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HPB-SB-14-58: Difference between revisions
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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued|Life after Death.|14-56}} | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued|Life after Death.|14-56}} | ||
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| style="width:34%; text-align:center;" | LIGHT. | |||
| style="width:33%; text-align:right;" | [October 14, 1882. | |||
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{{Style P-No indent|fluence. We learn that the law of intercourse and communion with our departed friends is one with the law which governs the great political, intellectual, and religious movements of the race. “The higher Spirits, living as they are, not in a single person, but each living and acting in more than one, are a spiritual link between those persons, uniting them all in the same belief, the same truth, the same moral or political tendency. All the persons having a certain spiritual interest between them, belong to the body of one Spirit, and as co-ordinate members of it, work out the ideas which they have received from that Spirit. Sometimes one idea lives in a whole nation, a multitude of people are roused up to one great common enterprise: here is a mighty Spirit coming over them all, penetrating them all . . . . The gradual formation and growth of States, the progress of science and art, of commerce and trade, the development of all these spheres into larger and larger bodies harmoniously organised, is the consequence of numberless Spirits living and moving among men, and growing together into more extended spiritual organisms.” And what is true of every minor and partial centre of influence is of course pre-eminently true of those mighty ideal-personal powers which tend to suffuse all humanity with a common life and purpose. “The most striking instance of a great Spirit living and working on through posterity we find in Jesus Christ. You must not think it an idle phrase, that He liveth in those who believe in Him. Every true Christian carries Him within him, not in a symbolical manner, but in life and reality; every one that thinks and acts according to His mind has part with Him; for it is the Spirit of Christ that causes in him such thinking and acting.”}} | |||
This conception of spiritual solidarity has latterly become of paramount importance in the speculations of every school of thought which concerns itself at all with the ideal life of mankind. The intellect of the age is manifestly rallying to this as to a height from which all our problems must be overseen. Christianity gave us a personal representation of the Divine Humanity, but we had apprehended it rather as an external figure whose individual perfection is to save us ''for'' ourselves, than as the living will and conscious purpose in us which will save us ''from'' ourselves. To correct this error we have but to recollect that the life of the Teacher is in his doctrine, and in us so far only as that is embraced. Nor shall we fall into sectarianism if we reflect that the same truth has many modes and presentations, and that the great religious teachers of the world are probably themselves a community participating the essential unity of their several systems, delivered to us only as we can receive them. To this reflection the author leads us, when he says, “In the same measure, therefore, as the higher Spirits comprehend the eternal ideas, they will grow together in larger spiritual organisms; and as the roots of all individual ideas are in general ideas, and their’s again in more general and universal ideas, all the Spirits will in the end be united—in wonderful organisation with the greatest of Spirits, with God.” | |||
But that which will chiefly endear this book to the majority of readers is the clear response of intelligence to the ceaseless importunity of the heart. This life in us of our seemingly lost friends, their irremovably conscious presence in our consciousness, the power of evocation inherent in love, nay, the fact that memory itself is at once the testimony and the effect of their continual action on us—these ideas emerge from the author’s lucid treatment with a force and impressiveness which almost raise them above the rank of ingenious speculation into a region of assurance and perception. For there are things which we need only to understand to believe with a sense of truth seldom attainable by the logical faculty. Doubtless, many assumptions underlie all statements concerning the invisible world and the spiritual nature of man; but when a field of intelligence becomes luminous, when we see movement, life, and connection in the thought, when we find in it all the coherence of a possible experience, laws, processes, and relations comprehensible as in a rational intuition, we feel that the fabric of such a vision cannot be baseless, and that we may with the surest reason regard as real that which has so many indicia of reality. | |||
It is interesting to compare the views put forward in this volume with very similar, in some respects almost identical ones, expressed by Mr. Roden Noel in his recently published “Philosophy of Immortality.” For instance, the novel and striking thought that memory results from the living presence in, and action on, our consciousness of the object remembered is common to both authors. And the important principle {{Style S-HPB SB. Restored|th}}at<ref name="editor-loss-58">The letters th, obscured by a damaged fold in the album clipping, are restored from Light, v. 2, No. 93, October 14, 1882, p. 456.</ref> we live continuously, and shall hereafter find our life consciously, in all our productions and effluence (which, therefore, never cease to belong to us), is stated not less explicitly in the “Philosophy of Immortality” than in “Life after Death.” But the latter has the advantage for most readers of being quite unmetaphysical in form and phraseology. The consciousness alleged is throughout a continuation of that we know, without distinction of “noumenal” and “phenomenal” and there is a grasp of the conception of organic inter-blending which results in a singularly clear, though brief exposition. The two books should stand together on the same shelf, for what is best in each will throw additional light on the other. | |||
Professor Fechner distinguishes three stages in the evolution of human life, with a fourth beyond, which may be called a Divine or universal life. Each stage is concerned with the development of organs for the next, and birth into one is the death of the preceding. “In the first stage the body develops itself from its germ, working out organs for the second; in the second stage his mind develops itself from its germ, working out organs for the third; in the third the Divine germ develops itself, which lies hidden in every human mind to direct him, through instinct, feeling, and believing, to the world beyond, which seems so dark at present, but shall be light as day hereafter.” As already seen, the third stage, that in which we enter at death, will be characterised by a much greater community of life, the individual, however, not being absorbed by any one or more of the groups or spheres, but having his life partially in them in a far more real sense than in societies here. For they are the localities, so to speak, of his consciousness, its bodily circumference. Not yet is there the perfect unity of all in harmonious relation and universal order; but this is the organic ideal to which the several groups are incessantly tending, as here the individual to find his own place in the groups. Of re-embodiments, or successive personalities determined by the individual Karma on this earth, we hear nothing. Their Karma itself is the embodiment, or organic expression, of Spirits of the third stage. The segregation of individual consciousness by again concentrating it in a physical body would be a retrogression in the case of all but the undeveloped, if we accept our author’s account. Nor does this take any notice of the distinctions of which we now hear so much, between the different constituents of our composite being. But the nature and conditions of our future consciousness, of our present connection with the spiritual world, and especially of our communion, or rather community, with those Spirits who have had a true influence upon our lives or minds, are so described that to understand is almost to be convinced. And there is much more in this small volume which solicitude to bring out what seemed most important—developed Western conception of Karma—has left no space for noticing. How strikingly different the idea presented of the life hereafter is from common conceptions of continual personality with memory of the past, every thoughtful reader of the book, if not of this review, will appreciate. It is often said, though, we think, very superficially, that memory is essential to identity. But there is another sort of memory, of which we have had as yet no actual experience, and which is such a revelation of total identity that the ego of any given moment is lost in it. Our transient, hour to hour personality may indeed seem drowned in a consciousness so comprehensive. And the sense of it may be yet further diminished by the perception into which the author tells us we shall come for the first time, that much which now seems distinctly our own, and originated by ourselves, is in fact the part of other Spirits in us, their influence and suggestion. That is a Swedenborgian thought, as indeed is the whole conception of spiritual solidarity; but every reader of Professor Fechner’s book will gain from its pages a clearer apprehension of the evolution of individual intelligence and life through community and intersection. | |||
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| title = The Countess of Caithness on “The Perfect Way.” | | title = The Countess of Caithness on “The Perfect Way.” | ||
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| author signed = H. M. | | author signed = H. M. | ||
| source title = Light | | source title = Light | ||
| source details = October 14, 1882 | | source details = v. 2, No. 93, October 14, 1882; letter dated Bath, October 9, 1882 | ||
| publication date = 1882-10-14 | | publication date = 1882-10-14 | ||
| original date = 1882-10-09 | | original date = 1882-10-09 | ||
| notes = Printed source page: 456. | |||
}} | }} | ||
... | {{Style P-Title|THE COUNTESS OF CAITHNESS ON “THE PERFECT WAY.}} | ||
<center>''To the Editor of'' “{{Style S-Small capitals|Light.}}”</center> | |||
{{Style S-Small capitals|Sir,}}—Can you tell me where the books, viz.: “The New Man” and “Morgenröthe,” (mentioned in the above communication given in “{{Style S-Small capitals|Light}}” of the 30th ult.) are to be procured? Perhaps the writer of the communication or some other of your readers will kindly give the desired information. | |||
{| style="width:100%;" | |||
| style="text-align:left;" | Bath, October 9th, 1882. | |||
| style="text-align:right;" | H. M. | |||
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| title = Miss Wood’s Offer. | | title = Miss Wood’s Offer. | ||
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| subtitle = | | subtitle = | ||
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| author signed = | | author signed = | ||
| source title = Light | | source title = Light | ||
| source details = October 14, 1882 | | source details = v. 2, No. 93, October 14, 1882 | ||
| publication date = 1882-10-14 | | publication date = 1882-10-14 | ||
| original date = | | original date = | ||
| notes = Printed source page: 456. | |||
}} | }} | ||
... | {{Style S-Small capitals|Miss Wood’s Offer.}}—For the information of numerous inquirers, we think we are justified in stating that a Committee of the C.A.S. is in communication with Miss Wood, and there is reason to hope that satisfactory arrangements will shortly be completed. | ||
{{HPB-SB-footer-footnotes}} | {{HPB-SB-footer-footnotes}} | ||
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Light v.02 n.93 1882-10-14.pdf|page=4|Light, v. 2, No. 93, October 14, 1882, p. 456 | |||
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