When we first criticised Mrs. Besant's newly-found Theosophy, and
thereby incurred her severe displeasure, we predicted that her
enthusiastic nature would carry her far on the road, which she thought
of true philosophy, but which we thought of gross superstition. Our
prediction has been realised; and, unless for some accident, or some
sudden turn in Mrs. Besant's mind or life, it will be realised still
further. In this, as in other matters (as the French say) it is the
first step which costs, because it involves all the following steps.
Mrs. Besant placed her feet upon the high road of credulity when she
succumbed to the Theosophical high priestess, whose life is a highly
interesting and instructive chapter in the history of imposture. Madame
Blavatsky had seen much of the world, and was up to most things. She
had a surprising power of bamboozling people of some intelligence and
culture. The broad-set eyes, and the great tiger-bar between and over
them, indicated the species to which she belonged. Mrs. Besant, with
her innocences and enthusiasms, was a baby in the hands of this
female Cagliostro. She actually gave the Blavatsky credit for what she
obviously did not possess. Her manners, for instance, were not such as
might be expected from one who had tasted of spiritual wisdom at its
secret sources; while her pretentious ignorance was enough to alarm
any student not under the glamor of her audacity. She made the most
grotesque mistakes in science, while pompously setting right in their
own province such colossal authorities as Darwin and Haeckel. She had
certainly read very widely (or got others to read very widely for her)
in "occult" literature; but wherever one's own knowledge enabled one to
test, she was a poor smatterer; and the same judgment is delivered upon
her by specialists in most of the fields she invaded. It was not her
learning or her intellectual power that captivated Mrs. Besant; it
was her strong personality, her masculine dominance, her crafty
self-possession. From the first minute of her enchantment, Mrs. Besant
lost all sense of logic in relation to Theosophy. For instance, it
was asserted, and the assertion was supported by positive,
detailed-evidence, that the Blavatsky had practised the grossest
imposture in India. And how did Mrs. Besant dispose of these charges?
She says she read them, and immediately joined the Theosophical
Society--as though that were any _answer_. It is like saying, "I don't
rebut the evidence against the prisoner in the dock, but I shall shake
hands with him." What possible effect could that have on the sensible
part of the jury? But this sort of logic has been displayed by Mrs.
Besant ever since; indeed, she seems to have a dim perception of her
weakness, for she dares not discuss Theosophy, or any part of it, with
an out-and-out Freethinker--one who would subject it to the critical
tests with which she herself was familiar when she stood upon the
Secular platform.
There is one aspect of Mrs. Besant's advocacy of Theosophy which we
censured at first, and which we now think is something short of honest.
Mrs. Besant used to present Secularism in its naked truth, to be
embraced or rejected; but she follows a different course in regard to
Theosophy; she puts its plausible features forward and conceals the
rest, so that people who have heard her are positively astonished when
they are told of some of her printed teachings. This seems especially
the case when she addresses meetings, somewhat too chivalrously
organised by Freethinkers. Now this is not fair, it is not really
honest; though it may be in accord with the ethics of those who
divide truth into "exoteric" and "esoteric." To our mind, it is rather
suggestive of the spider and the fly. "Will you walk into my parlor?"
"Oh yes," says the giddy fly, "it looks so nice, positively inviting?"
But what of the other rooms in your house; your garret near the sky,
where you do star-gazing, and your basement, where crawl the foul things
of savage superstition?
Many of our readers have heard Mrs. Besant in the sweet persuasive vein,
and felt pleased if rather muddled. For their sakes, and not for our
own satisfaction, we shall criticise her little volume on _Death--and
After?_ just issued as No. III. of a series of Theosophical Manuals.
When we have done they will know more about Theosophy than if they had
listened to Mrs. Besant (especially from Freethought platforms) for ten
thousand years.
First, let us notice Mrs. Besant's attitude. Her devotion to the
Blavatsky is complete; she mentions the great woman with profound
veneration, swears to all she taught, and, in fact, just stews down the
Blavatsky's voluminous nonsense. Mrs. Besant is also a patient disciple
of the Masters--to wit, the Mahatmas. These Masters of Wisdom never
appear for inspection. They lurk in the secret fastnesses of Tibet,
which is a very unexplored part of the world, large enough to hide a
good many things, even things that do not exist. They know a lot, but
what dribbles out of them is very commonplace when it is not pompously
silly. They inhabit higher planes of life than our greatest saints and
sages, but somehow they have done nothing for Tibet, which is one of the
poorest, dirtiest, and most degraded countries on earth. Still, they are
going to give a tremendous lift to the civilisation of Europe; and if we
live long enough we shall see what we _do_ see. Mahatmas are really the
distinctive feature of Theosophy; it is absolutely nothing without them;
and, in our opinion, they are a most farcical swindle Madame Blavatsky
created _these_ out of her own fertile imagination, she put them where
they could not be found, and she said, "If you want to know anything
about them come to me; I am the chosen vehicle of their sublime
revelations." And if you laughed at her Mahatmas, she was capable
of indulging in expletives that would strike envy into the soul of a
trooper. How curious it is, if these Mahatmas are real personages,
that they do not communicate with _our_ Masters of Wisdom. Why do they
neglect our Spencers and Huxleys? Why do they choose to speak through
a woman like Madame Blavatsky, or a popular lecturess like Mrs. Besant?
Why are they so fond of the ladies? Cannot they have some dealings
with _a man_, a man of great eminence as a philosopher, of high and
undisputed character, and of vast influence with the educated and
thoughtful classes? Why, in short, do the Mahatmas confine their
attention to smaller persons _with fish to fry?_
Relying upon these Mahatmas, and upon Madame Blavatsky, her great guide,
philosopher, and friend, Mrs. Besant has an extremely easy task. She
makes no attempt to prove, she simply asserts, and it seems to be a
kind of blasphemy to ask for evidence. She dishes everything up in Hindu
terminology, on the ground that "the English language has as yet no
equivalents." But will it ever have them? Never, we suspect, by
the assistance of Theosophists. The oriental lingo is part of the
fascination to those who like to look profound on a small stock of
learning. Besides, it imposes on the open-mouthed; and, if the Hindu
terminology were translated into vernacular English, they would probably
exclaim, "Good God! there's nothing in it." It is all very well for Mrs.
Besant to pour out second-hand praise of "technical terms." We all know
their value. But how is it we have not got them already? Because--and
this is the only answer--because we are ignorant of the _things_.
Western experience does not coincide with oriental dreams.
Mrs. Besant opens her little volume with the famous story of the
conversion to Christianity of Edwin, but she tells it very loosely, and
in fact wrongly; which is a proof that the infallibility of the Mahatmas
has not fallen upon their disciple. She states that while Paulinus,
the Christian missionary, was speaking to-Edwin of life, death, and
immortality, a bird flew in through a window, circled the hall, and flew
out again into the darkness; whereupon the Christian priest "bade the
king see in the flight of the bird within the-hall the transitory life
of man, and claimed for his faith that it showed the soul, in passing
from the' hall of life, winging its way, not in the darkness of night,
but in the sunlit radiance of a more glorious world." Now the bird did
not fly into the hall as Paulinus was speaking, nor did he preach this
sermon upon its movements. It was one of Edwin's suite who introduced
the bird's flight as a metaphor, reminding the king that sometimes at
supper, in the winter, a sparrow would fly in out of the storm, entering
at one door and passing out at another, staying but a minute, and after
that minute returning to winter as from winter it came. "Such is the
life of man," said the Saxon speaker, "and of what follows it, or what
has preceded it, we are altogether ignorant; wherefore, if this new
doctrine should bring anything more certain, it well deserves to be
followed." This is how the incident is related by Bede, though it is
probably apocryphal; nevertheless it ought not to be hashed up by fresh
cooks; and if the matter is in itself of trifling importance, it is as
well to be accurate, especially when you pretend a close acquaintance
with the Masters of Wisdom.
Many hundred years have elapsed since Paulinus talked with Edwin, and
to-day, says Mrs. Besant, there are "more people in Christendom
who question whether a man has a spirit to come anywhence or to go
any-whither, than, perhaps, in the world's history could ever before
have been found at one time." We are also reminded that man has always
been asking whence the soul comes, and whither it goes, and "the answers
have varied with the faiths." _This_ is true, at any rate; but it does
not suggest to Mrs. Besant any lesson of modesty or hesitation. Despite
the discord of so many ages, she is most coolly dogmatic. It does
not, apparently, occur to her to ask _why_ the discord has perpetually
prevailed. In matters of science, after investigation and discussion,
the world comes to an agreement; in matters of theology (or, if you
like, Theosophy) the world grows more and more at variance. _Why_ is
this? There must be an explanation. And to our mind the explanation is
very simple. In matters of science men deal with _facts_, while in those
other matters they deal with _fancies_, and the more freedom you give
them the greater will be the variety of their preferences.
Mrs. Besant's new superstition of Theosophy is, in our judgment, more
foolish and less dignified than Christianity. We are therefore moved
to say that she does injustice to Christianity in representing it as
responsible for all the black paraphernalia and lugubrious ceremonies
of death. There was, indeed, nothing of all this among the primitive
Christians. Such things belong to the world's common customs and
superstitions. Black was not merely a sign of sorrow, or at least of
depression; it was also thought to be protective against ghosts; so that
these trappings and suits of woe belong to the very "spookology" which
is an integral part of Theosophy. Of course I freely admit that the
ordinary gloom of death has been deepened by the Christian doctrine of
hell, though Mrs. Besant seems to think otherwise. She inclines to
the belief that the Western fear of death is ethnological, being the
antithesis of its vigorous life. But it may be objected that the old
Romans were comparatively free from this terror. On the other hand, it
must be allowed that Mrs. Besant is right in her observation that "the
more mystical dreamy East" has little dread of the "shadow cloaked from
head to foot," since it is ever ever seeking to escape from "from the
thraldom of the senses," and is apt to look upon "the disembodied state
as eminently desirable and as most conducive to unfettered thought."
In other words, that "when the brains are out," as Macbeth says, man's
intellect undergoes a wonderful improvement; an opinion, by the way,
which is quite in harmony with Theosophical teaching.
After giving the Theosophical view of the "body," Mrs. Besant says that
when once we _thus_ come to regard it, death loses all its terrors. But
this is not the sole achievement of Theosophy. What terror had death to
Charles Bradlaugh? What terror had death to Mrs. Besant while she was
an Atheist? There are thousands of sceptics who do not want Theosophy
to redeem them from a terror which they have long cast behind them, with
the superstition by which it was bred and cherished.
Let us pause to remark that Mrs. Besant quotes from _Paradise Lost_ its
magnificent description of Death. She appreciates at least the splendor
of the diction, but she does not notice how poor in comparison are the
words she quotes from her "Masters." How is it that Milton beats the
Mahatmas? What objects they look when the great English poet rises "with
his singing robes about him"! How thin their music when he strikes upon
his thrilling lyre, or blows his rousing trumpet, or rolls from his
mighty organ the floods of entrancing harmony!
But to return to the main subject. It is absurd, as Mrs. Besant points
out, to claim for Christianity that it "brought life and immortality
to light." The belief in a future life was an intense conviction--or,
perhaps we should say, a perfect truism--among the people of ancient
India and Egypt. Yet here again, with her taste for dogmatic rhetoric,
Mrs. Besant gratuitously exaggerates. "The whole ancient world," she
says, "basked in the full sunshine of belief in the immortality of man,
lived in it daily, voiced it in their literature, and went with it in
calm serenity through the gate of Death." Now "calm serenity" is bad
tautology, and the general assertion of this passage is equally open
to censure. "The whole ancient world," as the Americans would say, is a
large order. Greece and Rome (to say nothing of the pre-Maccabean Jews)
were very important parts of "the whole ancient world," and whoever
asserts that _their_ citizens "basked in the sunshine of belief in
immortality" is simply making a confession of ignorance. Greek and Roman
poets and philosophers in many cases doubted, or even denied, a life
beyond the grave. Even when the doctrine was entertained it does not
appear to have been productive of much "sunshine." Does not the poet
make the shade of the great Achilles say that he would rather be the
veriest day-drudge on earth than command all the armies of the ghosts
in the cold pale realm of the dead? We do not ignore, on the other hand,
the Islands of the Blest; we are only objecting to Mrs. Besant's loose
and sweeping assertions, which prove very clearly that her new "faith"
is not remarkable in the cultivation of accuracy.
With regard to man--the _entire_ human being, mortal and immortal--Mrs.
Besant remarks that "un-instructed Christians" chop him into two, the
body-that perishes at death, and the "something that survives death."
She omits to notice that a good many Christians chop him into three, to
say nothing of others, like the Christadelphians, who leave him one and
indivisible. Mrs. Besant, for her part, as a true Theo-sophist, goes
farther than the sharpest Christian dissectors. She chops man into
_seven_. When she was a Materialist she never suspected that her nature
was so composite, and we are still in the same benighted condition. One
begins to feel that the injunction, "Man, know thyself," is a terrible
burden. It is hard enough to get a fair knowledge of our organism,
its physical constitution, its intellectual faculties, and its moral
tendencies; but the task is absolutely appalling when, we have to get a
satisfactory knowledge of our Atma, our Buddhi, our Manas, our Kama, our
Prana, our Linga Sharira, and our Sthula Sharira. Anyone who can master
all that may as well go on unto seventy times seven.
The immortal soul consists of the upper three, which are a trinity in
everlasting unity. The heavens may wax old as a garment, but they "go
on for ever," and flourish in immortal youth. Death is the first step in
the process of their separation from the lower and perishable four. One
after another of these is shed, as the serpent sloughs its skin, or
the butterfly its chrysalis; or, to use a more familiar and pungent
illustration, which we make a present of to Mrs. Besant, as you peel an
onion, fold after fold, until you get to the tender core. Sthula Sharira
goes first, and the organism becomes a corpse, which is buried, or
cremated, or eaten by cannibals. Linga Sharira, the Astral Double, had
been attached to it by a "delicate cord," which is our old friend
"the thread of life"--a convenient metaphor turned into a positive
proposition. This delicate cord is snapped, not immediately, "but some
hours" (as many as thirty-six occasionally) after "apparent death." It is
necessary, therefore, to be very quiet in the death-chamber, while the
Linga Sharira is eloping. One shudders to think of what might happen, of
the indecent haste to which Number Six might be compelled, if a corpse
were cremated a few hours after death; the corpse, for instance, of a
man who died from cholera or the plague.
This "delicate cord" which attaches Number Seven to Number Six is
perceptible if your eyes are constructed that way; that is, if you are
a clairvoyant, one who is able to see beyond the real. Mrs. Besant
does not say she has seen it herself; indeed, she is always relying on
someone else. She refers us to Andrew Jackson Davis, the "Poughkeepsie
Seer" (and a Spiritist, though she does not say so), who "watched this
escape of the ethereal body" and states that "the magnetic cord did
not break for some thirty-six hours." "Others," says Mrs. Besant, "have
described, in similar terms, how they saw a faint violet mist rise
from the dying body, gradually condensing into a figure which was the
counterpart of the expiring person, and attached to that person by a
glittering thread." Thus the attachment is "delicate," "magnetic," and
"glittering." In the course of time, we dare say, it will be decorated
with a much larger variety of adjectives. Meanwhile we may observe that
if Mrs. Besant were to preach this sort of "higher wisdom" to savages
she would find an attentive and sympathetic audience. The violet mist,
the Astral Double, and the delicate, magnetic, glittering cord, are
things that they are to some extent already familiar with; and if
she could only get them to accept her terminology, and talk of Sthula
Sharira and Linga Sharira, they would be extremely promising candidates
for the Theosophical kingdom of heaven.
Mrs. Besant tells us that the Linga Sharira, or Astral Double, rots away
(disintegrates) in time. It is "the ethereal counterpart of the gross
body of man," and takes a longer time in dropping into nothingness.
"Sometimes this Double is seen by persons in the house, or in the
neighborhood... the Double may be seen or heard; when seen it shows the
dreamy hazy consciousness alluded to, is silent, vague in its aspect,
and unresponsive.... This astral corpse remains near the physical one,
and they disintegrate together; clairvoyants see these astral wraiths in
churchyards, sometimes showing likeness of the dead body, sometimes as
violet mists or lights. Such an astral corpse has been seen by a friend
of my own."
At this point we think it well to part company with Mrs. Besant. Who
would have imagined, ten years ago, that the colleague of Charles
Bradlaugh would ever descend so far into superstition as to write and
talk seriously about churchyard spooks? What she may have to say about
Theosophy after this can hardly be of interest to any thoroughly sane
person. We therefore close with an expression of profound regret that
an earnest, eloquent lady who once did such service in the cause
of progress, should thus fall a victim to some of the most childish
superstitions of the human race.