Part III ASTRAL LIGHT ENTITIES
Apr 20, 2005 06:19 AM
by W.Dallas TenBroeck
Part III ASTRAL LIGHT ENTITIES
III
SPHERES OF LIFE
Every organized thing in this world, visible as well as invisible, has an
element appropriate to itself. The fish lives and breathes in the water; the
plant consumes carbonic acid, which for animals and men produces death; some
beings are fitted for rarefied strata of air, others exist only in the
densest. Life to some is dependent on sunlight, to others, upon darkness;
and so the wise economy of nature adapts to each existing condition some
living form. These analogies warrant the conclusion that, not only is there
no unoccupied portion of universal nature, but also that for each thing that
has life, special conditions are furnished, and, being furnished, they are
necessary.
Now, assuming that there is an invisible side to the universe, the fixed
habit of nature warrants the conclusion that this half is occupied, like the
other half; and that each group of its occupants is supplied with the
indispensable conditions of existence. It is as illogical to imagine that
identical conditions are furnished to all, as it would be to maintain such a
theory respecting the inhabitants of the domain of visible nature.
That there are "spirits" implies that there is a diversity of "spirits"; for
men differ, and human "spirits" are but disembodied men.
To say that all "spirits" are alike, or fitted to the same atmosphere, or
possessed of like powers, or governed by the same attractions--electric,
magnetic, odic, astral, it matters not which--is as absurd as though one
should say that all planets have the same nature, or that all animals are
amphibious, or that all men can be nourished on the same food.
ELEMENTALS & ELEMENTARIES are NOT SPIRITS
To begin with, neither the elementals, nor the elementaries themselves, can
be called "spirits" at all. It accords with reason to suppose that the
grossest natures among them will sink to the lowest depths of the spiritual
atmosphere--in other words, be found nearest to the earth. Inversely, the
purest will be farthest away. In what, were we to coin a word, we should
call the "psychomatics" of Occultism, it is as unwarrantable to assume that
either of these grades of ethereal beings can occupy the place, or subsist
in the conditions, of the other, as it would be in hydraulics to expect that
two liquids of different densities could exchange their markings on the
scale of Beaume's hydrometer.
KAMA-RUPAS
Görres, describing a conversation he had with some Hindûs of the Malabar
coast, reports that upon asking them whether they had ghosts among them,
they replied:
“Yes, but we know them to be bad bhûts [spirits, or rather, the "empty"
ones, the "shells"], . . . good ones can hardly ever appear at all. They are
principally the spirits of suicides and murderers, or of those who die
violent deaths. They constantly flutter about and appear as phantoms.
Night-time is favourable to them, they seduce the feeble-minded and tempt
others in a thousand different ways. 23
Porphyry presents to us some hideous facts whose verity is substantiated in
the experience of every student of magic. He writes:
“The soul, 24 having even after death a certain affection for its body, an
affinity proportioned to the violence with which their union was broken, we
see many spirits hovering in despair about their earthly remains; we even
see them eagerly seeking the putrid remains of other bodies, but above all
freshly-spilled blood, which seems to impart to them for the moment some of
the faculties of life. 25.
Though spiritualists discredit them ever so much, these nature-spirits--as
much as the "elementaries," the "empty shells," as the Hindus call them--are
realities. If the gnomes, sylphs, salamanders and undines of the
Rosicrucians existed in their days, they must exist now. Bulwer Lytton's
"Dweller on the Threshold" is a modern conception, modelled on the ancient
type of the Sulanuth of the Hebrews and Egyptians, which is mentioned in the
Book of Jasher. 26
NATURE SPIRITS – ELEMENTALS
The Christians are very wrong to treat them indiscriminately, as "devils,"
"imps of Satan," and to give them like characteristics names. The elementals
are nothing of the kind, but simply creatures of ethereal matter,
irresponsible, and neither good nor bad, unless influenced by a superior
intelligence.
It is very extraordinary to hear devout Catholics abuse and misrepresent the
nature-spirits, when one of their greatest authorities, Clement the
Alexandrian, has described these creatures as they really are. Clement, who
perhaps had been a theurgist as well as an Neoplatonist, and thus argued
upon good authority, remarks, that it is absurd to call them devils, 27 for
they are only inferior angels, "the powers which inhabit elements, move the
winds and distribute showers, and as such are agents and subject to God." 28
Origen, who before he became a Christian also belonged to the Platonic
school, is of the same opinion. Porphyry, as we have seen, describes these
daimons more carefully than any one else.
MAN-SPIRIT
The Secret Doctrine teaches that man, if he wins immortality, will remain
for ever the septenary trinity that he is in life, and will continue so
throughout all the spheres. The astral body, which in this life is covered
by a gross physical envelope, becomes--when relieved of that covering by the
process of corporeal death--in its turn the shell of another and more
ethereal body.
This begins developing from the moment of death, and becomes perfected when
the astral body of the earthly form finally separates from it. This process,
they say, is repeated at every new transition from sphere to sphere of life.
But the immortal soul, the "silvery spark," observed by Dr. Fenwick in
Margrave's brain (in Bulwer Lytton's Strange Story), and not found by him in
the animals, never changes, but remains indestructible "by aught that
shatters its tabernacle."
“SPIRITS” of the ANIMALS
The descriptions by Porphyry and Iamblichus and others, of the spirits of
animals, which inhabit the astral light, are corroborated by those of many
of the most trustworthy and intelligent clairvoyants. Sometimes the animal
forms are even made visible to every person at a spiritual circle, by being
materialized.
In his People from the Other World, Colonel H. S. Olcott describes a
materialized squirrel which followed a spirit-woman into the view of the
spectators, disappeared and reappeared before their eyes several times, and
finally followed the spirit into the cabinet. The facts given in modern
spiritualistic literature are numerous and many of them are trustworthy.
As to the human spirit, the notions of the older philosophers and mediæval
Kabalists while differing in some particulars, agreed on the whole; so that
the doctrine of one may be viewed as the doctrine of the other. The most
substantial difference consisted in the location of the immortal or divine
spirit of man.
AUGOEIDES
While the ancient Neoplatonists held that the Augœides [HIGHER SELF] never
descends hypostatically into the living man, but only more or less sheds its
radiance on the inner man--the astral soul--the Kabalists of the middle ages
maintained that the spirit, detaching itself from the ocean of light and
spirit, entered into man's soul, where it remained through life imprisoned
in the astral capsule.
This difference was the result of the belief of Christian Kabalists, more or
less, in the dead letter of the allegory of the fall of man. The soul, they
said, became, through the "fall of Adam," contaminated with the world of
matter, or Satan. Before it could appear with its enclosed divine spirit in
the presence of the Eternal, it had to purify itself of the impurities of
darkness.
They compared the spirit imprisoned within the soul, to a drop of water
enclosed within a capsule of gelatine and thrown in the ocean; so long as
the capsule remains whole the drop of water remains isolated; break the
envelope and the drop becomes a part of the ocean--its individual existence
has ceased. So it is with the spirit. As long as it is enclosed in its
plastic mediator, or soul, it has an individual existence. Destroy the
capsule, a result which may occur from the agonies of withered conscience,
crime, and moral disease, and the spirit returns back to its original abode.
Its individuality is gone.
SPIRIT – the HIGHER SELF IN MAN
On the other hand, the philosophers who explained the "fall into generation"
in their own way, viewed spirit as something wholly distinct from the soul.
They allowed its presence in the astral capsule only so far as the spiritual
emanations or rays of the "shining one" were concerned.
Man and his spiritual soul or the monad--i.e., spirit and its vehicle--had
to conquer their immortality by ascending toward the unity with which, if
successful, they were finally linked, and into which they were absorbed, so
to say. The individualization of man after death depended on the spirit, not
on his astral or human soul--Manas and its vehicle Kâma Rûpa—and, thebody.
LOSS OF THE SOUL
Although the word "personality," in the sense in which it is usually
understood, is an absurdity, if applied literally to our immortal essence,
still the latter is a distinct entity, immortal and eternal, per se; and
when (as in the case of criminals beyond redemption) the shining thread
which links the spirit to the soul, from the moment of the birth of a child,
is violently snapped, and the disembodied personal entity is left to share
the fate of the lower animals, to gradually dissolve into ether, fall into
the terrible state of Âvîchi, or disappear entirely in the eighth sphere and
have its complete personality annihilated--even then the spirit remains a
distinct being. It becomes a planetary spirit, an angel; for the gods of the
Pagan or the archangels of the Christian, the direct emanations of the One
Cause, notwithstanding the hazardous statement of Swedenborg, never were nor
will they be men, on our planet, at least.
SPIRIT as THE ETERNAL INDIVIDUALITY
This specialization has been in all ages the stumbling-block of
metaphysicians.
The whole esotericism of the Buddhistic philosophy is based on this
mysterious teaching, understood by so few persons, and so totally
misrepresented by many of the most learned scholars. Even metaphysicians are
too inclined to confound the effect with the cause. A person may have won
his immortal life, and remain the same inner self he was on earth,
throughout eternity; but this does not imply necessarily that he must either
remain the Mr. Smith or Brown he was on earth, or lose his individuality.
ASTRAL SOUL or PERSONALITY
Therefore, the astral soul, i.e., the personality, like the terrestrial body
and the lower portion of the human soul of man, may, in the dark hereafter,
be absorbed into the cosmical ocean of sublimated elements, and cease to
feel its personal individuality, if it did not deserve to soar higher, and
the divine spirit, or spiritual individuality, still remain an unchanged
entity, though this terrestrial experience of his emanations may be totally
obliterated at the instant of separation from the unworthy vehicle.
THE DIVINE SPIRIT IS THE PREEXISTENT INDIVIDUALITY
If the "spirit," or the divine portion of the soul, is preëxistent as a
distinct being from all eternity, as Origen, Synesius, and other Christian
fathers and philosophers taught, and if it is the same, and nothing more
than the metaphysically-objective soul, how can it be otherwise than
eternal? And what matters it in such a case, whether man leads an animal or
a pure life, if, do what he may, he can never lose his personality? This
doctrine is as pernicious in its consequences as that of vicarious
atonement. Had the latter dogma, in company with the false idea that we are
all personally immortal, been demonstrated to the world in its true light,
humanity would have been bettered by its propagation.
CURE FOR CRIME AND SIN -- OUR INNER “GOD”
Crime and sin would be avoided, not for fear of earthly punishment, or of a
ridiculous hell, but for the sake of that which lies the most deeply rooted
in our nature--the desire of a personal and distinct life in the hereafter,
the positive assurance that we cannot win it unless we "take the kingdom of
heaven by violence," and the conviction that neither human prayers nor the
blood of another man will save us from personal destruction after death,
unless we firmly link ourselves during our terrestrial life with our own
immortal spirit--our only personal God.
UNIVERSAL WORLD-SOUL
Pythagoras, Plato, Timæus of Locris, and the whole Alexandrian School
derived the soul from the universal World-Soul; and a portion of the latter
was, according to their own teachings--ether; something of such a fine
nature as to be perceived only by our inner sight. Therefore, it cannot be
the essence of the Monas, or Cause, 29 because the Anima Mundi is but the
effect, the objective emanation of the former.
Both the divine spiritual soul and the human soul are preëxistent. But,
while the former exists as a distinct entity, an individualization, the soul
(the vehicle of the former) exists only as preëxisting matter, an unscient
portion of an intelligent whole. Both were originally formed from the
Eternal Ocean of Light; but as the Theosophists expressed it, there is a
visible as well as invisible spirit in fire. They made a difference between
the Anima Bruta and the Anima Divina.
TWO SOULS IN MAN
Empedocles firmly believed all men and animals to possess two souls; and in
Aristotle we find that he calls one the reasoning soul, Nous, and the other,
the animal soul, Psuche.
According to these philosophers, the reasoning soul comes from without the
Universal Soul (i.e., from a source higher than the Universal Soul--in its
cosmic sense; it is the Universal Spirit, the seventh principle of the
Universe in its totality), and the other from within.
This divine and superior region, in which they located the invisible and
supreme deity, was considered by them (by Aristotle himself, who was not an
initiate) as a fifth element--whereas it is the seventh in the Esoteric
Philosophy, or Mûlaprakriti--purely spiritual and divine, whereas the Anima
Mundi proper was considered as composed of a fine, igneous, and ethereal
nature spread throughout the Universe, in short--Ether. 30
The Stoics, the greatest materialists of ancient days, excepted the Divine
Principle and Divine Soul from any such a corporeal nature. Their modern
commentators and admirers, greedily seizing the opportunity, built on this
ground the supposition that the Stoics believed in neither God nor soul, the
essence of matter.
Most certainly Epicurus did not believe in God or soul as understood by
either ancient or modern theists. But Epicurus, whose doctrine (militating
directly against the agency of a Supreme Being and Gods, in the formation or
government of the world) placed him far above the Stoics in atheism and
materialism, nevertheless taught that the soul is of a fine, tender essence
formed from the smoothest, roundest, and finest atoms--which description
still brings us to the same sublimated ether. He further believed in the
Gods.
Arnobius, Tertullian, Irenæus, and Origen, notwithstanding their
Christianity, believed, with the more modern Spinoza and Hobbes, that the
soul was corporeal, though of a very fine nature--an anthropomorphic and
personal something, i.e., corporeal, finite and conditioned.
HARMONY & ETERNAL LIFE HEREAFTER
Can it under such conditions become immortal? Can the mutable become the
immutable?
This doctrine of the possibility of losing one's soul and, hence,
individuality, militates with the ideal theories and progressive ideas of
some spiritualists, though Swedenborg fully adopts it. They will never
accept the kabalistic doctrine which teaches that it is only through
observing the law of harmony that individual life hereafter can be obtained;
and that the farther the inner and outer man deviate from this fount of
harmony, whose source lies in our divine spirit, the more difficult it is to
regain the ground.
But while the spiritualists and other adherents of Christianity have little,
if any, perception of this fact of the possible death and obliteration of
the human personality by the separation of the immortal part from the
perishable, some Swedenborgians--those, at least, who follow the spirit of a
philosophy, not merely the dead letter of a teaching--fully comprehend it.
One of the most respected ministers of the New Church, the Rev. Chauncey
Giles, D. D., of New York, recently elucidated the subject in a public
discourse as follows. Physical death, or the death of the body, was a
provision of the divine economy for the benefit of man, a provision by means
of which he attained the higher ends of his being. But there is another
death which is the interruption of the divine order and the destruction of
every human element in man's nature, and every possibility of human
happiness. This is the spiritual death which takes place before the
dissolution of the body.
SELFISHNESS CAUSES “SPIRITUAL DEATH ”
"There may be a vast development of man's natural mind without that
development being accompanied by a particle of the divine love, or of
unselfish love of man."
When one falls into a love of self and love of the world, with its
pleasures, losing the divine love of God and of the neighbour, he falls from
life to death. The higher principles which constitute the essential elements
of his humanity perish, and he lives only on the natural plane of his
faculties. Physically he exists, spiritually he is dead. To all that
pertains to the higher and the only enduring phase of existence he is as
much dead as his body becomes dead to all the activities, delights, and
sensations of the world when the spirit has left it.
This spiritual death results from disobedience of the laws of spiritual
life, which is followed by the same penalty as the disobedience of the laws
of the natural life.
But the spiritually dead have still their delights; they have their
intellectual endowments, and power, and intense activities. All the animal
delights are theirs, and to multitudes of men and women these constitute the
highest ideal of human happiness. The tireless pursuit of riches, of the
amusements and entertainments of social life; the cultivation of graces of
manner, of taste in dress, of social preferment, of scientific distinction,
intoxicate and enrapture these dead-alive; but, the eloquent preacher
remarks, "these creatures, with all their graces, rich attire, and brilliant
accomplishments, are dead in the eye of the Lord and the angels, and when
measured by the only true and immutable standard have no more genuine life
than skeletons whose flesh has turned to dust."
Although we do not believe in "the Lord and the angels"--not, at any rate,
in the sense given to these terms by Swedenborg and his followers, we
nevertheless admire these feelings and fully agree with the reverend
gentleman's opinions.
Part IV to follow
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Dallas
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