Blavatsky H.P. - Occult or Exact Science: Difference between revisions

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Ecce signum! Behold the sign foreseen in a brighter future; the problem that will be the question of the forthcoming age, that every thoughtful, earnest father will be asking himself with regard to his children’s education in the XXth century. And let it be stated at once, that by “Occult Science” neither the life of a chela nor the austerities of an ascetic are here meant; but simply the study of that which alone can furnish the key to the mysteries of nature, and unveil the problems of the universe and of psycho-physical man––even though one should not feel inclined to go any deeper.

Every new discovery made by modern science vindicates the truths of the archaic philosophy. The true occultist is acquainted with no single problem that esoteric science is unable to solve, if approached in the right direction; the scientific bodies of the West have as yet no phenomenon of natural science that they can fathom to its innermost depths, or explain in all its aspects. Exact science fails to do so—in this cycle, for reasons that will be given further on. Nevertheless the pride of the age, which revolts against the intrusion into the empire of science of old especially of transcendental—truths, is growing every year more intolerant. Soon the world will behold it soaring in the clouds of self-sufficiency like a new tower of Babel, to share, perchance, the fate of the Biblical monument.

In a recent scientific work on Anthropology,<ref>Bulletin de la Société d’Anthropologie, 3e fascic., p. 384. [In de Mirville, Des Esprits, etc., Vol. II, 2nd Mémoire, p. 22.]</ref> one can read the following: “It is then given to us, at last, to know [?], to grasp, to handle and measure the forces through which it is claimed, that God proceeded. . . . . We have made electricity our postman, light our draughts-man, affinity our journeyman,” etc., etc. This is in a {{Page aside|56}}French work. One who knows something of the perplexities of exact science, of the mistakes and daily confessions of her staff, feels inclined, after reading such pompous stuff, to exclaim with the malcontent of the Bible: Tradidit mundum ut non sciant. Verily—“the world was delivered to them that they should never know it.”

How likely the scientists are to succeed in this direction may be inferred from the fact that the great Humboldt himself could give expression to such erroneous axioms as this one: “Science begins for man only when his mind has mastered MATTER!” <ref>Kosmos, Vol. I, pp. 3 and 76 (with same ideas).</ref> The word “spirit” for “matter” might perhaps have expressed a greater truth. But E. Renan would not have complimented the venerable author of the Kosmos in the terms he did, had the term matter been replaced by spirit.

I intend to give a few illustrations to show that the knowledge of matter alone, with the quondam “imponderable” force—whatever the adjective may have meant with the French Academy and Royal Society at the time it was invented—is not sufficient for the purposes of true science. Nor will it ever prove efficient to explain the simplest phenomenon even in objective physical nature, let alone the abnormal cases in which physiologists and biologists at present manifest such interest. As Father Secchi, the famous Roman astronomer expressed it in his work,<ref>L’unità delle Forze Fisiche. {{HPB-CW-comment|[Both Humboldt and Secchi quoted in de Mirville, op. cit., pp. 18 and 31.—Comp.]}}</ref> “if but a few of the new forces were proven, they would necessitate the admission in space of agents of quite another order than those of gravitation.”

“Now, mama, I love you. You are good and kind to me to-day. Your words are quite blue”. . . . .

“Your words are all blue—because they are so caressing, but when you scold me they are red . . . . . . so red! But it is worse when you fly in a passion with papa for then they are orange . . . horrid . . . like that”. . .. .

After that the little sensitive was heard very often associating sounds with colours. The melody played by the mother on the piano threw her into ecstasies of delight; she saw “such beautiful rainbows,” she explained, but when her aunt played, it was “fire-works and stars, brilliant stars shooting pistols—and then . . . bursting. . . .”

In a large Russian city, on the banks of the Volga, stands an hospital with a lunatic asylum attached to it. There a poor woman was locked up for over twenty years —to the day of her death in fact—as a “harmless” though insane patient. No other proofs of her insanity could be found on the case-books than the fact that the splash and murmur of the river-waves produced the finest “God’s rainbows” for her; while the voice of the superintendent caused her to see “black and crimson”—the colours of the Evil one.

About that same period, namely in 1840, something similar to this phenomenon was heralded by the French {{Page aside|58}}papers. Such an abnormal state of feelings—physicians thought in those days—could be due but to one reason; such impressions whenever experienced without any traceable cause, denoted an ill-balanced mind, a weak brain—likely to lead its possessor to lunacy. Such was the decree of science. The views of the piously inclined, supported by the affirmations of the village curés, inclined the other way. The brain had nought to do with the “obsession” for it was simply the work or tricks of the much slandered “old gentleman” with cloven foot and shining horns. Both the men of learning and the superstitious “good women” have had somewhat to alter their opinions since 1840.

Even in that early period and before the “Rochester” wave of spiritualism had swept over any considerable portion of civilized society in Europe, it was shown that the same phenomenon could be produced by means of various narcotics and drugs. Some bolder people, who feared neither a charge of lunacy nor the unpleasant prospect of being regarded as wards in “Old Nick’s Chancery,” made experiments and declared the results publicly. One was Théophile Gautier, the famous French author

Few are those acquainted with the French literature of that day, who have not read the charming story told by that author, in which he describes the dreams of an opium-eater. To analyse the impressions at first hand, he took a large dose of hashish. “My hearing” he writes, “acquired marvellous capacities: I heard the music of the flowers; sounds—green, red and blue—poured into my ears in clearly perceptible waves of smell and colour. A tumbler upset, the creaking of an arm-chair, a word whispered in the lowest tones vibrated and resounded within me like so many claps of thunder. At the gentlest contact with objects—furniture or human body—I heard prolonged sounds, sighs like the melodious vibrations of an Aeolian harp. . . . . .” <ref>La Presse, July 10, 1840.</ref>

No doubt the powers of human fancy are great; no doubt delusion and hallucination may be generated for a shorter or a longer period in the healthiest human brain either naturally or artificially. But natural phenomena that are not included in that “abnormal” class do exist; and they have at last taken forcible possession even of scientific minds. The phenomena of hypnotism, of thought-transference, of sense-provoking, merging as they do into one another and manifesting their occult existence in our phenomenal world, succeeded finally in arresting the attention of some eminent scientists. Under the leadership of the famous Dr. Charcot, of the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, several famous men of science took the phenomena in hand—in France, Russia, England, Germany and Italy. For over fifteen years they have been experimenting, investigating, theorising. And what is the result? The sole explanation given to the public, to those who thirst to become acquainted with the real, the intimate nature of the phenomena, with their productive cause and genesis—is that the sensitives who manifest them are all HYSTERICAL! They are psychopates,<ref>A Greek compound term coined by the Russian Medical Faculties.</ref> and neurosists <ref>From the word neurosis.</ref>—we are told—no other cause underlying the endless variety of manifestations than that of a purely physiological character.

“Hysterical hallucination” is thus doomed to become, as it appears, the alpha and the omega of every phenomenon. At the same time science defines the word “hallucination” as “an error of our senses, shared by, and imposed (by that error) upon our intelligence.”<ref>Dictionnaire Médical.<br>

{{HPB-CW-comment|[It is most likely that the following work is meant: Dictionnaire des sciences médicales. Par une société de médecins et de chirurgiens. Publié par F. P. Chaumeton et F. V. Mérat de Vaumartoise. 60 vols. 1812-1822.––Compiler.]}}</ref> Now {{Page aside|60}}such hallucinations of a sensitive as are objective—the apparition of an “astral body” for instance—are not only perceptible by the sensitive’s (or medium’s) “intelligence,” but are likewise shared by the senses of those present. Consequently the natural inference is that all those witnesses are also hysterical.

Of all the problems of medical philosophy, hallucination seems, at this rate, the most difficult to solve, the most obstinate to get rid of. It could hardly be otherwise, for it is one of the mysterious results of our dual nature, the bridge thrown over the chasm that separates the world of matter from the world of spirit. None but those willing to cross to the other side can appreciate it, or ever recognize the noumenon of its phenomena. And without doubt a manifestation is quite disconcerting to anyone who witnesses it for the first time. Proving to the materialist the creative faculty, the potency of man’s spirit, naturalising before the churchman the “miracle,” and supernaturalising, so to say, the simplest effects of natural causes, hallucination cannot be accepted yet for what it really is, and could hardly be forced upon the acceptation of either the materialist or the believing Christian, since one is as strong in his denial as the other is in his affirmation. “Hallucination,” says an authority quoted by Brierre de Boismont,<ref>Des Hallucinations, p. 3.</ref> “is the reproduction of the material sign of the idea.” Hallucination, it is said, has no respect for age or for merit; or, if a fatal experience is worth anything—“a physician who would give it too much of his attention or would study it for too long a time and too seriously, would be sure to end his career in the ranks of his own patients.”

This is an additional proof, that “hallucination” was hardly ever studied “too seriously” as self-sacrifice is not {{Page aside|61}}quite the most prominent feature of the age. But if so catching, why should we not be permitted the bold and disrespectful suggestion that the biologists and physiologists of Dr. Charcot’s school, have themselves become hallucinated with the rather one-sided scientific idea that such phenomenal hallucinations are all due to Hysteria?

However it may be, whether a collective hallucination of our medical lights or the impotency of material thought, the simplest phenomenon—of the class accepted and verified by men of science in the year 1885—remains as unexplained by them, as it was in 1840.

If, admitting for argument sake, that some of the common herd out of their great reverence—often amounting to fetich worship—for science and authority, do accept the dictum of the scientists that every phenomenon, every “abnormal” manifestation, is due to the pranks of epileptic hysteria, what shall the rest of the public do? Shall they believe that Mr. Eglinton’s self-moving slate pencil is also labouring under a fit of the same epilepsy as its medium—even though he does not touch it? Or that the prophetic utterances of the seers, the grand inspired apostles of all ages and religions, were simply the pathological results of hysteria? Or again that the “miracles” of the Bible, those of Pythagoras, Apollonius and others—belong to the same family of abnormal manifestations, as the hallucinations of Dr. Charcot’s Mlle. Alphonsine—or whatever her name—and her erotic descriptions and her poetry—“in consequence of the swelling with gases of her great bowel” (sic)? Such a pretension is likely to come to grief. First of all “hallucination” itself, when it is really the effect of a physiological cause, would have to be explained—but it never has been. Taking at random some out of the hundreds of definitions by eminent French physicians (we have not those of the English at hand) what do we learn about “hallucinations”? We have given Dr. Brierre de Boismont’s “definition,” if it can be called one: now let us see a few more.

Dr. L. F. Lélut calls it—“a sensorial and perceptive folly”; Dr. Chomel—“a common illusion of the {{Page aside|62}}sensorium”; <ref>See Dictionary of Medical Terms.</ref> Dr. F. Leuret—“an illusion intermediary between sensation and conception” (Fragments Psychologiques sur la Folie); Dr. Michéa—“a perceptive delirium “(Du Délire des Sensations); Dr. Calmeil—“an illusion due to a vicious modification of the nervous substance” (De la Folie, Vol. I); etc., etc. <ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[These brief excerpts are taken from Eudes de Mirville, Des Esprits, etc., Vol. I, p. 86 (3rd. ed., 1854).––Comp.]}}</ref>

The above will not make the world, I am afraid, much wiser than it is. For my part, I believe the theosophists would do well to keep to the old definition of hallucinations (theophania) <ref>Communication with Gods.</ref> and folly, made some two thousands of years back by Plato, Virgilius, Hippocrates, Galen and the medical and theological schools of old. “There are two kinds of folly, one of which is produced by the body, the other sent to us by the gods.”

About ten years ago, when Isis Unveiled was being written, the most important point the work aimed at was the demonstration of the following: (a) the reality of the Occult in nature; (b) the thorough knowledge of, and familiarity with, all such occult domains amongst “certain men,” and their mastery therein; (c) hardly an art or science known in our age, that the Vedas have not mentioned; and (d) that hundreds of things, especially, mysteries of nature—in abscondito as the alchemists called it—were known to the Aryas of the pre-mahabharata period, which are unknown to us, the modern sages of the XIXth century.

A new proof of it is now being given. It comes as a fresh corroboration from some recent investigations in France by learned “specialists” (?) with regard to the confusion made by their neurosists and psychomaniacs between colour and sound, “musical impressions” and colour impressions.

This special phenomenon was first approached in Austria in 1873 by Dr. Nüssbaumer. After him it began {{Page aside|63}}to be seriously investigated in Germany by Bleuler and Lehmann; in Italy by Velardi, Bareggi and a few others, and it was finally and quite recently taken up by Dr. Pedrono of France. The most interesting accounts of colour-sound phenomena may, however, be found in La Nature (No. 620, April 18, 1885, pp. 306-07, and No. 626, May 30, 1885, pp. 406-08), in an article contributed by A. de Rochas who experimented with a certain gentleman whom he names “M.H.P.”

The following is a short résumé of his experience.

M.H.P. is a man of about 57 years of age, an advocate by profession, now living in one of the country faubourgs of Paris, a passionate amateur of natural sciences which he has studied very seriously, fond of music, though no musician himself, a great traveller and as great a linguist. M.H.P. had never read anything about that peculiar phenomenon that makes certain people associate sound with colour, but was subject to it from his very boyhood. Sound of every description had always generated in him the impression of colours. Thus the articulation of the vowels produces in his brain the following results:—The letter A—appears to him dark red; E—white; I—black; O—yellow; U—blue. The double-vowelled letters: Ai—chestnut colour; Ei—greyish white; Eu—light blue; Oi—dirty-yellow; Ou—yellowish. The consonants are nearly all of a dark grey hue; while a vowel, or a double vowel forming with a consonant a syllable, colours that syllable with its own tint. Thus, ba, ca, da are all of red-grey colour; bi, ci, di—ash coloured; bo, co, do—yellow grey, and so on. S ending a word and pronounced in a hissing way, like the Spanish words los campos, imparts to the syllable that precedes it a metallic glittering. The colour of the word depends thus on the colour of the letters that compose it, so that to M.H.P. human speech appears in the shape of many-coloured, or variegated ribbons coming out of persons’ mouths, the colours of which are determined by those of the vowels in the sentences, separated one from the other by the greyish stripes of the consonants.

So it is with figures verbally pronounced; but when read mentally they reflect for him the colour of the ink they are written or printed with. The form, therefore, has nought to do with such colour phenomena. While these impressions do not generally take place outside of himself, but perform, so to say, on the platform of his brain, we find other sensitives offering far more curious phenomena than “M.H.P.” does.

Besides Galton’s interesting chapter upon this subject, in his Inquiries into human faculty and its development, we find in the London Medical Record a sensitive describing his impressions in this wise: “As soon as I hear the sounds of a guitar, I see vibrating chords, surrounded by coloured vapours.” The piano produces the same: “coloured images begin to float over the keys.” One of {{Page aside|65}}Dr. Pedrono’s subjects in Paris <ref>Annales d’Oculistique, Nov. and Dec., 1882.—Journal de Médecine de l’Ouest, 4me Trimestre, 1882.</ref> has always colour impressions outside of himself. “Whenever I hear a chorus composed of several voices,” he says, “I feel a great number of coloured points floating over the heads of the singers. I feel them, for my eye receives no definite impression; nevertheless, I am compelled to look at them and while examining them I feel perplexed, for I cannot find those bright coloured spots where I look at them, or rather feel them.”

Science investigates such manifestations, recognizes their reality, and—remains powerless to explain them. “Neurosis and hysteria” is the only answer obtained, and the “canine hallucinations” of the French academicians quoted in Isis [Vol. I, p. 178], have remained valid to this day as an explanation, or a universal solvent of all such phenomena. But it is only natural after all, that science should be unable to account at any rate for this particular phenomenon of light and sound, since its theory of light itself has never been fully verified, nor made complete to the present day.

Let then our scientific opponents play for a while longer at “blindman’s buff” amongst phenomena, with no ground to stand upon but their eternal physiological hypotheses. The time is not perhaps far off when they shall be compelled to change their tactics or—confess themselves defeated by even such elementary phenomena as described above. But, whatever physiologists may, or may not say, or do; whatever their scientific explanations, hypotheses and conclusions at present or in the future, {{Page aside|66}}modern phenomena are fast cycling back for their true explanation, to the archaic Vedas, and other “Sacred Books of the East.” For it is an easy matter to show, that the Vedic Aryans were quite familiar with all such mysteries of sound and colour. Mental correlations of the two senses of “sight” and “hearing “ were as common a fact in their days, as that of a man in our own seeing objective things before him with his eyes wide open at noon.

Any student of Occultism, the youngest of chelas who has just begun reading esoterically his Vedas, can suspect what the real phenomenon means; simply—a cyclic return of human organisms to their primitive form during the 3rd and even the 4th Root Races of what is known as the Antediluvian periods. Everything conspires to prove it, even the study of such exact sciences as philology and comparative mythology. From the hoary days of antiquity, from the very dawn of the grand civilizations of those races that preceded our Fifth Race, and the traces of which now lie buried at the very bottom of the oceans, the fact in question was known. That which is now considered as an abnormal phenomenon, was in every probability the normal state of the antediluvian Humanity. These are no vain words, for here are two of the many proofs.

In consequence of the abundant data gleaned by linguistic research, philologists are beginning to raise their voices and are pointing to some very suggestive, though as yet unexplained facts. (1) All the words indicative of human representations and conceptions of light and sound are found to have their derivation from the same roots.<ref>Introduction à la mythologie de l’Odyssée, Voyevodsky.<br>

{{HPB-CW-comment|[Reference is here made to the Russian historian Leopold Franzovich Voyevodsky, and to his doctorate thesis entitled Vvedenie v mifologiiu odissei (Introduction to the Mythology of the Odyssey, Odessa, 1881). It is very difficult to obtain, but may be consulted in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. It is not known why H.P.B. mentions this work with a French title, as no translation of it is known to exist. Vide VOYEVODSKY in the Bio-Bibliographical Index.––Compiler.]}}</ref> {{Page aside|67}}(2) Mythology shows, in her turn, the evident law—the uniformity of which precludes the possibility of chance—that led the ancient symbologists to represent all their sun-gods and radiant deities—such as the Dawn, the Sun, Aurora, Phoebus, Apollo, etc.––connected in one way or the other with music and singing—with sound in short—associated with radiancy and colour.<ref>D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, Essay on the Bacchic Cults of the Indo-European antiquity, etc.</ref>