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Sir,—The Spiritualist for some weeks past has been filled with assertions, speculations and opinions on adepts and adeptship, and on the school of Theosophists said to be in correspondence with these adepts. | |||
{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|11-173}} | You, sir, appear to be entirely sceptical in the matter, and although your opinions on the subject are somewhat deficient in reverence and stability, they are yet expressed with a freedom and confidence which has occasionally called forth in myself a good deal of not ill-natured laughter. | ||
Why should it seem incredible that adepts should exist? We are all acquainted with the phenomena connected with the ''Double ''or trans-corporeal man, and I have on more than one occasion, narrated in your pages and elsewhere the history of a lady friend of my own who, desiring much to be at home and warming herself at the kitchen fire, as she dragged her tired body homewards on a cold winter day, thereupon was seen by her two servants in the kitchen to open the door and walk towards the fire, and there stand warming herself, and then suddenly vanish into air. | |||
If this lady, by a mere passing volition and “absence of mind” thus showed a visible and apparently solid body a mile distant from her material body, why should adepts not be able, by long practice and will, to manifest themselves, say one hundred or one thousand miles distant from their solid bodies. | |||
My lady friend’s ghost visibly opened the kitchen door, and if so why should the ghosts of living adepts not open doors and touch friends or even speak? | |||
Clairvoyants are usually entranced during Clairvoyance but many are Clairvoyants in their ordinary waking state, and this is also claimed by adepts. | |||
Further, if a pot of flowers, fish, &c., could appear at the simple request of Mrs. Guppy, why should they not also arrive at the command of adepts. | |||
The great distinction between mediums and adepts is only this, that the medium passively receives the assistance of spirits, while the adept ''commands ''disembodied spirits and his own spirit, and the medium is passively Clairvoyant, while the adept is Clairvoyant by an effect of his will. | |||
In short the adept is a being who, partly by the idiosyncracy of his nature, and partly by powers acquired by the long training of the body and will, acts almost as if he were a disembodied spirit possessed of strong will and magnetic power. | |||
For my own part, beyond the evidence I have received from personal friends, I have no difficulty in believing in the existence of an order of Adept brothers. That they should prefer to live a life of seclusion, and on inaccessible mountains, beyond the contamination of the moral and material world is also consistent with their nature, namely, that of demi-spiritual beings who cannot endure the poisonous emanations and materialistic nature of low ''human ''beings. | |||
This sensitiveness, however, is to me an evidence not of their strength but of their weakness. | |||
Their spiritual nature is over sensitive and their aspirations more ambitious than benevolent. Indeed, you describe it well, as “Spiritual greed,” or at least it may be called spiritual self-indulgence. | |||
Will, not love, is their motive power, and their desire is to become demi-gods. Their aspirations are for spiritual aggrandisement, more than for the happiness and salvation of mankind. | |||
This opinion of mine will be perhaps resented, and the existence of the Theosophical Society, which aims at a universal brotherhood will be pointed to as a reply. | |||
In answer, I would beg reverentially to speak of Jesus of Nazareth as beyond all comparison the greatest adept who ever walked this earth, it being understood that I use the term adept as applied to the God-man by way of illustration only, for Jesus was the very opposite of an Indian Adept, inasmuch as he invariably asserted that all his power came from his Father God, while the adepts of India teach that all their power comes from the will power of their own spiritual nature, and that that is all they know of God. | |||
The grand distinction then between the Indian Adepts and Jesus of Nazareth consists in this, that whereas the Indian Adepts aspire to the possession of spiritual exaltation, and live in inaccessible mountains, and shun intercourse with human beings, except so far as they influence them from a distance through their spiritual telegraph. | |||
Jesus, on the contrary, although from time to time He retired into the mountains, and prayed to God the Father all night, always in daylight descended from thes solitary places, and daily gave to poor suffering huma {{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|11-173}} | |||
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Revision as of 13:29, 6 March 2025
< The Theosophical Society (continued from page 11-171) >
...
Do Adepts Exist?
Sir,—The Spiritualist for some weeks past has been filled with assertions, speculations and opinions on adepts and adeptship, and on the school of Theosophists said to be in correspondence with these adepts.
You, sir, appear to be entirely sceptical in the matter, and although your opinions on the subject are somewhat deficient in reverence and stability, they are yet expressed with a freedom and confidence which has occasionally called forth in myself a good deal of not ill-natured laughter.
Why should it seem incredible that adepts should exist? We are all acquainted with the phenomena connected with the Double or trans-corporeal man, and I have on more than one occasion, narrated in your pages and elsewhere the history of a lady friend of my own who, desiring much to be at home and warming herself at the kitchen fire, as she dragged her tired body homewards on a cold winter day, thereupon was seen by her two servants in the kitchen to open the door and walk towards the fire, and there stand warming herself, and then suddenly vanish into air.
If this lady, by a mere passing volition and “absence of mind” thus showed a visible and apparently solid body a mile distant from her material body, why should adepts not be able, by long practice and will, to manifest themselves, say one hundred or one thousand miles distant from their solid bodies.
My lady friend’s ghost visibly opened the kitchen door, and if so why should the ghosts of living adepts not open doors and touch friends or even speak?
Clairvoyants are usually entranced during Clairvoyance but many are Clairvoyants in their ordinary waking state, and this is also claimed by adepts.
Further, if a pot of flowers, fish, &c., could appear at the simple request of Mrs. Guppy, why should they not also arrive at the command of adepts.
The great distinction between mediums and adepts is only this, that the medium passively receives the assistance of spirits, while the adept commands disembodied spirits and his own spirit, and the medium is passively Clairvoyant, while the adept is Clairvoyant by an effect of his will.
In short the adept is a being who, partly by the idiosyncracy of his nature, and partly by powers acquired by the long training of the body and will, acts almost as if he were a disembodied spirit possessed of strong will and magnetic power.
For my own part, beyond the evidence I have received from personal friends, I have no difficulty in believing in the existence of an order of Adept brothers. That they should prefer to live a life of seclusion, and on inaccessible mountains, beyond the contamination of the moral and material world is also consistent with their nature, namely, that of demi-spiritual beings who cannot endure the poisonous emanations and materialistic nature of low human beings.
This sensitiveness, however, is to me an evidence not of their strength but of their weakness.
Their spiritual nature is over sensitive and their aspirations more ambitious than benevolent. Indeed, you describe it well, as “Spiritual greed,” or at least it may be called spiritual self-indulgence.
Will, not love, is their motive power, and their desire is to become demi-gods. Their aspirations are for spiritual aggrandisement, more than for the happiness and salvation of mankind.
This opinion of mine will be perhaps resented, and the existence of the Theosophical Society, which aims at a universal brotherhood will be pointed to as a reply.
In answer, I would beg reverentially to speak of Jesus of Nazareth as beyond all comparison the greatest adept who ever walked this earth, it being understood that I use the term adept as applied to the God-man by way of illustration only, for Jesus was the very opposite of an Indian Adept, inasmuch as he invariably asserted that all his power came from his Father God, while the adepts of India teach that all their power comes from the will power of their own spiritual nature, and that that is all they know of God.
The grand distinction then between the Indian Adepts and Jesus of Nazareth consists in this, that whereas the Indian Adepts aspire to the possession of spiritual exaltation, and live in inaccessible mountains, and shun intercourse with human beings, except so far as they influence them from a distance through their spiritual telegraph.
Jesus, on the contrary, although from time to time He retired into the mountains, and prayed to God the Father all night, always in daylight descended from thes solitary places, and daily gave to poor suffering huma <... continues on page 11-173 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Do Adepts Exist? by Theosophist, London Spiritualist, No. 464, July 15, 1881, pp. 30-1
Sources
-
London Spiritualist, No. 464, July 15, 1881, pp. 30-1