Theos-Talk Archives (August 2007 Message tt00058)

Hi Pablo,


I am not of that kind who cannot oversee my weaknesses in life at all.
About Alcohol, only damage can happen in the un natural alcohol.
In ancient times it was in the air also, but through car gaz and other
negative output it has been lost.I studied pharmacy, healthcare
allopatic as well as natural alterntive.In time with this study till
now I study the total anatomics of the human body and with that the
theosophical findings.That is why I think Leon Maurer have the point
of all.Also HPB gave that things science long forwards.For the time
now they see the righ in her quantumphysics etc.



Alcohol the un natural kind CAN damage the brain and within the brain
other hormons also have their work stagnated.
But Pinealgland, epifyse cannot be destroyed for it is the aspect of
Buddhi and if infinite quality.

And for sure I don't want anyone do the work for me, only if he wants
to do the household, hahah!

We need to keep in mind, that everyone can bring us to more insight
and knowledge.


Only with the story and experience him or herself.
And if he think he had to refer to HPB or whatever normally give place
from where he have that.

Now after hard discussion you give the place to be find something
about that.
And I must say I have only collected writing on CD and not in the
bookshelf, for that I need too much space to bring a lot of thick books.

With friendly greetings Christina.



Here I copied the text Annie Besant have published.:

Annie Besant wrote about alcoholuse and misuse in :Adyar Pamphlets -
No.138
The Influence of Alcohol

by
Annie Besant

Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India

First Edition 1892, Second 1912, Third 1930

Publisher's Note

Some requests have been received to provide the T.S. Order of Service
workers with a suitable pamphlet in the cause of Temperance and so a
second edition was issued. It was originally a lecture delivered in
the Livesey Central Temperance Hall, London, on 7th February, 1892,
under the presidency of Mr. George Ling of the Temperance movement.


[Page 1] FRIENDS, when I was asked to speak from the platform of your
Hall ? when I was told that your association took the broadest lines
in not compelling or trying to compel the assent of any one to views
on subjects outside that which you are united to support ? when I
learnt that you were thus liberal in your views, I was ready and glad
to take the opportunity of adding my voice to the many voices that are
heard all over the country protesting against the use of alcohol, and
against the influence exerted by that use, not only on the bodies, but
also on the minds of those who take it. My own position in the matter
is very likely founded upon principles that may not be identical with
those held by many of you; but then I am not sure that it may not be
at once useful and interesting to hear the way in which the question
presents itself to one whose views of the universe at large may be
different from the views of many present. I am not going to proceed
this morning on the lines of argument that will be most familiar to
you. I am not going to deal with the drink-question in its bearings on
the subject of poverty. I am not [Page 2] going to discuss drinking in
relation to the misery it spreads throughout the country, or the crime
of which it is the source. I am not going today to point you specially
to the misery of the drunkard's home, or contrast in appearance, in
health and in mental endowment, the children of the drunkard and the
children of the abstainer: all those are useful aspects of the
subject; are arguments that everyone of you may well have at your
fingers' ends when you are trying to combat this great enemy of our
race ? strong drink, ? but the lines which I am going to follow may
possibly suggest to some of you fresh arguments with which to
supplement the others; and even those of you who may disagree with the
foundation on which they are based, may yet find in the arguments
themselves useful reinforcement for your general line of thought. And
now so far as I am concerned, I am a Teetotaler because I am a
Theosophist; that is to say, it is part of the working out of the
Theosophical view of the nature, the constitution, and the destiny of
man. The views I hold with regard to man's nature, the views I hold of
the relationship of one man to another, joined, as I believe them to
be, by a bond of brotherhood that nothing can avail to break ? the
influence that is, which one man has upon another ? it is these views
which have led me to become an abstainer. Then the view of the body as
the mere tabernacle in which dwells the Intelligence that is the real
man; such I say, are the [Page 3] views, roughly, that lead me to the
standpoint of teetotalism in practical life; and it is these views
that I am going to put to you as possibly affording argument that may
be to some extent unfamiliar, but which will work into other arguments
more familiar to you, and so strengthen your own position as against
those who advocate the use of alcohol ? those who say it is an article
of diet, nourishing and so on, and that it is useful to be taken. You
may then show them that it is not useful but mischievous; not of the
nature of a help but of a hindrance, and that what is wanted is the
absolute cessation of the drink-habit; not merely what is called
temperate or moderate drinking, and so on. I hold that alcohol itself
is essentially a destructive, mischievous agency, and therefore its
use ought to be entirely opposed, entirely renounced, as of no benefit
in the economy of the human body. That is the position I am going to
take up.

And now, first, as regards the body. We look on the body, of course,
from our standpoint, as an instrument of the spiritual Intelligence
which we regard as the man himself; that is, looking at ourselves, we
regard the body as the coating, the garment, the instrument, used for
work in the physical world, so that the efficacy of the work will very
largely depend upon the integrity of the instrument. Just as no
workman could perform a good piece of work if he were using, say a
blunt [Page 4] chisel, a twisted screwdriver, or a hammer whose head
fell off the moment he struck a blow with it; so cannot the real man,
the inner man, the true man, do effective work on the physical plane,
if the instrument whereby that work is to be performed is injured,
spoilt, blunted, or stunted by any habit which injures physical life.
With regard to the body, we study it, in its formation, in its living
functions, and in its influence over the whole of the men and women ?
the whole of the animal, plant, and mineral world around us. We allege
that man, as regards his body, is part and parcel of the world around
him ? that between the man's body and the bodies of all other men (I
use the word, of course, to include women also) and things, having
physical shape and form, there is a constant interaction going on ?
that all these are built up of what the scientist speaks of as atoms,
and molecules, and that when you come to consider these atoms and
molecules you will get to understand what they are. Studying them as
we do from a double point of view, we say that an atom, like the man
of whom it forms a part, is a complex and not a simple thing, that it
is essentially a living thing ? that your bodies are built up of
innumerable lives ? that all these atoms that go to make up the
physical body are living things ? lives in themselves, and that,
according to their health or lack of health, will be the general
health, or general lack of health, of the body which they gradually
build up. It is an old Theosophical [Page 5] teaching, that all the
world is made up of these lives; that the mineral, the vegetable, the
animal, and the man differ not in the material of which the body is
composed, but in the way in which that material is organized; that you
have these atoms at one time in the mineral, at another in the
vegetable, and at another in the human body, and that it is the
difference of their arrangement, and of the way in which they are held
together which makes the total organism take on one or another form of
living thing. Now western science very much agrees with us in its
investigations on this point. Those of you who have followed the
investigations of our most eminent physicians will notice how, more
and more, during the last few years, they have been studying what are
called bacteria and microbes; those minute bodies, those tiny things
that are only seen by aid of the strongest microscope ? these, we have
been lately told by physicians, are at the very root of all the
diseases in men, so that when people come across a disease, the doctor
goes to look for the microbe that causes it, and whether it is
cholera, hydrophobia, influenza, or cancer, we are always being told
that our advanced scientists are searching for the microbe which is
the root of the mischief; because, if they can find what is acting in
this destructive fashion in the human body, then they will be able to
deal with its ravages better. They have gone a step further. They have
found out that very often a fight goes on in our [Page 6] bodies
between the microbes that are constructive and those that are
destructive, so that if you get into your blood a destructive kind of
microbe that would poison you, and gradually kill you as it
multiplies, that may be met and stopped by starting against them an
army of constructive microbes who build up where the others try to
destroy, and who conquer this power for mischief by their stronger
power for good. So that gradually science is making us look at our
bodies as a kind of battlefield, in which all these lower lives are
fighting, the one against the other, and always coming and going; so
that our entire body is really a kind of country, into which come
immigrants from other countries, and out of which go emigrants to
other countries, and on the character of the immigrants will largely
depend our condition; and if from other countries and neighbouring
countries, there are all sorts of bad immigrants coming in ?
immigrants who are pauperized, drunken, and laden with every form of
mischief, ? then they will poison the population of our own country,
and spread in that healthy population the diseases which they bring
with them from other lands. Now this, which almost sounds like a
fairy-tale, is really a scientific fact. There is no better fairy-tale
teller than science ? science which observes and coordinates facts,
and gives out its result to the world. The Theosophists, studying this
view of the body, find that it works in with their own view.[Page 7]

It is exactly the teaching which, for thousands of years, has formed
part of their own philosophy; so that our body is made up of these
millions upon millions of tiny lives which are always coming and
going, always changing from one position to another, and there is not
a moment in your life or in mine, in which we are not sending out
swarms of these lives into the atmosphere around us, and receiving
from it in return other swarms of lives. Science again will tell you
that your physical body changes in every single atom in seven years ?
that every morsel of your body during that period goes away and is
supplied by other morsels in exchange. This is done of course in such
minute particles that the change is invisible to the eye, but the
invisible world is none the less real ? in fact, really and truly, the
invisible world is by far the most important, for the invisible world
is the world of causes, while the visible world is the world of
effects, and it is in this invisible world that the causes which tend
to make us what we are, largely exist. Now for a moment use your
imagination in the way that Tyndall suggested, when he spoke of the
scientific use of the imagination. Think of your body for a moment,
and see it made up of all these innumerable lives. See them (with the
eye of the mind) leaving you after they have resided in your body for
a time and formed part of it. See others coming in to take their
place, as those that have been in your body for a time pass [Page 8]
away. Now notice a curious physical fact. Supposing you have had a bad
wound that has healed. It leaves what is known as a scar. That scar
may remain with you all your life although the wound may have healed
perhaps before you remember. As a baby, in trying to stand in my
cradle before I had any business to be on my feet, I received a wound
on my forehead from the ornamental iron at the top of it, arranged so
as to make a kind of canopy. Now that scar has remained with me from
that time to the present, and will go with me to my grave. That scar
remains though the body that has it has changed so many times ? each
seven years I have lived since the injury was caused. The scar
remains, so that the new atoms that come into the body take the print
of the older atoms amongst which they come, and just as those atoms I
have received from the world around me take the imprint of my body as
shown in the scar, so do the atoms I send out with them carry the
imprint that has been put upon them during their stay in my body, and
carry with them my imprint so to speak, to the other lives, the living
things which may go to help to build up other bodies in the future. So
that, to use another simile, the human body is like a mint that makes
coin ? bullion comes in, and goes out as coin stamped with the mark of
the mint. Our bodies are mint-stamping every atom that goes out of
them with the print and mark we put upon it, to carry [Page 9] that
mark with it, and so to leave our imprint on other organisms into
which they may go. Suppose that these atoms are always poisoned with
alcohol!

Alcohol happens to be a substance which peculiarly takes up the
magnetism of those who come into contact with it. I may speak of it in
the chemical sense as a certain definite chemical compound made up of
certain chemical atoms held together in a particular way. You may have
a variety of forms depending on the number of the atoms that go to
make them up, but, whatever the numbers, they always bear the same
proportion to each other. The alcohol-radical is made up of two
elements ? carbon and hydrogen ? perfectly harmless in themselves,
perfectly respectable members of the chemical family. They only become
disreputable in their combination into a particular form, and when you
get a particular combination of them and add to them part of the
molecule of water, you then get what you speak of as spirit, which is
of course largely diluted before ordinarily taken, but the mischievous
part of this diluted drink is the particular combination of chemical
atoms and the proportion they bear to each other, known to the chemist
as the alcohol-radical. Whether you get it in methylated spirit, in
your beer, wine, etc., whether you get it in still more fiery forms
like the potato spirit ? which is largely used in the manufacture of
the cheaper form of spirits, and is even more destructive and [Page
10] energetic than that which is ordinarily used ? however you get it,
it is always essentially marked by the same characteristics, and those
characteristics cannot be separated from it. They are the direct
result of this particular combination of the chemical elements. When
taken into the body the alcohol carries with it the magnetism of the
different persons who have been mixed up in its preparation. As a
rule, persons who are concerned in the making of these drinks are not
the most thoughtful, refined, or cultured of human beings. As a rule
they show the influence of that in which they are continually working,
and get a certain physical stamp upon them that enables you to
recognize them as persons who are normally connected with this
particular form of industry. I am not saying anything which is
exaggerated ? every one of you must know it, from your own
observation. Anyone of you could pick out a brewer's man from a whole
parcel of teetotalers. The physical body is changed by that with which
it is continually working. Then again, in order to show in an
exaggerated form what I am putting to you, take the habitual drunkard.
Do you mean to say he cannot be recognized at once by certain physical
marks, by the injury he does to his tissues, recognized always by the
impregnation of the whole body, by the odour of the liquids he drinks
? and this is so much the case that any one present who has the habit
of absolute teetotalism will know [Page 11] that he has become very
sensitive to the whole of those emanations that come from the body
penetrated with alcohol. You know it the very moment you come near
such a person. If a person who drinks comes into an omnibus with you,
you are acquainted with the fact at once. I know it myself, although I
have not been a teetotaler all my life. For a great portion of my life
I drank the light French wines which have very little alcohol in them,
2, 3, 4, and up to 8 per cent, so that the amount of alcohol there is
comparatively slight; but still, taking any at all makes a difference,
and I have noticed that difference since I have been now for some
years past an abstainer. I have noticed that one very unpleasant
result of teetotalism is the greater sensitiveness that it gives with
regard to everybody else who drinks. I say unpleasant, because the
majority do drink, and in every way you lay yourself open to this
extremely uncomfortable result, as you cannot avoid going about
amongst people who habitually take some amount of spirituous liquor.
Even moderate drinking is perceptible to those whose senses have
become very sensitive by long and complete abstention. On Tuesday
last, I was lecturing in South Wales, and had to travel back to a
certain point at which I wished to catch a connecting train. A
football match had been played in the place where I was lecturing, and
the players were returning to Cardiff in the train by which I
traveled. [Page 12] Unfortunately, almost everyone of them had drunk
heavily, and some of them were absolutely intoxicated. The result was,
that it made me positively sick to be near them, although you may be
sure, I kept as far from them as I could. The strong emanations,
physical emanations, that came from the bodies of those people who had
been in the habit of drinking, and still continued it, were simply
sickening, so that I am speaking not the language of exaggeration, but
of physical fact.

It is a literal fact that from everyone of our bodies emanations go
out. They fall upon the bodies around them, upon human beings, plants,
and minerals, and thus is continuing this constant interaction between
all things amongst which we live, so as to make a link between you,
and every body, and everything else, and constituting the drink habit
not only a curse to the people who drink, but to the community and the
nation. It has been said that the drunkard is no man's enemy but his
own. That is not true. Apart from the obvious fact that the wife and
children suffer, and that the example is demoralizing, the drunkard is
a focus of poison to the community in which he is a physical being. I
am not yet speaking of the mental and moral mischief, but of physical
results, and men who put alcohol into their bodies make the alcohol
mark on the atoms of which those bodies are composed. They scatter
those atoms, stamped with alcohol, over the whole of the community,
[Page 13] and sober people get these atoms into their bodies and
suffer in that fashion from the drunken habits of their neighbours. So
that it is not a mere self-regarding matter. Nothing is self-regarding
really, because we cannot help being linked to each other, but
drunkenness is most other-regarding, and a man has no more right to
drink, and to scatter these poisoned atoms through the community, than
he has a right, if he has small-pox, to go into an omnibus or cab and
leave there the poison of smallpox to be absorbed by the next person
who occupies the seat he has quitted. You will see now why I said at
the beginning that although I am speaking from a different standpoint
from that to which you are accustomed, some of the arguments I employ
may be used by you when dealing with drunkenness. You can enforce them
by the whole of the later observations of western science with regard
to the effect of these tiny atoms on our bodies, if you do not care to
take the stronger view I do, that every atom is a life, an organized
life, with power to affect everything with which it comes into
contact, and when it is a poisoned life, a germ in full activity that
may breed further disease in the body with which it comes into
contact. This, of course, has to be remembered on the other side. Let
us suppose a person with small-pox, or any kind of infectious disease,
to scatter about the poison germs. It does not follow that everybody
on whom those germs fall will get the disease, because you [Page 14]
not only want the germ, but you want the soil in which that germ can
germinate and fructify. So far, then, we can guard ourselves against
being the unwilling hosts of these poison germs. We cannot help them
coming, but we can make the soil so un-fructifying that they will
starve for want of nourishment. We can do that by making the soil of
the body thoroughly healthy; by taking care that we never poison an
atom when once it comes into our body; by taking care that we purify
the body by always keeping the poison away as much as possible, and so
in that fashion ? to use a technical term ? to sterilize the soil on
which otherwise the germ would grow.

To illustrate: The scientific man takes a germ, and puts it into the
mother liquid, as it is sometimes called. In that it grows and
multiplies; so that you may find some instances in which scientific
men have captured a germ or microbe and put it into a bottle filled
with liquid which contains all the nourishment that particular microbe
wants for its rapid development. The microbe begins to grow, and there
are many cases in which microscopical microbe, over-fed, has developed
until it has become visible to the naked eye in its full power of
mischief, forced into a development truly abnormal. On the other hand
it has been put into a liquid which is sterilizing, that is, it has
not got the particular form of nourishment it is able to assimilate,
and so it grows weaker and weaker until the [Page 15] power for
mischief has grown very small. That is only showing you, like a
picture, what may happen in the bodies of men. The body of man may be
like the mother liquid of the scientist, giving all the materials in
which the alcohol microbes, so to speak, may flourish. Thus, when an
atom poisoned with alcohol comes to you from some drunken neighbour,
and it finds in your body a host convenient for itself, it will grow
and multiply in the soil you provide, and will intensify your own
predisposition towards the alcoholic disease, by bringing fresh
materials to the soil in which that material may increase and grow. In
that way drunkards injure each other, and the very atmosphere of the
public-house tends to feed the drunkenness of the people. On the other
hand, if a body be pure, if it does not give the same tendency, the
same nourishment that suits the development of this atom impregnated
with alcohol, then gradually that atom, if it has no nourishment, will
be starved, will slowly change its character, and take on the
healthier condition of those other atoms amidst which it finds itself.
Hence you can guard yourself against this poison by keeping your own
body pure from all alcohol. You may indeed have one that is almost
proof against such mischief.

You will readily see from this how difficult it is to break the
alcohol habit ? how terrible is the struggle when the victim first
begins to fight against it ? how he will go without drink sometimes
[Page 16] for weeks and months, and then suddenly, as by an imperious
physical necessity, break out. That is a war, a literal war, that is
going on in the bodies of drunkards, and these atoms that by years of
drunkenness have been fed and nourished, cannot be suddenly got rid
of, and cannot at once be destroyed.

You will see, then, why it is that, as a Theosophist, I am in favour
of absolute abstention; how I look on alcohol not as a food, not as a
useful stimulant, but as an absolute poison. The danger of what is
called moderate drinking lies in this nourishing of the alcohol germ,
which may very easily develop, and so if the person come into
unfortunate conditions, his moderation may pass into excess, and the
ordinary sober man may become a drunkard by this poisoning received
from the life around him. Surely also this will show the enormous
importance of abstention, to the parents of families. The life of the
child, so far as the physical body is concerned, is very largely
influenced by the life given physically by the parents. How can a
child be born with a body physically healthy, if that body be built up
of atoms that are physically poisoned ? The father and mother give the
germs of physical life and the materials of which the physical body is
composed. If these are drink-poisoned, the child comes into the world
with the drink tendency physically implanted in the body that the
parents have given [Page 17] it. Surely that is a responsibility that
no man or woman should dare to take. They have no right to create a
physical body which is poisoned in this fashion, before it has a
chance for itself in the outer world. They have no right to hand on to
a child a body which, by its physical constitution, is already
impregnated with the alcoholic tendency. People say to men: " Oh, you
should drink to keep your strength up. You should take porter and
beer, in order that you may be strong." They might as well say: " You
should take poison in order that you may live." All these things not
only poison the mother but the child, because the materials are
poisoned, and on this point, if you will pardon me a moment's
digression, men are very largely to blame. I know a great deal, as you
are aware, of life in the East end. My work has been specially amongst
women, and one of my greatest difficulties is when these girls of 16,
17, and 18 get engaged. There is no earthly objection to that, for it
is natural and right; but the young man, as a rule, likes the girl to
drink with him. If she won't go and take a glass, he says she is bad
tempered, or sulky, or stuck-up. I have said to the girls over and
over again : " I do not believe you care for the drink." (Here let me
say we do not allow any alcoholic drink at all in the Club we have,
and I find the girls enjoy the coffee and tea thoroughly.) They say: "
We do not care for it, but Tom or Will, does not like it, if we won't
take a sup with him."[Page 18]

Now if a man who is engaged to a girl practically forces her, either
by chaff or jeering, or in any other way, into occasionally taking a
glass, he has no right to blame the wife when she keeps up the habit.
I have never yet found the man who liked his wife to drink. And yet
they all want the sweetheart to drink ! Well, you cannot cut people up
in that way. If you start them before marriage they will go on
afterwards, and no man has a right to complain of a drunken wife, when
he has jeered at the girl's first refusal to take any drink at all. So
that after all, this is a question not only that concerns the woman
who drinks, but that concerns other men and women; and there are none
of those divisions that people are so fond of making. All questions
really interest men and women alike in their issues, and this
drink-curse is a thing they must fight together hand in hand, here as
elsewhere, trying to make the world better by the influence they exert
over those with whom they live.

 

There is another standpoint from which I am also strongly an
abstainer. This again is Theosophical in its origin, and I do not know
that you will be inclined to follow me even so far probably as you
have agreed with my former argument ? with the principle of it, at
least. I said at the beginning that we regard man, not as a body but
as one who uses a body. The body is the house while the man is the
tenant, and we allege that the man passes from body to body, and that
he makes in [Page 19] each human life practically the house he is
going to inhabit in the next. So that during one life he builds up his
next habitation, and by the intellectual and spiritual activity of one
human existence he modifies the physical conditions of his next
experience in human life. That of course is what is called the
doctrine of reincarnation. It is one that many thoughtful people
accept as throwing an extraordinary light on many of the problems of
human life. Let me show you how it bears on this drink question. We
say that the power in you that really makes you human, is THOUGHT;
that that is the power that moulds action and life; that a man is what
he thinks much more than what he does ? that what he does very largely
depends upon the circumstances about him, but that what he thinks
governs his reaction on those circumstances. For instance, supposing a
man is not honest in his thought ? that is, suppose he is ready to
take an undue advantage, if he can do it without discovery, suppose he
is not thoroughly upright in his inner nature ? whether that man is
outwardly a thief or not depends very largely on circumstances. If he
gets the chance he will be a thief, because in his thought he is a
thief; and as a matter of dry fact, there is many a man who commits a
theft who is not nearly as much a thief as others who go down to their
graves and have the epitaphs of honest men. Now what the man thinks is
what he is. [Page 20] Some of you may hold special religious views,
but there is not one great religious teacher in the world who has not
laid stress on the thought far more than on the action of man ? the
thought of the man is the most important, for it governs the action.
As a man thinks, so he acts. Now on that foundation, and based on a
large number of experiments with which I cannot trouble you this
morning, the Theosophist has come to the absolute knowledge of the
fact that, as you think, you are continually creating forms of
ethereal matter not visible to ordinary eyesight, but visible under
certain peculiar conditions, even of the nervous system. Take a man
who is suffering from delirium tremens. It is not a fancy that he
sees. That man is in a real world, although not in the objective world
you are most acquainted with. He sees certain things by a certain
faculty which is asleep in the ordinary man, but which can be
stimulated into abnormal power under certain conditions, for good or
evil. One of those conditions is the continuous drink habit, which has
this peculiar physiological result, that it brings into activity this
ordinarily latent sense of sight, and under those conditions he sees
thought-forms of a very low and horrible character, but still
thought-forms. You may have noticed the very peculiar fact that the
type of things seen in delirium tremens is the same, whoever the
person may be. The kind of thing the patient sees is of the same sort.
These things are real, [Page 21] in a particular form of existence
which is veiled from you in the ordinary body, and with which you only
come into contact under these very abnormal conditions. Now your mind
is always making forms in this ethereal matter, perhaps the matter
spoken of as a possibility by Professor Clifford. Various experiments
have been tried to prove that this really does exist, and that every
time you think you are producing in the mental world a form that is
the image of your thinking. If you look closely into hypnotism you
will soon get the idea. The patient sees a thought-form, and is able
to describe it, although no word is spoken, and no contact between the
thinker and seer takes place. Sometimes you get it in what is called
the medium, who is able to see a thought-form, and speaks of it
generally as a spirit-form, but it is only a form of very subtle
matter. Now these thought-forms we say persist, and the true, the real
man, has the character which is made up of them. They go to mould even
the outer body. Notice the difference between men whose lives have
been noble or base in the outer world, when the man comes to be old.
You can tell the one from the other. The beauty of the noble old man
or old woman is not a beauty of feature ? it is a beauty of general
expression and appearance. It is the inner character, shining out
through the mask or veil of the body. That is what persists ? that
inner form which the true man makes for himself, and it is that
ethereal [Page 22] form that very largely models the physical form of
the next incarnation. This means that in your life you are making your
own future tendencies, and that when you come back to a new life's
lesson, you will be marked with the tendencies that you have been
making in your present life, so that those tendencies will form what
is called the innate character. Children are not born like sheets of
blank paper, but with strongly marked characteristics, sometimes
vicious, and sometimes virtuous. Now, every man gets vicious or
virtuous tendencies somehow. There are three alleged ways in which
they can get them. There is one way that the purely physical
scientists will tell you of, that man gets them by physical heredity.
If that be so, it is a very sad truth, because it means that a child
may be born into the world doomed by the actions of other people to
vicious characteristics and tendencies, against which he will have to
fight. Others say that it comes by virtue of the gift of an
over-ruling Providence, who gives the soul or spirit to the child with
all its tendencies, and so you come to a terrible injustice, if it is
true that men are thus handicapped by an outside power at the start;
but if neither of these views be correct; if the real view be, that
you and I, by our own actions and thoughts in the past, have moulded
the character which in the present life we are using for helping or
hindering our development, then there is no more talk [Page 23] about
injustice. There is no longer injustice at the heart of things, as in
the other two ways of looking at it. We are responsible for our own
characteristics and that which we have made we must live through as
best we can. That is the view of human destiny which makes man master
of his own life. Bit by bit he builds up a noble character; by
continual carefulness and self-sacrificing love of others, he builds
up a character of sympathy, of strength, of willingness to help, and
of desire to improve. He is born into his next life-experience with
this character that he has built during a previous life, and so has
made himself a better instrument wherein he may progress yet further,
gaining new powers, new growth, fresh progress for himself and for
others. That is our Theosophical view of life ? evolution, continually
progressing, our bodies moulded by this inner life, and made a better
and better expression of all its capacities in life after life, the
body reacting under this influence and changing for higher and higher
possibilities, until, millennium after millennium, the human race is
built better and better, for a dwelling beyond that which it now
occupies. And so you trace upwards as you trace individuals, and you
have in this system of evolution, the reason for the progress of man.

 

You can understand then, how, with such a theory of life, we should be
strongly against drinking habits everywhere, for it is as though [Page
24] in building a house you deliberately took bad materials and
poisoned substances to build into your walls, so that when you came to
dwell in the house its very walls should be poison-giving instead of
health-giving. That is the other side of the question ? the re-action
on the inner man of the dwelling he fashions for himself.

 

Whether you take my first line of argument ? the body built of these
atoms that we impregnate or stamp; or whether you regard it as a
dwelling-place of this true man ? the inner self ? you will see why
the Theosophist is likely to be a teetotaler, and why he throws all
his influence against the cursing of man by drink.

 

That, then, friends, is why I am glad to come this morning, and
perhaps add some new weapons to the arsenal you are accustomed to use
against this enemy of man. I do not ask any one of you to accept the
peculiar side of my views without thought and investigation. I am not
putting it to you as a propagandist might desire, to convince you of
the truth of his views. I have only tried to lay before you a definite
reason why this position against the use of alcohol altogether should
be taken up by those to whom I myself personally belong; and without
accepting my theories as a whole, I think you may find some of the
arguments useful ? at any rate, in putting them before you, you will
judge them for yourselves, for you, I am sure, like [Page 25] myself,
will not form your opinions merely upon an hour's lecture, but upon
long and careful investigation. I have put before you views I honestly
hold, and ask none to accept them until their reason judges them to be
right. I ask none to take them, until their own intelligence endorses
them. I speak to you as one human being to another, believing that
these views are useful. I leave them to your judgment, but do not
desire to dominate any one. I do not wish to force them upon any, but
simply to express my views of man's nature, and in doing so, to give
you fresh reasons to justify the propaganda you are carrying on in
this matter. If we do not agree on all points, we are united on one.
We are agreed on this, that in the present hour we are all practical
creators, and to be a drunken creator is so ghastly a possibility
that, when once realized, I am sure it never will be faced








--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Pablo Sender" <pasender@...> wrote:
>
> Christina
> 
> Pablo: However, alcohol, strong emotions, etc., do damage them; those 
> things "crystallize" the pineal gland, according to HPB.
> 
> Christina: Pablo why you write such nonsense in the name of HPB?
> 
> Pablo: Do you want me to do all the work? You should investigate the 
> subject, if interested . . . 
> On the other hand, I wonder why are you reacting to that statement, 
> as to call it "such nonsense in the name of HPB". Is it a nonsense? 
> Some people react to it because they want to justify the use of 
> alcohol. I don't know if that is your case.
> Anyway, here is a quotation (there are more, you can find them):
> 
> "When molecular action is set up in the Pituitary Body these flashes 
> are seen, and further action gives psychic vision, as similar motion 
> in the Pineal Gland gives Spiritual Clairvoyance. Drunkenness and 
> fever cause disorderly motion in the Pituitary Body, and so produce 
> illusions of sight, visions, hallucinations. This body is sometimes 
> so affected by drunkenness that it is paralyzed, and the strict 
> forbiddance of alcoholic liquids to all students of Occultism turns 
> on this effect which alcohol produces on the Pituitary Body and 
> Pineal Gland." CW XII, p. 698
>