Blavatsky H.P. - Correspondence (1): Difference between revisions

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<center>[Lucifer, Vol. II, No. 8, April, 1888, pp. 155-160]</center>

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<center>To the Editors of Lucifer.</center>

{{Style P-Signature|Very truly yours,

“F. T. S.”}}}}

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EDITORS’ REPLY.—Our Correspondent seems to have been misled as to the state of consciousness which entities experience in Kama-loka. He seems to have formed his conceptions on the visions of living psychics and the revelations of living mediums. But all conclusions drawn from such data are vitiated by the fact, that a living organism intervenes between the observer and the Kama-loka state per se. There can be no conscious meeting in Kama-loka, hence no grief. There is no astral disintegration pari passu with the separation of the shell from the spirit.

According to the Eastern teaching the state of the deceased in Kama-loka is not what we, living men, would recognise as “conscious.” It is rather that of a person stunned and dazed by a violent blow, who has momentarily “lost his senses.” Hence in Kama-loka there is as a rule (apart from vicarious life and consciousness awakened through contact with mediums) no recognition of friends or relatives, and therefore such a case as stated here is impossible.

We meet those we loved only in Devachan, that subjective world of perfect bliss, the state which succeeds the Kama-loka, after the separation of the principles. In Devachan all our personal, unfulfilled spiritual desires and aspirations will be realised; for we shall not be living in the hard world of matter but in those subjective realms wherein a desire finds its instant realisation; because man himself is there a god and a creator.

Kama-loka may be compared to the dressing-room of an actor, in which he divests himself of the costume of the last part he played before rebecoming himself properly—the immortal Ego or the Pilgrim cycling in his Round of Incarnations. The Eternal Ego being stripped in Kama-loka of its lower terrestrial principles, with their passions and desires, it enters into the state of Devachan. And therefore it is said that only the purely spiritual, the nonmaterial emotions, affections, and aspirations accompany the Ego into that state of Bliss. But the process of stripping off the lower, the fourth and part of the fifth, principles is an unconscious one in all normal human beings. It is only in very exceptional cases that there is a slight return to consciousness in Kama-loka: and this is the case of very materialistic unspiritual personalities, who, devoid of the {{Page aside|165}}conditions requisite, cannot enter the state of absolute Rest and Bliss.

 

<center>To the Editors of Lucifer.</center>

(1) What books do you specially advise to be read in connection with Esoteric Buddhism? And any remarks upon them.

(6) In what light are Theosophists to regard the whole account in the late republication of the T.P.S. of the marriage of the Spirit daughter of Colonel Eaton with the Spirit son of Franklin Pearce?!

(7) In the Articles on “The Esoteric Character of the Gospels” I observe that as yet no notice has been taken of Prophecy and its alleged fulfilment in Jesus Christ. I have read these with intense interest, and regret that I was unable to obtain the first two numbers of Lucifer.

{{Style P-Signature|I am, Yours truly,

J. M.}}}}

EDITORS’ REPLY:––(1) Five Years of Theosophy, or better the back numbers of The Theosophist, and The Path, also Light on the Path.

When the general outlines have been mastered, other books can be recommended; but it must always be borne in mind that with very few exceptions all books on these subjects are the works of students, not of Masters, and must therefore be studied with caution and a well-balanced mind. All theories should be tested by the reason and not accepted en bloc as revelation.

(3) Nothing but what they give out themselves—which is very little. Read Patañjali’s Yoga Philosophy; but with caution, for it is very apt to mislead, being written in symbolic language. Compare the article on “Sankhya and Yoga Philosophy” in The Theosophist for March.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Vol. IX, No. 102, March, 1888, pp. 342-56. Lecture read by the Secretary, Mr. A. J. Cooper-Oakley, before the Convention of The Theosophical Society, Adyar, December, 1887.—Compiler.]}}</ref>

(4) Wait for H. P. Blavatsky’s forthcoming work: The Secret Doctrine.

(5) See The Secret Doctrine, also Isis Unveiled, and various articles in The Theosophist, especially “About the Mineral Monad” (also reprinted in Five Years of Theosophy).<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Vide Volume V (1883), pp. 171-75, of the present Series.—Compiler.]}}</ref>

<center>To the Editors of Lucifer.</center>

{{Style P-Quote|In the last issue of Lucifer is a paper “Self-Evident Truths and Logical Deductions.” The paper is important, but is not, in my opinion, sufficiently clear. “One is a Unity and cannot be divided into two Ones.” This is so if we understand Unity to be many entities, parts, or forms, organised into a body of harmony so forming a Unity.}}

{{Style P-Signature|Respectfully yours,

J. W. HUNTER.}}

Edinburgh, 29th March, 1888.}}

EDITORS’ REPLY.—According to the Eastern philosophy a unity composed of “many entities, parts, or forms” is a compound unity on the plane of Maya—illusion or ignorance. The One universal divine Unity cannot be a differentiated whole, however much “organized into a body of harmony.” Organization implies external work out of materials at hand, and can never be connected with the self-existent, eternal, and unconditioned Absolute Unity.

This ONE SELF, absolute intelligence and existence, therefore non-intelligence and non-existence (to the finite and conditioned perception of man), is “impartite, beyond the range of speech and thought and is the substract of all” teaches Vedantasara in its introductory Stanza.

How, then, can the Infinite and the Boundless, the unconditioned and the absolute, be of any size? The question can only apply to a dwarfed reflection of the uncreate ray on the mayavic plane, or our phenomenal Universe; to one of the finite Elohim, who was most probably in the mind of our correspondent. To the (philosophically) untrained Pantheist, who identifies the objective Kosmos with the {{Page aside|168}}abstract Deity, and for whom Kosmos and Deity are synonymous terms, the form of the illusive objectivity must be the form of that Deity. To the (philosophically) trained Pantheist, the abstraction, or the noumenon, is the ever to be unknown Deity, the one eternal reality, formless, because homogeneous and impartite; boundless, because Omnipresent—as otherwise it would only be a contradiction in ideas not only in terms; and the concrete phenomenal form—its vehicle—no better than an aberration of the ever-deceiving physical senses.

 

“Is nature co-eternal with God?” It depends on what is meant by “nature.” If it is objective phenomenal nature, then the answer is—though ever latent in divine Ideation, but being only periodical as a manifestation, it cannot be co-eternal. But “abstract” nature and Deity, or what our correspondent calls “Self-existent cause or God,” are inseparable and even identical. Theosophy objects to the masculine pronoun used in connection with the Self-existent Cause, or Deity. It says IT—inasmuch as that “Cause” the rootless root of all—is neither male, female, nor anything to which an attribute—something always conditioned, finite, and limited—can be applied. The confession made by our esteemed correspondent that he “cannot think of anything of nature, spirit[!], soul or God [!!] without the ideas of size, form, number, and relation,” is a living example of the sad spirit of anthropomorphism in this age of ours. It is this theological and dogmatic anthropomorphism which has begotten and is the legitimate parent of materialism. If once we realize that form is merely a temporary perception dependent on our physical senses and the idiosyncrasies of our physical brain and has no existence, per se, then this illusion that formless cause cannot be causative of forms will soon vanish. To think of Space in relation to any limited area, basing oneself on its three dimensions of length, breadth, and thickness, is strictly in accordance with mechanical ideas; but it is inapplicable in metaphysics and transcendental philosophy. To say then that “The Truth of God is the Form of God,” is to ignore even the exotericism of the Old Testament. “And the Lord spake unto you out of the {{Page aside|169}}midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude. . . .” (Deut., iv, 12). And to think of the All-Evolver as something which has “size, form, number, and relation,” is to think of a finite and conditioned personal God, a part only of the ALL. And in such case, why should this part be better than its fellow-parts? Why not believe in Gods—the other rays of the All-Light? To say—“Among the gods who is like Thee O Lord” does not make the God so addressed really “the god of gods” or any better than his fellow-gods; it simply shows that every nation made a god of its own, and then, in its great ignorance and superstition, served and flattered and tried to propitiate that god. Polytheism on such lines, is more rational and philosophical than anthropomorphous monotheism.

To the Editors of Lucifer.

{{Style P-Quote|Several questions have of late occurred to me at the entry of the subject of Theosophy. . . . I am quite new to the study, and must perforce express myself crudely. I gather that an early result of entire devotion to an inner contemplative life, and a life also of fine unselfishness, such a life as is calculated to allow of the growth of faculties otherwise dormant, that a result of this life will be a growing recognition of the underlying unity of man and his surroundings, that to such a man truth will make itself known from within, and therefore will claim instant acceptance and unquestionable certitude; that in fact the longer that such a life is lived with unfading enthusiasm, the higher will the central spirit rise in self-assertion, the wider will be the survey of creation, and the more immediate the apprehension of truth; also that with these tends to develop a greater physical command of the forces of nature.

Now I submit that such a life as is here spoken of, is led by men who attain to none of these results. Most of us know Christians who seem never to have a selfish thought, who exist in an atmosphere of self-sacrifice for others, and whose leisure is all spent in meditation and in emotional prayer, which surely is seeking after truth. Yet they do not attain it. They fail to rise out of Christianity into Theosophy; they remain for ever limited to, and satisfied with the narrow space they move in. (1) It may be replied that they do expand slowly. Granted, for some of them. But my point is that there do exist (and one is enough for my purpose) men, and particularly women, leading lives both of spiritual meditation and of {{Page aside|170}}unselfishness, to whom nevertheless is not vouchsafed a clearer view of the great universe, a larger apprehension of Theosophic truth, nor any increased physical command of nature.

{{Style P-Signature|H.C.}}}}

EDITORS’ REPLY.—(1) Nowhere in the theosophic teachings was it stated that a life of entire devotion to one’s duty alone, or “a contemplative life,” graced even by “fine unselfishness” was sufficient in itself to awaken dormant faculties and lead man to the apprehension of final truths, let alone spiritual powers. To lead such life is an excellent and meritorious thing, under any circumstances, whether one be a Christian or a Mussulman, a Jew, Buddhist or Brahmin, and according to Eastern philosophy it must and will benefit a person, if not in his present, then in his future existence on earth, or what we call rebirth. But to expect that leading the best of lives helps one—without the help of philosophy and esoteric wisdom—to perceive “the soul of things” and develops in him “a physical command of the forces of nature,” i.e., endows him with abnormal or adept powers—is really too sanguine. Less than by any one else can such results be achieved by a sectarian of whatever exoteric creed. For the path to which his meditation is confined, and upon which his contemplation travels, is too narrow, too thickly covered with the weeds of dogmatic beliefs—the fruits of human fancy and error—to permit the pure ray of any Universal truth to shine upon it. His is a blind faith, and when his eyes open he has to give it up and cease being a “Christian” in the theological sense. The instance is not a good one. It is like pointing to a man immersed in “holy” water in a bathtub and asking why he has not learnt to swim in it, since he is sitting in such holy fluid. Moreover, “unfading enthusiasm” and “emotional prayer” are not exactly the conditions required for {{Page aside|171}}the achievement of true theosophic and spiritual development. These means can at best help to psychic development. If our correspondent is anxious to learn the difference between Spiritual and Psychic wisdom, between Sophia and Psyche, let him turn to the Greek text (the English translation is garbled) in the Epistle of James, iii, 15-16, and he will know that one is divine and the other terrestrial, “sensual devilish.”

(3) Both—i.e., persons in general, leading lives of spiritual meditation, and those who like John Stuart Mill live “always in the white light of exalted contemplation,” do not pursue truth in the right direction, and therefore they fail; moreover John Stuart Mill set up for himself an arbitrary standard of truth, inasmuch as he made his physical consciousness the final court of appeal. His was a case of a wonderful development of the intellectual and terrestrial side of psyche or soul, but Spirit he rejected as all Agnostics do. And how can any final truths be apprehended except by the Spirit, which is the only and eternal reality in Heaven as on Earth?

 

In the fourth number of Lucifer on page 328<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[December, 1887. Vide p. 299 of Vol. VIII in the present Series.—Compiler.]}}</ref> are the words:

{{Style P-Signature|“ONE WHO HUNGERS FOR SOME OF THIS KNOWLEDGE.”}}

It is certainly necessary to be an “Occultist” before the post-mortem states of man can be correctly understood {{Page aside|172}}and realised, for this can only be accomplished through the actual experience of one who has the faculty of placing his consciousness on the Kamalokic and Devachanic planes. But a good deal has been given out in The Theosophist. Much also can be learnt from the symbology not only of the Bible but of all religions, especially the Egyptian and the Hindu. Only again the key to that symbology is in the keeping of the Occult Sciences and their Custodians.