HPB-SB-12-110

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

T i

vol. 12, p. 110

vol. 12

page 110

 

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< Communicating Spirits: Their Claims to Recognition (continued from page 12-109) >

mind, but they will probably interest; and being carefully sifted from much confusing context, are for the general reader better read in selection than in the blinding obscurity of a first approach to Iris books.

“The whole deep between the stars and earth is inhabited, and not void and empty. Each dominion hath its own principle, which seems somewhat ridiculous to us men, because we see them not with our eyes, not considering that our eyes are not of their essence or property; so that we are neither able to see nor to perceive them; for we live not in their principle.”— “Mysterium Magnum,” chap. 8, par. 11.

“The whole deep between the constellations, so far as the Word gave itself unto the creation, is nothing but a life and stirring of Spirits.”—“Threefold Life” chap. 10, par. 20.

‘‘The Paradise which the souls of the holy children of God go into (when the body deceaseth), is in the very place whore the body deceaseth; it is also in the earth, it is in all the four elements; not divided but entirely everywhere.”—Ibid., chap. 5, par. 125.

“Paradise hath another principle, for it is the Divine and angelical joy, yet not without the place of this world. Indeed it is without the virtue and source of it, neither can the spirit of this world comprehend it, much less a creature.—“Three Principles,” chap. 9, par. 4.

“Reason, which is gone forth with Adam out of Paradiso, asketh where is Paradise to be had or found? Is it far off or near? or, when the souls go into Paradiso, whither do they go? Is it in this world, or without the place of this world above the stars I Where is it that God dwelleth with the angels 'I And where is that desirable country where there is no more death? Being there is no sun nor stars in it, therefore it cannot be in this world, or else it would have been found long ago. Beloved Reason: one cannot lend the key to another to unlock this withal: and if any have a key, he cannot open it to another.”

. . . “There is nothing that is nearer you than Heaven, Paradise, and Hell; unto which of them you are inclined, and to which of them you tend, to that in this lifetime you are most neere: you are between both: and there is a birth between each of them; you stand in this world between both the gates, and you have both the births in you,”—“Three Principles,” chap. 9, pars. 26, 27.

“As little as God is alterable, so little also is Paradiso alterable; for it is a part of the Deity: when the outward dominion shall pass away, then will the place where this world now standeth be neer Paradise, for there will be an earth of heavenly substantiality, which we may be able to dwell in through and through.’’—“Forty Questions,” quest. 40, par. 1.

“We shall be in Paradise again and eternally rejoice therein and enjoy the fair bright springing of all manner of flowers and variety of forms, as also of trees and herbs and all sorts of fruits; but not so earthly, thick, or gross and palpable,”—Ibid, quest. 32, par. 2.

“As we have all sorts of fruits in this world which we food on in an earthly manner, so also there are all manner of fruits in Paradise.”—Ibid, quest. 21, pars. 7 and 8.

All this will sound very “unspiritual” to many, but Bohme speaks of the state when man, the image of the Triune God, is perfected in all three principles. Nou; the third is the world of substance, or ultimates. Of Spirits not yet regenerated he reports a very different and varying state.

“Now seeing the departure of souls is various, so also is their condition after their departure various, so that many of the souls departed are indeed for a long time in purgatory, if the soul had been defiled with gross sins, and have not rightly stepped into the true earnest regeneration, and yet do hang a little to it.—“Three Principles,” chap. 19, par. 28.

“It is with the soul which thus hangeth by a thread, and yet at the last end entereh into sorrow, and so layeth hold on the Kingdom of Heaven by a thread, where doubting and believing is mixed; it is with such a soul in this manner that a hearty prayer and wish cometh to them, which, with total earnestness, presseth to the poor captive soul into its source quality or pain. For that soul is not in hell, also not in Heaven, but in the gate in the midst, in the source or the quality of the principle, where fire and light part, and is detained by its Turba, which continually seeketh the fire, and then that comprehended little twig or branch, viz., the weak faith, sinketh down in itself, and presseth after God’s mercifulness, and giveth itself patiently into the death of the sinking down, out of the anguish, and that sinking down out of the source quality or pain into the meekness of Heaven. And though many a soul be detained a competent [tedious] time yet can the anger not devour that little faith but must at last lot it go.— “Forty Questions,” quest. 24, pars. 7, 8, 9.

“There is little remedy unless the will-spirit have in the time of the outward life turned itself about into God’s love, and reached or attained that as a sparkle in the inward centre, and then somewhat may be done. But in what source, quality, or pain and irksome tediousness that is done, the sparkle of love experimenteth well enough, which there is to break the dark, fierce, wrathful death; it is purgatory, or purging fire enough to it; in what kind of enmity the life standeth in terror and anguish, till it can in the sparkle sink down to rest in the liberty of God, he experimenteth very well who so nakedly with small light departeth from this world; which the present too wise world holdeth for a jesting matter.”—Third of the Six Great Points,” chap. 4, pars. 29, 30.

And not without some excuse, because of the mistaken notions that generally attach to the idea of purgatory,—as of a state in which God afflicts from without, and not, as it is in truth, the state in which the soul discovers and undergoes the torments its own unharmonised nature contains. Let Böhme try and explain some of these:—

“The soul’s Spirit hath no woe done to it when the body departeth, but woe is done to the fire life; for the matter of the fire which hath generated the fire, that breaketh away, but only in the substance. The figure remaineth standing in the will, for the will cannot break, and the soul must continue in the will and taketh the figure for matter, and burneth in the will.” —“Forty Questions,” quest. 18, pars. 9, 10.

“For what the soul doth here, in this life-time, into which it involveth itself, and taketh it into its will, that it taketh with it in its will, and after the ending of the body cannot be freed from it; for afterwards it hath nothing else but that, and when it goetli into that and kindleth it and seeketh with diligence, that is but an unfolding of the same thing; and the poor soul must content itself with that: only in the time of the body it can break off that thing which it hath wrapped up in its will.” — “Threefold Life of Man,” chap. 12, par. 27.

How many of what we call ghost stories afford instances of precisely this state of arrested ideas, of an anxiety that might have been transient lasting through centuries! And if such a state is but faintly imagined, we shall be ready enough, I think, to accept another saying of Böhme’s: “Every one hath his own hell; there is nothing else that layeth hold of it [the soul], but its own venom, or poison.’’—“Forty Questions,” chap. 18, par. 25.

Even a few days of solitary helplessness in undistracted pain would give ample exposition of that text.

And, again, what is the terrible fire which is to be the purging element in every soul of man I Fully to explain Böhme’s teaching on this point would be impossible here; but a few more lines of his will indicate its drift. “At the end God will awaken the tire in the centre, which is the eternal fire, and will purge this floor; understand it is the soule’s tire”—(“Threefold Life,” chap. 11, par. 28.)—that tire which, immediately and originally derived from Deity, and is the immortal part of man; which arrested in its due development of light, and the heavenly body with, which light clothes itself, for ever,—with unappeasable want of light and love and Divine substance,—consumes every attempted substitute, and is in itself unquenchable. (Be it remembered, while using this word, that even in the souls of the blessed it is not and never can be extinguished, but in them the light swallows up the dark and fiery root of immortal being, and is itself everlasting.)

Now as to the state of those who on separating from the fleshly body have not oven a “thread of faith,” or “sparkle of love” of God, one could cite from the same seer many a statement, but these are so positive in detail that they may be justly suspected of taking colour from the usual mental furniture of the seventeenth century, largely borrowed from mediaeval legends. The following passage appears free from that objection, and shall conclude my quotations from him on this theme;—

“Outward reason supposeth that hell is farro off from us; but it is near us, everyone carrieth it in himself, unless he kill the hellish poyson with God’s power, and sprout out from thence as a new twig or branch, which the hellish source or quality cannot comprehend or touch.” . . . “Every man earrieth in this world Heaven and Hell in himself, which property soever he awakeneth, that burneth in him, and of that fire the soul is capable; and so when the body dieth and departeth, the soul need not goe any whither, but it will be cast home to the hellish dominion; whatsoever property it is of, those very devils which are of those properties wait upon it, and take it into their dominion even till the judgment of God. Though indeed they are bound to no place, yet they belong to the same dominion, and that very source or quality they have everywhere.”— “Six Great Points,” chap. 9, pars. 52,55, 56.

In fact the law of like to like acts in the world of Spirits without exception, and by an awful necessity evil tendencies, as well as good, intensify and strengthen themselves by consequent sympathy.

The whole of the twenty-sixth of Böhme’s “Forty Questions ’ in which he tries to answer his friend as to “whether the souls of the deceased take care about men, their children, friends and goods, and know, see, like, or dislike their purposes and undertakings,” is peculiarly pertinent to the subject before us, but being much too long to quote, will be referred to, I hope, by anyone who has access to the book.

(To be continued.)