HPB-SB-14-43

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

T i

vol. 14, p. 43	volume 14, page 43 vol. title: vol. period: 1882 pages in vol.: 174 Two blue diagonal strokes cross the upper left corner of the clipping. The writer has not been identified.
Legend HPB note HPB highlighted HPB underlined HPB crossed out <Editors note> <Archivist note> Lost or unclear SBT, DT Restored

<<   ☰   >>

eng • рус

LIGHT.
November 4, 1882.

< On Some Theosophic Doctrines. II. “Shells,” and “Conditional Immortality.” (continued from page 14-41) >

ON SOME THEOSOPHIC DOCTRINES.

“Shells,” and “Conditional Immortality.”

By the Hon. Roden Noel.

(Continued from page 480.)

II.

I will conclude by noticing an interpretation of this doctrine of shells, or “elementaries,” which I have heard from an able Western exponent of Occultism, and which seems to me far more plausible than that of the writer of the “Fragments,” though I shall give reasons for rejecting it. The occult philosophy, as expounded in these papers and elsewhere, appears to assume the real existence of matter—unless, indeed, our vulgar conception of it is merely substituted provisionally in argument for the conception of it as Maya, Illusion, the Hyle, Not-being of Plato and Aristotle.* Thus we are told that these elementaries pick up notions with which to deceive us in their impersonations out of the astral light. Now I do not believe a candid person can read Eliphas Levi or Madame Blavatsky without the irresistible impression that they regard the astral light, Akasa, or ether, as out there, together with grosser matter, apart from any personal centre of consciousness whatsoever. But I, as good idealist, believe that there can be no pictures either in gross or subtle matter apart from our, or some other personal spirit’s perception of them; that such pictures can only be in some personal consciousness. And nearly all competent Western thinkers would agree with me. The Theosophist in question agrees with me also on this head; but he contends that the pictures in the astral light may be memories in the world-soul, and that the elementaries are a temporary aggregate of the cell-souls, whose cell-bodies made up our organism on earth, still saturated with our influence for awhile, but tending to disintegrate.

Now there is no possibility to my mind that such an aggregate of souls could display the unity, and identity, and humanity of consciousness which, with whatever limitations, they admittedly do display, however all might be influenced by us. These innumerable, diverse, and lowly-organised cell-souls, whatever they may be, must be incapable, even now with us, and much more hereafter without us, of displaying any such self-identical unity of human consciousness as may simulate a deceased man. Either, moreover, they must separate after our departure, or they must remain in organic relation with us, or they must be dominated by some other greater Spirit as they were before. But, then, as to these astral pictures in which all events are supposed to be represented—so as to furnish information for the supposed elementaries; are they memories in the world-soul? Now, in such occultist books as I have read, by the world-soul appears to be meant a kind of unconscious principle of life—(see Cudworth, for instance)—and this I hold that a sound idealist philosophy must decidedly reject. But, if by world-soul be meant a superior world-spirit, in whom we and other creatures of the earth are, then I, too, believe in him. Well, a memory in him involves two factors, (1) the self-identical Spirit remembering, and (2) the self-identical person or object remembered acting upon him, consciously or otherwise, to produce such remembrance. That this holds good in all memory I have done my best to prove in my “Philosophy of Immortality.” And because, however clear what a man believes to be the truth may seem to himself, he cannot help feeling some diffidence in holding and declaring it, if he has neither received it from any external human source, nor has succeeded in producing the same conviction in other minds, I have welcomed warmly a clear statement of the same view, which I have just read in the translation of an admirable work by Professor Fechner, entitled “Life after Death,” reviewed in “Light” by “C. C. M.,” who points out the identity of my own and Fechner’s belief in this respect.* But if we are right, then the memory of the world-soul, into which these pictures in astral light resolve themselves, involves the continued existence of the person, who, according to this theory of elementaries, has really perished. And at any rate it involves the personal identity of the Spirit, or Spirits who remember. The vibrations in ether connected with our thought-life, being phenomena, involve other thought-lives; in so far as they do not belong to our own Spirits, they belong to other Spirits; they always must belong to some personal identity, or they would be nothing at all. So that we must have some Ego behind these memories of the world-soul, which is exactly what this theory of “Shells” denies. No “memory” without a rememberer.

My conclusion, therefore, is that the intelligences manifesting themselves at séances are either the real persons they pretend to be, or other Spirits personating them. That is the common Spiritualist view, and I assent to it. It is, however, very possible that these Spirits get a good deal of their information by thought-reading and otherwise, being very rarely the persons they pretend to be; also that they may be comparatively unintelligent and lethargic till they come in contact with the medium and sitters; or, on the other hand, they may be numbed and dazed, and forced to drink Lethe by coming back into our sphere, which does not belong to them. With the theory that these phenomena are due to the medium in a subdivided condition I have dealt in my book. But I, of course, am ready to accept what we are told by occultists about the power of adepts voluntarily to work marvels.

It is maintained by these teachers that some can attain to the height of spirituality, become one with the Spirit, who as a rule only “overshadows” us—or keeps away from us altogether in a large proportion of instances. Now is not the previous course of the life and experience of such favoured persons necessary to the attainment of this consummation? If not, what purpose does it serve? And it is admitted that the persons (or beings, if you like) who attain the end are identical with, however different from, the persons who in their earlier career were merely animal, and psychical. But if so, it is perfectly obvious that the Spirit with whom they succeed in being atoned must have been implicitly one with them from the very first. They must have always been implicitly what they afterwards become explicitly. Else there could be none of this admitted identity between the unconverted natural, and the converted spiritual man, and no process of conversion or elevation would have taken place; there would simply have been the substitution of one being for another person, which would not, of course, concern the first at all; but that is not what is contended, I presume? In such cases, therefore, at all events it must be incorrect to speak of “overshadowing” as the part the Spirit has to play in human development, even at any stage thereof. The Spirit, on the contrary, must be the man himself, or the spiritual man would not be able to identify himself with the natural and unconverted man, as he does, nor would he be conscious of any change in himself, as he is. Clearly nothing can become totally different from what it essentially is. And what may avail to bring about the changes in it except its own idea, or essential self not yet perfectly manifested, though implicit in the very earliest germ, or commencement of its time-life? If, indeed, the Spirit were, as this school sometimes alleges, unconscious, then there were no possible connection between man and it, because the unconscious can never become conscious, nor the conscious unconscious, seeing there is absolute contradiction, and no imaginable identity, between these <... continues on page 14-44 >

* Yet surely the writer of these “Fragments” is a very decided, one might say very gross, materialist; hear him—“the Spirit, of course, for all its comparative ethereality and incorporeality, a space-occupying and material entity, is borne about by magnetic currents, swayed here and there like dead leaves” (!!!); and again: “Thought, memory, and will are the energies of the brain.” Have Büchner or Moleschott ever said anything more crassly materialistic? (Theosophist, September, 1882. “Fragments,” No. III.) A Theosophist in the same number tells us that “Space, Motion, and Duration are the Trinitarian Essence, which Deists call God, but Occultists the One Element, Spirit-matter, or Matter-spirit.” Is this strange hodge-podge of ideas philosophy at all? Nevertheless, in the last instalment of the “Fragments” there is much profitable wisdom about occult lore, that it behoves all to read and ponder—though we are not bound to accept the System of Doctrine in its entirety here—and enough solemn warning about the possible dangers of mediumship and Spirit-circles to make us pause and beware. The claim to long and peculiar experience in these recondite regions must be, of course, admitted with due respect. Later I hope to speak of Theosophic teaching as regards “elementals,” which seems crude. The forces of nature are just taken and animated. This is the old animism, or fetishism. There is no hint that occultists are aware of these forces being mere phenomena, so appearing because of the peculiar constitution of human faculties, but not at all thus in themselves. No doubt the active powers in nature reveal spiritual agents, for all agents must be spiritual, but these “elementals” are not at all the forces of nature as they appear to us, electricity, galvanism, heat, mechanical energy, and the like. These are but our generalisations from phenomena, which are principally subjective; they are not real entities outside us. Here again occult philosophy proclaims itself rather infantine and crude, for all its overweening pretensions to exclusive esoteric knowledge.

* This coincidence in advocating what seems an “original” view on the part of minds absolutely without mutual communication rather confirms that other (not novel) doctrine also common to Professor Fechner and myself, as to our existence in, and communion with, higher Spirits—though he does not state the doctrine of perception as it has been given me to see it. This comes near the question debated recently in “Light” as to whether poets are inspired or not by other Spirits. My view would be midway between that of Mr. G. Barlow and that of most Spiritualists. Mr. Barlow claims all for himself, and the latter refer all to somebody else. But even parrots have some part of their own in the words they learn to repeat by rote. The truth is you cannot penetrate to the depths of your own spirit without being there in close communion with the great hierarchy of Spirits, between whom, thank God! there is solidarity. It is only at the surface of a soul that it is alone, and living for itself, with no need of assistance, or desire for it. The most original and profoundest men care least to contend for absolute originality. Their intuitions and sympathies are too universal. But no man can truly receive and assimilate great inspirations, whose own spirit is not great enough to have taken some part in their very formation, and to have responded with kindred tone to the note struck elsewhere. When Mr. Barlow claims inspiration from Nature, he claims it indeed from God and other Spirits. But some are subject to the influence of living genius even more than to that of the dead, though they may not know it. By the way, when Mr. Barlow spoke lightly of “women-singers,” methinks he might have remembered Mrs. Browning, and Sappho.

Editor's notes

Sources

• 

  Light, v. 2, No. 96, November 4, 1882, pp. 491-492