< A Lamasery in New York (continued from page 4-49) >
on the marble mantel a Chinese god in a gilt sariae. In one window stands an enormous ape, stuffed and grotesquely half-dressed. In another window hung a tuneful canary, on the occasion of the reporter’s visit, while halt a dozen Javanese sparrows frantically pecked at the bars of their spacious cage on the opposite side of the room. A huge palm-leaf waved in one corner of the room, and a ferocious tiger’s head gaped hungrily in another. Heavy tapestry curtains half hid a sacred alcove, and Oriental knick-knacks filled every niche and chink that could be discovered. Within a brief yard of the visitor’s elbow reposed the ashes of Baron de Palm. An Oriental pipe, finished in velvet, gilt filagree and amber, and filled with a seductive mixture of Turkish tobacco and perique, was banded to the visitor (Mme. Blavatsky has a true Russian’s indulgence for a smoker’s weakness), and lying back in one of the easy-chairs, he listened attentively—as, indeed, ho was compelled to do—to understand the words that came rapidly, and with a strong foreign accent, from the lips of the hostess.
Mme. Blavatsky has spent some thirty years of her life in Oriental countries, and, a mystic by nature, has embraced the Buddhic faith. A profound scholar and a remorseless critic, she is fearless in her attacks on what she holds to be error, wherever it is found. The reporter had called to learn about magic.
“Magic?” said Mme. Blavatsky. Well, magic is what science has not learned. That is the reason that people who arrogate to themselves the epithet ‘civilized’ scoff at magic. They are divided into two classes, those who follow the priests, and those who follow the scientists, and both priests and scientist’s, being either knaves or fools, teach their followers that magic is flap-double, because they are afraid to grapple with it themselves.”
“But this is a negative description of magic,” urged the interviewer. “Easy enough to say that magic is what science has not learned, but what is that? Is it fair to say that magic is the exercise of power in contravention of known natural laws?”
“No. The natural laws are not to be transgressed. What science calls the natural laws can every one of them be broken, but the real laws of nature cannot. What is magic? you ask. Magic is the great original religion. It has been handed down from father to son among the people who live in ‘the cradle of humanity’—the East. Science and religion quarrel over the age of the world, and religion, as usual, gets the worst or it; but even science is greatly at fault. I find in Mir Muller the statement that there are some reasons for supposing that there was a language before the Sanscrit; that there are indications in the formation of that language that would tend to show that it must have been derived from some other language but he says that there are absolutely no traces of it; that there is not a word of it left, nor a monument of its existence. Why, my dear sir, that language, older than the Sanscrit—that tongue which was once the universal language of mankind—is to day a written and a spoken language. We know it.’
“Who do you mean by ‘we?’”
“The adepts.”
“What is an adept?”
“An adept is one who has nothing more to learn. I am not yet an adept, out I have taken some steps in the initiation in the great societies of the East in which knowledge of the mysteries is handed down from father to son, from one member of the society to another.”
“But you say; ‘has nothing more to learn.’ Surely life is too short for one man to learn everything.”
“Oh! an adept need not know the details of every branch of knowledge. It is only necessary for him to master the principles of knowledge, and he can learn the details of whatever he chooses.”
“And there are such men?”
“Undoubtedly. There are even adepts in Europe, but the European mind is not well adapted to grasping subtle knowledge. It is in the East, where the people inherit this knowledge, that it is preserved. You know it has been scientifically proved that the people of Cashmere can distinguish 300 more colors than Europeans can. So the Hindoo has the sixth or seventh sense, which enables him to perceive mystic truth.”
“And does he thus acquire the power to perform the wonders that are told of the magicians of the East?”
“Yes. Magic, you must understand, is of two kinds —white and black. White magic is that produced by the exercise of a true understanding and knowledge of general principles. The holy men of the East are great magicians, but they never perform any of their feats for money. Black magic is a perverted use of a knowledge which is often, indeed generally, imperfect and partial. The jugglers of India and of Egypt, who are hired by travellers to perform their wonders, are men who have learned from their fathers a sort of mechanical knowledge of how to perform tricks—not merely sleight-of-hand feats, but genuine wonders. True magic,” she continued, “comes of an understanding of the constitution of man. As I have said to you before, the nature of man is three-fold. He has a physical body, and an astral body, and a soul. The astral body is the ‘spiritual body’ spoken of by St. Paul—the ‘irrational soul’ of Plato. It is not identical with the physical body, but permeates it, occupying the same position with it in space, although it can be separated from it. This separation, however, is the very last and highest possible achievement of magic. The soul hovers above the head of a man, and is a portion of the Divine Essence. It is God himself. By the separation of the astral and physical bodies the latter is left inert and lifeless, while the former becomes almost omnipotent. We live in one of the lowest of the spheres, but as we progress in successive lives from one sphere to another our astral body becomes purged of its imperfections and grossness, and becomes more and more nearly omnipotent and omniscient. You find the possibility of this separation hinted at in the Hebraic fable of the creation, when Jehovah said that he did not want man to become ‘as one of us.’ This separation has been accomplished in well-attested cases. The British Government tested it by hermetically sealing up the physical body of a Hindoo in a glass coffin, in which it was kept for months, constantly watched night and day by a military guard. When it was taken from the coffin the astral body and the soul rejoined the physical body and apparent life was restored. In the case of the lower animals, who have astral bodies, this separation is easily accomplished. The very shepherds in Thibet—ignorant people—know the trick of doing this. They frequently put to temporary death such of their sheep or cattle as they wish to preserve for any time, and then, when they desire to do so they bring them to life again. I have done this myself a number of times. It is done by a certain manipulation of a certain artery in the neck. I prophesy to you that within a year from now scientists will discover how this is done in the case oi the lower animals.”
“You speak of different countries. Is magic commonly practised in all of them?”
“Yes. Through all the countries of the East there are veritable magicians. In Thibet, in the city of colleges, there are over fifteen hundred lamas engaged in teaching the principles of magic to students. Many of them study to be lamas, and enter the lamaseries, but many more only learn enough for the education of a layman.”
“What is a lamasery?
“It is to the original religion what its modern copy, the monastery, is to the Roman Catholic. The monastery, with its rules of conduct and general management, is modelled after the Thibetan lamasery, as has been shown by a great number of writers who are accepted as authorities. And the lamaseries have suffered from the same abuses that have crept into the monasteries of the Christian. The Dalai-lama who was born, or rather who was inspired, in the thirteenth century, caused over 500,000 unworthy lamas to be driven out from the lamaseries. They were unworthy men, who used their profession merely as a means of livelihood. You know the Dalai-lama is the divinely inspired head of the Church. When a Dalai-lama dies Buddha enters the body of another human being—generally that of a child less than a year old. Some of the European ambassadors who have paid their respects to new Dalai-lamas in different centuries have recorded their amazement at being received by an infant of a few months with the courtesy and grave demeanor of an old man.”
“But of the actual operation of magic—the working of wonders—what have you seen?”
“What have I seen? Look there!” And. Mme. Blavatsky pointed to a window—not the one with a blue-glass sash, but another.
The reporter looked, and promptly dropped his pipe. Across the window, was passing a shadow. That of itself was not remarkable; but the shadow was not cast from the inside and there were certain reasons why it seemed impossible that it could have been cast from the outside.
It was a clear, dark night. The only lights visible outside the windows were the street gas-lights, the stars and a few night lights of other keepers of late hours besides the party in Mme. Blavatsky’s room. None of these lights could by any possibility have cast the shadow that was seen, as no single one was brighter or nearer than many others, and the shadow was as distinct as if cast by the noonday sun. Then, again, the shadow—if it was really a shadow—must have been cast by a body very near the window, for it was the exact profile image of a man, not distorted or disproportionate in any particular, and exactly life size. And another reason why it must have been cast by a body near the window lies in the fact that it was a second-story window, and there was no place nearer than the width of Eighth avenue whore the body could have been, excepting a ledge below the window, about eighteen inches wide. And the reporter will make affidavit that no solid body passed along that ledge when the shadow passed across the window.
Of the six persons who sat in the room one besides the reporter was a sceptic. All looked carefully. All saw the shadow, and four asserted and two admitted the facts detailed as showing the strange character of the apparition.
“Colonel Olcott,” said Mme. Blavatsky, after the examination bad been made, “please pull down the curtain.” Colonel Olcott complied, and Mme. Blavatsky left the room, leaving the company in silent and not altogether comfortable expectancy.
When she returned she was asked, “What was that?”
“It was a friend of mine, an adept who lives on the Mediterranean and who is this moment at home. You will hear his music-box in a few minutes.
“Do you mean that it was really he and that he has returned to the Mediterranean already?”
“I do. It was his astral body. He comes here frequently, and generally appears inside the room. I don’t know why he did not come in here to-night unless it was because you were here. I went into the ... Do you hear music?”
The reporter did not, and for a full minute all was silent. Then there came the sound of a music-box playing an unfamiliar air.
“It is a very old box,” said Mme. Blavatsky, “and I wish it played more than two old tunes. They set me almost wild at times, do those two tunes.”
“But is that the sound of a music-box that is playing on the shores of the Mediterranean?”
“It is. You carry sound by means of the telephone. All that is necessary to do is to establish the current. We can do that without a wire. But this is nothing unusual. You will see and hear many such things if you come often to this house. And you may read of far more wonderful things in the books of travel in the East. I have seen a man throw a large ball of cord into the air which unwound as it ascended, one end being fastened to the ground. As the ball unwound it disappeared in the clouds and the cord remained stationary. In a few moments the man sent a little boy up the cord, pretending that it was to find out what held the other end up. The boy went up and up, till he was entirely lost to sight. And he stayed up so long that the man pretended to become enraged and climbed up after him with a drawn sword in his hand, and he, too, disappeared from sight. And presently down fell a bloody foot, and then another, then a leg, and then different pieces of the boy, all bleeding. We dipped our handkerchiefs in the blood to see if it was really blood, and it was. At last the boy’s head fell down, and presently the man climbed down, all bloody, and still simulating rage. He collected the fragments of the boy that lay around and threw them in a heap on the ground. Then he threw a cloth over the pieces, and the boy instantly jumped up, alive and well. The man and the boy were entirely naked, and the trick, if it was a trick, as you will say it was, was done on an open plain, out of doors. I say it was actually done. There were hundreds of spectators. That is the kind of things that Eastern magicians do.”
“But why is it, if such things are true, arid not tricks, that we of the Western countries do not know more of them? Are we not as intelligent as those of the East?”
“Our Western civilization is young yet,” replied the occultist, “and, as I have said, the mind of the Caucasian is not as well adapted to the perception of subtle truths. But there are many Europeans who are real adepts, and there is quite a number of persons in New York who are studying occultism. Some of them only study it philosophically, but some are practising it. There is one who has several times accomplished the separation of his astral body from his physical body, though only for a few moments. But I can make all this much clearer to you after a time by showing you a copy of the book I am writing— ‘The Veil of Isis’—than I can do in conversation.”
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