THEOSOPHY
KOSMIC
MIND
From the
writings of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the
founder
of modern Theosophy and co-founder of the
original
Theosophical Society in
theosophycardiff@uwclub.net
____________________________
Cardiff
Theosophical Society
Mission
Statement
The
dominant and core activity of Cardiff Theosophical Society
is to
promote and assist the study of Theosophical Teachings
as defined
by the writings of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky,
William Quan Judge, Alfred Percy Sinnett and
their lineage.
This
Mission Statement does not preclude non Theosophical
activities
but these must be of a spiritual nature
and/or
compatible with the Objects of the Society.
____________________________
Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky
1831-1891
The
Founder of Modern Theosophy
Kosmic Mind
by
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
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 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 as 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 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 make of 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.
Such are
the chief features of the heresy of one, who ranked high among the men
of exact
science of this age. His Memoirs show plainly that not only he believed
in
Universal Deity, divine Ideation, or the Hermetic "Thought divine,"
and 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 finding 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
Paracelsus--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."1
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,2 who speaks
like an Occultist.
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 bases 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
Amœbas. Now the Amœbas or animalculæ are, as all know, microscopical
protoplasms--as the Vampyrella Sirogyra 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 Cienkowsky3 says of it. 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 Amœba--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 chlorophyl 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
Protoplasm), 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 Amœba 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 Amœba 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 Amœbæ 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 Arcellae
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.4
Among
hundreds of accusations against Asiatic nations of degrading superstitions,
based on "crass ignorance," there exists no more serious denunciation
than that which accuses 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 vertebræ, 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 Amœba 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 to-day 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.5
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 epithelium cell, sense, choose and select its favorite drop of
fat from a pigmental grain? But we will be told that "sensing, choosing, and
selecting"
pertain
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 Tantrikas.
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.6 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. Electrobiology 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 hydrodynamical 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 is found in the active functions of a living organism,7 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,8 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, Bhutâtman, one
with the created or emanated materials of the world; Pradhanâtman, "one
with the
senses;"
Paramâtman, "Supreme Soul"; and Atman, 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 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. Lucifer, April, 1890
1 Vide
"Secret Doctrine," vol. i, pp. 2 and 3.
2 From a
paper read by him some time ago at a public lecture.
3 L.
Cienkowsky. See his work Beitraege zur Kentniss der Monaden, Archiv f.
mikroskop,
Anatomie.
4 Loc.
Cit, Pfluger's Archiv. Bd. II, S. 387.
5 From the
paper read by the Professor of physiology at the University of Basle,
previously
quoted.
6
Untersuchungen ueber Resorption u. Assimilation der Naehrstoffe (Archiv. f.
Experimentalle
Pathologie und Pharmakologie, Bd. XIX, 1885).
7 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.
8 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.
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