest light, something concrete as compared with the purely abstract,
the atom is vitalized and energized by Spirit, without being endowed with distinct
consciousness. A grain of sand, as every minutest atom, is certainly
"imbued with that vital principle called Spirit"; so every atom of both,
following the law of evolution, whether of objective or semi-concrete astral
matter, will have to remain eternal throughout the endless cycles, indestructible
in their primary elementary constituents.
But will
"M.A. Cantab.," for all that, call a grain
of sand, or a human nail-paring, consciously immortal? Does he mean us to
understand him as
believing that a fractional part of a fraction has the
same attributes, capabilities, and limitations as the whole? Does he say that
because the atoms
in a nail-paring are indestructible as atoms, therefore
the body, of which the nail formed a part, is necessarily, as a conscious
whole, indestructible and immortal?
Our
opponents repeat the words trinity, body, soul, Spirit, as they might say the
cat, the house, and the Irishman inhabiting it—three perfectly dissimilar
things. They do not see that, dissimilar as the
three parts of the human trinity may seem, they are in truth but correlations
of the one eternal Essence—which is no essence; but unfortunately the English
language is barren of adequate expressions, and, though they do not see it, the
house, the physical Irishman, and the cat are, in their last analysis, one. I
verily begin to suspect that they imagine that Spirit and Matter are two,
instead of one! Truly says Vishnu Barva Brahmachâri, in one of his essays in Marathi (1869), that:
The opinion
of the Europeans that matter is Padartha (an
equivalent for the pada, or word Abhâva,
i.e., Ahey, composed of two letters, Ahe, meaning is, and nahin, not,
whereas Abhâva is no Padârtha)
is foolishly erroneous. Kant, Schopenhauer and Hartmann seem to have written to
little effect, and Kapila will be soon pronounced an
antiquated ignoramus. Without at all ranging
myself
under Schopenhauer’s banner, who maintains that in reality there is neither
Spirit nor Matter, yet I must say that if even he were studied,
Theosophy
would be better understood.
But can
one really discuss metaphysical ideas in a European language? I doubt it. We
say "Spirit," and behold, what confusion it
leads to. Europeans give the name Spirit to that something which they conceive
as apart from physical organization, independent of corporeal, objective
existence; and they call spirit also the airy, vaporous essence, alcohol.
Therefore, the
A copious
vocabulary, indeed, that has but one term for God and for alcohol! With all
their libraries of metaphysics, European nations have not even gone to the
trouble of inventing appropriate words to elucidate metaphysical
ideas. If they had, perhaps one book in every thousand
would have sufficed to really instruct the public, instead of there being the
present confusion of words, obscuring intelligence, and utterly hampering the Orientalist, who would expound his Philosophy in English. Whereas,
in the latter language, I find but one word to express, perhaps, twenty
different ideas, in the Eastern tongues,
especially Sanskrit, there are twenty words or more to
render one idea in its various shades of meaning.
We are
accused of propagating ideas that would surprise the "average"
Buddhist. Granted, and I will liberally add that the average Brâhmanist might be equally astonished. We never said that
we were either Buddhists or Brâhmanists in the
sense of their popular exoteric Theologies. Buddha,
sitting on his Lotus, or Brahmâ, with any number of teratological
arms, appeals to us as little as the
Catholic
Madonna or the Christian personal God, which stare at us from cathedral walls
and ceilings. But neither Buddha nor Brahmâ represents to His respective worshippers
the same ideas as these Catholic icons which we regard as blasphemous. In this
particular who dares say that Christendom with its civilization has outgrown
the fetichism of Fijians? When we see Christians and Spiritualists
speaking so flippantly and confidently about God and the "materialization
of Spirit," we wish they might be made to share a little in the reverential
ideas of the old Âryas.
We do not
write for "average" Buddhists, or average people of any sort. But I
am quite willing to match any tolerably educated Buddhist or Brâhman against the best metaphysicians of
The
ultimate abstract definition of this—call it God, Force, Principle, as you will—will
ever remain a mystery to Humanity, though it attain to its highest intellectual
development. The anthropomorphic ideas of Spiritualists concerning
Spirit are a direct consequence of the anthropomorphic conceptions
of Christians
as to the Deity. So directly is the one the
outflow of the other, that "Scrutator’s"
handiest argument against the duality of a child and potential
immortality is to citeJesus who
increased in wisdom as His brain increased.
Christians
call God an Infinite Being, and then endow Him with every finite attribute,
such as love, anger, benevolence, mercy! They call Him all-merciful, and preach
damnation for three-fourths of Humanity in every church, all-just, and the sins
of this brief span of life may not be expiated by even an eternity of conscious
agony. Now, by some miracle of oversight, among thousands of
mistranslations
in the "Holy" Writ, the word "destruction," the synonym of annihilation,
was rendered correctly in King James’s version, and no dictionary can make it
read either damnation or eternal torment. Though the Church consistently put
down the "destructionists," yet the impartial will scarcely deny that
they come nearer than their persecutors to believing what Jesus taught, and
what is consistent with justice, in teaching the final annihilation of the
wicked.
To
conclude, then, we believe that there is but one undefinable
Principle in the whole Universe, which being utterly incomprehensible by our
finite intellects, we prefer rather to leave undebated
than to blaspheme Its majesty with our
anthropomorphic speculations. We believe that all else which
has being, whether material or spiritual, and all that may have existence,
actually, or potentially in our idealism, emanates from this Principle. That
everything is a correlation
in one
shape or another of this Will and Force; and hence, judging of the unseen by
the visible, we base our speculations upon the teachings of the generations of
Sages who preceded Christianity, fortified by our own reason.
I have
already illustrated the incapacity of some of our critics to separate abstract
ideas from complex objects, by instancing the grain of sand and the
nail-paring. They refuse to comprehend that a philosophical
doctrine can teach that an atom imbued with divine light, or a portion of the
great Spirit, in its latent stage of correlation, may, notwithstanding its
reciprocal or corresponding similarity and relations to the one indivisible
whole, be yet utterly deficient in self-consciousness.
That it is
only when this atom, magnetically drawn to its fellow-atoms, which had served
in a previous state to form with it some lower complex object, is transformed
at last, after endless cycles of evolution, into man—the apex of perfected
being, intellectually and physically, on our planet—in conjunction with them it
becomes, as a whole, a
living soul, and reaches the state of intellectual
self-consciousness.
A stone
becomes a plant, a plant an animal, an animal a man, and man a Spirit, say the Kabalists. And here again, is the wretched necessity of
translating by the word "Spirit" an expression which means a
celestial, or rather ethereal,
transparent man. But if man is the crown of evolution on
earth, what is he in the initiatory stages of the next existence, that man who,
at his best—even when he is pretended to have served as a habitation for the
Christian God, Jesus—is
said by Paul to have been "made a little
lower than the angels"?
But now we
have every astral spook transformed into an "angel"! I cannot believe
that the scholars who write for your paper—and there are some of great
intelligence and erudition who think for themselves, and whom exact science has
taught that ex nihilo nihil
fit; who know that every atom of man’s body has been evolving by imperceptible
gradations, from lower into higher forms, through the cycles—accept the
unscientific and illogical doctrine that the simple unshelling
of an astral man transforms him into a celestial Spirit and "angel"
guide.
In
Theosophical opinion a Spirit is a Ray, a fraction of the Whole; and the Whole
being Omniscient and Infinite, Its fraction must
partake, in degree, of the same abstract attributes. Man’s "Spirit"
must become the drop of the Ocean,
called "Îshvara-Bhâva"—the
"I am one body, together with the universe itself" (I am in my
Father, and my Father is in me), instead of remaining but the "Jîva-Bhâva," the body only. He must feel himself not
only a part of the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer, but of the Soul of the
Three, the Parabrahman, Who is above these and is the
vitalizing, energizing and ever-presiding Spirit.
He must
fully realize the sense of the word "Sahajanund,"
that state of perfect bliss in Nirvâna, which can only exist for the It, which
has become coëxistent with the "formless and actionless present time." This is the state called "
Vartamâna," or the " ever
still present," in which there is neither past nor future, but one
infinite eternity of present. Which of the controlling
"spirits," materialized or invisible, have shown any
signs that they belong to the kind of real Spirits known as the "Sons of
Eternity"? Has the highest of them been able to tell even as much as our
own Divine Nous can whisper to us in
moments when there comes the flash of sudden prevision?
Honest communicating "intelligences" often answer to many questions:
"We do not know; this has not been revealed to us."
This very
admission proves that, while in many cases on their way to knowledge and
perfection, yet they are but embryonic, undeveloped "Spirits"; they
are inferior even to some living Yogis who, through abstract meditation, have
united themselves with their personal individual Brahman, their Âtman, and hence have overcome the "Agnyanam," or lack of that knowledge as to
the intrinsic value of one’s "self,"
the Ego or self-being, so recommended by Socrates and the Delphic commandment.
London has
been often visited by highlyintellectual, educated Hindûs. I have not
heard of any one professing a belief in "materialized Spirits"—as
Spirits. When not tainted with Materialism, through demoralizing association
with Europeans. and when free from superstitious
sectarianism, how would one of them, versed in the Vedânta,
regard these apparitions of the circle? The chances are that, after going the
rounds of the mediums, he would say: "Some of these may be survivals of
disembodied men’s intelligences, but they are no more spiritual than the
average man.
They lack
the knowledge of ‘Dryananta,’ and evidently find themselves
in a chronic state of ‘Mâyâ,’ i.e., possessed of the
idea that ‘they
are that which they are not.’ The ‘Vartamâna’ has no significance for them, as they are
cognizant but of the ‘Vishama’ [that which, like the
concrete numbers in mixed mathematics, applies to that which can be numbered].
Like simple, ignorant mortals, they regard the shadow of things as the reality,
and vice versâ, mixing up the true light of the ‘Vyatireka’ with the false light or deceitful appearance—the
‘Anvaya.’ . . . In what respect, then, are they
higher than the average mortal? No; they are not spirits, not ‘Devas,’ . . . they are
astral ‘Dasyoos.’"
Of course
all this will appear to "Scrutator" "unfathomable
absurdities," for unfortunately, few metaphysicians shower down from
Western skies. Therefore, so long as our English opponents will remain in their
semi-Christian ideas, and not
only ignore the old Philosophy, but the very terms
it employs to render abstract ideas; so long as we are forced to transmit these
ideas in a general
way—particularly as it is impracticable without
the invention of special words—it will be unprofitable to push discussion to
any great lengths. We would only make ourselves obnoxious to the general
reader, and receive from other
anonymous writers such unconvincing compliments as
"Scrutator" has favoured
us
with.
H.P.
BLAVATSKY.
______________________
The Blavatsky Blogger
Taking Theosophical
ideas
into the 21st
century
__________________________
Postings
to this Website reflect
the views of The Blavatsky Blogger.
Please
don’t go looking for anyone else.