HPB-SB-12-109

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

T i

vol. 12, p. 109

vol. 12

page 109

 

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eng • рус

Experiments in Mesmerism

To the Editor of “Light.”

Sir,—In your two last impressions of “Light” are reports of interesting “Mesmeric Seances” conducted by Mr. D. Younger, of 23, Ledbury-road, Bayswater. Now as I have been an attendant at these stances, I feel it would be a great injustice, not only to Mr. Younger but to any sincere investigator of this science (whose knowledge is of necessity confined to what he reads, and such readings are often mystified beyond comprehension to a beginner) if I were not to endeavour to report something of these meetings. I should be glad if space would allow me to give a detailed account of these most interesting stances, but I fear to trespass on your kindness. I will therefore content myself by saying that Mr. Younger commenced at the “bottom rung of the ladder” and step by step conveyed his subject and audience up and on, until he reached (explaining from time to time) if not the highest point of development, certainly the highest to which his sensitives were then capable of being carried. Judging from last week’s meeting we have strong hopes that he will at length be able to carry them so far as to shew that the destiny of man will be to us no longer a problem unsolved.

We had a glimpse of his power to open the spiritual vision of his sensitives, and in the closing scene he brought them to the front and asked them to describe what they saw. Two described two little children, one wearing a peculiar cross tied round its neck with blue ribbon. They also spelt out their names. These children were at once recognised by a lady present as her own. They also gave the name in full of another Spirit, which was also recognised by one of the audience, thus demonstrating beyond doubt that mesmerism is the handmaid of Spiritualism. Allow me to say that these young men in their normal state have not the slightest knowledge of either mesmerism or Spiritualism. Other phenomena of equally striking interest cropped up, which must be seen to be realised.

Mr. Younger announced that the next seance (which will take place on Thursday next at 7.30 p. m., precisely) will be partly devoted to healing, and invites a few more investigators to be present, and states that his object is to give the investigators an opportunity of witnessing the practical teaching of mesmerism, without being brought into contact with the rough element so often prominent at public exhibitions. He hopes that no one will let a single experiment pass without thoroughly mastering its import.

As the members of the audience must of necessity be limited application should be made by letter. Terms voluntary and only expected to defray expenses.—Your obedient servant, Selhurst-road, South Northwood, S. E.

C. T. Dixon.

January 30th, 1882.

Appendant Spirits

To the Editor of “Light.”

Sir,—In her interesting and highly instructive article on “Communicating Spirits,” Mrs. Penny says (“Light,” January 21st)—“I have myself a quite unsupported idea that in losing the mortal body we lose not only the restraining enclosure which gives reactive force, but the continual co-operation of a multitude of subordinate Spirits necessarily disbanded at dissolution. ” It may interest Mrs. Penny, as well as her readers, to know that her idea, so far, at least, as it concerns the attachment of subordinate Spirits to sub-conscious organism (thus making us the synthesis of lower forms of life), is not “quite unsupported.” Without speculating whether these Spirits are not the very agents spoken of at p. 131 of Mr. Sinnott's “Occult World”—“the elementals, or semi-intelligent forces of the kingdoms,”—the doctrine of προνάρτηματα, or “appendages” (Spirits) was one of the tenets of Basilides, the Gnostic. Some account of this (by no means singular) opinion may be found in Mansel’s “Gnostic Heresies.”—Yours obediently,

C. C. M.

Instantaneous Communication Between London and Calcutta

To the Editor of “Light.”

Sir,—I cannot help thinking that Miss Theobald’s explanation of this remarkable circumstance is needlessly complicated, besides involving the unsatisfactory imputation that one Spirit simulated the handwriting of another. A better supposition is open to us which enjoys the advantage of being strictly in accordance with known experience. If the medium in London who is supposed to have written the letter was entranced at the time, his Spirit might have left his body, gone to Calcutta, there written the letter through the mediumship of Mr. Eglinton, and returned in the course of a few minutes or even seconds; the London medium being all the time utterly unconscious of the whole proceeding. The question is, was the paper conveyed to the medium in London and back again; or did his Spirit go to the paper in Calcutta? It matters not, as both methods are equally possible and feasible. I entertain not the shadow of a doubt that the fact occurred as Mr. Meugens described it. The reader has now a choice of hypotheses to account for the production of the phenomenon.—Yours, Ac.,

Trident.

<Untitled> (The world is close to our body...)

The world is close to our body; God close to the soul, not only without but within; for the all-pervading current flows into each. The clear sky bends over each man, little or great. Let him uncover his head, there is nothing between him and infinite space. So the ocean of God encircles all men. Uncover the soul of its sensuality, selfishness, and sin, there is nothing between it and God, who flows into men as light into the air. Certain as the open air drinks in the light, do the pure in heart see God.

Communicating Spirits: Their Claims to Recognition

By Mrs. A. J. Penny. (Continued from page 40.)

So ready are our contemporary thinkers to look upon all conditions of time and space as the result of spiritual obscuration that they are apt to insist on the almost certainty of these being at an end for purified Spirits. They produce strong reasons for this, but it is not yet evident to me why all that we call phenomenal impressions should end with our elevation to a state of real being. I cannot understand why the transiency of time and evanescent illusions of space should not remain in a purer state, still surrounding spiritual senses; fully known to be phenomenal, yet leaving to these seemings that cannot deceive: just as our knowledge of the laws of perspective underlies enjoyment of beautiful landscape. We do not think the near shrub larger than the distant tree, but in our present fallen state we do feel our little arena of action more important than the fate of the next county, and a few years of time more momentous than eternity.

It is quite clear from all Swedenborg’s reportings that the circumstances of Spirits are self-evolved, are the outcome of their own internal state; and I feel almost over-bold to admit that I cannot believe this to be the normal condition of perfected Spirits. To me it seems just what would necessarily characterise an intermediate state, when one stage of existence in an ultimated body was ended, and the Spirit had to await the general resurrection till the body of the human race, being made ready for its glorification, each least member of that body will enter upon its individual as well as its universal perfectness. I was, therefore, very much pleased when I met with this declaration by Mr. T. L. Harris:—

“There is a region positive and primitive to the sun; arch nature in superiors and antecedents, which serves as the sun of the sun. The solar elements thence derive vitality and potency. Our solar globe forms into an inconceivably magnificent world, of which the visible orb is the centre, co-extensive with the system. The inhabitants of this luminous expanse, in one degree, are the ripened and translated men and women of the peopled planets. Objectively they are in times and spaces, but subjectively out of space and time. In this latter they were visible, by their interiors, to the wise and virtuous Swedenborg, who saw them by the opening of his interiors, and was with them by the rapports of interiors with interiors. Still, having no arch-natural basis in his earthly constitution, he was unable to divine or cognise the luminous world; unable in a phrase, to realise Heaven, by its objectivity.” (The italics are my own.)

Of this objectivity Böhme spoke with equal emphasis more than two centuries ago:—

“The true Heaven is everywhere, even in that very place where thou standest and goest.”... “But that there is assuredly a pure glorious Heaven in all the three births or genitures aloft above the deep of this world, in which God’s Being together with that of the holy angels riseth or springeth up, very purely, brightly, beauteously and joyfully, is undeniable, and he is not born of God that denyeth it.”—“Aurora,” chap. 19, pars. 20, 27.

And it is to be observed also when he writes of the unhappy Spirits “who have lost their first image,” that ho refers to a place as an advantage:—

“Though, indeed, the place of this world was given to Lucifer for a kingdom, for he was created therein, yet he is now thrust out of place and space, and dwelleth in the abysse where eternally he can reach no place of the angelical dominion.”— Point 6, chap. 9, par. 58.

I can myself hardly doubt there boing distinct localities for different orders of Spirits when Divine harmony is re-established in the vast universe; but, as yet, until the final separation, I suppose the place of human Spirits, good and bad, to be conterminous with our earth and its surrounding atmosphere. That we can only see human beings in flesh and blood proves nothing more than that our organs of vision are adapted for the world we live in, and no other. The prism shews us what colours are in space where we only see diffused light; and science, by spectrum analysis, has detected pencils of darkness, which, in the midst of brilliant colour, the common prism could not reveal. As near and as imperceptible are the inhabitants of light and of darkness to the world of mixed good and evil through which we fight our way.

Böhme’s works are comparatively rare, so that references to them would not answer my purpose; I must therefore be excused for quoting largely from them. To my readers his dicta will not seem so conclusive as they do to my own <... continues on page 12-110 >

Editor's notes

Sources

• 

  Light, v. 2, No. 57, February 4, 1882, p. 51

• 

  Light, v. 2, No. 57, February 4, 1882, p. 54