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Light. December 23, 1882.
THEOSOPHIC TEACHINGS.
By the Hon. Roden Noel.
No. II.
In his second paper “C. C. M.” explains what he means by “matter.” Whether his instructors, and their authorised expounders will accept his explanation as their own, we do not know. One would not have supposed that such ultra-idealist views of “matter” were those of “C. C. M.,” had he not now told us. And, of course, I accept his definition of his own words in the use of such phrases as “thought, memory, and will, are the energies of the brain.” But, perhaps, one can hardly be blamed for not knowing beforehand that, when the terminology of materialism is used, the writer is using it in the sense of idealism. “Ultra-idealist,” I say, because “C. C. M.” appears hardly to distinguish between ourselves, and matter as objects in reflection—matter is to him an object of thought, he now explains. But I think our notion of matter distinctively implies sensible qualities in space and time, regarded not as our notion, but as something external to us, and opposed to us. We may argue that, if it is external to us individually, then, since it is also a complex notion, necessarily constructed by a mind, a unity of experience with certain qualifying and quantifying functions, it can only be a notion of similar minds. I should not have gathered from his first article that this was “C. C. M.’s” idea of matter, but now I accept his explanation. What he argues here is that every subject implies an object. This I also have maintained in the third of my papers in “Light.” I regard it as an elementary truth. But if this is true, it must surely be equally true that every object implies a subject. Yet the Occultists and “C. C. M.” in their “shell” appear to provide us with just this—an object without a subject. For “C. C. M.” expressly tells us that the shell is not a conscious subject—yet it is conscious; so it must be a conscious object. But the idealism of “C. C. M.” ought not to admit the possibility of such a monster. For I have argued already that even in the most rudimentary consciousness there must be discrimination of feelings, and therefore an implicit subject discriminating them. Can “C. C. M.” really imagine a cluster of memories unattached to a rememberer and gadding about all alone with an airy body—behaviour most improper and inconceivable!
He defends here the statement of the “Fragments” that the individual is constituted by the union of the spirit with matter. Now I can scarcely believe that Occultists in general, Eliphas Levi, or Madame Blavatsky, or the writer of “Fragments” mean by matter anything like what “C. C. M.” tell us he means. Their language suggests something so very different, in fact, the ordinary notion of so-called common sense. Orientals are not idealists in the Western sense, though they may possibly accept the defence of their able Western advocate.* But let us take the sentence defended by “C. C. M.,” as really having such a meaning. Then if matter means here the object of a subject’s consciousness, why should individuality ever cease, as these writers are so anxious to prove it will? Why should the spirit ever cease to have an object of cognition? Since it must be always present to itself, it must always have itself for object—its own subjective states, even if no outer object; but the former would be sufficient, according to the present definition, to give the sense of individuality. And resistance, or independence of an object in space, is sufficient to give matter in the ordinary sense. Why should it cease to know both this and other individual intelligences, and its own subjective states, or ideas, which, as “C. C. M.” rightly points out, are objects to it? So far as these may be connected with the phenomenon of an astral body, the inference in regard to it would seem to be rather that we shall continue to cognise such a phenomenon than that it will disappear, taking with it a great part of what so intimately belongs to us. Why should it? All this, as I must repeat again and again, may be transformed, but not extinguished, wasted, alienated from its own essential cause. And so far from the withdrawal of one object annihilating us, we cannot be self-conscious without many in succession. “C. C. M.” proceeds to touch upon some of the deepest problems that can be presented to us, and he treats them with marked ability. I find myself, however, diametrically opposed to him. He takes the lower psychic man as the matter, which the spirit proceeds to form into the higher spiritual man. This is quite the Aristotelian sense of the word as potentiality, material capable of form. And the Christian might accept this as a true account of regeneration. But he seems here to shift his ground again as regards the meaning of the word “matter.” For the psychic man evidently implies subject as well as object. “Matter,” then, here, is no longer mere object. However, we will again follow “C. C. M.” in taking the word in this new Aristotelian sense. He does not even notice, far less attempt to answer, my argument that nothing can ever become explicitly what it is not already implicitly. I asked whether the unregenerate man is not identical with the regenerate, whether he has not undergone a change of which he is conscious? I argued that, if so, the change wrought must be, not from outside, but from inside. The spirit then, is not an element exterior to him, but implicit in him. I need scarcely repeat my arguments on this head, but “C. C. M.” has not attempted to touch them. I urged that though the animal psychic men do not exhibit the characteristic virtues of the spiritual man, still, if you take the spirit as the highest principle of all, it is by virtue of this very spirit that the lower nature exists, and the spirit may be discerned in it both germinally, and symbolically by a purged, sympathetic vision, though, doubtless, not by the merely analytic unidealising understanding. “C. C. M.,” like the rest of the Occultists, evidently thinks of the spirit as “overshadowing” only, not as the very substance of all existence.
We spoke of Occultist Calvinism; we may speak also of the Occultist Dieu des Philosophes. With the former, indeed, God is far from being a “bon Papa,” sitting apart, but It is a Principle sitting apart: It seems not to be immanent. It has to come down like a Deus ex machinâ, and if It prefers, It can keep away. I always objected to that in the orthodox carpenter theory of creation—as when God is described by Young “bowling” the worlds flaming through the blue profound. And I equally object when it is a Principle only, believing that even an immanent Principle would be capable of little, but a Principle exterior to the world of still less. Yet “C. C. M.,” at the end of his second paper, just admits that the spirit is the life of all—and again, later; but then he adds, “It is a question of consciousness.” Precisely, it is just that—but consciousness of what? Why, of the fact, of the truth, that the spirit, and all which the word connotes, all its attributes, Love, Righteousness, Insight, are the substance and truth of us, at the root of our being, as of all being. And if they are so, how can any Oriental Occultist, or regenerate Christian, in the pride of his own little oil-lamp illumination, assert that the truth is for him and his fellows only, not for all, even the most rudimentary and degraded? that some are for ever incapable of rising to the privilege of knowing and enjoying what is the birthright of them all! He who does so proves thereby that his own boasted spiritual illumination is but a glimmer. He cannot pierce below the surface of things to the universal truth of being. The Sun is all-nourishing, all-beholding, though for awhile some among us may be pilgrims of the night. Precisely because the Universal is the truth of all, therefore if one single atom were to fail from the Universal, all would fall into ruin. Individuality is guaranteed by the Universal that supports it; guaranteed in its own ideal perfection, as function of the Divine whole.
And yet, what inconsistency in the Occultist camp! For “C. C. M.” at the same time maintains that the true self is universal, not individual. Why, surely, then, if the Universal be the true self of every individual, his noumenon, as “C. C. M.” believes, every individual ought to be capable of knowing his own true self, possibly not now, but at least later? And how can the true self of each be spoken of as only “overshadowing” each—indeed, not even overshadowing a great number? (See, e.g., “Isis Unveiled.)” The very being, substance, and identity can in no sense be external to the person or thing of which it is the true being, substance, and identity! And surely the individual must be capable of being atoned with his own true self? Occultists have a simple way of atoning, viz., annihilating! If they held free will, this “conditional” position would be more intelligible on the part of these teachers. They, in truth, dwell much in the region of the phenomenal, the “astral.” Thus they have just bewildered us by leading our imagination on a curious, and, no doubt, interesting journey of regress through millions of past ages, and through myriads of worlds, and manifold births and re-births. But one flash of true insight would annihilate all that by transformation, and would place the spirit of man in his own Divine centre, where worlds and æons, in place of burdening and overwhelming him with a sense of dizzying insignificance, would hide their diminished heads before him as his own obedient slaves, whom he has himself summoned from the vasty deep by the mere waving of his magic wand of phantasy. Yet all—even man and his rich spiritual life—is the sport of an impersonal Being’s illusion, all to vanish into the vacuous Inane, whence it issued! (See Subbha Row’s reply to Mr. Oxley, in Theosophist for October.)<... continues on page 14-132 >
* For systems of religious philosophy have proved themselves elastic. Orientals believe matter to be illusion, but that, as I said before, is quite a different notion. Thought is product of the different forms of this illusion, physical or astral, which I repeat is only Büchner subtilized in the Oriental mind. I am sorry “C. C. M.” does not like my saying this, but it is my own honest conviction which I have not yet seen cause to change. Impersonal, unconscious spirit, that is, the great Nothing, produces an illusion in itself—matter, and this produces another—thought and individuality. This is not so very unlike the more philosophic forms of our Western nihilistic materialism. Read Mr. F. Harrison in our “Symposium on a Future Life” in the Nineteenth Century. Positivism holds all to be phenomenal and illusory, yet uses the language of materialism—regards thought as subsequent to organised matter, consequent on it.
Editor's notes
- ↑ Theosophic Teachings. by Noel, Roden (signed as The Hon. Roden Noel), Light, Vol. II, No. 103. A blue diagonal stroke crosses the upper-left margin and date. The writer has not been identified.
Sources
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Light, v. 2, No. 103, December 23, 1882, pp. 575–576