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HPB-SB-14-95: Difference between revisions
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| style="width:25%;" | December 2, 1882.] | |||
| style="width:50%; text-align:center;" | LIGHT. | |||
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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued|The Astral Light and the Objectivity of Thought.|14-94}} | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued|The Astral Light and the Objectivity of Thought.|14-94}} | ||
... | {{Style P-No indent|more ''evidently'' a manifestation of life), and contains an infinite variety of phenomenal representations. And though I may avow the authorship of a suggestion referred to by Mr. Noel, that the pictures in the astral light may be conceived as memories in the world soul, I am no more driven to this or any other explanation in the case of these “pictures” than I am to account for the possibility of objects in this sensible world when not immediately present in the consciousness of any individual percipient. It is not the idealist, who can conceive this apparently solid, lifeless world of sense as a presentation of conscious spirit to conscious spirit, who should find it difficult to realise the fact that his own thinking is similarly creative, and may give phenomenal representations to a faculty of sense. We shall never understand these teachings unless we get rid of the notion of thought (the object, not the process) as exclusively subjective, that is, as existing only in the individual present consciousness of the subject evolving it. We call it so in this earth-life of ours because it is not apparent to sense. But its objective distinction from the subject thinking is recognised in philosophy. Occultism asserts that this objectivity is as truly phenomenal, as truly figured in what it calls the astral light, as stones and plants are in our elementary world. Nay more, it declares that thought is nothing else than the plastic energy of spirit on a subtle material. This is one of the assertions which appears to scandalise Mr. Noel’s idealism, especially when to it is added that the human brain, itself a “material” organ, is the workshop in which this subtle material is elaborated, or thought (wrought) out. But why not? To Mr. Noel, as an idealist, it should never have occurred to make such an objection. An idealist should be the last to except to thought being represented as material, that is, phenomenal. For if we regard the “material object” as the phenomenon resulting in our consciousness from the energy of another consciousness, what is to prevent us from conceiving that ''our'' thoughts so act phenomenally as to produce in another world of apparent space-conditions those “pictures” in that world which to suitable percipient faculties would be “objects” in it?}} | ||
But since the idealist principle allows of no dead product, but requires that all shall be sustained in consciousness, Mr. Noel postulates an immediate relation between the originating thinker and the thought as product, object, or phenomenon. Therefore is it that the notion of a thought waiting, as it were, in the “astral light” to be “picked up” is to him so unphilosophical. If the astral light itself were a dead element, this objection would be unanswerable. But then that supposition is fatal to idealism itself. It is reading into the Occultist theory the very materialism derived from a false conception of our world of sense, which every idealist disavows. The astral light bears the same relation to its phenomenal modifications (though a much more ''manifestly'' living one), that our terrestrial elements bear to objects of sense. It is the “material.” | |||
All sensible objects in this world are forms impressed upon its elements. These elements antecede the particular forms as the “material” for the spiritual energies which construct them. Granted that they exist only in consciousness, they are yet a more primitive and universal form of consciousness than the sub-forms which they include. Mr. Noel can no more object to the akasa or astral light—the ''prima materia'', or hyle, of the old philosophers—on idealist principles, than he can object to our four (so-called) elements of matter. Now what we can do manually with these elements, namely, impress upon them forms which, as in the case of a statue or picture, may henceforth last as long as the elementary conditions will permit, quite independently of the consciousness of us the artists, that, it is said, is done through a more subtle organ, the brain, upon this kosmic element, the astral light or akasa. All thinking is a modification of this element, a production of form in it. We call these forms thoughts, and when we have produced them, and are no longer conscious of them, we suppose that they have no existence, or exist only potentially, as our capacity to reconstruct them. But for our experience of “material” permanence, we should suppose just the same of the statue we had sculptured as soon as we had turned our back upon it. It may be said that in such operations we know there is a pre-existing element, but that is not the case with thought. It ''is'' the case with thought—the whole process of thinking is the elaboration of a material which we know already as ideal—absolute origination of material as well as of form there is none for us. It is just this ideal material and its modifications which constitute the objective world of ''any'' state of existence. The fixity and comparative inertness of our world of nature are a state of consciousness. In the organic order we see the formative ideas of spiritual energies working ''in'' this state. In the inorganic, the energies are working also, and the ''results'' are known to science, though the ''process'' is too slow to be detected by common observation. In the inner objective world we are these agents, or some of them; but it is a crude and not a developed idealism which supposes that the results of our activity—our evolved thoughts—can only be sustained and conserved by our individual minds. We have ''thought into'' a world-consciousness, which is the basis of perpetuation. | |||
In conclusion, I must express my surprise that so instructed a writer as Mr. Noel, to whom knowledge of the essential character of Eastern philosophy must be ascribed, should suppose it ''possible'' that the crude, gross error of Western Materialism—which our Christianity, by-the-by, has done nothing whatever to correct—should vitiate any ''genuine'' product of Indian thought. Could I find it there, I should at once say, “Don’t talk to me of Koot Hoomi Lal Singh! this is an Anglo-American hash.” ''We'', indeed, find it difficult always to speak and think in consistency with conceptions which Western philosophy has only re-evolved within the last century or two, but in India the phenomenal character of “matter” is the commonplace of millennia of teaching. And perhaps that is why these Occultists talk so composedly of “matter,” with an understanding which we newly-fledged idealists cannot take for granted, but must have distinctly expressed. | |||
{{Style P-Signature custom|C. C. M.}} | |||
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{{Style P-Title|“SHELLS.”}} | |||
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| continues = 96 | | continues = 96 | ||
| title = “Shells.” | | title = “Shells.” | ||
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| subtitle = | | subtitle = | ||
| untitled = | | untitled = | ||
| author = | | author = | ||
| author signed = C. | | author signed = C. G. | ||
| source title = Light | | source title = Light | ||
| source details = December2,1882 | | source details = Saturday, December2,1882; letter to the editor; signed C.G. and dated November20,1882 on continuation | ||
| publication date = 1882-12-02 | | publication date = 1882-12-02 | ||
| original date = 1882-11-20 | | original date = 1882-11-20 | ||
}} | }} | ||
... | <center>''To the Editor of'' “Light.”</center> | ||
{{Style S-Small capitals|Sir}},—I do not think that Spiritualists in general would find it so difficult to accept the idea of “shells,” as so called by Occultists, if they would simplify matters to their own thoughts by remembering that they do not expect the “natural man,” as he is on earth, to “go to Heaven” (I employ phrases ordinarily in use). They one and all believe there is “progression” on the other side. Progression implies “change,” a casting off of old states, habits, earthly modes of thought and life; in short, the growth of the “spiritual man,” who puts off, as an old “shell” we will say, the “natural man.” Spiritualists, it appears, have mistakenly been in the habit of considering this external, temporary personality, formed on the earth-plane for the convenience of the spirit in earth-life, as ''the'' man proper—or the individual—the Ego: when, in reality, the true man or individual is the inner spirit, which in the processes of human evolution, wears many external, temporary forms of personalities, which are necessarily evanescent. | |||
{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|14-96}} | Although we Spiritualists believe that the man is changed after death, and ascends from “sphere” to “sphere,” yet we do not know the processes of the changes the ascending spirit passes through. Many of us have not, until now, learned that the spirit gradually detaches itself from the earthly externals, worn as a garment, and that the old husk or “shell” hangs together, as a species of personality, for a certain period; and may receive a sort of galvanic re-animation by the calls of friends living still in the body, to re-manifest itself in a dreamy sort of way, by giving a few isolated “tests.” But if we will reflect a little we must see that these “shells”—the Kama-rupa, “passion,” or “desire” forms of the Occultists, are in truth the “perispirits” we form by our lives here; and as we advance, forming new “perispirits,” the old must be left off. Unfortunately they do not dissipate ''at once'', and are ''visible'' in the Spirit-world. As we advance, and become spiritualised on earth, we also form new “perispirits.” We leave off old habits of thought and life which were unclean, but of whose uncleanness we were not conscious until a new spirit was awakened within us: we become “changed” visibly to the eyes of neighbours and friends; and the old personality gradually and almost insensibly merges into a new one. Even the physical body will change, atom by atom, during these processes of spiritual growth, and necessarily the old “perispirits” also become disintegrated, giving place to new. In the Spirit-world, the physical body having died, and been buried on earth, only the “perispirits” can be seen, which are these “shells,” in process of disintegration, having been cast off by the ascending spiritual Ego, the ''true man''. | ||
I have thrown these thoughts together more with the idea of aiding a friend, who frankly confessed inability to understand “C. C. M.’s” able and lucid paper on this subject. And I hope this humble attempt at a simplification of occult teachings, will not be deemed an intrusion upon the ground so ably occupied by{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|14-96}} | |||
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Light v.02 n.100 1882-12-02.pdf|page=5|Light, v. 2, No. 100, December 2, 1882, pp. 539, 541 | |||
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