(March 1892)
Publications:
- The Path, vol. VI, March 1892, pp. 345–346
Related works:
CTD entry in Russian: Джадж У.К. - Заметка к статье Другой взгляд на метафизическое лечение
DATA
Title for references: Judge W.Q. - "Another View of Metaphysical Healing" (note)
Short description: Judge's editorial note replying to Ursula N. Gestefeld's rebuttal of his article "Of Metaphysical He...
Editor's note appended to Ursula N. Gestefeld's rebuttal article "Another View of Metaphysical Healing".
The Path has no desire to seem unfair, and hence the foregoing article is inserted at the request of a friend. It cannot be considered as a reply to the article in January issue,[1] nor does it deal with the important points then raised and which will be further discussed at a later date. Very few earnest theosophists will share with Mrs. Gestefeld, however much they respect her, the assumption made in her second paragraph that because they give time and attention to the study of Theosophy they "also therefore" do not give attention "to the teaching covered by the term Divine Science." Such assumption assumes the total non-existence of Theosophical literature. Divine Science is a term used ages ago in Indian writing, and is well understood to cover a real science of psychology, physiology, and spirit; but if a number of people in America appropriate the term to cover a few half-truths from the whole, it does not necessarily follow that others who are not of that cult do not study the real thing. There is no sequence between her premise and her conclusion.
The next point on which we must differ from our contributor is where she says this "Divine Science" of which she speaks — and which is different in her opinion from Mental Science, etc., as promulgated illogically — must be studied by throwing away all standards save those adopted by its exponents, "accepting for the time being the terms as used with the meanings attached to them" (by its exponents), and "following them" to conclusion "without weighing and measuring them by another standard than their premise." This is just the difficulty. The terms used are strained in general, and thus false conclusions are arrived at if we thus throw away right standards long ago fixed by the use of English by wiser and better educated people than most of us can claim to be. We cannot do that, even to show that "Divine Science" is the same as theosophy; nor can we with the same object in view abandon words from foreign tongues to express ideas for which materialistic English has no counters. By such a process the students of Modern Divine Science may be saved the trouble of investigating and classifying the manifold divisions in man's personality — and which even now the celebrated hypnotists call number 1, 2, and so on. The resulting calm ignorance of these vital matters might be pleasant, but it would not destroy the existence of the subtle form of matter called akas, nor the subtle body temporarily called sukshma sarira, nor the Mayavi rupa, nor those negative and positive astral currents known as Ida and Pingala but not yet perceived distinctly by either scientific men or "metaphysical or divine healers." When, diving into Greek or Latin, the authorities of the day shall have adopted distinctive terms for these things as they discover their existence, use, and function, then we will take those more familiar terms and drop Sanscrit. For, digressing, we may remind our readers that it is a tradition in the Lodge "which seeth all, holding all, as it were, in its eye", that our language will creep slowly back by way of Greek and Latin to the ancient Sanscrit.
Footnotes
- ↑ Judge W.Q., Of "Metaphysical Healing".