< Concerning Adeptship (continued from page 11-177) >
(i.e., a vital Adept) can be said to be one who can turn his soul out, or rather one whom the soul has turned inside out. “Jesus being asked when his kingdom should come, answered, when two shall be one, and that which is without as that which is within; and the male with the female neither male nor female.” II. Clement V. 1.
Although Adeptship is only fully understood by an Adept, it can be generally defined to be either mental or vital, one being a confirmation of the other. In the occult, “to know is to be.” A mental Adept is one who, by initiation, intuition or illumination, has arrived at complete knowledge of the true philosophy, and who lives according to his principles.*
Truth is its own law, consequently mental Adeptship is generally unattended by phenomena, as these are the attributes, but not the object, of vital Adeptship. A mental Adept is he who thinks for all. A vital Adept is one who, because he feels for all, has the healing power conferred upon him that he may relieve the suffering. But he who destroys an evil or an error is as great a benefactor as he who removes a pain. After some years of right life, and when one is not working under abnormal circumstances, it is merely a question of a few months’ or weeks’ active practice to pass from mental to vital Adeptship.
There is a diversity in Adepts, for instance, Philo, Scotus Erigena, Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, Boehmen, St. Martin, and many more Mystics and Kabbalists, were purely mental Adepts. In Plotinus and several Alexandrian philosophers, mental and vital Adeptship were equally well balanced. While with Jesus Christ the mental part was subordinate to the vital. But there are no gradations in the soul-world. The imperfect has grades of comparison, but the One is incomparable.
My individual attainments are my private affair, and have nothing to do with the matter. It is not the question whether I can project my double, any more than whether I can stand on one leg for a longer time than anyone else, but, “are these things which I teach true?” Your readers, therefore, should only take my teachings into consideration. These, as I mentioned to you in our first private conversation, I base exclusively upon reason, and do not intend to appeal to the marvellous. For even a thunderbolt cannot improve a bad argument, and in things pertaining to rational life let us speak only rationally and leave miracles to phenomena-hunters. It is as easy to accuse one of doing miracles by the aid of the devil as it is to accuse him of want of charity; this is amply instanced in the life of Jesus, who was also compelled to use strong invective against the misleaders of his time.
In as far as I know how to attain to the divine power and wherein it consists, I do not in the least care whether I am designated as an “Adept” or not. But why we should bow the head to an individual who can perform the trick of sending his double about, is as complete a mystery to me as it must be to most of your readers.
There may be “some who mistake hysteria for greatness,” even as there are others who erroneously believe alcoholic or anæsthetic intoxication to be equal or similar to divine illumination. The many “Britons” who are desiring Adeptship, however “patient, slow and laborious” they may be, will never find the absolute in a bottle of port. And although they may be “Britons” and beef-eating Britons, the absolute will never sing “Bule Britannia” for them, nor “Yankee Doodle” for Americans, however “patient, slow and laborious” they may be.
The personal remarks in “Theosophist’s” letter meet my most benign indifference. I derive consolation from a perusal of John v, 41—44; viii, 13—19, 45—47, and from the fact that ignorant opposition to anything that I have written but serves to establish it upon a firmer basis.
* Although Adeptship has, to the best of my knowledge, not been in this wise recognised and classified by anyone else before, the division, as I have given it, nevertheless exists, even as all the phrenological organs existed before they were named and numbered.
A Letter from Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten
Sir,—For many years past, I have been collecting materials for a compendious history of the great modern Spiritual movement, as it has transpired all over the world in the nineteenth century. This work 1 have been requested to undertake—no matter what other publications of a kindred character might be issued— by those beloved spirit friends who have never deceived me, or failed to inspire me for good. Those who are most thoroughly acquainted with me will remember how often I have stated that I only obey the commands of spirits when they accord with my own judgment, especially when they relate to the movement of which they are the authors and promoters. The present occasion is one which fully meets this position.
Wise and good spirits desire to give to the age, through my instrumentality, a thoroughly exhaustive record of the work they have accomplished in the nineteenth century and the reasons they have alleged for this charge, <... continues on page 11-179 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ A Letter from Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten by unknown author, London Spiritualist, No. 466, July 29, 1881, pp. 58-9
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 466, July 29, 1881, pp. 58-9