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(p. 197)
To the Editor of Light.
“sir, – As this is a question of extreme
importance, practically no less than philosophically, and we have been largely
referred to in the discussion of it in your columns, and our teaching impugned,
we shall be much obliged if you will allow us to supplement “C.C.M.’s” able exposition of the Theosophical doctrine
concerning it by some remarks tending to elucidate it yet more fully.
For the attainment of a sound conclusion upon any subject it is indispensable
that there be, first, sound premisses, and, secondly,
sound reasoning from these premisses. For, however
excellent in itself may be the superstructure constituted by the latter, it can
have no stability unless the former also be secure. It is the second only of
these conditions which has been fulfilled by the Hon. Roden
Noel. He has reasoned correctly from his premisses,
but those premisses are in themselves defective.
Hence, notwithstanding the knowledge and skill displayed in his superstructure,
it lacks that first condition of stability, a firm foundation.
The consequences of this characteristic of Mr. Noel’s treatment of the subject
are, even to his own position, disastrous in the extreme. Not only does he
deprive of their only possible explanation some of the principal and most
incontestable facts of spiritual cognition, but, even while seeking to uphold the current orthodox
presentments of the doctrines of the Trinity, the Logos, and Creation, he, in
denying the possibility of differentiation of the Ego, and ignoring the
differentiation of Substance, makes the Trinity, the Logos, and the Universe one
and all alike impossible!
This assumption – so fatal – of the indivisibility of the Ego has its rise in a
misconception of the nature of the Substance and the constitution of the entity
concerned. Mr. Noel not only treats as simple that which is complex, but, in
likening the
(p. 198)
astral envelope, or “Shell,” to a material
fabric, such as a coat, and arguing that the former is, when separated from its
central Ego, as devoid of consciousness as the latter, he compares things which
differ so essentially as to have between them no point of similitude, and which
are, therefore, incapable of comparison, namely, living, conscient Substance with lifeless, manufactured stuff.
The following account of the nature and constitution of the individual system
will render the Theosophical position clearly intelligible. Taking it for
granted that those of your readers who are sufficiently interested in the
question to follow this discussion have already made themselves familiar with The Perfect Way, we shall refrain from repeating what
we have there said respecting the fourfoldness
of the constitution of Existence, and come at once to the question of the nature
and mode of distribution of Consciousness.
Remembering that Spirit is Consciousness, and that, therefore, all
differentiations of Spirit – the material, the astral, and the psychic – are
modes of Consciousness, originally proceeding from and indefeasibly permeated by
Spirit, it becomes obvious that the consciousness of the Ego of any individual
system consists in the sum-total of the consciousnesses of all its individual
particles, and, though single, is the resultant of the innumerable minute
individual personalities which, bound harmoniously together, compose the system.
The consciousness of the Ego thus resulting depends, necessarily, both in
quantity and quality, upon the character and condition of the constituent
elements of its system. Consciousness, therefore, is not so much a Thing as a
Condition, as the following illustration will shew. Let
us imagine an incandescent globe, consisting of several concentric spheres or
zones, each zone of course containing all those which are nearer to the centre
than itself. Of this fiery ball the radiant point, or heart, occupies and
constitutes the innermost and central zone, and each successive zone constitutes
a circumferential halo more or less intense according to its proximity to, or remoteness from,
the radiant point. But each such zone is secondary and derived only, and is not
in itself a source of luminous radiation.
This illustration applies alike to Macrocosm and to Microcosm. In the human
kingdom the interior zone, which immediately contains the radiant point, the
Divine Spirit, and is Nucleus to its Nucleolus, is the Soul, Psyche. And by this
one indivisible
(p. 199)
effulgence the successive zones are illuminated
in unbroken continuity, but the source of this effulgence is not in them. As his
radiant point is the Divine spark, or spiritual Ego, so this effulgence is
Consciousness. And inasmuch as Spirit is Consciousness, and Consciousness is
manifold, and all things are modes and manifestations of it, the Ego, though
One, comprehends in its Unity many personalities. Were it not so, there
could be no Universe, no Man, but only one point of Light, spreading no rays – a
thing against reason and altogether impossible, since it is the very nature of
light to be radiant, that is, to emit itself.
Similarly, in the human system Consciousness emits Consciousness, and transmits
it first to the astral, and last to the material man; first, that is, to the Anima bruta, which, after death, constitutes the Phantom,
Ruach, or “Shell”; and, last, to the
physical body. But the more concentrated the Consciousness, the brighter and
more effulgent the central spark. And every part of man is conscious in its own
mode and degree, and capable of independent expression. Thus in the phenomenal
manifestations of Somnambulism, either the Anima bruta and the physical body exhibit
consciousness, while that of the soul is suspended; or the soul exhibits
consciousness, while that of the spheres exterior to it is suspended. And the
part which remains conscious (a thing dependent on the characters and desires of
the person or persons concerned in the manifestation) is capable of reflection,
of thought, of memory, even of intelligent invention, according to its kind and
its endowments. For in being diffusive, Consciousness is also divisible.
Now, if from our supposed incandescent globe we take away the central radiant
spark, the whole globe does not immediately become dark, but the effulgence
lingers in each zone according to its position in regard to the centre, the
outermost first becoming dark. So is it at the dissolution of the man. From his
outermost and lowest sphere, the physical body, the consciousness speedily
departs. In the shade, Nephesch, which is an emanation
from the dead body, as the “Astral” is from the living, – Mr. Noel seems to confound the shade with the Ruach – consciousness lingers a brief while. In the Ruach (Anima bruta, astral soul, or Shell) consciousness
lasts long, it may be for many centuries, according to the strength of the lower
will of the individual, manifesting the distinctive characteristics of his outer
personality. In the soul, the immediate receptacle of the Divine Spirit, the
consciousness is everlasting as the soul herself. And while
(p. 200)
the Ruach remains below in the astral sphere,
the soul,
Psyche, obeying the same universal law of
gravitation, detaches herself and mounts to the higher atmosphere suited to her,
there to undergo purification prior to her further evolution; unless, indeed,
she be wholly gross and devoid of aspiration, in which case she remains “bound”
in her astral envelope as in a prison.
For being an agglomeration of all the essences of the myriad consciousnesses
which compose the human system, the soul is as the apex of a flame – its upper,
purer, and intenser part – having for fuel the body,
and for the lower part the astral sphere. And from these it is separable as is a
flame from its fuel, or as one part of a flame from another part, yet leaving an
energetic flame behind it, and it is capable of transference to other affinities
as a flame is transferable from one mass of combustible material to another.
Meanwhile the Ruach, or astral Shell, on its detachment
from the soul, continues to operate in the same manner as before such
separation, just as does Mr. Noel’s hypothetical old coat after he has ceased to
wear it. For to everything belongs its proper behaviour.
The coat holds its parts and its warp and woof together; and maintains its colour, shape, consistency, and all other of its
characteristics, after he has parted with it. It was a coat when he wore it. It
is a coat still.
And so with a man’s astral Ego. In his lifetime its proper
function was to reason and think electrically (as distinguished from psychically).
It is not a coat; it is Substance having life. And when the soul puts it off, it
continues to be what it was; for it is of thought-nature, and it keeps its
nature as does the coat. And just as it would be a miracle were the coat, on
being discarded, to change its nature and become something else than a coat –
say, non-material; so it would be a miracle were the astral phantom, when the
soul separates from it, suddenly to change its nature and become something else
– say, non-substantial, and devoid of the characteristics it hitherto possessed.
Matter remains matter, and psychic substance remains psychic substance. Mr. Noel
would make differentiation in the substantial world impossible, a procedure of
which the consequences have already been indicated.
This, as we have remarked, is not only a philosophical but a practical question,
and we now come to the latter aspect of it. The phantoms of the dead resemble
mirrors having double surfaces. On one side they reflect the earth-sphere
(p. 201)
and its picture of the past; on the other they
receive influxes from those higher spheres which have received their higher Egos
– these consisting, as already described, of the most sublimated essences of the
lower. The interval, however, between the two is better described as of
condition than of place or time; for these belong to the physical and mundane,
and have no existence for the freed soul. This is because there is no Far or
Near in the Divine.
The
Ruach, however, has hopes which are not
without justification. It does not all die. The soul, on
attaining Nirvana, gathers up all that it has left within the astral of holy
memories and worthy experiences. To this end the Ruach rises in
the astral sphere by the gradual decay and loss of its more material affinities,
until these have so disintegrated and perished that its substance is thereby
lightened and purified. But continued commerce and intercourse with earth add,
as it were, fresh fuel to its earthly affinities, keeping these alive, and so
hinders its recall to its spiritual Ego. And thus, therefore, the spiritual Ego
itself is detained from perfect absorption into the Divine.
The
Ruach survives only insomuch as it is worthy of such
recall. The astral sphere which it inhabits is also its place of purgation. And
“Saturn,” who, as Time, is the “devourer of his own children,” even those who
being born only of Time have in them no Divine, enduring element, devours the
dross, and suffers only that which is ethereal to escape.
This “death” of the Ruach is gradual and natural. It is a
process of disintegration and elimination extending over periods greater or less
according to the character of the individual. Those which have belonged to evil
persons, having strong wills and disposed earthwards, persist longest and
manifest most frequently and vividly, because they rise not, but being destined
to extinction are not withdrawn from immediate contact with the earth. These are
all dross; there is in them no redeemable or redemptive element. The Ruach of the righteous, on the other hand,
complains if his evolution be disturbed. “Why callest
thou me?” he may be represented as saying. “Disturb me not. The memories of my
earth-life are chains about my neck. The desire of the past detains me. Suffer
me to rise towards my rest, and hinder me not with evocations. But let thy love
go after me and encompass me. Rise
thou with me through sphere after sphere.”
Thus even though, as often happens, the Ruach of a righteous man remains near one
who, being also righteous, has loved him,
(p. 202)
it is still after the true soul of his dead that
the love of the living friend goes, and not after his lower personality
represented in the Ruach. And it is the strength and divinity
of this love which helps the purgation of
the astral soul, being to it an indication of the way it ought to go, “a light
shining upon the upward path” which leads from the astral to the celestial and
everlasting.
A knowledge of the physical is an indispensable aid to the
comprehension of the metaphysical. The chemist is well aware that a great number
of substances which to ordinary observation appear indubitably simple, both in
their nature and in their operation, are in reality complex and divisible. Thus
water, once universally regarded as an element, is now known by all to be a
complex substance composed of two elements united in invariable proportion, and
easily divisible into its factors. The same occurs with a number of chemical
bodies which, though behaving as simple in many combinations, yet are divisible
by analysis into several elementary substances. To all ordinary perception these
bodies appear simple entities, since they exhibit affinities as such, but when
the right test is applied, they dissolve and separate into their distinct
constituents.
Similarly with the human body. The material of the brain is
constituted of countless cells and connecting fibres,
and each cell has its own consciousness according to its kind and degree.
Nevertheless the resultant of all these concordant functions is one Perception
and one Consciousness. There is also a Consciousness of the nerves, another of
the blood, and another of the tissues. There is a consciousness of the eye,
another of the ear, and another of the touch. And so with
every bodily organ. And all these work continuously in the body, each
according to its kind and its order, yet the intellect of the man knows nothing
of it. And if one of these living organs be interrogated, it answers after its
own kind.
If, then, man comprises in his own physical body so many diverse parts which he
can neither direct nor discern, why should it appear strange that his ethereal
Self should be similarly multiple? The Anima bruta is as an organ of the Spiritual Man,
and though it be a part of him, its acts, its functions, and its consciousness
are not identical with those of the Anima Divina. Consciousness is divisible, and diffusible, in man as in God, in the
planet as in the universe. And One Law is throughout all, for “He who worketh is One.”
THE WRITERS OF “THE
January 1883.
FOOTNOTES
(197:1) Letter written by Anna Kingsford and
Edward Maitland, and published in Light, 1883, p. 63. (See
Life of A.K., Vol. II, pp. 107-109). – S.H.H.
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