< The Theosophical Society (continued from page 11-171) >
to his old friends and surroundings, apologising for having even thought of doing different from themselves,” &e. (Address delivered at Bombay, 23rd March, 1879.)
I come to another palpable misrepresentation by J. K. He here Bays, “I am opposed to the Theosophical Society because I cannot allow the members of it to be equal to their pretentions. . . . The Theosophists pretend to teach: I really teach. They pretend to know: I really know,” &c. (the italics are mine.) Hear Col. Olcott again, “We are . . . simply investigators of earnest purpose and unbiassed mind, who study all things, prove all things, and hold fast to that which is good.” “We seek, inquire, reject nothing without cause, accept nothing without proof, we are students, not teachers” Inaugural Address, October, 1875. (Earlier in his letter, J. K. says, “Should a number of ordinary men combine and call themselves a college of science, they cannot impose thereby upon an actual man of science. That is the position of the Theosophical Society Take yet another case. When J. K. reproved me for saying that we were already familiar with the principles he had laid down, on the ground that “to know is to be,” he must have been perfectly well aware that I was not writing in that sense, but in the more usual one, and he profaned a deep and mystic truth for the purpose of misrepresenting me. We may read books and receive instructions, and in that sense be “perfectly familiar” with what is said (“know,” by the by, was not my word, the confusion of the two expressions is J. K.’s own) without asserting a regenerate union with truth, the knowledge which is being.
I believe I have now sufficiently exposed the tissue of misstatements by which J. K. has endeavoured to impart to others his own prejudice against the Theosophical Society. Nor should I have expended all this time and paper upon him, were it not that he has undoubtedly some true theoretical knowledge, most of which, or the most important part of which, I recognise as identical with what I and many others have learned to believed. But he cannot be allowed, unchecked, to represent that theoretical wisdom as an exclusive revelation, and to stigmatise as false and ignorant impostors all who have dared to learn it from others than themself. Of his more lofty pretentions, though you, sir, appear to admit them (since you constantly refer to him as “the adept”) we have no evidence whatever beyond his own assurance.
July 10th.
[Will J. K. be kind enough to let the controversy end here?]
Do Adepts Exist?
Sir,—The Spiritualist for some weeks past has been filled with assertions, speculations and opinions on adepts and adeptship, and on the school of Theosophists said to be in correspondence with these adepts.
You, sir, appear to be entirely sceptical in the matter, and although your opinions on the subject are somewhat deficient in reverence and stability, they are yet expressed with a freedom and confidence which has occasionally called forth in myself a good deal of not ill-natured laughter.
Why should it seem incredible that adepts should exist? We are all acquainted with the phenomena connected with the Double or trans-corporeal man, and I have on more than one occasion, narrated in your pages and elsewhere the history of a lady friend of my own who, desiring much to be at home and warming herself at the kitchen fire, as she dragged her tired body homewards on a cold winter day, thereupon was seen by her two servants in the kitchen to open the door and walk towards the fire, and there stand warming herself, and then suddenly vanish into air.
If this lady, by a mere passing volition and “absence of mind” thus showed a visible and apparently solid body a mile distant from her material body, why should adepts not be able, by long practice and will, to manifest themselves, say one hundred or one thousand miles distant from their solid bodies.
My lady friend’s ghost visibly opened the kitchen door, and if so why should the ghosts of living adepts not open doors and touch friends or even speak?
Clairvoyants are usually entranced during Clairvoyance but many are Clairvoyants in their ordinary waking state, and this is also claimed by adepts.
Further, if a pot of flowers, fish, &c., could appear at the simple request of Mrs. Guppy, why should they not also arrive at the command of adepts.
The great distinction between mediums and adepts is only this, that the medium passively receives the assistance of spirits, while the adept commands disembodied spirits and his own spirit, and the medium is passively Clairvoyant, while the adept is Clairvoyant by an effect of his will.
In short the adept is a being who, partly by the idiosyncracy of his nature, and partly by powers acquired by the long training of the body and will, acts almost as if he were a disembodied spirit possessed of strong will and magnetic power.
For my own part, beyond the evidence I have received from personal friends, I have no difficulty in believing in the existence of an order of Adept brothers. That they should prefer to live a life of seclusion, and on inaccessible mountains, beyond the contamination of the moral and material world is also consistent with their nature, namely, that of demi-spiritual beings who cannot endure the poisonous emanations and materialistic nature of low human beings.
This sensitiveness, however, is to me an evidence not of their strength but of their weakness.
Their spiritual nature is over sensitive and their aspirations more ambitious than benevolent. Indeed, you describe it well, as “Spiritual greed,” or at least it may be called spiritual self-indulgence.
Will, not love, is their motive power, and their desire is to become demi-gods. Their aspirations are for spiritual aggrandisement, more than for the happiness and salvation of mankind.
This opinion of mine will be perhaps resented, and the existence of the Theosophical Society, which aims at a universal brotherhood will be pointed to as a reply.
In answer, I would beg reverentially to speak of Jesus of Nazareth as beyond all comparison the greatest adept who ever walked this earth, it being understood that I use the term adept as applied to the God-man by way of illustration only, for Jesus was the very opposite of an Indian Adept, inasmuch as he invariably asserted that all his power came from his Father God, while the adepts of India teach that all their power comes from the will power of their own spiritual nature, and that that is all they know of God.
The grand distinction then between the Indian Adepts and Jesus of Nazareth consists in this, that whereas the Indian Adepts aspire to the possession of spiritual exaltation, and live in inaccessible mountains, and shun intercourse with human beings, except so far as they influence them from a distance through their spiritual telegraph.
Jesus, on the contrary, although from time to time He retired into the mountains, and prayed to God the Father all night, always in daylight descended from thes solitary places, and daily gave to poor suffering huma <... continues on page 11-173 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Do Adepts Exist? by Theosophist, London Spiritualist, No. 464, July 15, 1881, pp. 30-1
Sources
-
London Spiritualist, No. 464, July 15, 1881, pp. 30-1