< The Study of the Occult (continued from page 11-136) >
who have never transcended the medium’s mental plane; whose science is shaky, whose poetry is tedious rubbish; and whose religious teachings are questionable, if not blasphemous. Nor do they, except it may be a few doting old women—now expect to get through physical mediums of low mental and spiritual types, the pure, unadulterated embodiment of exalted angelic personages. Materialisations are known to be so largely tinctured by the medium, that no one in the possession of common sense would be disposed to fall at the feet of any form thus showing itself, or to accept its utterances as infallible and absolute truth. It is now well known that historical personages who have left this earth some hundreds, or thousands of years ago, and who are in all probability lifted into the highest realms of spiritual existence, cannot reinvest themselves with flesh, without passing through such processes of degradation as would be to them direst suffering; and becoming so changed and transformed through the medium as to be no longer themselves, but false personalities. Leaving the exalted freedom of the purest spiritual life, they would descend, step by step, by lower and lower degrees, to the constraining conditions of the natural plane, which are always arbitrary and inexorable. Nor could they, even then, be true to the old earthly personality, so long put off, as to be completely dissipated, and no longer in existence, for man surely grows out of his old natural self into a divine self, utterly inconceivable by the natural senses. We can but dimly perceive what the conditions of earthly life must be to spiritual beings—as arbitrary as links of steel, as inexorable as death. For man to rise into high spiritual states, many deaths are essential, and when he becomes spiritualised, he is forced to retire from the lower planes of existence, being no longer able to support life thereon, where the very air has become too coarse for his refined breathing. Thus the “Brothers,” who to all intents and purposes have become “spirits,” can no longer support their refined and attenuated existences upon the coarser atmospheres, our lungs take in as the breath of life; nor endure the deletorious emanations or auras given forth by the lower world of men; and are compelled to live in the purer atmospheres to be found upon the mountain summits. How then could we expect a pure and genuine materialisation of a being who would have to descend from angelic life to thus come into our midst, through mediums, some of whom are ignorant; whose conversation betrays the vulgarity of their minds, and whose private lives will probably not bear scanning? Therefore wise people would not expect Jesus again to materialise; nor would they believe, as do some doting fanatics in America, that they have beheld the veritable Queen Esther of the Bible, in a black velvet dress, trimmed with bands of white lace round the skirt; as well as a host of other scriptural celebrities. Enlightened Spiritualists know that these appearances are made by personating spirits near the earth, or are the medium dressed up.
It has taken time to learn all these facts, and they have come to many of us through bitter experience, and after much suffering; but once learned, the wise Spiritualist will not go back upon his steps, and will more than ever see the importance of a deeper study of the occult, or hidden things of God’s wisdom. He will take the creme de la creme of all teachings which have ever come to the earth on these subjects, whether from Swedenborg, Boehme, or the Eastern adepts; for he will feel that the man of the new age must be the crown of all preceding ages, building up a monument of learning which will answer for all time on this planet.
<Untitled> (Next Sunday evening...)
Next Sunday evening, at seven o’clock, at the Quebec Hall, 25, Great Quebec Street, London, several Spiritualists will narrate their experiences as inquirers into the subject. On Wednesday next, at 8.30 p.m., Mr. F. O. Matthews will officiate.
Those occultists who smoke, and who are striving for adeptship, may be interested in the following information from J. K., the adept:—“If tobacco is beneficial to man, it must be so to his nearest ally, the monkey, who can be, and has been, educated to the use of it, but with what result? A lessening of intelligence, an engendering of erratic passions, and a shortening of life.”
Editor's notes
- ↑ Next Sunday evening... by unknown author, London Spiritualist, No. 462, July 1, 1881, p. 11
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 462, July 1, 1881, p. 11