HPB-SB-10-247

T i

vol. 10, p. 247

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

vol. 10

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eng • рус

< Emancipation From the Flesh (continued from page 10-246) >

ing of all creation on this planet, as well as what we already know so well—its effects.

I have spoken of the immediate result of an emancipation from the flesh. What the soul, without the body, may have to undergo afterwards, in its changed state, is another thing altogether; for, during my short emancipation through an anæsthetic, it is hardly necessary to add that there was hardly time for any new soul troubles to begin. But as regards the passions, apart from flesh, nerve, blood, and bone pain, there is no reason to suppose that they (the passions) cease to trouble in the fluidic life any more than they do here, so long, at least, as the soul exists within the atmosphere and precincts of this earth. We must all know that the religion of the highest civilisation of Europe gives no idea of any absence of the passions in its sacred writings concerning even the highest place or spirit there described.

From the beginning to the end—or at any rate from Exodus to the Revelations—wrath, and its climax fury, repentance, jealousy, and revenge are the common terms which there represent the feelings and dealings of the highest Spirit with the large majority of men. But as good Bishop Burnet, in his Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, written in the time of William III., and still given for study to the young theologian and student for orders, says:—

“Passion is an agitation that supposes a succession of thoughts, together with a trouble for what is past, and a fear of missing what is aimed at. It arises out of a heat of mind, and produces a vehemence of action. Now, all these are such manifest imperfections, that it does plainly appear they cannot consist with infinite perfection.”

Still, if these passions be contrary to the attributes of the Most High God, which they evidently are, they are in conformity with the attributes of all other spirits, in or out of the flesh, with whom we have ever been put in communion or read of. Not only Scripture, but mediumship, shows that we must all expect to meet with the passions pretty sharply agitating every single spirit in the next life, as long at least (as I said) as we remain within the influence and the precincts of this planet. Even the idea of God as a Father does not exempt Him from the imputation of being subject to the passions. The idea of the Most High God as a Father was taught by very early races. The Aryans called Him Diauspiter, or Sky Father; the Greeks, Zeuspater; and the Latins, Jupiter; but how they degraded Him! So it seems to confer great credit on the heads and hearts of the former wise ones of Europe—I say nothing of the present day—with all the data that they had to go upon looking contrariwise, to have worked out by themselves the great problem that the Greatest of Spirits must be passionless. This must have come, surely, from the depths of their inward consciousness; or, who knows? Name it not in Gath! from Buddhism? Certainly not from the Jewish or Christian Scriptures.

It was, I say, a wondrous thing, while this small world and its surroundings, so full of sin and shame, both above and below, was regarded as the centre of the universe, and that all things were made for it, the sun and stars appearing through holes in a firmament, something beaten out like sheet iron to let light through—it was, I repeat, wondrous, with such views, and with the news of the wrath of God frowning on a stricken world, that men should even have imagined and guessed at a God who was above and devoid of the passions. But now we have been vouchsafed the knowledge of the grandest, infinitely and incomparably the grandest and most blessed truth that ever was revealed to expectant, trembling, suffering humanity—that this world is but as a grain of sand in the immensity, the boundlessness of the Universe, the specific truth revealed to the God-gifted ecclesiastic Copernicus, revealed by him and accepted as true by the wise Pope Leo X., A.D. 1533, but quenched and overlooked, through the fightings between Catholics and Protestants; and yet again brought forward by Galileo, A.D. 1623, but repudiated by the “infallible” Pope Urban VIII.;—happily, I say, since this wonderful revelation, we may look forward to the time when we may rise above the hatreds, wraths, jealousies, injustice, and dishonesty which we now know infest and infect fluidic life as well as earth life within the precincts of this our poor little agitated globe. And when we have each borne the full burden of our sins and fully paid our whole debt (since it is plain we must have a debt, the whole extent of which we cannot know), we may look forward to the time of the assuagement of passions, and to being lifted beyond and above them, just in proportion as we leave this earth and its precincts as men and spirits; and calmly hope that in other spheres, though not in earth spheres, there may be abodes afar off in infinite space where infinite progress may be assured to us; and that, as we cast off our imperfections, there will be not only space but work perhaps for us all, as there is surely room for us all in the infinity of space—work in such high and noble service as the All-seeing may appoint, even for the perfect as He is perfect.

M.A. (Cantab)

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