T
Teacher
Guest
Letter No. 21
[Letter from Mr. Sinnett to K.H. With K.H.'s Comments printed in bold type. -- ED.]
Received back 22.8.82.
August 12th.
My dear Guardian,
I am afraid the present letters on Theosophy are not worth much, for I have worked on too literal an acceptance of some passages in your long letter about Deva-Chan. The bearing of that seemed to be that the "accidents" as well as the suicides, were in danger from the attraction of the seance room. You wrote: --
"But there is another kind of spirit we have lost sight of, -- the suicides and those killed by accidents. Both kinds can communicate and both have to pay dearly for such visits. . . ." Correct.
And later on after speaking of the case of the suicides in detail you say: --
"As to the victims of accident these fare still worse . . . unhappy shades . . . cut off in the full flush of earthly passions . . . they are the pisachas etc. . . ." They not only ruin their victims etc. . . ." Again correct. Bear in mind that the exceptions enforce the rule.
And if they are neither very good nor very bad the "victims of accident or violence," derive a new set of skandhas from the medium who attracts them. I have explained the situation on the margin of proofs. See note.
It was on this text that I have been working.
If this is not to be maintained or if in some way that as yet I cannot understand the words bear a different signification from that which seems to belong to them, it might be better to cancel these two letters altogether or hold them over for complete alteration. The warning is delivered in too solemn a tone and the danger is made too much of if it is merely to apply to suicides, and in the last slip of the proof the elimination of "the accidents and" makes the rest rather ridiculous because then we are dividing suicides only into the very pure and elevated! and the medium people etc.
It seems to me that it would hardly do to let even letter (1) stand alone, -- though it does not include the mistake, for it would have no raison d'etre unless followed up by letter (2).
Both letters have gone home to Stainton Moses for transmission to Light -- the first by the mail from here of July 21, the second by last mail -- yesterday. Now if you decide that it is better to stop and cancel them I shall just be in time to telegraph home to Stainton Moses to that effect, and will do this directly I receive a telegram from you or from the Old Lady to that effect.
If nothing is done they Will appear in Light as written -- i.e. as the MS. sent with the present proof stood barring a few little mistakes which I see my wife has made in copying them out.
It is altogether a very awkward tangle. I was precipitate apparently in sending them home, but I thought I had followed the statements of your long devachan letter so faithfully. Awaiting orders,
Ever your devoted
A. P. S.
On margin I said "rarely" but I have not pronounced the word "never." Accidents occur under the most various circumstances; and men are not only killed accidentally, or die as suicides but are also murdered-- something we have not even touched upon. I can well understand your perplexity but can hardly help you. Bear always in mind that there are exceptions to every rule, and to these again and other side exceptions, and be always prepared to learn something new. I can easily understand we are accused of contradictionsand inconsistencies -- aye, even to writing one thing to-day and denying it to-morrow. What you were taught is the RULE. Good and pure "accidents" sleep in the Akasa, ignorant of their change; very wicked and impure -- suffer all the tortures of a horrible nightmare. The majority -- neither very good nor very bad, the victims of accident or violence (including murder) -- some sleep, others become Nature pisachas, and while a small minority may fall victims to mediums and derive a new set of skandhas from the medium who attracts them. Small as their number may be, their fate is to be the most deplored. What I said in my notes on your MSS. was in reply to Mr. Hume's statistical calculations which led him to infer that "there were more Spirits than shells in the seance rooms" in such a case.
You have much to learn -- and we have much to teach nor do we refuse to go to the very end. But we must really beg that you should not jump at hasty conclusions. I do not blame you, my dear faithful friend, I would rather blame myself, were anyone here to be blamed except our respective modes of thought and habits so diametrically opposed to each other. Accustomed as we are to teach chelas who know enough to find themselves beyond the necessity of "if's " and "but's" during the lessons -- I am but too apt to forget that I am doing the work with you generally entrusted to these chelas. Henceforth, I will take more time when answering your questions. Your letters to London can do no harm, and are sure, on the contrary to do good. They are admirably written and the exceptionsmay be mentioned and the whole ground covered in one of the future letters.
I have no objection to your making extracts for Colonel Chesney -- except one -- he is not a Theosophist. Only be careful, and do not forget your details and exceptions whenever you explain your rules. Remember still: even in the case of suicides there are many who will never allow themselves to be drawn into the vortex of mediumship, and pray do not accuse me of "inconsistency" or contradiction when we come to that point. Could you but know how I write my letters and the time I am enabled to give to them, perchance you would feel less critical if not exacting. Well, and how do you like Djual Khool's ideaand art? I have not caught a glimpse of Simla for the last ten days.
Affectionately yours,
K.H.
Letter No. 22
[Transcribed from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. -- ED.]
Extract from Letter by K.H. to Hume. Received for my perusal towards the end of season 1882. (A.P.S.)
Did it ever strike you, -- and now from the standpoint of your Western science and the suggestion of your own Ego which has already seized up the essentials of every truth, prepare to deride the erroneous idea -- did you ever suspect that Universal, like finite, human mind might have two attributes, or a dual power -- one the voluntary and conscious, and the other the involuntary and unconscious or the mechanical power. To reconcile the difficulty of many theistic and anti-theistic propositions, both these powers are a philosophical necessity. The possibility of the first or the voluntary and conscious attribute in reference to the infinite mind, notwithstanding the assertions of all the Egos throughout the living world -- will remain for ever a mere hypothesis, whereas in the finite mind it is a scientific and demonstrated fact. The highest Planetary Spirit is as ignorant of the first as we are, and the hypothesis will remain one even in Nirvana, as it is a mere inferential possibility, whether there or here.
Take the human mind in connexion with the body. Man has two distinct physical brains; the cerebrum with its two hemispheres at the frontal part of the head -- the source of the voluntary nerves; and the cerebellum, situated at the back portion of the skull -- the fountain of the involuntary nerves which are the agents of the unconscious or mechanical powers of the mind to act through. And weak and uncertain as may be the control of man over his involuntary, such as the blood circulation, the throbbings of the heart and respiration, especially during sleep -- yet how far more powerful, how much more potential appears man as master and ruler over the blind molecular motion -- the laws which govern his body (a proof of this being afforded by the phenomenal powers of the Adept and even the common Yogi) than that which you will call God, shows over the immutable laws of Nature. Contrary in that to the finite, the "infinite mind," which we name so but for argument's sake, for we call it the infinite FORCE -- exhibits but the functions of its cerebellum, the existence of its supposed cerebrum being admitted as above stated, but on the inferential hypothesis deduced from the Kabalistic theory (correct in every other relation) of the Macrocosm being the prototype of the Microcosm. So far as we know the corroboration of it by modern science receiving but little consideration -- so far as the highest Planetary Spirits have ascertained (who remember well have the same relations with the trans-cosmical world, penetrating behind the primitive veil of cosmic matter as we have to go behind the veil of this, our gross physical world --) the infinite mind displays to them as to us no more than the regular unconscious throbbings of the eternal and universal pulse of Nature, throughout the myriads of worlds within as without the primitive veil of our solar system.
So far -- WE KNOW. Within and to the utmost limit, to the very edge of the cosmic veil we know the fact to be correct -- owing to personal experience; for the information gathered as to what takes place beyond -- we are indebted to the Planetary Spirits, to our blessed Lord Buddha. This of course may be regarded as second-hand information. There are those who rather than to yield to the evidence of fact will prefer regarding even the planetary gods as "erring" disembodied philosophers if not actually liars. Be it so. Everyone is master of his own wisdom -- says a Tibetan proverb and he is at liberty either to honour or degrade his slave --. However I will go on for the benefit of those who may yet seize my explanation of the problem and understand the nature of the solution.
It is the peculiar faculty of the involuntary power of the infinite mind -- which no one could ever think of calling God, -- to be eternally evolving subjective matter into objective atoms (you will please remember that these two adjectives are used but in a relative sense) or cosmic matter to be later on developed into form. And it is likewise that same involuntary mechanical power that we see so intensely active in all the fixed laws of nature -- which governs and controls what is called the Universe or the Cosmos. There are some modern philosophers who would prove the existence of a Creator from motion. We say and affirm that that motion -- the universal perpetual motion which never ceases never slackens nor increases its speed not even during the interludes between the pralayas, or "nights of Brahma" but goes on like a mill set in motion, whether it has anything to grind or not (for the pralaya means the temporary loss of every form, but by no means the destruction of cosmic matter which is eternal) -- we say this perpetual motion is the only eternal and uncreated Deity we are able to recognise. To regard God as an intelligent spirit, and accept at the same time his absolute immateriality is to conceive of a nonentity, a blank void; to regard God as a Being, an Ego and to place his intelligence under a bushel for some mysterious reasons -- is a most consummate nonsense; to endow him with intelligence in the face of blind brutal Evil is to make of him a fiend -- a most rascally God. A Being however gigantic, occupying space and having length breadth and thickness is most certainly the Mosaic deity; "No-being" and a mere principle lands you directly in the Buddhistic atheism, or the Vedantic primitive Acosmism. What lies beyond and outside the worlds of form, and being, in worlds and spheres in their most spiritualized state -- (and you will perhaps oblige us by telling us where that beyond can be, since the Universe is infinite and limitless) is useless for anyone to search after since even Planetary Spirits have no knowledge or perception of it. If our greatest adepts and Bodhisatvas have never penetrated themselves beyond our solar system, -- and the idea seems to suit your preconceived theistic theory wonderfully, my respected Brother -- they still know of the existence of other such solar systems, with as mathematical a certainty as any western astronomer knows of the existence of invisible stars which he can never approach or explore. But of that which lies within the worlds and systems, not in the trans-infinitude -- (a queer expression to use) -- but in the cis-infinitude rather, in the state of the purest and inconceivable immateriality, no one ever knew or will ever tell, hence it is something non-existent for the universe. You are at liberty to place in this eternal vacuum the intellectual or voluntary powers of your deity -- if you can conceive of such a thing.
Meanwhile we may say that it is motion that governs the laws of nature; and that it governs them as the mechanical impulse given to running water which will propel them either in a direct line or along hundreds of side furrows they may happen to meet on their way and whether those furrows are natural grooves or channels prepared artificially by the hand of man. And we maintain that wherever there is life and being, and in however much spiritualized a form, there is no room for moral government, much less for a moral Governor -- a Being which at the same time has no form nor occupies space! Verily if light shineth in darkness, and darkness comprehends it not, it is because such is the natural law, but how more suggestive and pregnant with meaning for one who knows, to say that light can still less comprehend darkness, nor ever know it since it kills wherever it penetrates and annihilates it instantly. Pure yet a volitional Spirit is an absurdity for volitional mind. The result of organism cannot exist independently of an organized brain, and an organized brain made out of nihil is a still greater fallacy. If you ask me "Whence then the immutable laws? -- laws cannot make themselves" -- then in my turn I will ask you -- and whence their supposed Creator? -- a creator cannot create or make himself. If the brain did not make itself, for this would be affirming that brain acted before it existed, how could intelligence, the result of an organized brain, act before its creator was made.
All this reminds one of wrangling for seniorship. If our doctrines clash too much with your theories then we can easily give up the subject and talk of something else. Study the laws and doctrines of the Nepaulese Swabhavikas, the principal Buddhist philosophical school in India, and you will find them the most learned as the most scientifically logical wranglers in the world. Their plastic, invisible, eternal, omnipresent and unconscious Swabhavat is Force or Motion ever generating its electricity which is life.
Yes: there is a force as limitless as thought, as potent as boundless will, as subtile as the essence of life so inconceivably awful in its rending force as to convulse the universe to its centre would it but be used as a lever, but this Force is not God, since there are men who have learned the secret of subjecting it to their will when necessary. Look around you and see the myriad manifestations of life, so infinitely multiform; of life, of motion, of change. What caused these? From what inexhaustible source came they, by what agency? Out of the invisible and subjective they have entered our little area of the visible and objective. Children of Akasa, concrete evolutions from the ether, it was force which brought them into perceptibility and Force will in time remove them from the sight of man. Why should this plant in your garden to the right, have been produced with such a shape and that other one to the left with one totally dissimilar? Are these not the result of varying action of Force -- unlike correlations? Given a perfect monotony of activities throughout the world, and we would have a complete identity of forms, colours, shapes and properties throughout all the kingdoms of nature. It is the motion with its resulting conflict, neutralization, equilibration, correlation, to which is due the infinite variety which prevails. You speak of an intelligent and good -- (the attribute is rather unfortunately chosen) -- Father, a moral guide and governor of the universe and man. A certain condition of things exists around us which we call normal. Under this nothing can occur which transcends our every-day experience "God's immutable laws." But suppose we change this condition and have the best of him without whom even a hair of your head will not fall, as they tell you in the West. A current of air brings to me from the lake near which, with my fingers half frozen I now write to you this letter -- I change by a certain combination of electrical magnetic odyllic or other influences the current of air which benumbs my fingers into a warmer breeze; I have thwarted the intention of the Almighty, and dethroned him at my will! I can do that, or when I do not want Nature to produce strange and too visible phenomena, I force my nature-seeing, nature-influencing self within me, to suddenly awake to new perceptions and feelings and thus am my own Creator and ruler.
But do you think that you are right when saying that "the laws arise." Immutable laws cannot arise, since they are eternal and uncreated, propelled in the Eternity and that God himself if such a thing existed, could never have the power of stopping them. And when did I say that these laws were fortuitous per se. I meant their blind correlations, never the laws, or rather the law -- since we recognise but one law in the Universe, the law of harmony, of perfect EQUILIBRIUM. Then for a man endowed with so subtle a logic, and such a fine comprehension of the value of ideas in general and that of words especially -- for a man so accurate as you generally are to make tirades upon an "all wise, powerful and love-ful God" seems to say at least strange. I do not protest at all as you seem to think against your theism, or a belief in an abstract ideal of some kind, but I cannot help asking you, how do you or how can you know that your God is all wise, omnipotent and love-ful, when everything in nature, physical and moral, proves such a being, if he does exist to be quite the reverse of all you say of him? Strange delusion and one which seems to overpower your very intellect.
The difficulty of explaining the fact that "unintelligent Forces can give rise to highly intelligent beings like ourselves," is covered by the eternal progression of cycles, and the process of evolution ever perfecting its work as it goes along. Not believing in cycles, it is unnecessary for you to learn that which will create but a new pretext for you, my dear Brother, to combat the theory and argue upon it ad infinitum. Nor did I ever become guilty of the heresy I am accused of -- in reference to spirit and matter. The conception of matter and spirit as entirely distinct, and both eternal could certainly never have entered my head, however little I may know of them, for it is one of the elementary and fundamental doctrines of Occultism that the two are one, and are distinct but in their respective manifestations, and only in the limited perceptions of the world of senses. Far from "lacking philosophical breadth" then, our doctrines show, but one principle in nature, -- spirit-matter or matter-spirit, the third the ultimate Absolute or the quintessence of the two, -- if I may be allowed to use an erroneous term in the present application -- losing itself beyond the view and spiritual perceptions of even the "Gods" or Planetary Spirits. This third principle say the Vedantic Philosophers -- is the only reality, everything else being Maya, as none of the Protean manifestations of spirit-matter or Purusha and Prakriti have ever been regarded in any other light than that of temporary delusions of the senses. Even in the hardly outlined philosophy of Isis this idea is clearly carried out. In the book of Kiu-te, Spirit is called the ultimate sublimation of matter, and matter the crystallization of spirit. And no better illustration could be afforded than in the very simple phenomenon of ice, water, vapour and the final dispersion of the latter, the phenomenon being reversed in its consecutive manifestations and called the Spirit failing into generation or matter. This trinity resolving itself into unity, -- a doctrine as old as the world of thought -- was seized upon by some early Christians, who had it in the schools of Alexandria, and made up into the Father, or generative spirit; the Son or matter, -- man; and into the Holy Ghost, the immaterial essence, or the apex of the equilateral triangle, an idea found to this day in the pyramids of Egypt. Thus once more it is proved that you misunderstand my meaning entirely, whenever for the sake of brevity I use a phraseology habitual with the Western people. But in my turn I have to remark that your idea that matter is but the temporary allotropic form of spirit differing from it as charcoal does from diamond is as unphilosophical as it is unscientific from both the Eastern and the Western points of view, charcoal being but a form of residue of matter, while matter per se is indestructible, and as I maintain coeval with spirit -- that spirit which we know and can conceive of. Bereaved of Prakriti, Purusha (Spirit) is unable to manifest itself, hence ceases to exist -- becomes nihil. Without spirit or Force, even that which Science styles as "not living" matter, the so-called mineral ingredients which feed plants, could never have been called into form. There is a moment in the existence of every molecule and atom of matter when, for one cause or another, the last spark of spirit or motion or life (call it by whatever name) is withdrawn, and in the same instant with the swiftness which surpasses that of the lightning glance of thought the atom or molecule or an aggregation of molecules is annihilated to return to its pristine purity of intra-cosmic matter. It is drawn to the mother fount with the velocity of a globule of quicksilver to the central mass. Matter, force, and motion are the trinity of physical objective nature, as the trinitarian unity of spirit-matter is that of the spiritual or subjective nature. Motion is eternal because spirit is eternal. But no modes of motion can ever be conceived unless they be in connection with matter.
And now to your extraordinary hypothesis that Evil with its attendant train of sin and suffering is not the result of matter, but may be perchance the wise scheme of the moral Governor of the Universe. Conceivable as the idea may seem to you trained in the pernicious fallacy of the Christian, -- "the ways of the Lord are inscrutable" -- it is utterly inconceivable for me. Must I repeat again that the best Adepts have searched the Universe during milleniums and found nowhere the slightest trace of such a Machiavellian schemer -- but throughout, the same immutable, inexorable law. You must excuse me therefore if I positively decline to lose my time over such childish speculations. It is not "the ways of the Lord" but rather those of some extremely intelligent men in everything but some particular hobby, that are to me incomprehensible.
As you say this need "make no difference between us" -- personally. But it does make a world of difference if you propose to learn and offer me to teach. For the life of me I cannot make out how I could ever impart to you that which I know since the very A.B.C. of what I know, the rock upon which the secrets of the occult universe, whether on this or that side of the veil, are encrusted, is contradicted by you invariably and a priori. My very dear Brother, either we know something or we do not know anything. In the first case what is the use of your learning, since you think you know better? In the second case why should you lose your time? You say it matters nothing whether these laws are the expression of the will of an intelligent conscious God, as you think, or constitute the inevitable attributes of an unintelligent, unconscious "God," as I hold. I say, it matters everything, and since you earnestly believe that these fundamental questions (of spirit and matter -- of God or no God) "are admittedly beyond both of us" -- in other words that neither I nor yet our greatest adepts can know no more than you do, then what is there on earth that I could teach you? You know that in order to enable you to read you have first to learn your letters -- yet you want to know the course of events before and after the Pralayas, of every event here on this globe on the opening of a new cycle, namely a mystery imparted at one of the last initiations, as Mr. Sinnett was told, -- for my letter to him upon the Planetary Spirits was simply incidental -- brought out by a question of his. And now you will say I am evading the direct issue. I have discoursed upon collateral points, but have not explained to you all you want to know and asked me to tell you. I "dodge" as I always do. Pardon me for contradicting you, but it is nothing of the kind. There are a thousand questions I will never be permitted to answer, and it would be dodging were I to answer you otherwise than I do. I tell you plainly you are unfit to learn, for your mind is too full and there is not a corner vacant from whence a previous occupant would not arise, to struggle with and drive away the newcomer. Therefore I do not evade, I only give you time to reflect and deduce and first learn well what was already given you before you seize on something else. The world of force, is the world of Occultism and the only one whither the highest initiate goes to probe the secrets of being. Hence no-one but such an initiate can know anything of these secrets. Guided by his Guru the chela first discovers this world, then its laws, then their centrifugal evolutions into the world of matter. To become a perfect adept takes him long years, but at last he becomes the master. The hidden things have become patent, and mystery and miracle have fled from his sight forever. He sees how to guide force in this direction or that -- to produce desirable effects. The secret chemical, electric or odic properties of plants, herbs, roots, minerals, animal tissue, are as familiar to him as the feathers of your birds are to you. No change in the etheric vibrations can escape him. He applies his knowledge, and behold a miracle! And he who started with the repudiation of the very idea that miracle is possible, is straightway classed as a miracle worker and either worshipped by the fools as a demi-god or repudiated by still greater fools as a charlatan! And to show you how exact a science is occultism let me tell you that the means we avail ourselves of are all laid down for us in a code as old as humanity to the minutest detail, but everyone of us has to begin from the beginning, not from the end. Our laws are as immutable as those of Nature, and they were known to man and eternity before this strutting game cock, modern science, was hatched. If I have not given you the modus operandi or begun by the wrong end, I have at least shown you that we build our philosophy upon experiment and deduction -- unless you choose to question and dispute this fact equally with all others. Learn first our laws and educate your perceptions, dear Brother. Control your involuntary powers and develop in the right direction your will and you will become a teacher instead of a learner. I would not refuse what I have a right to teach. Only I had to study for fifteen years before I came to the doctrines of cycles and had to learn simpler things at first.
But do what we may, and whatever happens I trust we will have no more arguing which is as profitless as it is painful.
Letter No. 23a
[K.H.'s Comments etc. appear in bold type. -- ED.]
Received at Simla: Oct. 1882.
Herewith -- apologizing for their number, I send a few notes of interrogation. Perhaps you will be so kind as to take them up from time to time and answer them by ones and twos as leisure and time allow.
Memo -- At convenience to send A.P.S. those unpublished notes of Eliphas Levi's with annotations by K.H.
Sent long ago to our "Jacko" friend.
I
(1) There is a very interesting allusion in your last, when speaking of Hume you speak of certain characteristics he brought back with him from his last incarnation.
(2) Have you the power of looking back to the former lives of persons now living, and identifying them?
(3) In that case would it be improper personal curiosity -- to ask for any particulars of my own?
I
(1) All of us, we bring some characteristics from our previous incarnations. It is unavoidable.
(2) Unfortunately, some of us have. I, for one do not like to exercise it.
(3) "Man know thyself," saith the Delphian oracle. There is nothing "improper" -- certainly in such a curiosity. Only would it not be still more proper to study our own present personality before attempting to learn anything of its creator, -- predecessor, and fashioner, -- the man that was?Well, some day I may treat you to a little story -- no time now -- only I promise no details; a simple sketch, and a hint or two to test your intuitional powers.
II
[For K.H.'s replies to these queries see post Letter 23b. -- ED.]
(1) Is there any way of accounting for what seems the curious rush of human progress within the last two thousand years, as compared with the relatively stagnant condition of the fourth round people up to the beginning of modern progress?
(2) Or has there been at any former period during the habitation of the earth by fourth round men, civilizations as great as our own in regard to intellectual development that have utterly passed away?
(3) Even the fifth race (own) of the fourth round began in Asia a million years ago. What was it about for the 998,000 years preceding the last 2,000? During that period have greater civilizations than our own risen and decayed?
(4) To what epoch did the existence of the Continent of Atlantis belong, and did the cataclysmical change which produced its extinction come into any appointed place in the evolution of the round, -- corresponding to the place occupied in the whole manvantaric evolution by obscurations?
(5) I find that the most common question asked about occult philosophy by fairly intelligent people who begin to enquire about it is "Does it give any explanation of the origin of evil?" That is a point on which you have formerly promised to touch, and which it might be worth while to take up before long.
(6) Closely allied to this question would be another often put. "What is the good of the whole cyclic process if spirit only emerges at the end of all things pure and impersonal as it was at first before its descent into matter?" (And the portions taken away from the fifth?) My answer is that I am not at present engaged in excusing, but in investigating the operations of Nature. But perhaps there may be a better answer available.
(7) Can you, i.e., is it permitted ever to answer any questions relating to matters of physical science? If so -- here are some points, that I should greatly like dealt with.
(8) Have magnetic conditions anything to do with the precipitation of rain, or is that due entirely to atmospheric currents at different temperatures encountering other currents of different humidities, the whole set of motions being established by pressures, expansions, etc., due in the first instance to solar energy? If magnetic conditions are engaged, how do they operate and how could they be tested?
(9) Is the sun's corona, an atmosphere? of any known gases? and why does it assume the rayed shape always observed in eclipses?
(10) Is the photometric value of light emitted by stars a safe guide to their magnitude, (1) and is it true as astronomy assumes faute de mieux in the way of a theory, that per square mile the sun's surface emits as much light as can be emitted from any body?
(11) Is Jupiter a hot and still partially luminous body and to what cause, as solar energy has probably nothing to do with the matter, are the violent disturbances of Jupiter's atmosphere due?
(12) Is there any truth in the new Siemens theory of solar combustion, -- i.e., that the sun in its passage through space gathers in at the poles combustible gas (which is diffused through all space in a highly attenuated condition), and throws it off again at the equator after the intense heat of that region has again dispersed the elements which combustion temporarily united?
(13) Could any clue be given to the causes of magnetic variations, -- the daily changes at given places, and the apparently capricious curvature of the isogonic lines which show equal declinations? For example -- why is there a region in Eastern Asia where the needle shows no variation from the true north, though variations are recorded all round that space? (Have your Lordships anything to do with this peculiar condition of things?)
(14) Could any other planets besides those known to modern astronomy (I do not mean mere planetoids) be discovered by physical instruments if properly directed?
(15) When you wrote "Have you experienced monotony during that moment which you considered then and now so consider it, -- as the moment of the highest bliss you have ever felt?"
Did you refer to any specific moment and any specific event in my life, or were you merely referring to an X quantity -- the happiest moment whatever it might have been?
(16) You say: -- "Remember we create ourselves, our Deva Chan, and our Avitchi and mostly during the latter days and even moments of our sentient lives."
(17) But do the thoughts on which the mind may be engaged at the last moment necessarily hinge on to the predominant character of its past life? Otherwise it would seem as if the character of a person's Deva Chan or Avitchi might be capriciously and unjustly determined by the chance which brought some special thought uppermost at last?
(18) "The full remembrance of our lives will come but at the end of the "minor cycle."
Does "minor cycle" here mean one round, or the whole Manvantara of our planetary chain?
That is, do we remember our past lives in the Deva Chan of world Z at the end of each round, or only at the end of the seventh round?
(I9) You say "And even the shells of those good men whose pages will not be found missing in the great book of lives: -- even they will regain their remembrance and an appearance of self consciousness only after the sixth and seventh principles with the essence of the fifth have gone to their gestation period."
(20) A little later on: -- "Whether the personal Ego was good, bad or indifferent, his consciousness leaves him as suddenly as the flame leaves the wick -- his perceptive faculties become extinct for ever." (Well? can a physical brain once dead retain its perceptive faculties: that which will perceive in the shell is something that perceives with a borrowed or reflected light. See notes.)
Then what is the nature of the remembrance and self-consciousness of the shell? This touches on a matter I have often thought about -- wishing for further explanation -- the extent of personal identity in elementaries.
(21) The spiritual Ego goes circling through the worlds, retaining what it possesses of identity and self-consciousness, always neither more nor less (a) But it is continually evolving personalities, in which at all events the sense of identity while it remains united with them is very complete. (b) Now these personalities I understand to be absolutely new evolutions in each case. A. P. Sinnett is, for what it is worth, -- absolutely a new invention. Now it will leave a shell behind which will survive for a time (c) assuming that the spiritual monad temporarily engaged in this incarnation will find enough decent material in the fifth to lay hold of. (d) That shell will have no consciousness directly after death, because "it requires a certain time to establish its new centre of gravity and evolve its perception proper." (e) But how much consciousness will it have when it has done this? (f) Will it still be A. P. Sinnett of which the spiritual Ego, will think, even at the last, as of a person it had known -- or will it be conscious that the individuality is gone? Will it be able to reason about itself at all, and to remember anything of its once higher interests. Will it remember the name it bore? (g) or is it only inflated with recollections of this sort in mediumistic presence, remaining asleep at other times? (h) And is it conscious of losing anything that feels like life as it gradually disintegrates?
(22) What is the nature of the life that goes on in the "Planet of Death?" Is it a physical reincarnation with remembrance of past personality, or an astral existence as in Kama Loka? Is it an existence with birth, maturity and decay, or a uniform prolongation of the old personality of this earth under penal conditions?
(23) What other planets of those known to ordinary science, besides Mercury, belong to our system of worlds?
Are the more spiritual planets -- (A, B & Y, Z) -- visible bodies in the sky or are all those known to astronomy of the more material sort?
(24) Is the Sun (a) as Allan Kardec says: -- a habitation of highly spiritualized beings? (b) Is it the vertex of our Manvantaric chain? and of all the other chains in this solar system also?
(25) You say: -- it may happen -- "that the spiritual spoil from the fifth will prove too weak to be reborn in Deva Chan, in which case it's sixth will then and there reclothe itself in a new body -- and enter upon a new earth existence, whether upon this or any other planet."
(26) This seems to want further elucidation. Are these exceptional cases in which two earth lives of the same spiritual monad may occur closer together than the thousand years indicated by some previous letters as the almost inevitable limit of such successive lives?
(27) The reference to the case of Guiteau is puzzling. I can understand his being in a state in which the crime he committed is ever present to his imagination, but how does he "toss into confusion and shuffle the destinies of millions of persons?"
(28) Obscurations are a subject at present wrapped in obscurity.
They take place after the last man of any given round has passed on to the next planet. But I want to make out how the next superior round forms are evolved. When the fifth round spiritual monads arrive what fleshly habitations are ready for them? Going back to the only former letter in which you have dealt with obscurations I find: -- (a) "We have traced man out of a round into the Nirvanic state between Z and A. "A" was left in the last round dead. (See note.) As the new round begins it catches the new influx of life, reawakens to vitality, and begets all its kingdoms of a superior order to the last."
(29) But has it to begin at the beginning again between each
round, and evolve human forms from animal, these last from vegetable, etc. If so to what round do the first imperfectly evolved men belong? Ex hypothesi to the fifth; but the fifth should be a more perfect race in all respects.
[Letter from Mr. Sinnett to K.H. With K.H.'s Comments printed in bold type. -- ED.]
Received back 22.8.82.
August 12th.
My dear Guardian,
I am afraid the present letters on Theosophy are not worth much, for I have worked on too literal an acceptance of some passages in your long letter about Deva-Chan. The bearing of that seemed to be that the "accidents" as well as the suicides, were in danger from the attraction of the seance room. You wrote: --
"But there is another kind of spirit we have lost sight of, -- the suicides and those killed by accidents. Both kinds can communicate and both have to pay dearly for such visits. . . ." Correct.
And later on after speaking of the case of the suicides in detail you say: --
"As to the victims of accident these fare still worse . . . unhappy shades . . . cut off in the full flush of earthly passions . . . they are the pisachas etc. . . ." They not only ruin their victims etc. . . ." Again correct. Bear in mind that the exceptions enforce the rule.
And if they are neither very good nor very bad the "victims of accident or violence," derive a new set of skandhas from the medium who attracts them. I have explained the situation on the margin of proofs. See note.
It was on this text that I have been working.
If this is not to be maintained or if in some way that as yet I cannot understand the words bear a different signification from that which seems to belong to them, it might be better to cancel these two letters altogether or hold them over for complete alteration. The warning is delivered in too solemn a tone and the danger is made too much of if it is merely to apply to suicides, and in the last slip of the proof the elimination of "the accidents and" makes the rest rather ridiculous because then we are dividing suicides only into the very pure and elevated! and the medium people etc.
It seems to me that it would hardly do to let even letter (1) stand alone, -- though it does not include the mistake, for it would have no raison d'etre unless followed up by letter (2).
Both letters have gone home to Stainton Moses for transmission to Light -- the first by the mail from here of July 21, the second by last mail -- yesterday. Now if you decide that it is better to stop and cancel them I shall just be in time to telegraph home to Stainton Moses to that effect, and will do this directly I receive a telegram from you or from the Old Lady to that effect.
If nothing is done they Will appear in Light as written -- i.e. as the MS. sent with the present proof stood barring a few little mistakes which I see my wife has made in copying them out.
It is altogether a very awkward tangle. I was precipitate apparently in sending them home, but I thought I had followed the statements of your long devachan letter so faithfully. Awaiting orders,
Ever your devoted
A. P. S.
On margin I said "rarely" but I have not pronounced the word "never." Accidents occur under the most various circumstances; and men are not only killed accidentally, or die as suicides but are also murdered-- something we have not even touched upon. I can well understand your perplexity but can hardly help you. Bear always in mind that there are exceptions to every rule, and to these again and other side exceptions, and be always prepared to learn something new. I can easily understand we are accused of contradictionsand inconsistencies -- aye, even to writing one thing to-day and denying it to-morrow. What you were taught is the RULE. Good and pure "accidents" sleep in the Akasa, ignorant of their change; very wicked and impure -- suffer all the tortures of a horrible nightmare. The majority -- neither very good nor very bad, the victims of accident or violence (including murder) -- some sleep, others become Nature pisachas, and while a small minority may fall victims to mediums and derive a new set of skandhas from the medium who attracts them. Small as their number may be, their fate is to be the most deplored. What I said in my notes on your MSS. was in reply to Mr. Hume's statistical calculations which led him to infer that "there were more Spirits than shells in the seance rooms" in such a case.
You have much to learn -- and we have much to teach nor do we refuse to go to the very end. But we must really beg that you should not jump at hasty conclusions. I do not blame you, my dear faithful friend, I would rather blame myself, were anyone here to be blamed except our respective modes of thought and habits so diametrically opposed to each other. Accustomed as we are to teach chelas who know enough to find themselves beyond the necessity of "if's " and "but's" during the lessons -- I am but too apt to forget that I am doing the work with you generally entrusted to these chelas. Henceforth, I will take more time when answering your questions. Your letters to London can do no harm, and are sure, on the contrary to do good. They are admirably written and the exceptionsmay be mentioned and the whole ground covered in one of the future letters.
I have no objection to your making extracts for Colonel Chesney -- except one -- he is not a Theosophist. Only be careful, and do not forget your details and exceptions whenever you explain your rules. Remember still: even in the case of suicides there are many who will never allow themselves to be drawn into the vortex of mediumship, and pray do not accuse me of "inconsistency" or contradiction when we come to that point. Could you but know how I write my letters and the time I am enabled to give to them, perchance you would feel less critical if not exacting. Well, and how do you like Djual Khool's ideaand art? I have not caught a glimpse of Simla for the last ten days.
Affectionately yours,
K.H.
Letter No. 22
[Transcribed from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. -- ED.]
Extract from Letter by K.H. to Hume. Received for my perusal towards the end of season 1882. (A.P.S.)
Did it ever strike you, -- and now from the standpoint of your Western science and the suggestion of your own Ego which has already seized up the essentials of every truth, prepare to deride the erroneous idea -- did you ever suspect that Universal, like finite, human mind might have two attributes, or a dual power -- one the voluntary and conscious, and the other the involuntary and unconscious or the mechanical power. To reconcile the difficulty of many theistic and anti-theistic propositions, both these powers are a philosophical necessity. The possibility of the first or the voluntary and conscious attribute in reference to the infinite mind, notwithstanding the assertions of all the Egos throughout the living world -- will remain for ever a mere hypothesis, whereas in the finite mind it is a scientific and demonstrated fact. The highest Planetary Spirit is as ignorant of the first as we are, and the hypothesis will remain one even in Nirvana, as it is a mere inferential possibility, whether there or here.
Take the human mind in connexion with the body. Man has two distinct physical brains; the cerebrum with its two hemispheres at the frontal part of the head -- the source of the voluntary nerves; and the cerebellum, situated at the back portion of the skull -- the fountain of the involuntary nerves which are the agents of the unconscious or mechanical powers of the mind to act through. And weak and uncertain as may be the control of man over his involuntary, such as the blood circulation, the throbbings of the heart and respiration, especially during sleep -- yet how far more powerful, how much more potential appears man as master and ruler over the blind molecular motion -- the laws which govern his body (a proof of this being afforded by the phenomenal powers of the Adept and even the common Yogi) than that which you will call God, shows over the immutable laws of Nature. Contrary in that to the finite, the "infinite mind," which we name so but for argument's sake, for we call it the infinite FORCE -- exhibits but the functions of its cerebellum, the existence of its supposed cerebrum being admitted as above stated, but on the inferential hypothesis deduced from the Kabalistic theory (correct in every other relation) of the Macrocosm being the prototype of the Microcosm. So far as we know the corroboration of it by modern science receiving but little consideration -- so far as the highest Planetary Spirits have ascertained (who remember well have the same relations with the trans-cosmical world, penetrating behind the primitive veil of cosmic matter as we have to go behind the veil of this, our gross physical world --) the infinite mind displays to them as to us no more than the regular unconscious throbbings of the eternal and universal pulse of Nature, throughout the myriads of worlds within as without the primitive veil of our solar system.
So far -- WE KNOW. Within and to the utmost limit, to the very edge of the cosmic veil we know the fact to be correct -- owing to personal experience; for the information gathered as to what takes place beyond -- we are indebted to the Planetary Spirits, to our blessed Lord Buddha. This of course may be regarded as second-hand information. There are those who rather than to yield to the evidence of fact will prefer regarding even the planetary gods as "erring" disembodied philosophers if not actually liars. Be it so. Everyone is master of his own wisdom -- says a Tibetan proverb and he is at liberty either to honour or degrade his slave --. However I will go on for the benefit of those who may yet seize my explanation of the problem and understand the nature of the solution.
It is the peculiar faculty of the involuntary power of the infinite mind -- which no one could ever think of calling God, -- to be eternally evolving subjective matter into objective atoms (you will please remember that these two adjectives are used but in a relative sense) or cosmic matter to be later on developed into form. And it is likewise that same involuntary mechanical power that we see so intensely active in all the fixed laws of nature -- which governs and controls what is called the Universe or the Cosmos. There are some modern philosophers who would prove the existence of a Creator from motion. We say and affirm that that motion -- the universal perpetual motion which never ceases never slackens nor increases its speed not even during the interludes between the pralayas, or "nights of Brahma" but goes on like a mill set in motion, whether it has anything to grind or not (for the pralaya means the temporary loss of every form, but by no means the destruction of cosmic matter which is eternal) -- we say this perpetual motion is the only eternal and uncreated Deity we are able to recognise. To regard God as an intelligent spirit, and accept at the same time his absolute immateriality is to conceive of a nonentity, a blank void; to regard God as a Being, an Ego and to place his intelligence under a bushel for some mysterious reasons -- is a most consummate nonsense; to endow him with intelligence in the face of blind brutal Evil is to make of him a fiend -- a most rascally God. A Being however gigantic, occupying space and having length breadth and thickness is most certainly the Mosaic deity; "No-being" and a mere principle lands you directly in the Buddhistic atheism, or the Vedantic primitive Acosmism. What lies beyond and outside the worlds of form, and being, in worlds and spheres in their most spiritualized state -- (and you will perhaps oblige us by telling us where that beyond can be, since the Universe is infinite and limitless) is useless for anyone to search after since even Planetary Spirits have no knowledge or perception of it. If our greatest adepts and Bodhisatvas have never penetrated themselves beyond our solar system, -- and the idea seems to suit your preconceived theistic theory wonderfully, my respected Brother -- they still know of the existence of other such solar systems, with as mathematical a certainty as any western astronomer knows of the existence of invisible stars which he can never approach or explore. But of that which lies within the worlds and systems, not in the trans-infinitude -- (a queer expression to use) -- but in the cis-infinitude rather, in the state of the purest and inconceivable immateriality, no one ever knew or will ever tell, hence it is something non-existent for the universe. You are at liberty to place in this eternal vacuum the intellectual or voluntary powers of your deity -- if you can conceive of such a thing.
Meanwhile we may say that it is motion that governs the laws of nature; and that it governs them as the mechanical impulse given to running water which will propel them either in a direct line or along hundreds of side furrows they may happen to meet on their way and whether those furrows are natural grooves or channels prepared artificially by the hand of man. And we maintain that wherever there is life and being, and in however much spiritualized a form, there is no room for moral government, much less for a moral Governor -- a Being which at the same time has no form nor occupies space! Verily if light shineth in darkness, and darkness comprehends it not, it is because such is the natural law, but how more suggestive and pregnant with meaning for one who knows, to say that light can still less comprehend darkness, nor ever know it since it kills wherever it penetrates and annihilates it instantly. Pure yet a volitional Spirit is an absurdity for volitional mind. The result of organism cannot exist independently of an organized brain, and an organized brain made out of nihil is a still greater fallacy. If you ask me "Whence then the immutable laws? -- laws cannot make themselves" -- then in my turn I will ask you -- and whence their supposed Creator? -- a creator cannot create or make himself. If the brain did not make itself, for this would be affirming that brain acted before it existed, how could intelligence, the result of an organized brain, act before its creator was made.
All this reminds one of wrangling for seniorship. If our doctrines clash too much with your theories then we can easily give up the subject and talk of something else. Study the laws and doctrines of the Nepaulese Swabhavikas, the principal Buddhist philosophical school in India, and you will find them the most learned as the most scientifically logical wranglers in the world. Their plastic, invisible, eternal, omnipresent and unconscious Swabhavat is Force or Motion ever generating its electricity which is life.
Yes: there is a force as limitless as thought, as potent as boundless will, as subtile as the essence of life so inconceivably awful in its rending force as to convulse the universe to its centre would it but be used as a lever, but this Force is not God, since there are men who have learned the secret of subjecting it to their will when necessary. Look around you and see the myriad manifestations of life, so infinitely multiform; of life, of motion, of change. What caused these? From what inexhaustible source came they, by what agency? Out of the invisible and subjective they have entered our little area of the visible and objective. Children of Akasa, concrete evolutions from the ether, it was force which brought them into perceptibility and Force will in time remove them from the sight of man. Why should this plant in your garden to the right, have been produced with such a shape and that other one to the left with one totally dissimilar? Are these not the result of varying action of Force -- unlike correlations? Given a perfect monotony of activities throughout the world, and we would have a complete identity of forms, colours, shapes and properties throughout all the kingdoms of nature. It is the motion with its resulting conflict, neutralization, equilibration, correlation, to which is due the infinite variety which prevails. You speak of an intelligent and good -- (the attribute is rather unfortunately chosen) -- Father, a moral guide and governor of the universe and man. A certain condition of things exists around us which we call normal. Under this nothing can occur which transcends our every-day experience "God's immutable laws." But suppose we change this condition and have the best of him without whom even a hair of your head will not fall, as they tell you in the West. A current of air brings to me from the lake near which, with my fingers half frozen I now write to you this letter -- I change by a certain combination of electrical magnetic odyllic or other influences the current of air which benumbs my fingers into a warmer breeze; I have thwarted the intention of the Almighty, and dethroned him at my will! I can do that, or when I do not want Nature to produce strange and too visible phenomena, I force my nature-seeing, nature-influencing self within me, to suddenly awake to new perceptions and feelings and thus am my own Creator and ruler.
But do you think that you are right when saying that "the laws arise." Immutable laws cannot arise, since they are eternal and uncreated, propelled in the Eternity and that God himself if such a thing existed, could never have the power of stopping them. And when did I say that these laws were fortuitous per se. I meant their blind correlations, never the laws, or rather the law -- since we recognise but one law in the Universe, the law of harmony, of perfect EQUILIBRIUM. Then for a man endowed with so subtle a logic, and such a fine comprehension of the value of ideas in general and that of words especially -- for a man so accurate as you generally are to make tirades upon an "all wise, powerful and love-ful God" seems to say at least strange. I do not protest at all as you seem to think against your theism, or a belief in an abstract ideal of some kind, but I cannot help asking you, how do you or how can you know that your God is all wise, omnipotent and love-ful, when everything in nature, physical and moral, proves such a being, if he does exist to be quite the reverse of all you say of him? Strange delusion and one which seems to overpower your very intellect.
The difficulty of explaining the fact that "unintelligent Forces can give rise to highly intelligent beings like ourselves," is covered by the eternal progression of cycles, and the process of evolution ever perfecting its work as it goes along. Not believing in cycles, it is unnecessary for you to learn that which will create but a new pretext for you, my dear Brother, to combat the theory and argue upon it ad infinitum. Nor did I ever become guilty of the heresy I am accused of -- in reference to spirit and matter. The conception of matter and spirit as entirely distinct, and both eternal could certainly never have entered my head, however little I may know of them, for it is one of the elementary and fundamental doctrines of Occultism that the two are one, and are distinct but in their respective manifestations, and only in the limited perceptions of the world of senses. Far from "lacking philosophical breadth" then, our doctrines show, but one principle in nature, -- spirit-matter or matter-spirit, the third the ultimate Absolute or the quintessence of the two, -- if I may be allowed to use an erroneous term in the present application -- losing itself beyond the view and spiritual perceptions of even the "Gods" or Planetary Spirits. This third principle say the Vedantic Philosophers -- is the only reality, everything else being Maya, as none of the Protean manifestations of spirit-matter or Purusha and Prakriti have ever been regarded in any other light than that of temporary delusions of the senses. Even in the hardly outlined philosophy of Isis this idea is clearly carried out. In the book of Kiu-te, Spirit is called the ultimate sublimation of matter, and matter the crystallization of spirit. And no better illustration could be afforded than in the very simple phenomenon of ice, water, vapour and the final dispersion of the latter, the phenomenon being reversed in its consecutive manifestations and called the Spirit failing into generation or matter. This trinity resolving itself into unity, -- a doctrine as old as the world of thought -- was seized upon by some early Christians, who had it in the schools of Alexandria, and made up into the Father, or generative spirit; the Son or matter, -- man; and into the Holy Ghost, the immaterial essence, or the apex of the equilateral triangle, an idea found to this day in the pyramids of Egypt. Thus once more it is proved that you misunderstand my meaning entirely, whenever for the sake of brevity I use a phraseology habitual with the Western people. But in my turn I have to remark that your idea that matter is but the temporary allotropic form of spirit differing from it as charcoal does from diamond is as unphilosophical as it is unscientific from both the Eastern and the Western points of view, charcoal being but a form of residue of matter, while matter per se is indestructible, and as I maintain coeval with spirit -- that spirit which we know and can conceive of. Bereaved of Prakriti, Purusha (Spirit) is unable to manifest itself, hence ceases to exist -- becomes nihil. Without spirit or Force, even that which Science styles as "not living" matter, the so-called mineral ingredients which feed plants, could never have been called into form. There is a moment in the existence of every molecule and atom of matter when, for one cause or another, the last spark of spirit or motion or life (call it by whatever name) is withdrawn, and in the same instant with the swiftness which surpasses that of the lightning glance of thought the atom or molecule or an aggregation of molecules is annihilated to return to its pristine purity of intra-cosmic matter. It is drawn to the mother fount with the velocity of a globule of quicksilver to the central mass. Matter, force, and motion are the trinity of physical objective nature, as the trinitarian unity of spirit-matter is that of the spiritual or subjective nature. Motion is eternal because spirit is eternal. But no modes of motion can ever be conceived unless they be in connection with matter.
And now to your extraordinary hypothesis that Evil with its attendant train of sin and suffering is not the result of matter, but may be perchance the wise scheme of the moral Governor of the Universe. Conceivable as the idea may seem to you trained in the pernicious fallacy of the Christian, -- "the ways of the Lord are inscrutable" -- it is utterly inconceivable for me. Must I repeat again that the best Adepts have searched the Universe during milleniums and found nowhere the slightest trace of such a Machiavellian schemer -- but throughout, the same immutable, inexorable law. You must excuse me therefore if I positively decline to lose my time over such childish speculations. It is not "the ways of the Lord" but rather those of some extremely intelligent men in everything but some particular hobby, that are to me incomprehensible.
As you say this need "make no difference between us" -- personally. But it does make a world of difference if you propose to learn and offer me to teach. For the life of me I cannot make out how I could ever impart to you that which I know since the very A.B.C. of what I know, the rock upon which the secrets of the occult universe, whether on this or that side of the veil, are encrusted, is contradicted by you invariably and a priori. My very dear Brother, either we know something or we do not know anything. In the first case what is the use of your learning, since you think you know better? In the second case why should you lose your time? You say it matters nothing whether these laws are the expression of the will of an intelligent conscious God, as you think, or constitute the inevitable attributes of an unintelligent, unconscious "God," as I hold. I say, it matters everything, and since you earnestly believe that these fundamental questions (of spirit and matter -- of God or no God) "are admittedly beyond both of us" -- in other words that neither I nor yet our greatest adepts can know no more than you do, then what is there on earth that I could teach you? You know that in order to enable you to read you have first to learn your letters -- yet you want to know the course of events before and after the Pralayas, of every event here on this globe on the opening of a new cycle, namely a mystery imparted at one of the last initiations, as Mr. Sinnett was told, -- for my letter to him upon the Planetary Spirits was simply incidental -- brought out by a question of his. And now you will say I am evading the direct issue. I have discoursed upon collateral points, but have not explained to you all you want to know and asked me to tell you. I "dodge" as I always do. Pardon me for contradicting you, but it is nothing of the kind. There are a thousand questions I will never be permitted to answer, and it would be dodging were I to answer you otherwise than I do. I tell you plainly you are unfit to learn, for your mind is too full and there is not a corner vacant from whence a previous occupant would not arise, to struggle with and drive away the newcomer. Therefore I do not evade, I only give you time to reflect and deduce and first learn well what was already given you before you seize on something else. The world of force, is the world of Occultism and the only one whither the highest initiate goes to probe the secrets of being. Hence no-one but such an initiate can know anything of these secrets. Guided by his Guru the chela first discovers this world, then its laws, then their centrifugal evolutions into the world of matter. To become a perfect adept takes him long years, but at last he becomes the master. The hidden things have become patent, and mystery and miracle have fled from his sight forever. He sees how to guide force in this direction or that -- to produce desirable effects. The secret chemical, electric or odic properties of plants, herbs, roots, minerals, animal tissue, are as familiar to him as the feathers of your birds are to you. No change in the etheric vibrations can escape him. He applies his knowledge, and behold a miracle! And he who started with the repudiation of the very idea that miracle is possible, is straightway classed as a miracle worker and either worshipped by the fools as a demi-god or repudiated by still greater fools as a charlatan! And to show you how exact a science is occultism let me tell you that the means we avail ourselves of are all laid down for us in a code as old as humanity to the minutest detail, but everyone of us has to begin from the beginning, not from the end. Our laws are as immutable as those of Nature, and they were known to man and eternity before this strutting game cock, modern science, was hatched. If I have not given you the modus operandi or begun by the wrong end, I have at least shown you that we build our philosophy upon experiment and deduction -- unless you choose to question and dispute this fact equally with all others. Learn first our laws and educate your perceptions, dear Brother. Control your involuntary powers and develop in the right direction your will and you will become a teacher instead of a learner. I would not refuse what I have a right to teach. Only I had to study for fifteen years before I came to the doctrines of cycles and had to learn simpler things at first.
But do what we may, and whatever happens I trust we will have no more arguing which is as profitless as it is painful.
Letter No. 23a
[K.H.'s Comments etc. appear in bold type. -- ED.]
Received at Simla: Oct. 1882.
Herewith -- apologizing for their number, I send a few notes of interrogation. Perhaps you will be so kind as to take them up from time to time and answer them by ones and twos as leisure and time allow.
Memo -- At convenience to send A.P.S. those unpublished notes of Eliphas Levi's with annotations by K.H.
Sent long ago to our "Jacko" friend.
I
(1) There is a very interesting allusion in your last, when speaking of Hume you speak of certain characteristics he brought back with him from his last incarnation.
(2) Have you the power of looking back to the former lives of persons now living, and identifying them?
(3) In that case would it be improper personal curiosity -- to ask for any particulars of my own?
I
(1) All of us, we bring some characteristics from our previous incarnations. It is unavoidable.
(2) Unfortunately, some of us have. I, for one do not like to exercise it.
(3) "Man know thyself," saith the Delphian oracle. There is nothing "improper" -- certainly in such a curiosity. Only would it not be still more proper to study our own present personality before attempting to learn anything of its creator, -- predecessor, and fashioner, -- the man that was?Well, some day I may treat you to a little story -- no time now -- only I promise no details; a simple sketch, and a hint or two to test your intuitional powers.
II
[For K.H.'s replies to these queries see post Letter 23b. -- ED.]
(1) Is there any way of accounting for what seems the curious rush of human progress within the last two thousand years, as compared with the relatively stagnant condition of the fourth round people up to the beginning of modern progress?
(2) Or has there been at any former period during the habitation of the earth by fourth round men, civilizations as great as our own in regard to intellectual development that have utterly passed away?
(3) Even the fifth race (own) of the fourth round began in Asia a million years ago. What was it about for the 998,000 years preceding the last 2,000? During that period have greater civilizations than our own risen and decayed?
(4) To what epoch did the existence of the Continent of Atlantis belong, and did the cataclysmical change which produced its extinction come into any appointed place in the evolution of the round, -- corresponding to the place occupied in the whole manvantaric evolution by obscurations?
(5) I find that the most common question asked about occult philosophy by fairly intelligent people who begin to enquire about it is "Does it give any explanation of the origin of evil?" That is a point on which you have formerly promised to touch, and which it might be worth while to take up before long.
(6) Closely allied to this question would be another often put. "What is the good of the whole cyclic process if spirit only emerges at the end of all things pure and impersonal as it was at first before its descent into matter?" (And the portions taken away from the fifth?) My answer is that I am not at present engaged in excusing, but in investigating the operations of Nature. But perhaps there may be a better answer available.
(7) Can you, i.e., is it permitted ever to answer any questions relating to matters of physical science? If so -- here are some points, that I should greatly like dealt with.
(8) Have magnetic conditions anything to do with the precipitation of rain, or is that due entirely to atmospheric currents at different temperatures encountering other currents of different humidities, the whole set of motions being established by pressures, expansions, etc., due in the first instance to solar energy? If magnetic conditions are engaged, how do they operate and how could they be tested?
(9) Is the sun's corona, an atmosphere? of any known gases? and why does it assume the rayed shape always observed in eclipses?
(10) Is the photometric value of light emitted by stars a safe guide to their magnitude, (1) and is it true as astronomy assumes faute de mieux in the way of a theory, that per square mile the sun's surface emits as much light as can be emitted from any body?
(11) Is Jupiter a hot and still partially luminous body and to what cause, as solar energy has probably nothing to do with the matter, are the violent disturbances of Jupiter's atmosphere due?
(12) Is there any truth in the new Siemens theory of solar combustion, -- i.e., that the sun in its passage through space gathers in at the poles combustible gas (which is diffused through all space in a highly attenuated condition), and throws it off again at the equator after the intense heat of that region has again dispersed the elements which combustion temporarily united?
(13) Could any clue be given to the causes of magnetic variations, -- the daily changes at given places, and the apparently capricious curvature of the isogonic lines which show equal declinations? For example -- why is there a region in Eastern Asia where the needle shows no variation from the true north, though variations are recorded all round that space? (Have your Lordships anything to do with this peculiar condition of things?)
(14) Could any other planets besides those known to modern astronomy (I do not mean mere planetoids) be discovered by physical instruments if properly directed?
(15) When you wrote "Have you experienced monotony during that moment which you considered then and now so consider it, -- as the moment of the highest bliss you have ever felt?"
Did you refer to any specific moment and any specific event in my life, or were you merely referring to an X quantity -- the happiest moment whatever it might have been?
(16) You say: -- "Remember we create ourselves, our Deva Chan, and our Avitchi and mostly during the latter days and even moments of our sentient lives."
(17) But do the thoughts on which the mind may be engaged at the last moment necessarily hinge on to the predominant character of its past life? Otherwise it would seem as if the character of a person's Deva Chan or Avitchi might be capriciously and unjustly determined by the chance which brought some special thought uppermost at last?
(18) "The full remembrance of our lives will come but at the end of the "minor cycle."
Does "minor cycle" here mean one round, or the whole Manvantara of our planetary chain?
That is, do we remember our past lives in the Deva Chan of world Z at the end of each round, or only at the end of the seventh round?
(I9) You say "And even the shells of those good men whose pages will not be found missing in the great book of lives: -- even they will regain their remembrance and an appearance of self consciousness only after the sixth and seventh principles with the essence of the fifth have gone to their gestation period."
(20) A little later on: -- "Whether the personal Ego was good, bad or indifferent, his consciousness leaves him as suddenly as the flame leaves the wick -- his perceptive faculties become extinct for ever." (Well? can a physical brain once dead retain its perceptive faculties: that which will perceive in the shell is something that perceives with a borrowed or reflected light. See notes.)
Then what is the nature of the remembrance and self-consciousness of the shell? This touches on a matter I have often thought about -- wishing for further explanation -- the extent of personal identity in elementaries.
(21) The spiritual Ego goes circling through the worlds, retaining what it possesses of identity and self-consciousness, always neither more nor less (a) But it is continually evolving personalities, in which at all events the sense of identity while it remains united with them is very complete. (b) Now these personalities I understand to be absolutely new evolutions in each case. A. P. Sinnett is, for what it is worth, -- absolutely a new invention. Now it will leave a shell behind which will survive for a time (c) assuming that the spiritual monad temporarily engaged in this incarnation will find enough decent material in the fifth to lay hold of. (d) That shell will have no consciousness directly after death, because "it requires a certain time to establish its new centre of gravity and evolve its perception proper." (e) But how much consciousness will it have when it has done this? (f) Will it still be A. P. Sinnett of which the spiritual Ego, will think, even at the last, as of a person it had known -- or will it be conscious that the individuality is gone? Will it be able to reason about itself at all, and to remember anything of its once higher interests. Will it remember the name it bore? (g) or is it only inflated with recollections of this sort in mediumistic presence, remaining asleep at other times? (h) And is it conscious of losing anything that feels like life as it gradually disintegrates?
(22) What is the nature of the life that goes on in the "Planet of Death?" Is it a physical reincarnation with remembrance of past personality, or an astral existence as in Kama Loka? Is it an existence with birth, maturity and decay, or a uniform prolongation of the old personality of this earth under penal conditions?
(23) What other planets of those known to ordinary science, besides Mercury, belong to our system of worlds?
Are the more spiritual planets -- (A, B & Y, Z) -- visible bodies in the sky or are all those known to astronomy of the more material sort?
(24) Is the Sun (a) as Allan Kardec says: -- a habitation of highly spiritualized beings? (b) Is it the vertex of our Manvantaric chain? and of all the other chains in this solar system also?
(25) You say: -- it may happen -- "that the spiritual spoil from the fifth will prove too weak to be reborn in Deva Chan, in which case it's sixth will then and there reclothe itself in a new body -- and enter upon a new earth existence, whether upon this or any other planet."
(26) This seems to want further elucidation. Are these exceptional cases in which two earth lives of the same spiritual monad may occur closer together than the thousand years indicated by some previous letters as the almost inevitable limit of such successive lives?
(27) The reference to the case of Guiteau is puzzling. I can understand his being in a state in which the crime he committed is ever present to his imagination, but how does he "toss into confusion and shuffle the destinies of millions of persons?"
(28) Obscurations are a subject at present wrapped in obscurity.
They take place after the last man of any given round has passed on to the next planet. But I want to make out how the next superior round forms are evolved. When the fifth round spiritual monads arrive what fleshly habitations are ready for them? Going back to the only former letter in which you have dealt with obscurations I find: -- (a) "We have traced man out of a round into the Nirvanic state between Z and A. "A" was left in the last round dead. (See note.) As the new round begins it catches the new influx of life, reawakens to vitality, and begets all its kingdoms of a superior order to the last."
(29) But has it to begin at the beginning again between each
round, and evolve human forms from animal, these last from vegetable, etc. If so to what round do the first imperfectly evolved men belong? Ex hypothesi to the fifth; but the fifth should be a more perfect race in all respects.