< Voices from the Ancients (continued from page 12-45) >
excited by the nature of the food. Thought, or rather the thinker, becomes defiled when impure fantasies become mixed with the thoughts.
A fattened body increases that which is mortal in man and becomes an obstacle to eternal happiness; it defiles the soul and renders her gross and corporeal and addicted to strange things.
It is impossible to he united even with an inferior god (or higher spirit) unless we totally renounce the use of flesh, and far less with the Supreme who rules the All. It is only by purity of body and soul that we can have access to Him.
Pure food is the safe-guard of innocence, and the symbol and seal of God, which limits the power of demons (earth-bound spirits); for they have no power over those whose body and spirit is pure, as these conditions have no similarity to their own. The best sacrifices we can offer to the Deity are a pure spirit and a soul free from passion. For if one is filled with impurities, how can he become united to the most perfect of all beings?
The Philosopher, therefore, who is at the same time priest of the Supreme God, abstains from partaking as food of anything which has had animal life, and avoiding the persecution of importunate spirits, he studies nature as a true thinker; he understands her various operations, and seeking to approach the Supreme God alone, be is intent only upon that which unites him with God.
The foregoing extracts sufficiently illustrate that the system this treatise advocates, the Religion of Humanity and the Knowledge of the Absolute, is no new invention, but the most ancient and the most true system of practical philosophy. It is an exact and absolute system, which makes no concessions to vice. Morality has but one standard, and all right-minded men must conform to it; there is diversity of mentality and talents, but only one uniform purity for all. Even as little as there is liberty of opinion in mathematical science, can there be a diversity of moral systems; there is but one absolutely right system, and the laws thereof are the laws of right and wrong, innate in every undepraved being, and which are as clear as the noonday sun. No sophistry should ever cloud a right-minded man as to the necessity or permissibility of bloodshed and wrong indulgence; the straight line of Humanity is the criterion of adeptship, and a life of rational abstinence is the way to the absolute.
Liberty to differ in opinion from the absolute ethical standard means the liberty of ignorance and liberty of being wrong-minded. Man is free to do evil, and he may crush the innate sense of justice, the criterion of Humanity, but he will do so to his own detriment and at his own peril.
Man should live in accordance with the object of life, strictly adhering to necessaries for his physical and psychical well-being, and utterly avoiding all sensual luxuries, the more so if they are costly. The wealthy should first of all provide the necessaries of life for the poor; those unhappy, wrongly educated wealthy people, who indulge in expensive luxuries, are criminally responsible for the misery their thoughtlessness has caused, and the example they set to their less fortunate fellow-beings. Not only is a luxurious sensual mode of life simply an expensive method of acquiring painful diseases, but an indiscriminate pursuit of sensual pleasure can only terminate in extreme misery and bitterness.
Spiritual Selfishness
I have read a good many articles recently about Adeptship, and the mysteries of the Eastern Brotherhood of Theosophists, and I confess I am puzzled to make out what they are all about; nevertheless, I venture to express what appears to me to be a common-sense opinion upon the utility of following the life of an adept.
In the first place, Madame Blavatsky, who appears to be an exponent of the mysteries, cannot shew that any practical good comes of being a Theosophist. We have not heard that she has benefited humanity by being a Theosophist. She is said to have performed some wonderful feats, to have caused things to appear in places where they were never put by human hands, and to have astonished her friends by producing letters from invisible personages stitched up in the middle of cushions where no human hand could have placed them. This may be very wonderful, but what is the good of it? Does it make anyone happier? Is it a worthy object in life to produce such marvels, taking into account the price at which the power to work such wonders is acquired? We are not told what the process is; but we learn that complete isolation from your fellow-men for some years is one of the conditions of adeptship. This on the face of it stamps the whole thing <... continues on page 12-47 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Spiritual Selfishness by unknown author, London Spiritualist, No. 490, January 13, 1882, pp. 16-8
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 490, January 13, 1882, pp. 16-8