The Acquirement of Individuality
Humility of Aspiration
Theosophy Generally Stated
Tridosha and Divine Therapy
Application of Theosophical
Theories
Which is Vague, Theosophy or Science
Universal Applications of Doctrine
The Synthesis of Occult Science
The Kali Yuga
MESMERISM
True Progress
SHEATHS OF THE SOUL
Elementals--Karma
Elementals and Elementaries
Elementals How They Act
Laws Governing Elementals
Mantrams
Forms of Elementals
LIVING THE HIGHER LIFE
LIVING THE HIGHER LIFE
Theosophy Magazine. vol. 30 p.194
“I have no desire for any other line of life; but
by the time I had awakened to a knowledge of this life, I found myself involved
by circumstances against which I do not rebel, but out of and through which, I
am determined to work, neglecting no known duty to others.”
—Letter from a Friend.
THE “Dweller of the
Threshold” which stares even advanced occultists in the face and often threatens
to overwhelm them, and the ordeals of Chelaship or of probation for Chelaship,
differ from each other only in degree. It may not be unprofitable to analyze
this Dweller and those ordeals. For our present purpose, it is enough to state,
that they are of a triune nature and depend upon these three relations: (1) to
our nationality; (2) to our family; and (3) to ourselves. And every one of these
three relations is due to the assertion of a portion of our own past Karma, that
is to say, to its effects.
Why should we be born in a particular nation and in a particular family?
Because of the effect of a particular set of our Karmic attractions, which
assert themselves in that manner. I mean that one set of our past Karmas exhaust
themselves in throwing us in our present incarnation amidst a particular nation,
another set introducing us into a particular family; and a third set serving to
differentiate or individualize us from all the other members of the nation or of
the family. One of our Eastern proverbs says: “the five children of a family
differ like the five fingers of a hand.” Unless we look at this difference from
this standpoint, it must always appear to us a riddle, a problem too difficult
to solve, a mystery, in short, why children born of one family, while they have
some traits common to all, should still appear to differ vastly from one
another. What applies to the family applies also to the nation, of which
families are but units; and also to mankind as a whole, of whom nations are but
families or units. The only way to decide the great question of the age, whether
the laws of nature are blind and material, or spiritual, intelligent and divine,
is, it seems to me, to point out in connection with every subject, the
absolutely intelligent and divine manner in which these laws act, and how they
force us to realize the economy of nature. This is the only way by which we
could become spiritual; and I would, once for all, call upon my co-workers for
the cause, to realize at every step of their study, as far as possible, the
Divine
———————————
NOTE.—This article by Wm. Q. Judge first appeared n the Path
for July and August, 1886.—Editors.
195 LIVING THE HIGHER
LIFE
Intelligence thus manifesting itself. Otherwise, how much so ever you might
believe or take it for granted, that the forces that govern the universe are
spiritual, the belief, however deep rooted it might appear, would be of little
use to you when you have to pass through the ordeals of Chelaship; and then you
are sure to succumb and exclaim that the “Law is blind, unjust and cruel,”
especially when your selfishness and personality overwhelm you. When once a
practical occultist and a learned philosopher met with, what seemed to him a
“serious calamity and trial,” in spite of himself he exclaimed to me frankly:
‘the law of Karma is surely blind, there is no God; what better proofs are
needed?” So deep-rooted in human nature is infidelity and selfishness; no one
need therefore to be sure of his own spiritual nature. No amount of lip learning
will avail us in the hour of need. We have to study the law in all its aspects
and assimilate to our highest consciousness,—that which is called by Du Prel
super sensuous consciousness—all the data which go to prove and convince us that
the Power is spiritual. Look around and see whether any two persons are
absolutely identical, even for a time. How intelligent must be the power that
ever strives to keep each and every one of us totally different on the whole,
while, if analyzed, we possess some traits in common, even with the Negro,
with whom we are remotely allied.
In this connection I shall refer you to a passage in the article on “Chelas
and Lay Chelas” (vide column 1, page 11 of “Supplement to the Theosophist” for
July, 1883): “The Chela is not only called to face all latent evil propensities
of his nature, but in addition, the whole volume of maleficent power accumulated
by the community and nation to which he belongs * * until the result is known.”
I shall only ask you to apply the same principle to your family relations
affecting your present incarnation. Thus seven things are found to secure us a
victory, or a sad, inglorious defeat in the mighty struggle known as the Dweller
of the threshold and the ordeals of Chelaship: (1) The evil propensities common
to ourselves and to our family; (2) those common to ourself and our nation; (3)
those common to ourself and to mankind in general, or better known as the
weakness of human nature, the fruits of Adam’s first transgression; (4 to 6) the
noble qualities common to us and to these three; (7) the peculiar way in which
the 6 sets of our past Karmas choose or are allowed to influence us now, or
their effects in producing in us the present tendency. The adept alone can take
the seventh or last mentioned item completely into his own hands; and every
mortal who would, as I have since recently begun to reiterate, direct all his
196 LIVING THE HIGHER
LIFE
energies to the highest plane possible for him (“Desire always to attain the
unattainable”—says the author of “Light on the Path”),— such a mortal, too,
could more or less do the same thing as the adept, insofar as he acts up to the
rule. Every Chela, and also those who have a desire to be Chelas even, as they
suppose secretly, have to do with the first six propensities or influences.
The world is inclined—at least in this Kali Yuga (the Dark Age) —always to
begin at the wrong end of anything and direct all its faculties to the
perception of effects and not of their causes. So the ideas of “renunciation,”
“asceticism” and of the “true feeling of universal Brotherhood” (or “mercy,” as
I call it, in accordance with South Indian Ethics), all of which are compatible
with Gnanis, or the most exalted of Mahatmas, all these have come to be
recognized by all our Theosophists, in general, as the means of progress
for a beginner; while the real means of progress for us mortals—duties to our
own families and to our own nation, or “kindness” and “patriotism” in the
highest and ethical sense of the terms—are discarded. True, from the standpoint
of a Jivanmukta, a true friend of humanity, these two Sadhanas are really
“selfishness”; still, until we attain that exalted state, these two feelings
should be made the ladders for raising ourselves, the means of not only getting
ourselves rid of our family defects and natural idiosyncrasies, but also of
strengthening in ourselves the noble qualities of our families and of our
nation. Until we reach that ideal state where the blessed soul has to make
neither good nor bad Karma, we must strive to be constantly doing “good” Karma,
in order that we might become Karma-less (nish Karmis).
Let it not be understood at all, that I mean by “family duties” and
“National duties,” false attachments to the family or to the nation. Family duty
consists not in sensuality or pleasure-hunting, but in cultivating and in
elevating the emotional nature (the fourth principle), of ourselves and of our
family; in being equally “kind,” not only to the members of the family, but also
to all creatures, and in enjoying all such pleasures of the family life as are
consistent with the acquirement of “wealth” (all the means necessary for the
performance of Dharma or whole duty) according to the teachings of Valluvar, and
in utilizing such pleasure and means for the performance of our duty to our
nation. Patriotism consists similarly in theosophising our own nation, in not
only getting ourselves rid of our national defects, as well as other members of
the nation rid of the same, but also in strengthening in ourselves and in our
nation as a whole, all the noble qualities which belong to our nation; in the
LIVING THE HIGHER LIFE
197
enjoyment of the privileges * of the nation and using them as a means for the
performance of Dharma. If family duties are taken due care of, our duties
to the nation and to humanity would, to a great extent, take care of themselves
unimpeded. Our national duties, if strictly performed, serve to purify our fifth
lower principle of its dross and to establish and develop the better part of it,
while the performance of our duty to Humanity or the realization of universal
tolerance and mercy, purifies the lower (human) stuff in the fifth higher
principle and makes it divine, thus enabling us to free ourselves gradually from
the bonds of ignorance common to all human beings.
The above assertions, might, at first sight, seem rather bold and
untheosophical. But I should venture to state my conviction that the whole
edifice of Aryan religions and Aryan philosophy is based upon these principles,
and that, on a careful consideration of the subject, the great importance
attached to household life (Grihasta ashrama) in that philosophy, would be fully
borne out. To my mind no ascetics, no teachers of mankind, however eminent and
full of the highest knowledge, are really such good and practical benefactors of
humanity as Valluvar, of ancient times, who incarnated on earth for the express
purpose, among others, of setting an example of an ideal household life to
mortals who were prematurely and madly rushing against the rocks of
renunciation, and of proving the possibility of leading such a life in any age
however degenerated; or as Rãma, who, even after having become an avatar-purusha,
came down amidst mortals and led a household life.
It has often been contended that the world has not progressed on the
path, because gnanis, or Mahatmas, have dwindled in their number and
greatness, and because it is Kali Yuga, or the dark age, now. Such arguments are
due to our mistaking the effects for their causes. The only way to prepare the
way for the advent of a favorable Yuga and for the increase of the number and
greatness of Mahatmas, is to establish gradually the conditions for the leading
of a true household life. I should unhesitatingly state, that that is the duty
of earnest Theosophists and real philanthropists.
Is it not conceded by all philanthropists that unselfish labors for
humanity can alone relieve us from the ocean of Samsara (Rebirth), develop our
highest potentialities and help us to alchemise our human weakness? Applying the
same principle to unselfish discharge of our family and national duties, my
position becomes tenable. A Mahatma has, it appears, declared that He has still
“patriotism.” But
——————————
* I use this word “privilege” in its ethical sense; privileges are to the
patriot what the “pleasures” are to the family life.
198 LIVING THE HIGHER
LIFE
He has not said nor would say, that He has still family “attachments.” This
proves that He has got out of the defects of the family to which He belongs,
while He is only striving to get out of national defects, some of which at any
rate cling to Him. A Buddha would say, that He has “mercy,” but no “patriotism.”
The only effectual way to get out of family defects is to discharge all our
duty to our family before leaving it, as ascetics, or before we die. Blessed is
he * who, in each of his incarnations, then and there, gets rid of the
defects of the family into which he is ushered, thereby converts those defects
in his parents, brothers and sisters, into noble qualities, thus strengthening
and developing the good qualities both of himself and of his family, then
strives to be born in the same family again and again, until he himself becomes
a Buddha and assists his family to become a family fit for a Buddha to be born
into, while he becomes the cream of all the noble qualities of the family
without being tainted with its idosyncrasies. A Dugpa (Black Magician) is
frequently born in the same family and becomes the cream of all its evil
propensities. Here again is the operation of the sublime and divinely
intelligent law of universal and natural economy asserting itself. This is
beautifully allegorized in the story of a Jivanmukta churning out of the ocean
the elixir of life, and leaving the visha (the poison, all the evil
propensities) for the Dugpas. This is one of the meanings of the allegory.
Avoiding all personalities and questionable facts, I shall rely solely upon our
Puranas and scriptures to prove that in every family where Adepts and Gnanis are
(or choose to be) frequently born, often Dugpas are also born, as a matter of
course. Krishna was the greatest of Gnanis and his uncle, Kansa (for our present
purpose), was a terrible Dugpa. The five Pandavas had a hundred wicked cousins,
the Kauravas. Devas and the whole brood of wicked Asuras were born of the same
parent. Vibhishana had for his brother, Ravana the prince of
Dugpas; so had the good Sugriva a brother like Vali. Prahlada had a monster for
his father.
Take the case of one who has not done all his duty to his family, before he
dies, or before he takes the vows of renunciation and becomes an ascetic. Such
ascetics find themselves attracted by the family defects and selfishness of
themselves (which hitherto perhaps lay more or less dormant and now become
kindled and awakened by the selfishness of the relatives) and are disturbed in
the performance of the duties of their new order or Ashrama, however
unselfish their
———————————
* This is the man to be in the family and not of the family like the water
on the lotus leaf, making only the good traits of the family the seat of
his higher self.
199 LIVING THE HIGHER
LIFE
relatives might have been “unconsciously” or unintentionally. In spite of
themselves these relatives arrest the progress of the ascetics in whom the
family defects become thus strengthened and developed. Such is the mysterious
law of attraction. This man must be born again (1) either in the same family,
with the family defects strengthened, both in himself and in his family; (2) or
in another family. In the first case, the noble qualities of the family are not
strengthened and therefore gradually disappear both from him and from the
family. In the second case, he becomes an undutiful son, brother or husband, in
his new family, firstly because of the natural law of repetition, which, with
the terrible Karmic interest, strengthens the tendency in him to disregard duty;
secondly because of the “counter family attractions” (or repulsions). Let not
this unfortunate wanderer from the post of his family duty console himself with
the foolish idea that this tendency would confine its havoc to family traits
(good and evil) and to family duties alone. It would extend itself in all
directions, wherever it can; it would make him disregard his duties to his
nation and to himself (or in other words, to humanity). He would suddenly be
surprised to find himself apathetic to his nation and to his highest nature, or
to mankind. Such are the mazes and unknown ramifications of our evil or good
propensities. Any evil or noble element of human nature converts itself, under
“favorable” conditions into any other element however apparently remote. The
conditions are there ready wherever the element is strong; where there is a will
there is a way. Performance of family duties therefore develops patriotism and
mercy.
I do not at all mean to say that the effects of Karma always assert
themselves in the same shape or form; but they often might and do. Nor do I mean
that the affinities above stated, blossom and ripen in the incarnation
immediately succeeding; they might develop ten or even one hundred incarnations
after; but in such a case, the Karma only accumulates enormous interest. The
affinities might not develop at the same time in both him and her, who
was once his wife; if they did at the same time, the account could be easily
settled,—otherwise, woe to him and to her! Supposing that the attractions for
him are developed in her, while the attachments for her are not developed in him
at the same time; the result might be, that she pines and languishes for him,
sends her poisonous darts consciously or “unconsciously” against him; if these
arrows do not kindle the corresponding nature in him, for the time being they
frustrate his achievements in other directions. Supposing by the time the
affinities in him are developed, he becomes an initiate and she becomes, (let us
suppose)
200 LIVING THE HIGHER
LIFE
his pupil (male or female). If at the time the pupil’s affinities have become
converted into devotion for the initiate, the latter becomes blinded in his
philanthropic work and noble duties of a sage, and commits, through the
infatuation of a love for the pupil, serious blunders, which result in a
catastrophe to both of them and to humanity: and both the pupil and initiate
fall down and have to mount their rugged pathway again with increased
difficulties in their way.
Once, in an age and in a country, when and where household life continues
to be ideal, one single wretch commits the first act of transgression by
impetuously rushing into the circle of ascetics, or by dying before wholly
discharging his duty to his family, the natural result is that both himself, his
family, and his nation, become thereby seriously affected. The Akasa* becomes
affected by the impulse to transgress in this direction; this impulse forces
itself gradually (with accumulated interest, redoubled force) upon others; the
ignoble example becomes a precedent; other cases of a like nature follow in
quick succession. In course of time, ( just when a sad descending cycle begins,
such is the divine intelligence of the law that economizes energies and makes
things fit it) the leading of the ideal family life becomes almost impossible
and very rare; the whole community is thus ruined. Learned and great adepts
retire to other spheres (where there then is an ascending cycle) and leave the
nation to be swallowed by a cataclysm after ages of degradation and vice.
Let us now reverse this case, and suppose that in the most degenerate
nation, in the darkest of cycles, one philanthropist becomes unselfish and
intelligent enough to set a noble and intelligent example by fulfilling all
family duties; then, as naturally as in the preceding case, the precedent
gradually gains acceptance; the way is paved for the advent of an ascending
cycle; Gnanis bless the noble man and come down from other unfavorable spheres,
where descending cycles begin to dawn.
Now it may be easy to understand why Chelas and lay Chelas (who have not
yet thrown off their family defects and thus become the cream of their family’s
good qualities) are told to be careful lest they become Dugpas (Black
Magicians).
I will ask you to apply the same kinds of arguments to the necessity for
performing (and the failure to perform) our duties to our nation and to mankind.
You can see that the phenomena of heresy, downfall of religions, rise of new
religions, the birth in Europe of a Max Muller, who expatiates upon the
greatness of the Vedic philosophy, and of Bradlaughs and other infidel sons of
Christian
—————————————
*The Ether, the Astral Light.—[Ed.]
201 LIVING THE HIGHER
LIFE
parents—all these are due to the fact (and also to other causes), that the
individuals concerned had not in some one or other of their past incarnations,
done their duty to the nations (or religions), to which they respectively
belonged. A study of the times when and in the manner in which the traits of
these men are brought into play should be profitable in several ways. Extending
the analogy, it may be said that heartlessness, murder, cannibalism, etc., are
due to failure to discharge, in past incarnations, one’s duty to humanity (that
is to one’s self).
In conclusion it might be added that the most important element in the
“Dweller of the Threshold,” and in the ordeals of Chelaship, is family defects,
which ought to be first “conquered”; then in order come national defects
and the “diseases of the flesh” in general. Though all these three have to be
got rid of simultaneously as far as possible, and all the three kinds of duties
performed, still beginners should pay more attention to the first than to the
second, and more to the second than to the third, and none of these neglected.
In those happy Aryan ages, when Dharma was known and performed fully, those
men and women who did not marry, remained in the family for performing their
family duties and led a strictly ascetical and Vedantic life as Brahmacharis and
Kannikas (or virgins). Those alone married, who were in every way qualified for
leading a grihasta (household) life. Marriage was in those days a sacred and
religious contract, and not at all a means of gratifying selfish desires and
animal passions. These marriages were of two kinds: (1) Those who married for
the express purpose of assisting each other (husband and wife) in their
determination to lead a higher life, in fulfilling their family duties, in
enjoying all pleasures enjoined for such a life and thereby acquiring the means
for attaining the qualifications for higher ashrama of renunciation (Sannyása),
and, above all, for giving the world the benefit of children, who would become
gnanis and work for humanity. Such a husband and wife might be regarded as not
having in their previous incarnations been able enough to become ripe for
Chelaship. (2) Those who had, in their past incarnations already fitted
themselves completely for entering the sanctuary of Occultism and gnana marga
(path of wisdom). One of them, the Pati (the master or “husband”) was the Guru
who had advanced far higher than his Patin (co-worker or pupil or “wife”). As
soon as the alliance between them was made, these retired into the forest to
lead the life of celibacy and practical Occultism. But, before so retiring, they
had
202 LIVING THE HIGHER
LIFE
invariably promised to their parents and other members of their family to assist
and elevate them even from a distance and offered to periodically adjust* the
inner life of all the relatives. I quote the language generally used in making
such promises: “Whenever mother, father, sister and brothers, any of you think
of me in your hour of need, wherever or whatever I may be, I solemnly promise to
lend you a helping hand.”
Needless to say, that such vows were conscientiously kept, and that those who
were not really able to do so never made such promises nor retired from the side
of their family, but chose to belong to the first class of married people. This
second class of persons who thus retired into the forest and became hermits,
were called Vanaprasthas. They always obtained the full consent ** of their near
relatives and renounced “pleasures” and material prosperity (money making,
etc.).
The fourth highest order of life was complete renunciation (Sannyasis).
These were the blessed few who had, then and there, in each incarnation, got out
of family defects. Only those were admitted into this order whom the
defects of no family could affect. Long before their admission into this order,
they had, by fulfilling family duties, successively, incarnation after
incarnation gone far beyond the reach of family defects. Brahmacharis and
Kannikas could, after they had discharged family duties, become Sannyásis. All
except those belonging to the second order of life, were called upon and did
take a vow to give up one or more of their dearest and strongest defects.
Such, my friends, were the Laws of Manu. If any of you could establish a
community on a better foundation, I should be happy to give up my allegiance to
the great Sage, Saviour, and Legislator. As every Manu establishes the same
Manava Dharma again and again, and as the Manus are higher than Buddha and other
founders of religions, I should call upon you to pay all possible attention to
this subject. Manu is higher, because he overshadows a Buddha.
I must request the readers, to study every word and the whole of this paper
(if it deserves to be so called) and not tear it piece-meal or interpret
passages and phrases in it, as they please. I must add, that by “family duties”
I do not at all mean sacrificing your duty or conviction and Truth, to gratify
the whims of selfish nature or
———————————
* I use the word in the peculiar sense which I have already attached to it.
**“FuIl Consent” including the consent of all their various consciousnesses. If
the Patin or Pati saw, and they ought to be able to see, that even in one of the
consciousnesses of any of their near relatives there lurked a latent spark of
hesitation to consent or of unwillingness, then the pair unselfishly gave up
their determination to become Vanaprasthas and remained with the family until
the proper time came.
203 LIVING THE HIGHER
LIFE
sectarian views of any of your “relatives.” But I use the expression “family
duties” in a peculiar sense, namely, “that course and only that course of
action, speech and thoughts by which you can not only get rid of your family
defects in this very incarnation, but also strengthen in yourself all the noble
qualities of your family, and which will at the same time enable your relatives
(parents, brothers, sisters, wife, children, etc.,) also to get rid of the
same defects and strengthen in themselves the same good qualities—so
that you might be born again and again in the same family.” “Patriotism” is used
in a similar manner; and the article “Elixir of Life” (see Theosophist)
should be read in the light of this paper.
The question is asked, “Has the dweller of the threshold an objective form;
upon what does its objective form depend; does it always appear to everyone in
the same form as it did to Glyndon in Bulwer’s story?”
It is objective to those who have gone very far.
It depends upon (1) a certain thing I shall not here name; (2) the stage of
development to which the chela or occultist has attained or is near attaining;
(3) the mode of regarding elementals and the Dweller, peculiar to the chela or
occultist, to his family and to his nation, or rather to the national and family
legends or religion; (4) which form, more or less monstrous or incongruous,
would be most frightful and overpowering to him at the critical period. Subject
to the above four conditions, the Dweller assumes a form according to the manner
in which the chela or occultist has or has not fulfilled his threefold
duties, and according to the manner in which the sevenfold elements of the
Dweller assert themselves upon him. The better he has fulfilled the threefold
duties, the less does the Dweller affect him. Of course the form is not
necessarily the same for everyone.
Why did the Dweller appear to Glyndon’s sister, who was not undergoing
probation, and why in the same form?
Because she was sympathetic and sensitive enough. The principle involved in
this case is the same as in obsession.
The Dweller might either be but one elemental, or a group or several groups
of elementals assuming one collective form. It is one elemental, when the crisis
comes at the very commencement of the chela’s or occultist’s attempt to elevate
his lower nature. This is the case when he has the least (Karmic) stamina for
the “uphill path.” The later on his path is waylaid, the more numerous are the
elementals of which the Dweller is composed.
It need not be imagined that this appearance or influence confronts the
chela only once until he reaches the first initiation, and an initiate only once
during the interval between two initiations. It appears as
204 LIVING THE HIGHER
LIFE
often as the stock of his Karmic stamina falls below the minimum limit.
By Karmic stamina is meant the phala (effect or fruit) of past
unselfish, good Karma that has become ripened. Though the occultist might have
an immense quantity of past unselfish good Karma stored up, still, if during his
crisis there be not a sufficient number of present unselfish good thoughts to
ripen a sufficient portion of that quantity, he finds himself destitute of the
necessary stock of stamina. Few are they who have already laid up a good
quantity of unselfish good Karma; and fewer still are they who have the
requisite degree of unselfish and spiritual nature during the period of trial;
and there are still fewer who would not rush for further Yoga development,
without having all the requisite means.
When not qualified fully for it, we ought to and could go on developing
ourselves in the ordinary way, and try to secure the necessary means by leading
an unselfish life and setting an example to others, and this is the stage of
nearly all ordinary Theosophists. They, in common with all their fellows, are
influenced by a “Dweller,” which is the effect upon them of their own, their
family, and national defects; and although they may never, in this life, see
objectively any such form, the influence is still there, and is commonly
recognized as “bad inclinations and discouraging thoughts.”
Seek then, to live the Higher life by beginning now to purify your thoughts
by good deeds, and by right speech.
MURDHNA
JOTI.
CONSCIOUS ASPIRATION
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to
elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a
particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects
beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere
and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality
of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life,
even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and
critical
hour. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU.
SEERSHIP Theosophy Magazine. vol. 6 p. 12
THE following
remarks are not intended to be a critique upon the literary merits or demerits
of the poem which is taken as the subject of criticism. In 1882, The
Theosophist
1
published a review of “The Seer, a Prophetic
Poem,” by Mr. H. G. Hellon, and as clairvoyance is much talked of in the West,
it seemed advisable to use the verses of this poet for the purpose of inquiring,
to some extent, into the western views of Seership, and of laying before my
fellow seekers the views of one brought up in a totally different school.
I have not yet been able to understand with the slightest degree of
distinctness what state is known as “Seership” in the language of western
mysticism. After trying to analyze the states of many a “seer,” I am as far as
ever from any probability of becoming wiser on the subject, as understood here,
because it appears to me that no classification whatever exists of the different
states as exhibited on this side of the globe, but all the different states are
heterogeneously mixed. We see the state of merely catching glimpses in the
astral light denominated seership, at the same time that the very highest
illustrations of that state are called trances.
As far as I have yet been able to discover, “Seership,” as thus
understood here, does not come up to the level of Sushupti, which is the
dreamless state in which the mystic’s highest consciousness—composed of his
highest intellectual and ethical faculties—hunts for and seizes any knowledge he
may be in need of. In this state the mystic’s lower nature is at rest
(paralyzed) ; only his highest nature roams into the ideal world in quest of
food. By lower nature, I mean his physical, astral or psychic, lower
emotional and intellectual principles, including the lower fifth.
2
Yet even the knowledge obtained during the Sushupti state must be regarded, from
this plane, as theoretical and liable to be mixed, upon resuming the application
of the body, with falsehood and with the preconception of the mystic’s ordinary
waking state, as compared with the true knowledge acquired during the several
initiations. There is no guarantee held out for any mystic that any experience,
researches, or knowledge that may come within his reach in any other state
whatever, is accurate, except in the mysteries of initiation.
But all these different states are necessary to growth. Yagrata—our
waking state, in which all our physical and vital organs, senses, and faculties
find their necessary exercise and development, is needed to prevent the physical
organization from collapsing. Swapna—dream state, in which are included
all the various states of consciousness between Ygrata and Sushupti, such as
somnambulism, trance, dreams, visions, &c. is necessary for the physical
———————————
* This article was printed by William Q. Judge in the path for April 1886
1 See Theosophist, vol. III, p. 177
2 See Esoteric Buddism for the sevenfold classification adopted by many
Theosophists.
13 SEERSHIP
faculties to enjoy rest, and for the lower emotional and astral faculties to
live, become active, and develop; and Sushupti state comes about in order
that the consciousness of both Ygrata and Swapna states may enjoy rest, and for
the fifth principle, which is the one active in Sushupti, to develop itself by
appropriate exercise. In the equilibrium of these three states lies true
progress.
The knowledge acquired during Sushupti state might or might not be brought
back to one’s physical consciousness; all depends upon his desires, and
according as his lower consciousnesses are or are not prepared to receive and
retain that knowledge.
The avenues of the ideal world are carefully guarded by elementals from the
trespass of the profane.
Lytton makes Mejnour say :
1
“We place our tests in ordeals that purify the passions and elevate the desires.
And nature in this controls and assists us, for it places awful guardians and
unsurmountable barriers between the ambitions of vice and the heaven of loftier
science.”
The desire for physical enjoyment, if rightly directed, becomes elevated,
as a desire for something higher, gradually becoming converted into a desire to
do good to others, and thus ascending ceases to be a desire, and is transformed
into an element of the sixth principle.
The control by nature to which Mejnour refers is found in the natural
maximum and minimum limits; there cannot be too much ascension, nor can the
descent be too quick or too Low. The assistance of nature is found in the Turya
state, in which the adept takes one step and nature helps for another. In the
Sushupti state, one might or might not find the object of his earnest search,
and as soon as it is found, the moment the desire to bring it back to normal
consciousness arises, that moment Sushupti state is at an end for the time
being. But one might often find himself in an awkward position when he has left
that state. The doors for the descent of the truth into the lower nature are
closed. Then his position is beautifully described in an Indian proverb: “The
bran in the mouth and the fire are both lost.” This is an allusion to a poor
girl who is eating bran, and at the same time wants to kindle the fire just
going out before her. She blows it with the bran in her mouth; the bran falls on
the dying ashes, extinguishing them completely; she is thus a double loser. In
the Sushupti state, the anxiety which is felt to bring back the experience to
consciousness acts as the brain with the fire. Anxiety to have or to do, instead
of being a help as some imagine, is a direct injury, and if permitted to grow in
our waking moments, will act with all the greater force on the plane of
Sushupti. The result of these failures is clearly set forth by Patanjali.
2
Even where the doors to the lower consciousness are open, the knowledge
brought back from Sushupti state might, owing to the
———————————
1 Zanoni,
Book Iv, chapter 2.
2
Patanjali’s Yoga Aphorisms,
30 & 31, Part I.
14 SEERSHIP
distractions and difficulties of the direct and indirect routes of ascent and
descent, he lost on the way either partially or wholly, or become mixed up with
misconceptions and falsehood.
But in this search for knowledge in Sushupti, there must not remain a spark
of indifference or idle inquisitiveness in the higher consciousness. Not even a
jot of lurking hesitation about entering into the state, nor doubt about its
desirability, nor about the usefulness or accuracy of the knowledge gleaned on
former occasions, or to be presently gleaned. If there is any such doubt or
hesitancy, his progress is retarded. Nor can there be any cheating or hypocrisy,
nor any laughing in the sleeve. In our normal wakeful state it always happens
that when we believe we are earnestly aspiring, some one or more of the elements
of one or more of our lower consciousness belie us, make us feel deluded and
laugh at us, for such is the self-inconsistent nature of desire.
In this state which we are considering, there are subjective and objective
states, or classes of knowledge and experience, even as there are the same in
Yagrata. So, therefore, great care should be taken to make your aims and
aspirations as high as possible while in your normal condition. Woe to
him who would dare to trifle with the means placed at his disposal in the shape
of Sushupti. One of the most effectual ways in which western mystics could
trifle with this is to seek for the missing links of evolution, so as to bring
that knowledge to the normal consciousness, and then with it to extend the
domain of “scientific” knowledge. Of course, from the moment such a desire is
entertained, the one who has it is shut out from Sushupti.*
The mystic might be interested in analyzing the real nature of the
objective world, or in soaring up to the feet of Manus,
I
to
the spheres where Manava intellect is busy shaping the mould for a future
religion, or had been shaping that of a past religion. But here the maximum and
minimum limits by which nature controls are again to be taken account of. One
essential feature of Sushupti is,
———————————
* “ The following from the Kaushitaki Upanishad, (see Max Muller’s
translation, and also that published in the Bibliotheka Indica, with
Sankaracharya’s commentary— cowell’s tran.) may he of interest to students.
“Agatasatru to him: ‘Bilâki, where did this person here sleep? where was he?
whence did he come back? ‘Bilâki, did not know. And Agatasatru said to him:
‘where this person here slept, where he was, whence he thus came back, is this:
The arteries of the heart called Hita extend from the heart of the person
towards the surrounding body. Small as a hair divided a thousand times, they
stand, full of a thin fluid of various colors, white, black, yellow, red. In
these the person is when sleeping, he sees no dream (Sushupti). Then he becomes
one with that prana (breath) alone.’ “ (Elsewhere the number of these arteries
is said to be 101.) “And as a razor might be fitted in a razor case, or as fire
in the fire place, even thus this conscious self enters into the self of the
body, to the very hair and nails; he is the master of all, and eats with and
enjoys with them. So long as Indra did not understand the self, the Asuras
(lower principles in man) conquered him, when he understood it, he conquered the
Asuras, and obtained the pre-eminenee among all gods. And thus also he who knows
this obtains pre-eminence, sovereignty, supremacy.” And in the Khandogya
Upanishad, VI Prap. 8, Kh, I: “when the man sleeps here, my dear son, he
becomes united with the True—in Sushupti sleep—he is gone to his own self.
Therefore they say, he sleeps (Swapita), because he is gone (apita) to his own (sva).
And in Prasno Up II, 1. “There are 101 arteries from the heart; one of
them penetrates the crown of the head: moving upwards by it man reaches the
immortal: the others serve for departing in different directions.” (Ed. PATH.)
I
This opens up an
intensely interesting and highly important subject, which cannot be here treated
of, but which will be in future papers. Meanwhile, Theosophists can exercise
their intuition in respect to it. (Ed. PATH.)
15 SEERSHIP
as far as can now be understood, that the mystic must get at all truths through
but one source, or path, viz: through the divine world pertaining to his own
lodge (or teacher), and through this path he might soar as high as he can,
though how much knowledge he can get is an open question.
Let us now inquire what state is the seership of the author of our poem
“The Seer,” and try to discover the “hare’s horns” in it. Later on we may try to
peep into the states of Swedenborg, P. B. Randolph, and a few of the “trained,
untrained, natural-born, self- taught, crystal, and magic mirror seers.”
I look at this poem solely to point out mistakes so as to obtain materials
for our study. There are beauties and truths in it which all can enjoy.
In ancient days it was all very well for mystics to write figuratively so
as to keep sacred things from the profane. Then symbolism was rife in the air
with mysticism, and all the allegories were understood at once by those for whom
they were intended. But times have changed. In this materialistic age it is
known that the wildest misconceptions exist in the minds of many who are
mystically and spiritually inclined. The generality of mystics and their
followers are not free from the superstitions and prejudices which have in
church and science their counterpart. Therefore in my humble opinion there can
be no justification for writing allegorically on mysticism, and, by publication,
placing such writings within reach of all. To do so is positively mischievous.
If allegorical writings and misleading novels are intended to popularize
mysticism by removing existing prejudices, then the writers ought to express
their motives. It is an open question whether the benefit resulting from such
popularization is not more than counterbalanced by the injury worked to helpless
votaries of mysticism, who are misled. And there is less justification for our
present allegorical writers than there was for those of Lytton’s time. Moreover,
in the present quarter of our century, veils are thrown by symbolical or
misleading utterances over much that can be safely given out in plain words.
With these general remarks let us turn to “The Seer.”
In the Invocation, addressed evidently to the Seer’s guru,
1
we find these words:
“When in delicious dreams I leave this life,
And in sweet trance unveil its mysteries;
Give me thy light, thy love, thy truth divine !“
Trance here means only one of the various states known as cataleptic
or somnambulic, but certainly neither Turya nor Sushupti. In such a trance state
very few of the mysteries of “this life,” or even of the state of trance itself,
could be unveiled. The so-called Seer can “enjoy” as harmlessly and as uselessly
as a boy who idly swims in the lagoon, where he gains no knowledge and may end
—————————————
1
Guru, a spiritual teacher.
16 SEERSHIP
his sport in death. Even so is the one who swims, cuts capers, in the astral
light, and becomes lost in something strange which surpasses all his
comprehension. The difference between such a Seer and the ordinary sensualist
is, that the first indulges both his astral and physical senses to excess, while
the latter his physical senses only. These occultists fancy that they have
removed their interest from self, when in reality they have only enlarged
the limits of experience and desire, and transferred their interest to the
things which concern their larger span of life.
1
Invoking a Guru’s blessings on your own higher nature for the purpose of
sustaining you in this trance state, is as blasphemous and reprehensible an act
of assisting descent, and conversion of higher into lower energies, as to invoke
your Guru to help you in excessive wine drinking; for the astral world is also
material. To be able to solve the mysteries of any consciousness whatever, even
of the lowest physical, while in trance, is as vain a boast of the hunters for
such a state as that of physiologists or mesmerists. While you are in trance
state, if you are not ethical enough in your nature, you will be tempted and
forced, by your powerful lower elements, to pry into the secrets of your
neighbors, and then, on returning to your normal state, to slander them. The
surest way to draw down your higher nature into the miry abyss of your physical
and astral world, and thus to animalize yourself, is to go into a trance or to
aspire for clairvoyance.
“And thou, (Guru) left me looking upward through the veil,
To gaze into thy goal and follow thee !“
These lines are highly presumptuous. It is impossible, even for a very
high Hierophant, in any of his states whatever, to gaze into his Guru’s
goal ; 2 his subjective consciousness can but barely come up to
the level of the normal or objective consciousness of his Guru. It is only
during the initiation that the initiated sees not only his own immediate goal,
but also Nirvana, which of course includes his Guru’s goal also; but after the
ceremony is over he recollects only his own immediate goal for his next “class,”
but nothing beyond that. 3 This is what is meant by the God Jehovah
saying to Moses: “And I will take away mine hand and Thou shalt see my back, but
my face shall not be seen.” And in The Rig Veda it is said : 4 “Dark is the path
of Thee, who art bright: the light is before Thee.”
Mr. Hellon opens his poem with a quotation from Zanoni: “Man’s first
initiation is in trance; in dreams commence all human
——————————
1 Vide Light on the Path, Rule 1, note, part I.
2 There is one exceptional case where the Guru’s goal is seen, and then the
Guru has to die, for there can be no two equals.
3 There is no contradiction between this and the
preceding paragraph where it is said, To see the Guru’s goal is
impossible.” During the initiation ceremony, there is no separateness between
those engaged in it. They all become one whole, and therefore even the High
Hierophant, while engaged in an initiation, is no more his separate self, but is
only a part of the whole, of which the candidate is also a part, and then, for
the time being, having as much power and knowledge as the very highest present.
(Ed. PATH)
4 Rig Veda, IV, VII,
9.
17 SEERSHIP
knowledge, in dreams he hovers over measureless space, the first faint bridge
between spirit and spirit—this world and the world beyond.”
As this is a passage often quoted approvingly, and recognized as containing
no misconceptions, I may be permitted to pass a few remarks, first, upon its
intrinsic merits, and secondly, on Lytton himself and his Zanoni. I shall not
speak of the rage which prevails among mystical writers for quoting without
understanding what they quote.
In Swapna state man gets human, unreliable knowledge, while divine
knowledge begins to come in Sushupti state. Lytton has here thrown a gilded
globule of erroneous ideas to mislead the unworthy and inquisitive mysticism
hunters, who unconsciously price the globule. It is not too much to say that
such statements in these days, instead of aiding us to discover the true path,
but give rise to numberless patent remedies for the evils of life, remedies
which can never accomplish a cure. Man-made edifices called true Raja Yoga, 1
evolved in trance, arise confronting each other, conflicting with each other,
and out of harmony in themselves. Then not only endless disputation arises, but
also bigotry, while the devoted and innocent seekers after truth are misled, and
scientific, intelligent, competent men are scared away from any attempt to
examine the claims of the true science. As soon as some one sided objective
truth is discovered by a Mesmer, a defender of ancient Yoga Vidya 2 blows
a trumpet crying out, “Yoga is self mesmerization, mesmerism is the key
to it, and animal magnetism develops spirituality and is itself spirit, God,
Atman,” deluding himself with the idea that he is assisting humanity and the
cause of truth, unconscious of the fact that he is thus only degrading Yoga
Vidya. The ignorant medium contends that her “control” is divine. There seems to
be little difference between the claims of these two classes of dupes and the
materialist who sets up a protoplasm in the place of God. Among the innumerable
hosts of desecrated terms are Trance, Yoga, Turya, initiation, &c. It is
therefore no wonder that Lytton, in a novel, has desecrated it and misapplied it
to a mere semi-cataleptic state. I, for one, prefer always to limit the term
Initiation to its true sense, viz., those sacred ceremonies in which alone
“Isis is unveiled.”
Man’s first initiation is not in trance, as Lytton means. Trance is
an artificial, waking, somnambulistic state, in which one can learn nothing at
all about the real nature of the elements of our physical consciousness, and
much less any of any other. None of Lytton’s admirers seems to have thought that
he was chaffing at occultism, although he believed in it, and was not anxious to
throw the pearls before swine. Such a hierophant as Mejnour—not Lytton
himself—could not have mistaken the tomfoolery of somnambulism for even the
first steps in Raja Yoga. This can be seen
———————————
1 Divine science.
2 The knowledge of Yoga, which is, “joining with your higher self.”
18 SEERSHIP
from the way in which
Lytton gives out absolutely erroneous ideas about occultism, while at the same
time he shows a knowledge which he could not have, did he believe himself in his
own chaffing. It is pretty well recognized that he at last failed, after some
progress in occultism as a high accepted disciple. His Glyndon might be Lytton,
and Glyndon’s sister Lady Lytton. The hieroglyphics of a book given him to
decipher, and which he brought out as Zanoni, must be allegorical. The
book is really the master’s ideas which the pupil’s highest consciousness
endeavors to read. But they were only the mere commonplaces of the master’s
mind. The profane and the cowardly always say that the master descends to the
plane of the pupil. Such can never happen. And precipitation of messages from
the master is only possible when the pupil’s highest ethical and intuitive
faculties reach the level of the master’s normal and objective state. In
Zanoni, this is veiled by the assertion that he had to read the
hieroglyphics—they did not speak to him. And he confesses in the preface
that he is by no means sure that he has correctly deciphered them. ‘Enthusiasm,”
he says, “is when that part of the soul which is above intellect soars up to the
Gods, and there derives the inspiration.” Errors will therefore be due to wilful
misstatements or to his difficulty in reading the cipher.
“In dreams I see a world so fair,
That life would love to linger there,
And pass from this to that bright sphere,
In dreams ecstatic, pure and free,
Strange forms my inward senses see,
While hands mysterious welcome me.”
Such indefinite descriptions are worse than useless. The inward senses are
psychic senses, and their perceiving strange forms and mere appearances in the
astral world is not useful or instructive. Forms and appearances in the astral
light are legion, and take their shape not only from the seer’s mind unknown to
himself, but are also, in many cases, reflections for other people’s minds.
“Oh, why should mine be ever less,
And light ineffable bless
Thee, in thy starry loneliness,”
seems to be utterly unethical. Here the seer is in first place jealous of the
light possessed by his guru, or he is grasping in the dark, ignorant even of the
rationale of himself being in lower states than his guru. However, Mr.
Hellon has not erred about the existence of such a feeling. It does and should
exist in the trance and dreaming state. In our ordinary waking state,
attachments, desires, &c., are the very life of our physical senses, and in the
same way the emotional energies manifest themselves on the astral plane in order
to feed and fatten the seer’s astral senses, sustaining them during his trance
state. Unless thus animated, his astral nature would come to rest.
19 SEERSHIP
No proof is therefore needed for the proposition that any state which is
sustained by desires and passions cannot be regarded as anything more than as a
means for developing one part of the animal nature. Van Helmont is of the same
opinion as Mr. Hellon. * We cannot, therefore, for a moment believe that in
such a state the “I” of that state is Atman.1 It is only the false “I” ;
the vehicle for the real one. It is Ahankara—lower self, or individuality
of the waking state, for even in trance state the lower sixth principle plays no
greater part and develops no more than in the wakeful state. The change is only
in the field of action, from the waking one to the astral plane; the physical
one remaining more or less at rest. Were it otherwise, we would find somnambules
day by day exhibiting increase of intellect, whereas this does not occur.
Suppose that we induce the trance state in an illiterate man. He can then
read from the astral counterpart of Herbert Spencer or Patanjali’s books as many
pages as we desire, or even the unpublished ideas of Spencer; but he can never
make a comparison between the two systems, unless that has already been done by
some other mind in no matter what language. Nor can any somnambule analyze and
describe the complicated machinery of the astral faculties, much less of the
emotional ones, or of the fifth principle. For in order to be analyzed they must
be at rest so that the higher self may carry on the analysis. So when Mr. Hellon
says:
“A trance steals o’er my spirit now,”
he is undoubtedly wrong, as Atman, or spirit, cannot go into a trance. When a
lower plane energy ascends to a higher plane, it becomes silent there for a
while until by contract with the denizens of its new home its powers are
animated. The somnambulic state has two conditions, (a) waking, which is
psycho-physiological or astro-physical; (b) sleeping, which is psychical. In
these two the trance steals partly or completely only over the physical
consciousness and senses.
“And from my forehead peers the sight,” etc.
This, with much that follows is pure imagination or misconception. As for
instance, “floating from sphere to sphere.” In this state the seer is confined
to but one sphere—the astral or psycho-physiological— ; no higher one can he
even comprehend.
Speaking of the period when the sixth sense shall be developed, he says:
“No mystery then her sons shall find,
Within the compass of mankind;
The one shall read the other’s mind.”
————————————
* See Zanoni,
Book IV, c. iii.
1 Highest soul.
20 SEERSHIP
In this the seer shows
even a want of theoretical knowledge of the period spoken of. He has madly
rushed into the astral world without a knowledge of the philosophy of the
mystics. Even though the twelfth sense were developed—let alone the physical
sixth—it shall ever remain as difficult as it is now, for people to read one
another’s mind. Such is the mystery of Manas. 1 He is evidently deluded
by seeing the apparent triumphs during a transitional period of a race’s mental
development, of those minds abnormally developed which are able to look into the
minds of others; and yet they do that only partially. If one with a highly
developed sixth principle were to indulge for only six times in reading others’
minds, he would surely drain that development down to fatten the mind and
desires. Moreover, Mr. Hellon’s seer seems to be totally unaware of the fact
that the object of developing higher faculties is not to peer into the minds of
others, and that the economy of the occult world gives an important privilege to
the mystic, in that the pages of his life and manas shall be carefully
locked up against inquisitive prowlers, the key safely deposited with his guru,
who never lends it to any one else. If with the occult world the laws of nature
are so strict, how much more should they be with people in general. Otherwise,
nothing would be safe. The sixth sense would then be as delusive and a curse to
the ignorant as sight and learning are now. Nor shall this sixth sense man be
“perfect.” Truth for him shall be as difficult to attain through his “sense,” as
it is now. The horizon shall have only widened, and what we are now acquiring as
truth will have passed into history, into literature, into axiom. “Sense” is
always nothing else than a channel for desire to flow through and torment
ourselves and others.
The whole poem is misleading, especially such expressions as:
“His spirit views the world’s turmoil; behold his body feed the soil.—A sixth
sense race borne ages since, to God’s own zone.” Our higher self—Atman—can never
“view the world’s turmoil,” nor behold the body. For supposing that it did view
the body or the world’s turmoil, it would be attracted to them, descending to
the physical plane, where it would be converted more or less into physical
nature. And the elevation of a sixth sense race unphilosophically supposes the
raising up of that sense, which certainly has only to do with our physical
nature, at most our astro-physical nature, to the sphere of God or Atman.
By merely training the psychical powers true progress is not gained, but
only the enjoyment of those powers; a sort of alcohol on the astral plane, which
results in unfavorable Karma. The true path to divine wisdom is in performing
our duty unselfishly in the station in which we are placed, for thereby we
convert lower nature into higher, following Dharma—our whole duty.
——————— —
—
MURDHNA JOTI.
1 Fifth principle.
[ This sequel to Mr. Judge’s “Mesmerism,” published last month, continues his discussion of the psychic principles of man in the Tight of occult psychology and physiology. Readers will find it of value to correlate with this article the Secret Doctrine passages quoted in / ‘Psychic’ Characteristics” (p. 447), to see how intimately complementary are the writings of H. P. B. and W. Q. J. Of equal interest would be a comparison of this discussion of the function of the sheaths with H. P. B.’s footnote to the article, “Mediums and Yogis” (see THEOSOPHY ‘1, 185). One thing more: Idealistic systems, in which spiritual intuitions are speculatively developed, make common cause with Theosophy in denying the conclusions of psychologists who found their theories on materialistic biology. Such speculation, how ever, cannot, because it has not the knowledge, either deal with the facts revealed by science, or offer other and modifying facts that lend themselves to philosophical interpretation. Theosophy does provide facts which increase our scientific knowledge of the psychic, intellectual and moral processes of life; hence, its peculiar competency to criticize and correct the errors of materialism. “Sheaths of the Soul,” which first appeared in Lucifer for June, 1892, is an embodiment of such portions of the science of occultism as it is useful for the men of this cycle to know.—Editors, THEOSOPHY.]
IN my last article, “Mesmerism,” I arrived at the point where we discover that the inner mortal man has several sheaths through which he obtains touch with Nature, feeling her motions and exhibiting in return his own powers and functions. It is a doctrine as old as any Esoteric School now alive, and far more ancient than the modem scientific academies; an understanding of it is absolutely needful if we are to gain an adequate comprehension of real Mesmerism.
Instead of looking at the human being as that which we see, it is to be regarded as a being altogether different, functioning and perceiving in a way quite peculiar to itself, and being compelled to trans late every outward impression, as well as those coming from within, from one language into another, that is to say from pictures into words, signs and acts, or vice versa. This statement is vague, I admit, yet nevertheless true. The vagueness arises from the difficulties of a language that has as yet dealt but slightly with these subjects, and the development of which has gone on in a civilization wholly materialistic. Man is a Soul, and as such stands among material things. This Soul is not only on its way upward for itself, but is compelled at the same time to draw up, refine, purge and perfect the gross matter—so-called—in which it is compelled to live. For though we call the less fine stages of substance by the name “matter,” it is, however, made up of lives which have in them the potentiality of becoming Souls in the enormously distant future; and the Soul being itself a life made up of smaller ones, it is under the brotherly necessity of waiting in the bonds of matter long enough to give the latter the right impetus along the path of perfection.
So, during the long ages that have passed since the present evolution began in this solar system, the Soul has constructed for its own use various sheaths, ranging from very fine ones, near to its own essential being, to those that are more remote, ending with the outer physical one, and that one the most illusionary of them all, although appearing from the outside to be the truly real. These sheaths are necessary if the Soul is to know or to act. For it cannot by itself understand Nature at all, but transforms instantly all sensations and ideas by means of the different sheaths, until in the process it has directed the body below, or obtained itself experience above. By this I mean that whatever Soul initiates, it has to pass along through the several sheaths, each reporting, as it were, to the one next below it; and in like manner they report from below upward in the case of sensations from natural phenomena and impressions on the outside. In the beginnings of evolution, during all its stages, this took appreciable amounts of solar time, but at this point of the system’s march along the line of growth it takes such an infinitesimally short space that we are justified in calling it instantaneous in all cases of normal and well-balanced persons. There are, of course, instances where longer time is used in consequence of the slower action of some one of the sheaths.
The number of sharply defined sheaths of the Soul is seven, but the sub-differentiations of each araises the apparent number very much higher. Roughly speaking, each one divides itself into seven, and every one in each collection of seven partakes of the nature of its own class. There may, therefore, be said to exist forty-nine sheaths possible to classification.
Physical body may be recognized as one sheath, and the sub divisions in it are such as skin, blood, nerves, bones, flesh, mucous membrane and. Astral body is another, but not so easily recognized by the men of today. It has also its own sub-divisions answering in part to those of the physical body. But being one stage higher than the latter it includes in one of its own sub-divisions several of those in the body. For instance, the surface sensations of blood, skin, flesh and mucous membrane will be included in a single one of the astral sub-divisions. And exactly at this point the Esoteric Schools diverge from and appear to contradict modern pathology and physiology. For the modern school admits only the action of nerves along skin and mucous membrane and in flesh, as the receivers and transmitters of sensation. It would appear to be so, but the facts on the inside are different, or rather more numerous, leading to additional conclusions. Likewise, too, we clash with the nineteenth century in the matter of the blood. We say that the blood cells and the fluid they float in receive and transmit sensation.
Each sub-division among the physical sheaths performs not only the duty of receiving and transmitting sensations, but also has the power of retaining a memory of them which is registered in the appropriate ganglion of the body, and continually, from there, implanted in the corresponding centre of sensation and action in the astral body. At the same time the physical brain has always the power, as is of course a common fact, of collecting all the physical sensations and impressions.
Having laid all this down—without stopping for argument, which would end in nothing without physical demonstrations being added— the next step is this. The lower man who collects, so to say, for the Soul’s use, all the experiences below it, can either at will when trained, or involuntarily when forced by processes or accident or abnormal birth, live in the sensations and impressions of one or many of the various sheaths of the physical or astral body.
If trained, then there will be no delusions or any temporary delusion will be easily dispersed. If untrained, delusion walks arm in arm with the sensations. If diseased or forced, the outer acts may be correctly performed but the free intelligence is absent, and all the delusions and illusions of hypnotic and mesmeric states show them selves.
If the inner lower man be functioning among the sensations— or planes, if you like—of some astral sense or centre, then clairvoyance or clairaudience comes on, because he is conveying to the brain those impressions derived from similar planes of nature in any direction.
And when to this is added a partial touch of some minor physical sub-divisions of the sheaths, then delusion is made more complete, because the experience of a single set of cells is taken for the whole and reported, by means of the brain, in the language used by a normal being. Indeed, so vast are the possible combinations in this department that I have only mentioned a few by way of illustration. It is this possibility of the inner lower man being connected with one or more of the sheaths, and disconnected from all the rest, which has led one of the French schools of hypnotizers to conclude to the effect that every man is a collection of personalities, each complete in itself. The positions laid down above are not destroyed by the fact, as observed at Paris and Nancy, that the subject in hypnotic state No. 2 knows nothing about state No. I, for each normal per son, when acting normally, compounds all the various sets of sensations, experiences, and recollections into one whole, the sum total of all, and which is not recognizable as any one of them distinct from the rest.
It must also be remembered that each person has pursued in prior lives this or that course of action, which has trained and developed this or that Soul-sheath. And although at death many of them are dissolved as integral collections, the effect of such development formerly pursued is not lost to the reincarnating being. It is pre served through the mysterious laws that guide the atoms when they assemble for the birth of a new personal house to be occupied by the returning Soul. It is known that the atoms—physical and astral—have gone through every sort of training. When the Soul is reincarnating it attracts to itself those physical and astral atoms which are like unto its old experience as far as possible. It often gets back again some of the identical matter it used in its last life. And if the astral senses have received in the prior existence on earth great attention and development, then there will be born a medium or a real seer or sage. Which it will be depends upon the great balancing of forces from the prior life. For instance, one who in another incarnation attended wholly to psychic development without philosophy, or made other errors, will be born, maybe, as an irresponsible medium; another, again, of the same class, emerges as a wholly untrustworthy partial clairvoyant, and so on ad infinitum.
A birth in a family of wise devotees and real sages is declared from old time to be very difficult of attainment. This difficulty may be gradually overcome by philosophical study and unselfish effort for others, together with devotion to the Higher Self pursued through many lives. Any other sort of practice leads only to additional bewilderment.*
*Mr. Judge’s article, as written, ends here. The remaining paragraphs, which
are from a commentary on Plotinus by Porphyry, were intended by the editor of
Lucifer to fill out the page where “Sheaths of the Soul” ended, but were inserted above
Mr. Judge’s signature through a printer’s mistake. An editor’s note.
The Soul is bound to the body by a conversion to the corporeal passions; and is again liberated by becoming impassive to the body.
That which Nature binds, Nature also dissolves; and that with the Soul binds, the Soul likewise dissolves. Nature, indeed, bound the body to the Soul; but the Soul binds herself to the body. Nature, therefore, liberates the body from the Soul; but the Soul liberates herself from the body.
Hence there is a two-fold death; the one, indeed, universally known, in which the body is liberated from the Soul; but the other peculiar to philosophers, in which the Soul is liberated from the body. Nor does the one entirely follow the other.
WILLIAM 0. JUDGE, F.T.S.
“STEPPING-STONES”
Once grasp the idea that universal causation is not merely present, but past, present and future, and every action on our present plane falls naturally and easily into its true place, and is seen in its true relation to ourselves and to others. Every mean and selfish action sends us. backward and not forward, while every noble thought and every unselfish deed are stepping-stones to the higher and more glorious planes of being. If this life were all, then in many respects it would indeed be poor and mean; but regarded as a preparation for the next sphere of existence, it maybe used as the golden gate through which we may pass, not selfishly and not alone, but in company with our fellows, to the palaces which lie beyond. —H. P. B.
[ Together with “Sheaths of the Soul,” which THEOSOPHY will reprint in August, show William Q. Judge as the occult scientist. Here is the psycho-physiology of the future, for which no facts will be “sacred,” none “profane.” All particulars will be seen as applications of universal doctrines.
These two articles treat more fully of the astral body than any other Theosophical writings. Of the scientific necessity for the concept of the astral body, H. P. Blavatsky has written: “The whole issue of the quarrel between the, profane and the esoteric sciences depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an astral body within the physical, the former independent of the latter.” (S. D. II, 149.) In the light of these fundamental propositions on the nature, powers and uses of. the astral principle in man, the recent series of historical studies on the astral body may be viewed with profit. (See THEOSOPHY xxviii, Nos. 3-10.) “Mesmerism” first appeared in Lucifer for May, 1892.—Editors, THEOSOPHY.]
THIS is the name given to an art, or the exhibition of a power to act upon others and the facility to be acted upon, which long antedate the days of Anton Mesmer. Another name for some of its phenomena is Hypnotism, and still another is Magnetism. The last title was given because sometimes the person operated on was seen to follow the hand of the operator, as if drawn like iron filings to a magnet. These are all used today by various operators, but by many different appellations it has been known; fascination is one, and psychologizing is another, but the number of them is so great it is useless to go over the list.
Anton Mesmer, who gave greater publicity in the Western world to the subject than any other person, and whose name is still attached to it, was born in 1734, and some few years before 1783, or about 1775, obtained great prominence in Europe in connection with his experiments and cures; but, as H. P. Blavatsky says in her Theosophical Glossary, he was only a rediscoverer. The whole subject had been explored long before his time—indeed many centuries anterior to the rise of civilization in Europe—and all the great fraternities of the East were always in full possession of secrets concerning its practice which remain still unknown. Mesmer came out with his discoveries as agent, in fact—though, perhaps, without disclosing those behind him—of certain brotherhoods to which he belonged. His promulgations were in the last quarter of the century, just as those of the Theosophical Society were begun in 1875, and what he did was all that could be done at that time.
But in 1639, one hundred years before Mesmer, a book was published in Europe upon the use of mesmerism in the cure of wounds, and bore the title, The Sympathetical Powder of Edricius Mohynus of Eburo. These cures, it was said, could be effected at a distance from the wound by reason of the virtue or directive faculty between that and the wound. This is exactly one of the phases of both hypnotism and mesmerism. And along the same line were the writings of a monk named Uldericus Balk, who said diseases could be similarly cured, in a book concerning the lamp of life in 1611. In these works, of course, there is much superstition, but they treat of mesmerism underneath all the folly.
After the French Academy committee, including Benjamin Franklin, passed sentence on the subject, condemning it in substance, mesmerism fell into disrepute, but was revived in America by many persons who adopted different names for their work and wrote books on it. One of them named Dodds obtained a good deal of celebrity, and was invited during the life of Daniel Webster to lecture on it before a number of United States senators. He called his system “psychology,” but it was mesmerism exactly, even to details regarding nerves and the like. And in England also a good deal of attention was given to it by numbers of people who were not of scientific repute. They gave it no better reputation than it had before, and the press and public generally looked on them as charlatans and upon mesmerism as a delusion. Such was the state of things until the researches into what is now known as hypnotism brought that phase of the subject once more forward, and subsequently to 1875 the popular mind gave more and more attention to the possibilities in the fields of clairvoyance, clairaudience, trance, apparitions, and the like. Even physicians and others, who previously scouted all such investigations, began to take them up for consideration, and are still engaged thereon. And it seems quite certain that, by whatever name designated, mesmerism is sure to have more and more attention paid to it. For it is impossible to proceed very far with hypnotic experiments without meeting mesmeric phenomena, and being compelled, as it were, to proceed with an enquiry into those as well.
The hypnotists unjustifiably claim the merit of discoveries, for even the uneducated so-called charlatans of the above-mentioned periods cited the very fact appropriated by hypnotists, that many persons were normally—for them—in a hypnotized state, or, as they called it, in a psychologized condition, or negative one, and so forth, according to the particular system employed.
In France Baron Du Potet astonished everyone with his feats in mesmerism, bringing about as great changes in subjects as the hypnotizers do now. After a time, and after reading old books, he adopted a number of queer symbols that he said had the most extraordinary effect on the subject, and refused to give these out to any except pledged persons. This rule was violated, and his instructions and figures were printed not many years ago for sale with a pretense of secrecy consisting in a lock to the book. I have read these and find they are of no moment at all, having their force simply from the will of the person who uses them. The Baron was a man of very strong natural mesmeric force, and made his subjects do things that few others could bring about. He died without causing the scientific world to pay much attention to the matter.
The great question mooted is whether there is or is not any actual fluid thrown off by the mesmerizer. Many deny it, and nearly all hypnotizers refuse to admit it. H. P. Blavatsky declares there is such a fluid, and those who can see into the plane to which it belongs assert its existence as a subtle form of matter. This is, I think, true, and is not at all inconsistent with the experiments in hypnotism, for the fluid can have its own existence at the same time that people may be self-hypnotized by merely inverting their eyes while looking at some bright object. This fluid is composed in part of the astral substance around every one, and in part of the physical atoms in a finely divided state. By some this astral substance is called the aura. But that word is indefinite, as there are many sorts of aura and many degrees of its expression. These will not be known, even to Theosophists of the most willing mind, until the race as a whole has developed up to that point. So the word will remain in use for the present.
This aura, then,
is thrown off by the mesmerizer upon his subject, and is received by the latter
in a department of his inner constitution, never described by any Western
experimenters, because they know nothing of it. It wakes up certain inner and
non-physical divisions of the person operated on, causing a change of relation
between the various and numerous sheaths surrounding the inner man, and making
possible different degrees of intelligence and of clairvoyance and the like. It
has no influence whatsoever on the Higher SeIf,* which it is impossible to reach
by such means. Many persons are deluded into supposing that the Higher Self is
the responder, or that some spirit or what not is present, but it is only one of
the many inner persons, so to say, who is talking or rather causing the organs
speech to do their office. And it is just here that the Theosophist and the
non-Theosophist are at fault, since the words spoken are some times far above
the ordinary intelligence or power of the subject in waking state. I therefore
propose to give in the rough the theory of what actually does take place, as has
been known for ages to those who see with the inner eye, and as will one day be
discovered and admitted by science.
—————————————————————
*Atmâ in its vehicle Buddhi.
When the hypnotic or mesmerized state is complete—and often when it is partial—there is an immediate paralyzing of the power of the body to throw its impressions, and thus modify the conceptions of the inner being. In ordinary waking life everyone, without being able to disentangle himself, is subject to the impressions from the whole organism; that is to say, every cell in the body, to the most minute, has its own series of impressions and recollections, all of which continue to impinge on the great register, the brain, until the impression remaining in the cell is fully exhausted. And that exhaustion takes a long time. Further, as we are adding continually to them, the period of disappearance of impression is indefinitely postponed. Thus the inner person is not able to make itself felt. But, in the right subject, those bodily impressions are by mesmerism neutralized for the time, and at once another effect follows, which is equivalent to cutting the general off from his army and compelling him to seek other means of expression.
The brain—in cases where the subject talks—is left free sufficiently to permit it to obey the commands of the mesmerizer and compel the organs of speech to respond. So much in general.
We have now come to another part of the nature of man which is a land unknown to the Western world and its scientists. By mesmerism other organs are set to work disconnected from the body, but which in normal state function with and through the latter. These are not admitted by the world, but they exist, and are as real as the body is—in fact some who know say they are more real and less subject to decay, for they remain almost unchanged from birth to death. These organs have their own currents, circulation if you will, and methods of receiving and storing impressions. They are those which in a second of time seize and keep the faintest trace of any object or word coming before the waking man. They not only keep them but very often give them out, and when the person is mesmerized their exit is untrammeled by the body.
They are divided into many classes and grades, and each one of them has a whole series of ideas and facts peculiar to itself, as well as centres in the ethereal body to which they relate. Instead now of the brain’s dealing with the sensations of the body, it deals with something quite different, and reports what these inner organs see in any part of space to which they are directed. And in place of your having waked up the Higher Self, you have merely uncovered one of the many sets of impressions and experiences of which the inner man is composed, and who is himself a long distance from the Higher Self. These varied pictures, thus seized from every quarter, are normally overborne by the great roar of the physical life, which is the sum total of possible expression of a normal being on the physical plane whereon we move. They show themselves usually only by glimpses when we have sudden ideas or recollections, or in dreams when our sleeping may be crowded with fancies for which we cannot find a basis in daily life. Yet the basis exists, and is always some one or other of the million small impressions of the day passed unnoticed by the physical brain, but caught unerringly by means of other sensoriums belonging to our astral double. For this astral body, or double, permeates the physical one as color does the bowl of water. And although to the materialistic conceptions of the present day such a misty shadow is not admitted to have parts, powers, and organs, it nevertheless has all of these with a surprising power and grasp. Although perhaps a mist, it can exert under proper conditions a force equal to the viewless wind when it levels to earth the proud constructions of puny man.
In the astral body, then, is the place to look for the explanation of mesmerism and hypnotism. The Higher Self will explain the flights we seldom make into the realm of spirit, and is the God—the Father—within who guides His children up the long steep road to perfection. Let not the idea of it be degraded by chaining it to the low floor of mesmeric phenomena, which any healthy man or woman can bring about if they will only try. The grosser the operator the better, for thus there is more of the mesmeric force, and if it be the Higher Self that is affected, then the meaning of it would be that gross matter can with ease affect and deflect the high spirit— and this is against the testimony of the ages.
A Paramahansa of the Himalayas has put in print the following words: “Theosophy is that branch of Masonry which shows the Universe in the form of an egg.” Putting on one side the germinal spot in the egg, we have left five other main divisions: the fluid, the yolk, the skin of the yolk, the inner skin of the shell, and the hard shell. The shell and the inner skin may be taken as one. That leaves us four, corresponding to the old divisions of fire, air, earth, and water. Man, roughly speaking, is divided in the same manner, and from these main divisions spring all his manifold experiences on the outer and the introspective planes. The human structure has its skin, its blood, its earthy matter—called bones for the moment, its flesh, and lastly the great germ which is insulated somewhere in the brain by means of a complete coat of fatty matter.
The skin includes the mucous, all membranes in the body, the arterial coats, and so on. The flesh takes in the nerves, the animal cells so-called, and the muscles. The bones stand alone. The blood has its cells, the corpuscles, and the fluid they float in. The organs, such as the liver, the spleen, the lungs, include skin, blood, and mucous. Each of these divisions and all of their subdivisions have their own peculiar impressions and recollections, and all, together with the coordinator the brain, make up the man as he is on the visible plane.
These all have to do with the phenomena of mesmerism, although there are those who may think it not possible that mucous membrane or skin can give us any knowledge. But it is nevertheless the fact, for the sensations of every part of the body affect each cognition, and when the experiences of the skin cells, or any other, are most prominent before the brain of the subject, all his reports to the operator will be drawn from that, unknown to both, and put into language for the brain’s use so long as the next condition is not reached. This is the Esoteric Doctrine, and will at last be found true. For man is made up of millions of lives, and from these, unable of themselves to act rationally or independently, he gains ideas, and as the master of all puts those ideas, together with others from higher planes, into thought, word, and act. Hence at the very first step in mesmerism this factor has to be remembered, but nowadays people do not know it and cannot recognize its presence, but are carried away by the strangeness of the phenomena.
The very best of subjects are mixed in their reports, because the things they do see are varied and distorted by the several experiences of the parts of their nature I have mentioned, all of which are constantly clamouring for a hearing. And every operator is sure to be misled by them unless he is himself a trained seer.
The next step takes us into the region of the inner man, not the spiritual being, but the astral one who is the model on which the outer visible form is built. The inner person is the mediator between mind and matter. Hearing the commands of mind, he causes the physical nerves to act and thus the whole body. All the senses have their seat in this person, and every one of them is a thousand-fold more extensive in range than their outer representatives, for those outer eyes and ears, and sense of touch, taste, and smell, are only gross organs which the inner ones use, but which of themselves can do nothing.
This can be seen when we cut off the nerve connection, say from the eye, for then the inner eye cannot connect with physical nature and is unable to see an object placed before the retina, although feeling or hearing may in their way apprehend the object if those are not also cut off.
These inner senses can perceive under certain conditions to any distance regardless of position or obstacle. But they cannot see every thing, nor are they always able to properly understand the nature of everything they do see. For sometimes that appears to them with which they are not familiar. And further, they will often report having seen what they are desired by the operator to see, when in fact they are giving unreliable information. For, as the astral senses of any person are the direct inheritance of his own prior incarnations, and are not the product of family heredity, they cannot transcend their own experience, and hence their cognitions are limited by it, no matter how wonderful their action appears to him who is using only the physical sense-organs. In the ordinary healthy person these astral senses are inextricably linked with the body and limited by the apparatus which it furnishes during the waking state. And only when one falls asleep, or into a mesmerized state, or trance, or under the most severe training, can they act in a somewhat independent manner. This they do in sleep, when they live another life than that compelled by the force and the necessities of the waking organism. And when there is a paralyzation of the body by the mesmeric fluid they can act, because the impressions from the physical cells are inhibited.
The mesmeric fluid brings this paralyzing about by flowing from the operator and creeping steadily over the whole body of the subject, changing the polarity of the cells in every part and thus disconnecting the outer from the inner man. As the whole system of physical nerves is sympathetic in all its ramifications, when certain major sets of nerves are affected others by sympathy follow into the same condition. So it often happens with mesmerized subjects that the arms or legs are suddenly paralyzed without being directly operated on, or, as frequently, the sensation due to the fluid is felt first in the fore-arm, although the head was the only place touched.
There are many secrets about this part of the process, but they will not be given out, as it is easy enough for all proper purposes to mesmerize a subject by following what is already publicly known. By means of certain nerve points located near the skin the whole system of nerves may be altered in an instant, even by a slight breath from F the mouth at a distance of eight feet from the subject. But modern books do not point this out.
When the paralyzing and change of polarity of the cells are complete the astral man is almost disconnected from the body. Has he any structure? What mesmerizer knows? How many probably will deny that he has any structure at all? Is he only a mist, an idea? And yet, again, how many subjects are trained so as to be able to analyze their own astral anatomy?
But the structure of the inner astral man is definite and coherent. It cannot be fully dealt with in a magazine article, but may be roughly set forth, leaving readers to fill in the details.
Just as the outer body has a spine which is the column whereon the being sustains itself with the brain at the top, so the astral body has its spine and brain. It is material, for it is made of matter, however finely divided, and is not of the nature of the spirit.
After the maturity of the child before birth this form is fixed, coherent, and lasting, undergoing but small alteration from that day ‘ until death. And so also as to its brain; that remains unchanged until the body is given up, and does not, like the outer brain, give up cells to be replaced by others from hour to hour. These inner parts ‘ are thus more permanent than the outer correspondents to them. Our material organs, bones, and tissues are undergoing change each instant. They are suffering always what the ancients called “the constant momentary dissolution of minor units of matter,” and hence within each month there is a perceptible change by way of diminution or accretion. This is not the case with the inner form. It alters only from life to life, being constructed at the time of reincarnation to last for a whole period of existence. For it is the model fixed by the present evolutionary proportions for the outer body. It is the collector, as it were, of the visible atoms which make us as we outwardly appear. So at birth it is potentially of a certain size, and when that limit is reached it stops the further extension of the body, ‘ making possible what are known today as average weights and aver ‘age sizes. At the same time the outer body is kept in shape by the inner one until the period of decay. And this decay, followed by death, is not due to bodily disintegration per se, but to the fact that the term of the astral body is reached, when it is no longer able to hold the outer frame intact. Its power to resist the impact and war of the material molecules being exhausted, the sleep of death supervenes.
Now, as in our physical form the brain and spine are centres for nerves, so in the other there are the nerves which ramify from the inner brain and spine all over the structure. All of these are related to every organ in the outer visible body. They are more in the nature of currents than nerves, as we understand the word, and may be called astro-nerves. They move in relation to such great centres in the body outside, as the heart, the pit of the throat, umbilical centre, spleen, and sacral plexus. And here, in passing, it may be asked of the Western mesmerizers what do they know of the use and power, if any, of the umbilical centre? They will probably say it has no use in particular after the accomplishment of birth. But the true science of mesmerism says there is much yet to be learned even on that one point; and there is no scarcity, in the proper quarters, of records as to experiments on, and use of, this centre.
The astro-spinal column has three great nerves of the same sort of matter. They may be called ways or channels, up and down which the forces play, that enable man inside and outside to stand erect, to move, to feel, and to act. In description they answer exactly to the magnetic fluids, that is, they are respectively positive, negative, and neutral, their regular balance being essential to sanity. When the astral spine reaches the inner brain the nerves alter and become more complex, having a final great outlet in the skull. Then, with these two great parts of the inner person are the other manifold sets of nerves of similar nature related to the various planes of sensation in the visible and invisible worlds. These all then constitute the personal actor within, and in these is the place to seek for the solution of the problems presented by mesmerism and hypnotism.
Disjoin this being from the outer body with which he is linked, and the divorce deprives him of freedom temporarily, making him the slave of the operator. But mesmerizers know very well that the subject can and does often escape from control, puzzling them often, and often giving them fright. This is testified to by all the best writers in the Western schools.
Now this inner man is not by any means omniscient. He has an understanding that is limited by his own experience, as said before. Therefore, error creeps in if we rely on what he says in the mesmeric trance as to anything that requires philosophical knowledge, except with rare cases that are so infrequent as not to need consideration now. For neither the limit of the subject’s power to know, nor the effect of the operator on the inner sensoriums described above, is known to operators in general, and especially not by those who do not accept the ancient division of the inner nature of man. The effect of the operator is almost always to colour the reports made by the subject.
Take an instance: A. was a mesmerizer of C., a very sensitive woman, who had never made philosophy a study. A. had his mind made up to a certain course of procedure concerning other persons and requiring argument. But before action he consulted the sensitive, having in his possession a letter from X., who is a very definite thinker and very positive; while A., on the other hand, was not definite in idea although a good physical mesmerizer. The result was that the sensitive, after falling into the trance and being asked on the question debated, gave the views of X., whom she had not known, and so strongly that A. changed his plan although not his conviction, not knowing that it was the influence of the ideas of X. then in his mind, that had deflected the understanding of the sensitive. The thoughts of X., being very sharply cut, were enough to entirely change any previous views the subject had. What reliance, then, can be placed on untrained seers? And all the mesmeric subjects we have are wholly untrained, in the sense that the word bears with the school of ancient mesmerism of which I have been speaking.
The processes used in mesmeric experiment need not be gone into here. There are many books declaring them, but after studying the matter for the past twenty-two years, I do not find that they do other than copy one another, and that the entire set of directions can, for all practical purposes, be written on a single sheet of paper. But there are many other methods of still greater efficiency anciently taught, that may be left for another occasion.
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE, F. T. S.
PLASTIC POWER OF SOUL
The consequence of our soul’s pre-existence is more agreeable to reason than any other hypothesis whatever; has been received by the most learned philosophers of all ages, there being scarcely any of them that held the soul of man immortal upon the mere light of Nature and reason, but asserted also her pre-existence. . . . [ soul is a] spirit endued with sense and reason, and a power of organizing terrestrial matter into human shape by vital union there with . . . the frame of the body, of which I think it most reasonable to conclude the soul herself to be the more particular architect (for I will not wholly reject Plotinus his opinion), and that the plastick power resides in her, as also in the souls of brute animals, as very worthy and learned writers have determined. —HENRY MORE.
THE ACQUIREMENT OF INDIVIDUALITY
THE “pivotal doctrine of the esoteric philosophy,” wrote H. P. Blavatsky, “admits of no special gifts or privileges in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit.”
At the outset of her presentation of the Third Fundamental Proposition of the Secret Doctrine, she recapitulates the central theses of Propositions I and II, as they bear upon man’s own situation in evolution. The source of beinghood is the same for all, she says, cyclic law is the same for all, and the experiences of manifested life are also the same. The natural direction of evolution, however, is toward the acquirement of individuality, and the proposition that individuality must be acquired is clearly the “pivotal doctrine” to which she refers.
These considerations should make evident the central reason for the continued emphasis upon the teachings of Gautama Buddha in Isis Unveiled, The Secret Doctrine and in the studies promoted by the Theosophical Society. Buddhism was a reform of Brahmanism in India; its central tenet was that no man had special gifts or privileges, nor could attain to enlightened self-consciousness save by self-induced and self-devised efforts. According to the Buddha, neither priests nor doctrinal scriptures were necessary to the attainment of se1f-realization—upon which self-conscious individuality depends.
Similarly, in both the Theosophist and Lucifer, H.P.B. stressed over and over again the fact that a true Theosophist must apprehend truth by individual inspiration, by solitary progressive awakenings. Thus she sought to guard against the tendency of human nature, quite evidently ready to manifest in all groups, to codify and doctrinalize what was decided to be “truth.” If Theosophists were to allow the ancient teachings they studied to become a religion, she implied, the “pivotal doctrine” of esoteric work would have been forgotten.
To consider the acquirement of individuality as the pivotal doctrine of the whole esoteric philosophy, however, is in no sense to endorse anarchism. The very fact that individuality, on H.P.B.’s presentation, is not given, but must be won, indicates that the overly independent attitude is but a sign of immaturity. The truism, “no man can be truly independent until he realizes the nature and extent of his interdependence” is here applicable. Fully conscious individuality, moreover, must of necessity mean a transcendence of many of those conditions of mind which we associate with the “independent personality.” Buddha, the greatest, perhaps, of all psychologists, emphasized this aspect of the quest for spiritual attainment by his demonstration of the transitoriness of all personal things. A modern psychologist sums up the paradox as follows:
The attitude most clearly exhibited and described by the mystics is an attitude of oneness not only in oneself, not only with one’s fellow men, but with all life and, beyond that, with the universe. Some may think that this attitude is one in which the uniqueness and individuality of the self are denied and the experiences of self weakened. That this is not so constitutes the paradoxical nature of this attitude ie.,The religious attitude in this sense is simultaneously the fullest experience of individuality and its opposite; it is not so much a blending of the two as a polarity.
The whole subject of morality belongs within the province of the Third Fundamental Proposition, for the reason that there is no morality without choice, and because the choices for man are always between the two differing polar orientations of his nature. The “dual” nature of man may be said to represent, on the one hand, the created elements of his being—the habits which the instruments of the soul have learned—and, on the other, the creative elements, which cannot be expressed without departure from habit. There are, then, two kinds of independence, but only one kind of individuality. A man who is indifferent to the welfare of his fellows is indifferent because he is satisfied with the pleasurable repetition of routine actions, or routine psychological states. This is pseudo-independence, for such an one is actually at the mercy of circumstances—if these no longer permit him his pleasures he is desolate. The higher independence is independence from one’s own personal propensities, which are also apt to be the prejudices and dogmas which condition the lives of the majority.
Here we finally arrive at the raison d’être for claiming theosophical content in the world’s great struggles for freedom of thought. We are still less than fully self-conscious beings. Buddhi and Manas are not yet united, and, thus, we are still predominantly creatures of habit. Both in terms of our personal biases and in terms of the institutional alliances we form, we follow routines of mental orientation. The higher mind comes awake only when we question these routines and biases, insist on a broader purview. The differences, then, between the mind content with its residual creations and the dynamically creative mind is a difference analogous to that between a circle and a spiral— for, in the former case there is a ceaseless return of the mind to the same reference points, and in the latter the mental perspective is constantly transcending old views.
When intellectual and moral revolutions take place in the course of history these are always, at least in part, rebellions against the confines of habit. Thus, in William Q. Judge’s terms, the Renaissance and the political revolutions of the eighteenth century all played a part in the further enlightening of manas. Through such transformations men have assisted one another in the “acquiring of individuality,” or, rather, accelerated the process for those concerned, and even though most revolutions in time create their own dogmas and complacencies of opinion, something has always been gained by the thinking men who have participated in the early stages. The processes of destruction and regeneration are the processes of cyclic law, by which both individuals and cultures become more than they previously were.
Thus, in the lives of Theosophical students, too, come incessant promptings