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| notes = | | notes = A blue angled stroke appears in the left margin beside the beginning of “Theosophic Teachings.” The writer has not been identified.<!-- HANDWRITING-ATTRIBUTION-RECHECK --> | ||
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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued|Notes by the Way.|14-137}} | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued|Notes by the Way.|14-137}} | ||
... | {{Style P-No indent|the death of a favourite child, thrown into great grief and distress of mind, pining after him day by day, and often expressing a wish to see him once again. My mother did what she could with her, by entreaty and prayer, to submit to the will of God in this dispensation, but it was in vain. She began to neglect her person and family, and would still repeat the sinful words, ‘O! that I might see him once again!’ My mother had not seen her for some days, and was surprised by a call from her. She was washed and dressed, and wore a look of resignation, almost cheerfulness, so that my mother could not help expressing wonder at the happy change. ‘Dear Mary,’ she said, ‘in my rebellious and sinful grief I would not listen to the voice of man. I needed a reproof from God, and I got it. Two days before this, I was sitting alone, mourning for my lost darling, and still the wish rose from my heart to my lips: ‘O! that I might see him once again,’ when, lifting up my eyes, I saw, as it were, in the air—so near me that I could have put my hand on the place—the appearance of my child just as you saw him at the moment of dissolution, his face distorted, and his little hands twitching in strong convulsions. My eyes were fixed upon the sight, for I was powerless to look away. It remained so long that I had time to say more than once, ‘God in mercy remove this sight from me!’ It was removed, and my conscious heart said, ‘Thou hast had thy wish, art thou satisfied?’ I fell on my knees, and with tears besought God to pardon my guilty murmuring and sinful wish. It was remarked of this woman, that although afterwards she met with many severe trials and bereavements in her family, she sustained them with true Christian resignation and fortitude. Some will say that this was an instance of spectral illusion. It may have been so; but she never having before nor ever after had any visitation of the kind, this view of the matter is doubtful, but there is one thing certain, that whatever the cause might be, the effect was good, and that good remained with Mrs. Rae during the remainder of her life.”}} | ||
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<div>{{Style P-Align center|Light. December 30, 1882.}}</div> | |||
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| type = article | | type = article | ||
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| continues = 139 | | continues = 139 | ||
| title = Theosophic Teachings. | | title = Theosophic Teachings. | ||
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| subtitle = No. III. | | subtitle = No. III. | ||
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| author signed = The Hon. Roden Noel | | author signed = The Hon. Roden Noel | ||
| source title = Light | | source title = Light | ||
| source details = | | source details = Vol. II, No. 104 | ||
| publication date = 1882-12-30 | | publication date = 1882-12-30 | ||
| original date = | | original date = | ||
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... | {{Style P-Title|THEOSOPHIC TEACHINGS.}} | ||
{{Style P-Align center|By the Hon. Roden Noel.}} | |||
{{Style P-Align center|No. III.}} | |||
I have now explained that, though the Logos is a ''Common Nature'', we Christians believe Him to be ''also Personal'', and that we are in Him as He is in us. “I in you, and you in Me,” were the words of our Blessed Lord. And He had atoned His God-consciousness with that of His soul. | |||
{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|14-139}} | When “C. C. M.” says that the material upon which the antecedent energy of thought works, so as to produce the sense of individuality, is “not a pure evolution from a transcendental source or content,” I disagree with him. It must be so, because all phenomena are. Or else, what is the account of them? Whence do they arise, and what is their sufficient reason? Spiritual energy imposes a form on a given material, says “C. C. M.” Quite true. But whence the given material? It can only be the spiritual energy itself in a lower stage of development, in process of ''self''-development. And ''even from the first'', the Ego is ''double''—subject-object, though in early sensation the elements are implicit. In Aristotelian phrase, the Active is developing the Passive reason. Moreover, in so far as the material is necessary to a particular potential individuality, it is an integral factor in the transcendent individuality, and is only ''before'' it in conditional or phenomenal time-existence, not in true being. Even if you regard it as belonging to other systems of intelligence, that is true, for all is in all. In the eternal, we are not isolated as we are here and now, but we are in and by one another. But the potential object having become ''our'' object, it is henceforth part and parcel of ourselves for ever—though it will undergo transfiguration in thought. (By ''objective'', however, remember that the Germans mean necessarily true for all—even the book would have a relative objectivity, because it is a percept for Jack, Tom, and Harry; but your experience as ''yours'' would be ''subjective'' only.) The “antecedent energy of thought” is more correctly to be regarded as transcendent, though, no doubt, ''we'' have existed in other spheres and states. And other Spirits are concerned in our manifestation. Do not understand me to deny that our actual subjectivity is phenomenal only, just as external objects are; but the Real underlies both, and the Real glorifies, reveals, fulfils, not annihilates. | ||
Of the Divine Spirit “C. C. M.” says, “This noumenon, abstracted from all object or phenomena, is necessarily impersonal, inasmuch as individual consciousness is the opposition of subject and object.” Quite so. But who told “C. C. M.” that It ''is'' abstracted from all object? The Father-Spirit is not so, if He has the Son, the Word, the Christ for object, and all other Spirits in Him. It appears that the Adept teachers have told “C. C. M.” otherwise. There is a very curious editorial note in the last (November) number of the ''Theosophist'', in which it is claimed that there ''can be'' no Personal or Impersonal God, because the Brothers, though able to project their astral bodies, have not found Him. Now, really, how should this help them? Seeing that God is to be found by concentration, and not by dispersion? “Closer is He than breathing, more near than hands and feet.” The Occultists have just been assuring us that in the astral region God is utterly absent—a country of mere shells, and elementaries. If He is anywhere, He is in the spiritual region, with which astral bodies have nothing to do—in love, charity, self-renunciation—though I myself do not think Him altogether absent from the astral, or even the physical, sphere. Is He absent from art, science, philosophy? St. Catherine, Augustine, Leibnitz, and Newton could promenade their physical bodies, and one of them her astral body, and they found God. Bradlaugh, Baron D’Holbach, and a few very degraded savages, can promenade theirs, and find Him not. This sort of argument proves little. Our Lord knew the Father, and I suppose Gautama did not. Perhaps it was his loss, and the loss of many beside. But “C. C. M.” argues that the impersonality of the Spirit (how does he reconcile this with the teaching of his Gurus, that there is no ''im''personal God?) is proved by the fact that It makes us impersonal, causes us to merge our individuality, as he reminds us the mystics have always sought to do. Now this I have by anticipation answered in my letter about “The Perfect Way” in {{Style S-Small capitals|Light}}, 25th November. Love transports us out of ourselves, but the lover remains implicitly with the beloved for his adored object, else there is no love possible. In the final aspiration of Shelley’s “Epipsychidion,” Love herself is slain in a barren and monstrous identification of her two necessary factors. We know and can imagine nothing beyond. The Abyss, Being, the Ungrund, the Nothing, these are but abstractions of our mind. | |||
With respect to the ''number'' destined to annihilation, my strong impression is that in “Isis Unveiled,” and in the letters of Colonel Olcott and Madame Blavatsky to the ''Spiritualist'', a great majority was spoken of as thus doomed; possibly I am mistaken, but the numbers are certainly described as great. Look at the extract from the Book of Kiu-te in the November ''Theosophist.'' All the ''negative'' people, all the drones!—only the very good and—God save the mark!—the very ''bad'', are immortal! Are not the negative, humdrum people the ''hoi polloi?'' They are to perish “by millions as self-conscious entities,” &c. | |||
What I admire most in the speculative teaching of the Orientals is their grand intuition of the Universal, and the altitudes of Being, Spiritual Calm, of the Central, as distinguished from the vicissitudes of atomistic, self-centred, earthly-passioned, vain, mortal, suffering, unreal existence—their strong sense of the impermanence of all this, of its constant subjection to interminable births and re-births, all restless with thirst unquenchable, which is fire. “In God’s will is our peace,” in the merging of our own in His—that has been the one grand fundamental truth of all great religious teaching, and has been insisted on by the mystics of all creeds especially. But there is no rest of our wills in God’s when our wills and God’s are merged in one common grave. And we of the West have our supplementary idea, though, perhaps, emphasising it unduly, of the transcendent value of every human, nay, of every individual soul, as also of the symbolic manifestation, and necessary self-development of the Absolute Spirit ''through'' the world of phenomena, even through evil, sin, sorrow, and pain, as well as their corresponding opposites; so that the latter is not for us, as for Easterns, ''pure'' Maya and illusion of Brahm, but the Actual Substance of all, viewed imperfectly from our standpoint, and, therefore, under conditions of illusion, needing to be correlated with the sum total of conditions, in order to be harmonised with Divine Reason. But because I have criticised these particular teachings from the East, let no one imagine that I have not been deeply impressed with the Bagavad-Gita, and other grand monuments of Oriental thought. I protest, however, against the Nihilism to which these teachers would dogmatically conduct us, though, no doubt, after a more lengthened promenade in the worlds of phantasmagoria than their brethren of corresponding schools of Nihilism in the West are willing to accord. Yet Spencer and Tyndal, Huxley and Hartmann too, have their “unknowable” and “unconscious” beyond matter and mind, though all, ultimately, are to vanish into that “infinite azure of the past.” Spiritualists, dissatisfied with Christianity, thought ''they'' at least had secured some foothold in the void. These portentously learned, and miraculously gifted persons have come to undeceive them, though graciously promising them their “alliance” against that effete and mischievous superstition, called Christianity. | |||
“C. C. M.’s” reply, though very clever, does not seem to me to touch my arguments. I fear that, as in most philosophical controversies, we shall have been reminding the reader of two combatants vigorously striking the air on either side of one another, supposing that they are inflicting mutual damage, but not really touching each other at all. And for Spiritualists, who believe themselves the fortunate recipients of ready-made, if somewhat contradictory, revelations on all subjects and sundry, obtained through tilting tables, dead men materialised, and trance addresses more or less impromptu, it must seem rather hard to be asked to go through so much thinking for themselves, like any ordinary mortals not so favoured! | |||
However, the third paper of “C. C. M.” is extremely interesting. Indeed, all are lucid philosophical expositions of the philosophy he has espoused; and if the people over the water were not such very great people as we are told they are{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|14-139}} | |||
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Light v.02 n.104 1882-12-30.pdf|page=2|Light, v. 2, No. 104, December 30, 1882, pp. 586–587 | |||
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