From the Caves and Jungles of HindostanBlavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Religion
From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna), 1831-1891; India -- Description and travel; India -- Religion
when necessary, may happen to any nation....."
During his five years of work Swami Dayanand made about two million
proselytes, chiefly amongst the higher castes. Judging by appearances,
they are all ready to sacrifice to him their lives and souls and even
their earthly possessions, which are often more precious to them than
their lives. But Dayanand is a real Yogi, he never touches money, and
despises pecuniary affairs. He contents himself with a few handfuls of
rice per day. One is inclined to think that this wonderful Hindu bears
a charmed life, so careless is he of rousing the worst human passions,
which are so dangerous in India. A marble statue could not be less moved
by the raging wrath of the crowd. We saw him once at work. He sent away
all his faithful followers and forbade them either to watch over him
or to defend him, and stood alone before the infuriated crowd, facing
calmly the monster ready to spring upon him and tear him to pieces.
Here a short explanation is necessary. A few years ago a society of
well-informed, energetic people was formed in New York. A certain
sharp-witted savant surnamed them "La Societe des Malcontents du
Spiritisme." The founders of this club were people who, believing in the
phenomena of spiritualism as much as in the possibility of every other
phenomenon in Nature, still denied the theory of the "spirits." They
considered that the modern psychology was a science still in the first
stages of its development, in total ignorance of the nature of the
psychic man, and denying, as do many other sciences, all that cannot be
explained according to its own particular theories.
From the first days of its existence some of the most learned Americans
joined the Society, which became known as the Theosophical Society. Its
members differed on many points, much as do the members of any other
Society, Geographical or Archeological, which fights for years over
the sources of the Nile, or the Hieroglyphs of Egypt. But everyone is
unanimously agreed that, as long as there is water in the Nile,
its sources must exist somewhere. So much about the phenomena of
spiritualism and mesmerism. These phenomena were still waiting their
Champollion--but the Rosetta stone was to be searched for neither in
Europe nor in America, but in the far-away countries where they still
believe in magic, where wonders are performed daily by the native
priesthood, and where the cold materialism of science has never yet
reached--in one word, in the East.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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