Part IV ASTRAL LIGHT ENTITIES
Apr 20, 2005 06:19 AM
by W.Dallas TenBroeck
Part IV ASTRAL LIGHT ENTITIES
IV
INTELLECTUALITY and SPIRITUALITY
A high development of the intellectual faculties does not imply spiritual
and true life. The presence in one of a highly developed human, intellectual
soul (the fifth principle, or Manas), is quite compatible with the absence
of Buddhi, or the spiritual soul. Unless the former evolves from and
develops under the beneficent and vivifying rays of the latter, it will
remain for ever but a direct progeny of the terrestrial, lower principles,
sterile in spiritual perceptions; a magnificent, luxurious sepulchre, full
of the dry bones of decaying matter within. Many of our greatest scientists
are but animate corpses--they have no spiritual sight because their spirits
have left them, or, rather, cannot reach them. So we might go through all
ages, examine all occupations, weigh all human attainments, and investigate
all forms of society, and we would find these spiritually dead everywhere.
Although Aristotle himself, anticipating the modern physiologists, regarded
the human mind as a material substance, and ridiculed the hylozoïsts,
nevertheless he fully believed in the existence of a "double" soul, or soul
plus spirit, as one can see in his De Generat. et Corrupt. (Lib. ii.). He
laughed at Strabo for believing that any particles of matter, per se, could
have life and intellect in themselves sufficient to fashion by degrees such
a multiform world as ours. 31
ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS
Aristotle is indebted for the sublime morality of his Nichomachean Ethics to
a thorough study of the Pythagorean Ethical Fragments; for the latter can be
easily shown to have been the source at which he gathered his ideas, though
he might not have sworn "by him who the Tetraktys found." 32
But indeed our men of science know nothing certain about Aristotle. His
philosophy is so abstruse that he constantly leaves his reader to supply by
the imagination the missing links of his logical deductions. Moreover, we
know that before his works ever reached our scholars, who delight in his
seemingly atheistical arguments in support of his doctrine of fate, they
passed through too many hands to have remained immaculate.
>From Theophrastus, his legator, they passed to Neleus, whose heirs kept them
mouldering in subterranean caves for nearly 150 years; after which, we learn
that his manuscripts were copied and much augmented by Appelicon of Theos,
who supplied such paragraphs as had become illegible, by conjectures of his
own, probably many of these drawn from the depths of his inner
consciousness. Our scholars of the nineteenth as anxious to imitate him
practically as they are to throw his inductive method and materialistic
theories at the heads of the Platonists. We invite them to collect facts as
carefully as he did, instead of denying those they know nothing about.
EXPERIENCE AND ASTRAL “SPIRITS”
What we have said here and elsewhere of the variety of "spirits" and other
invisible beings evolved in the astral light, and what we now mean to say of
mediums and the tendency of their mediumship, is not based upon conjecture,
but upon actual experience and observation.
H P B THE GREAT TRAVELER
There is scarcely one phase of mediumship, of either kind, that we have not
seen exemplified during the past thirty-five years, in various countries.
India, Tibet, Borneo, Siam, Egypt, Asia Minor, America (North and South),
and other parts of the world, have each displayed to us its peculiar phase
of mediumistic phenomena and magical power.
Our varied experience has fully corroborated the teachings of our Masters
and of The Secret Doctrine, and has taught us two important truths, viz.,
that for the exercise of "mediumship" personal purity and the exercise of a
trained and indomitable will-power are indispensable; and that spiritualists
can never assure themselves of the genuineness of mediumistic manifestations
unless they occur in the light and under such reasonable test conditions as
would make an attempted fraud instantly noticed.
DISEMBODIED HUMAN SPIRITS CAN MANIFEST
For fear of being misunderstood, we would remark that while, as a rule,
physical phenomena are produced by the nature-spirits, of their own motion
and under the impulse of the elementaries, still genuine disembodied human
spirits, may, under exceptional circumstances--such as the aspiration of a
pure, loving heart, or under the influence of some intense thought or
unsatisfied desire, at the moment of death--manifest their presence, either
in dream, or vision, or even bring about their objective appearance--if very
soon after physical death.
Direct writing may be produced in the genuine handwriting of the "spirit,"
the medium being influenced by a process unknown as much to himself as to
the modern spiritualists, we fear.
But what we maintain and shall maintain to the last is, that no genuine
human spirit can materialize, i.e., clothe his monad with an objective form.
Even for the rest it must be a mighty attraction indeed to draw a pure,
disembodied spirit from its radiant, Devachanic state--its home--into the
foul atmosphere from which it escaped upon leaving its earthly body.
When the possible nature of the manifesting intelligences, which science
believes to be a "psychic force," and spiritualists the identical "spirits
of the dead," is better known, then will academicians and believers turn to
the old philosophers for information. They may in their indomitable pride,
that becomes so often stubbornness and arrogance, do as Dr. Charcot, of the
Salpêtrière of Paris, has done: deny for years the existence of Mesmerism
and its phenomena, to accept and finally preach it in public lectures--only
under the assumed name, Hypnotism.
We have found in spiritualistic journals many instances where apparitions of
departed pet dogs and other animals have been seen. Therefore, upon
spiritualistic testimony, we must think that such animal "spirits" do appear
although we reserve the right of concurring with the ancients that the forms
are but tricks of the elementals. Notwithstanding every proof and
probability the spiritualists will, nevertheless, maintain that it is the
"spirits" of the departed human beings that are at work even in the
"materialization" of animals. We will now examine with their permission the
pro and con of the mooted question.
APE AND ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE
Let us for a moment imagine an intelligent orang-outang or some African
anthropoid ape disembodied, i.e., deprived of its physical and in possession
of an astral, if not an immortal body. Once open the door of communication
between the terrestrial and the spiritual world, what prevents the ape from
producing physical phenomena such as he sees human spirits produce? And why
may not these excel in cleverness and ingenuity many of those which have
been witnessed in spiritualistic circles? Let spiritualists answer.
The orang-outang of Borneo is little, if any, inferior to the savage man in
intelligence. Mr. Wallace and other great naturalists give instances of its
wonderful acuteness, although its brains are inferior in cubic capacity to
the most undeveloped of savages. These apes lack but speech to be men of low
grade. The sentinels placed by monkeys; the sleeping chambers selected and
built by orang-outangs; their prevision of danger and calculations, which
show more than instinct; their choice of leaders whom they obey; and the
exercise of many of their faculties, certainly entitle them to a place at
least on a level with many a flat-headed Australian. Says Mr. Wallace, "The
mental requirements of savages, and the faculties actually exercised by
them, are very little above those of the animals."
Now, people assume that there can be no apes in the other world, because
apes have no "souls." But apes have as much intelligence, it appears, as
some men; why, then, should these men, in no way superior to the apes, have
immortal spirits, and the apes none?
The materialists will answer that neither the one nor the other has a
spirit, but that annihilation overtakes each at physical death.
But the spiritual philosophers of all times have agreed that man occupies a
step one degree higher than the animal, and is possessed of that something
which it lacks, be he the most untutored of savages or the wisest of
philosophers.
The ancients, as we have seen, taught that while man is a septenary trinity
of body, astral spirit, and immortal soul, the animal is but a
duality--i.e., having but five instead of seven principles in him, a being
having a physical body with its astral body and life-principle, and its
animal soul and vehicle animating it. Scientists can distinguish no
difference in the elements composing the bodies of men and brutes; and the
Kabalists agree with them so far as to say that the astral bodies (or, as
the physicists would call it, the "life-principle") of animals and men are
identical in essence.
Physical man is but the highest development of animal life. If, as the
scientists tell us, even thought is matter, and every sensation of pain or
pleasure, every transient desire is accompanied by a disturbance of ether;
and those bold speculators, the authors of the Unseen Universe believe that
thought is conceived "to affect the matter of another universe
simultaneously with this"; why, then, should not the gross, brutish thought
of an orang-outang, or a dog, impressing itself on the ethereal waves of the
astral light, as well as that of man, assure the animal a continuity of life
after death, or a "future state"?
The Kabalists held, and now hold, that it is unphilosophical to admit that
the astral body of man can survive corporeal death, and at the same time
assert that the astral body of the ape is resolved into independent
molecules.
That which survives as an individuality after the death of the body is the
astral soul, which Plato, in the Timæus and Gorgias, calls the mortal soul,
for, according to the Hermetic doctrine, it throws off its more material
particles at every progressive change into a higher sphere.
Let us advance another step in our argument. If there is such a thing as
existence in the spiritual world after corporeal death, then it must occur
in accordance with the law of evolution. It takes man from his place at the
apex of the pyramid of matter, and lifts him into a sphere of existence
where the same inexorable law follows him. And if it follows him, why not
everything else in nature? Why not animals and plants, which have all a
life-principle, and whose gross forms decay like his, when that
life-principle leaves them? If his astral body becomes more ethereal upon
attaining the other sphere, why not theirs? *
---- H P B unpublished incomplete MSS ----------
LUCIFER, August, 1893 (Published posthumously)
------------------------ Footnotes
-------------------------------
1 Bulwer-Lytton, Zanoni.
2 Plutarch, De Isid., ch. xxv, p. 360.
3 De Natura Deorum, lib. i. Cap. xviii.
4 Let the student consult The Secret Doctrine on this matter, and he will
there find full explanations.
5 In order to create a blind, or throw a veil upon the mystery of
primordial evolution, the later Brâhmans, with a view also to serve
orthodoxy, explained the two, by an invented fable; the first Pitris were
"sons of God" and offended Brahmâ by refusing to sacrifice to him, for which
crime, the Creator cursed them to become fools, a curse they could escape
only by accepting their own sons as instructors and addressing them as their
Fathers--Pitris. This is the exoteric version.
6 We find an echo of this in the Codex Nazaræus. Bahak-Zivo, the "father of
Genii" (the seven) is ordered to construct creatures. But, as he is
"ignorant of Orcus" and unacquainted with "the consuming fire which is
wanting in light," he fails to do so and calls in Fetahil, a still purer
spirit, to his aid, who fails still worse and sits in the mud (Ilus, Chaos,
Matter) and wonders why the living fire is so changed. It is only when the
"Spirit" (Soul) steps on the stage of creation (the feminine Anima Mundi of
the Nazarenes and Gnostics) and awakens Karabtanos--the spirit of matter and
concupiscence--who consents to help his mother, that the "Spiritus"
conceives and bring forth "Seven Figures," and again "Seven" and once more
"Seven" (the Seven Virtues, Seven Sins and Seven Worlds). Then Fetahil dips
his hand in the Chaos and creates our planet. (See Isis Unveiled, vol. i.
298-300 et seq.)
7 Idra Suta, Zohar, iii. 292b.
8 Of late, some narrow-minded critics--unable to understand the high
philosophy of the above doctrine, the Esoteric meaning of which reveals when
solved the widest horizons in astro-physical as well as in psychological
sciences--chuckled over and pooh-poohed the idea of the eighth sphere, that
could discover to their minds, befogged with old and mouldy dogmas of an
unscientific faith, nothing better than our "moon in the shape of a dust-bin
to collect the sins of men!"
9 Persons who believe in clairvoyant power, but are disposed to discredit
the existing of any other spirits in nature than disembodied human spirits,
will be interested in an account of certain clairvoyant observations which
appeared in the London Spiritualist of June 29th, 1877. A thunderstorm
approaching, the seeress saw "a bright spirit emerge from a dark cloud and
pass with lightning speed across the sky, and, a few minutes after, a
diagonal line of dark spirits in the clouds." These are the Maruts of the
Vedas.
The well-known lecturer, author, and clairvoyant, Mrs. Emma Hardinge
Britten, has published accounts of her frequent experiences with these
elemental spirits. If Spiritualists will accept her "spiritual" experience
they can hardly reject her evidence in favour of the occult theories.
10 Correlation of Vital with Chemical and Physical Forces, by J. Le Conte.
11 Archives des Sciences, xiv. 345, December, 1872.
12 Mr. Cromwell F. Varley, the well-known electrician of the Atlantic Cable
Company, communicates the result of his observations, in the course of a
debate at the Psychological Society of Great Britain, which is reported in
the Spiritualist (London, April 14th, 1876, pp. l74, 175). He thought that
the effect of free nitric acid in the atmosphere was able to drive away what
he calls "unpleasant spirits." He thought that those who were troubled by
unpleasant spirits at home, would find relief by pouring one ounce of
vitriol upon two ounces of finely-powdered nitre in a saucer and putting the
mixture under the bed. Here is a scientist, whose reputation extends over
two continents, who gives a recipe to drive away bad spirits! And yet the
general public mocks at as a "superstition" the herbs and incenses employed
by Hindus, Chinese, Africans, and other races to accomplish the self-same
purpose!
13 "Of Sacrifices to Gods and Daimons," chap. ii.
14 Odyssey, vii.
15 Porphyry, "Of Sacrifices to Gods and Daimons," chap. ii.
16 Ibid.
17 Iamblichus, De Mysteriis Egyptorum.
18 Ibid., "On the Difference between the Daimons, the Souls," etc.
19 We give the spelling and words of this Kabalist, who lived and published
his works in the seventeenth century. Generally he is considered as one of
the most famous alchemists among the Hermetic philosophers.
20 The most positive of materialistic philosophers agree that all that
exists was evolved from ether; hence, air, water, earth, and fire, the four
primordial elements must also proceed from ether and chaos the first duad;
all the imponderables, whether now known or unknown, proceed from the same
source. Now, if there is a spiritual essence in matter, and that essence
forces it to shape itself into millions of individual forms, why is it
illogical to assert that each of these spiritual kingdoms in nature is
peopled with beings evolved out of its own material? Chemistry teaches us
that in man's body there are air, water, earth, and heat, or fire--air is
present in its components; water in the secretions; earth in the inorganic
constituents; and fire in the animal heat. The Kabalist knows by experience
that an elemental spirit contains only one of these, and that each one of
the four kingdoms has its own peculiar elemental spirits; man being higher
than they, the law of evolution finds its illustration in the combination of
all four in him.
21 Virgil, Georgica. book ii.
22 Porphyry and other philosophers explain the nature of the dwellers They
are mischievous and deceitful, though some of them are perfectly gentle and
harmless, but so weak as to have the greatest difficulty in communicating
with mortals whose company they seek incessantly. The former are not wicked
through intelligent malice. The law of spiritual evolution not having yet
developed their instinct into intelligence, whose highest light belongs but
to immortal spirits, their powers of reasoning are in a latent state, and,
therefore, they themselves, irresponsible.
But the Latin Church contradicts the Kabalists. St. Augustine has even a
discussion on that account with Porphyry, the Neoplatonist. "These spirits,"
he says, "are deceitful, not by their nature, as Porphyry, the theurgist,
will have it, but through malice. They pass themselves off for gods and for
the souls of the defunct" (Civit. Det, x. 2). So far Porphyry agrees with
him; "but they do not claim to be demons [read devils], for they are such in
reality!"--adds the Bishop of Hippo. So far, so good, and he is right there,
But then, under what class should we place the men without heads, whom
Augustine wishes us to believe he saw himself; or the satyrs of St. Jerome,
which he asserts were exhibited for a considerable length of time at
Alexandria? They were, he tells us, "men with the legs and tails of goats";
and, if we may believe him, one of these satyrs was actually pickled and
sent in a cask to the Emperor Constantine!!!
23 Görres, Mystique, iii; 63.
24 The ancients called the spirits of bad people "souls"; the soul was the
"larva" and "lemure." Good human spirits became "gods."
25 Porphyry, De Sacrificiis. Chapter on the true Cultus.
26 Chap. lxxx. vv. 19, 20. "And when the Egyptians hid themselves on
account of the swarm [one of the plagues alleged to have been brought on by
Moses] . . . they locked their doors after them, and God ordered the
Sulanuth . . . [a sea-monster, naively explains the translator, in a
foot-note] which was then in the sea, to come up and go into Egypt . . . and
she had long arms, ten cubits in length . . . and she went upon the roofs
and uncovered the rafting and cut them . . . and stretched forth her arm
into the house and removed the lock and the bolt and opened the houses of
Egypt . . . and the swarm of animals destroyed the Egyptians, and it grieved
them exceedingly."
27 Strom., vi. 17, § 159.
28 Ibid., vi. 3, §30.
29 As says Krishna--who is at the same time Purusha and Prakriti in its
totality, and the seventh principle, the divine spirit in man--in the
Bhagavad Gita: "I am the Cause. I am the production and dissolution of the
whole of Nature. On me is all the Universe suspended as pearls upon a
string." (Ch. vii.) "Even though myself unborn, of changeless essence, and
the Lord of all existence, yet in presiding over Nature (Prakriti) which is
mine, I am born but through my own Mâyâ [the mystic power of Self-ideation,
the Eternal Thought in the Eternal Mind]." (Ch. iv.)
30 Ether is the Âkâsha of the Hindus. Âkâsha is Prakriti, or the totality of
the manifested Universe, while Purusha is the Universal Spirit, higher than
the Universal Soul.
31 De Part., i. 1.
32 A Pythagorean oath. The Pythagoreans swore by their Master.
*The article here comes to an abrupt termination--whether it was ever
finished or whether some of the MS. was lost, it is impossible to say.--EDS.
[Lucifer].
LUCIFER, 1893, ELEMENTALS Article by H. P. Blavatsky
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Dallas
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