 |
vol. title: vol. period: 1882 pages in vol.: 231 |
Communicating Spirits. Their Claims to Recognition
It is evident that the habit of regarding the crisis of dissolution as a terminus to probation—a habit which religious teachers naturally insist upon—accustoms us to think of any condition not blessed or not full of torment as simply purgatorial, as solely occupied by reformatory suffering: yet the simile of this life being the time of seed-sowing so often used by such teachers, might, I think, suggest a less immediate result of either good or bad conduct; for even in a plant like wheat the fulness of the ear is at some monthsэ remove from the time of sowing, and analogy would justify us in letting these periods in the existence of short-lived plants represent centuries, at least, in that of an immortal being.
If such deferred expectation of final reaping acts as a soporific to any conscience, it is from a total misconception of what that delay involves. Let such an one consider for a moment the common facts of a germ, a sprout, a plant in leaf, flower, and fructification,—the properties of its life strengthening in each progression of growth. The germ may be soon trodden down, the tender blade easily eradicated, but the rooted plant must be removed by hard effort if it is to be done at all. And, meanwhile, supposing these properties to be productive of poison, as their evil similitudes in spiritual life are of anguish, that poison, that anguish must be intensifying with every stage of growth. The only hope is for those who do not believe “that eternal issues are irrevocably decided in a brief flash of existence,”* that after dissolution Divine love may prevail on the soul of man to have mercy on itself, and submit to the extermination of all the poison plants which have been sown on this side of death.
Believers in Re-incarnation cherish this hope of course, and have extremely powerful arguments for its support; but my quarrel with them is that they seem to think the human body, as we now wear it, the only possible vehicle that ascendant Spirits could exist in for repeated terms of probation. That many of them, little advanced by this life's experience, should so long for the old corporeal husk as to seek and gain readmission to a former phase of being, appears quite possible, but with so many worlds crowded in sight does it not argue some poverty of imagination to conclude that in this alone our spiritual schooling can go on?
“Man,” said J. Pierrepoint Greaves, “has seven stages of existence here or elsewhere: and in the eighth he will be perfected.”—“Theosophic Revelations,” p. 170. Why suppose all these seven to be in one corner of the universe?
Again, St. Martin says: “Ce n’est qu’à la mort corporelle de l'homme que commencent les quarante deux campements des Israélites; sa vie terrestre se passe presque entière dans la terre d’Egypte.”†—“L'Homme de Désir,” par. 208.
Now supposing this comparison of his to be true to future fact, the trials of the Israelites out of Egypt were of an entirely different kind from what they endured before they were set free from its bondage; and probationary as we are told those trials were, they came to them at intervals, and in the midst of much that we must believe to have been an interesting if not an agreeable life.
The anonymous writer of “Le Mystère de la Croix” (published in second edition, 1786), while sparing us no severity of supposed truth as to crosses after death, takes a view of the state of the unregenerate dead far more rational to my thinking than those commonly entertained. After saying:
“Il y a aussi d’autres temps après cette vie, d’autres siècles et éternités, dont les unes succèdent aux autres; car on n’a pas tout fait dans cette vie” .... “quoique après la mort l’âme n'ait point tant de liberté ni de pouvoir que dans cette vie, elle trouve néanmoins bien plus à combattre qu’ici” …. “elle fait la rencontre de tant et tant d’esprits, dont elle doit subir le jugement et goûter les essences et les propriétés bien, <... continues on page 12-114.1 >
* “Links and Clues,” by Vita, p. 153.
† Translation.—“Man only begins the forty-two encampments of the Israelites at his death of the body. His earthly life is passed almost entirely in the land of Egypt.”
Inlay
< Communicating Spirits. Their Claims to Recognition (continued from page 12-114) >
souvent contraires aux siennes, si elle n’y est point passée pendant la vie, de sorte qu’un esprit y combat contre l’autre, l’un juge et goûte l’autre, l’un condamne et afflige l’autre, jusqu’à ce que l’âme en soit victorieuse”—he adds: “Or elle y trouve aussi des alternatives de reveillement, d’acquiescence, de paix, de tranquillité pour reprendre haleine et se préparer à de nouveaux combats.”*—“Le Mystère de la Croix,” p. 103, chap. 11.
I am loth to appear presumptuous, but in truth I cannot see why so long as the Spirit is able to fence itself with any suitable body after death its conditions need be intolerably severe. The doubt with me hangs upon just that point, what sort of body has the sensitive Spirit to make shift with when the new creature of spiritual regeneration is not formed? Böhme’s idea of the astral body† outlasting the flesh and blood body by years or ages, according to the constellations dominating the time of birth, is shared by J. M. Hahn, whose opinions I quote, not as an authority but as those of one of the few writers known to me who venture to enlarge on the obscure topic of post-mortem prospects.
“There are souls,” he quaintly says, “who are not so bad that they go into Gehenna or hell fire immediately after death, and, in my opinion, they never would go if they let themselves be reformed.” ... “Where do those souls go before the judgment day and where are their judicial prisons and purgatories? They are partly in the earth, partly in the planets belonging to our solar system, partly in the upper region of the air. We read clearly that it is appointed to man once to die, and after that to undergo his own particular judgment. But not all, oh, no! the smallest number attain the appointed limits of life. For one shortens his temporal life in one fashion, one in another. Now those who have shortened their life have not yet released themselves from the ties of the starry region, and are therefore bound with their astral body and life to the astral band, and therefore are not judged immediately after death, because they have not reached the destined goal. They are therefore, as I suppose, in the atmosphere, or else become attracted by the properties and powers of nature in the planets, so that they there find their place for purification.”‡—“Die Lehre des Württembergischen Theosophen.” Johann Michael Hahn. Third part, p. 504.
Desbarrolles attributes a very different fate to those who resort to the planets under happier conditions of spirit. Speaking of a soul that has been all that is humane, just, and loving, he says:—
“Then on the day of death it leaves its earthly envelopment, and flies away following the attraction of its star, and goes to live again in another universe where it makes for itself a new Vestment analogous to the progress of its beauty, leaving on one hand on the earth the material corpse seemingly inert, but which by its decomposition already conduces to new creations, and on the other the sidereal corpse, which rises like a luminous mantle to carry into the sidereal light, where all things diffuse themselves, the image, the reflection, the phantom of the body on the earth.§ If, on the contrary, the mind has allowed itself to be subjugated by the gross passions of the body, if it has permitted falsehood, impure pleasures, injustice, all that is low, all that is evil, then on the day of death, the astral corpse made strong by the condescensions of the spirit, retains it prisoner as it did during life, and surrenders it to the Sidereal System, which drags it into the whirlpools of astral light.”**—Desbarrolles, “Les Mystères de la Main,” p. 54.
Such a generality as that would fall powerless on my inner ear had not Hahn supplied me with some little hint of what this domination of astral influence may mean.
“A magnetic force penetrates the whole creation, by means of which each creative sphere, and every outbirth from it, attracts to itself what is homogeneous. Hence every soul after the death of the body must pass by gradual stages through different places and conditions, either for separation and cutting asunder, or for purifying and being matured.”††—Hahn's “Lehre des Württembergischen Theosophen,” p. 499.
Having now brought forward the best and clearest opinions I have been able to gather on this difficult subject—the state of those we call dead—it only remains for me to point out that, for the most part, the evidence of people on this side of death, such as it is, in no way contradicts the reiterated and emphatic assertions of those who speak or write from behind the veil. Even the Re-incarnationists, who believe that one life in this mortal body is followed by others in the same perishable investiture, admit that in the intervals Spirits are in the Spirit-world, and if so, free—if Swedenborg's information does not mislead—to be present where their thoughts and affections are. A. Kardec says: “The incarnation of the Spirit is neither constant nor perpetual; it is but transitory; in quitting one body it does not take up another immediately; during a lapse of time more or less considerable, it lives in the Spiritual life, which is its normal state; so that the amount of time passed in different incarnations is trifling, compared to that passed in the condition of a Spirit at liberty.”‡‡
Merely to cite the strongest testimony of the proven presence of recognised friends and relations would be to take it from almost every book written on Spiritist themes during the last thirty years, as well as from a host of unimpeachable witnesses viva voce. One would have thought, if one did not know otherwise, that such books as “Spirit Identity,” and “Psychography,” by “M.A. (Oxon.),” and the late Mr. Epes Sargent's “The Scientific Basis of Spiritualism,” would have set all doubt at rest in any candid mind. Yet they fail to do so. Readers will allow that here and there cases occur which admit of no doubt, and yet they will say, "I cannot quite believe that our dead are still conscious of the trivialities of this world! It must be some deluding Spirits that simulate their presence!"
Now if the possibility of a Spirit having been identified beyond all chance of error is proved even in half-a-dozen cases, we have no longer to question what is possible but what is probable, and there of course our judgment is necessarily at fault for want of data.
“I have dreamed that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us changed.”§§ My dream proves nothing; nevertheless, a dream that has outlines is more effective than formless, in curious ignorance—cherished as the only position wisdom can warrant our taking with regard to a future certain for all of us, very near for some: and a hypothesis, however false, has at least this advantage, that it gives the mind a temporary footing in the world that must be entered, that encompasses us every moment, and suddenly from time to time engulphs in its blank silence our nearest and dearest companions.
The cry “Memento mori” uttered from age to age by all who have preserved spiritual sanity in this hallucinated state of being, testifies to the wonderful negligence with which we toil, dance, or drowse on the brink of life’s precipitous boundary, ever veiled and ever ready to shatter without an hour's notice the all-important interests of our present state. There is no stronger mental opiate than a resolve not to think. I dread its effects both as regards myself and those I have lost.
As to those gone before, they seem to me to run some risk of cruelty who assure us that all perceived of their presence is but the effect of our own imagination, like the reflections seen in a darkened window, which for a moment may be taken for objects beyond. We might faintly guess what sort of cruelty if, when unable to do more, we have called and beckoned to friends seen out of reach, and yet failed to catch their eye; when we think, “Oh! why cannot they look round! how can they be so engrossed as not to turn this way!”
I am the last person to wish that anyone should so turn that way as to seek for communications with the dead, believing as I do that the infinite love of the Father of Spirits would have made such intercourse natural and habitual had it been best for us; and that Perfect Wisdom must know, as we cannot, the danger attending it; but if such communications come, sought or unsought, free from any possibility of delusion on our side, I hold it to be unkind, as well as foolish, to treat them as untrustworthy.
* Translation.—"There are also other times after this life, other ages and eternities which succeed each other; for one has not done all in this life. Though after death the soul has not so much liberty or power as it has in this life, it nevertheless finds much more to combat than it does here. It encounters many Spirits, to whose judgment it is subjected, whose essences and properties it must test (often repugnant to its own) if it has not during life passed through them, so that one Spirit makes war upon another, one judges and tests another, one condemns and afflicts another until the soul gains the victory.” ... "Now it finds also alternations of refreshment, of acquiescence, of peace, of tranquillity in which to take breath and prepare for new combats." [Not very unlike our present life this!]
† I suspect even Böhme of confusing the astral Spirit and astral body in the following passage. He is speaking of unquiet Spirits: "Therefore many of them come again with the starry Spirit, and walk about in houses and other places, and appear in human shape and form, and desire this and that, and often take care about their wills and testaments" ... “and if their earthly business and employment stick in them and cleave to them still, then, indeed, they take care about their children and friends, and this continueth so long, till they sink down into their rest, so that their starry Spirit be consumed, then all is gone as to all care and perplexity, and they have no more feeling knowledge thereof”—“Forty Questions,” quest. 26, pas. 12, 13.
‡ “Es gibt Seelen, die nicht so böse sind, dass sie gleich nach ihrem Tode in die Gehenna oder Feuerhölle fahren, und meines Erachtens auch nie darein fahren sollten, wenn sie sich bessern lassen.” ... “Wo kommen also diese Seelen vor dem Gerichtstag hin? und wo sind die Gerichtskerker und Reinigungsörter? Sie sind theils auch in der Erde, theils in den zu unserem Sonnensystem gehörigen Planeten, theils in der oberen Luftregion. Dass dem Menschen gesetzt ist, Einmal zu sterben, hernach über sein Particulargericht, lesen wir ja deutlich. Aber nicht Alle, o nein! der wenigste Theil erreicht sein bestimmtes Lebensziel. Denn der Eine verkürzt sich sein zeitliches Leben auf diese, der Andere aber ebenfalls, auf andere Weise. Solche nun, die ihr Leben abkürzen, haben sich noch nicht losgerissen vom Bande der Sternregion, sind also mit ihrem astralischen Leibe und Leben an das astralische Band gebunden und werden also nicht gleich gerichtet werden nach dem Tode, weil sie das gesetzte Ziel nicht erreicht haben; sind also entweder, so vermuthe ich, in der Luftregion, oder werden von den Naturkräften und Eigenschaften der Planeten angezogen, das sie allda ihre Reinigungsörter finden.”
§ Readers of Mr. T. Lake Harris's unpublished writings will find here agreement with his account of the “Geist” of Man as distinguished from his spiritual individuality.
** “Alors au jour de la mort elle quitte l’enveloppe terrestre, s’envole en suivant l’attraction de son étoile, et va revivre dans un autre univers, où elle se fait un nouveau vêtement analogue au progrès de sa beauté, en laissant d’une part, sur terre, le cadavre matériel inerte en apparence, mais qui déjà travaillé par sa décomposition même à concourir à des créations nouvelles, et de l'autre le cadavre sidéral qui s’élève comme un manteau lumineux, pour aller porter dans la lumière astrale, où tout s’imprègne, l’image, le reflet, le fantôme du corps sur la terre. Si, au contraire, l’âme s’est laissé subjuguer par les passions grossières du corps, s’il a permis le mensonge, les voluptés crapuleuses, l’injustice, tout ce qui est bas, tout ce qui est mal, alors au jour de la mort le cadavre astral, rendu fort par les condescendances de l’esprit, le retient prisonnier comme pendant sa vie et le livre au corps sidéral qui l’entraîne dans les tourbillons de la lumière astrale.”
†† “Durch die ganze Schöpfung hinurch geht die magnetische Kraft, vermöge der jeder Schöpfungskreis und jede Geburt das Gleichartige an sich zieht. Deshalb muss eine jede Seele nach dem Tod des Leibes entweder zur Scheidung und Auseinandersetzung, oder zur Reinigung und Ausreifung durch die verschiedenen Orte und Stufen stufenweise durch passieren.”—N.B.—What ideas he attached to the words “Scheidung” and “Auseinandersetzung” applied to the soul I am at a loss to imagine, but Mr. Harris's speaking of the "disintegration" of lost souls for the ultimate rescue of the immortal germ, will perhaps a little elucidate the dark saying.
‡‡ Translation.—“L’incarnation de l’esprit n’est ni constante ni perpétuelle; elle n’est que transitoire; en quittant un corps, il n’en reprend pas un autre instantanément; pendant un laps de temps plus ou moins considérable, il vit de la vie spirituelle, qui est sa vie normale; de telle sorte que la somme du temps passé dans les différentes incarnations est peu de chose, comparée à celle du temps qu’il passe à l’état d'esprit libre.”—A. Kardec’s “La Genèse Spirituelle,” chap. 11, p. 282.
§§ Walt. Whitman’s “Burial.” W. Rossetti’s selected edition.
"Communicating Spirits"
At the conclusion of her article in “Light” of February 4th, Mrs. Penny refers her readers for further elucidation to the 26th of Böhme’s “Forty Questions.” Owing to Mrs. Penny, besides much patient and luminous instruction in Christian Theosophy, the loan of many of the scarce and valuable works of her great authority, I was able at once to turn to the passages in which he deals with this momentous question, “whether the souls of the deceased take care about men, their children, friends, and goods; and know, see, like, or dislike their purposes and undertakings.” Leaving Mrs. Penny (than whom no one is more competent) to pursue the exposition of Böhme in detail on the subject selected, I should like to call attention generally to the distinctions he takes in this place, and to compare them with those recognised in similar teachings from another source. Böhme, then, here divides souls into three classes, of which I gather from him the following abbreviated account.
(1) There are the souls which from their strong attachments to the earth retain for a long time “the astral Spirit,” in which is conserved the memories of the past, and which also serves as a semi-material vehicle (more often called the “astral body,” and in Sanskrit Linga-sarira), enabling them sometimes sensibly to manifest their presence. When this astral body dissolves, as in time it must, and should, the soul is at rest (“This condition of theirs continues so long, till they fall into their rest, so that their astral Spirit be consumed”), but whether by this “rest” is meant an oblivion preparatory to entering on a new life of experience, or the state of grace and heavenly substantiality, we are not clearly informed.
(2) Souls in a more advanced state of spiritual progression at the time of bodily decease (who, therefore, are at once freed from their “astral” principle, and thus as well of all desire for, or memory of, earthly concerns, as of all medium of sensible communications); but who are yet without the “heavenly” body (набрать греческий of the Greeks), and are said to be “naked.” (“But after the departure of the body the soul is naked, and especially if it be without a new body.”) In this condition it is said, “When the honest souls that are alive send them their works, with their spirit and will, they rejoice in them, and are so friendly and ready that they appear to men magically in sleep, and show them good ways, and many times reveal arts which lie in secret, viz., in the abyss of the soul.” “Then it” (such a soul) “beholds itself, and also its wonders; and it can very well shew one that is living somewhat in the sleeping Magia, if he be honest and has not stirred up the Turba; for dreams are wholly magical, and a soul without a body <... continues on page 12-115 >
Editor's notes
Sources
-
Light, v. 2, No. 58, February 11, 1882, pp. 63-5
-
Light, v. 2, No. 58, February 11, 1882, p. 67