< Spiritualism and Theosophy (continued from page 11-21) >
their family matters, and even her old habit of alternately plaiting and smoothing-out her lawn apron, identify her amply. But the figure did nothing and said nothing that was not fixed in the son's memory—indelibly stamped there, however the long dormant pictures might have been obscured by fresher images. And the medium’s body being entranced and his active vitality transferred to his inner self, or ‘double,’ that double could make itself appear under the guise of the dead lady, and catch and comment upon the familiar incidents it found in the son’s magnetic atmosphere. This will be hard for you to comprehend, for our Western scientific discoveries have not as yet crossed the threshold of this hidden world of Force. But progress is the law of human thought, and we are now so near the verge of the chasm that divides physical from spiritual science, that it will not be long before we will bridge it. Let this stand as a prophecy; if you bide patiently you will see it fulfilled. This then is the present attitude of parties. The promulgation of our views and of many reports by eye-witnesses of things done by members of the Theosophical Society has been causing great talk all over the world. A largo body of the most intelligent Spiritualists have joined us and are giving their countenance to our work. Groups of sympathisers have organised themselves into branches in many different countries. Even here in Simla there has sprung up the nucleus of what will be an Anglo-Indian branch. No country in the world affords so wide a field as India for psychological study. What we Europeans call Animal Magnetism has been known here and practised in its highest perfection for countless centuries. The Hindus know equally well the life-principle in man, animals and plants. All over India, if search were but made, you would find in the possession of the natives many facts that it is most important for Europe and America to know. And you, gentlemen, of the civil and military branches of the public service, are the proper ones to undertake the work with the Hindu help. Be just and kind to them and they will tell you a thousand things they now keep profound secrets among themselves. Our policy is one of general conciliation and co-operation for the discovery of truth. Some talebearer has started the report that our Society is preaching a new religion. This is false: the Society has no more a religion of its own than the Royal Asiatic, the Geographical, the Royal, or the Astronomical. As those societies have their separate sections, each devoted to some speciality of research, so have we. We take in persons of all religions and every race, and treat all with equal respect and impartiality. We have royal, noble, and plebeian blood among us. Edison is our member, and Wallace, and Camille Flam-marion, and Lord Lindsay, and Baron du Potet and the octogenarian Cahagnet, and scores of men of that intellectual quality. We have but one passionate and consuming ambition—that of learning what man is, what nature. Are there any here, who sympathise with these aspirations? Any who fee within their hearts the glow of true manhood—one that puts a higher value upon divine wisdom than upon the honours and rewards of the lower life? Come then, brother dreamers, and let us combine our efforts and our good will. Let us see if wo cannot win happiness for ourselves in striving to benefit others. Let us do what we can to rescue from the oblivion of centuries that, priceless knowledge of divine things which we call Theosophy.* —-The Theo-sophist. (Bombay.)
* Upon the conclusion of the lecture, Lieutenant-General W. Olpherts, C.B., rose and said that, however much those present might differ in religious opinion with the eloquent lecturer, or even in the matter of the phenomena he had described, yet he felt sure that the thanks of the mooting would be unanimously voted to him for the impartial and able address to which they had just listened. The motion was carried with marked signs of approbation, and the mooting thon adjourned.
The Authority of Spirit?
Sir,—I thank Mr. Bryan for his letter. As I understand him the only creation is the creation of ideas, which are created by the elemental substance—will (or wills)—which puts itself (themselves) into the shape of the objects we see around us in order to impross us, through those, with the ideas it is seeking to communicate to us. That is to say, his theory substitutes a system of personation for the system of nature, while unable to tree itself from the methods of nature, since its teaching is carried on through the natural.
He admits, however, that this system of personation is inadequate for its purposes, since this will, these wills, as gods or deifie intelligences, is (are) developing him in some way whether as spirit guides, controls or otherwise, through which ho is enabled to realize not only that natural objects are unreal but that those who so teach him are deifie intelligences.
I will not ask him how ho has convinced himself that his habitual personators are not porsonating deifie nature simply to give him an idea of what deific nature is, without being deific themselves—though it would be instructive to know bow this idea was imparted and in what it consisted—for I have already trespassed too much on his good nature.
The question that underlies the form this correspondence has taken, is of far deeper import than any theoretic view of the reality or unreality of nature; though oven as it has been represented to Mr. Bryan, nature, whether real or unreal, must be real to us, as the channel through which we are formed or receive our ideas, if the deific intelligences are obliged to act through or personate it in order to impart their ideas to us.
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Editor's notes
- ↑ The Authority of Spirit? by M.D. (F.T.S.), London Spiritualist, No. 439, January 21, 1881, pp. 34-5
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 439, January 21, 1881, pp. 34-5