HPB-SB-12-154

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

T i

vol. 12, p. 154

vol. 12

page 154

 

SBT, DT

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eng • рус

< Communication spirits (continued from page 12-153) >

possibility as regards individuals. One need not stop to notice how much greater worth, interest, and moral safeguard the belief in that virtual oneness imparts to earthly life. In the words of A. Kardec:—

“With the thought that activity and co-operation of individuals is limited to the present life.” . . . “what does the ulterior progress of humanity matter to man? How can it concern him whether in the future the peoples are better governed, more happy, more enlightened, mutually the better for each other's lives? Since he is never to draw any result from it, is not this progress lost to him? What is the use of working for those who will come after if he is never to know them, if they are new beings who soon after will themselves return to nothingness? Under the influence of denial of an individual future, all necessarily narrows itself to the mean proportions of the moment and of personality.”*

(Kardec is here arguing for belief in Re-incarnation, but these words seem to me quite as cogent with regard to belief in the solidarity of the human race both in the body and out of it.)

Neither need I point out how consonant this tenet is to what all Christians verbally profess to believe, however little meaning they may derive from the words, “seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews xii. 1)—and “I believe in the Communion of Saints.”

Affection of whatever kind, let no one doubt it, is the tie death cannot break. Hear Swedenborg on this text:—

“The ruling love remains with man after death.” “That man after death is his own love or his own will has been testified to me by abundant experience.” . . “The experiment has been frequently made whether Spirits can act in any degree contrary to their ruling love, but they have tried in vain. Their love is like a chain or rope, with which they are, as it were, tied round, by which they may be drawn, and from which they cannot extricate themselves; and the case is similar with men in the world, for their ruling love leads them, and by means of that love they are led by other men; but when they become Spirits, the government of their ruling love is more perfect, because then it is not allowable to assume the appearance of any other love, and feign a character not properly their own.”—Heaven and Hell, par. 479.

(“Allowable”? surely he meant to say “possible”?) But the words which I find still more consoling in that book are these:—

“The life which remains after death is his love and his faith hence derived; not love and faith in mere potentiality, but love and faith realised in action.”—Ibid. par. 476.

What can be compared to a “rope attached” to the departed spirit of love for those left behind, and the ability to realise love in action, how should these not bring near to us the unseen presence of those whose long-felt affection we mourn? Doubting the possibility of that, bereavement has complicated anguish.

“That dear hugged thing Identity Gone, and the dream that grasped it gone— All's gone.”†

Yes, truly: if love and remembrance can have been quenched by death the past is darkened almost as much as the present, for we may conclude that the one in whose strong attachment we believed was—to our hearts—a simulacrum fully as deceptive as any false representation at a seance: if not, if the attachment was true and real, I think the nearness of the loving Spirit is almost as certain as its invisibility unless repelled by the objects of its affection. The question each one of us can best answer for him or herself would be, “Is our love to the dead so much a spiritual reality that—if or when they can ‘look us through and through’—we do not appear to them deceptive shadows of what they once believed us to be?”

“Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side? Is there no baseness we would hide? No inner vileness that we dread?”—In Memoriam.

When at last seeing us as we are, and our self-love what it is, may they not be tempted to think; “It cannot be those we left! they are only misleading Spirits!”

* “Avec la pensée que l’activité et la coopération individuelles dans l’œuvre générale de la civilisation sont limitées à la vie présente” . . . “que lui importe qu’à l’avenir les peuples soient mieux gouvernés, plus heureux, plus éclairés, meilleurs les uns pour les autres? Puisqu'il n’en doit retirer aucun fruit, ce progrès n’est il pas perdu pour lui? Que lui sert de travailler pour ceux qui viendront après lui, s’il ne doit jamais les connaître, si ce sont des êtres nouveaux qui peu après rentreront eux-mêmes dans le néant? Sous l’empire de la négation de l'avenir individuel, tout se rapetisse forcément aux mesquines proportions du moment et de la personnalité.”—A. Kardec's “La Genèse” chap. 18, par. 13.

† Joseph Downs's “Proud Shepherd's Tragedy,” p. 66.

<Untitled> (A Correction...)

A Correction.—To the Editor of “Light.”—Sir,—The statement appearing in “Light,” this week, as to my reasons for declining to stand as secretary to the Newcastle Spiritual Evidence Society for the ensuing year, is incorrect.—Yours, &c., W. C. Robson, 8, Brandling-place, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 10th February, 1882.

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<Untitled> (Sir, In your paper of this morning...)

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Editor's notes

Sources

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  Light, v. 2, No. 59, February 18, 1882, p. 76