!!! This text was extracted from an image and needs proofreading !!!
(February 1888)
Publications:
- The Path, vol. II, no. 11, February 1888, pp. 341-343
Read:
DATA
Title for references: Keightley J - The Way of the Wind
Short description:
Signed "J. Campbell Ver Planck"—her name at the time, before her 1891 marriage to Archibald Keightley. A commentary on Prof. William H. Parker's article "Arguments for the Unseen" (The Forum, December 1887), with supporting quotations from Hartmann's experiments on vibration and Tyndall on light.
341
The Way of the Wind.
It is one of the gratifying signs of the times, and a pleasing indicative straw to point the way of the wind, that we should find in the Forum of Dec., 1887, such an article as the one by Professor W. H. Parker, entitled "Arguments for the Unseen." Disclaiming both orthodoxy and advance thought as it were, this writer presents much evidence which might have fallen from the pen of an occultist—an occultist such as he himself would be if he realized the full inferences from his own statements. The Arguments are clearly, even limpidly, put, and the article must do much good in opening such minds as will only hear those ideas which they consider "safe," "sound," and acceptable to the community at large. What it is they wish to save, or fear to lose, unless it be the consistency of ignorance, prejudice, or limitation, and what could be more "sound" than Truth, we do not know and will not ask of those who would be "plus royaliste que le roi." We quote a few paragraphs of the article as its best recommendation to those who desire to think more, or to induce others to think more, in the direction of the Unseen.
"He sees not his fellow man, but only an outward manifestation of an unknown force, be that force vital or chemical or other. He who believes that man is made in the image of God, accepting our spiritual nature, realizes that every human assembly is an assembly of spirits unseen."
The above might refer either to the presence of the "astral men" or doubles, or even to the existence of that entity known to many occultists as the "Higher Self" "of the unseen world. It often implies, however, that the inhabitants of that world were in ready communication with the earth, and this implication favors an inference that we are surrounded by an invisible world."
"Without touching on the many debatable phenomena that come under the discussion of the old psychology and the new so-called psychical research, and without giving any credence to the claims of modern spiritism, we have the further fact that in life and health we are dealing with none but invisible beings. The materialist himself must acknowledge that the unknown quantity which constitutes personality amid all the change and degradation of bodily tissue, is beyond dissection, is deathless, and that some organizing force beyond his ken precedes and accompanies organism."
Compare the above with the statement in "Esoteric Buddhism" that the 3rd principle guides the 2nd, or Jiva, the life force, in its task of building up the body.
"Facts suggest that a great exaltation of senses * * * may sometimes bring to sight or hearing, not phantasms, but realities never perceived in our ordinary life."
342 "Since, therefore, we know scarcely anything directly, our seeming-direct knowledge of the outward world, and our seeming lack of such knowledge in regard to any spiritual world above it, are illusive."
"Men of science least of all, should shrug their shoulders at mention of the Unseen. In their own way they deal more with the hidden, the invisible, the vanished, or the future, than with the tangible."
"The great Unseen, for which we have intimations and reasons, is as real as the Seen, or more so. Enough that we know not the visible in itself, but only by some message it sends to us from afar, truly so when it seems nearest. There is no light, no color, as we apprehend these, outside of the mind. Let the vibrations cease, and everything vanishes; let the molecules cease to give forth resistant force, and nothing is tangible. Since, therefore, the physical world is so tremulous, shadowy, spiritual, it is no presumption against a hidden universe that it affects us as something dreamy and unsubstantial. Granting that matter is composed of atoms, still there is nothing solid except to our sensations. An eminent English mathematician has calculated that, in a piece of dense metal, the atoms must be as far apart as 100 men would be when distributed at equal distances from each other over the surface of England; that is, one to every 500 square miles. Surely no supramundane world could be much more at variance with all that we deem firm and substantial."
"Brown Sequard observed that certain cholera patients remained clear and active in mind when their blood was becoming black and clotted in the last stages of the disease; a fact inconsistent with the identity of mind and brain, since the latter depends on the blood for its activity."
"Analogy demands a destiny of boundless splendors and activities for those (mankind) who begin their career on so vast a material platform."
"Man is the first of a new series—the spiritual."
"If anything is temporal, it is the Seen; if anything is eternal, it is the Unseen."
All the above are theosophical teachings, and are, moreover, elaborated and accounted for by those teachings. In respect to the statements concerning the uncertainty of sense-evidence and the debt which we are under to Vibration, the following quotation from Hartmann's Experiments may interest the general reader. A metallic rod is suspended in a dark room: "Let the same be connected with some mechanical contrivance by which it can be made to vibrate and increase the vibrations gradually to a certain extent, and we will have the following result: * * * When the vibrations rise to the number of more than 32 per second * * * the drum of our ear then begins to vibrate in consonance with the rod, and we hear a sound of deep sonorous bass. As the vibrations increase, the sound increases in pitch and runs up through the musical scale to the 343highest note, when, at 36,000 vibrations per second, all sound ceases and the rod becomes imperceptible to our senses. All through the long interval from 36,000 up to 18 millions of vibrations per second, we can neither hear nor see the rod; but at this point it begins to affect our sense of feeling by emitting radiant heat. At a still higher rate the heat ceases, a dull red glow appears which becomes perceptible to our sight and runs up through all the colors of the solar spectrum; through yellow, green, blue, purple, and violet, until at eight billions of vibrations all light disappears and the rod, as far as our senses are concerned, has ceased to exist, although its presence can still be proved by its exhibition of chemical action."
It is interesting to note that the above phenomena follow that order which occult science indicates as the creative order. Ether was first of the creative elements; its special property is sound. Air next; its special property is tangibility or affecting the sense of feeling. Fire third; its property is color, and it affects the sense of sight. Water and earth are the most gross; they affect the senses of taste and smell; the rod in its normal condition would be cognizable by these, and perhaps also in still more heightened chemical action. Professor Parker also alludes to the well known fact that the optic nerve in ordinary men is blind to all colors below the red and above the violet. Professor Tyndall states this as follows, in his work on Light and Electricity. "The radiation composing the solar spectrum possesses a dimension much larger than that of which the eye can take cognisance. This spectrum is in reality composed of three distinct parts.
1st. Luminous rays, which, acting on the retina of the eye, constitute the spectrum of seven simple colors.
2d. Rays lying within the red ray, and which do not affect the vision, but the existence of which is scientifically demonstrated by their calorific power.
3d. Rays lying beyond the violet, equally invisible, but whose existence is not the less demonstrable by chemical tests. Thus the spectrum consists of three sorts of rays: Calorific, Luminous, and Chemical, the second of which only is directly appreciable by the organ of vision, the existence of others being ascertained by experimental observation involving an exercise of mind." He further states that the rays beyond the violet "manifest their action, not in heat or light, but in the operation of composition, decomposition, and allied phenomena," and that all these three orders of effects result from a variation in the vibrations of the Etherial Medium. Clairvoyants and seers under an excitation of the senses also see through ordinary matter, which Professor Parker has shown us in his Arguments is far less "dense" than is ordinarily supposed.
J. Campbell Ver Planck.
Footnotes