Blavatsky H.P. - Theosophy and Spiritism: Difference between revisions

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<center>Continuation of the Controversy between Theosophical Occultism and Spiritism.</center>

<center>[Translation of the original French text.]</center>

After the explanations and rectifications which have already appeared in the Bulletin following the controversy on Occultism (see the April, May, and June issues), we concluded that the discussion could be closed. We were mistaken. The Theosophists from India have compelled us to keep the promise we made from the outset, to open the pages of the Bulletin to the rejoinder. As we do not intend to suppress the opinion of anyone, we are publishing what follows in spite of its length. To do so, we must double the number of pages in this issue.

Moreover, the subject is worth the effort. In the first place, this document has an official character, since it emanates from the Parent-Society, and is drawn up in the name of the Branch of Occultists. One may conclude, then, that this time we have the expression of the real doctrine professed by Theosophical Occultism.<ref>In the mail which followed the one that brought us the document now published, we received a collective letter signed by the Occultists of the Theosophical Society at Bombay, urgently demanding the publication in the Bulletin Mensuel of the reply written by Madame Blavatsky in their name. This letter is dated Madras, May 27th.</ref> Moreover, among some recriminations dealing with personalities and adding nothing of value to the discussion, ideas of great philosophic import are to be found in this paper, ideas of which the readers of the Bulletin should not be deprived.

{{Style P-Signature|THE EDITOR.}}

{{Page aside|37}}<center>THE REPLY OF THE THEOSOPHISTS</center>

In the April issue of the Bulletin Mensuel of the Scientific Society for Psychological Studies, we find in the “Editorial Note” which follows the annihilation of Theosophy in India —a veritable “massacre of the innocents”—the generous offer to open the pages of the Bulletin to the answer of the Theosophists who do not share the views of Mr. T. . . . A generous offer, no doubt, but a very dangerous one—for the Editor. Aside from some Spiritists who have been pleased to associate themselves with an organization of which they evidently know neither the program nor the statutes not even the simple rules—”the Theosophists who do not share his views” being reckoned by thousands, the Editor of this esteemed journal may perhaps find himself embarrassed in keeping his word. Fortunately for the interested parties, our Hindu Theosophists know no more French than our Parisian Theosophists know English. It is to this blessed ignorance of their reciprocal languages—which has prevented the former from reading the Bulletin and the latter, The Theosophist—that we owe, undoubtedly, the highly fraternal harmony and touching accord that have reigned for five years until now, between the Parent Society, established in India, and its well-beloved daughter in Paris. That this was really conducive to mutual understanding, the following will indeed prove.

I ask permission to say a few words on the subject of the lectures and at the same time to correct the very serious errors I have discovered therein. These errors—easily shown by quoting thousands of passages in confirmation from The Theosophist as well as from other publications of our Society—are quite natural in the cases of Madame and Monsieur Rosen, Mr. Waroquier and others, who perhaps do not speak English, and have not read The Theosophist, but who judge Occultism by relying on some pages translated from one of the Fragments. They become more serious when we find them accepted and vigorously {{Page aside|38}} emphasized by Mr. T. . . ., “Fellow of the Theosophical Society of Paris.” Dr. Thurman was quite right not to undertake the thankless task of defending and especially of explaining a system “to an audience which had not been prepared for it by preliminary study of the subject.” We thank our brother for his discretion.

As to the lectures delivered at meetings on the 6th and 21st of March, it must be confessed that they were unique. A debate in fact, where nothing was disputed but everything admitted in advance, where no one defended, but everyone attacked, where both sides, friends and enemies, Theosophists and Spiritists, tore to pieces a system of which they did not know the first word, bumping against each other—pardon my language—in utter blindness, and where, finally, the only so-called representative of the system under attack, attacked it himself with more heat and vigor than all the others—is indeed an extremely original debate, and one of an entirely new variety!<ref>The committee of the Scientific Society for Psychological Studies intended to please the Theosophical Society of Paris in placing at its disposal both the pages of the Bulletin and the lecture platform to expound Theosophical ideas. It is not the fault of the committee—which, by the way, reckons several Fellows of the Theosophical Society among its members—if the representatives of the doctrines of occultism refrained from taking part in the discussion. All the known Theosophists were invited to the lectures. Several of them were present but said nothing, in spite of the fact that the president invariably offered the floor to the opponent before calling upon the defender of the subject under discussion.—THE EDITOR.</ref>

It is only necessary to read sentences like the following, which I quote from the speech of Mr. T. . . ., to see that this “Fellow of the Theosophical Society of Paris” has not the faintest idea of what the Parent-Society is: “This doctrine of nothingness professed by The Theosophist . . .” “Theosophists preach annihilation . . . the doctrine that the spiritual Ego [!?] can fall back . . . into the world of primal cosmic matter” [!!] . . . “the authors of The Theosophist,” etc., all which proves to us without the shadow of a doubt that our esteemed brother in Theosophy, “astronomer, orientalist, scholar and author of numerous {{Page aside|39}} discoveries” though he may be, has not yet discovered either what the Theosophical Society in general is, or that particular occultism, which a small group of its chosen members study.

We will go further; and now declare, proof in hand, that Mr. T. . . . who sees no difference between the Theosophical Society, Occultism, and the magazine The Theosophist, who appears to be unaware that 90 out of 100 of the Fellows of the Society take hardly any interest in, and deny the existence of, Occultism as well as Spiritism; that The Theosophist is not a special organ for the occult sciences, any more than it is the journal of exoteric Christianity, Buddhism, or Hinduism; and who confuses—perhaps because he has never heard of it—the doctrine of the Arhats, the sole representatives of the oldest esotericism of the ancient Âryans, with the Theosophy of Paracelsus and Henry Khunrath of the Middle Ages—has acted neither like a Theosophist nor a scientist in regard to us. In short, he condemns what he knows nothing about; and one letter from him which we have just received is a striking proof of it. Reserving until later what we are told therein about “Gôtomô,” the author of the Nyâya, we will take note of only one error now. “Magnetism,” he tells us, “has no place in the series of definitions of Occultism.” That may be so, in the occultism that he believes he has found in the “Hieratic Code of Gôtomô.”

In regard to the Occultism of the initiated Brâhmanas, the Rishis and the Arhats, magnetism and mesmerism are its foundation stones. The Oriental initiates believe in no “miracles,” and the “ceremonial magic” of the Theosophists and hermetic philosophers of the Middle Ages is repudiated by them with as much vehemence as the imaginary Occultism of the Oriental Theosophists is repudiated by Mr. T. . . .

Aside from the extraordinary attitude of Mr. T. . . ., a Fellow of our Society, may we be allowed to protest against the perverted interpretations which are found in the {{Page aside|40}} Refutations of the Spiritists, and to contradict them seriatim. I will commence with the “Explanatory Note,” presented by the translator of the first Fragment of the occult doctrine “On the constitution of man.” This Fragment has been perfectly translated, but less perfectly understood, which is not at all the translator’s fault, but the author’s. Who is this author? Has he ever been heard of in Paris? First of all, I will deal with a remark of Mr. Rosen, who already thinks he sees us following the example “of the current political practice of denying tomorrow what was asserted yesterday.” We deny nothing, since we (occultists) have written nothing, and it is just what I have had the honor of telling both the translator and the honorable President, Monsieur Fauvety, for the last month or so. I regret that Monsieur D.A.C.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[See footnote on page 11 of the present volume.—Comp.]}}</ref> chose for his first translation a Fragment written in answer to the objections of an Australian Spiritualist (a Fellow of our Society, the editor of The Harbinger of Light)<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[See footnote on page 11 of the present volume.—Comp.]}}</ref> by another Fellow. The latter, although actually, as Mr. Michel Rosen says, “one of the most prominent members of Theosophism,” was however, when he wrote that article, neither an adept nor even a pupil in Occultism. Therefore he did not distort “the truth knowingly”; he simply was not aware of it, since it was the first time he had heard of it. It was indeed a fragment in every sense of the word, that is to say, incomplete and quite likely for that reason to lead into error those who were themselves, at that period (1881), as little proficient in the occult sciences as he was, having but recently joined the Society. However, apart from some mistakes which were not actually errors, but which arose from his incomplete explanations, the teaching of the occultists about spirits will be found correctly outlined therein; and I am not the least surprised to see it spurned by the Spiritists. Some incorrect expressions, however, found therein, were immediately denied and explained by other pupils in further Fragments as well as in The Theosophist, and our brother, Mr. T. Subba Row, the most learned occultist in India at this time, a disciple {{Page aside|41}} of the Himâlayan Hierophants, analyzed, corrected, and explained it in a long and admirable article “The Aryan-Arhat Esoteric Tenets on the Sevenfold Principle in Man.”<ref>The Theosophist, Vol. III, No. 4 (28), January 1882, pp. 93-99.</ref> Has Mr. T. . . . read that article? Let him hasten to do so then, before he makes the accusation that we believe in nothingness. We shall say more about this later on, and we shall prove that this distinguished civil engineer, who may have knowledge of the architectural monuments of ancient Egypt and of Baalbec at his fingers’ ends, and for whom the aqueducts of archaic Peru have few secrets, knows far less—if he knows anything at all—of the Sanskrit “Jîvâtman” or of the genealogy of the Gautama clan. Really, what does he know of the “Jîvâtman,” he who speaks of “the pretended translation which follows” the Sanskrit terms, and who does not know that the Jîva or the “life” of the Occultists and the Jîva or Jîvâtman (the only life or living soul) of the Vedântins are two ideas quite distinct one from the other, and who does not know that the Occultists call the second principle—Life—while the Vedântins, who do not recognize the Universal Life as the only Reality, and consider all the other Jîvas (or lives) as illusory, give that name only to the seventh principle—the divine monad in man—whose identity with the Parabrahm they maintain, in opposition to the Dwaita Vedântins who regard the human soul as distinct from the universal soul. One would have to be more than a Max Müller or a Burnouf to be permitted to invalidate in such a magisterial and dogmatic tone the translations of the Sanskrit terms made by the best Sanskritists of Benares (a Pandit Bala Śâstrî, a Ram Miśra Śâstrî, and lastly, a Doctor Râjendralâla Mitra, the most celebrated Sanskritist in India) as “pretended translations”! Finally, when Mr. T. . . brings us in support of his assertions about his “Hieratic Code of Gôtomô,” the corroboration of a Hindû scholar like Doctor R. L. Mitra, author of Buddha Gayâ, translator of the Lalitavistara, honorary Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and of the Imperial Academy of Sciences {{Page aside|42}} at Vienna, corresponding Fellow of all the Oriental Societies in Europe, well-known to nearly all the Academies, friend and correspondent of Max Müller and other Orientalists, and when this Doctor, this celebrated Sanskritist and greatest expert in Indian hierograms, tells us that the author of the work on logic, Gautama of the Nyâya<ref>The Nyâya-Sûtras, which consist of five books, is an analytical work—the term Nyâya being opposed to that of Sâmkhya or “synthesis”—which gives its readers a correct method for discussing philosophical questions. Generally speaking, it is a combination of enthymemes and syllogisms—a system very inferior in its method to that of Aristotle. The style of the work is heavy and somewhat obscure and it treats of metaphysics in only one of its books, and with doubtful success, at that. The ten treatises of the Vaiśeshika-Sûtras of Kanâda on the physical constitution of our earth, and the Kusumâñjali, on the existence of a superior God or of God, are included also.</ref>—HAS EVER WRITTEN ONE WORD—ONE SINGLE WORD—on Occultism, “divine” or human, then we shall recognize the right of Mr. T. . . . to settle the question of Occultism in the way he does. Till then, we shall assume the right to analyze and to judge at their proper value all the fine tirades which he offers us about his apocryphal author. We shall now proceed seriatim.

(Page 68, April Bulletin)

1. “The very good ones: these are prepared to pass with their four constituent elements to a reincarnation on a planet in a superior world.”—Here are two capital errors in four lines; four principles or constituent elements can never be found together in the gestation state which precedes the Devachan (the paradise of the Buddhist Occultists). They are separated at the entrance into gestation. The seventh and the sixth, that is to say the immortal spirit and its vehicle, the immortal or spiritual soul, enter therein alone (an exceptional case) or, which nearly always takes place, the soul carries in the case of very good people (and even the indifferent and sometimes the very wicked), the essence, so to speak, of the fifth principle which has {{Page aside|43}} been withdrawn from the personal EGO (the material soul). It is the latter only, in the case of the irredeemably wicked and when the spiritual and impersonal soul has nothing to withdraw from its individuality (terrestrial personality). because the latter had nothing to offer but the purely material and sensual—that becomes annihilated. Only the individuality, which possesses the most spiritual feelings, can survive by uniting with the immortal principle. The “Kâma-rûpa,” the vehicle, and the manas, the soul in which the personal and animal intelligence inheres, after having been denuded of their essence, as described, remain alone in Kâma-loka, the intermediate sphere between our earth and the Devachan (the Kâma-loka being the hades of the Greeks, the region of the shades) to be extinguished and to disappear from it after a while. This unfortunate duad forms the cast-off “tatters” of the “spiritual ego” and of the personal EGO, superior principles which, purified of all terrestrial uncleanliness, united henceforth with the divine monad in eternity, pass into regions where the mire of the purely terrestrial ego cannot follow, to glean therein their reward—the effects of the causes generated—and from which they do not emerge until the next incarnation. If we maintain that the shell, the reflexion of the person who was, survives in the land of shades for a certain time proportionate to its constitution and then disappears, we offer nothing but the logical and philosophical. Is that annihilation? Are we annihilationists without knowing it because we keep insisting that the human shadow disappears from the wall when the person to whom it belongs leaves the room? And even in the case of the most depraved, when dissociated from its divine and immortal double principle, and unable to give anything to the spiritual EGO, the material soul is annihilated without leaving anything behind of its personal individuality, is that annihilation for the spiritual EGO? Is it the reincarnationist-Spiritists who protest? Is it these believers who teach that Mr. X becomes after his death Mr. T. . ., and Mrs. A— Mrs. B, etc., who refuse to believe in the losing of all {{Page aside|44}} recollection by the spiritual soul of one of its thousands of personalities, annihilated because there was nothing in it spiritual enough to survive? Let us clearly understand each other once and for all. It is not the divine soul, the immortal individuality, that perishes, but only the animal soul with its consciousness of a personality too gross, too terrestrial, for the former to assimilate. Millions of people who have never heard of reincarnation and even those who believe in it, live and die in absolute ignorance of who they were in their former incarnations—and they are not a bit the worse for that. Those whose spirit is open to the great truths, those who understand absolute justice and reject every doctrine based on favoritism or personal grace will fully understand what we mean. For the immortal soul this is nothing but justice. That cast-off existence is for it but a page torn out of the great book of life before the pages are numbered, and the SOUL suffers no more from it than a saint in ecstasy would suffer because he had lost all recollection of one wretched day among the 20,000 days that he has passed on earth. On the contrary, had he retained that recollection, it would have been enough to prevent him from ever feeling happy. Only one drop of gall is enough to make the water bitter in the largest vessel. And after all, the doctrine teaches us that these cases of total annihilation of a personality are extremely rare (See Fragment VI, The Theosophist, Vol. IV, March 1883, p. 134).

2. “Reincarnation on a planet of a superior world.”—That sentence contains two errors (p. 68). The Monad is going to incarnate on the planet superior to ours, in our chain of worlds, but only when its incarnations on our globe are completed—and not “on a planet of a superior world”;<ref>According to our doctrine, the Universe is filled with septenary chains of worlds, each chain being composed of seven globes, ours being the 4th of its chain and being found exactly in the middle. It is after passing through all the races as well as all the sub-races and having reached the planetary Pralaya (dissolution) that we shall go to a planet of a superior world. There is ample time for that.</ref> and before it reaches that superior planet, E— {{Page aside|45}} ours being D—which it has already visited three times and which it must visit four times more before reaching the end of its great cycle each monad must incarnate in every one of the seven great human races as well as in their ramifications into collateral races. It is therefore an error to say:

“According to the Theosophists no one reincarnates on earth except children who die young and congenital idiots,” for the sentence being incomplete, does not tell everything. The difference between the souls mentioned above and those of people in general is that the former incarnate immediately, because neither the infants nor the idiots, being irresponsible for their actions, are able to receive either reward or punishment. Failures of nature they begin a new life immediately; while reincarnations in general take place after rather long periods passed in the intermediate and invisible spheres. So that if a Spiritist-Theosophist tells an Occultist-Theosophist that he is a reincarnation of Louis XV, or that Mrs. X is a reincarnation of Joan of Arc, the Occultist would answer that according to his doctrine it is impossible. It is quite possible that he might be a reincarnation of Sesostris or of Semiramis, but the time period that has passed since the death of Louis XV and even of Joan of Arc is too short according to our calculations, which are mathematically correct. Should we be thoroughly ostracized if we were to say that the souls of idiots and extremely young children (dying before the age of personal consciousness) are the exact parallels to those who are annihilated? Can the personalities of the infants and the idiots leave a greater trace on the monadic memory with which they have not been able to become united, than those of the souls of marked animal tendencies who have also, though not more than the former, failed to become assimilated therein? In both cases the final result is the same. The sixth element or the spiritual EGO which has not had either the time or the possibility to unite with the lower principles in the cases of the idiot and the infant, has had the time but {{Page aside|46}} not the possibility to accomplish that union in the case of the totally depraved person. Now it is not that the “spiritual EGO is dissipated and ceases to exist,” as it seems to say, but really does not, in Fragment No. 1. This was immediately elucidated in The Theosophist. It would be absurd to say that something which is immortal in its essence can be dissipated or cease to be. The spiritual EGO is dissociated from the lower elements and, following its divine monad—the seventh element, disappears in the case of the utterly vicious man and ceases to exist for him, for the personal and physical man as well as for the astral man. As for the latter, once being depraved, whether it belong to an idiot or to a Newton, if it has failed to grasp, or has lost the Ariadne’s thread which must lead it through the labyrinth of matter into the regions of eternal light—it must disappear.

Thus this personal astral man (or the fourth and fifth principles) whether it disappears into an immediate reincarnation, or is annihilated, drops from the number of the individual existences which are to the monad equivalent to days passed by an individual—a series of recollections, some fresh and eternal in our memory, others forgotten and dead, never to revive. To say of the Occultists, as Mr. Rosen does, that they are selfishly occupied in their own salvation, that they condemn “the majority of mankind to destruction” like the Christians “who doom them to the flames of hell”—is unjust and untrue, since with the Occultists, forgetfulness of one’s self is the very greatest virtue. It is rather the Spiritists who would doom the divine monad to a terrible torment, to the perpetual recollection of one or more shameful or criminal existences, filled with earthly and gross experiences, without the smallest ray of spirituality to enlighten them. Moreover would it not be a horrible punishment to bedeck it with all the personalities that it had to endure, during its long terrestrial journey, instead of merely preserving the acquisitions which enriched it during those previous existences and which have made of it a complete being, a glorious and spiritual unity!

{{Page aside|47}}3. “It is not logical to say that all the entities that manifest themselves are essentially bad.” We have never said it. We do not say that these are devils, but that they are unfortunate vampires, generally unconscious—mere shells, according to Mr. de Waroquier’s correct expression. That is why we do not consent to degrade the sublime word Spirit by applying it to the Elementaries whose spirit is in Devachan, from whence it never descends, although the spirit of the medium can ascend thereto; and while we have nothing to say against subjective communication with the spirits, nevertheless we would consider ourselves practising necromancy were we to encourage the larvae to play the part of the latter in material and physical manifestations (see the same Fragment, p. 133). The “non-incarnation on this earth” falsely attributed to Theosophists, being proved an error, I now pass to other objections.

We have little to say to Madame Sophie Rosen, having met her refutations when explaining the errors in the translator’s deductions—very logical and accurate deductions—but drawn from misunderstood premises. But we would ask Mr. de Waroquier where he got the strange notion that our Fragment No. I is “nothing less than an inoculation offered” to the Spiritists?

Like all the Spiritists, he too, “already endowed with a doctrine based on the affirmation and the control of facts,” is doubtless right in refusing to learn the doctrine of the Occultists, as long as he holds to his own belief. But it is another error to say that this doctrine is forced on anyone. For our adversaries should learn once for all, that it is against our rules and regulations to make the Occult Sciences an object of propaganda. Furthermore, we have doctrines therein which have not yet been mentioned in the Fragments, and which are as diametrically opposed to the Spiritistic doctrines as they are to those of the Christians and even of the orthodox Hindûs. Although our Society, including many French and Russian Spiritists, English and American Spiritualists and Hindus from the banks of the Ganges, refuses to accept their respective {{Page aside|48}} beliefs, we, the Occultists of the Oriental School, are forced by our very statutes to RESPECT ALL OF THEM; never to discuss them in the presence of Fellows who may hold them; likewise never to criticize anyone’s religion in our journals, even that of individuals who have nothing to do with our Society—unless we are forced to do so by a direct attack on our beliefs—as in the present case, or by some preposterous act of intolerance. Allowing none the right to attack us with impunity, we never attack anyone, and it would be difficult to find a word against Spiritism in our magazine, however far we may be from accepting its doctrines. As to the accusation that we wish to inoculate others with the doctrines said to be ours, just because one of our Fragments has been translated—is as if we were to accuse our friend Mr. Leymarie of conspiring against Occultism because one of his articles on his beliefs should be found translated in the Revue Spirite by one of our Occultists! Spiritism is as opposed to our teachings as is Occultism to those of the late Allan Kardec. That is no reason, however, for us to start lecturing against and ridiculing the latter, making fulminating speeches against the Psychological Society, the Western Spiritists and their predecessors, and extolling Oriental Theosophy and Occultism as the only beliefs fit to exist. Let those who do not accept our beliefs leave them alone and hold to their own. Since we never criticize their doctrines, and they have never been offered ours, why should they criticize them? Replying to Madame S. Rosen, we say: “You are deceiving yourself, dear Madame.” Theosophy (Occultism would be more correct) in dividing the human being into entities called: Animal intelligence, higher intelligence, Spirit, etc., does not assert, nor even imply “the disintegration and consequently the destruction of the conscious, individual Ego.” On the contrary, Occultism protects it from every kind of profanation, from the sacrilegious outrage of making it bear the heavy burden of absurdities, lies and impostures, of the goblins and larvae which have been adorned with that divine name, that does not belong to them nor does it suit {{Page aside|49}} them in many cases. Do the Spiritists wish us to believe that all their “Spirits” are Angels of Light, that they always show themselves true and honest, that they have never lied or deceived anyone? Really! We Occultists say that in our estimation it is a horrible blasphemy to give these impermanent beings the holy name of “Spirit,” and Soul! Why should we not give to everything its proper name? Where is the chaos and the destruction of the “conscious ego” in that most necessary division? Can one doubt that the intelligence and the soul are two different things; that the first can be destroyed by just a blow on the head with a hammer without the soul feeling it at all? The aggregations which the Spiritists call memory, intelligence, etc., are only the transitory attributes of the fifth principle, which itself is also temporary. To render the conscious ego eternal, in short to assure its immortality, it is absolutely necessary that it be transferred (not in its terrestrial entirety, but in the essence of its spirituality) to the 6th and 7th Principles, to the monad, in fact. We appeal to the philosophy of the whole world to inform us if we can accept, while remaining within the bounds of rigid logic, the absolute immortality of the divine soul, while firmly believing that the five principles which clothe it during its earthly existences, continue with the divine essence attached to it like barnacles to the sides of a ship ! What are these principles or “Entities”?

2nd Principle: LIFE or rather the vital ray which animates us and which is borrowed from the inexhaustible reservoir of the Universal Life. 3rd Principle: the astral body, the double or doppelgänger, the shadow of, or emanation from, the physical body, which disappears when the latter ceases to exist. Every living being has one, even the beasts; and it is called illusory because it has no material consistence, properly speaking, and cannot last. “Illusory!” exclaims Mr. Rosen. “Then it does not exist at all. How, in that case, can it vanish at death?” Does not a shadow {{Page aside|50}} exist as long as it is there—and does it not vanish with the cause that produced it? 4th Principle: the will which directs Principles 1 and 2. 5th Principle: the human or animal intelligence, or the instinct of the brute. 6th Principle: the spiritual or divine soul, and the 7th Principle: the SPIRIT. The last is what the Christians call Logos, and we—our personal God. We know no other; because the absolute and the One—that is the All—Parabrahm, is an impersonal principle beyond all human speculation.

To Mr. de Waroquier, who asks from whom we have received our facts, and who says: “As throughout the earth there is only one and the same kind of communicating beings [how does he know?] these can be nothing but the périsprit-remains of the deceased persons, and their shells, etc.,” we would reply: you are deceiving yourself, you who never read The Theosophist and do not know the whole truth about us. We have received our doctrines from those who do not need, in order to explore and learn the mysteries of the Universe, to avail themselves of either the disincarnate spirits or their “shells,” and what an enormous advantage that is! The Spiritists, on the other hand, who, like the blind, have to employ the eyes of others to cognize objects too far away to be touched, are only able to learn what those “spirits” are willing to tell them. The more fortunate among them, having had to trust to somnambulists who are not able to guide at will their temporarily liberated souls, cannot always receive correct impressions because their soul (the fifth principle) is itself guided by the magnetizer, whose preconceived and often fixed ideas dominate the subject and make him speak in the direction in which they tend more or less themselves, while the adepts do not suffer from these unavoidable limitations. For them, the evidence is not second-hand, nor post-mortem, but really the evidence of their own faculties, purified and prepared through long years to receive it correctly and without any foreign influence that would make them deviate from the straight road. For thousands {{Page aside|51}} of years, one initiate after another, one great hierophant succeeded by other hierophants, has explored and re-explored the invisible Universe, the worlds of the interplanetary regions, during long periods when his conscious soul, united to the spiritual soul and to the ALL, free and almost omnipotent, left his body. It is not only the initiates belonging to the “Great Brotherhood of the Himâlayas,” who give us these doctrines; it is not only the Buddhist Arhats who teach them, but they are found in the secret writings of Saˆkarâchârya, of Gautama Buddha, of Zoroaster, as well as in those of the Rishis.