< Buddhism in Ceylon (continued from page 4-150) >
”Dr. Peebles,—My Dear Sir,—I send you the particulars of the case I mentioned to you yesterday. It was a fine, clear evening, many years ago, a day after I had gone to Negembe to act for Mr. John Selby, as district judge of that place, that I joined that gentleman at a game of cricket. We finished our game, and were, in the dusk of the evening, coming to the Government House, where we all lived, when Mr. Selby, who was behind us, came rushing past us, and beckoned to me to come fast. He was rather excited, and desired me to be good enough to consult my watch and tell him the time. I did so. He then sat down at my writing table, took a sheet of note paper, and wrote down, ‘My wife died thirteen minutes to six o’clock’'' (month, &c., which I forgot). This slip of paper he put into an envelope, sealed it, and got me and another gentleman then present to put our signatures to the fact therein stated. We did so. And he then explained to us that his wife, who had been long ill in England, had appeared to him at the time above indicated, under the shadow of the big Banian, and that he had not the slightest doubt that she had died at that hour, and that it was her spirit which he had seen. In consequence of this persuasion, Mr. Selby, who was to leave Ceylon in a few days for England, postponed his trip for a short time. And when the mail had arrived, a month or more after the date above given, he showed me his private letters, and they fully confirmed the prediction of his wife’s death, within a few hours, as I remember, of the time he stated he had seen his wife under the tree.
P.S.—You may make any use of these facts.
“Colombo, Ceylon.”
Banner of Light.
Spiritualism and the Theosophists
Both as a Spiritualist, and as a member of the Theosophical Society, I take immediate and grave exception to much that appears in your last two numbers under the honoured signature of “M. A., Oxon.” As a Spiritualist, I demur altogether to his characterisation of the movement. As a very ignorant pupil of my society, I nevertheless perceive and complain that this honest and powerful writer has done a public injustice to its teachings.
Unfortunately, I cannot say that I hear “for the first time” that Spiritualism is chiefly or exclusively valued by its votaries for the privilege which it is supposed to discover of communion with departed friends. But I have always contradicted this statement as an imputation on our intelligence, and I little expected to hear it put forth on such authority. Speaking of this faith, M.A., Oxon, says, “It is this which I designate (a cardinal dogma of our faith.’ I will so far vary my language as to say that it is the central fact round which the whole fabric of Spiritualism is built up. Demolish that faith, and you have cut out from the body the heart that gave it life. Take away that belief—that pious hope, if you prefer to call it so—and you have robbed Spiritualism of that which, in the vast majority of instances, is its sole attraction. There remains—what? A scientific something with which the savant may amuse himself; the action of a force, the possibility of a transfusion of thought, a curious questioning as to elementals and elementaries, and the possible action of infra-human (or, as the theologian calls them, diabolic) agencies; a body from which the soul has been wrenched; and for which most men will care nothing.” And so this egotism of the affections is the core and heart of Spiritualism! Not the proof that the body is not the life, not the downfall of materialism, not the foundation thus laid for a purer philosophy, a truer science, and better lives; but a demand that our dead should be given back to us, not that we should go to them, but that they should come to us. If I had to summarise a sentiment which I, in common, I believe, with many who have the interests and progress of Spiritualism at heart, would repudiate, as an essential account of the movement, with all the emphasis I can convey, and even with all the distaste which consideration and respect for others would allow me to express, I could not do so in language more sufficiently descriptive than that which I have cited. It is probably true that many Spiritualists (not, I hope, the “vast majority”) care nothing for the scientific aspects of the phenomena, but only for the suppossd privilege of intercourse with their own departed friends, a privilege which they suppose themselves to enjoy in utter, and often angry, rejection of every consideration that could disturb their faith, and this to the neglect of their own psychological education, to the perpetuation of illusion within the movement, and to its discredit without. Much unpopularity will inevitably be incurred in insisting upon facts which tend to impair this cherished belief whenever it is not—as often the Theosophists, at least, admit it is—well founded; and it is not a little annoying to find one of our ablest and most honoured leaders using language which identifies Spiritualism with its most emotional and least progressive elements; for now, it seems, that all psychological investigations and speculations that seek to penetrate the mysteries of man’s nature, and to exhibit other spiritual agencies, as concerned in the phenomena, are incidental inimical to Spiritualism. Why? if not, that Spiritualism, instead of being a science, of man as a spirit, and of the spiritual world, in which even now he lives, and therefore subject, like other sciences, to have the simplicity of its early conclusions corrected, is a religious teaching which reason, observation, hypothesis, and even the wisdom and experience of the past must not presume to disturb. Modern Spiritualism is a thing of yesterday. Starting up in a materialistic age, to which all the experience, all the learning, all the philosophy, all the revelations respecting these very phenomena in the past were so much forgotten superstition, it was embraced with enthusiasm by multitudes who had no other conception of a spiritual universe than that it must contain their dead, for whom they passionately yearned. Then came the Theosophists, who in the schools of the East, where the continuity of spirit manifestations has never been broken nor the science of them neglected, had made it their business to study the history of the subject—a history that does not date from the Rochester rappings. They speak with some authority therefore, and authority is abhorrent to the Western mind. They tell us what they think they know about these phenomena, and about the invisible agencies that beset us. How they have been received in America we pretty well know; what is to be their greeting here? “Occultism,” according to Olcott, “is the deadly foe of Spiritualism, as interpreted by popular teachers.” “I should have thought that the mission of Occultism was to strike at the root of the central theory of Spiritualism, and to discourage its practice altogether.” How such language can be reconciled with that of the same writer only the week before I am at a loss to understand. I will quote it, leaving it to be explained in consistency with the above, if possible, by one of the most logical minds with which I am acquainted: “The Theosophist platform, so far as concerns the subject now under notice” [the agency in phenomena] “is far more worthy of consideration, There is much in it that must commend itself to one whose prepossessions are dormant, and whose perceptions are wide awake. So far as it goes, it seems to me to embody a true rationale of the fact; so far as I can comprehend it, I believe it to be worthy of all attention. I wish it had been in the mind of my friend to state more clearly his belief in, or acceptance of, what I may be allowed to call the pure Spiritualist, as contradistinguished from the Occultist theory I could wish that he had given a more prominent place in his review to the; action of pure disembodied spirits,’ of which he makes so little. It is there that I find myself constrained to avow myself a Spiritualist pur sang.” I think it will be agreed that from a Spiritualist pur sang, this is a very mild declaration of deadly hostility.
In his second paper, M.A., Oxon., criticises other points in Col. Olcott’s letter. I submit that the latter is strictly consistent and precise in proclaiming the immortality of the human spirit along with the doctrine of the potential immortality of man. Surely, he has enforced with sufficient distinctness the doctrine that the human spirit is not the lower consciousness with which we identify ourselves here, but which it is the essential teaching of Theosophy is not immortal. This survives, it is true, indefinitely even after <... continues on page 4-152 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Spiritualism and the Theosophists by Massey C.C., London Spiritualist, No. 282, January 18, 1878, pp. 28-9
London Spiritualist, No. 282, January 18, 1878, pp. 28-9