Theos-Talk Archives (May 2002 Message tt00031)

PART II A BEWITCHED LIFE -- by H P B (Begins)

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Saturday, May 04, 2002

Dear Friends:

May 8th 2002 will mark the 111th year since 1891 when on May 8th H P
Bs body died.

Her legacy to the world and to us has changed many a direction in a
man's career. In fact her writings and her message of THEOSOPHY has
already sensibly affected our world.

More than ever we demand answers, we seek for causes, we desire to
know why things happen.

The message of Theosophy was designed to change the "Manas and the
Buddhi of the race of man."
(Manas -- mind frame; Buddhi -- wisdom base.)

What does it consist of:

It points to Mind and thought as the prime movers of individual
progress. It points to Wisdom as the history of the choices and
actions of the past, of its present power as the Law of Karma, and of
the future of altruism and cooperation to which all may aspire and act
for.

It points to the universality of the world of truth, of spiritual
values and of ideals. It declares that the rules and laws of the
World and our Universe are fair and harmonious, and demands from each
of us the practice of altruism. This is epitomized in the phrase:
UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD.

This, UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD is the first Object of the T S, and of all
Theosophical bodies everywhere. Theosophy means Divine Wisdom. Its
practice is devotion to universality and impersonality. It demands
that everyone exercise the same opportunity to be free -- to seek, to
ask and to learn.

It declares Nature and its existence (as innumerable Monads) are
facts.

Truth ever prevails as an invariable and changeless background -- an
ABSOLUTENESS. It is ever-present, whether there is manifestation or
non-manifestation. It is the ONE LAW.

These truths and facts cannot be concealed, veiled or made a mystery
of.

Ignorance is a passing phase. It is always supplanted by the
discovery of the truth that underlies all misconceptions.

It declares that Nature is ONE -- a sensitive and organized whole. It
is ruled by Law and Laws. these are fair, clear, compassionate,
educative and just for all.

The Universe and its components are neither born nor does it, or they
die. It exists forever. It is the Power to Perceive. Consciousness
that is unlimited, deathless and permanent. These identical powers
are presenting every one of its components, the immortal Monads.

Spirit (perfection and truth), Matter (substance, forms and
ever-changing limitations), and Mind (thought, action, desires and
feeling) are the three divisions of universal DIVINITY that are ever
present. The Deity, the Presence is superior to these and unaffected
by them. It is therefore the OBSERVER and the WITNESS as well as the
SCRIBE and the RECORDER.

Every being without exception is included in its limitless vastness.

It is also know by synonyms such as Divinity, Deity, God, Universal
Law, Universal progress or the universal Evolution of every individual
component of nature. For al. there is a singular goal: which can
only be characterized as "Sublime Perfection."

This is Universal Brotherhood.

When this is grasped then selfishness, greed, pride, isolation,
disappear.

-----------------------

H P B from time to time wrote tales, stories and used allegories to
illustrate wisdom already present or to expose some aspect of Nature
that needs attention from us who aspire to learn something of her
secret workings.

Here are two: One on the universal symbol of the Lotus. (already
posted) The other on the dark areas that surround our psyche --
which have to be known and mastered so that our progress may be
assured.

Best wishes,

Dallas

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A BEWITCHED LIFE

As Narrated by a Quill Pen

By H. P. Blavatsky


INTRODUCTION

It was a dark, chilly night in September, 1884. A heavy gloom had
descended over the streets of A---, a small town on the Rhine, and was
hanging like a black funeral-pall over the dull factory burgh. The
greater number of its inhabitants, wearied by their long day's work,
had hours before retired to stretch their tired limbs, and lay their
aching heads upon their pillows. All was quiet in the large house; all
was quiet in the deserted streets.

I too was lying in my bed; alas, not one of rest, but of pain and
sickness, to which I had been confined for some days. So still was
everything in the house, that, as Longfellow has it, its stillness
seemed almost audible. I could plainly hear the murmur of the blood as
it rushed through my aching body, producing that monotonous singing so
familiar to one who lends a watchful ear to silence. I had listened to
it until, in my nervous imagination, it had grown into the sound of a
distant cataract, the fall of mighty waters . . . when, suddenly
changing its character, the evergrowing "singing" merged into other
and far more welcome sounds. It was the low, and at first scarce
audible, whisper of a human voice. It approached, and gradually
strengthening seemed to speak in my very ear. Thus sounds a voice
speaking across a blue quiescent lake, in one of those wondrously
acoustic gorges of the snow-capped mountains, where the air is so pure
that a word pronounced half a mile off seems almost at the elbow. Yes;
it was the voice of one whom to know is to reverence; of one, to me,
owing to many mystic associations, most dear and holy; a voice
familiar for long years and ever welcome; doubly so in hours of mental
or physical suffering, for it always brings with it a ray of hope and
consolation.

"Courage," it whispered in gentle, mellow tones. "Think of the days
passed by you in sweet associations; of the great lessons received of
Nature's truths; of the many errors of men concerning these truths;
and try to add to them the experience of a night in this city. Let the
narrative of a strange life, that will interest you, help to shorten
the hours of suffering. . . . . . Give your attention. Look yonder
before you!"

"Yonder" meant the clear, large windows of an empty house on the other
side of the narrow street of the German town. They faced my own in
almost a straight line across the street, and my bed faced the windows
of my sleeping room. Obedient to the suggestion, I directed my gaze
towards them, and what I saw made me for the time being forget the
agony of the pain that racked my swollen arm and rheumatical body.

Over the windows was creeping a mist; a dense, heavy, serpentine,
whitish mist, that looked like the huge shadow of a gigantic boa
slowly uncoiling its body. Gradually it disappeared, to leave a
lustrous light, soft and silvery, as though the window-panes behind
reflected a thousand moonbeams, a tropical star-lit sky -- first from
outside, then from within the empty rooms. Next I saw the mist
elongating itself and throwing, as it were, a fairy bridge across the
street from the bewitched windows to my own balcony, nay, to my very
own bed. As I continued gazing, the wall and windows and the opposite
house itself, suddenly vanished. The space occupied by the empty rooms
had changed into the interior of another smaller room, in what I knew
to be a Swiss chalet -- into a study, whose old, dark walls were
covered from floor to ceiling with book shelves on which were many
antiquated folios, as well as works of a more recent date. In the
centre stood a large old-fashioned table, littered over with
manuscripts and writing materials. Before it, quill-pen in hand, sat
an old man; a grim-looking, skeleton-like personage, with a face so
thin, so pale, yellow and emaciated, that the light of the solitary
little student's lamp was reflected in two shining spots on his high
cheekbones, as though they were carved out of ivory.

As I tried to get a better view of him by slowly raising myself upon
my pillows, the whole vision, chalet and study, desk, books and
scribe, seemed to flicker and move. Once set in motion, they
approached nearer and nearer, until, gliding noiselessly along the
fleecy bridge of clouds across the street, they floated through the
closed windows into my room and finally seemed to settle beside my
bed.
"Listen to what he thinks and is going to write" -- said in soothing
tones the same familiar, far off, and yet near voice." Thus you will
hear a narrative, the telling of which may help to shorten the long
sleepless hours, and even make you forget for a while your pain . . .
Try!" -- it added, using the well-known Rosicrucian and Kabalistic
formula.

I tried, doing as I was bid. I centred all my attention on the
solitary laborious figure that I saw before me, but which did not see
me. At first, the noise of the quill-pen with which the old man was
writing, suggested to my mind nothing more than a low whispered murmur
of a nondescript nature. Then, gradually, my ear caught the indistinct
words of a faint and distant voice, and I thought the figure before
me, bending over its manuscript, was reading its tale aloud instead of
writing it. But I soon found out my error. For casting my gaze at the
old scribe's face, I saw at a glance that his lips were compressed and
motionless, and the voice too thin and shrill to be his voice.
Stranger still at every word traced by the feeble, aged hand, I
noticed a light flashing from under his pen, a bright coloured spark
that became instantaneously a sound, or -- what is the same thing --
it seemed to do so to my inner perceptions. It was indeed the small
voice of the quill that I heard though scribe and pen were at the
time, perchance, hundreds of miles away from Germany. Such things will
happen occasionally, especially at night, beneath whose starry shade,
as Byron tells us,

" . . . we learn the language of another world . . ."

However it may be, the words uttered by the quill remained in my
memory for days after. Nor had I any great difficulty in retaining
them, for when I sat down to record the story, I found it, as usual,
indelibly impressed on the astral tablets before my inner eye.

Thus, I had but to copy it and so give it as I received it. I failed
to learn the name of the unknown nocturnal writer. Nevertheless,
though the reader may prefer to regard the whole story as one made up
for the occasion, a dream, perhaps, still its incidents will, I hope,
prove none the less interesting.



I -- THE STRANGER'S STORY


My birth-place is a small mountain hamlet, a cluster of Swiss
cottages, hidden deep in a sunny nook, between two tumble-down
glaciers and a peak covered with eternal snows. Thither, thirty-seven
years ago, I returned -- crippled mentally and physically -- to die,
if death would only have me. The pure, invigorating air of my
birth-place decided otherwise. I am still alive; perhaps for the
purpose of giving evidence to facts I have kept profoundly secret from
all -- a tale of horror I would rather hide than reveal. The reason
for this unwillingness on my part is due to my early education, and to
subsequent events that gave the lie to my most cherished prejudices.
Some people might be inclined to regard these events as providential:
I, however, believe in no Providence, and yet am unable to attribute
them to mere chance. I connect them as the ceaseless evolution of
effects, engendered by certain direct causes, with one primary and
fundamental cause, from which ensued all that followed. A feeble old
man am I now, yet physical weakness has in no way impaired my mental
faculties. I remember the smallest details of that terrible cause,
which engendered such fatal results. It is these which furnish me with
an additional proof of the actual existence of one whom I fain would
regard -- oh, that I could do so! -- as a creature born of my fancy,
the evanescent production of a feverish, horrid dream! Oh that
terrible, mild and all-forgiving, that saintly and respected Being! It
was that paragon of all the virtues who embittered my whole existence.
It is he, who, pushing me violently out of the monotonous but secure
groove of daily life, was the first to force upon me the certitude of
a life hereafter, thus adding an additional horror to one already
great enough.

With a view to a clearer comprehension of the situation, I must
interrupt these recollections with a few words about myself. Oh how,
if I could, would I obliterate that hated Self!
Born in Switzerland, of French parents, who centred the whole
world-wisdom in the literary trinity of Voltaire, J. J. Rousseau and
D'Holbach, and educated in a German university, I grew up a thorough
materialist, a confirmed atheist. I could never have even pictured to
myself any beings -- least of all a Being -- above or even outside
visible nature, as distinguished from her. Hence I regarded everything
that could not be brought under the strictest analysis of the physical
senses as a mere chimera. A soul, I argued, even supposing man has
one, must be material. According to Origen's definition,
incorporeus -- the epithet he gave to his God -- signifies a substance
only more subtle than that of physical bodies, of which, at best, we
can form no definite idea. How then can that, of which our senses
cannot enable us to obtain any clear knowledge, how can that make
itself visible or produce any tangible manifestations?
Accordingly, I received the tales of nascent Spiritualism with a
feeling of utter contempt, and regarded the overtures made by certain
priests with derision, often akin to anger. And indeed the latter
feeling has never entirely abandoned me.

Pascal, in the eighth Act of his " Thoughts," confesses to a most
complete incertitude upon the existence of God. Throughout my life, I
too professed a complete certitude as to the non-existence of any such
extra-cosmic being, and repeated with that great thinker the memorable
words in which he tells us: "I have examined if this God of whom all
the world speaks might not have left some marks of himself. I look
everywhere, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers
me nothing that may not be a matter of doubt and inquietude." Nor have
I found to this day anything that might unsettle me in precisely
similar and even stronger feelings. I have never believed, nor shall I
ever believe, in a Supreme Being. But at the potentialities of man,
proclaimed far and wide in the East, powers so developed in some
persons as to make them virtually Gods, at them I laugh no more. My
whole broken life is a protest against such negation. I believe in
such phenomena, and -- I curse them, whenever they come, and by
whatsoever means generated.

On the death of my parents, owing to an unfortunate lawsuit, I lost
the greater part of my fortune, and resolved -- for the sake of those
I loved best, rather than for my own -- to make another for myself. My
elder sister, whom I adored, had married a poor man. I accepted the
offer of a rich Hamburg firm and sailed for Japan as its junior
partner.

For several years my business went on successfully. I got into the
confidence of many influential Japanese, through whose protection I
was enabled to travel and transact business in many localities, which,
in those days especially, were not easily accessible to foreigners.
Indifferent to every religion, I became interested in the philosophy
of Buddhism, the only religious system I thought worthy of being
called philosophical. Thus, in my moments of leisure, I visited the
most remarkable temples of Japan, the most important and curious of
the ninety-six Buddhist monasteries of Kioto. I have examined in turn
Day -- Bootzoo, with its gigantic bell; Tzeonene, Enarino-Yassero,
Kie-Missoo, Higadzi-Hong-Vonsi, and many other famous temples.

Several years passed away, and during that whole period I was not
cured of my scepticism, nor did I ever contemplate having my opinions
on this subject altered. I derided the pretensions of the Japanese
bonzes and ascetics, as I had those of Christian priests and European
Spiritualists. I could not believe in the acquisition of powers
unknown to, and never studied by, men of science; hence I scoffed at
all such ideas. The superstitious and atrabilious Buddhist, teaching
us to shun the pleasures of life, to put to rout one's passions, to
render oneself insensible alike to happiness and suffering, in order
to acquire such chimerical powers -- seemed supremely ridiculous in my
eyes.

On a day ever memorable to me -- a fatal day -- I made the
acquaintance of a venerable and learned Bonze, a Japanese priest,
named Tamoora Hideyeri. I met him at the foot of the golden Kwon-On,
and from that moment he became my best and most trusted friend.
Notwithstanding my great and genuine regard for him, however, whenever
a good opportunity was offered I never failed to mock his religious
convictions, thereby very often hurting his feelings.

But my old friend was as meek and forgiving as any true Buddhist's
heart might desire. He never resented my impatient sarcasms, even when
they were, to say the least, of equivocal propriety, and generally
limited his replies to the "wait and see" kind of protest. Nor could
he be brought to seriously believe in the sincerity of my denial of
the existence of any God or Gods. The full meaning of the terms
"atheism" and "scepticism" was beyond the comprehension of his
otherwise extremely intellectual and acute mind. Like certain
reverential Christians, he seemed incapable of realizing that any man
of sense should prefer the wise conclusions arrived at by philosophy
and modern science to a ridiculous belief in an invisible world full
of Gods and spirits, dzins and demons. "Man is a spiritual being," he
insisted, "who returns to earth more than once, and is rewarded or
punished in the between times." The proposition that man is nothing
else but a heap of organized dust, was beyond him. Like Jeremy
Collier, he refused to admit that he was no better than "a stalking
machine, a speaking head without a soul in it," whose "thoughts" are
all bound by the laws of motion." "For," he argued, "if my actions
were, as you say, prescribed beforehand, and I had no more liberty or
free will to change the course of my action than the running waters of
the river yonder, then the glorious doctrine of Karma, of merit and
demerit, would be a foolishness indeed."

Thus the whole of my hyper-metaphysical friend's ontology rested on
the shaky superstructure of metempsychosis, of a fancied "just" Law of
Retribution, and other such equally absurd dreams.
"We cannot," said he paradoxically one day, "hope to live hereafter in
the full enjoyment of our consciousness, unless we have built for it
beforehand a firm and solid foundation of spirituality. . . . . . Nay,
laugh not, friend of no faith," he meekly pleaded, "but rather think
and reflect on this. One who has never taught himself to live in
Spirit during his conscious and responsible life on earth, can hardly
hope to enjoy a sentient existence after death, when, deprived of his
body, he is limited to that Spirit alone."

"What can you mean by life in Spirit?" -- I enquired.

"Life on a spiritual plane; that which the Buddhists call Tushita
Devaloka (Paradise). Man can create such a blissful existence for
himself between two births, by the gradual transference on to that
plane of all the faculties which during his sojourn on earth manifest
through his organic body and, as you call it, animal brain."

"How absurd! And how can man do this?"

"Contemplation and a strong desire to assimilate the blessed Gods,
will enable him to do so."

"And if man refuses this intellectual occupation, by which you mean, I
suppose, the fixing of the eyes on the tip of his nose, what becomes
of him after the death of his body?" was my mocking question.

"He will be dealt with according to the prevailing state of his
consciousness, of which there are many grades. At best -- immediate
rebirth; at worst -- the state of avitchi, a mental hell. Yet one need
not be an ascetic to assimilate spiritual life which will extend to
the hereafter. All that is required is to try and approach Spirit."

"How so? Even when disbelieving in it?" -- I rejoined.

"Even so! One may disbelieve and yet harbour in one's nature room for
doubt, however small that room may be, and thus try one day, were it
but for one moment, to open the door of the inner temple; and this
will prove sufficient for the purpose."

"You are decidedly poetical, and paradoxical to boot, reverend sir.
Will you kindly explain to me a little more of the mystery?"

"There is none; still I am willing. Suppose for a moment that some
unknown temple to which you have never been before, and the existence
of which you think you have reasons to deny, is the 'spiritual plane'
of which I am speaking. Some one takes you by the hand and leads you
towards its entrance, curiosity makes you open its door and look
within. By this simple act, by entering it for one second, you have
established an everlasting connection between your consciousness and
the temple. You cannot deny its existence any longer, nor obliterate
the fact of your having entered it. And according to the character and
the variety of your work, within its holy precincts, so will you live
in it after your consciousness is severed from its dwelling of flesh."

"What do you mean? And what has my after-death consciousness -- if
such a thing exists -- to do with the temple?"

"It has everything to do with it," solemnly rejoined the old man.
"There can be no self-consciousness after death outside the temple of
spirit. That which you will have done within its plane will alone
survive. All the rest is false and an illusion. It is doomed to perish
in the Ocean of Maya."
Amused at the idea of living outside one's body, I urged on my old
friend to tell me more. Mistaking my meaning the venerable man
willingly consented.

Tamoora Hideyeri belonged to the great temple of Tzionene, a Buddhist
monastery, famous not only in all Japan, but also throughout Tibet and
China. No other is so venerated in Kioto. Its monks belong to the sect
of Dzeno-doo, and are considered as the most learned among the many
erudite fraternities. They are, moreover, closely connected and allied
with the Yamabooshi (the ascetics, or hermits), who follow the
doctrines of Lao-tze. No wonder, that at the slightest provocation on
my part the priest flew into the highest metaphysics, hoping thereby
to cure me of my infidelity.

No use repeating here the long rigmarole of the most hopelessly
involved and incomprehensible of all doctrines. According to his
ideas, we have to train ourselves for spirituality in another world --
as for gymnastics. Carrying on the analogy between the temple and the
"spiritual plane" he tried to illustrate his idea. He had himself
worked in the temple of Spirit two-thirds of his life, and given
several hours daily to "contemplation." Thus he knew (!?) that after
he had laid aside his mortal casket, "a mere illusion," he
explained -- he would in his spiritual consciousness live over again
every feeling of ennobling joy and divine bliss he had ever had, or
ought to have had -- only a hundredfold intensified. His work on the
spirit-plane had been considerable, he said, and he hoped, therefore
that the wages of the labourer would prove proportionate.

"But suppose the labourer, as in the example you have just brought
forward in my case, should have no more, than opened the temple door
out of mere curiosity; had only peeped into the sanctuary never to set
his foot therein again. What then?"

"Then," he answered, "you would have only this short minute to record
in your future self-consciousness and no more. Our life hereafter
records and repeats but the impressions and feelings we have had in
our spiritual experiences and nothing else. Thus, if instead of
reverence at the moment of entering the abode of Spirit, you had been
harbouring in your heart anger, jealousy or grief, then your future
spiritual life would be a sad one, in truth. There would be nothing to
record, save the opening of a door, in a fit of bad temper."

"How then could it be repeated?" -- I insisted, highly amused. "What
do you suppose I would be doing before incarnating again?"

"In that case," he said speaking slowly and weighing every word -- "in
that case, you would have I fear, only to open and shut the temple
door, over and over again, during a period which, however short, would
seem to you an eternity."

This kind of after-death occupation appeared to me, at that time, so
grotesque in its sublime absurdity, that I was seized with an almost
inextinguishable fit of laughter.

My venerable friend looked considerably dismayed at such a result of
his metaphysical instruction. He had evidently not expected such
hilarity. However, he said nothing, but only sighed and gazed at me
with increased benevolence and pity shining in his small black eyes.

"Pray excuse my laughter," I apologized. "But really, now, you cannot
seriously mean to tell me that the 'spiritual state' you advocate and
so firmly believe in, consists only in aping certain things we do in
life?"

"Nay, nay; not aping, but only intensifying their repetition; filling
the gaps that were unjustly left unfilled during life in the fruition
of our acts and deeds, and of everything performed on the spiritual
plane of the one real state. What I said was an illustration, and no
doubt for you, who seem entirely ignorant of the mysteries of
Soul-Vision, not a very intelligible one. It is myself who am to be
blamed. . . . . . What I sought to impress upon you was that, as the
spiritual state of our consciousness liberated from its body is but
the fruition of every spiritual act performed during life, where an
act had been barren, there could be no results expected -- save the
repetition of that act itself. This is all. I pray you may be spared
such fruitless deeds and finally made to see certain truths." And
passing through the usual Japanese courtesies of taking leave the
excellent man departed.

Alas, alas! had I but known at the time what I have learnt since, how
little would I have laughed, and how much more would I have learned!

But as the matter stood, the more personal affection and respect I
felt for him, the less could I become reconciled to his wild ideas
about an after-life, and especially as to the acquisition by some men
of supernatural powers. I felt particularly disgusted with his
reverence for the Yamabooshi, the allies of every Buddhist sect in the
land. Their claims to the "miraculous" were simply odious to my
notions. To hear every Jap I knew at Kioto, even to my own partner,
the shrewdest of all the business men I had come across in the East --
mentioning these followers of Lao-tze with downcast eyes,
reverentially folded hands, and affirmations of their possessing
"great" and "wonderful" gifts, was more than I was prepared to
patiently tolerate in those days. And who were they, after all, these
great magicians with their ridiculous pretensions to super-mundane
knowledge; these "holy beggars" who, as I then thought, purposely
dwell in the recesses of unfrequented mountains and an unapproachable
craggy steeps, so as the better to afford no chance to curious
intruders of finding them out and watching them in their own dens?
Simply, impudent fortune-tellers, Japanese gypsies who sell charms and
talismans, and no better. In answer to those who sought to assure me
that though the Yamabooshi lead a mysterious life, admitting none of
the profane to their secrets, they still do accept pupils, however
difficult it is for one to become their disciple, and that thus they
have living witnesses to the great purity and sanctity of their lives,
in answer to such affirmations I opposed the strongest negation and
stood firmly by it. I insulted both masters and pupils, classing them
under the same category of fools, when not knaves, and I went so far
as to include in this number the Sintos. Now Sintoism or Sin-Syu,
"faith in the Gods, and in the way to the Gods," that is, belief in
the communication between these creatures and men, is a kind of
worship of nature-spirits, than which nothing can be more miserably
absurd. And by placing the Sintos among the fools and knaves of other
sects, I gained many enemies. For the Sinto Kanusi (spiritual
teachers) are looked upon as the highest in the upper classes of
Society, the Mikado himself being at the head of their hierarchy and
the members of the sect belonging to the most cultured and educated
men in Japan. These Kanusi of the Sinto form no caste or class apart,
nor do they pass any ordination -- at any rate none known to
outsiders. And as they claim publicly no special privilege or powers,
even their dress being in no wise different from that of the laity,
but are simply in the world's opinion professors and students of
occult and spiritual sciences, I very often came in contact with them
without in the least suspecting that I was in the presence of such
personages.


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Continued in Part III


Dallas