Christian and Eastern Theosophy
Sir,—Allow me to offer a few observations on Dr. Wyld’s letter in your number of August 26th, with the view of showing that the distinction defined in the following passages is apparent only.
“The total abnegation of Self,” says Dr. Wyld, “in order that being thus empty of Self Will, we may become filled by the Will of God, is the essential doctrine of the Saint or Christian adept. In one sense this is the reverse of the view held by Colonel Olcott, who teaches that the highest is to be reached by the Will power of the Soul.
I submit that the learned President of the London Theosophical Society has here confused the Will power of the soul with Self Will. It is in fact just in this total abnegation of Self, or Self Will, (for these are the same) that the Eastern Theosophist finds the Will power of the Soul or Spirit. How is Self subdued but by the spirit working in us revealed in consciousness as a higher Will which is at enmity with the lower? The Christian calls this higher will the life of Christ, or God, manifest in us. The Eastern Theosophist, recognizing the fact that whatever the derivation of this transcendent life, it is yet manifest in consciousness as our spiritual being, so speaks of it, not using the words of mediation belonging to the Christian conception, but asserting the Divine Humanity as thoroughly identical with the regenerate Will of the individual.
The real distinction, if any, between the two systems is rather metaphysical than practical, and seems to be expressed in the words of Jesus, “No man cometh to the Father save through the Son.” No Christian mystic, that is, no esoteric Christian, interprets this in the vulgar sense of belief in the external efficacy of an historical atonement, but refers it to our regeneration by the living “Word” of God. The mediatorial idea in the philosophical sense, and not at all in that of intercession, is essential, and perhaps peculiar to Christianity. It is not too much to say that regeneration, and the “total abnegation of Self” as its indispensable condition, are doctrines common to all great spiritual teachers, always and everywhere. Whether the agency is described as the Divine Spirit of man, or the Spirit of God in man is of less practical importance. Certainly the “Will power” which is directed to the restraint of all that Self impels us to, even to the very desires and least movement of this lower Self, can be none other than that same agency. I believe that Colonel Olcott and Dr. Wyld have only to understand one another to perceive that whatever difference is between them is entirely speculative, if not merely nominal, and does not at all relate to the practical teaching and process of theosophy.
<Untitled> (All the above facts...)
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The Bishop of Manchester on Miracles
“But miracles,” said the Bishop, in another part of his sermon, some one may say, “both from the scientific and from the philosophical point of view are impossible. You cannot expect me to believe them.” I cannot, of course, force you to believe them; nor am I prepared to say that a Christian faith cannot exist without a belief in them, as miracles. And I quite feel the & priori objection to them, as violations of, or at least variations from, known law. But, as Sir James Paget says, “Science cannot define or infer all possibilities.” Paley’s position is impregnable, “Only believe that there is a God, and miracles are not incredible.” And as to the philosophical objection of Hume, the same strong reasoner says “There is a want of logical justice in a statement which, while affirming the incredibility of miracles suppresses all those circumstances of extenuation which result from our knowledge of the existence, power, and disposition of the Deity; His concern in the creation, and the end answered by the miracle; the importance of that end, and its subserviency to the plan pursued in the work of nature.” “Hume’s celebrated principle,” says Mr. J. 8. Mill, “that nothing is credible which is contrary to experience or at variance with the laws of nature, is merely this very harmless proposition, that whatever is contradictory to a complete induction is incredible. ... A miracle,” he goes on to say, “(as was justly remarked by Brown) is no contradiction to the law of cause and effect; it is a new effect introduced by a new cause. Of the adequacy of that cause, if it exist, there can be no doubt; and the only antecedent improbability which can be ascribed to the miracle is the improbability that any such cause had existence in this case. All therefore which Hume has made out is, that no evidence can be sufficient to prove a miracle to one who did not previously believe the existence of a being or beings with supernatural power: or who believed himself to have full proof that the character of the Being whom he recognises is inconsistent with his having seen fit to interfere oh the occasion in question.” Nor can the human heart be content with that dark and dreary view of the future which is all that science can pretend to yield. We feel that there are invisible things beyond the visible. We have hopes that stretch beyond the grave. We are not content with the assumed immortality of the race, nor with the cold comfort of the posthumous immortality of the famous mid renowned. It does not satisfy me, who am neither renowned or famous, to say with the old heathen, “Explebo numerum reddare tenebris”—“My life’s work done, let darkness once more cover me.” The hope of immortality cannot be extinguished in the human breast. Conscience and feeling alike require, demand it. And the revelation of Jesus Christ alone has satisfied conscience and feeling. Just as the Frenchman said. “S’il n’y avail pas un Dieu, il faudrait l’inventir” just as Professor Huxley told you on Friday that “if the Darwinian theory of descent had not been presented to the palæontologist he would have had to invent it, to account for the phenomena before him,” so John Stuart Mill held that, even if the hope of immortality were an illusion, it were well maintained; so helpful was it and comforting. Science, certainly, has neither the right nor the power to rob us of it. Humanity—at least the mass of it—is not so rich that it can afford to part with what, to it, is no illusion, but a revealed truth, which has proved to it, by actual experience, in hours of darkness, temptation, sorrow, trial, an unspeakable comfort and stay. It was the hope of Francis Bacon, expressed in the preface to his great philosophical work, the Instauratis Magna, that by his new method of scientific inquiry he had established a true and legitimate union between the two faculties, the empirical and the rational, whose morose and ill-omened divorces and repudiations had thrown everything into confusion in the human family. It is on the same ground that I humbly but earnestly deprecate even the appearance of a conflict between science and Christian faith. We are each of us—you teachers of science and us teachers of religion—being wounded in the house of those who ought to be our friends. It is a conflict in which, if fought out to the bitter end, some of the highest interests of society would be imperilled. It is an unnecessary, and therefore an unrighteous war. It would seem that no single resource of the human mind is adequate to bear the pressure, or satisfy the demands of man’s nature, taken at its best or at its worst; and the knowledge which feeds the soul, and supplies motives to moral conduct, is at least as helpful and as necessary for the mass of mankind as that which teaches them their place in the universe of matter, or explains the framework and mechanism of that physical body, so fearfully and wonderfully made.
Error of the Theosophists
Although I am a thorough enemy of mystification and mystifiers, as also of those who pretend to teach what they themselves do not know, I nevertheless, so long as Madame Blavatsky was reputed to be the author of Isis Unveiled, made no public remarks upon that work, which I considered to be a very creditable performance for a lady who evidently knows nothing of our art. But as this book is now asserted to be the inspiration of “the Brothers,” I do not hesitate to state that the voluminous work in question is a thoroughly misleading one, and is crammed full of matter, whereof the author (whoever he or she may be) has not grasped the right meaning. Assuming it now to be the work of a fraternity of Eastern adepts, who do not desire that their existence should be known, yet instigate books advertising them, why are no extracts given from such original works of Oriental philosophy as are untranslated in Western language? Would not Eastern adepts be more familiar with such writings than with those that happen to have been accidentally translated?
In Isis Unveiled magic is performed by commanding the Elementaries and Elementals. In the Occult World they are not mentioned, and Akaz is said to be the instrument
Elementaries are Larvae, destroyed foetuses, physically undeveloped human beings prematurely thrown into the spirit world; the germ of life being indestructible, yet by unfavorable conditions physically destroyed, continues to exist spiritually. They are not old <... continues on page 11-228 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Christian and Eastern Theosophy by C.C.M., London Spiritualist, No. 472, September 9, 1881, p. 125
- ↑ All the above facts... by unknown author
- ↑ The Bishop of Manchester on Miracles by unknown author, London Spiritualist, No. 472, September 9, 1881, pp. 128-29
- ↑ Error of the Theosophists by J.K., London Spiritualist, No. 472, September 9, 1881, pp. 129-31
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 472, September 9, 1881, p. 125
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London Spiritualist, No. 472, September 9, 1881, pp. 128-29
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London Spiritualist, No. 472, September 9, 1881, pp. 129-31