Fashionable Philosophy, and Other Sketches Part 6

After a late dinner, we usually had concerts, b.a.l.l.s, and private theatricals.

On the day following my arrival, Ushas explained to me the relationship in which we were to stand towards each other. She said that marriage was an inst.i.tution as yet unknown to them, because their organisms had not yet attained the conditions to which they were struggling. They had progressed so far, however, that they had discovered the secret of eternal youth. Indeed, Ushas herself was 590 years old. I was not surprised at this, as something of the same kind has occurred more than once to _rishis_ or very advanced _mahatmas_. As a rule, however, they are too anxious to go to _nirvana_, to stay on earth a moment longer than necessary, and prefer rather to come back at intervals: this, we all know, has occurred at least six times in the case of Buddha, as Mr Sinnett so well explains. At the same time Ushas announced without words, but with a slight blush, and a smile of ineffable tenderness, that from the day of my birth she knew that I was destined to be her future husband, and that at the appointed time we should be brought together. We now had our period of probation to go through together, and she told me that all the other _chelas_ here were going through the necessary training preparatory to wedlock like myself, and that there would be a general marrying all round, when the long-expected culminating epoch should arrive.

Meantime, in order to enter upon the first stage of my new _chela_-ship, it became necessary for me to forget all the experiences which I had acquired during the last twenty years of my life, as she explained that it would be impossible for my mind to receive the new truths which I had now to learn so long as I clung to what she called "the fantasies" of my _mahatma_-ship. I cannot describe the pang which this announcement produced. Still I felt that nothing must impede my search after truth; and I could not conceal from myself that, if in winning it I also won Ushas, I was not to be pitied. Nor to this day have I ever had reason to regret the determination at which I then arrived.

It would be impossible for me in the compa.s.s of this article to describe all my experiences in the new life to which I dedicated myself, nor indeed would it be proper to do so; suffice it to say, that I progressed beyond my Ushas' most sanguine expectations. And here I would remark, that I found my chief stimulus to exertion to be one which had been completely wanting in my former experience. It consisted simply in this, that altruism had been subst.i.tuted for egotism. Formerly, I made the most herculean spiritual effort to tide myself over the great period of danger--the middle of the fifth round. "That," as Mr Sinnett correctly says, "is the stupendous achievement of the adept as regards his own personal interests;" and of course our own interests were all that I or any of the other _mahatmas_ ever thought of. "He has reached," pursues our author, "the farther sh.o.r.e of the sea in which so many of mankind will perish. He waits there, in a contentment which people cannot even realise without some glimmering of spirituality--the sixth sense--themselves, for the arrival of his future companions." This is perfectly true. I always found that the full enjoyment of this sixth sense among _mahatmas_ was heightened just in proportion to the numbers of other people who perish, so long as you were safe yourself.

Here among the Sisters, on the other hand, the principle which was inculcated was, "Never mind if you perish yourself, so long as you can save others;" and indeed the whole effort was to elaborate such a system by means of the concentration of spiritual forces upon earth, as should be powerful enough to redeem it from its present dislocated and unhappy condition. To this end had the efforts of the Sisters been directed for so many centuries, and I had reason to believe that the time was not far distant when we should emerge from our retirement to be the saviours and benefactors of the whole human race. It followed from this, of course, that I retained all the supernatural faculties which I had acquired as a _mahatma_, and which I now determined to use, not for my own benefit as formerly, but for that of my fellow-creatures, and was soon able--thanks to additional faculties, acquired under Ushas' tutorship--to flit about the world in my astral body without inconvenience.

I happened to be in London on business the other day in this ethereal condition, when Mr Sinnett's book appeared, and I at once projected it on the astral current to Thibet. I immediately received a communication from Ushas to the effect that it compelled some words of reply from the sisterhood, and a few days since I received them. I regret that it has been necessary to occupy so much of the reader's time with personal details. They were called for in order that he should understand the source of my information, and my peculiar qualifications for imparting it. It will be readily understood, after my long connection with the Thibetan brotherhood, how painful it must be to me to be the instrument chosen not merely of throwing a doubt upon "the absolute truth concerning nature, man, the origin of the universe, and the destinies toward which its inhabitants are tending," to use Mr Sinnett's own words, but actually to demolish the whole structure of Esoteric Buddhism! Nor would I do this now were it not that the publication of the book called by that name has reluctantly compelled the sisterhood to break their long silence. If the Thibetan Brothers had only held their tongues and kept their secret as they have done hitherto, they would not now be so rudely disturbed by the Thibetan Sisters.

"The Sisters of Thibet," writes Ushas, of course with an astral pen in astral ink, "owe their origin to a circ.u.mstance which occurred in the time of Sankaracharya, erroneously supposed by the initiated to be an incarnation of Buddha. This teacher, who lived more than a century before the Christian era, dwelt chiefly upon the necessity of pursuing _gnyanam_ in order to obtain _moksha_--that is to say, the importance of secret knowledge to spiritual progress, and the consummation thereof. And he even went so far as to maintain that a man ought to keep all such knowledge secret from his wife. Now the wife of Sankaracharya, whose name was Nandana, 'she who rejoices,' was a woman of very profound occult attainments; and when she found that her husband was acquiring knowledges which he did not impart to her, she did not upbraid him, but laboured all the more strenuously in her own sphere of esoteric science, and she even discovered that all esoteric science had a twofold element in it--masculine and feminine--and that all discoveries of occult mysteries engaged in by man alone, were, so to speak, lop-sided, and therefore valueless. So she conveyed herself secretly, by processes familiar to her, away from her husband, and took refuge in this region of Thibet in which we now dwell, and which, with all his knowledges, Sankaracharya was never able to discover, for they were all subjective, and dealt not with the material things of this world. And she a.s.sociated herself here in the pursuit of knowledge with a learned man called Svasar, 'he who is friendly,' who considered secret knowledge merely the means to an end, and even spiritual progress valuable only in so far as it could be used to help others; and they studied deep mysteries as brother and sister together--and he had been a _mahatma_ or _rishi_ of the highest grade--and, owing to the aid he derived from his female a.s.sociate, he discovered that the subjective conditions of _nirvana_ and _devachan_ were the result of one-sided male imaginings which had their origin in male selfishness; and this conviction grew in him in the degree in which the Parthivi Mutar, or 'Earth Mother,' became incarnated in Nandana. Thus was revealed to him the astounding fact that the whole system of the occult adepts had originated in the natural brains of men who had given themselves up to egotistical transcendental speculation--in fact, I cannot better describe the process than in the words of Mr Sinnett himself, where he alludes to 'the highly cultivated devotees to be met with occasionally in India, who build up a conception of nature, the universe and G.o.d, entirely on a metaphysical basis, and who have evolved their systems by sheer force of transcendental thinking--who will take some established system of philosophy as its groundwork, and amplify on this to an extent which only an oriental metaphysician could dream of.'

"This, Mr Sinnett chooses to a.s.sume, was not the fact with the Thibet Brothers; but, in reality, this was just what they did. The fact that they have outstripped other similar transcendentalists is due to the circ.u.mstance that the original founders of the system were men of more powerful will and higher attainments than any who have succeeded them.

And on their death they formed a compact spiritual society in the other world, impregnating the wills and imaginations of their disciples still on earth with their fantastic theories, which they still retain there, of a planetary chain, and the spiral advance of the seven rounds, and the septenary law, and all the rest of it. In order for human beings to come into these occult knowledges, it is necessary, as Mr Sinnett admits, for the adepts to go into trance-conditions--in other words, to lose all control of their normal, or as they would probably call them, their objective faculties. While in this condition, they are the sport of any invisible intelligences that choose to play upon them; but fearing lest they may be accused of this, they erroneously a.s.sert that no such intelligences of a high order have cognisance of what happens in this world. The fact that _mahatmas_ have powers which appear supernatural proves nothing, as Mr Sinnett also admits that innumerable _fakirs_ and _yojis_ possess these as well, whose authority on occultism he deems of no account, when he says that 'careless inquirers are very apt to confound such persons with the great adepts of whom they vaguely hear.'

There can be no better evidence of the falsity of the whole conception than you are yourself. For to prove to you that you were the sport of a delusion, although your own experience as a _mahatma_ in regard to the secret processes of nature, and the sensations attendant upon subjective conditions, exactly corresponded to those of all other _mahatmas_, you have, under my tutelage, at various times allowed yourself to fall into trance-conditions, when, owing to occult influences which we have brought to bear, a totally different idea concerning 'nature, man, the origin of the universe, and the destinies toward which its inhabitants are tending,' was presented to your sixth sense, which appeared 'absolute truth' at the time, and which would have continued to seem so, had I not had the power of intromitting you through trance-conditions into a totally different set of apparent truths on the same subject, which were no more to be relied upon than the other. The fact is, that no seer, be he Hindoo, Buddhist, Christian, or of any other religion, is to be depended upon the moment he throws himself into abnormal organic conditions. We see best, as you have now learnt, into the deepest mysteries with all our senses about us. And the discovery of this great fact was due to woman; and it is for this reason that _mahatmas_ shrink from female _chelas_--they are afraid of them. According to their philosophy, women play a poor part in the system of the universe, and their chances of reaching the blissful condition of _nirvana_ are practically not to be compared with those of the men.

"There is no such thing as subjectivity apart from objectivity. Mr Sinnett very properly tells you 'that occult science regards force and matter as identical, and that it contemplates no principle in nature as wholly immaterial. The clue to the mystery involved,' he goes on to say, 'lies in the fact, directly cognisable by occult experts, that matter exists in other states than those which are cognisable by the five senses;' but it does not become only cognisable subjectively on that account. You know very well, as an old _mahatma_, that you can cognise matter now with your sixth sense as well as with your five while in a perfectly normal condition, that you could not cognise except in trance- conditions before, and which even then you could only cognise incorrectly. The much-vaunted sixth sense of _mahatmas_ needs sharpening as much as their logic, for you can no more separate subjectivity from objectivity than you can separate mind from matter. Christians, if they desire it, have a right to a heaven of subjective bliss, because they consider that they become immaterial when they go there; but Buddhists, who admit that they are in a sense material while in _devachan_ or _nirvana_, and deny that their consciousness in that condition is in the same sense objective as well as subjective, talk sheer nonsense." Ushas used a stronger expression here, but out of consideration for my old _mahatma_ friends, I suppress it.

"'_Devachan_', says our Guru--speaking through his disciple in order to escape from this dilemma--'will seem as real as the chairs and tables round us; and remember that above all things, to the profound philosophy of occultism, are the chairs and tables, and the whole objective scenery of the world, unreal and merely transitory delusions of sense.' If, as he admits, they are material, why should they be more unreal than the chairs and tables in _devachan_, which are also material, since occult science contemplates no principle in nature as wholly immaterial? The fact is, that there is no more unreal and transitory delusion of sense than those 'states' known to the adepts as _devachan_ or _nirvana_; they are mere dreamlands, invented by metaphysicians, and lived in by them after death--which are used by them to encourage a set of dreamers here to evade the practical duties which they owe to their fellow-men in this world. 'Hence it is possible,' says our author, 'for yet living persons to have visions of _devachan_, though such visions are rare and only one- sided, the ent.i.ties in _devachan_, sighted by the earthly clairvoyant, being quite unconscious themselves of undergoing such observation.' This is an erroneous and incorrect a.s.sumption on the Guru's part. 'The spirit of the clairvoyant,' he goes on, 'ascends into the condition of _devachan_ in such rare visions, and thus becomes subject to the vivid delusions of that existence.' Vivid delusions indeed, the fatal consequences of which are, that they separate their votaries from the practical duties of life, and create a cla.s.s of idle visionaries who, wrapping themselves in their own vain conceits, would stand by and allow their fellow-creatures to starve to death, because, as Mr Sinnett frankly tells us, 'if spiritual existence, vivid subjective consciousness, really does go on for periods greater than the periods of intellectual physical existence, in the ratio, as we have seen in discussing the devachanic condition, of 80 to 1 at least, then surely man's subjective existence is more important than his physical existence and intellect in error, when all its efforts are bent on the amelioration of the physical existence.'

"This is the ingenious theory which the Brothers of Thibet have devised to release them from acknowledging that they have any other Brothers in this world to whom they are under sacred obligations besides themselves, and which, owing to the selfish principle that underlies it, has a tendency to sap the foundations of all morality. So that we have this nineteenth-century apostle of Esoteric Buddhism venturing to a.s.sert to his Western readers that 'it is not so rough a question as that--whether man be wicked or virtuous--which must really, at the final critical turning-point, decide whether he shall continue to live and develop into higher phases of existence, or cease to live altogether.' We, the Sisters of Thibet, repudiate and denounce in the strongest terms any such doctrine as the logical outcome either of the moral precepts of Buddha or of the highest esoteric science. Let the Brothers of Thibet beware of any longer cherishing the delusion that the Sisters of Thibet, because their existence is purely objective, 'are therefore unreal and merely transitory delusions of sense.' We also have a secret to reveal--the result of twenty centuries of occult learning--and we formally announce to you, the so-called adepts of occult science, that if you persist in disseminating any more of your deleterious metaphysical compounds in this world under the name of Esoteric Buddhism, we will not only no longer refrain, as we have hitherto done, from tormenting you in your subjective conditions while still in your _rupas_, but, by virtue of the occult powers we possess, will poison the elements of _devachan_ until subjective existence becomes intolerable there for your fifth and sixth principles,--your _manas_ and your _buddhis_,--and _nirvana_ itself will be converted into h.e.l.l."

ADOLPHUS: A COMEDY OF AFFINITIES.

_Dramatis personae_.

The HON. ADOLPHUS GRESHAM.

The EARL OF GULES.

ADOLPHUS PLUMPER.

Mr FLAMM.

LADY ELAINE BENDORE.

The COUNTESS OF GULES.

Mrs PLUMPER.

CHARLES.

SCENE I.--A railway carriage. The Earl and Countess of Gules--Lady Elaine Bendore--The Hon. Adolphus Gresham.

_Elaine_. I must really beg of you to stop, Mr Gresham. You cannot think how you pain and surprise me. I am sure I never had the least idea! Besides, supposing papa or mamma should hear you.

_Adolphus_. Lord Gules is asleep, and her ladyship is absorbed in her novel; besides, you may be sure that I have taken care to ascertain their sentiments before I venture to say what I have to you. Oh, Elaine, if I could but hope!

_Train stops_. _Guard_ [_looking in_]. All the smoking-carriages are engaged, gentlemen; but you'll find room in here.

[_Enter_ Adolphus Plumper _and_ Mr Flamm. Flamm _seats himself opposite_ Elaine, _and_ Plumper _opposite_ Adolphus.

_Flamm_ [_aside to_ Plumper]. By Jove, Plumper! you never told me you had a twin brother. Polish up your spectacles, old man--you've made 'em damp by that race we had to catch the train--and look at your _vis-a-vis_.

[Plumper _takes off his spectacles with great deliberation, wipes them, puts them on again, and stares at_ Adolphus.

_Plumper_ [_aside_] _stammering_. Dud-dud-dud-do you see a likeness? Dud- dud-dud-don't see it myself. He's bab-bab-bab-bald, and he's not sh-sh- sh-ort-sighted.

_Fl_. Probably he doesn't stammer either. I'll try presently.

Positively, if he wore spectacles and a wig of your hair, I shouldn't know you apart.

_Lady Gules_ [_aside to_ Elaine]. Did you ever see anything more extraordinary, my dear? What a horrid caricature of our dear Adolphus Gresham!

_El_. [_aside_]. I can't say I agree with you, mamma. I think he has a more intelligent expression--more soul, I should say.

_Lady G_. You are quite ridiculous, Elaine. Half the girls in London have bean setting their caps at Mr Gresham for the last few seasons, till they have given him up as invulnerable; and now that you have a chance of becoming one of the richest peeresses in England, you do nothing but snub him. He is as clever and charming as he will be rich when his father dies, and is certain to become a Cabinet Minister some day. He's considered the most rising young man of his party.

_El_. That he may easily be, considering he is a Conservative. Oh, mamma! how can you suppose that I would ever marry a Conservative?

_Lady G_. I have no patience with you, Elaine; a nice mess your Radicals have made of it with Egypt and Ireland. But we won't go into that now; only remember this, if he proposes, and you don't accept him, your father and I will be seriously displeased.

_El_. [_sighing_]. I'm sure the gentleman opposite is a friend of the people. See! he's reading the 'Pall Mall.' [_Aside to_ Adolphus.] Mamma has just been telling me that she sees such a strange likeness between you and your opposite neighbour.

_Ad_. Ah! Plumper--if the name on his hat-box is to be believed; A.

Plumper, too. I wonder whether A. stands for Adolphus? I don't feel flattered.

_El_. Now that is nothing but Tory prejudice. I am sure he looks very distinguished, though his name is Plumper. I have no doubt he's a self- made man.

_Pl_. Pup-pup-pup-pardon me, madam; shall I put the window up? I see you feel the dud-dud-dud-draught.

_El_. Thank you. No; I prefer it open. But may I ask you to lend me your 'Echo'? it's a paper I like so much, and so seldom see.

_Fl_. Cheap, but not nasty; enjoys a vast circulation among the middle cla.s.ses. The Conservatives are as far behind us in journalistic capacity as they are in parliamentary eloquence.

_Pl_. You must make allowances for my friend. He's on the pup-pup-pup- press himself, and expects shortly to get into Pup-pup-pup-Parliament.

_El_. Oh, I do so hope he will! You don't think there is a reaction setting in, do you? Papa says that Mr Gladstone is losing his hold on the country.

_Lord Gules_ [_awaking with a snort_]. Not, however, before the country has lost its hold upon him. He cares no more for his country, sir, than I do for the Chinese in California. He's a traitor, sir, to his principles; he's--