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FOOTNOTES TO “MY EXPERIENCES IN OCCULTISM AND OCCULT DEVELOPMENT”
[A. F. Tindall, having been an investigator of the occult for some sixteen years, relates some of his experiences in that realm, and the teachings which he has received from various occult agencies. H.P.B. appends a number of footnotes to several of his statements.]
[I cannot but feel that the Agencies of the Adepts are not confined in their manifestations to the Theosophical Society.] Nor was it ever claimed by us. On the contrary, the hitherto very esoteric doctrine of the Nirmanakayas was lately brought forward as a proof and explained in the treatise called The Voice of the Silence. These Nirmanakayas are the Bodhisattvas or late Adepts, who having reached Nirvana and liberation from rebirth, renounce it voluntarily in order to remain invisibly amidst the world to help poor ignorant Humanity within the lines permitted by Karma. These are the real SPIRITS of the disembodied men, and we recognize no others. The rest are either Devachanees to whose plane the spirit of the living medium must ascend, and who therefore; can never descend to our plane, or spooks of the first water. But then no Nirmanakaya will influence any man for the benefit of the latter for his own weal, or to save him from anything save death, and that only [if] the man’s life is useful. By the fruit we recognize the tree. Units are as the leaves of that tree for them; and they look forward to benefit and save the trunk, not to concern themselves with its every leaf, whether good, bad, or indifferent. Even living Adepts have no such right.
[Our passions must be burnt out.] Not on the physical plane, as it would come then to a deliberate gratification of all our passions, in order to get rid of them by satiety, and this is an abomination.
32 [The experience must be gained, and the Soul must rise superior to them, by acquiring a love for higher things.] “Experience must be gained” of every evil as good passion mentally, and overcome in thought, by reflection. Love and longing for higher things on a Spiritual plane will thus leave no room for the lower animal longings.
[. . . certain signs to be used accompanied by a sort of prayer . . . . such Magic must only be exercised when the Soul is wishing for nothing but the Will of the All-good Intelligence to be done . . .] Whether this teaching agrees with Theosophy depends on the meaning given by the mystic to “the All-God Intelligence.” If this is a Being or “Intelligence” outside of us, then it would point to either a personal God or a spirit, which is no part of the Theosophical teachings. But if it refers to our Higher Self, then we are at one with the writer. Only in this case IT (Atman) has no Will of its own, as It is no conditioned thing. The expression is faulty.
[I call the Spirits of the Living, and then see a simulacrum of them and hear them speak.] Theosophists would call this necromancy and unconscious black magic.
[on seeing the form of an Adept prior to receiving a letter] Surely no “Indian” nor any other adept, would go to the trouble of disturbing himself to announce such a trifling event as the one mentioned! Especially when a letter to that effect came “an hour later” and was all that was required. This was simply a case of the writer’s own natural clairvoyance. What would an adept have to do with this?
[There is a good and loving Intelligence pervading Nature.] Why “loving”? If absolute, it can have no attributes either of love or hatred.
[Thy will be done.] We recognize no Being to whom such a phrase may be addressed.