< Theosophists' Ideas as to the Nature of Spirits (continued from page 11-281) >
insuperable obstacle. Once reborn into the higher world and (independent of the physical impossibility of any communication between its world and ours, to all but the very highest adepts) the new Ego has become a new person; it has lost its old consciousness linked with earthly experiences and has acquired a new consciousness which, as time rolls on, will be interpenetrated by its experiences in that higher sphere. The time will come, no doubt, but many steps higher on the ladder, when the Ego will regain its consciousness of all its past stages of existence, but in the next higher world of causes, or activity, to our own, the new Ego has no more remembrance of its earthly career than we here have of the life that preceded this present one.
Therefore, it is that the Occultists maintain that no spirits of the departed can appear or take part in the phenomena of seance-rooms. To what can appear and take part in these, the Occultists refuse the name of spirits.
But it may be said, what is it that can appear?
We reply—merely the animal souls or perispirits of the deceased. It might appear from what we have said that while this, according to our previous exposition, would be true in the case of the spiritually minded, in that of the materially minded we should have these plus the spiritual Ego or consciousness. But such is not the case. Immediately on the severance of the spirit, whether at death, or (as we have already hinted is sometimes the case) before death, the spiritual Ego is dissipated and ceases to exist. It is the result of the action of spirit on matter, and it might, to render the matter more clear, be described as a combination of spirit and matter, just as flame is the result of the combination of oxygen with the substance being oxygenised, and might loosely be described as the combination of the two. Withdraw the oxygen and the flame censes; withdraw the spirit, and the spiritual Ego disappears. The sense of individuality in spirit cannot exist without combination with matter. Thus the pure planetary spirits, when first propelled into the circle of necessity, have no individual consciousness, only the absolute consciousness which they share with all fragments of the spirit hitherto entirely uncombined with matter. As they, entering into generation, descend the ladder and grow gradually more and more hemmed in by matter and isolated from the universal spirit, so the sense of individuality, the spiritual Egoship, grows. How finally on reascending the circle, step by step, they regain on reunion with the universal, the absolute consciousness, and simultaneously all the individual consciousnesses which they have developed at each stage of their descending and ascending progress, is one of the highest mysteries.
Theosophists' Ideas as to the Nature of Spirits
But to return to the spiritual Egoship developed on this earth; if too tainted to follow the spirit in its upward course, it is, as it were, forthwith torn asunder from it Loft in the terrestrial atmosphere without the sustaining spirit that gave it existence, it has to disappear as the flame does when the oxygen is exhausted. All the material elements which in combination with the spirit gave it a consistency, fly by the Law of Affinity to join the three other principles that constitute the perispirit or natural soul, and the spiritual Ego ceases to exist.
Thus alike in all cases all that remain, all that can appear, are the shells of the deceased, the two principles which we call the animal or surviving astral souls, or animal Ego.
But there is this to be noted. As the clay, as Saadi says, long retains trace· of the perfume of the roses which once honoured it with their companionship, so the etherialized matter which has been in combination with spirit, long retains a power of resisting disintegration. The more pure the spiritual Ego, the less of the matter which in combination with the spirit went to form it does it leave behind clinging to the two principles; the more impure, the greater the mass of such spirit-vitalized matter which remains to invigorate the reliquiae.
Thus it follows that in the case of the pure and good, the shells rapidly disintegrate, and the animal soul having ever been kept in subjection is feeble and will-less, and it can very rarely, if ever, happen that such should voluntarily appear or manifest themselves— their vitality, desires and aspirations almost exclusively existed in what has passed away. No doubt a power exists which can compel even these to appear, a power taught by the evil science of necromancy, rightly denounced by all good men of old. But why evil it may be asked? Because until these shells have dissipated, a certain sympathy exists between them and the departed spiritual Ego which is <... continues on page 11-283 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Theosophists' Ideas as to the Nature of Spirits by unknown author, London Spiritualist, No. 485, December 9, 1881, pp. 284-87
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 485, December 9, 1881, pp. 284-87