HPB-SB-14-61

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

T i

vol. 14, p. 61	volume 14, page 61 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:
A Journal devoted to the Highest Interests of Humanity both Here and Hereafter.
“Light! More Light!”—Goethe.

No. 94.—Vol. II.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1882.

Price Threepence.

CONTENTS.

Notes by the Way. By M.A. (Oxon.)	465	Haunted House in Cornwall	472
Inspiration and Thought-Reading	466	A Protest to “A Reply”	472
On Influx	467	Interrupted Consciousness	473
Séances in the Light	468	Spiritualism in San Francisco	473
Spiritualism at Balmoral	468	The Divining Rod	474
Séance with Mr. Bastian	469	Some Remarkable Visions	474
The Divining Rod	469	Methods of Investigation	475
Vision of a Past Tragedy	470	Hindu Terms	475
“Light” Sustentation Fund	471	Thought-Reading	475
Poetry and Inspiration	471	Psychical Research	475
Mediums and Materialisations	472	Epitaph at St. Keverne	475

NOTES BY THE WAY.

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Contributed by “M. A. (Oxon.)”

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The transference of thought is a very interesting phenomenon, and not so rare as might be imagined. Mrs. Penny is kind enough to send me a little fact akin to the story of Mrs. Andrews. She writes:—

“Your interesting little story in to-day’s ‘Light,’ about what Mrs. A.’s boy said in his dreams, reminds me of a very small fact in my own experience somewhat akin to it.

“One day I slept late, having a bad headache, and dreamed that I was in a wonderfully beautiful garden, and while I walked along its alleys a friend of one of my sisters, F. H., came smiling towards me, dressed in white, and looking radiant with joy. She said, ‘I am here now, and it is always so lovely.’ On waking, I found breakfast and letters brought up, and one open on my pillow to my sister from the sister of F. H., telling her that she had died after a very short illness.

“Now, as this poor F. H., who seldom had a day’s happiness, was to me only an acquaintance, I conclude that the aura of her sister conveyed to my higher consciousness the fact of which she was full, and in the momentary duration of a dream this fact got translated into the adjacent ideas of life in Paradise.

“Here is another little fact just heard from two of my nieces on a visit here, pertinent to your narrative.

“One of them was reading Bulwer’s ‘Last Days of Pompeii’ to herself a little time ago, while another sister wrote not far from her, but quite out of sight of the book. The next night the non-reader dreamed a most vivid dream of seeing the Temple of Isis in Pompeii, which she had never even heard of. She so clearly saw it that she said she could draw it, and that in her dream she knew it was the Temple of Isis.

“Now the book, just brought into the house, had never been in her hands, nor had her sister told her anything about it, nor when this happened had they yet been to Italy and seen Pompeii and the Temple of Isis.”

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A very interesting article in The Spectator (September 23rd) speculates as to the causes of the strange mental impenetrability that is everywhere apparent in the progress of any new form of religious thought. In a family of six, for example, when Puseyism was first impressing receptive minds, two would perhaps become devotees, two would be absolutely indifferent, two violently antagonistic. In no case would all be impressed alike. Why does every new form of truth advance “by jumps, instead of rushes, lighting now on this man, now on that?” Why do whole races reject certain ideas? Why has Christianity made no mark on the Jew, seeing that “it was founded by Jews, preached by Jews, died for by Jews?” The writer gives no sufficient answer, but the fact is familiar to the Spiritualist in a very striking degree, so that one who has had much experience in replying to inquiries on the subject, knows that some minds are attracted as surely as others are repelled. One man will take in all that he is told, and hardly need personal evidence to verify the narrative, which to his neighbour sounds so monstrously incredible that he flies into a rage and cannot talk with patience of the irritating thing. One will take an infinitude of care and pains to seek (often fruitlessly) proof of what he cannot believe, and is equally unable to put aside. Another will decide the whole matter a priori, and settle it out of hand. One is never tired of hearing the unaccountable noises that seem to him so conclusive of intelligence apart from a brain: another speculates and spins philosophic or metaphysical theories: and so on. Is there not evidence here that we are all in a different state of mental preparedness for the new and untried? Some of us are content with what we have, or careful about some totally different line of thought and investigation. Some, again, have extracted all the nutriment from what they have received and are hungering and thirsting for more. We are all on different planes of progression, and we do not know how or by what means we are lifted or diverted from one to another.

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A very few weeks, I might say days, separated two states of mind in my life. In the former the evidences of what now seems to me the most important issue that man can try, made absolutely no impression beyond eliciting a half contemptuous pshaw! In the other I was so saturated with the subject, so impressed by its evidences, so full of its far-reaching import, that my whole life, my whole mind, my every interest was revolutionised. I had passed from one plane of thought to another, and “all things had become new.” It is the prepared minds that new truth catches, as the Spectator sees, but what or who prepares them? There we come to the difference between the Spiritualist and other men. Antecedent experience, he says, gained in other states, develops and prepares the mind to receive the influences which, under wise guardianship, are brought to bear on it here. Each has his proper training; each selects what he can assimilate, what will nourish him and do him good. Here as elsewhere “one man’s meat is another man’s poison,” and it is by no means impossible that what is truth to one man may be absolute error, misleading and false, to another who is on another plane of experience and thought. The mental impenetrability will pass when the time comes and the experience that avails to pierce the wall. It is useless, nay, hurtful to hammer at the wall and create a disturbance, until the disruptive force which comes from within has rendered entrance possible. Hence indiscriminate propagandism is a blunder. Hence many souls go through this state of life untouched by new ideas; unimpressed by what so governs other men’s lives; or find, as Darwin did, their religion in their work, content to think that no revelation of the mind and will of a Supreme Being has ever been made, and that “with regard to a future life every one must draw his own conclusions from vague and contradictory probabilities.”

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The Lancet, always honourably distinguished for its recognition of the spiritual, and for its denunciation of a crude materialism, has an article on Berkeleyism which contains much truth. “To the intelligent student of the so-called medical sciences, and to the practising physician, Berkeleyism supplies the only key that will unlock a world of mystery. . . . . Translated into the language and terminology of contemporary schoolmen, the essential principle of this system of philosophy may be said to consist in the recognition that the external—as it stands related to our consciousness, whether through the mental or the physical senses—is the reflection of our own conceptions. What we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch are not—as far as we are concerned—the things themselves, but our sensory notions or impressions of them.” Between us and the external world intervenes the cloud or halo of personal environment through which our impressions come; and here, our contemporary thinks, is the source of error; hence good honest folk go wrong in the estimation of things occult. “It is absurd to suppose, and vexatiously wicked to assume, or try to prove, that all the believers in these ’isms . . . intentionally deceive either themselves or others.” “Ghosts, spirits . . . may be real—as real as anything can be—to those by whom they are witnessed.” Quite so; and the Lancet, though it will have none of what it calls “Spiritism,” is nearer to a just conception of its merits than many a less impartial and clear judge. We need not desire a fairer criticism of what to the materialist is transcendental nonsense than the Lancet publishes.

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And we shall not easily find a more grotesquely inadequate criticism, more one-sided, prejudiced, flippant, and foolish, than <... continues on page 14-62 >

Editor's notes

Sources

• 

  Light, v. 2, No. 94, October 21, 1882, pp. 465-466