The Path, Vol. I.—1886-'7.: A Magazine Devoted to the Brotherhood of Humanity, Theosophy in America, and the Study of Occult Science, Philosophy, and Aryan Literature.Various
Religion
The Path, Vol. I.—1886-'7.: A Magazine Devoted to the Brotherhood of Humanity, Theosophy in America, and the Study of Occult Science, Philosophy, and Aryan Literature.
Various
Theosophy -- Periodicals
This, with much that follows, is pure imagination or misconception. As
for instance, “floating from sphere to sphere.” In this state the seer
is confined to but one sphere—the astral or psycho-physiological—no
higher one can he even comprehend.
Speaking of the period when the sixth sense shall be developed, he says:
“No mystery then her sons shall find,
Within the compass of mankind;
The one shall read the other’s mind.”
In this the seer shows even a want of theoretical knowledge of the
period spoken of. He has madly rushed into the astral world without a
knowledge of the philosophy of the mystics. Even though the twelfth
sense were developed—let alone the physical sixth—it shall ever remain
as difficult as it is now, for people to read one another’s mind.
Such is the mystery of Manas.[21] He is evidently deluded by seeing
the apparent triumphs during a transitional period of a race’s mental
development, of those minds abnormally developed which are able to look
into the minds of others; and yet they do that only partially. If one
with a highly developed sixth principle were to indulge for only six
times in reading other’s minds, he would surely drain that development
down to fatten the mind and desires. Moreover, Mr. Hellon’s seer seems
to be totally unaware of the fact that the object of developing higher
faculties is not to peer into the minds of others, and that the economy
of the occult world gives an important privilege to the mystic, in
that the pages of his life and _manas_ shall be carefully locked up
against inquisitive prowlers, the key safely deposited with his guru,
who never lends it to any one else. If with the occult world the laws
of nature are so strict, how much more should they be with people
in general. Otherwise, nothing would be safe. The sixth sense would
then be as delusive and a curse to the ignorant as sight and learning
are now. Nor shall this sixth sense man be “perfect.” Truth for him
shall be as difficult to attain through his “sense,” as it is now. The
horizon shall have only widened, and what we are now acquiring as truth
will have passed into history, into literature, into axiom. “Sense”
is always nothing else than a channel for desire to flow through and
torment ourselves and others.
The whole poem is misleading, especially such expressions as: “His
spirit views the world’s turmoil; behold his body feed the soil.—A
sixth sense race borne ages since, to God’s own zone.” Our higher
self—Atman—can never “view the world’s turmoil,” nor behold the body.
For supposing that it did view the body or the world’s turmoil, it
would be attracted to them, descending to the physical plane, where it
would be converted more or less into physical nature. And the elevation
of a sixth sense race unphilosophically supposes the raising up of that
sense, which certainly has only to do with our physical nature, at most
our astro-physical nature, to the sphere of God or Atman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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