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vol. title: vol. period: 1881 pages in vol.: 439 |
< Conditional Immortality and "Elementary" Spirits (continued from page 11-334) >
worse and worse, improves by time, and is only annihilated because of its improvement. His most earnest prayer to Buddha is something like this:—“Take, I beseech thee, my holy spirit from my long-suffering soul when the latter is sufficiently purified, that it may be freed, at length, from the trials that it has to undergo both in fluidic and flesh life. Let my heartaches end; and may the thousand different ills that my soul is heir to pass away! Cast away from my holy spirit, for once and for all, this loathsome matter of my soul, which marks my sad identity through all my many changes, and may my holy spirit be absorbed, as soon as may be, in Nirvana, for ever!” In fact the Buddhist’s prayer for release of the soul attached to the spirit, is, in effect, the Theosophist’s threat of annihilation to the alleged spiritless soul. For Col. Olcott is probably right when he says: “The immortal spirit—that cannot be lost,” but at the same time the Colonel believes that this immortal spirit was once in the possession of all these spiritless souls, before they lost it by physical mediumship or otherwise. I would here remark that, supposing the eventual death of the soul of any, or many, or even all, to be a true doctrine, it is great presumption and childish vanity for any finite being to predicate who are the already lost, in the short and unequally allotted trial of one single earth life.
There is, however, another view of Nirvana among the Buddhists of the present day, which may be, perhaps, more rational than the other. The prayer of many of them is now said to be “That their souls may grow more and more purified, so as to become, at length, fit receptacles of their divine spirit, which is a spark from the Eternal; and that their souls having attained perfection by a perpetual increase in virtue, may, conjoined with their immortal spirit, spend an eternity in meetly doing the behests of the Eternal.” This view assumes the universal improvement of men’s souls, instead of the idea of a vast proportion of the souls of men being destined to deteriorate until annihilation comes upon them, in consequence of their unfitness to survive, as imagined by the Theosophist. Probably this latter Buddhist view of the universal improvement of the soul and its eternal retention is held by the present enlightened Emperor of Japan, for certainly, in his late public invocation of his ancestors or predecessors to assist him in inaugurating a national assembly, he did not address any of them as “elementaries” on so solemn an occasion, although there can be no doubt that many of them were physical mediums when living.
Now, whichever of the two above-named views of Nirvana the Buddhists may hold, there are two things in which both parties agree. First, in the doctrine of progress, through incarnation, not for a chosen few only, but for all men. And secondly, in the retention throughout the whole of their progress, of the divine spark, that atom of the immortal spirit of Buddha which was alloted to each at their souls’ beginning, and which continues with them through every evolution, and will remain with them, as one party believes, for ever. Or until the absorption of that atom of spirit which renders the immortal spark back to Him who gave it, as believed by the other party.
This belief in the retention of the spirit, and in the certain progress, and ultimate triumph of every individual soul, through successive reincarnations, as held by the Buddhists, though it be but the triumph of shaking off an impediment, an incubus, is the religion which greatly surpasses all others on the face of the earth in the number of its followers. More than a third of the inhabitants of our globe are Buddhists; and yet they make but little effort to propagate their views. So we see if there be any truth in the apothegm, Vox populi, vox Dei, their salient position cannot be ignored.
<Untitled> (Spiritualism has as yet made no progress in Calais...)
Spiritualism has as yet made no progress in Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Dr. J. Μ. Pebbles has postponed his visit to Australia, Professor William Denton being already on a visit to that colony on a lecturing tour.
Dr. Purdon, after a three weeks’ visit to London, has left for the Channel Islands, and he will probably return to India early in the year.
The New York Times announces that Mrs. and Miss Woodhull and Miss Claflin have arrived in that city, and will shortly begin a lecturing tour.
The President of the Theosophical Society has been working for some time past at the establishment of Buddhist schools in Ceylon and Southern India. He is therefore extremely popular among the natives, but has at the same time brought forth expressions of ecclesiastical irritation.
Lord Crawford has as yet been unable to trace the stolen remains of his father. The celebrated sleuth hound, Morgan, has been called into requisition in the endeavour to trace the body, but so far without success. The weather has been too frosty in Scotland as yet to give the dog a fair chance.
The Channel newspaper at Boulogne-sur-Mer, gives frequent notices of matters connected with psychology.
A correspondent writes from Toulon that if, as Theosophists assert, the Spiritualism of the West is in its infancy as compared with the Spiritualism of the Fast, the fact ought to be known, and they ought to give the most exact proof that such is the case.
Editor's notes
- ↑ Spiritualism has as yet made no progress in Calais... by unknown author, London Spiritualist, No. 486, December 16, 1881, p. 293
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 486, December 16, 1881, p. 293