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vol. title: Vol Four of The Theosophical Society of The Arya Samaj of Arya-wart vol. period: Sept 1878 – Sept 1879 pages in vol.: 350 |
Correspondence
Sir,—In the Indian Tribune of March 15th, appears a letter upon the relations of the Theosophical Society with the Arya Samaj. The writer seems neither an enemy of our cause, nor hostile to the Society; therefore I will try in a gentle spirit to correct certain misapprehensions under which he labours. As he signs himself “A Member,” he must, therefore, be regarded by us as a Brother? And yet he seems moved by an unwarranted fear to a hasty repudiation of too-close a connection between our Society and his Samaj lest the fair name of the latter be compromised before the public by some strange notions of ours! “I have been surprised,” he says, “to hear that the Society embraces people who believe in magic.........Should this, however, be the belief of the Theosophical Society, I could only assure your readers that the Arya Samaj is not in common with them in this respect......Only as far as Vedic learning and Vidic philosophy is concerned their objects may be said to be similar.”
It is these very points I now mean to answer. The gist of the whole question is as to the correct definition of the word “magic,” and understanding of what Vedic “learning and philosophy” are. If by magic is meant the popular superstitious belief in sorcery, witchcraft and ghosts in general; if it involves the admission that supernatural feats may be performed; if it requires faith in miracles; that is to say, phenomena outside natural law; then, on behalf of every Theosophist, whether a sceptic yet unconverted, a believer in, and student of phenomena pure and simple, or even a modern Spiritualist so called—i. e., one who believes in mediumistic phenomena to be necessarily caused by returning human spirits—we emphatically repudiate the accusation.
We did not see the Civil and Military Gazette, which seems so well acquainted with our doctrines; but if it meant to accuse any Theosophists of any such belief, then like many other Gazettes and Reviews it talked of that which it knew nothing about.
Our Society believes in no miracle, divine, diabolical or human, nor in anything which eludes the grasp of either philosophical and logical induction, or the syllogistic method of deduction. But, if the corrupted and comparatively modern term of “magic” is understood to mean the higher study and knowledge of nature, and deep research into her hidden powers—those occult and mysterious laws which constitute the ultimate essence of every element, whether, with the ancients we recognize but four or five, or with the moderns over sixty; or, again, if by magic is meant that ancient study within the sanctuaries known as the “worship of the Light,” or divine and spiritual wisdom as distinct from the worship of darkness or ignorance, which led the initiated high-priests of antiquity among the Aryans, Chaldeans, Medes and Egyptians to be called Maha magi or Maginsi, and by the Zoroastrians, Meghistom (from the root Meh’al—great, learned wise)—then, we Theosophists “plead guilty”............
We do study that “Science of Sciences,” extolled by the Eclectics and Platonists of the Alexandrian Schools, and practiced by the theurgists and the mystics of every age. If, magic gradually fell into disrepute, it was not because of its intrinsic worthlessness, but through misconception and ignorance of its primitive meaning; and especially—the cunning policy of Christian theologians who, feared, lest many of the phenomena produced by and through natural (though occult) law should give the direct lie to, and thus cheapen “Divine Biblical miracle,” and so forced the people to attribute every manifestation that they could not comprehend, or explain—to the direct agency of a personal devil. As well accuse the renowned Magi of old, of having had no better knowledge of divine truth and the hidden powers and possibilities of physical law than their successors—the uneducated Parsee Mobeds, or the Hindu Maharajas of that shameless sect known as the Vallabacharyaus, both of whom yet derive their appellation from the Persian word Mog or Mag, and the Sanskrit Maha. More than one glorious truth has thus tumbled down through human ignorance from the sublime unto the ridiculous. Plato, and even the sceptical Lucian, both recognized the high wisdom and profound learning of the Magi; and Cicero, speaking of those who inhabited Persia of his times, calls them “Sapientium et doctorum genus magorum.” And if so, we must evidently believe that these Magi or “Magicians” stood somewhat higher than the modern Maskelyns and Cooks,—the style of magicians that London sees at a shilling a seat—or yet, certain fraudulent Spiritual mediums. The science of such theurgists and philosophers as Pythagoras, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Bruno, Paracelsus and a host of other great men, has now fallen into disrepute. But, had our Brother Theosophist—Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of the telephone and the phonograph, lived in the days of Galileo, he would have surely expiated on the rack or at the stake his sin of having found the means to fix on a soft surface of metal, and preserve for long years the sounds of human voice; for his talent would have been pronounced the gift of Hell. And yet, such an abuse of brute power to suppress truth would not have changed a scientific discovery into a foolish and disreputable superstition.
But our friend “A member” consenting to descend to our level in one point at least admits himself that in “Vedic learning and philosophy” the Arya Samaj and the Theosophical Society are upon a common ground. Then, I have something to appeal to as an authority which will be better still than the so much derided Magic theurgy and Alchemy. It is the Vedas themselves: for “Magic” is brought in every line of the sacred books of the Aryans. Magic is indispensable for the comprehension of either of the six great schools of Aryan philosophy. And, it is precisely to understand them and thus enable ourselves to bring to light the hidden summum bonum of that mother of all Eastern philosophers known as the Veds, and the latter Brahmanical literature, that we study it. Neglect this study, and we, in common with all Europe would have to set Max Muller’s interpretations of the Veds far above those of Swamee Dya Nand Saraswati as given in his Veda-Bashya. And we would have to let the Anglo-German Sanskritist go uncontradicted, when he says that with the exception of the Rik, none other of the four sacred books is deserving of the name of Veda, especially Atharva Veda which is absurd magical nonsense, composed of sacrificial formulas, charms and incantations” (See his Lecture on the Vedas). This is, therefore, why, disregarding every mis-conception, we humbly beg to be allowed to follow the analytical method of such students and practitioners of “magic” as Kapila mentioned in the Sveta Vatara Upanishad as “the Rishi, nourished with knowledge” by God Himself; Patanjali,—the great authority of the yogs, Sankaracharya of theurgic memory, and—even Zoroaster who certainly learned his wisdom from the initiated Brahmins of Aryavarta. And, we do not see why, for that, we should be held up to the world’s scorn as either superstitious fools or hallucinated enthusiasts by our own brother of the Arya Samaj. I will say more: while the latter is, perhaps, in common with other “members” of the same Samaj unable and perfectly helpless to defend Swamee Dya Nand against the sophistry of such partial scoffers as a certain Pandit Mahesa Chandra Nyayaratna, of Calcutta, who would have us believe, the Veda-Bashya a futile attempt at interpretation, we, theosophists, do not shrink from assuming the burden. When the Swamee affirms that Agni and Iswara are identical, the Calcutta Pandit calls it “stuff.” To him Agni means the coarse, visible fire, with which one melts his ghee and cooks his rice cakes. Apparently he does not know, as he might, if he had studied “magic” that is to say had familiarised himself with the views about the divine fire or Light “whose external body is flame” held by the mediæval Rosicrucians (the fire-philosophers) and all their initiated predecessors, and successors, that the Vedic Agni is in fact Iswara and nothing else. The Swamee makes no mistake when he says “for Agni is all the deities and Vishnu is all the deities. For these two (divine) bodies Agni and Vishnu are the two ends of the sacrifice.” At one end of the ladder which stretches from heaven to earth is Iswara—Spirit, Supreme Being—subjective, invisible and incomprehensible,—at the other his visible manifestation “sacrificial fire.” So well has this been comprehended by every religious philosophy of the antiquity, that the—enlightened Parsee worships not gross flame but the divine Spirit within, of which it is the visible type; and even in the Jewish Bible there is the unapproachable Jehovah and his down-rushing fire which consumes the wood upon the altar and licks up the water in the trench about it. (1. Kings. 18. 38.) There also is the visible manifestation of God in the burning bush of Moses; and the Holy Ghost in the Gospels of Christians, descending like tongues of flame upon the heads of the assembled disciples on the day of Pentecost. There is not an esoteric philosophy, or rather theosophy—which did not apprehend this deep spiritual idea; and each and all are traceable to the Vedic sacred books. “Wonder no longer, then,”—says the author of the Rosicrucians, in his chapter on The Nature of Fire, and quoting R., Fluell, the mediæval Theosophist and Alchemist—“If in the religions of the Aryans—Medes, and Zoroastrians, rejected so long as an, idolatry, the ancient Persians and their masters the Magi—concluding that they saw “All” in this supernaturally magnificent element (fire) fell down and worshiped it; making of it the visible representation of the truest, but yet, in men’s speculations—in his philosophies, nay, in his commonest reason—impossible God: God being everywhere and in, us, and indeed, us, in the God—lighted man, and impossible to be contemplated or known outside being All.”
This is the teaching of the mediæval Fire-Philosophers known as the Brothers of the Rosie-Cross, such as Paracelsus, Kunrath, Van Helmont, and that of all the Illuminati and Alchemists who succeeded these, and who claimed to have discovered the eternal Fire, or to have “found out God in the Immortal Light,”—that Light whose radiance shone through the Yoges. “Already” remarks of them the same author, “in their determined climbing into the heights of thought, had these Titans of mind achieved, past the cosmical through the shadowy borders of Real and Unreal into Magic. For is Magic wholly false?” He goes on asking.
No; certainly not, when by magic is understood the higher study of divine, and yet not supernatural law, though the latter be, as yet, undiscovered by exact and materialistic science. No more are the so called spiritualistic phenomena, which are believed in by nearly twenty millions of well educated, often—highly enlightened and learned persons—in Europe and America, but mere hallucinations of a deceased brain. They are as real, and as well authenticated by the testimony of thousands of unimpeached witnesses, and as scientifically and mathematically proved as the latest discoveries <... continues on page 8-168 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Correspondence by Blavatsky, H. P., Deccan Star, The, Sunday, March 30, 1879