Theos-Talk Archives (March 2010 Message tt00074)

H. P. Blavatsky wrote (posthumously):
"Schopenhauer only synthesized all this by calling it Will, and contradicted the men of Science in their materialistic views, as von Hartmann did later on. The author of the Philosophy of the Unconscious calls their views âan instinctual prejudice.â
Furthermore, he demonstrates that no experimenter can have anything"
....

"to do with matter properly termed, but only with the forces into which he divides it. The visible effects of matter are but the effects of force. He concludes thereby that that which is now called matter is nothing but the aggregation of atomic forces, to express which the word matter is used; outside of that, for science matter is but a word void of sense.* 

As much, it is to be feared, as those other terms with which we are now concerned, âSpace,â âNirvÃna,â and so on.

The bold theories and opinions expressed in Schopenhauerâs works differ widely from those of the majority of our orthodox scientists.â âIn reality,â remarks this daring speculator, âthere is neither matter nor spirit. . . . The tendency to gravitation in a stone is as unexplainable as thought in human brain.. If matter canâno one knows whyâfall to the ground, then it can alsoâno one knows whyâthink. . . . . . . . As soon, even in mechanics, as we trespass beyond the purely mathematical, as soon as we reach the inscrutable, adhesion, gravitation,. . . we are faced by phenomena which are to our senses as mysterious as the WILL and THOUGHT in manâwe find ourselves facing the incomprehensible, for such is every force in nature. Where is then that matter which you all pretend to know so well; and from whichâbeing so familiar with itâyou draw all your conclusions and explanations, and attribute to it all things? . . . That, which can be fully realized by our reason and senses, is but the superficial; they can never reach the true inner substance of things. Such was the opinion of Kant. If you consider that there is in a human head . . . some sort of a spiritâ then you are obliged to concede the same to a stone. If your dead and utterly passive matter can manifest a tendency toward gravitation, or, like electricity, attract and repel, and send out sparksâthen, as well as the brain, it can also think. In short, every particle of the so-called spirit, we can replace with an equivalent of matter, and every particle of matter replace with spirit. . . . Thus, it is not the Cartesian division of all things into matter and spirit that can ever be found philosophically exact; but only if we divide them into will and manifestation, which form of division has naught to do with the former, for it spiritualizes everything: all that, which is in the first instance real and objectiveâbody and matterâit transforms into a representation, and every manifestation into will.ââ 

The matter of science may be for all objective purposes a

ââââââââââ
* Op. cit., I, 59.
â While they are to a great extent identical with those of Esoteric Buddhism, the Secret Doctrine of the East.
â Parerga and Paralipomena, II, pp. 89, 90. Berlin, 1851. Cf. Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 58.
ââââââââââ

hammer in the matter of Esoteric Philosophy. Nevertheless it is the duty of the Occultist to try and explain it. 
NirvÃna and Moksha, then, as said before, have their being in non-being, if such a paradox be permitted to illustrate the meaning the better. NirvÃna, as some illustrious Orientalists have attempted to prove, does mean the âblowing-outâ* of all sentient existence. It is like the flame of a candle burnt out to its last atom, and then suddenly extinguished. Quite so. Nevertheless, as the old Arhat NÃgasena affirmed before the king who taunted him: âNirvÃna isââand NirvÃna is eternal. But the Orientalists deny this, and say it is not so. In their opinion NirvÃna is not a re-absorption in the Universal Force, not eternal bliss and rest, but it means literally âthe blowing-out, the extinction, complete annihilation, and not absorption.â The LankÃvatÃra [section] quoted in support of their arguments by some Sanskritists, and which gives the different interpretations of NirvÃna by the TÃrthika-BrÃhmans, is no authority to one who goes to primeval sources for information, namely, to the Buddha who taught the doctrine.â As well quote the ChÃrvÃka Materialists in their support. 
If we bring as an argument the sacred Jaina books, wherein the dying Gautama Buddha is thus addressed: âArise into Nirvi [NirvÃna] from this decrepit body into which thou hast been sent. . . . Ascend into thy former abode, O blessed AvatÃraâ; and if we add that this seems to us the very opposite of nihilism, we may be told that so far it may only prove a contradiction, one more discrepancy in the Buddhist faith. If again we remind the reader that".......

http://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/articles/v14/mb_006.htm


M. Sufilight

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