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The Inner Life, v. II/Fourth Section/II

CLAIRVOYANCE The possession of clairvoyant power is a very great privilege and a very great advantage, and if properly and sensibly used it may be a blessing and a help to its fortunate holder, just as surely as, if it is misused, it may often be a hindrance and a curse. The principal dangers attendant upon it arise from pride, ignorance, and impurity, and if these be avoided, as they easily may be, nothing but good can come from it. Pride is the first great danger. The possession of a faculty which, though it is the heritage of the whole human race, is as yet manifested only very occasionally, often causes the ignorant clairvoyant to feel himself (or still more frequently herself) exalted above his fellows, chosen by the Almighty for some mission of world-wide importance, dowered with a discernment that can never err, selected under angelic guidance to be the founder of a new dispensation, and so on. It should be remembered that there are always plenty of sportive and mischievous entities on the other side of the veil who are ready and even anxious to foster all such delusions, to reflect and embody all such thoughts, and to fill whatever role of archangel or spirit-guide may happen to be suggested to them. Unfortunately it is so fatally easy to persuade the average man that he really is a very fine fellow at bottom, and quite worthy to be the recipient of a special revelation, even though his friends have through blindness or prejudice somehow failed hitherto to appreciate him. Another danger, perhaps the greatest of all because it is the mother of all others, is ignorance. If the clairvoyant knows anything of the history of his subject, if he at all understands the conditions of those other planes into which his vision is penetrating, he cannot of course suppose himself the only person who was ever so highly favoured, nor can he feel with self-complacent certainty that it is impossible for him to mistake. But when he is, as so many are, in the densest ignorance as to history, conditions and everything else, he is liable in the first place to make all kinds of mistakes as to what he sees, and secondly to be the easy prey of all sorts of designing and deceptive entities from the astral plane. He has no criterion by which to judge what he sees, or thinks he sees, no test to apply to his visions or communications, and so he has no sense of relative proportion or the fitness of things, and he magnifies a copy-book maxim into a fragment of divine wisdom, a platitude of the most ordinary type into an angelic message. Then again, for want of common knowledge on scientific subjects he will often utterly misunderstand what his faculties enable him to perceive, and he will in consequence gravely promulgate the grossest absurdities. The third danger is that of impurity. The man, who is pure in thought and life, pure in intention and free from the taint of selfishness, is by that very fact guarded from the influence of undesirable entities from other planes. There is in him nothing upon which they can play; he is no fit medium for them. On the other hand all good influences naturally surround such a man, and hasten to use him as a channel through which they may act, and thus a still further barrier is erected about him against all which is mean and low and evil. The man of impure life or motive, on the contrary, inevitably attracts to himself all that is worst in the invisible world which so closely surrounds us; he responds readily to it, while it will be hardly possible for the forces of good to make any impression upon him. But a clairvoyant who will bear in mind all these dangers, and strive to avoid them, who will take the trouble to study the history and the rationale of clairvoyance, who will see to it that his heart is humble and his motives are pure — such a man may assuredly learn very much from these powers of which he finds himself in possession, and may make them of the greatest use to him in the work which he has to do. Having first taken good heed to the training of his character, let him observe and note down carefully any visions which come to him; let him patiently endeavour to disentangle the core of truth in them from the various accretions and exaggerations which are sure at first to be almost inextricably confused with them; let him in every possible way test and check them and endeavour to ascertain which of them are reliable, and in what way these reliable ones differ from others which have proved less trustworthy — and he will very soon find himself evolving order out of chaos, and learning to distinguish what he can trust and what he must for the present put aside as incomprehensible. He will probably find in course of time that he gets impressions, whether by direct sight or only by feeling, in reference to the various people with whom he comes into contact. Once more the careful noting down of every such impression as soon as it occurs, and the impartial testing and checking of it as opportunity offers, will soon show our friend how far these feelings or visions are to be relied on; and as soon as he finds that they are correct and dependable he has made a very great advance, for he is in possession of a power which enables him to be of far more use to those among whom his work lies than he could be if he knew only as much about them as can be seen by the ordinary eye. If, for example, his sight includes the auras of those around him, he can judge from what it shows him how best to deal with them, how to bring out their latent good qualities, how to strengthen their weaknesses, how to repress what is undesirable in their characters. Again, his power may often enable him to observe something of the processes of nature, to see something of the working of the non-human evolutions which surround us, and thus to acquire most valuable knowledge on all kinds of recondite subjects. If he happens to be personally acquainted with some clairvoyant who has been put under regular training he has of course a great advantage, in that he can without difficulty get his visions examined and tested by one upon whom he can rely. Generally speaking, then, the course to be recommended to the untrained clairvoyant is that of exceeding patience and much watchfulness; but with this hope ever before his eyes, that assuredly if he makes use of the talent entrusted to him it cannot but attract the favourable notice of Those who are ever watching for instruments which can be employed in the great work of evolution, and that when the right time comes he will receive the training which he so earnestly desires, and will thus be enabled definitely to become one of those who help the world. Special training should be arranged from early childhood for clairvoyant children. The modern system of education tends to suppress all psychic faculties, and most young people are overstrained by their studies. In Greece and Rome these psychic children were promptly isolated as vestal virgins or postulants for the priesthood, and specially trained. There is a natural tendency in the present day, apart from education, to repress these faculties. The best way to prevent the loss of these to the world is to put the boys into some sort of monastery where the monks know about the higher life and try to live it, for family life is not suitable for this development. Where such clairvoyance appears it ought to be encouraged, for many additional investigators are wanted for the Society's work, and those who begin young are likely to adapt themselves to it most readily. People who are psychic by birth generally use the etheric double a great deal. People who possess what has sometimes been called “etheric sight” — that is, sight capable of observing physical matter in a state of exceedingly fine subdivision, though not yet capable of discerning the subtler matter of the astral plane — frequently see, when they look keenly at any exposed portion of the human body, such as the face or the hand, multitudes of tiny forms, such as dice, stars, and double pyramids. These belong neither to the thought-plane nor to the astral, but are purely physical, though of exceeding minuteness. They are simply the physical emanation from the body, which is always taking place — the waste matter, consisting largely of finely-divided salts, which is constantly being thrown out in this manner. The character of these tiny particles varies from many causes. Naturally loss of health often alters them entirely, but any wave of emotion will affect them to a greater or lesser extent, and they even respond to the influence of any definite train of thought. Professor Gates is reported as saying (a) that the material emanations of the living body differ according to the states of the mind as well as the conditions of the physical health; (b) that these emanations can be tested by the chemical reactions of some salts of selenium; (c) that these reactions are characterised by various tints or colours according to the nature of the mental impressions; (d) that forty different emotion-products, as he calls them, have already been obtained. People sometimes see animated particles quivering with intense rapidity, and dashing about in the air before them. This again shows the possession of much increased physical power, not of mental. It is unfortunately only too common for the person who gains for the first time a glimpse of astral or even of etheric matter to jump at once to the conclusion that he is at least upon the mental level, if not upon the nirvânic, and holds in his hand the key to all the mysteries of the entire solar system. All that will come in good time and these grander vistas will assuredly open before him one day; but he will hasten the coming of that desirable consummation if he makes sure of each step as he takes it, and tries fully to understand and make the best of what he has, before desiring more. Those who begin their experience with nirvânic vision are few and far between; for most of us, progress must be slow and steady, and the safest motto for us is festina lente. I should not advise anyone to allow himself to be thrown into mesmeric sleep for the purpose of gaining clairvoyant experiences. The domination of the will by that of another produces effects that few people realise. The will of the victim becomes weaker, and is more liable to be acted upon by others. In the scheme of things no man is forced to do anything; he is taught by receiving always the result of his actions; and it is better to allow clairvoyant powers to come gradually in the natural course of evolution, rather than to try to force them in any way. We must not always assume that a man who sees something pertaining to higher planes is necessarily becoming clairvoyant. By clairvoyance, for example, we may undoubtedly see an apparition, but on the other hand there are various other ways in which a man may see or suppose himself to see something which to him would be exactly the same as an apparition. The apparition of a dead person may be (a) one's own imagination, (b) a thought-form produced by another person, (c) or by the person seen, (d) an impersonation, (e) the etheric double of the person, or (f) the real person actually there. In the last case one of three things must have happened — that is, supposing that the apparition is a dead or sleeping person in his astral body, and that the man who sees him is himself in his physical body and wide awake. Either (a) the dead man has materialised himself, in which case of course he is for the time a physical object, which may be seen by any number of people with ordinary physical sight; (b) the dead man is in his astral body, in which case only those possessing astral sight can perceive him; he has probably succeeded by some special effort in temporarily opening that sight for the person to whom he wishes to show himself, and is therefore most likely visible to that one person only, and not to any others who may happen to be present; or, (c) the dead man has mesmerised the living, so as to impose upon him the idea that he sees a figure which is not really visible to him, though it may be really present. If the apparition be an etheric double, it will not stray far away from the dense body to which it belongs or used to belong. An unpractised apparition — one who is new to the astral plane — often shows traces of the habits of his earth-life. He will enter and depart by a door or a window, not yet realising that he can pass through the wall just as easily. I have even seen one squeeze through the crack of a locked door; he might as well have tried the key-hole! But he moves as he has been accustomed to move — as he thinks of himself as moving. For the same reason an apparition often walks upon the earth, when he might just as well float through the air. It is a mistake to think that if you see a vision, it must necessarily mean something for you, or be specially sent to you. If you for the moment become sensitive, you see what happens to be there. Suppose I am sitting in a room, and a curtain is drawn across the window, so that the street outside is invisible to me. Suppose the wind lifts the curtain for a moment, so that I get a glimpse of the street, I shall then see whatever happens to be passing at that moment. Let us imagine that I see a little girl in a red cloak, carrying a basket. That little girl is probably going about her own business, or perhaps her mother's; should I not be very foolish if I chose to fancy that she had been sent there especially for me to see, and began to worry myself as to what could be symbolised by the red cloak and the basket? A flash of clairvoyance is usually just the accidental lifting of a curtain, and generally what is seen has no special relation to the seer. There may occasionally be instances in which the curtain is intentionally lifted by a friend because something of personal interest is passing; but we must not be too ready to assume that that is the case. Among the real psychic powers, however, which are attained by slow and careful self-development, there are some which are of very great interest. For example, for one who can function freely in the mental body there are methods of getting at the meaning of a book, quite apart from the ordinary process of reading it. The simplest is to read from the mind of one who has studied it; but this is open to the objection that one gets not the real meaning of the work but that student's conception of the meaning, which may be by no means the same thing. A second plan is to examine the aura of the book — a phrase which needs a little explanation for those not practically acquainted with the hidden side of things. An ancient manuscript stands in this respect in a somewhat different position from a modern book. If it is not the original work of the author himself, it has at any rate been copied word by word by some person of a certain education and understanding, who knew the subject of the book, and had his own opinions about it. It must be remembered that copying (done usually with a stylus) is almost as slow and emphatic as engraving; so that the writer inevitably impresses his thought strongly on his handiwork. Any manuscript, therefore, even a new one, has always some sort of thought-aura about it which conveys its general meaning, or rather one man's idea of its meaning and his estimate of its value. Every time it is read by anyone an addition is made to that thought-aura, and if it be carefully studied the addition is naturally large and valuable. This is equally true of a printed volume. A book which has passed through many hands has an aura which is usually better balanced than that of a new one, because it is rounded off and completed by the divergent views brought to it by its many readers; consequently the psychometrisation of such a book generally yields a fairly full comprehension of its contents, though with a considerable fringe of opinions not expressed in the book, but held by its various readers. On the other hand, a book used in a public library is not infrequently as unpleasant psychically as it usually is physically, for it becomes loaded with all kinds of mixed magnetisms, many of them of a most unsavoury character. The sensitive person will do well to avoid such books, or if necessity compels him to use them he will be wise to touch them as little as may be, and rather to let them lie upon a table than to hold them in his hand. Another factor to be remembered with regard to such book is that a volume written upon a special subject is most likely to be read by a particular type of person, and these readers leave their impress upon the aura of the volume. Thus a book violently advocating some sectarian religious views is not read except by persons who sympathise with its narrowness, and so it soon developes a decidedly unpleasant aura; and in the same way a book of an indecent or prurient nature quickly becomes loathsome beyond description. Old books containing magical formulae are often for this reason most uncomfortable neighbours. Even the language in which a book is printed indirectly affects its aura, by limiting its readers largely to men of a certain nationality, and so by degrees endowing it with the more prominent characteristics of that nationality. In the case of a printed book there is no original copyist, so that at the beginning of its career it usually carries nothing but disjointed fragments of the thought of the binder and bookseller. Few readers at the present day seem to study so thoughtfully and thoroughly as did the men of old, and for that reason the thought-forms connected with a modern book are rarely so precise and clear-cut as those which surround the manuscripts of the past. The third method of reading requires some higher powers, in order to go behind the book or manuscript altogether and get at the mind of its author. If the book is in some foreign language, its subject entirely unknown, and there is no aura around it to give any helpful suggestion, the only way is to follow back its history to see from what it was copied (or set up in type, as the case may be) and so to trace out the line of its descent until one reaches its author. If the subject of the work be known, a less tedious method is to psychometrise that subject, get into the general current of thought about it, and so find the particular writer required, and see what he thinks. There is a sense in which all the ideas connected with a given subject may be said to be local — to be concentrated round a certain point in space — so that by mentally visiting that point one can come into touch with all the converging streams of thought about that subject, though these are linked by millions of lines with all sorts of other subjects. Another interesting power is that of magnification. There are two methods of magnification which may be used in connection with the clairvoyant faculty. One is simply an intensification of ordinary sight. It is obvious that when in common life we see anything, an impact of some sort is made upon the retina — upon its physical rods and cones. The effects there produced, or the vibrations set up, are transmitted, in some way by no means thoroughly understood, by the optic nerve to the grey matter of the brain. Clearly before the true man within can become conscious of what is seen, these impressions made upon the physical brain-matter must be transmitted from that to the etheric matter, from that in turn to the astral, and from that to the mental — these different degrees of matter being, as it were, stations on a telegraph-wire. One method of magnification is to tap this telegraph-wire at an intermediate station — to receive the impression upon the etheric matter of the retina instead of upon the physical rods and cones, and to transfer the impression received directly to the etheric part of the brain By an effort of will the attention can be focussed in only a few of the etheric particles, or even in one of them, and in that way a similarity of size can be attained between the organ employed and some minute object which is to be observed. A method more commonly used, but requiring somewhat higher development, is to employ the special faculty of the centre between the eyebrows. From the central portion of that can be projected what we may call a tiny microscope, having for its lens only one atom. In this way again we produce an organ commensurate in size with the minute objects to be observed. The atom employed may be either physical, astral or mental, but whichever it is it needs a special preparation. All its spirillae must be opened up and brought into full working order, so that it is just as it will be in the seventh round of our chain.

This power belongs to the causal body, so if an atom of lower level be used as an eye-piece a system of reflecting counterparts must be introduced. The atom can be adjusted to any subplane, so that any required degree of magnification can be applied in order to suit the object which is being examined. A further extension of the same power enables the operator to focus his own consciousness in that lens through which he looks, and then to project it to distant points. The same power, by a different arrangement, can be used for diminishing purposes when one wishes to view as a whole something far too large to be taken in at once by ordinary vision.

title: The Inner Life, v. II/Fourth Section/II


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 LIONEL JOHNSON

news of Lionel Johnson's early and tragic death brought to friends a keen sense of personal loss and to the literary world a consciousness that his place would be difficult to fill, yet could not, save with serious detriment, be left empty. He had stood for something definite and something high. As poet, he had clothed conceptions of delicate and poignant loveliness in the robe of an almost classic austerity. As critic, he had shown himself a master of sure judgment and wide sympathies; possessing, in his own words, "preferences but no prejudices"—if one except that fundamental prejudice against the vulgar, the perverse or the insincere in art. All things pure and noble, and not a few forgotten or despised, found shelter in Lionel Johnson's heart: and then, that heart ceased beating. Even now it is difficult to think dispassionately of the young poet, with his childlike face and his words of memorable wisdom, of reticent yet compelling pathos. Still more difficult is it to reach any satisfying analysis of the mingled defeat and victory which made up his life's brief conflict. His aloofness, to the very end, was majestic as well as melancholy.

Strangely enough, it is in the vivid yet unconscious self-portraiture of his final poem, the lines to Walter Pater, that the truest comment upon his own life and work is found:

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:The Poet's Chantry pg 120.jpg


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User:William Maury Morris II/sandbox

MAURY, MATTHEW FONTAINE (1806-1873), American naval officer and hydrographer, was born near Fredericksburg in Spottsylvania county, Virginia, on the 24th of January 1806. He was educated at Harpeth academy, and in 1825 entered the navy as midshipman, circumnavigating the globe in the “Vincennes,” during a cruise of four years (1826-1830). In 1831 he was appointed master of the sloop “Falmouth” on the Pacific station, and subsequently served in other vessels before returning home in 1834, when he married his cousin, Ann Hull Herndon, sister of William Lewis Herndon. In 1835-1836 he was actively engaged in producing for publication a treatise on navigation, a remarkable achievement at so early a stage in his career; he was at this time made lieutenant, and gazetted astronomer to a South Sea exploring expedition, but resigned this position and was appointed to the survey of southern harbours. In 1839 he met with an accident which resulted in permanent lameness, and unfitted him for active service. In the same year, however, he began to write a series of articles on naval reform and other subjects, under the title of Scraps from the Lucky-Bag, which attracted much attention; and in 1841 he was placed in charge of the Dépôt of Charts and Instruments, out of which grew the United States Naval Observatory and the Hydrographie Office. He laboured assiduously to obtain observations as to the winds and currents by distributing to captains of vessels specially prepared log-books; and in the course of nine years he had collected a sufficient number of logs to make two hundred manuscript volumes, each with about two thousand five hundred days’ observations. One result was to show the necessity for combined action on the part of maritime nations in regard to ocean meteorology. This led to an international conference at Brussels in 1853, which produced the greatest benefit to navigation as well as indirectly to meteorology. Maury attempted to organize co-operative meteorological work on land, but the government did not at this time take any steps in this direction. His oceanographical work, however, received recognition in all parts of the civilized world, and in 1855 it was proposed in the senate to remunerate him, but in the same year the Naval Retiring Board, erected under an act to promote the efficiency of the navy, placed him on the retired list. This action aroused wide opposition, and in 1858 he was reinstated with the rank of commander as from 1855. In 1853 Maury had published his Letters on the Amazon and Atlantic Slopes of South America, and the most widely popular of his works, the Physical Geography of the Sea, was published in London in 1855, and in New York in 1856; it was translated into several European languages. On the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, Maury threw in his lot with the South, and became head of coast, harbour and river defences. He invented an electric torpedo for harbour defence, and in 1862 was ordered to England to purchase torpedo material, &c. Here he took active part in organizing a petition for peace to the American people, which was unsuccessful. Afterwards he became imperial commissioner of emigration to the emperor Maximilian of Mexico, and attempted to form a Virginian colony in that country. Incidentally he introduced there the cultivation of cinchona. The scheme of colonization was abandoned by the emperor (1866), and Maury, who had lost nearly his all during the war, settled for a while in England, where he was presented with a testimonial raised by public subscription, and among other honours received the degree of LL.D. of Cambridge University (1868). In the same year, a general amnesty admitting of his return to America, he accepted the professorship of meteorology in the Virginia Military Institute, and settled at Lexington, Virginia, where he died on the 1st of February 1873. Among works published by Maury, in addition to those mentioned, are the papers contributed by him to the Astronomical Observations of the United States Observatory, Letter concerning Lanes for Steamers crossing the Atlantic (1855); Physical Geography (1864) and Manual of Geography (1871). In 1859 he began the publication of a series of Nautical Monographs.

See Diana Fontaine Maury Corbin (one of his daughters), "Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury (London, 1888). Note: Look up date & source M.F.Maury was superintendent of Gold Mine. He was studying mineralogy before that time.

title: User:William Maury Morris II/sandbox


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The Inner Life, v. II/Fourth Section/III

THE MYSTIC CHORD Questions have often been asked as to the method by which a person at a distance of some thousands of miles can be instantly found by a trained clairvoyant. Apparently this remains somewhat of a mystery to many, so I will endeavour to give an explanation of the plan commonly adopted, though it is not easy to put it quite plainly. A clear expression of super-physical facts cannot be achieved in physical words, for the latter are always to some extent misleading even when they seem most illuminative. Man's various forces and qualities, manifesting in his bodies as vibrations, send out for each vehicle what may be called a keynote. Take his astral body as an example. From the number of different vibrations which are habitual to that astral body there emerges a sort of average tone, which we may call the keynote of the man on the astral plane. It is obviously conceivable that there may be a considerable number of ordinary men whose astral keynote is practically the same, so that this alone would not suffice to distinguish them with certainty. But there is a similar average tone for each man's mental body, for his causal body, and even for the etheric part of his physical body; and there have never yet been found two persons whose keynotes were identical at all these levels, so as to make exactly the same chord when struck simultaneously. Thus the chord of each man is unique, and it furnishes a means by which he can always be distinguished from the rest of the world. Among millions of primitive savages there may possibly be cases where development is as yet so slight that the chords are scarcely clear enough for the differences between them to be observed, but with any of the higher races there is never the least difficulty, nor is there any risk of confusion. Whether the man be sleeping or waking, living or dead, his chord remains the same, and he can always be found by it. How can this be so, it may be asked, when he is resting in the heaven-world, and has therefore no astral or etheric body to emit the characteristic sounds? So long as the causal body itself remains, it has always attached to it its permanent atoms, one belonging to each of the planes, and therefore, wherever he goes, the man in his causal body carries his chord with him, for the single atom is quite sufficient to give out the distinctive sound. The trained seer, who is able to sense the chord, attunes his own vehicles for the moment exactly to its notes, and then by an effort of will sends forth its sound. Wherever in the three worlds that man who is sought may be, this evokes an instantaneous response from him. If he be living in the physical body, it is quite possible that in that lower vehicle he may be conscious only of a slight shock, and may not in the least know what has caused it. But his causal body lights up instantly; it leaps up like a great flame, and this response is at once visible to the seer, so that by that one action the man is found, and a magnetic line of communication is established. The seer can use that line as a kind of telescope, or if he prefers he can send his consciousness flashing along it with the speed of light, and see from the other end of it, as it were. The combination of sounds which will produce a man's chord is his true occult name; and it is in this sense that it has been said that when a man's true name is called he instantly replies, wherever he may be. Some vague tradition of this is probably at the back of the idea so widely spread among savage nations, that a man' s real name is a part of him, and must be carefully concealed, because one who knows it has a certain power over him, and can work magic upon him. Thus also it is said that the man's true name is changed at each initiation, since each such ceremony is at once the official recognition and the fulfilment of a progress by which he has, as it were, raised himself into a higher key, putting an additional strain upon the strings of his instrument, and evoking from it far grander music, so that thence-forward his chord must be sounded differently. This name of the man must not be confused with the hidden name of the Augoeides, for that is the chord of the three principles of the ego, produced by the vibrations of the âtmic, buddhic and mental atoms, and the monad behind them. In order to avoid such confusion we must keep clearly in mind the distinction between two manifestations of the man at different levels. The correspondence between these two manifestations is so close that we may almost consider the lower as the repetition of the higher. The ego is triple, consisting of âtmâ, buddhi, manas, three constituents each existing on its own plane — the âtmâ on the nirvânic, the buddhi on the buddhic, and the manas on the highest level of the mental. This ego inhabits a causal body, a vehicle built of the matter of the lowest of the three planes to which he belongs. He then puts himself further down into manifestation, and takes three lower vehicles, the mental, astral and physical bodies. His chord in this lower manifestation is that which we have been describing, and consists of his own note and those of the three lower vehicles. Just as the ego is triple, so is the monad, and this also has its three constituents, each existing on its own plane; but in this case the three planes are the first, second and third of our system, and the nirvânic is the lowest of them instead of the highest. But on that nirvânic level it takes to itself a manifestation, and we call it the monad in its âtmic vehicle, or sometimes the triple âtmâ or triple spirit; and this is for it what the causal body is for the ego. Just as the ego takes on three lower bodies (mental, astral, physical), the first of which (the mental) is on the lower part of his own plane, and the lowest (the physical) two planes below, so the monad takes on three lower manifestations (which we commonly call âtmâ, buddhi, manas), the first of which is on the lower part of his plane, and the lowest two planes below that. It will thus be seen that the causal body is to the monad what the physical body is to the ego. If we think of the ego as the soul of the physical body, we may consider the monad as the soul of the ego in turn. Thus the chord of the Augoeides (the glorified ego in his causal body) consists of the note of the monad, with those of its three manifestations, âtmâ, buddhi, manas. It must be understood that the chord cannot be accurately considered as sound in the sense in which we use that word on this plane. It has been suggested to me that an analogy which is in some respects better is that of the combination of lines in a spectrum. Each of the elements whose spectrum is known to us is instantly recognisable by it, in whatever star it may appear, no matter how great the distance may be — so long as the lines are bright enough to be seen at all. But the chord of which we have been speaking is not actually either heard or seen; it is received by a complex perception which requires the practically simultaneous activity of the consciousness in the causal body and in all the lower vehicles. Even with regard to ordinary astral perception it is misleading (though practically unavoidable) to speak of “hearing” and “seeing.” These terms connote for us the idea of certain sense-organs which receive impressions of a well-defined type. To see implies the possession of an eye, to hear implies the existence of an ear. But no such sense-organs are to be found on the astral plane. It is true that the astral body is an exact counterpart of the physical, and that it consequently shows eyes and ears, nose and mouth, hands and feet, just as the latter does. But when functioning in the astral body we do not walk upon the astral counterparts of our physical feet, nor do we see and hear with the counterparts of our physical eyes and ears. Each particle in an astral body is capable of receiving a certain set of vibrations — those belonging to its own level, and those only. If we divide all astral vibrations into seven sets, just like seven octaves in music, each octave will correspond to a sub-plane, and only a particle in the astral body which is built of matter belonging to that subplane can respond to the vibrations of that octave. So “to be upon a certain sub-plane in the astral” is to have developed the sensitiveness of only those particles in one's astral body which belong to that subplane, so that one can perceive the matter and the inhabitants of that sub-plane only. To have perfect vision upon the astral plane means to have developed sensitiveness in all particles of the astral body, so that all the sub-planes are simultaneously visible. Even though a man has developed the particles of one sub-plane only, if those are fully developed he will have on that sub-plane a power of perception equivalent to all of our physical senses. If he perceives an object at all, he will in that one act of perception receive from it an impression which conveys all that we learn down here through those various channels which we call the senses; he will simultaneously see, hear and feel it. The instantaneous perception which belongs to higher planes is still further removed from the clumsy and partial action of the physical senses.

In order to see how the chord helps the clairvoyant to find any given person, it must also be understood that the vibrations which cause it are communicated by the man to any object which is for some time in close contact with him, and therefore permeated by his magnetism. A lock of his hair, an article of clothing which he has worn a letter which he has written — any of these is sufficient to give the chord to one who knows how to perceive it. It can also be obtained very readily from a photograph, which seems more curious, since the photograph need not have been in direct contact with the person whom it represents. Even untrained clairvoyants, who have no scientific knowledge of the subject, instinctively recognize the necessity of bringing themselves en rapport with those whom they seek by means of some such objects. It is not necessary for the seer to hold the letter in his hand while examining the case, or even to have it near him. Having once held the letter and sensed the chord, he is able to remember it and reproduce it, just as any one with a good memory might remember a face after seeing it once. Some such link as this is always necessary to find a person previously unknown. We had recently a case of a man who had died somewhere in the Congo district, but as no photograph of him was sent by the friend who wrote about him, it was necessary first to seek that friend (somewhere in Scandinavia, I think) and make a contact in a roundabout way through him. There are, however, other methods of finding people at a distance. One which is most effective requires higher development than that just described. A man who is able to raise his consciousness to the atomic level of the buddhic plane there finds himself absolutely in union with all his fellowmen — and therefore of course among the rest with the person whom he seeks. He draws his consciousness up into this unity along his own line, and he has only to put himself out again along the line of that other person in order to find him. There are always various ways of exercising clairvoyance, and each student employs that which comes most naturally to him. If he has not fully studied his subject, he often thinks his own method the only one possible, but wider knowledge soon disabuses him of that idea.


text:
The Inner Life, v. II/Fourth Section/IV

HOW PAST LIVES ARE SEEN As a series of past lives of enthralling interest has recently been published in The Theosophist, many enquiries have been received as to the exact method by which the record of such lives is read by the investigators. It is not easy to explain the matter satisfactorily to those who have not themselves the power to see them, but some attempt at a description of the process may at least help students on the way towards comprehension. To begin with, it is by no means easy to explain what the record is which is to be read. A suggestion leading towards an idea of it may perhaps be obtained by imagining a room with a huge pier-glass at one end. Everything which took place in that room would be reflected in that mirror. If we further suppose that mirror to be endowed with the properties of a kind of perpetual cinematograph, so that it records all which it reflects, and can afterwards under certain circumstances be made to reproduce it, we have advanced one stage towards understanding how the record presents itself. But we must add to our conception qualities which no mirror ever possessed — the power to reproduce all sounds as a phonograph does, and also to reflect and reproduce thoughts and feelings. Then we must further try to understand what the reflection in a mirror really is. If two persons stand in relation to a mirror so that each sees in it not himself but the other, it is obvious that the same area of glass is reflecting the two images. Therefore if we suppose the glass to retain permanently every image which has ever been cast upon it (perhaps it actually does!) it is again clear that the same part of the glass must be simultaneously recording those two images. Move up and down and from side to side, and you will soon convince yourself that every particle of glass must be simultaneously recording every part of every object in the room, and that what you happen to see in it depends upon the position of your eye. Hence it also follows that no two people can ever see at the same moment exactly the same reflection in a mirror, any more than two people can see the same rainbow, because two physical eyes cannot simultaneously occupy exactly the same point in space. What we have supposed to happen with regard to the particles of our mirror does really happen with regard to every particle of every substance. Every stone by the roadside contains an indelible record of everything that has ever passed it, but this record cannot (so far as we yet know) be recovered from it so as to be visible to the ordinary physical senses, though the more developed sense of the psychometrist perceives it without difficulty. How is it possible, men ask, for an inanimate particle to register and reproduce impressions? The answer is that the particle is not inanimate, and that the life which ensouls it is part of the Divine Life. Indeed, another way in which one may attempt to describe the record is to say that it is the memory of the LOGOS Himself, and that each particle is somehow in touch with that part of that memory which includes the events which have taken place in its neighbourhood, or what we may call within sight of it. It is probable that what we call our memory is nothing but a similar power of coming into touch (though often very imperfectly) with that part of His memory which refers to events which we happen to have seen or known. So we might say that every man carries about with him on the physical plane two memories of anything which he has seen — his brain-memory, which is often imperfect or inaccurate, and the memory enshrined in any unchanged particles of his body or of the clothes that he wears, which is always perfect and accurate, but is available only for those who have learnt how to read it. Remember also that the brain-memory may be inaccurate, not only because it is itself imperfect, but because the original observation may have been defective. Also that it may have been coloured by prejudice: we see, to a large extent, what we wish to see, and we can remember an event only as it appeared to us, though we may have seen it partially or wrongly. But from all these defects the record is entirely free. It is obvious that a man's physical body can have neither a memory nor a record of a past incarnation in which it did not participate; and the same is true of his astral and mental bodies, since all these vehicles are new for each new incarnation. This at once shows us that the lowest level at which we can hope to get really reliable information about past lives is that of the causal body, for nothing below that can give us first-hand evidence. In those previous lives the ego in his causal body was present — at least a certain small part of him was — and so he is an actual witness; whereas all lower vehicles were not witnesses, and can only report what they have received from him. When we recollect how imperfect is the communication between the ego and the personality in the ordinary man, we shall at once see how entirely unreliable such second, third, or fourth-hand testimony is likely to be. One may sometimes obtain from the astral or mental bodies isolated pictures of events in a man's past life, but not a sequential and coherent account of it; and even those pictures are but reflections from the causal body, and probably very dim and blurred reflections. Therefore to read past lives with accuracy the first thing necessary is to develope the faculties of the causal body. Turning those faculties upon the causal body of the man to be examined, we have before us the same two possibilities as in the case of the physical man. We can take the ego's own memory of what happened, or we can as it were psychometrise him and see for ourselves the experiences through which he has passed. The latter method is the safer, for even the ego, since he has seen these things through a past personality, may have imperfect or prejudiced impressions of them. This then is the mechanism of the ordinary method of investigating past lives — to use the faculties of one's own causal body, and by its means to psychometrise the causal body of the subject. The thing could be done at lower levels by psychometrisation of the permanent atoms, but as this would be a much more difficult feat than the unfolding of the senses of the causal body it is not at all likely ever to be attempted successfully. Another method (which, however, requires much higher development) is to use the buddhic faculties — to become absolutely one with the ego under investigation, and read his experiences as though they were one's own — from within instead of from without. Both of these methods have been employed by those who prepared the series of lives which appear in The Theosophist, and the investigators have also had the advantage of the intelligent co-operation of the ego whose incarnations are described. The physical presence of the subject whose lives are being read is an advantage, but not a necessity; he is useful if he can keep his vehicles perfectly calm, but if he becomes excited he spoils everything. The surroundings are not specially important, but quiet is essential, as the physical brain must be calm if impressions are to be brought through clearly. Everything which comes down to the physical level from the causal body must pass through the mental and the astral vehicles, and if either of these is disturbed it reflects imperfectly, just as the least rippling of the surface of a lake will break up or distort the images of the trees or houses upon its banks. It is necessary also to eradicate absolutely all prejudices, otherwise they will produce the effect of stained glass; they will colour everything which is seen through them, and so give a false impression. In looking at past lives it has always been our custom to retain full physical consciousness, so as to be able to make a note of everything while it is being observed. This is found to be a much safer method than to leave the physical body during the observations, and then trust to memory for their reproduction. There is however a stage at which this latter plan is the only one available, when the student, though able to use the causal body, can do so only while the physical vehicle is asleep. The identification of the various characters encountered in these glimpses of the past sometimes presents a little difficulty, for naturally egos change considerably in the course of twenty thousand years or so. Fortunately, with a little practice it is possible to pass the record in review as rapidly or as slowly as may be desired; so when there is any doubt as to identification we always adopt the plan of running quickly along the line of lives of the ego under observation, until we trace him to the present day. Some investigators, when they see an ego in some remote life, at once feel an intuition as to his present personality; but though such a flash of intuition may often be right, it may certainly also sometimes be wrong, and the more laborious method is the only one which is thoroughly reliable. There are cases in which even after many thousands of years the egos of ordinary people are instantly recognisable; but that does not speak particularly well for them, because it means that during all that time they have made but little progress. To try to recognise twenty thousand years ago some one whom one knows at the present day is rather like meeting as an adult some one whom one knew long ago as a little child. In some cases recognition is possible; in other cases the change has been too great. Those who have since become Masters of the Wisdom are often instantly recognisable, even thousands of years ago, but that is for a very different reason. When the lower vehicles are already fully in harmony with the ego, they form themselves in the likeness of the Augoeides, and so change very little from life to life. In the same way when the ego himself is becoming a perfect reflection of the monad, he also changes but little, but gradually grows; and so he is readily recognisable. In examining a past life the easiest way of all would be to let the record drift past us at its natural rate, but that would mean a day's work to look up the events of each day, and a lifetime spent upon each incarnation. As has been said, it is possible to accelerate or retard the passage of events, so that a period of thousands of years may be run through rapidly, or on the other hand any particular picture may be held as long as is desired, so that it may be examined in detail. The acceleration or retardation may perhaps be compared to the hastening or slackening of the movement of a panorama; a little practice gives the power to do this at will, but as in the case of the panorama, the whole record is really there all the time. What I have described as the unrolling of the record rapidly or slowly at will is in reality a movement not of the record, but of the consciousness of the seer. But the impression which it gives is exactly as I have stated it. The records may be said to lie upon one another in layers, the more recent on the top and the older ones behind. Yet even this simile is misleading, because it inevitably suggests the idea of thickness, whereas these records occupy no more space than does the reflection on the surface of a mirror. When the consciousness passes through them, it does not really move in space at all; it rather puts on itself, as a kind of cloak, one or other of the layers of the record, and in doing so it finds itself in the midst of the action of the story. One of the most tiresome tasks connected with this branch of enquiry is the determination of exact dates. In fact, some investigators frankly decline to undertake it, saying that it is not worth the trouble, and that a round number is sufficient for all practical purposes. Probably it is; yet there is a feeling of satisfaction in getting even details as accurate as possible, even at the cost of tedious counting up to very high numbers. Our plan is of course to establish certain fixed points and then use those as a basis for further calculation. One such fixed point is the date 9,564 B.C., when the sinking of Poseidonis took place. Another is the date 75,025 B.C., for the commencement of the great previous catastrophe. In the course of the investigation of the lives of Alcyone we have thus established a number of points, up to the date of 22,662 B.C., and as those lives were worked backwards, and the intervals were therefore counted one by one and not all at once, the scheme was not too insufferably tedious, as it certainly would be with very large numbers. In certain cases astronomical means are also employed. A description of these different methods will be found in my book on Clairvoyance. It is on the whole somewhat easier to read lives forwards than backwards, because in that case we are working with the natural flow of time instead of against it. So the usual plan is to run rapidly to some selected point in the past, and then work slowly forwards from that. It must be remembered that at first sight it is rarely possible to estimate accurately the relative importance of the minor events of a life, so we often skim over it first, to see from what actions or occurrences the really important changes flow, and then go back and describe those more in detail. If the investigator himself happens to be one of the characters in the life which he is examining, there opens before him the interesting alternative of actually putting himself back into that old personality, and feeling over again just what he felt in that ancient time. But in that case he sees everything exactly as he saw it then, and knows no more than he knew then. Few of those who read the life-stories, which are often somewhat meagre outlines, will have any conception of the amount of labour which has been bestowed upon them — of the hours of work which have sometimes been given to the full comprehension of some trifling detail, so that the picture finally presented may be as nearly a true one as is possible. At least our readers may be sure that no pains have been spared to ensure accuracy, though this is often no easy task when we are dealing with conditions and modes of thought as entirely different from our own as though they belonged to another planet. The languages employed are almost always unintelligible to the investigator, but as the thoughts behind the words lie open before him that matters little. On several occasions those who were doing the work have copied down public inscriptions which they could not understand, and have afterwards had them translated on the physical plane by someone to whom the ancient language was familiar. A vast amount of work is represented by the sets of lives which are now appearing; may that labour bring its fruit in a more vivid realisation of the mighty civilisations of the past and a clearer comprehension of the working of the laws of karma and reincarnation. Since the first set of lives which appeared have culminated in the initiation of the hero in his present incarnation, they are surely a valuable study for those whose aspiration is to become the pupils of a Master of the Wisdom, for their own progress should be the more rapid when they have learnt how a brother has attained the goal towards which they are striving. This progress has been made the more easy for them because that brother has taken the trouble to record for us in that most admirable little book At the Feet of the Master the teachings which led him to that goal. About a hundred and fifty of those who are at present members of the Theosophical Society are the prominent characters in the drama which lies before the readers of The Theosophist; and it is deeply interesting to note how those who in the past have often been linked by the ties of blood-relationship, though born this time in countries thousands of miles apart, are yet brought together by their common interest in Theosophical study, and bound to one another more closely by their love for the Masters than they could ever have been by any mere earthly connection. There are two sources of possible error in examining the records clairvoyantly; first, personal bias, and secondly, limited views. There are fundamental differences of temperament, and these cannot but colour the views taken of other planes. The adept has a perfect perception of life, but below that level we are sure to have some prejudices. The man of the world magnifies unimportant details and omits all the important things, because he is in the habit of doing that in daily life; but on the other hand a man starting on the Path may, in his enthusiasm, lose for a time his touch with the ordinary human life from which he has emerged. Even then he has made a great advance, for those who see the inside of things are nearer to the truth than those who see only the outside. The statements of clairvoyants may and must be coloured by opinions already formed, as was clearly the case with Swedenborg, who used a very narrow Christian terminology to describe the facts of the astral plane, and unquestionably saw many things through strong thought-forms which he had made in previous years. He started with certain definite preconceptions, and he made everything which he saw fit into those preconceptions. You know how it is possible down here on the physical plane to start with some preconception about a man and distort his most innocent words and actions to fit that preconception — to read into them ideas of which the unfortunate man never even dreamt. The same thing is possible on the astral plane if one is careless. Theosophical investigators are thoroughly on their guard against this danger of personal bias, and use constant checks of all kinds to avoid it. To minimise the chance of error from this source the Masters usually select people of radically different types to work together. Secondly, there is the danger of a limited view — of taking a part for the whole. For example, there has been much said of the corruption and black magic of later days in Poseidonis, but there existed there, at that very time, a secret society that was quite pure and had high aims. If it had happened that we had seen only this society, we might easily have thought of Poseidonis as a most spiritual country. It is possible, you see that such limited views may be taken as applying to a whole region or community. Generalisations must be checked and verified. There is, however, a general aura of a time or a country, which usually prevents any great mistakes of this sort. A psychic who has not been trained to sense this general aura is often unconscious of it, and thus the untrained man falls into many errors. In fact, long continued observation shows that all untrained psychics are sometimes reliable and sometimes unreliable, and those who consult them always run a risk of being misled.

The records must not be thought of as originally inhering in matter of any kind, though they are reflected in it. In order to read them it is not necessary to come into direct contact with any particular grouping of matter, since they can be read from any distance, when a connection has once been made.

Nevertheless it is also true that each atom retains the record, or perhaps only possesses the power to put a clairvoyant en rapport with the record, of all that has ever happened within sight of it. It is by means of this quality that psychometry is possible. But there is this very curious limitation attached to it that the normal psychometer sees by means of it only what he would have seen if he had been standing at the spot from which the object psychometrised has been taken. For example, if a man psychometrises a pebble which has been lying for ages in a valley, he will see only what has passed during those ages in that valley; his views will be limited by the surrounding hills, just as if he had stood for all those ages where the stone lay, and had witnessed all those things.

True, there is an extension of the psychometric power, by which a man may see the thoughts and feelings of the actors in his drama as well as their physical bodies, and there is also another extension by which, having first established himself in that valley, he may make it the basis of further operations, and so pass over the surrounding hills and see what lies beyond them, and also what has happened there since the stone was removed, and even what occurred before it in some manner arrived there. But the man who can do that will soon be able to dispense with the stone altogether. When we use the senses of the causal body on the counterparts of physical things, we see that every object is thus throwing off pictures of the past. As we develop our inner consciousness and faculties, our life becomes a continuous one; we reach the consciousness of the ego, and then we can travel back even as far as the group-soul in which we lived the animal stage of our life, and look through animal eyes at the human beings of that period and the different world that flourished then. But there are no words to tell what is seen in that way, for the difference of outlook is beyond all expression. Short of that continuous consciousness, however, there is no detailed memory — not even of the most important facts. For example, a person who knows the truth of reincarnation in one life does not necessarily carry his certainty over to the next. I forgot it myself, and so did Mrs. Besant. I did not know anything of it in this life, until I heard of it from outside, and then I instantly recognised its truth. Whatever we have known in the past will spring up in the mind in this way as a certainty when it is next presented before us. As a child I used constantly to dream of a certain house, which I afterwards learned was a house which I had lived in a previous life. It was quite unlike any with which I was at that time familiar on the physical plane, for it was built round a central courtyard (with a fountain and statues and shrubs) into which all the rooms looked. I used to dream of it perhaps three times a week, and I knew every room of it and all the people who lived in it, and used constantly to describe it to my mother, and make ground-plans of it. We called it my dream-house. As I grew older I dreamt of it less and less frequently, until at last it faded from my memory altogether. But one day to illustrate some point my Master showed me a picture of the house in which I had lived in my last incarnation, and I recognised it immediately. Any one may intellectually appreciate the necessity of reincarnation; but actually to prove it one must become, in the causal body, cognisant of the past and future. The only way of casting off the fetter of doubt is by knowledge and intelligent comprehension. Blind belief is a barrier to progress, but this does not mean that we are wrong in accepting intelligently the statements of those who know more than ourselves. There are no authoritative dogmas which must be accepted in the Theosophical Society. There are only statements of the results of investigation, which are offered in the belief that they will be as helpful to other minds as they have been to the investigators.

title: The Inner Life, v. II/Fourth Section/IV


text:
Page:The Poet's Chantry pg 121.jpg

Rh

At Broadstairs, Kent, in the March of 1867, Lionel Johnson was born into a family of Protestant faith and military predilection; a family, indeed, which had seen much service and owned to Irish affiliations. Perhaps it was the old Gaelic and Cymric strain in his blood which kept the boy so free from hostile influences and planted in his heart an early love of Nature and of the past, a certain mystic kinship with the Beautiful Unknown. Then it was his great good fortune to be educated at Winchester, where were passed six years of deep content and inspiration. The memory of Arnold was still redolent there; further back, the memories of Collins, of Otway, of Sir Thomas Browne, and dreams of "half a thousand years" of scholarship. There were the natural beauties, too, of that rich and rural England—Twyford Down, the near-by hills and woodlands, "walks and streets of ancient days," and that "fair, fern-grown Chauntry of the Lilies," white beneath the moonbeams.

Lionel later wrote; and there is scarcely a spire or cranny of the old place on which he has not dwelt in loving veneration. At Winchester, very largely, his character was formed and his future taste determined; there the bent toward scholarship, toward solitude and toward Catholicity became inalienable parts of his life.

title: Page:The Poet's Chantry pg 121.jpg


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The Inner Life, v. II/Fourth Section/V

FORESEEING THE FUTURE It is very difficult to explain how the future is foreseen, but there is no doubt whatever as to the fact. Apart from apparently accidental pictures and flashes of intuition, often effective but not under control, there are two ways in which the future may definitely be foreseen by means of the higher clairvoyance. One is quite readily explicable and comprehensible; the other is not explicable at all. Even with only physical senses we may see enough to foretell certain things. If, for instance, we see a man leading an extravagant life of debauchery, we may safely predict that, unless he changes, he will presently lose both health and fortune. What we cannot tell by physical means is whether he will change or not. But a man who has the sight of the causal body could often tell this, because to him the reserve forces of the other would be visible; he could see what the ego thought of it all, and whether he was strong enough to interfere. No merely physical prediction is certain, because so many of the causes which influence life cannot be seen on this lower plane. But when we raise our consciousness to higher planes we can see more of the causes, and so can come much nearer to calculating the effects. Obviously if all the causes could be perfectly seen and judged, all their results would be readily calculable. Perhaps none but the LOGOS can see all causes in His system, but an adept would surely be able to see all that could affect an ordinary man! So it is probable that by this method an adept could foretell the life of that man quite accurately. For the ordinary man has little will-power; karma assigns to him certain surroundings, and he is the creature of those surroundings; he accepts the fate marked out for him, because he does not know that he can alter it. A more developed man takes hold of his destiny and moulds it; he makes his future what he wills it to be, counteracting the karma of the past by setting fresh forces in motion. So his future is not so easily predicable; but no doubt even in this case an adept, who could see the latent will, could also calculate how he would use it. That method of foretelling the future is entirely comprehensible, and it is clear that the chief events of any life could be prophesied along that line. But there is another way for which we cannot so easily account. One has only to raise the consciousness to a plane sufficiently high, to find the limitation which we call time disappearing, and the past, present and future spread out before us like an open book. How that can be reconciled with our freedom of action I am not prepared to say, but I can testify that the fact is so; when this sight is employed the future is simply there, down to the minutest detail. I believe myself that we are free to choose, though only within certain limits; yet a power, far higher than we, may well know how we shall choose. You know what your dog will do under certain conditions, but that does not in the least make him do it; so a power as much higher than man, as man is than the dog, may know quite well how man will use his fragment of free-will. For it is only a fragment; the plan of the LOGOS is to trust us with a little freedom, and see how we use it. If we use it well and wisely, a little more is given to us; and so long as we continue to use it in harmony with His great intention of evolution, we shall find more and more freedom of choice coming to us. But if we are so foolish as to use it selfishly, so as to bring harm to ourselves and hinder His plan, we shall find ourselves cramped in our action and forced back into line. A child must have freedom to walk, even though that involves a risk of falling, or else he will never learn; but no one would let him make his experiment on the edge of a precipice. So we have freedom enough to do ourselves a little harm if we use it wrongly, but no freedom enough to destroy ourselves altogether. Times of choice certainly come to us, but between those times we have often little option. When we have made our choice we must abide by its consequences. Looked at from above, human destiny seems rather like a network of railway lines. A man starts out on a locomotive, and chooses his line of rail; but when he has chosen it he must run along it, and cannot swerve to the right hand or the left until he reaches the first set of points. Then he may descend and set the points as he will, but having once set them and started on his way he must accept the consequences of his decision; he has no power to turn aside until the next point of choice comes in his way. We must not confuse free-will with freedom of action. Now to possess fully the power of forecasting the future by either of the methods described means considerable development; but isolated pictures reflected from both of them may often be had at very much lower levels. What is called in Scotland second-sight appears to be an example; by that, a future event is often seen with quite a wealth of detail. I remember reading of a case where a seer told a skeptic that a certain man known to them both would die at a given time, and furthermore gave a detailed description of his funeral, mentioning the pall-bearers by name. The skeptic ridiculed the whole prediction, but when the appointed time came the man indicated did die as had been prophesied. The skeptic was astonished, but still more annoyed, and he determined that the rest of the story should not come true, for he himself would interfere to falsify it. He therefore got himself appointed as one of the pall-bearers! But when the day came and the party was just about to start, he was called aside for a moment, and when he returned he found that the procession had already moved away, and that the pall-bearers were those who had been seen in the vision. I have myself had similar pictures of scenes in the future — scenes of no interest to myself, and of no use so far as I could see; but they have always happened exactly as I had seen them, in every case where I have had the opportunity of verifying them. The LOGOS has thought out the whole life of His system, not only as it is now, but as it has been at every moment in the past, and as it will be at every moment in the future. And His thought calls into existence that of which He thinks. These thought-forms are said to be on the cosmic mental plane — two whole sets of seven planes above our set of seven. He thinks out what He intends each of the planetary chains to do; He comes down to smaller details, for He thinks of the type of man for every root-race and sub-race, from the beginning of all, through the Lemurian, the Atlantean, the Aryan and the succeeding races. Thus we may say that on that cosmic mental plane the whole of the system was called into existence simultaneously by that thought — an act of special creation; and it must all be now simultaneously present to Him. So that it may well be that His mighty consciousness to some extent reflects itself even on very much lower levels, and somehow we sometimes catch faint glimpses of those reflection.

title: The Inner Life, v. II/Fourth Section/V


text:
The Inner Life, v. II/Fifth Section

FIFTH SECTION

DEVAS AND NATURE-SPIRITS

title: The Inner Life, v. II/Fifth Section


text:
The Inner Life, v. II/Fifth Section/I

THE AURA OF THE DEVA THE devas are a mighty kingdom of spirits, the next above humanity, just in the same way as the animal kingdom is the next one below it. You may think of them as great and glorious angels, but of course they are of many different kinds, and different degrees of evolution. None of them are so low down as to have physical bodies such as we have. The lowest kind are called kamadevas, and they have astral bodies, while the next higher variety have bodies made of lower mental matter, and so on. They will never be human, because most of them are already beyond that stage, but there are some of them who have been human beings in the past. When men come to the end of their evolution as men, and become something greater than human, several paths open before them and one of these is to join this beautiful deva evolution. Devas and men differ in appearance. For one thing devas are more fluidic — capable of far greater expansion and contraction. Secondly, they have a certain fiery quality which is clearly distinguishable from that of any ordinary human being. The only kind of human being with whom it might be possible to confound them would be the highly-developed — an arhat, for example, who had a large and well-arranged aura; but even then one who had seen both would not be likely to mistake them. The aura of the ordinary man is capable of a certain amount of temporary expansion. It has a definite size, which is the same as that of a section of the causal body, and as the causal body grows, that section becomes larger, and the man has a larger aura; but such increase comes only gradually. If you remember the plates in Man Visible and Invisible, you will recollect that the ordinary man, as far as the causal body is concerned, is far from being fully developed. When you look at the causal body of the developed man, you will see that it is full of colour, so the first stages of improvement in the case of the ordinary man consists in its filling up, not its enlargement. He must get the ovoid filled with different colours, and then expansion begins. If any sudden rush of feeling comes over the ordinary man, it shows itself, as depicted in the book, by the flashing in the aura, and out from it, of the colour of the quality expressed — rose for affection, blue for devotion or green for sympathy; and also in the pulsating bands of that colour, and in the general intensification of everything connected with that emotion. It does not do more than that for the ordinary man; an exceedingly vivid rush of affection, for example, fills the aura with rose and sends out thought-forms of that colour in the direction of its object; but it does not usually appreciably increase, even temporarily, the size of the aura. The developed man, however, has already filled the causal body with colour, so in his case the effect produced by such a rush of affection or devotion or sympathy is not only to suffuse the body with colour and cause a great outrush of thought-forms, but also to produce a considerable temporary expansion, though the aura afterwards contracts to its normal size. Each such outrush of feeling makes the aura permanently just a little larger than before. The more it increases the more power the man has to feel. Intellectual development also increases the aura, but in that case yellow is the predominant colour. Remember that utterly unselfish affection or devotion belongs not to the astral but to the buddhic plane, and that is why when a wave of such feeling rushes over a man it causes great temporary expansion of his aura; yet it never increases to the same tremendous extent as with a deva. The fluctuations in the aura of a deva are so great as to be startling to those who are not used to them. One who recently did us the honour to pay us a visit at Adyar, to give us information about the foundation of the sixth root-race, had normally an aura of about one hundred and fifty yards in diameter; but when he became interested in the teaching which he was giving to us, that aura increased until it reached the sea, which is about a mile away from us. No human being could feel sufficient emotion to produce such an increase as this. Even in the case of a Master the proportionate temporary enlargement would never be so great. I do not mean anything derogatory to the deva, when I say that the Master is steadier, and that the permanent growth of His aura would be as great as that of the deva, but the temporary expansion less in proportion. The texture of the deva's aura is, as it were, looser. The same extent of aura in a human being contains more matter, because it is more condensed or concentrated. The deva in question was no further advanced than an arhat, whose aura might probably extend a third of the distance. But it might easily happen that a clairvoyant who had not seen either before might realise only that he was surrounded by a cloud of glory in either case, and he probably would not know the difference. Expansion and growth take place in the astral and mental bodies as well as in the causal. These three bodies are all of the same extent, although you must remember one is dealing with only sections, and even sections of sections. There used to be a theory afloat that the causal body of the ordinary was about the size of a pea, and that it gradually increased; but that is not correct. The undeveloped causal body is the same size as any other, until the expansion begins. As I have said, the aura of a deva has fiery characteristics which are not easy to describe, though very readily recognisable. All of the colours are more fluidic, and of the nature of flame rather than of cloud. A man looks like an exceedingly brilliant, yet delicate cloud of glowing gas, but a deva looks like a mass of fire. The human form inside the aura of a deva is very much less defined than in a man. He lives more in the circumference, more all over his aura than a man does. Ninety-nine per cent of the matter of a man's aura is within the periphery of the physical body, but the proportion is far less in the case of a deva. Devas usually appear as human beings of gigantic size. Somebody has suggested that there are devas who look as though they were feathered. There is some justification for this idea; I know exactly the appearance that that man was trying to describe, but it is not easy to put it into words. The great green devas whom I saw in Ireland have a very striking appearance, being enormous in size and most majestic. One cannot describe them accurately; in words it is only possible to approximate. The painters usually represent angels with wings and feathers, but I think where these are mentioned in the Christian scriptures they are always symbolical, for when real angels appear they are sometimes mistaken for human beings (as by Abraham, for example); so obviously they could not have had wings. In many cases a deva may be distinguished by the form which he happens to be taking inside his ovoid. It is nearly always a human form. You remember that nature-spirits take human form almost invariably, but with a peculiarity of some sort — always a little odd. I should be disposed to say the same of the devas; but it would be wrong to think of their forms as in any way distorted, for they have a great dignity and majesty. The devas produce thought-forms as we do, but theirs are not usually so concrete as ours until they reach a high level. They have a wide generalising nature, and are constantly making gorgeous plans. They have a colour-language, which is probably not as definite as our speech, though in certain ways it may express more. As regards the size of the aura, that of an ordinary man extends about eighteen inches on each side of the body. If he puts his elbow against his side and stretches out his arm and hand, his finger-tips will be near the circumference. The average Theosophist may be a trifle larger than the quite uninterested person; but there are fine, large auras outside the Society as well. Intense feeling means a larger aura.

We may have a distortion of the aura — it may be a little out of shape. As I have explained before, most people have the small end of the egg upwards, but we who are students tend to grow larger at the top, because the characteristics which we are developing express themselves in matter which naturally floats in the upper part of the aura because of its specific gravity. The increased size of the aura is a prerequisite for initiation, and the qualifications should be visible in it. The aura of a Buddha is said in the books to be three miles in radius; at one stage below His, I have myself seen one which extends about two miles. It naturally increases with each initiation. The devas do not come along our line of development, and do not take such initiations as we do, for the two kingdoms converge at a point higher than the adept. There are ways in which a man can enter the deva evolution, even at our own stage, or lower. You ask if the devas are often near at hand and willing to teach men. They are usually quite willing to expound and exemplify subjects along their own line to any human being who is sufficiently developed to appreciate them. Much instruction is being given in this way; but most people have not prepared themselves for it yet, and so are unable to profit by it. We know nothing of any rule or limit for the work of the devas; they have more lines of activity than we can imagine. There are usually plenty of them here at Adyar. We have many great advantages here, where the Masters come so frequently. In order to see them, all that is required is a little clairvoyance at the right moment. There is a stimulus from these Beings, which some feel in one way and some in others. Perhaps in the earlier incarnation of the Lord Gautama as the first Zoroaster, the fire which is one of the signs of His development may have been one of the reasons why He was mistaken for a deva. It is said that during meditation flames leapt from the aura of the Lord Buddha; but we must remember that an ordinary thought-form would often appear flame-like to a person who was not used to such things. The shining of the Christ at the transfiguration is a similar case. There are plenty of glorious influences all around us here, but their effect upon each one of us can be in proportion to his receptivity. We can take from all this just what we make ourselves fit to take, and no more. A person who is thinking of himself all the while may bathe in this glowing magnetism for a year, and not be one iota the better for it. He may even be the worse; for these tremendously strong vibrations tend to intensify a man's qualities, and sometimes the undesirable are strengthened as well as the desirable; or he may be altogether upset, and become unbalanced and hysterical. To a man who is wise enough to take it, a stay at Adyar is an opportunity such as few men have ever had during history; but what we make of it depends entirely upon ourselves.

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122 When Johnson passed on to New College, Oxford, he was scarcely the usual freshman. He had written and had written well; already a curious maturity of intellect was united to that curious youthfulness of physique which endured even to the end. Several of his published poems date as far back as 1887, 1885, even 1883, albeit their author was but little inclined to rest upon these tentative laurels. The educational process seems to have been in the nature of a triumphal march all along for Lionel Johnson, and the poem "Oxford Nights" is a charming commentary upon his early love of the classics—"dear human books" to him, and nowise formidable. In spite of all this, he very nearly missed his first degree because only one member of the entire examining board could decipher his handwriting!

Shortly after attaining his majority, Lionel Johnson was received into the Catholic Church. The step implied no sudden change of faith, for he would seem to have been Catholic almost from the first by right of intuitive yearning. His instinct was all for legitimacy and orderly development on the one side—on the other, all for the mystical and unworldly, for the human fired with a touch of the divine: and it is this very inevitability which imparts such grace to the story. Here was the return of a son into the arms of his Mother, a great yet simple act; and, beyond a prayer that his beloved England might so return to allegiance, Lionel appeared quite unconscious that the matter could be made one of controversy. It is said that about this time he had thoughts of entering the priesthood. In his "Vigils" (written at Oxford in 1887), one recognises a spiritual concentration very like that of the young Crashaw, lone watcher "beneath Tertullian's roof of angels":

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The Inner Life, v. II/Fifth Section/II

THE SPIRIT OF A TREE The spirit of a great tree, such as a banyan, not infrequently externalises itself, and when it does so it usually takes on a gigantic human form. I have noticed one near here, for example, whose form is about twelve feet high, and looked like a woman the last time I saw it. Its features were quite clear, but its form was misty. There are also nature-spirits which cling round a tree, and do not at all like to be disturbed. I have heard it said that nature-spirits do not cling round the trees which man fells for timber; but such observations as I have been able to make do not bear out this contention, and it seems to me that it must have been invented by men who wished to destroy the tree without feeling any unpleasant twinges of conscience. Although it takes so fine a form, the spirit of a tree is not individualised, nor even within measurable distance of individualisation. Nevertheless, it is already much higher than the lower forms of animal life, and when it passes into the animal kingdom it will come straight into some of the mammalian groups. It has its likes and dislikes, and these show in its aura, though the colour and definition are naturally altogether vaguer and dimmer than in the case of an animal. Indeed, in animals who glow with affection its colour is often remarkably strong; stronger in the case of some animals than that which is shown by some human beings, because it is so much more concentrated and one-pointed. The strong attraction which some people feel for particular kinds of trees or animals depends often upon the line of animal and vegetable evolution through which those people have risen.

title: The Inner Life, v. II/Fifth Section/II


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The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section

SIXTH SECTION

THE WORLDS AND THE RACES OF MEN

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Lionel Johnson's vocation to what Faber has called "the mystical apostolate of the inward life" was, to the last, unwavering; but with characteristic self-criticism he deemed himself better suited to a literary than to a priestly career. Thenceforth he served his art with almost cloistral consecration, finding in the long and painful service a "blessedness beyond the pride of kings."

The first publication of Johnson's poems seems to have been in 1892, when a selection of the earlier ones appeared in the Book of the Rhymers' Club. The beautiful lines "By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross" were included in the number, and attracted some attention from the poetically hopeful. That same year he completed his searching and admirable prose work on The Art of Thomas Hardy. The publication of this volume was delayed until 1894, but its final appearance was the signal for Lionel Johnson's immediate welcome. The name of the youthful critic (he was then only twenty-seven) was coupled with those of Arnold and Pater, and his words were thenceforth prized by the foremost literary journals of London.

The passing of another year added new laurels, for in 1895 his first complete volume of Poems was issued. The power of verses like "The Dark Angel" was recognised on all sides; but Johnson's intense subjectivity, his preoccupation with spiritual ideas and ideals, made the critics somewhat guarded in their praise. Meanwhile, with serene indifference, our poet was preparing a new volume,

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124 to appear in 1897 under the title Ireland, with Other Poems. This contained some of his most exquisite work; religious lyrics that soared up straight as the tapers upon an altar, songs of hapless Innisfail, and chastened meditations upon life and love. And it proved, beyond all doubt, that here was a poet of Other-world fealties, with no intention of conciliating the practical English public. With heart-whole sincerity Johnson followed the gods of his affection—and for the most part, they were neglected divinities. Yet his poet's insight had prophetic clearness; looking backward now, one is almost amazed at the number of public movements which shared his sympathy. There was, first of all, the Catholic reaction in England, admittedly one of the great phenomena of nineteenth-century thought; and Lionel Johnson was as distinctively its product as the Westminster Cathedral. Again, he was one of the first to give ardent support to that Celtic Renaissance which has since proved itself a reality. As an early member of the Irish Literary Society, he mourned with Douglas Hyde over the decline of the Gaelic tongue; while, with his friend William Butler Yeats, he shared hopes for the future of Irish drama. So, too, did Johnson raise his protest against a certain decadent literary influence from across the Channel, and against various native "professors of strange speech" and stranger graces, who "suffer under the delusion that they are very French."

But throughout these years when his critical activity brightened the pages of the Academy, the Daily Chronicle and other papers, Johnson's health was perceptibly failing. His body, always frail, grew less and less able to support the continued mental strain. Even those long, wondrous rambles through Wales and Cornwall, which

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Rh brought the poet so close to Nature's meanings, were powerless to wrest the secret of physical health. Every normal stimulant seemed at last ineffective; and so it happened that the sad, immemorial story was repeated—the story of which Edgar Poe furnished an even more tragic instance. There is slight call to dwell upon the warfare of these later years, or to remember the darkness which for a time eclipsed the star. For full twelve months before his death Johnson appears to have published nothing; from his nearest friends he became a recluse, and all letters and solicitations were met by silence. But scarcely anyone realised the full pathos of his situation until, on 22 September, 1902, the following note came to the editor of the Academy.

"You last wrote to me some time, I think, in the last century, and I hadn't the grace to answer. But I was in the middle of a serious illness which lasted more than a year, during the whole of which time I was not in the open for even five minutes, and hopelessly crippled in hands and feet. After that long spell of enforced idleness I feel greedy for work."

Accompanying this precious evidence of the star's enduring and prevailing brightness were the lines before mentioned, to the memory of his "unforgettably most gracious friend," Walter Pater. One week later—on the night of 29 September—he left his lodgings at Clifford's Inn for a solitary walk. He never returned. Death, by some inscrutable irony, waited tryst with this high and solitary soul in all the vulgar glare of a way-side "public house." There was a slight fall (slight, indeed, for any other, but not for this tabernacle of wrought ivory), and when the unconscious form was raised, the skull was found hopelessly fractured. Mr. Yeats had said the

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Rh high o’er the hoard, of handiwork noblest, brilliantly broidered; so bright its gleam, all the earth-floor he easily saw and viewed all these vessels. No vestige now was seen of the serpent: the sword had ta’en him. Then, I heard, the hill of its hoard was reft, old work of giants, by one alone; he burdened his bosom with beakers and plate at his own good will, and the ensign took, brightest of beacons.—The blade of his lord —its edge was iron —had injured deep one that guarded the golden hoard many a year and its murder-fire spread hot round the barrow in horror-billows at midnight hour, till it met its doom. Hasted the herald, the hoard so spurred him his track to retrace; he was troubled by doubt, high-souled hero, if haply he’d find alive, where he left him, the lord of Weders, weakening fast by the wall of the cave. So he carried the load. His lord and king he found all bleeding, famous chief, at the lapse of life. The liegeman again plashed him with water, till point of word broke through the breast-hoard. Beowulf spake, sage and sad, as he stared at the gold:— “For the gold and treasure, to God my thanks, to the Wielder-of-Wonders, with words I say, for what I behold, to Heaven’s Lord,


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126 word: it was all part of the old world's tragedy that

So Lionel Johnson was carried to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where he whom the world had taught weariness slept for four long days and nights. Then, early in the morning of 4 October, 1902, he awakened in Eternity.

Were it not for the poems, it would be difficult to connect this reticent, fragile struggler with life—always a pathetic and lovable figure—with the serenely impersonal man of letters known to London journalism. But his own hand has bridged the abyss; through his poetical work may we trace the author's spiritual pilgrimage with no great incompleteness. It is not that the pages are frequently autobiographical—it is simply that both choice of theme and treatment are essentially characteristic. Some of the earliest of these poems show the strong influence of Classical literature: "Sertorius" is one instance, and "Julian at Eleusis," that plaintive elegy upon the death of pagan worship, is another. But "The Classics," with its brief and trenchant appreciation of the Greek and Latin writers, is the most complete expression of a culture which very largely moulded Johnson's own literary style. Upon every page of his work lies this stamp of scholarship; one recognises it in the exquisite, unobtrusive chiselling of his verse-effects, but even more fundamentally in his graceful ordering of ideas and his masterly control of passion and imagination. Considering his poetry as a whole, in matter rather than form, we may safely define the mainsprings of inspiration as Nature, Celtic Memories and Catholic Faith. A glorious trio it was, falling into subdivisions of

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Rh almost equal majesty: exaltation of sky and sea and earth, musings upon the immemorial tragedy of life and death, chivalrous loyalty to Ireland, deep love and reverence for the past, for pagan culture and mediæval mysticism, with wistful visions of eternity. Even in poems of personal or reminiscent origin, such as "Winchester" or the series to "Malise," most of these elements are discoverable, blended into a harmony which is our poet's very own—his characteristic message to the world.

Because of the universal potency of external beauty, it may be that Johnson's widest appeal will be made through his Nature poems. "Sancta Silvarum," written as early as 1886, expresses in lines of powerful cadence the youth's passionate sympathy with the Nature world, his quick response to the

his awed recognition of one mighty Will that shapes the course of star and blossom, of wind and sea. For the most part it was the wilder and more desolate aspect that he loved to contemplate—Nature upon rain-driven moors, where "the wet earth breathes ancient fair fragrance forth," rather than in "vineyard and orchard, flowers and mellow fruit."

Such is the exalting burden of "Gwynedd";

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128 but the author of "Gwynedd," be it remembered, had never known the lotus land of Italy.

The blending of abstract and concrete throughout these poems is peculiarly interesting: Lionel Johnson's ideal beauty is not invariably wrapped in cloud or dazzling in the splendour of sunrise—it is both sought and found beneath some actual, earthly symbol. Hence this poet was increasingly given to the painting of word pictures, little vignettes of an almost Cowper-like nicety, which crystallise some momentary aspect of Nature with the soulful simplicity of Wordsworth himself. "In England" abounds in these sketches, as of

or again of:

A thousand intimate recollections of Johnson's own rambles intensify the personal note, and very charmingly; he sings of the sea-gulls wheeling off in "a snowstorm of white wings," and of the shy rabbits who hopped away at his approach, the sunlight glowing "red their startled ears." Our poet once wrote that while he could but ill understand the temptation to worship the sun, he found entirely comprehensible that other temptation toward worship of the earth—"not with a vague, pantheistic emotion, but with a personal love for the sensible ground beneath his feet." It is impossible not to feel this tenderness, this sense of omnipresent kinship throughout his Nature pictures; in his love of the "freshness of early spray," and of sky and field and moor. The reality of it all reaches final expression in those poignant lines of "Cadgwith":

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144 for the grace that I give such gifts to my folk or ever the day of my death be run! Now I’ve bartered here for booty of treasure the last of my life, so look ye well to the needs of my land! No longer I tarry. A barrow bid ye the battle-famed raise for my ashes. ’Twill shine by the shore of the flood, to folk of mine memorial fair on Hronës Headland high uplifted, that ocean-wanderers oft may hail Beowulf’s Barrow, as back from far they drive their keels o’er the darkling wave.” From his neck he unclasped the collar of gold, valorous king, to his vassal gave it with bright-gold helmet, breastplate, and ring, to the youthful thane: bade him use them in joy. “Thou art end and remnant of all our race, the Wægmunding name. For Wyrd hath swept them, all my line, to the land of doom, earls in their glory: I after them go.” This word was the last which the wise old man harbored in heart ere hot death-waves of balefire he chose. From his bosom fled his soul to seek the saints’ reward.


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There has been a general acceptation of Johnson as a poet of the Irish revival which is both true and false. The heart has its own fatherland; and, while as fundamentally English in many ways as Newman himself, Johnson did throw in his lot unhesitatingly with the fortunes of the Celt. It was at first, no doubt, a poetical and devotional attraction (albeit blood, too, called, on the paternal side); the response of a keenly imaginative nature to the half-revealed magic of Celtic lore—that magic of fire and of tears. Out of this grew Lionel's passion for Ireland; albeit the glamour of her romance and her mystery, her thirst for freedom and her unnumbered woes, eventually won from him the allegiance of a very son. That fine and masterly poem which forms the title of his second volume is probably the richest fruit of this self-dedication. From the elemental pathos of "Ireland's" opening stanzas, through the bitter story of wrong and martyrdom, and the cold, terrible arraignment of the land's oppressors, the music sweeps with the majesty at once of death and of victory:

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text: The Oldest English Epic/Chapter 1/Beowulf 38