Judge W.Q. - Answers to Questioners: Difference between revisions

  | publication date = November, December 1887, January, February, March, April, May 1888

  | publications = [[Path/Vol2/Text|''The Path'', vol. II, no. 8]], November 1887, pp. 249-251; no. 9, December 1887, pp. 278-281; no. 10, January 1888, pp. 309-310; no. 11, February 1888, pp. 344-346; no. 12, March 1888, pp. 378-381; [[Path/Vol3/Text|vol. III, no. 1]], April 1888, pp. 21-23; no. 2, May 1888, p. 65 (announcing postponement; continuing further in Volume III, outside the scope of this project)

  | note = Signed "Zadok," the pseudonym established the previous month in [[Judge W.Q. - Notice to Inquirers|"Notice to Inquirers"]] (October 1887). The December and February installments' final answers, and the last answer of the March installment, are signed "Julius," a pseudonym of [[Keightley, Julia|Julia Keightley]]. The April 1888 (Volume III) installment's final answer is signed "Hadji," another of Judge's established pseudonyms. The rest are signed "Zadok." The May 1888 installment consists of a single unsigned editorial note announcing that, owing to the pressure of business following the Chicago Convention, the department's answers are postponed to the following month.

{{Style P-No indent|(2.) It is more than a faculty of the soul, for it is the soul at work. The spirit is unmanifest except through the soul. The soul manifesting the {{Page aside in Path|v=2|n=9|p=279}}spirit is the true will. The human will is the lowest form of this manifestation.}}

{{Style P-No indent|Do advanced students contemplate "Rupa Loka" and "Arupa Loka" as {{Page aside in Path|v=2|n=9|p=280}}at present desirable conditions? If desirable then in what sense: absolutely or comparatively as regards earth life? Is Sinnett's statement of the entire satisfaction of the soul's longings, to be regarded as "Ex Cathedra," or is it only Sinnett's personal conception?}}

{{Style P-No indent|''Answer''.—There is but one way to open the heart. That is by living {{Page aside in Path|v=2|n=9|p=281}}the life. It is a simple matter to govern the will, but this is not the true will. The governing of the Astral body is the smallest of the tasks of the true will. The will should be used to obtain wisdom, and when so used it will control the Astral body without effort. We should exert psychic powers only to benefit others, never to free ourselves from the disagreeable. Let your aim be to find God; your motive, to know yourself for the sake of Theo Sophia and humanity: your desire, to help humanity, and the true Will will be developed, the heart opened and you will not only control the Astral body but all in the Astral. You must seek beyond the Astral for powers, but it is not wise to desire the acquisition of powers. Let your aim be beyond that, and the powers will grow of themselves. If the strong-willed or sick depress you, seek to aid each in some way, forget that you are depressed, ''forget your self'', and they will not affect you. The life of the Occult student is full of sorrow, anguish and depressing influences. These go to make him a student in the Occult. A portion of his training is to become aware of these only in so far as they affect others. As to their affecting his own personality, he does not know they exist. If you desire to help humanity, then you possess the true motive. If you use your will in this cause, wisdom, peace and all the powers will be given.}}

{{Style P-No indent|You say you have "conned the Yoga philosophy." This is not enough; merely to "con" it is not to know it. It is in fact a most practical system (if you refer to that of Patanjali), and one that will meet all requirements you have in the way of difficulty; for it is one of the most difficult. It is not possible for you to judge its merits without practice; and it gives full directions. If for three years you study and practice it—aye for one year—you will find that you need no other. In these matters there is no child's play nor the usual English and American method of mere book-learning,—we must absorb and work into the practice and the theory laid down, for they are not written merely for the intellect, but for the whole spiritual nature. There must be within the man something which he {{Page aside in Path|v=2|n=11|p=345}}already knows, that leaps up and out when he scans the books of wisdom; a thing already existing, which only takes an added life or confirmation from books. True Theosophy has all that is practical, but many forget this; there is no greater system of practise than that required by it.}}

{{Style P-No indent|''Answer''—We intended no perversion. The seeming drift of the first question was as to anæsthetics opening the doors of the astral world. That seemed more important than a single experience of any individual. Unless {{Page aside in Path|v=2|n=11|p=346}}we knew the state of your health last summer, occupation, kind of food, and many other matters not in our purview, we could not give the cause of, much less explain, your condition at the time you speak of. It seemed in December, as it does now, that it was highly important to strangle a possible error as to anæsthetics and the astral world. Hasheesh is a partial anæsthetic, and as it apparently caused Bayard Taylor's feeling, our previous reply applies quite fairly.}}

{{Style P-No indent|''Answer''.—Men attach an erroneous meaning to Occultism. If one has found the beginning of the Way he has found some of the mysteries of Occultism, for none find the Way until they find something of the Unseen. It {{Page aside in Path|v=2|n=12|p=379}}is impossible for one to put himself in a spiritually receptive condition without "investigation" of or being under the sway of Occultism or Occult conditions; and it is through these same conditions that he knows that pain and pleasure are one and all wise. Karma does not always manifest itself as suffering, by any means; it is quite as likely to produce joy as sorrow, and Karma is not always weighty. Such persons of whom you speak may be trying to become Theosophists, but are not Theosophists. A seeker for Divine wisdom seeks in all directions and refuses none.}}

{{Style P-No indent|''Answer''.—For the Deity there is no fall. He can not fall. In the so-called descent into matter, He must manifest through something. Never {{Page aside in Path|v=2|n=12|p=380}}does the Ineffable stand unveiled before mortal man. When the All Wise deemed it good to manifest Himself as individualities, He did so through the soul. After creating the human man with the soul that all things possess, "He breathed into his nostrils and man became a living soul," or the Deity manifested Himself through the soul in the man. Nothing below man is immortal. Man is not immortal; his soul is not immortal; but the breath of God, which is God's life or God himself, is forever. Man was to have lived as the angels, "for they also were made;" but, although by the grosser elements of matter or nature, by its lusts and desires, its seductive beauties and deceptive pleasures, realized most fully through the senses of the human body, the soul was drawn down instead of upward, into ignorance of the True instead of toward the wisdom of God, holding and binding thus the spirit in the meshes of the grossest part of nature, and so fell. God did not fall,—the spirit; nor did man as the human man; but the soul, being a free agent, did so, causing the spirit to be limited, and entailing pain and anguish upon the human man. Man with the Divine manifest in him was to know only the good, or wisdom; but, not content, he must eat of the tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil, or the misapplication of the good, and fell into ignorance. There can be no greater evil than losing the wisdom of a God for the ignorance of a man. Herein consists the only evil of the fall after the descent into matter.}}

{{Style P-No indent|''Answer''.—The question is too general to be answered categorically. The effects vary in each case, and in the greater number only a powerful {{Page aside in Path|v=2|n=12|p=381}}seer or adept could tell what, if any, effect had been produced. Further, several effects could be mentioned which would be incomprehensible to you unless you possessed actual experience in the matters referred to, for which no words of description exist as yet in the English language.}}