< More Elucidations to "The Adeptship of Jesus Christ" (continued from page 11-280) >
...
Theosophists' Ideas as to the Nature of Spirits
The following are some of the speculations printed in the October number of The Theosophist, in an article which was described by us last week as interesting but unscientific; in other words it is assertion, assertion, assertion, from beginning to end, with no proof:—
In order to understand clearly the view of the Occultists, it is necessary to glance at the constitution of the living human being. Even the spiritual theory teaches that man is a trinity, composed of (l) a higher spirit, or the “Spiritual Soul” as ancient philosophers designated it; (2) its envelope—the ethereal form or shadow of the body—called by the Neoplatonists the “animal soul;” and (3) the physical body.
Although from one point of view this is broadly correct, yet, according to Occultists, to render our conceptions of this truth clearer and follow successfully the course of man after death, it is neccessary to subdivide further these three entities and resolve them into their <... continues on page 11-281 >
< Theosophists' Ideas as to the Nature of Spirits (continued from page 11-282) >
gestating in the fathomless womb of the adjoining world of effects, and to disturb the shells by necromantic sorcery is at the same time to disturb the foetal spiritual Ego.
We said that these shells in such cases rapidly decay, the rapidity being exactly proportional to the purity of the departed spiritual Ego, and we may add that similarly the rapidity of gestation of the new Ego is proportional to the purity of the old Ego out of which it is evolved. Happily necromancy is unknown to modern Spiritualists, so that it is next to impossible that the reliquiæ of the good and pure should ever appear in the séance-room. No doubt, the simulacra of some spiritual Egos whose fate trembled in the balance, whose affinities, earthwards and heaven-wards, to use the popular phraseology, were nearly equal, who have left too much of the matter behind that has been in combination to form them, who will He long in festal bonds before being able to develop the new Egohood; no doubt, we say such simulacra may survive longer and may occasionally appear under exceptional conditions in seance-rooms, with a dim-dazed consciousness of their past lives. But even this, owing to the conditions of the case, will be rare, and they will never be active or intelligent, as the stronger portions of their wills—the higher portions of then intelligence—have gone elsewhere.
Nature draws no hard and fast lines, though in the balance of forces very slight differences in opposing energies may produce the most divergent results. All entities shade off from one end to the other of the chain by imperceptible degrees, and it is impossible for man to guage the exact degree of purity of the deceased at which the re-appearance voluntarily of his rebquiæ through the agency of mediumship becomes impossible, but it is absolutely true that, broadly speaking, as a law, it is only the reliquiæ of non-spiritually minded men, whose spiritual Egos have perished, that appear in séance-rooms and are dignified by Spiritualists with the title of “spirits of the departed.”
These shells, these animal souls, in whom still survive the major portions of the intelligence, will-power, and knowledge that they possessed when incorporated in the human combination, invigorated too by the re-assimilation with the spirit-vitalised matter that once combined with the spirit to compose their spiritual Ego, are often powerful and highly intelligent, and continue to survive for lengthened periods, their intense desire for earthly life enabling them to seize from the decaying simulacra of the good and feeble the material for prolonged existence.
To these eidolons Occultists are used to give the name of elementaries, and these it is that, by the aid of the half-intelligent forces of nature which are attracted to them, perform most of the wonders of the seance-rooms. If to these shells, these eidolons, which have lost their immortality <... continues on page 11-285 >
<Untitled> (The last number...)
...
< Theosophists' Ideas as to the Nature of Spirits (continued from page 11-286) >
whence its perceptions are being derived. In its spiritual soul it knows no doubt, but in its combination with the other principles—a combination necessary for the writing or speaking of those perceptions,—it is quite in the dark and can be impressed by any elementary, of sufficient force, at hand with any conception in regard to this point that it chooses to convey.
Editor's notes
Sources
-
London Spiritualist, No. 483, November 25, 1881, pp. 260-62