HPB-SB-14-78

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

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vol. 14, p. 78	volume 14, page 78 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.

[November 18, 1882.

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< “Shells.” (continued from page 14-77) >

origination till they can even obtrude themselves against our will, just like objects of external perception—belong to an organic consciousness to which we have ourselves transferred them. The Ego is incessantly labouring at the construction of an organism whereby its voluntary activity may be exchanged for a spontaneous one. All education and training have this for their aim. None of the higher voluntary results can be obtained till the lower ones have become thus organically spontaneous. And the whole of our living is nothing else than this process of thus imaging ourselves forth upon a reactive basis, which Mr. Noel and I, at least, believe to be conscious forces of nature, co-ordinated, actuated, inspired, and disciplined—in one word, organised—by our formative energies.

Now, so far as this process is complete, there is an organised representation of ourselves resulting in characteristic phenomena which no longer require our voluntary origination. But those phenomena, Mr. Noel will say, however elicited, are still phenomena of our consciousness. Not altogether so even now, for there is a stage beyond the spontaneous, the automatic. Many physical acts, of which some required an elaborate conscious training, are ever afterwards performed without any observable consciousness at all, unless attention is accidentally directed to them, which, by the by, usually impairs their facility. And often, nay constantly, in a long train of associated ideas, each of which suggests its successor, intermediate links do not emerge into consciousness at all.* We may go so far as to say that the degree of consciousness of every process which must still be called mental is in an inverse ratio to its facility.

But though the tendency is thus to automatism, it is usually only the lower results of the personal life which become thus completely organised. In exceptional cases, possibly, where there has been great brain power, even more difficult processes of intelligence may be spontaneously reproduced—spontaniety, be it repeated, always testifying to organic co-ordination. This is the opinion of Mr. Thomas Lake Harris,† no less than of our Eastern teachers. And the “shell” would, for a long time at least, retain enough to give fragmentary “tests of identity,” when in psychic rapport, though rarely enough to stand a tolerably severe cross-examination. And I may mention here that long before I had heard of the “shell,” the idea was suggested to my mind by my own experience, and that of others, in Spiritualistic investigations. It was really the most tenable hypothesis by which to account for the curious abundance of isolated tests, with the invariable inability to follow these up by particulars which would be equally within the memory of the deceased individual. Had I been myself a medium, that is, in direct rapport, I have no doubt that these further “tests” would have been supplied in any quantity from my own mind. But when the facts did not admit the supposition of scraps of information picked up by the medium for purposes of imposition, the phenomenon was that of a disintegrating memory.

However that may be, I submit that we have got thus far without quitting the region of experience and ascertained psychology; viz, that there is a large class of mental acts and phenomena which originated in, but are reproduced independently of, our will and higher faculties. Nor will it be denied that these are just such as are most habitual to, and therefore most characteristic of, the individual, and most expressive of his personality. I can only conceive these associated tendencies of mine as an organic representation of myself, as in a more external manner my physical body is so. And just as my body, though a phenomenon for my consciousness, has an enduring cause outside my consciousness, so that other organism, constructed by me, reacts upon my consciousness in those subjective phenomena which I no longer originate and can very imperfectly control. Spontaneous subjectivity is objectivity. The power of organism to impose phenomena on consciousness is just like the power of any other “object” to do so. That tree is a phenomenon which as such exists only in the consciousness of the percipient. But there is a living energy acting on me to make me see the tree. And there is a living energy acting on me to make me feel my external body in sensations, and also to give me that complex experience which is my spontaneous, involuntary personality. But there is this distinction between the two cases. The phenomenon of the external sense is the resultant of two factors which may be quite unlike. But in the other case they are my own modes which I have objectified by the mere fact of constructing them.

Now I will not call this subtle organism of habitual modes the personality, because Mr. Noel understands by that the transcendental unity of the Ego, and I do not want to dispute about words. But if its objective existence is conceded at all, we must conceive it as an association of forces far more vital, far more intimately blended and complicated, than those which combine for the phenomena of physical life in the outer body. Its separation from the Ego would be the withdrawal of the latter from objective personal consciousness. It is just this withdrawal which, even in this life, we are trying to effect in every effort of self-control and self-reconstruction. But there is a great body of mere innocent habit in which we dwell contentedly. The complete arrest of our spontaneous life would be return to a state of absolute subjectivity, until we had evolved new modes by that voluntary energy in which the Ego most truly consists. It is this intermediate state of subjectivity which I understand by what the Adepts, through their expositor, call Devachan. But before we can attain it, after physical death, there is a longer or shorter period required for disengagement from those objective modes, including all the interests and dispositions for which there are no longer the occasions and opportunities afforded by our life here. When this separation has been effected completely, these collective modes do not at once disintegrate, but maintain their union for a time, and in the state of union are what is called the “shell.”

Now the perpetuation and vitality of such an organism would consist in its co-ordination, and consequent ability to respond to those excitants, which, in association with the Ego, educed the phenomena of personal life. The “shell” has no self-consciousness, for it has no self; it has no originating power, no plan or purpose. But the habits of its co-ordination continue, and it may be drawn by those attractions into rapport with living intelligences. That is its opportunity. Then come the indispensable excitants, and the consequent automatic responses. The same questions which would have elicited from your friend, had he been living and present, merely spontaneous answers, without the necessity of reflection, you will get with equal readiness from his “shell.” If your friend was a ready scholar, the “shell” will quote you Greek and Latin.* And so on.

It is to another class of “shells,” the “elementaries,” that will-power, intelligence, and consciousness are attributed by the author of the “Fragments of Occult Truth.” With these I propose to deal next week in reply to Mr. Noel, when the larger and more difficult question of the “Loss of the Spirit” will have to be met.

But Mr. Noel will find nothing, I think, in these teachings to imply that the “shell” is a personality with a distinct self-consciousness, unless it represents the actual individual, as in the case of the elementary. And, therefore, I really cannot see how an objection from the essential unity of individual consciousness can apply to the organism now in question. There are numerous analogies in life and nature for co-ordinations surviving the principle of integration. The State may be without a government, yet the routine executive functions may be uninterrupted for a while.

That there can be any phenomenal consciousness without the unity of apperception, the synthesis which must be accompanied, as Kant says, by the Ich denke, and which thus presupposes the distinction of subject and object, I cannot at all represent to myself. And it is also quite true that to get that Ich denke out of the elements or “manifold” of a phenomenon thus combined in and for consciousness alone is the impossible mistake of materialism. So, as already said, I do not conceive these “shells” as conscious, that is, with a unity of consciousness. But there is another possibility, for we are told (Theos., Oct. 81): “Until the shells are dissipated there is a certain sympathy between them and the departed Spiritual Ego,” which may be disturbed by incitements to the “shell.” Well, I conceive that to mean that the disengagement is after all never quite complete while the “shell” lasts—the consciousness of the Ego, though abstracted, can yet return to its old habit when the feeble organism is moved to activity. To expect in the first instance a perfectly unexceptionable mode of statement from pupils who are themselves at the same time learning to understand (for that is how these teachings come to us) would not be reasonable. And as I also am in that case, I bespeak a liberal indulgence, and some independent thinking on the part of the reader, for this explanation.

C. C. M.

* Psychologists at first supposed that the links were only forgotten, not suppressed; but all are now agreed that this was a mere assumption.

† “If a man possessed great intellectual powers and put them forth through a long life, he has built a great geist, if not a great name; he has sent forth a splendid representation of himself into the world of shadows.”—Concerning Geists.

* “The geist of Homer talks good Greek.”—T. L. Harris.