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HPB-SB-14-33: Difference between revisions
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| style="text-align:left; width:75%;" | September 16, 1882.] | |||
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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued|Letters on Theosophy. No. II.|14-32}} | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued|Letters on Theosophy. No. II.|14-32}} | ||
... | {{Style P-No indent|at the unwholesome bar to which they are invited. If they were of a very material sensual type in life, the enjoyments they will seek will be of a kind the indulgence of which in their disembodied state may readily be conceived even more prejudicial to their ''Karma'' than similar indulgences would have been in life. In such cases, ''facilis est descensus.'' Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which bind them to familiar scenes, they are enticed by the opportunities which mediums afford them to gratify these vicariously. They are the ''Pisachas'', the ''Incubi'' and ''Succubi'' of mediæval writings, the demons of thirst, gluttony, lust, and avarice, elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness, and cruelty, provoking their victims to crimes, and revelling in their commission. They ruin not only their victims, but their own future, and the Ego, which might, if burdened with no heavier load than that it accumulated for itself during life, have ripened by degrees into a spiritual regeneration, is hopelessly dragged down by the infamy of its after life, and lost for ever.}} | ||
Understand me, pray. I do not say that such is the inevitable fate of all disembodied “accidents and suicides.” That which has just been described is the fate only of the very depraved members of that class, but of such who might not have been depraved enough to have sunk into the very lowest currents and affinities had it not been for their adventures after bodily death. At the other extreme end of the scale we may take note of the case of persons who have already on earth developed extremely pure and elevated affinities. These, if the victims of sudden and accidental death, are as much beyond the reach of temptation in the shape of mediumistic currents after death as they would have been superior in life to the common incitements to crime. Even they, dying prematurely, ''have to wait'', before they can be spiritually re-born; but they wait in a dreamless sleep beyond the regions of this earth-life and its attractions, and are quite out of reach of the risks with which this letter is concerned. | |||
But then how few of us are very, very good; how few, let us hope, utterly, utterly vile. Certainly the majority of the earth-walkers I am dealing with will not come into mediumistic presence, with ready-formed schemes of wickedness to work out, clearly defined thirsts for evil to gratify. But they will come, weary of waiting, and thirsting for life, amusement, and variety. And they ''may'' do themselves no harm, as an idle young man ''may'' frequent the haunts of vice to pass the time away, and may come out untainted. But the immense probability is the other way; and for the earth-walkers who take advantage of the facilities for materialisation, the probability is so great that it has almost passed into the regions of accomplished fact. | |||
Of course, it does not follow that every person, who has helped to sit for materialisations even, has been an accomplice in working such havoc with human souls as that I have been describing. In this study of occult philosophy one takes no step forward without finding the horizon of the unknown widen out twice as far as one has advanced. Nature, which seemed a small thing to the ancients, has widened out before the inquiries of science until we have come to know of suns 300 times the size of our own, of distances from which the light takes 50,000 years to reach us, and, in the other direction, of living creatures so minute that they are but faintly visible threads in the field of a microscope which shows the blood corpuscles, themselves perhaps the 3,000th of an inch in diameter, tumbling about like boulders in a torrent. So with the occult secrets of Nature’s processes. The further one penetrates into the labyrinth, the more complex become the ramifications of its colonades. I have learned, for example, this fact about materialisations which has been set forth above, the fact which connects them with the case of disembodied Egos of persons who have died sudden and violent deaths. But, doubtless, there are multiplicities of other facts which might be learned about them, of which, as yet, I know nothing, and the bearing of which might be to shew that materialisations are sometimes due to quite a different kind of combination. But the discoveries in occult science we may be able to make in the future will most assuredly not militate against the force of the discoveries we have made in the past. We have learned enough to be sure of that—sure that when we thoroughly understand what our teachers mean to say, we may safely fit that stone into the foundation of the edifice we are constructing, and cement it down. And what I have just been telling you is no amplification of what I have been told—no theory partly woven out of my own speculations. I have, so to speak, chapter and verse for every statement I have made, and for every tint with which I have coloured it. | |||
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| author signed = C. C. M. | | author signed = C. C. M. | ||
| source title = Light | | source title = Light | ||
| source details = September 2, 1882 | | source details = v. 2, No. 87, September 2, 1882 | ||
| publication date = 1882-09-02 | | publication date = 1882-09-02 | ||
| original date = | | original date = | ||
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| style="text-align:left; width:75%;" | September 2, 1882.] | |||
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{{Style P-Title|“ISIS UNVEILED,” AND “THE THEOSOPHIST’ ON<br>RE-INCARNATION.}} | |||
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{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|14-34}} | <center>''To the Editor of'' “{{Style S-Small capitals|Light.}}”</center> | ||
{{Style S-Small capitals|Sir,}}—In your paper of June 8th I called attention, under the above heading, to what seemed a glaring inconsistency in the teachings of the two authoriti{{Style S-HPB SB. Restored|es}} cited, on the question of Re-Incarnation, following immediately on a statement that the “Adept Brothers” were the authors of both. In the August ''Theosophist'' my article is referred to and quoted, an explanation is given, and I am challenged to notice the reply in “{{Style S-Small capitals|Light.}}” I must therefore trouble you again upon the subject. | |||
It may, perhaps, be remembered that the inconsistency alleged by me was that in “Isis Unveiled” Re-Incarnation on this earth was expressly denied (with some very rare exceptions) whereas in the ''Theosophist'', of June last, a writer of peculiar authority (Reviewer of “The Perfect Way”) had declared that it “takes place over and over again till the highest condition of humanity, as known here, is attained.” I also quoted the passage from “Isis” at length, but I need now only repeat the first sentence, in order to do justice to the reply:—“Re-Incarnation, ''i.e.'', the appearance of the same individual—or rather, of his astral monad—twice on the same planet is not a rule in nature; it is an exception,” &c. | |||
The explanation and reply of the ''Theosophist'' depend entirely on the words “or rather of his astral monad,” in the above sentence. I am reminded that the astral monad is not the Spiritual monad—not the true Ego, that is—and thus that what is denied of the former is not therefore and thereby denied of the latter. And the editor remarks that “where that even ‘seeming discrepancy’ is to be found between the two passages—except by those who are entirely ignorant of the occult doctrine—will be certainly a mystery to every Eastern Occultist who reads the above and who studies in the same school as the Reviewer of ‘The Perfect Way.’” Again, “Therefore, in the face of the statement from the very correct and excellent review of ‘The Perfect Way,’ we say again that Re-Incarnation—''i.e.'', the appearance of the same individual, or rather of his astral monad (or the ''personality'' as claimed by the modern Re-Incarnationists) twice on the same planet is not a rule in nature, and that it ''is'' an exception.” As the developed doctrine of our Eastern instructors will probably be more interesting to your readers than the mere question whether their teachings have always been consistent, I will further extract the following from the same article. After repeating the summary of the seven principles of the human constitution which we have already learned from “Fragments of Occult Truth,” in the ''Theosophist'' of October last, the writer proceeds:—“There is a mighty difference in our occult doctrine between an ''impersonal'' Individuality, and an individual ''Personality.'' C. C. M. will not be re-incarnated; nor will he be in his next re-birth C. C. M., but quite a new being, born of the thoughts and deeds of C. C. M.; his own creation, the child and fruit of his present life, the effect of the causes he is now producing. Shall we say, than, with the Spiritists, that C. C. M., the man we know, will be re-born again? No; but that his divine Monad will be clothed thousands of times yet before the end of the Grand Cycle, in various human forms, every one of them a ''new'' personality.” Now, I call that rather hard; not, of course, upon “C. C. M.,” but upon your unhappy correspondent, who is compelled, for the present, so to subscribe himself. The Reviewer of “The Perfect Way” gives every one at least a chance of escape at every incarnation, and translates one to a better world as soon as the highest condition on this earth is attained; to say nothing of the orthodox Buddhist teaching of exemption from ''all'' re-birth as the result of Arahatship here. Without dreaming of that, I had hoped that a few hundred or so of future incarnations in this world might, in the case of any ordinary mortal, satisfy the more moderate requirements of the ''Reviewer.'' But it seems that my individual case is more desperate; I must drink the cup to the bitter dregs, and go right on to “the end of the Grand Cycle.” Such is the evil ''Karma'' accumulated by doubting the infallibility of “Isis,”! But was I right, or must I apologise and retract? Certainly I was quite aware of the distinction between the astral and the spiritual, and I have repeatedly and long ago—before the publication of the “Fragments”—maintained that the personality is not the immortal man, and have, chiefly on this account, always discredited what may be called the orthodox belief of Spiritualists. “A. P. S.’s.” statement about the “shells,” and their relation to Spiritualism, in your{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|14-34}} | |||
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Light v.02 n.87 1882-09-02.pdf|page=3|Light, v. 2, No. 87, September 2, 1882, p. 395 | |||
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