Blavatsky H.P. - A Bewitched Life: Difference between revisions

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<center>(As narrated by a Quill-Pen)</center>

{{HPB-CW-comment|1. “An Unsolved Mystery,” Spiritual Scientist, Boston, Vol. III, Nov. 25, 1875. It was unsigned.}}

{{HPB-CW-comment|2. “A Story of the Mystical,” The Sun, New York, December 26, 1875. It was signed Hadji Mora.}}

{{HPB-CW-comment|3. “The Luminous Circle,” The Sun, New York, January 2, 1876, signed Hadji Mora.}}

{{HPB-CW-comment|4. “The Cave of the Echoes,” The Banner of Light, Boston, March 30, 1878, signed H. P. Blavatsky.}}

{{HPB-CW-comment|5. “The Ensouled Violin,” The Theosophist, Vol. I, January, 1880, signed Hillarion Smerdis, F.T.S., Cyprus, October 1, 1879.}}

{{HPB-CW-comment|7. “From the Polar Lands,” appeared, as far as is known, for the first time in the collection known as Nightmare Tales.}}

{{HPB-CW-comment|No. 1 does not seem to have ever been re-edited or in any other way re-done by H. P. B. No. 2 was reprinted with but minor changes in The Theosophist, Vol. IV, January 1883, its title was altered to: “Can the Double Murder?” and an Introductory Note was added to it. No. 3 was edited and slightly altered by H. P. B., but was not republished until the appearance of Nightmare Tales, after her passing, its title being altered to “The Luminous Shield.” No. 4 was revised and enlarged by H. P. B. at some later date, and re-published in The Theosophist, Vol. IV, April, 1883, with the exception of a rather important explanation which was made to follow this story as originally published. At a still later date, the same story, entitled this time “Peshchera Ozerkov” (Cave of the Ozerky), appeared in Russian in the weekly called Rebus (St. Petersburg), being published in three consecutive installments in the issues of Jan. 5th, 12th, and 19th, 1886. It is probable that this was H. P. B.’s own Russian translation of her English story. Its introductory part was greatly altered, while the main portion of the text followed on the whole the English {{Page aside|355}}original. It was signed by her well-known Russian pseudonym of Radda-Bai. No. 5 was almost completely re-written and greatly enlarged by H. P. B. at a later date. It was published in this new version after her passing, namely in Lucifer, Vol. X March and April, 1892. No. 6, which follows this introductory explanation, was also considerably enlarged at one time or another, as compared with its original version, and was re-published posthumously also. No. 7 may well have been written by H. P. B. not long before her death, as no earlier date or place of publication is known.}}

{{HPB-CW-comment|The revised versions of Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, and the story called “From the Polar Lands”, were published after H. P. B.’s passing in a collection known as the Nightmare Tales (London, New York and Madras, 1892); it was printed on the H. P. B. Press in London, with an appropriate frontispiece and title-page drawing by one of H. P. B.’s personal pupils, the well-known painter Reginald M. Machell, depicting, among other things, wild witches riding the sky, holding on to a mare’s tail.}}

{{HPB-CW-comment|Nos. 1, 2 and 5 at least, and possibly all of these stories, were written by H. P. B. in collaboration with the Cyprian Adept known as Hilarion. It is he that Master K. H. meant when, in a letter to Miss Francesca Arundale, he wrote of “the adept who writes stories with H. P. B.” (Vide C. Jinarâjadâsa, Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom. First Series. 4th Edition, 1948, p. 57; Mary K. Neff, The “Brothers” of Madame Blavatsky, pp. 53-55; Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, p. 152; and the respective volumes of the present Series where these various stories appear in their chronological sequence, according to the earliest date of publication.).}}

 

{{HPB-CW-comment|The following text represents the longer version of “A Bewitched Life,” as published in Lucifer. Disregarding most of the minor differences of wording, we have indicated by square brackets within the text those chief passages which have been added in Lucifer to the original version in The Theosophist.—Compiler.]}}

It was a dark chilly night in September, 1884. A heavy gloom had descended over the streets of [A * * *, a small town on the Rhine,]<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[The original version mentions at this place the German town of Elberfeld.—Comp.]}}</ref> and was hanging like a black funeral-pall over the dull factory burgh. The greater number of its inhabitants, wearied by their long day’s work, had hours before retired to stretch their tired limbs and lay their {{Page aside|356}}aching heads upon their pillows. All was quiet in the large house; all was quiet in the deserted streets.

“. . . . learn the language of another world. . . .”

{{Page aside|359}}<center>'''I'''</center>

<center>[THE STRANGER’S STORY.]</center>

With a view to a clearer comprehension of the situation, I must interrupt these recollections with a few words about myself. [Oh how, if I could, would I obliterate that hated Self!]

Born in Switzerland, of French parents, who centered the whole world-wisdom in the literary trinity of Voltaire, {{Page aside|360}}J. J. Rousseau and d’Holbach, and educated in a German university, I grew up a thorough materialist, a confirmed atheist. I could never have even pictured to myself any beings—least of all a Being—above or even outside visible nature, as distinguished from her. Hence I regarded everything that could not be brought under the strictest analysis of the physical senses as a mere chimera. A soul, I argued, even supposing man has one, must be material. According to Origen’s definition, incorporeus<ref>ἀσώματος</ref>—the epithet he gave to his God—signifies a substance only more subtle than that of physical bodies, of which, at best, we can form no definite idea. How then can that, of which our senses cannot enable us to obtain any clear knowledge, how can that make itself visible or produce any tangible manifestations?

Pascal, in the eighth Act of his Thoughts, confesses to a most complete incertitude upon the existence of God. Throughout my life, I too professed a complete certitude as to the non-existence of any such extra-cosmic being, and repeated with that great thinker the memorable words in which he tells us:—“ I have examined if this God of whom all the world speaks might not have left some marks of himself. I look everywhere, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me nothing that may not be a matter of doubt and inquietude.” Nor have I found to this day anything that might unsettle me in precisely similar and even stronger feelings. I have never believed, nor shall I ever believe, in a Supreme Being. But at the potentialities of man, proclaimed far and wide in the East, powers so developed in some persons as to make them virtually gods, at them I laugh no more. My whole broken life is a protest against such negation. [I believe in such phenomena, and—I curse them, whenever they come, and {{Page aside|361}}by whatsoever means generated.] On the death of my parents, owing to an unfortunate lawsuit, I lost the greater part of- my fortune, and resolved—for the sake of those I loved best, rather than for my own—to make another for myself. My elder sister, whom I adored, had married a poor man. I accepted the offer of a rich Hamburg firm and sailed for Japan as its junior partner.

For several years my business went on successfully. I got into the confidence of many influential Japanese, through whose protection I was enabled to travel and transact business in many localities, which, in those days especially, were not easily accessible to foreigners. Indifferent to every religion, I became interested in the philosophy of Buddhism, the only religious system I thought worthy of being called philosophical. Thus, in my moments of leisure, I visited the most remarkable temples of Japan, the most important and curious of the ninety-six Buddhist monasteries of Kioto. I have examined in turn Day-Bootzoo, with its gigantic bell; Tzeonene, Enarino-Yassero, Kie-Missoo, Higadzi-Hong-Vonsi, and many other famous temples.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[The spelling of these Japanese names is somewhat peculiar. One or two of them are not easy to identify. Daibutsu is the great image of the Buddha at Nara, Japan. “Tzeonene” with its two other variants in the text is most probably Chion In, the Headquarters of the Jyodo sect. The third name is likely to be Inari No Yashiro, a Shinto temple, Inari being the god of the harvest. The fourth is definitely Kiyo Mizu, a famous Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. The last name in the text corresponds to Higashi Hongwanji, a temple of the Shin sect located at Kyoto.

A few other names and terms used by H. P. B. later in this story might as well be mentioned here. Monks of the temple of Chion In (“Tzeonene”) belong to the sect of Jyodo; it is therefore possible that “Dzeno-doo” stands for Jyodo. Yamabushi is a mountain priest, an itinerant priest, a hermit, a strolling monk. The spiritual teachers of the Shinto are usually called Kannushi; they are the guardians of a shrine.

In the third sub-division of the story, the Lord “Ten-Dzio-Dai-Dzio” is most likely Tenjo Daijin, although not definitely so. —Compiler.]}}</ref>

“Life on a spiritual plane; that which the Buddhists call Tushita Devaloka (Paradise). Man can create such a blissful existence for himself between two births, by the gradual transference onto that plane of all the faculties which during his sojourn on earth manifest through his organic body and, as you call it, animal brain.” . . .

“He will be dealt with according to the prevailing state of his consciousness, of which there are many grades. At best—immediate rebirth; at worst—the state of avitchi, a mental hell. Yet one need not be an ascetic to assimilate spiritual life which will extend to the hereafter. All that is required is to try and approach Spirit.”

No use repeating here the long rigmarole of the most hopelessly involved and incomprehensible of all doctrines. According to his ideas, we have to train ourselves for spirituality in another world—as for gymnastics. Carrying on the analogy between the temple and the “spiritual plane” he tried to illustrate his idea. He had himself worked in the temple of Spirit two-thirds of his life, and given several hours daily to “contemplation.” Thus he knew (?!) that after he had laid aside his mortal casket, “a mere illusion,” he explained—he would in his spiritual consciousness live over again every feeling of ennobling joy and divine bliss he had ever had, or ought to have had—only a hundred-fold intensified. His work on the spirit-plane had been considerable, he said, and he hoped, therefore, that the wages of the labourer would prove proportionate.

{{Page aside|366}}“In that case,” he said, speaking slowly and weighing every word—“in that case, you would have, I fear, only to open and shut the temple door, over and over again, during a period which, however short, would seem to you an eternity.”

“Nay, nay; not aping, but only intensifying their repetition; filling the gaps that were unjustly left unfilled during life in the fruition of our acts and deeds, and of everything performed on the spiritual plane of the one real state. What I said was an illustration, and no doubt for you, who seem entirely ignorant of the mysteries of Soul-Vision, not a very intelligible one. It is myself who am to be blamed. . . . What I sought to impress upon you was that, as the spiritual state of our consciousness liberated from its body is but the fruition of every spiritual act performed during life, where an act had been barren, there could be no results expected—save the repetition of that act itself. This is all. I pray you may be spared such fruitless deeds and finally made to see certain truths.” And passing through the usual Japanese courtesies of taking leave, the excellent man departed.

But as the matter stood, the more personal affection and respect I felt for him, the less could I become reconciled to his wild ideas about an after-life, and especially {{Page aside|367}}as to the acquisition by some men of supernatural powers. I felt particularly disgusted with his reverence for the Yamabooshi, the allies of every Buddhist sect in the land. Their claims to the “miraculous” were simply odious to my notions. To hear every Jap I knew at Kioto, even to my own partner, the shrewdest of all the business men I had come across in the East—mentioning these followers of Lao-tze with downcast eyes, reverentially folded hands, and affirmations of their possessing “great” and “wonderful” gifts, was more than I was prepared to patiently tolerate in those days. And who were they, after all, these great magicians with their ridiculous pretensions to super-mundane knowledge; these “holy beggars” who, as I then thought, purposely dwell in the recesses of unfrequented mountains and on unapproachable craggy steeps so as the better to afford no chance to curious intruders of finding them out and watching them in their own dens? Simply, impudent fortune-tellers, Japanese gypsies who sell charms and talismans, and no better. In answer to those who sought to assure me that though the Yamabooshi lead a mysterious life, admitting none of the profane to their secrets, they still do accept pupils, however difficult it is for one to become their disciple, and that thus they have living witnesses to the great purity and sanctity of their lives, in answer to such affirmations I opposed the strongest negation and stood firmly by it. I insulted both masters and pupils, classing them under the same category of fools, when not knaves, and I went so far as to include in this number the Shintos [Now Shintoism or Sin-Syu, “faith in the gods, and in the way to the gods,” that is, belief in the communication between these creatures and men, is a kind of worship of nature-spirits, of which nothing can be more miserably absurd. And by placing the Shintos among the fools and knaves of other sects, I gained many enemies.] For the Shinto Kanusi (spiritual teachers) are looked upon as the highest in the upper classes of society, [the Mikado himself being at the head of their hierarchy] and the members of the sect belonging to the most cultured and educated men in Japan. These Kanusi of the Shinto form {{Page aside|368}}no caste or class apart, nor do they pass any ordination—at any rate none known to outsiders. And as they claim publicly no special privilege or powers, even their dress being in no wise different from that of the laity, but are simply in the world’s opinion professors and students of occult and spiritual sciences, I very often came in contact with them without in the least suspecting that I was in the presence of such personages.

<center>'''II'''</center>

<center>[THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR.]</center>