HPB-SB-14-42

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

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vol. 14, p. 42	volume 14, page 42 vol. title: vol. period: 1882 pages in vol.: 174
Legend HPB note HPB highlighted HPB underlined HPB crossed out <Editors note> <Archivist note> Lost or unclear SBT, DT Restored

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eng • рус

LIGHT.

[October 28, 1882.

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< On Some Theosophic Doctrines. (continued from page 14-41) >

As to there being two or more Egos, say the animal Ego and the spiritual, that is only a way of speaking; if you erect popular talk into a philosophy you go wrong. Even the distinguished authors of “The Perfect Way” seem to make this mistake. It is I or you who eat, who smell, who desire, who love, who think, who act virtuously or viciously, even conceivably who fast, inflict self-torture, go into trances, and see visions, possibly end by discovering the elixir of life. It is not two separate identities, but one identity, that does all this. There are instances, no doubt, of double lives lived by the same person, and I myself believe we have a spiritual veiled, together with a psychical revealed, consciousness, more or less divorced. But what I contend is, that you cannot absolutely and permanently sever one sphere of conscious life from another in the same personality. Moreover, the unity of experience belonging to each member of a double consciousness proves the presence of the one Spirit in both, in spite of temporary severance. And obsession may account for much at present hard to understand. In the case of influence, even, as Professor Fechner and myself have both independently argued, such a severance is only for a while. You will find yourself again in the heart of a friend, or of any you may have even unconsciously influenced. To our Western thought this seems just the cardinal error of Eastern philosophy—that it takes the results of abstraction for real separate entities. The analyses which it makes of the principles underlying human nature seem to most of us over here often only creatures of a subtle and ingenious fancy; for instance, we do not know that we have so many different bodies with imposing Indian names; bodies, moreover, that are a sort of hybrid between body and soul, judging by the description of them, and are apt to get mixed up, as “C.C.M.” shewed recently. Still, if it is only a question of phenomenon, or representation in our thought, we may be right to defer to those who have special knowledge and means of knowing. But we think that, however long and peculiar the experience, and however accumulated the observations of those sages who teach thus, their teaching on this head may be a misinterpretation of so-called abnormal facts, which they may have quite correctly observed; and however this be, when we find their system of philosophy at variance with what appears to us common sense, right reason, and the testimony of consciousness, then no appeal to the methods of research, or self-discipline adopted by such sages, can avail to induce our acceptance of it. You cannot “verify” a metaphysical doctrine, though you can a fact or a law. A will without a willer may perhaps be found in the world where two and two make five, or, as the French say, in the week of the two Thursdays; but the idea is an absurdity and a self-contradiction, which can only serve to discredit the “authority” by which it is put forward as a matter of fact. Assuredly we have will, memory, judgment, affection, perception, reason; but it does not follow that the results of this analysis are capable of dissolving partnership, and setting up on their own account; it does not follow that the one can very easily remain behind when the other has flown away. Man is a “combination,” indeed, in one sense. He has various faculties; but he is not a combination in this sense, that he and his faculties may part company, he going to one place, and his faculties staying in another, or one faculty flying here and another there. Judgment, memory, perception, will, desire, reason are mutually implicit, though in different acts one faculty may of course be more obviously and prominently exercised than another; will, however, is implied in all; it is the spontaneous activity of all and sundry faculties, and in all the willer is necessarily present. One would think that a man was a strawberry, from whom cuttings might easily be made and planted out by themselves. Thus we hear of seven principles in one individual man, and it seems that all these have only formed a partnership pro tem.; Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, may go each its respective way, or, at all events, they may go in couples; but why, then, does an individual feel himself one, and not seven? This is as bad as the physiological materialist, who tries to get the unity of human consciousness out of an innumerable conglomeration of material cells, each with a psychical side to it.

It is alleged that the Divine essence has for ever departed from these elementaries or shells. If so, what essence is it that now underlies and supports their intelligence, will, and appreciation of virtue? Are there then two essences in the universe, the Divine and some other? This would be Manicheeism, yet the philosophy in question is not, I believe, Manichean. I agree, on the contrary, with Spinoza and Augustine, that the intelligence, will, life, and muscular power with which Nero slew his mother were necessarily Divine—only the abuse of these faculties through defective being was creaturely. But if the Divine essence has not departed from these shells, then they have not lost their immortality as alleged, any more than God has lost His. God is the Divine Substance of all conscious being, and all conscious being is necessarily personal, one with itself, and different from others, though also one with all by virtue of this Divine Substance, which is universal as well as particular—particular and universal. You cannot divorce the two ideas any more than you can the one and the many, the identical and the different. It is a false philosophy that proposes to plant them out separately, and herein, in the clear perception of this, lies principally the advance made by Behmen and Hegel upon the often profound, yet also fanciful and undeveloped conceptions of Indian, Kabalistic, Eleatic, Neo-Platonic, and Spinozistic philosophy. Do I not then believe in the “three Principles” or Kingdoms, of Behmen, in the “Body, Soul, and Spirit” of St. Paul? Certainly, but I also believe that “these three are one.” They are three degrees of the same being, not three beings. They are all rooted in One, exist by Influx on the one hand and by Defect, Limitation, Illusion on the other. It is one, Inverted Cone, with Infinity for Base, containing three regions. I do not say that the body and soul will not be transfigured in the spirit, but I do say that the body and soul cannot be without the spirit to underlie and support them. The lower depends on the higher; it is by limitation of the higher; but so far as it is at all, the higher is in it. It is true that the lower does not manifest the higher, as the higher is at its own fullest and highest; yet, regarded by a spiritually-purged vision, it does manifest the higher in symbol, in image, veiled. But, assuredly, a bad man may seem to lose all sense of right and wrong, and in some races these do not appear to be developed. What a bad man has, however, he derives from the Divine essence, though he be deprived of some excellencies that pertain to the Divine essence. But often we come to perceive that these were only latent—as they are latent in the infant or untutored savage. And if the essence of a conscious being be Divine, what capacity of rising in the scale of being shall we presume to deny him?

(To be continued.)

<... continues on page 14-43 >

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VISION AT THE MOMENT OF DEATH.

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Mr. H. Wedgwood’s story in “Light” of October 14th reminds me of a similar occurrence which I heard of some years ago. The lady who told it to me,—daughter of a clergyman—was at that time my neighbour, and well known as very intelligent and very truthful. Not knowing her whereabouts now, I cannot ask permission to give her name, but I believe she would not object to her little narrative being here repeated. Many years before he became an old man her father had lost a favourite brother named Joseph. During her father’s last illness she was his constant attendant, watching day and night. One night, in order to get a little rest she lay down on a couch in the dressing-room adjoining his bedroom, where a light was kept burning, with the door between the two rooms wide open. As she lay there, wide awake and ready to attend to his slightest change of posture, she heard him cry out in a tone of delight, and with a voice stronger than weakness had of late made possible, “What, Joseph! you here!” and then followed rapid speech in which another and quite different voice seemed to join. The daughter started up in an instant, and was approaching her father’s bedside when he waved his hand, motioning her to retire again to the inner room, and saying with an air of reproof, “Go away, don’t disturb me now; do not you see I am engaged?” Nothing was to be seen to prove this except an attitude of wrapt attention, but for some five or ten minutes (I cannot be as certain of the length of time as I am of other details) she heard a low-voiced but animated conversation going on, in which two different speakers were distinctly audible, though the subject of discourse was not so. The next day her father died.

A. J. Penny.

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<Untitled> (Mrs. Hardinge-Britten’s Lecture Appointments…)

Mrs. Hardinge-Britten’s Lecture Appointments.—Belper: Sunday, October 29th, and Monday, October 30th. Sowerby Bridge: Sunday, November 5th. Halifax: Sunday, November 12th, and Monday, November 13th. Bradford: Sunday, November 19th. Sowerby Bridge: Sunday, November 26th.—Address, The Limes, Humphrey-street, Cheetham Hill, Manchester.

Editor's notes

Sources

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  Light, v. 2, No. 95, October 28, 1882, p. 480