Theosophy - Kosmic Mind by Blavatsky
Adyar
Pamphlet - No 116 - printed August 1920
KOSMIC MIND
H. P. Blavatsky
reprinted from "The Theosophist" Volume
XI, May 1890
Whatsoever quits the Laya (homogeneous) state, becomes
active conscious life. Individual consciousness emanates
from, and returns into Absolute consciousness, which
is eternal MOTION.
ESOTERIC AXIOMS
Whatever that be which thinks, which understands,
which wills, which acts, it is something celestial
and divine, and upon that account must necessarily be eternal.
CICERO
EDISON'S conception of matter
was quoted in our March editorial article. The great American electrician is reported
by Mr. G. Parsons Lathrop in Harper's Magazine as giving out his personal
belief about the atoms being "possessed by a certain amount of intelligence,"
and shown indulging in other reveries of this kind. For this flight of fancy the
February Review of Reviews takes the inventor of the phonograph to task
and critically remarks that "Edison is much given to dreaming," his
"scientific imagination" being constantly at work.
Would to goodness the men of science exercised their "scientific
imagination" a little more and their dogmatic and cold negations a little
less. Dreams differ. In that strange state of being which, as Byron has it,
puts us in a position "with seal'd eyes to see," one often perceives
more real facts than when awake. Imagination is, again, one of the strongest
elements in human nature, or in the words of Dugald Stewart it
"is the great spring of human activity, and the principal source of
human improvement. . . . Destroy the faculty, and the condition of men will
become as stationary as that of the brutes.
" It is the best guide of our blind senses, without which the latter could
never lead us beyond matter and its illusions. The greatest discoveries of modern
science are due to the imaginative faculty of the discoverers. But when has
anything new been postulated, when a theory clashing with and contradicting
a comfortably settled predecessor put forth, without orthodox science first
sitting on it, and trying to crush it out of existence? Harvey was also regarded
at first as a "dreamer and a madman to boot. Finally, the whole of modem
science is formed of "working hypotheses," the fruits of "scientific
imagination" as Mr. Tyndall felicitously called it.
Is it then, because consciousness in every universal atom and the possibility
of a complete control over the cells and atoms of his body by man, have not
been honored so far with the imprimatur of the Popes of exact science,
that the idea is to be dismissed as a dream? Occultism gives the same teaching.
Occultism tells us that every atom, like the monad of Leibnitz, is a little
universe in itself; and that every organ and cell in the human body is endowed
with a brain of its own, with memory, therefore, experience and discriminative
powers. The idea of Universal Life composed of individual atomic lives is one
of the oldest teachings of esoteric philosophy, and the very modern hypothesis
of modern science, that of crystalline life, is the first ray from the
ancient luminary of knowledge that has reached our scholars. If plants can be
shown to have nerves and sensations and instinct (but another word for consciousness),
why not allow the same in the cells of the human body? Science divides matter
into organic and inorganic bodies, only because it rejects the idea of absolute
life and a life-principle as an entity: otherwise it would be the first
to see that absolute life cannot produce even a geometrical point, or
an atom inorganic in its essence. But Occultism, you see, "teaches mysteries"
they say; and mystery is the negation of common sense, just as again
metaphysics is but a kind of poetry, according to Mr. Tyndall. There is no such
thing for science as mystery; and therefore, as a Life Principle is, and must
remain for the intellects of our civilized races for ever a mystery on physical
lines--they who deal in this question have to be of necessity either fools
or knaves.
Dixit. Nevertheless, we may repeat with a French
preacher: "mystery is the fatality of science.
" Official science is surrounded on every side and hedged in by unapproachable,
for ever impenetrable mysteries. And why? Simply because physical science is
self-doomed to a squirrel-like progress around a wheel of matter limited by
our five senses. And though it is as confessedly ignorant of the formation of
matter, as of the generation of a simple cell; though it is as powerless to
explain what is this, that, or the other, it will yet dogmatize and insist on
what life, matter and the rest are not. It comes to this: the words of Father
Felix addressed fifty years ago to the French academicians have nearly become
immortal as a truism.
"Gentlemen," he said, "you throw into our teeth the
reproach that we teach mysteries. But imagine whatever science you will; follow
the magnificent sweep of its deductions. . . . and when you arrive at its parent
source you come face to face with the unknown!"
Now to lay at rest once for all in the minds of Theosophists
this vexed question, we intend to prove that modern science, owing to physiology,
is itself on the eve of discovering that consciousness is universal--thus justifying
Edison's "dreams." But before we do this, we mean also to show that
though many a man of science is soaked through and through with such belief,
very few are brave enough to openly admit it, as the late Dr. Pirogoff of St.
Petersburg has done in his posthumous Memoirs. Indeed that great surgeon
and pathologist raised by their publication quite a howl of indignation among
his colleagues. How then? the public asked: He, Dr. Pirogoff, whom we regarded
as almost the embodiment of European learning, believing in the superstitions
of crazy alchemists? He, who in the words of a contemporary:--
was the very incarnation of exact science and
methods of thought; who had dissected hundreds and thousands of human organs,
making himself thus acquainted with all the mysteries of surgery and anatomy
as we are with our familiar furniture; the savant for whom physiology
had no secrets and who, above all men, was one to whom Voltaire might have ironically
asked whether he had not found the immortal soul between the bladder and the
blind gut,--that same Pirogoff is found after his death devoting whole chapters
in his literary Will to the scientific demonstration. . . . Novoye Vremya
of 1887.
--Of what? Why, of the existence in every organism of
a distinct "VITAL FORCE" independent of any physical or chemical process. Like
Liebig he accepted the derided and tabooed homogeneity of nature--a Life Principle--that
persecuted and hapless teleology, or the science of the final causes of things,
which is as philosophical as it is unscientific, if we have to
believe imperial and royal academies. His unpardonable sin in the eyes of dogmatic
modern science, however, was this: The great anatomist and surgeon, had the
"hardihood" to declare in his Memoirs, that:--
We have no cause to reject the possibility of
the existence of organisms endowed with such properties that would impart to
them -- the direct embodiment of the universal mind -- a perfection inaccessible
to our own (human) mind. . . . Because, we have no right to maintain that man
is the last expression of the divine creative thought. (Novove Vremya of 1887)
Such are the chief features of the heresy of one, who ranked
high among the men of exact science of his age. His Memoirs show plainly
that not only he believed in Universal Deity, divine Ideation, or the Hermetic
"Thought divine," as a Vital Principle, but taught all this, and tried
to demonstrate it scientifically. Thus he argues that Universal Mind needs no
physico-chemical, or mechanical brain as an organ of transmission. He even goes
so far as to admit it in these suggestive words:--
Our reason must accept in all necessity
an infinite and eternal Mind which rules and governs the ocean of life. . .
. Thought and creative ideation, in full agreement with the laws of unity
and causation, manifest themselves plainly enough in universal life without
the participation of brain-slush. . . . Directing the forces and elements
toward the formation of organisms, this organizing life-principle becomes
self-sentient, self-conscious, racial or individual. Substance, ruled
and directed by the life-principle, is organised according to a general
defined plan into certain types. . . .
He explains this belief by confessing that never, during
his long life so full of study, observation, and experiments, could he--
acquire the conviction, that our brain could be
the only organ of thought in the whole universe, that everything in this world,
save that organ, should be unconditioned and senseless, and that human
thought alone should impart to the universe a meaning and a reasonable harmony
in its integrity.
And he adds à propos of Moleschott's
materialism:--
Howsoever much fish and peas I may eat, never
shall I consent to give away my Ego into durance vile of a product casually
extracted by modern alchemy from the urine. If, in our conceptions of
the Universe it be our fate to fall into illusions, then my "illusion"
has, at least, the advantage of being very consoling. For it shows to me an
intelligent Universe and the activity of Forces working in it harmoniously and
intelligently; and that my "I" is not the product of chemical and
histological elements but an embodiment of a common universal Mind. The
latter, I sense and represent to myself as acting in free will and consciousness
in accordance with the same laws which are traced for the guidance of my own
mind, but only exempt from that restraint which trammels our human conscious
individuality.
For, as remarks elsewhere this great and philosophic man
of Science:--
The limitless and the eternal, is not only
a postulate of our mind and reason, but also a gigantic fact, in itself. What
would become of our ethical or moral principle were not the everlasting and
integral truth to serve it as a foundation!
The above selections translated verbatim from the
confessions of one who was during his long life a star of the first magnitude
in the fields of pathology and surgery, show him imbued and soaked through with
the philosophy of a reasoned and scientific mysticism. In reading the Memoirs
of that man of scientific fame, we feel proud of to find him accepting,
almost wholesale, the fundamental doctrines and beliefs of Theosophy; with such
an exceptionally scientific mind in the ranks of mystics, the idiotic grins,
the cheap satires and flings at our great Philosophy by some European and American
"Freethinkers," become almost a compliment. More than ever do they
appear to us like the frightened discordant cry of the night-owl hurrying to
hide in its dark ruins before the light of the morning Sun.
The progress of physiology itself, as we have just said,
is a sure warrant that the dawn of that day when a full recognition of a universally
diffused mind will be an accomplished fact, is not far off. It is only a
question of time.
For, notwithstanding the boast of physiology, that the
aim of its researches is only the summing up of every vital function in order
to bring them into a definite order by showing their mutual relations to, and
connection with the laws of physics and chemistry, hence, in their final form,
with mechanical laws--we fear there is a good deal of contradiction between
the confessed object and the speculations of some of the best of our modern
physiologists; while few of them would dare to return as openly as did Dr. Pirogoff
to the "exploded superstition" of vitalism and the severely
exiled life principle, the principium vitæ of Para celsus -- yet
physiology stands sorely perplexed in the face of its ablest representatives
before certain facts. Unfortunately for us, this age of ours is not conducive
to the development of moral courage. The time for most to act on the noble idea
of" principia non homines," has not yet come. And yet there
are exceptions to the general rule, and physiology--whose destiny it is to become
the hand-maiden of Occult truths--has not let the latter remain without their
witnesses. There are those who are already stoutly protesting against certain
hitherto favorite propositions. For instance, some physiologists are already
denying that it is the forces and substances of so-called "inanimate"
nature, which are acting exclusively in living beings. For, as they well argue:--
The fact that we reject the interference of other
forces in living things, depends entirely on the limitations of our senses.
We use, indeed, the same organs for our observations of both animate and
inanimate nature; and these organs can receive manifestations of only a limited
realm of motion. Vibrations passed along the fibres of our optic nerves to the
brain reach our perceptions through our consciousness as sensations of light
and color; vibrations affecting our consciousness through our auditory organs
strike us as sounds; all our feelings, through whichever of our senses, are
due to nothing but motions.
Such are the teachings of physical Science, and such were
in their roughest outlines those of Occultism, æons and millenniums back.
The difference, however, and most vital distinction between the two teachings,
is this: official science sees in motion simply a blind, unreasoning force or
law; Occultism, tracing motion to its origin, identifies it with the Universal
Deity, and calls this eternal ceaseless motion--the "Great Breath."
[ See The Secret Doctrine,Volume I, pages 2 and 3 ]
Nevertheless, however limited the conception of Modern
Science about the said Force, still it is suggestive enough to have forced the
following remark from a great Scientist, the present professor of physiology
at the University of Basle, who speaks like an Occultist: [
From a paper read by him some time ago at a public lecture ]
It would be folly in us to expect to be ever able
to discover, with the assistance only of our external senses, in animate nature
that something which we are unable to find in the inanimate.
And forthwith the lecturer adds that man being endowed
"in addition to his physical senses with an inner sense," a
perception which gives him the possibility of observing the states and phenomena
of his own consciousness, "he has to use that in dealing
with animate nature"--a profession of faith verging suspiciously on the
borders of Occultism. He denies, moreover, the assumption, that the states and
phenomena of consciousness represent in substance the same manifestations of
motion as in the external world, and fortifies his denial by the reminder that
not all of such states and manifestations have necessarily a spatial extension.
According to him that only is connected with our conception of space which has
reached our consciousness through sight, touch, and the muscular sense, while
all the other senses, all the effects, tendencies, as all the
interminable series of representations, have no extension in space, but, only
in time.
Thus he asks:--
Where then is there room in this for a mechanical
theory? Objectors might argue that this is so only in appearance, while in reality
all these have a spatial extension. But such an argument would be entirely erroneous.
Our sole reason for believing that objects perceived by the senses have such
extension in the external world, rests on the idea that they seem to do so,
as far as they can be watched and observed through the senses of sight and touch.
With regard, however, to the realm of our inner senses even that supposed
foundation loses its force and there is no ground for admitting it.
The winding up argument of the lecturer is most interesting
to Theosophists. Says this physiologist of the modern school of Materialism--
Thus, a deeper and more direct acquaintance with
our inner nature unveils to us a world entirely unlike the world represented
to us by our external senses, and reveals the most heterogeneous faculties,
shows objects having nought to do with spatial extension, and phenomena absolutely
disconnected with those that fall under mechanical laws.
Hitherto the opponents of vitalism and "life-principle,"
as well as the followers of the mechanical theory of life, based their views
on the supposed fact, that, as physiology was progressing forward, its students
succeeded more and more in connecting its functions with the laws of blind
matter. All those manifestations that used to be attributed to a "mystical
life-force," they said, may be brought now under physical and chemical
laws. And they were, and still are loudly clamoring for the recognition of the
fact that it is only a question of time when it will be triumphantly demonstrated
that the whole vital process, in its grand totality, represents nothing more
mysterious than a very complicated phenomenon of motion, exclusively governed
by the forces of inanimate nature.
But here we have a professor of physiology who asserts
that the history of physiology proves, unfortunately for them, quite the contrary;
and he pronounces these ominous words:--
I maintain that the more our experiments and observations
are exact and many-sided, the deeper we penetrate into facts, the more we try
to fathom and speculate on the phenomena of life, the more we acquire the conviction,
that even those phenomena that we had hoped to be already able to explain by
physical and chemical laws, are in reality unfathomable. They are vastly
more complicated, in fact; and as we stand at present, they will not yield
to any mechanical explanation.
This is a terrible blow at the puffed-up bladder known
as Materialism, which is as empty as it is dilated. A Judas in the camp of the
apostles of negation--the "animalists"! But the Basle professor is
no solitary exception, as we have just shown; and there are several physiologists
who are of his way of thinking; indeed some of them going so far as to almost
accept free-will and consciousness, in the simplest monadic protoplasms!
One discovery after the other tends in this direction.
The works of some German physiologists are especially interesting with regard
to cases of consciousness and positive discrimination--one is almost inclined
to say thought--in the Ambas. Now the Ambas or
animalculae are, as all know, microscopical protoplasms--as the Vampyrello
Spirogyra for instance, a most simple elementary cell, a protoplasmic drop,
formless and almost structureless. And yet it shows in its behavior something
for which zoologists, if they do not call it mind and power of reasoning, will
have to find some other qualification, and coin a new term. For see what Cienkowsky
says of it. [ L. Cienkowsky. See his work Beirage zur Kenniss
der Monanden, Archiv f. mikroshop. Anatomie. ]
Speaking of this microscopical, bare, reddish cell he describes the way in which
it hunts for and finds among a number of other aquatic plants one called Spirogyra,
rejecting every other food. Examining its peregrinations under a powerful
microscope, he found it when moved by hunger, first projecting its pseudopodiæ
(false feet) by the help of which it crawls. Then it commences moving about
until among a great variety of plants it comes across a Spirogyra, after
which it proceeds toward the cellulated portion of one of the cells of the latter,
and placing itself on it, it bursts the tissue, sucks the contents of one cell
and then passes on to another, repeating the same process. This naturalist never
saw it take any other food, and it never touched any of the numerous plants
placed by Cienkowsky in its way. Mentioning another Amoeba -- the Colpadella
Pugnax -- he says that he found it showing the same predilection for the
Chlamydomonas on which it feeds exclusively; "having made a puncture
in the body of the Chlamydomonas it sucks its chlorophyll and then goes away,"
he writes, adding these significant words: "The way of acting of
these monads during their search for and reception of food, is so amazing that
one is almost inclined to see in them consciously acting beings!"
Not less suggestive are the observations of Th. W. Engelman
(Beitraege zur Physiologie des Protoplasma), on the Arcella, another
unicellular organism only a trifle more complex than the Vampyrella.
He shows them in a drop of water under a microscope on a piece of glass, lying
so to speak, on their backs, i.e., on their convex side, so that the
pseudopodiæ, projected from the edge of the shell, find no hold
in space and leave the Amoeba helpless. Under these circumstances the following
curious fact is observed. Under the very edge of one of the sides of the protoplasm
gas-bubbles begin immediately to form, which, making that side lighter, allow
it to be raised, bringing at the same time the opposite side of the creature
into contact with the glass, thus furnishing its pseudo or false feet
means to get hold of the surface and thereby turning over its body to raise
itself on all its pseudopodiæ. After this, the Amoeba proceeds
to suck back into itself the gas-bubbles and begins to move. If a like drop
of water is placed on the lower extremity of the glass, then, following the
law of gravity the Amoeba will find themselves at first at the lower end of
the drop of water. Failing to find there a point of support, they proceed to
generate large bubbles of gas, when, becoming lighter than the water, they are
raised up to the surface of the drop.
In the words of Engelman:--
If, having reached the surface of the glass they
find no more support for their feet than before, forthwith one sees the gas-globules
diminishing on one side and increasing in size and number on the other, or both,
until the creatures touch with the edge of their shell, the surface of the glass,
and are enabled to turn over. No sooner is this done than the gas-globules disappear
and the Arcella begin crawling. Detach them carefully by means of a fine
needle from the surface of the glass and thus bring them down once more to the
lower surface of the drop of water; and forthwith they will repeat the same
process, varying its details according to necessity and devising new means to
reach their desired aim. Try as much as you will to place them in uncomfortable
positions, and they find means to extricate themselves from them, each time,
by one device or the other; and no sooner have they succeeded than the gas-bubbles
disappear! It is impossible not to admit that such facts as these point to
the presence of some PSYCHIC process
in the protoplasm. [ Loc. cit. Pflager's Archiv. Bk.
S. 387]
Among hundreds of accusations against Asiatic nations of
degrading superstitions, based on "crass ignorance," there
exists no more serious denunciation than that which charges and convicts them
of personifying and even deifying the chief organs of, and
in, the human body. Indeed, do not we hear these "benighted fools"
of Hindus speaking of the small-pox as a goddess--thus personifying the microbes
of the variolic virus? Do we not read about Tantrikas, a sect of mystics,
giving proper names to nerves, cells and arteries, connecting and identifying
various parts of the body with deities, endowing functions and physiological
processes with intelligence, and what not? The vertebrae, fibers, ganglia, the
cord, etc., of the spinal column; the heart, its four chambers, auricle and
ventricle, valves and the rest; stomach, liver, lungs and spleen, everything
has its special deific name, is believed to act consciously and to act
under the potent will of the Yogi, whose head and heart are the seats of Brahmâ
and the various parts of whose body are all the pleasure grounds of this or
another deity!
This is indeed ignorance. Especially when we think
that the said organs, and the whole body of man are composed of cells, and these
cells are now being recognised as individual organisms and -- quien sabe
-- will come perhaps to be recognized some day as an independent race
of thinkers inhabiting the globe, called man! It really looks like it. For
was it not hitherto believed that all the phenomena of assimilation and sucking
in of food by the intestinal canal, could be explained by the laws of diffusion
and endosmosis? And now, alas, physiologists have come to learn that the action
of the intestinal canal during the act of absorbing, is not identical with the
action of the non-living membrane in the dialyser. It is now well demonstrated
that --
This wall is covered with epithelium cells, each
of which is an organism per se, a living being, and with very complex
functions. We know further, that such a cell assimilates food--by means of active
contractions of its protoplasmic body--in a manner as mysterious as that which
we notice in the independent Amoeba and animalcules. We can observe on the intestinal
epithelium of the cold-blooded animals how these cells project shoots --
pseudopodiæ -- out of their contractive, bare, protoplasmic bodies--which
pseudopodiæ, or false feet, fish out of the food drops of fat,
suck them into their protoplasm and send it further, toward the lymph-duct.
. . . The lymphatic cells issuing from the nests of the adipose tissue, and
squeezing themselves through the epithelium cells up to the surface of the intestines,
absorb therein the drops of fat and loaded with their prey, travel homeward
to the lymphatic canals. So long as this active work of the cells remained unknown
to us, the fact that while the globules of fat penetrated through the walls
of the intestines into lymphatic channels, the smallest of pigmental grains
introduced into the intestines did not do so,--remained unexplained. But today
we know, that this faculty of selecting their special food -- of assimilating
the useful and rejecting the useless and the harmful--is common to all the unicellular
organisms. [ From the paper read by the Professor of Physiology
at the University of Basle, previously quoted. ]
And the lecturer queries why, if this discrimination
in the selection of food exists in the simplest and most elementary of
the cells, in the formless and structureless protoplasmic drops--why
it should not exist also in the epithelium cells of our intestinal canal. Indeed,
if the Vampyrella recognises its much beloved Spirogyra, among
hundreds of other plants as shown above, why should not the epithelian cell,
sense, choose and select its favorite drop of fat from a pigmental
grain? But we will be told that "sensing, choosing, and selecting"
pertains only to reasoning beings, at least to the instinct of more structural
animals than is the protoplasmic cell outside or inside man. Agreed; but as
we translate from the lecture of a learned physiologist and the works of other
learned naturalists, we can only say, that these learned gentlemen must know
what they are talking about; though they are probably ignorant of the fact that
their scientific prose is but one degree removed from the ignorant,
superstitious, but rather poetical "twaddle" of the Hindu Yogis
and Tântrikas.
Anyhow, our professor of physiology falls foul of the materialistic
theories of diffusion and endosmosis. Armed with the facts of the evident discrimination
and a mind in the cells, he demonstrates by numerous instances the fallacy
of trying to explain certain physiological processes by mechanical theories;
such for instance as the passing of sugar from the liver (where it is transformed
into glucose) into the blood. Physiologists find great difficulty in explaining
this process, and regard it as an impossibility to bring it under the endosmosic
laws. In all probability the lymphatic cells play just as active a part
during the absorption of alimentary substances dissolved in water, as the peptics
do, a process well demonstrated by F. Hofmeister. [ Untersuchungen
uber Resorption u. Assimilation der Nahrstoffe (Archiv f. Experimentale Pathologie,
Bk. XIX, 1885) ]
Generally speaking, poor convenient endosmose is dethroned
and exiled from among the active functionaries of the human body as a useless
sinecurist. It has lost its voice in the matter of glands and other agents of
secretion, in the action of which the same epithelium cells have replaced it.
The mysterious faculties of selection, of extracting from the blood one kind
of substance and rejecting another, of transforming the former by means of decomposition
and synthesis, of directing some of the products into passages which will throw
them out of the body and redirecting others into lymphatic and blood vessels--such
is the work of the cells. "It is evident that in all this there is not
the slightest hint at diffusion or endosmose," says the Basle physiologist.
"It becomes entirely useless to try and explain these phenomena by chemical
laws."
But perhaps physiology is luckier in some other department?
Failing in the laws of alimentation, it may have found some consolation for
its mechanical theories in the question of the activity of muscles and nerves,
which it sought to explain by electric laws? Alas, save in a few fishes -- in
no other living organisms, least of all in the human body, could it find any
possibility of pointing out electric currents as the chief ruling agency. Electro-biology
on the lines of pure dynamic electricity has egregiously failed. Ignorant of
"Fohat" no electrical currents suffice to explain to it either muscular
or nervous activity!
But there is such a thing as the physiology of external
sensations. Here we are no longer on terra incognita, and all such phenomena
have already found purely physical explanations. No doubt, there is the
phenomenon of sight, the eye with its optical apparatus, its camera obscura.
But the fact of the sameness of the reproduction of things in the eye, according
to the same laws of refraction as on the plate of a photographic machine, is
no vital phenomenon. The same may be reproduced on a dead eye. The
phenomenon of life consists in the evolution and development of the eye itself.
How is this marvellous and complicated work produced? To this Physiology
replies, "We do not know"; for, toward the solution of this great
problem--
Physiology has not yet made one single step. True,
we can follow the sequence of the stages of the development and formation of
the eye, but why it is so and what is the causal connection,
we have absolutely no idea. The second vital phenomenon of the eye is its accommodating
activity. And here we are again face to face with the functions of nerves and
muscles--our old insoluble riddles. The same may be said of all the organs of
sense. The same also relates to other departments of physiology. We had hoped
to explain the phenomena of the circulation of the blood by the laws of hydrostatics
or hydrodynamics. Of course the blood moves in accordance with the hydro-dynamical
laws: but its relation to them remains utterly passive. As to the active
functions of the heart and the muscles of its vessels, no one,
so far, has ever been able to explain them by physical laws.
The underlined words in the concluding portion of the able
Professor's lecture are worthy of an Occultist. Indeed, he seems to be repeating
an aphorism from the "Elementary Instructions" of the esoteric physiology
of practical Occultism:--
The riddle of life [ Life
and activity are but two different names for the same idea, or, what is still
more correct, they are two words with which the men of science connect no definite
idea whatever. Nevertheless, and perhaps just for that, they are obliged to
use them, for they contain the point of contact between the most difficult problems
over which, in fact, the greatest thinkers of the materialistic school have
ever tripped." ] is found in the active functions
of a living organism, the real perception of which activity we can get only
through self-observation, and not owing to our external senses; by observations
on our will, so far as it penetrates our consciousness, thus revealing itself
to our inner sense. Therefore, when the same phenomenon acts only on our external
senses, we recognize it no longer. We see everything that takes place around
and near the phenomenon of motion, but the essence of that phenomenon we do
not see at all, because we lack for it a special organ of receptivity. We can
accept that esse in a mere hypothetical way, and do so, in fact, when
we speak of "active functions." Thus does every physiologist, for
he cannot go on without such hypothesis; and this is a first experiment of a
psychological explanation of all vital phenomena. . . . And if it is
demonstrated to us that we are unable with the help only of physics and chemistry
to explain the phenomena of life, what may we expect from other adjuncts of
physiology, from the sciences of morphology, anatomy, and histology? I maintain
that these can never help us to unriddle the problem of any of the mysterious
phenomena of life. For after we have succeeded with the help of scalpel and
microscope in dividing the organisms into their most elementary compounds, and
reached the simplest of cells, it is just here that we find ourselves face to
face with the greatest problem of all. The simplest monad, a microscopical point
of protoplasm, form less and structureless, exhibits yet all the essential vital
functions, alimentation, growth, breeding, motion, feeling and sensuous perception,
and even such functions which replace "consciousness"--the soul of
the higher animals!
The problem -- for Materialism -- is a terrible one, indeed!
Shall our cells, and infinitesimal monads in nature, do for us that which the
arguments of the greatest Pantheistic philosophers have hitherto failed to do?
Let us hope so. And if they do, then the "superstitious and ignorant"
Eastern Yogis, and even their exoteric followers, will find themselves vindicated.
For we hear from the same physiologist that--
A large number of poisons are prevented by the
epithelium cells from penetrating into lymphatic spaces, though we know
that they are easily decomposed in the abdominal and intestinal juices. More
than this. Physiology is aware that by injecting these poisons directly into
the blood, they will separate from, and reappear through the intestinal walls,
and that in this process the lymphatic cells take a most active part.
If the reader turns to Webster's Dictionary he will
find therein a curious explanation at the words "lymphatic" and "lymph."
Etymologists think that the Latin word lympha is derived from the Greek
nymphe, "a nymph or inferior goddess," they say. "The
Muses were sometimes called nymphs by the poets. Hence (according to
Webster) all persons in a state of rapture, as seers, poets, madmen, etc., were
said to be caught by the nymphs."
The Goddess of Moisture (the Greek and Latin nymph or
lymph, then) is fabled in India as being born from the pores of
one of the Gods, whether the Ocean God, Varuna, or a minor "River God"
is left to the particular sect and fancy of the believers. But the main question
is, that the ancient Greeks and Latins are thus admittedly known to have shared
in the same "superstitions" as the Hindus.
This superstition is shown in their maintaining to this day that every atom
of matter in the four (or five) Elements is an emanation from an inferior God
or Goddess, himself or herself an earlier emanation from a superior deity; and,
moreover, that each of these atoms--being Brahmâ, one of whose names is
Anu, or atom--no sooner is it emanated than it becomes endowed with
consciousness, each of its kind, and free-will, acting within the limits
of law. Now, he who knows that the Kosmic Trimurti (trinity) composed
of Brahmâ, the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; and Siva, the Destroyer,
is a most magnificent and scientific symbol of the material Universe
and its gradual evolution; and who finds a proof of this, in the etymology of
the names of these deities, [ Brahmâ comes from the root
brih, to "expand", to "scatter", Vishnu, from
the root vis or vish (phonetically) "to enter into", "to pervade"
- the Universe of matter. As to Siva - the patron of
the yogis - the etymology of his name would remain incomprehensible to the
casual reader. ] plus the doctrines
of Gupta Vidya, or esoteric knowledge--knows also how to correctly understand
this "superstition." The five fundamental titles of Vishnu--added
to that of Anu (atom) common to all the trimurtic personages--which are,
Bhutâlman, one with the created or emanated materials of the world;
Pradhanâtman, "one with the senses;" Paramâtman,
"Supreme Soul"; and Âtman, Kosmic Soul, or the Universal
Mind--show sufficiently what the ancient Hindus meant by endowing with mind
and consciousness every atom and giving it a distinct name of a God or a Goddess.
Place their Pantheon, composed of 30 crores (or 300 millions) of deities within
the macrocosm (the Universe), or inside the microcosm (man), and the number
will not be found to be overrated, since they relate to the atoms, cells, and
molecules of everything that is.
This, no doubt, is too poetical and abstruse for our generation,
but it seems decidedly as scientific, if not more so, than the teachings derived
from the latest discoveries of Physiology and Natural History.
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