Blavatsky H.P. - Facts and Ideations: Difference between revisions

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The current of public attraction runs towards psychic phenomena and is becoming in Europe stronger every year. Even German science and philosophy are beginning to feel interested: Professor Virchoff of Berlin—once the sternest opponent of the claims of mediumship and the personal enemy of Dr. Slade, is said to have fallen a victim to evidence, and is preparing to investigate psychic manifestations with scales and crucible. On the other hand the well known philosopher, E. von Hartmann has just published a new work, called Der Spiritismus.

{{Page aside|342}}The writer of these lines is not yet acquainted with the views held on spiritualism proper by that distinguished disciple of Schopenhauer; but the probability that he attributes most of its phenomena to “illusion,” is very great. The evening takes its character generally from the day that has preceded it; hence the Philosophy of the Unconscious should find itself reflected in Der Spiritismus. Phenomena will not be denied, but their objective and subjective, their physical and mental manifestations will be grouped together, and crammed within the narrow boundaries of that philosophy of negation that would see in our notions of matter the “mere illusions of our senses”—in each and every case.

“Not at all” was the quick answer. “I shall not need it until this day fortnight, not one hour earlier. My little girl has been taken ill with measles to-day, and will not die before that time.”

Two days later she received a letter informing her that her own child had been taken ill with measles, and on the very morning of the visit of the mysterious old lady in black. The disease had become serious and the mother was summoned in all haste. Thirteen days later the child died, just a fortnight after the order received for the funeral clothes. But the little old woman never came to claim them for her grand-child. A month passed, and “the little cap and long gown” are there still as a living remembrance to the bereaved mother of her own loss and sorrow.

This weird event reminds one of the story told of the way in which Mozart’s “Requiem” came into existence—remarks the correspondent of Swyet, a Russian paper.

A well known resident of Warsaw, the rich Count O— of B—, finding himself in the first stage of consumption, and when there was as yet no immediate danger to his life, called his friends and relatives into the house of his parents and declared to them that he was going to die on the following day at 12 o’clock precisely, notwithstanding the protests of those present. He coolly gave an order for a coffin to be made and brought into his room on that same night. After that, he sent for a priest, and paid him in advance for a certain number of masses and requiems; made his will, and ended by sending printed letters of invitation to his own funeral to a number of his friends and acquaintances. The black-bordered cards were addressed by himself, in his own hand-writing, and appointed the exact date and hour of the solemn ceremony for the transfer of the body from the house to the cathedral; as also the day of the burial. On the next day, as foretold, he dressed himself in a black evening suit, white tie, and gloves which he carefully buttoned, after which, placing himself in the coffin a few minutes before the clock struck twelve, he laid himself out in prescribed form, and expired at the appointed hour. The case appeared so strange to the authorities, that an autopsy was ordered: but no traces of poison or violent death by other means were found.

Was this prevision, or a consequence of a fixed idea; of an imagination so strongly overexcited, that death had to become subservient to the thought? Who can say?

Mozart wrote his “Requiem” mentioned above under the firm belief that this chef-d’oeuvre of his genius, was written for himself; that it would be heard for the first {{Page aside|346}}time over his own remains. When death was fast approaching he called for the partiture and addressing those present, musingly asked: “Did I not tell you truly that it was for myself that I composed this death chant!” The order for the latter was given to him as is well known in a strange vision or dream, and Wakley thinks that John Hunter has solved the mystery of such presentiments in one sentence––“if mystery it can be called” he adds scepticaIly. “We sometimes”—says the great physiologist, “feel within ourselves that we shall not live; for the living powers become weak, and the nerves communicate the intelligence to the brain.”

To this Wakley also adds that certain circumstances when health is failing, are often accepted as omens. He says, “The order for the ‘Requiem’ with Mozart, the dreams with Fletcher, turned the current of their thoughts to the grave.” But forthwith the learned sceptic contradicts his own theory by narrating the case of Wolsey, reminding us somewhat of the one just mentioned that happened at Warsaw. The probability of near dissolution, can certainly turn “the current of the thought” to an intimate assurance of death; when, however, that assurance makes us foresee and point out the exact hour, to the minute, of our death, there must be something besides the “natural current of thought,” to help and guide our intuition so unerringly. In Wakley’s own words, “The case of Wolsey was singular.” The morning before he died he asked Cavendish the hour and was answered, “Past eight.” “Eight!”—said Wolsey—“that cannot be;—eight of the clock, nay, nay, it cannot be eight of the clock, for by eight of the clock shall you lose your master.” The day he miscalculated, the hour came true. On the following morning, as the clock struck eight, his troubled spirit passed from life.

While rejecting the theory of Cavendish that Wolsey had received a revelation, Wakley suspects “from the way in which the fact had taken possession of his mind—that he (Wolsey) relied on astrological prediction, which had the credit of a revelation in his own esteem.”

MAN is composed of two bodies, the internal and the external; the inner one being moreover, double, i.e., having, in its turn, a semi-physical outer shell which serves as the astral being only during the life-time of man; while the latter is still in seeming health, the dissolution of the former, or rather of its outer shell, may have already begun. For during its captivity in the living body the “double” —or that covering of the astral form that alone survives— is too closely bound by its jailor (man), too much encumbered with the physical particles derived from the prison of flesh within which it is confined, not to imperiously require, before the astral form proper is set entirely free, to be thrown off from the latter. Thus, this preliminary process of purification may be justly called “the dissolution of the inner man,” and it begins much earlier than the agony or even the final disease of the physical man. Let us admit so much and then ask: why should we require, in such a case, in order to account for the insight some persons have of the hour of their death,—to explain the phenomenon by “revelation” from without, supernaturalism, or the still more unsatisfactory hypothesis of a purely physiological character as given by Hunter and Wakley, and that explain to us moreover nothing at all? During and after {{Page aside|348}}the dissolution of the “double,”<ref>That such dissolution has to precede that of the physical body, is proved to us by several things. One of these is the well ascertained fact (to those, of course, who believe in such facts) that the astral doubles of living men—of sorcerers for instance—fear steel, and may be wounded by sword or fire; their wounds, moreover, reacting upon and leaving marks and scars upon the physical shells—whereas the astral bodies of even the “Elementary apparitions”—cannot be hurt.—Ed.</ref> the darkness of our human ignorance beginning to be dispelled, there are many things we can see. Among these, things hidden in futurity, the nearest events of which, overshadowing the purified “soul,” have become to her as the present. The “former-self” is making room for the actual-self, the latter to be transformed in its turn, after the final dissolution of both the “double” and the physical body into the “Eternal Ego.” Thus the “actual-self” may pass its knowledge to the physical brain of man; and thus also we may see and hear the precise hour of our death striking on the clock of eternity. It is made visible to us through the decaying nature of our dying “double,” the latter surviving us during a very short period, if at all,<ref>When the “double” of the living man has been disintegrated before the death of man, it is annihilated for ever. When, however, death comes suddenly, it may survive the body that held it captive, but then, the process of dissolution going on outside of the dead body, the “soul” suffers, and in its impatience tries often to throw off the particles that encumber its freedom and chain it to the earth, upon the living—says the MSS. of the Copt Terentius. The cases of accidental deaths and suicides are fairly described in Mr. A. P. Sinnett’s “Fragments of Occult Truth” by a Lay Chela (See The Theosophist). Suicides fare the worst.—Ed.<br>

{{HPB-CW-comment|[This text can also be found in Chapter vi of Esoteric Buddhism, by A. P. Sinnett.—Comp.]}}</ref> and through the newly acquired powers of the purified “soul” (the higher tetraktis or quaternary) as yet in its integral whole, and which is already possessing itself of those faculties that are in store for it, on a higher plane. Through our “soul” it is then that we see, clearer and still clearer, as we approach the end; and it is through the throbs of dissolution that horizons of vaster, profounder knowledge are drawn on, bursting upon our mental {{Page aside|349}}vision, and becoming with every hour plainer to our inner eye. Otherwise, how account for those bright flashes of memory, for the prophetic insight that comes as often to the enfeebled grandsire, as to the youth who is passing away? The nearer some approach death, the brighter becomes their long lost memory and the more correct the previsions. The unfoldment of the inner faculties increases as life-blood becomes more stagnant.

All of the above definitions are found incorrect by Professor Wagner, as well they may be. They sketch only the external side of life without touching its essence. The universal manifestation of life, said the lecturer, rises progressively in all its phenomena from the simplest forms toward the most complex. “What then may be the causes, what are the forces,” he asks, “that govern life and modify it? It is from this standpoint that we shall examine the life-phenomenon. Life is a chemical manifestation, we are told by the majority of our physiologists. Chemism is the prominent feature in vegetable and animal organisms.”

Schelling declared that “life is an aspiration toward individuality; it is the synthesis, harmonizing those processes that are accomplished in the organism.” Then how can we believe, enquires the lecturer, “that this individuality disappears with our death? The soil of the province of Champagne consists of microscopical shells, the whole city of Paris is built on a soil that is the remaining relic of organic life. In nature, that which was is ever preparing that which will be. Life is an ENERGY [the ONE LIFE of Esoteric Philosophy?—Ed.]. All individual energies have, sooner or later, to merge into, and become one with, the UNIVERSAL ENERGY.

Are but sunbeams lifted higher.”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[In Christus: A Mystery. Part II: “The Golden Legend.”]}}</ref>}}

{{Page aside|351}}The spiritual SUN within which they merge finally, not to disappear but to return to earth as other sunbeams, is no “Land” from whence visitors can appear to us in their individuality. A little heat left behind is not the sunbeam, but the remnant of its chemical action, as the photograph is not the person it represents but his reflection. But:—

If for “necromancer” we write “medium,” the lines quoted will represent the hidden spirit and object of the learned lecturer who, nevertheless, winds up his lecture by a remark that no Vedantin would disavow. Prof. Wagner is a well known orthodox spiritualist. How then can he, who shows on undeniable and scientific grounds that all the “individual energies,” i.e., “souls,” merge into, and finally become one with “universal energy” (the PARABRAHM of the Vedanta) or the universal soul; how can he harmonize this belief with that in the “spirits” of spiritualism? It is a strange contradiction. For our spirit is either the “sunbeam” of Longfellow’s poetical metaphor, or it is only “dancing in the sunbeam” agreeably to James Duff’s imagery. It cannot be both.

Life and death are as much of a mystery to the man of science, as they are to the spiritualist and the profane unbeliever. The less they talk of it, in the present chaotic state of knowledge with reference to that great riddle, the better for the truth. Modern science and spiritualism are two opposite poles. One denies point-blank everything outside chemical action and matter, the other by its own fanciful arrangement sets both at nought; and thus the middle ground of sound philosophy and logic is abandoned. Science will not hear of the metaphysics of the spiritualists, and the latter will not admit the theory of even that transcendental chemical action that the Theosophists show as playing a more important part in the likenesses of their {{Page aside|352}}dead—that so bewilder people—than the spiritual “energy” of disembodied friends.

However, that is as moot question that we shall leave the combatants who are directly interested to settle among themselves. Both claim to be guided by the logic of facts, and both claim for their respective opinions the name of “philosophy,” and so far—both are right and both are wrong. The method of materialistic exact science is that philosophy that—

The “philosophy” of the spiritualists consists in rejecting every other philosophy save their own. They will prove a formidable foe to the former however. The men of science call spiritualism a “mischievous superstition” as Pliny and the men of his day called rising Christianity “a most pernicious sect.” They and the leaders of Spiritualism have a mutual right to complain of each other; for as Fielding has it, “if superstition renders a man a fool,—scepticism makes him MAD.” Neither of the two enemies, however, knows anything of the mysteries of life and death; though both behave as if each of them had become the sole confidants of Nature, in whose ear the weird Sphinx had whispered the word of her great riddle. The Materialist scorns death, he fears him not, he says, for in his sight there is no “hereafter.” The Spiritualist welcomes “the Angel with the amaranthine wreath,” singing “Oh Death, where is thy sting?” etc. And yet, ten to one, the majority on both sides prefer life to that change which, according to their respective views, disintegrates the one into chemical molecules, and transforms the other into a dematerialized Angel!

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