HPB-SD(ed.1) v.1 p.3 sec.6: Difference between revisions

The Occultists are often misunderstood because, for lack of better terms, they apply to the essence of Force ''under certain aspects ''the descriptive epithet of ''substance. ''Now the names for the varieties of “ substance ” on different planes of perception and being are ''legion. ''Eastern Occultism has a special appellation for each kind ; but Science — like England, in the recollection of a witty Frenchman, blessed with thirty-six religions and only one fish-sauce — has but one name for all, namely, “ Substance.” Moreover, neither the orthodox physicists nor their critics seem to be very certain of their premises, and are as apt to confuse the effects as they do the causes. It is incorrect, for instance, to say, as Stallo does, that “ matter can no more be realized or conceived as mere spacial presence than as a concretion of forces,” or that “ force is nothing without mass, and mass is nothing without force ” — for one is the noumenon and the other the phenomenon. Again ; Schelling, when saying that “ It is a mere delusion of the phantasy that something, we know not what, remains after we have denuded an object of all the predicates belonging to it ” † — could never have applied the remark to the realm of transcendental metaphysics. It is true that pure force is ''nothing ''in the world of physics ; it is all in the domain of Spirit. Says Stallo : “ If we reduce the mass upon which a given force, however small, acts to its limit zero — or, mathematically expressed, until it becomes infinitely small — the consequence is that the velocity of the resulting motion is infinitely great, and that the ‘ thing ’ . . . is at any given moment neither here nor there, but everywhere — that there is no

This may be true in the phenomenal world, inasmuch as the illusive reflection of the ''one reality ''of the supersensual world may appear true to the dwarfed conceptions of a materialist. It is absolutely incorrect when the argument is applied to things, in what the Kabalists call the supermundane spheres. Inertia, so called, “ is force ” according to Newton (''Princ. Def. iii.''), and for the student of Esoteric Sciences the greatest of the occult forces. A body may be considered divorced from its relations with other bodies — which, according to physical and mechanical sciences, give rise to its attributes — only ''conceptually'', only on this plane of illusion. In fact, it can never be so detached : death itself being unable to detach it from its relation with the Universal forces, of which the one Force or Life is the synthesis : but simply continues such inter-relation on another plane. But what, if Stallo is right, can Dr. James Croll mean when, in speaking “ On the Transformation of Gravity ” (''Philosophical Magazine'', Vol. II., p. 252), he brings forward the views advocated by Faraday, Waterston, and others ? For he says very plainly that gravity —

The objection made that there are two distinct schools of physicists, by one of which “ the force is assumed to be an ''independent substantial entity'', which is not a property of matter nor is it essentially related to matter,” * is hardly likely to help the profane to any clearer understanding. It is, on the contrary, still more calculated to throw the question into greater confusion than ever. For Force is, then, neither this nor the other. By viewing it as “ an independent substantial entity,” the theory extends the right hand of fellowship to Occultism, while the strange contradictory idea that it is not related to matter otherwise than by its power to act upon it,” † leads physical science to the most absurd contradictory hypotheses. Whether “ force ” or “ motion,” (Occultism, seeing no difference between the two, never attempts to separate them) it cannot act for the adherents of the atomo-mechanical theory one way, and for those of the rival school in another way. Nor can the atoms be, in one case, ''absolutely uniform in size and weight'', and in another, vary in their weight (Avogadro’s law). For, in the words of the same able critic,

{{Style P-No indent|more than once before now — do the Occultists dispute the explanations of Science, as affording a solution of the ''immediate ''objective agencies at work. Science only errs in believing that, because it has detected in vibratory waves the ''proximate ''cause of these phenomena, it has, therefore, revealed all that lies beyond the threshold of Sense. It merely traces the sequence of phenomena on a plane of effects, illusory projections from the region that Occultism has long since penetrated. And the latter maintains that those etheric tremors, are not, as asserted by Science, set up by the vibrations of the molecules of ''known ''bodies — the matter of our terrestrial objective consciousness, — but that we must seek for the ultimate causes of light, heat, etc., etc., in MATTER existing in ''super-sensuous ''states — states, however, as fully objective to the spiritual eye of man, as a horse or a tree is to the ordinary mortal. Light and heat are the ghost or shadow of matter in motion. Such states can be perceived by the seer or the Adept during the hours of trance, under the ''Sushumna ray'' — the first of the Seven ''Mystic ''rays of the Sun. *}}

The answer given is : There are fluids of various kinds. Electricity is called a fluid, and so was heat quite recently, but it was on the supposition that heat was some imponderable substance. This was during the supreme and autocratic reign of matter. When the latter was dethroned, and motion was proclaimed the sole sovereign ruler of the Universe, heat became “ a mode of motion.” We need not despair : it may become something else to-morrow. Like the Universe itself, Science is ever ''becoming'', and can never say, “ I am that I am.” On the other hand, Occult Science has its ''changeless ''traditions from prehistoric times. It may err in particulars ; it can never become guilty of a mistake in questions of Universal laws, simply because that Science, justly referred to by philosophy as the “ ''divine'',” was born on higher planes, and was brought on Earth by beings who were wiser than man will be, even in the seventh Race of his Seventh Round. And ''that ''Science maintains that Forces are not what modern learning would have them ; ''e.g.'', Magnetism is ''not ''a “ mode of motion ” ; and, in this particular case, at least, ''exact ''“ modern Science ” is sure to come to grief some day. Nothing, at the first blush, can appear more ridiculous, more outrageously absurd than to say, for instance : “ the Hindu initiated Yogi knows really ''ten times more than the greatest European physicist of the ultimate nature and constitution of light'' — both solar and lunar.” Yet why is the Sushumna ray believed to be that ray which furnishes the moon with its borrowed light ? Why is it “ the ray cherished ''by the initiated Yogi ? ”'' Why is the moon held as the ''deity of the mind'', by those Yogis ? We say, because light, or rather all its occult properties, every combination and correlation of it with other forces, mental, psychic, and spiritual, were perfectly known to the old adepts.