Blavatsky H.P. - Footnotes to A Glance at Theosophy from Outside: Difference between revisions

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<center>[Lucifer, Vol. III, No. 14, October, 1888, pp. 137-142]</center>

No true theosophist—the accused party least of all—believes in miracles, though every true theosophist ought to believe in the existence of` abnormal powers in man; "abnormal" because, so far, either misunderstood or denied. All such objective physical phenomena, however, are simply psychological “glamour,” i.e., if not witchery, at least “a charm on the eyes and senses.” This, people {{Page aside|132}}may call brutally “trick,” but since they are psychic, they cannot be physical: hence, no conjuring or “sleight of hand.” As well call “tricksters” the grave medical celebrities, who hypnotize their subjects to see things which have no reality! “Theosophical phenomena” differ from these in this: that while hypnotic hallucinations are suggested by the operator’s idle fancy, occult manifestations are produced by the will of the Occultist, that one or a hundred men should see realities, generally hidden from the profane, e.g., certain things and persons thousands of miles away, whose astral images are brought within the view of the audience. Thus a cup may never have been broken in reality, and yet people are made to see it shattered in atoms and then made whole. Is this a juggler’s trick? Occult phenomena are then simply a hundred-fold intensified hypnotism, and between the hypnotic hallucinations at the Salpêtrière and the magic of the East there is chiefly a question of degree.

—as Juvenal says,<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Satires, XIV, 173-176; though not identical to the poetical rendering used by H.P.B. from some unknown translation, this reference seems to be the one most likely meant.—Compiler.]}}</ref> even an honest and cautious doubt must be gratefully received. Moreover, there is a line of demarcation beyond which one ought rather to feel proud of being slandered, than otherwise. For Swift’s remark: “the worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as we usually find that to be the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at”—may serve as a consolation.