Simla
Letters from Simla inform us that some of the most influential Spiritualists in India are now in that fashionable hill town, that Madame Blavatsky is there, and that Simla is exceedingly gay with balls, private theatricals, and high festivity.
It is assumed by some that because direct spirit writing of good intellectual capacity, appears, and sometimes in daylight, in the presence of Madame Blavatsky, therefore it was written many hundreds of miles away by a “Himalayan Brother.” But when the same phenomena have taken place in England in the presence of mediums, no such conclusion as to their origin was formed.
Where the writings come from depends upon the testimony of the invisible producers or transporters thereof, and sad experience has proved that the testimony of a large proportion of the intelligences who produce physical manifestations is not to be trusted. It is hard for new inquirers, when first brought into contact with physical mediums, to believe this, and the knowledge comes only by a few years’ hard experience, as Mr. H. D. Jencken has testified. We do not question the good faith of the mediums.
One point raised in these pages has not been answered by our Indian friends, namely, whether the life of abstention from flesh diet, wines, spirits and tobacco, said to be necessary on the part of every probationer before acquiring higher soul-powers and direct communication with the Himalayan Brothers, is practised by Madame Blavatsky herself. Such diet is adverse to physical mediumship, which bears relationship to the development of some of the animal faculties. Hitherto we have not met a vegetarian who at the same time was a strong physical medium.
Theosophical View of Mediumship
In the last number of The Theosophist the editor says:—
In truth, mediumship is a dangerous, too often a fatal capacity, and if we oppose Spiritualism, as we have ever consistently done, it is not because we question the reality of the phenomena, which we know can and do occur (despite the multitudes of fraudulent imitations) and which our adepts can reproduce at will without danger to themselves—but because of the irreparable spiritual injury (we say nothing of the mere physical sufferings) which the pursuit of Spiritualism inevitably entails on nine-tenths of the mediums employed. We have seen scores nay rather hundreds of so to say good, pure, honest young men and women who but for the cultivation of this evil capacity for the reception of impressions by elementaries might, and would in all probability, have lived lives leading to higher things, but who through the gradual pernicious influence of these low earth-bound natures have sunk from bad to worse, ending often prematurely lives that could lead but to spiritual ruin.
These are no speculations—we speak that we do know—and if one in five mediums, who habitually exercise their capacity, escape the doom that overtakes so many, these exceptions cannot justify the Spiritualists in aiding and abetting the crowd of professional mediums who gamble away their immortality with the lower material influences. The practice of mediumship for good purposes at rare intervals, by virtuous mediums, intermediately over careful to strengthen their moral and spiritual natures by pure lives and holy aspirations, is one thing, and the habitual practice, in a worldly, careless, undevout spirit for gain, is another, and this latter cannot be too strongly denounced alike in the highest interests of the mediums and of the sitters who employ them.
“Evil communications corrupt good manners” is an eternal truth, trite and hackneyed though it be, and no evil communications are so evil as those subtle influences that radiate from the low, bestial elementaries who crowd the séance rooms of immoral, or more or less demoralized mediums, too weak and low to make themselves heard or seen, but strong enough in their intensely material tendencies, to diffuse a moral poison into the mental atmosphere of ell present.
A Conversation with "Elementaries"
Last Saturday evening at a seance with Mr. C. E. Williams, the well-known medium, who of late, in common with many of the early workers in Spiritualism, has retired to a large extent into private life, we questioned the powers about him as to the Theosophists and their speculations, in this wise, at a time when “John King” was making himself visible to all present, and floating near the ceiling:—
“John King, the Theosophists and some Indian natives say that you and your coworkers here are but remnants of humanity, divorced from the highest spiritual principle, and doomed soon to be snuffed out Is it true?”
“I leave you to judge by looking at my work now and in the past. I do not speak of changes in the phenomena—with which no good or evil is necessarily connected—but as you see my work now, and have seen it in the past.”
This instantaneous reply to our question, containing thoughts as novel to us as our question must have been to the medium, raised an equally prompt acknowledgment: “Yes. I remember in your early days how the property of the medium used to disappear or to be destroyed, how the manifestations were rough, how his aspirations for another mode of life were unpleasantly thwarted, how he and Mr. Herne were sometimes placed in dubious positions before inquirers by the manifestations, but we witness little or nothing of that now.”
John King responded: “It is so. And look at ‘Ebenezer.’ When he first came he said that he did not believe he was ‘dead;’ he also frequently demanded drink of the sitters. Is there not a change in him?”
“It is true, so far as I have seen.”
“No human being, not even a costermonger, or anyone else, comes over here without rising in the spiritual scale. I testify to you that I am a human being who lived on earth in the flesh some hundreds of years ago.”
“Then who are you?”
Here “Peter” chimed in that he (Peter) had been a clown, whose name he gave.
“You are the spirit, are you not, who Mr. Williams thinks has given fair evidence of personal identity?”
“Yes. And,” added Peter, with a whine imposed on his usual squeak, “don’t you think it would be a very wicked thing if I had to be ‘snuffed out’ after all the work I have done here?”
There was no denying it.
“How will Mr. Eglinton get on, when he, with his elementaries, meets Madame Blavatsky with her highly superior spirits?”
“Of course they will ‘snuff out’ his half-gone elementaries without delay, and ho will be obliged to come home without any spirits.”
This was said by Peter sarcastically.
This conversation has been as accurately reported as possible, when no notes could be taken in the dark at the moment. It was written down within three hours after it took place, and while it was fresh in the memory. The record is substantially correct.
Editor's notes
- ↑ Simla by unknown author, London Spiritualist, No. 482, November 11, 1881, p. 229
- ↑ Theosophical View of Mediumship by unknown author, London Spiritualist, No. 480, November 4, 1881, p. 221
- ↑ A Conversation with "Elementaries" by unknown author, London Spiritualist, No. 482, November 11, 1881, pp. 234-35
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 482, November 11, 1881, p. 229
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London Spiritualist, No. 482, November 11, 1881, pp. 234-35
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London Spiritualist, No. 480, November 4, 1881, p. 221