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FROM THE UPANISHADS*

S a metal disk (mirror), tarnished by dust, shines bright again after it has been cleaned, so is the one incarnate person satisfied and free from grief, after he has seen the real nature of the self. And when by means of the real nature of his self he sees, as by a lamp, the real nature of Brahman, then having known the unborn, eternal god, who is beyond all natures, he is freed from all fetters.

The god who is in the fire, the god who is in the water, the god who has entered into the whole world, the god who is in plants, the god who is in trees, adoration be to that god, adoration!

When that light has risen, there is no day, no night, neither existence nor non-existence; Siva (the blessed) alone is there. That is the eternal, the adorable light of Savitri-and the ancient wisdom proceeded thence.

No one has grasped him above, or across, or in the middle. There is no image of him whose name is Great Glory.

His form cannot be seen, no one perceives him with the eye. Those who through heart and mind know him thus abiding in the heart, become immortal.

But he who is endowed with qualities, and performs works that are to bear fruit, and enjoys the reward of whatever he has done, migrates through his own works, the lord of life, assuming all forms, led by the three Gunas (qualities), and following the three paths (vice, virtue and knowledge).

That lower one also, not larger than a thumb, but brilliant like the sun, who is endowed with personality and thoughts, with the quality of mind and the quality of body, is seen small even like the point of a goad.

That living soul is to be known as part of the hundredth part of the point of a hair, divided a hundred times, and yet it is infinite.

It is not woman, it is not man, nor is it neuter; whatever body it takes with that it is joined (only).

By means of thoughts, touching, seeing, and passions the incarnate Self assumes successively in various places forms, in accordance with his deeds, just as the body grows when food and drink are poured into it.

That incarnate Self, according to his own qualities, chooses (assumes) many shapes, coarse or subtle, and having himself caused his union with them, he is seen as another and another, through the qualities of his acts, and through the qualities of his body.

*These Extracts from the Upanishads were printed by H. P. Blavatsky in Lucifer for April, 1891. The title used is our own.-ED. THEOSOPHY.

ON THE LOOKOUT

In The Saturday Evening Post of October 20, Harvey O'Higgins, who has been contributing to Metropolitan's discussion of Spiritualism, psychic phenomena, etc., writes of "Your Other Self." He quotes Stevenson's admission that many of his plots came to him from the Land of Nod, and we add that Stevenson also said that he dreamed the plot of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which every student of occultism knows to be almost if not quite as vivid a presentment of the "Dweller on the threshhold" as Bulwer-Lytton's Zanoni. Mr. O'Higgins writes entertainingly and those who have what he has not, the clues to the threads of causation, may gather something of value from his illustrations of the action of the "subconscious self." His theories, like those of more sober writers on the various phases of the psychological mystery called man, really trace back to the studies of Thomas Jay Hudson, embodied in his book, The Law of Psychic Phenomena. Hudson himself presents to students of Theosophy an example of "those who studied Occultism long ago in former lives, and made some progress, but they went too much along the lines of astral science, of alchemy pure and simple, and set up affinities with the lower groups of agents in nature. The result is that they are now reborn with two natures, the one opposing the other. The old astral knowledge is obscured" and they grope in darkness and in vain to come "in contact with the knowledge which was theirs in former births." Mr. O'Higgins is another and similar illustration. He "leaves aside the whole question of occultism” and asks "what possible value can it (the 'subconscious') have in the practical affairs of life?" He answers his own question by saying, "It has a most immediate value. That other self of yours not only helps or hinders you in your work-it is responsible for many of your opinions; it directs even more of your behavior; it is a silent partner in all your doings and ways and habits, and, like most silent partners, it is often the more powerful member of the firm." He calls it "the dream mind," which has nothing to do with reason: "The greatest artists are born, not made; for you may indeed develop your intelligence, but no way has been found for you to strengthen that part of your mind that is instinctive, intuitive and unconscious." We have underscored these three words, because they are the keys with which Mr. O'Higgins and his kind have locked themselves in the darkness of effects, the causes of which are beyond their ken. That knowledge does not exist outside of Occultism which Mr. O'Higgins "leaves aside." Occultism knows better than to call anything "unconscious," least of all the mind, or any part of it. Occultism knows that the instinctive" is the infiltration into the brain of man of the influences and associations of the "lower group of agents in nature," and that "intuition" is another infiltration altogether, coming from the higher groups of agents, in nature; that both are received in the same receptacle, to wit, the brain, the end organ of the conscious contact of man with both "groups of agents in nature." To confuse instinct and intuition, separately, or as the "subconscious self," is as gross and crass materialism and ignorance as to confuse body, mind and soul. It is a mere change of terms and not of ideas. Occultism is the study of causes. All else is mere confusion or the prestidigitation of effects.

However faulty and erroneous, these gropings are yet indicative in a larger sense of popular awakening from the lethargy of ignorance. Consider, for instance, that the Saturday Post is read each week by some ten million persons, and therefore from either end considered is a popular magazine. For some years past it has been publishing stories and articles whose motif and raison d'etre lie in the mystical and the mysterious. The reader who is conversant to some extent with the teachings of Theosophy will necessarily

chafe a bit at Mr. O'Higgins' bewilderments, and wish that he and his compeers might understand the polar antithesis between impulse and intuition, and regret from the depths of his understanding that all such do not avail themselves of the occult teachings on the compound nature of man, but this fretting is but momentary. Their time will come; is, indeed, at hand. H. P. B. saw it forty years ago; else why did she write in the preface to Isis: "Is it too much to believe that man should be developing new sensibilities and a closer relation with nature? The logic of evolution must teach as much, if carried to its legitimate conclusion. It cannot be unreasonable to infer and believe that a faculty of perception is also growing in man, enabling him to descry facts and truths even beyond our ordinary ken." What she then limned for our encouragement is now all but the dawning, for on every hand can be noted the visible evidences. The Lookout sees them by the hundred every month, and the Lookout is far from being argus-eyed. Just to conclude the homily, and point the moral of Mr. O'Higgins, we note as we write that the second following Saturday Post, the issue of November 3, contains two stories flavored with the tincture of the "occult." One is a "thriller" by Donn Byrne whose Prologue is mantramic and mystical, and who dares quote Cornelius Agrippa, magician par excellence, by name and number. The other, "Lempke," by Will Levington Comfort has for its citadel of enchantment the mysterious Gobi desert and an attempt to wrest from it its secrets of the buried past. Mr. Comfort, who, by the way, is a student of Theosophy, and the author of "Routledge Rides Alone," mixes Masters, Dugpas, and borrowed phrases from Light on the Path with sententious expressions of consuming passion for Mary Mansteve. All this is as little enlightening as Mr. O'Higgins' "subconscious," but has its own energic and advertising values in calling attention to the hidden side of nature.

George Howard Parker, Professor of Zoology at Harvard, writing in Science, advances views of the relation of the senses to the brain that in many respects coincide with occult physiology and psychology. Essentially, his theory is that sensations are not located where the pain is apparently felt, but in the cerebral cortex. He notes the successive stages of the evolution of the nervous system in the lower beings, first, sense organs and muscles; then the central organization-brain, spinal cord, etc., until, as in man, there is integrative action. He sums up by saying that when such a chain goes into action we speak of it as reflex, for it resembles light in that it passes from an external source inward to a central organ whence it is reflected, so to speak, outward to the muscle. Thus the conscious life of man "is not a function of his body as a whole, but an activity limited strictly to his nervous system." Muscular activity, then, precedes nervous origins, and nervous tissues appear in consequence of the presence of muscles. "Any conception of the nervous system that assumes sensation as a basal phenomenon is most assuredly to be abandoned. Our sensations, then, are not our most fundamental and primitive nervous processes, but behind these and of much more ancient lineage are our impulses to action, our wishes, our desires, and the whole vague body of nervous states that drive us to do things. These are the most ancient and deeply seated of our nervous propensities, and immeasurably antedate in point of origin our sensations with all that supergrowth that constitutes the fabric of our mental life.”

We have italicised the foregoing because of its far-reaching importance as a truly scientific generalization, an importance, we are regretfully compelled to add, that Professor Parker fails to grasp, and therefore fails to apply. And it is in the applications alone that the value of any generalization, however true and inclusive, must lie. For, if the pin prick in the skin is actually felt in the brain, and if the sensation is not the basal phenomenon, it is but a more refined error to think the actual seat of the sensation is in

the cortex. The "light which passes from an external source inward," passes inward far more deeply than to the brain before it is "reflected, so to speak, outward to the muscle." This is recognized, albeit unconsciously, in the phrase "our wishes, our desires, and the whole vague body of nervous states that drive us to do things." In other words, remarshaling the chain of ideas, the actual modus is the "passage inwards" from sense to sensation, from sensation to "our wishes, our desires and the whole vague body of nervous states," then still deeper inward to "that supergrowth that constitutes the fabric of our mental life," and then, and not till then, is it "reflected, so to speak, outward" to the muscular action. It begins in the environment, penetrates to the "fabric" of the mind, and by reaction, or reflex, returns once more to the environment. The process must be substantial throughout; there can be no hiatus, no void. This calls for psychology as well as physiology, and it is the psychological aspect that Professor Parker ignores or evades. Nevertheless it is evident that he uses the words "nervous" and "nervous system" and "nervous states" in a psychological as well as a physiological sense. The physiological side is muscle, nerve, brain; astral body and mental fabric, of the two latter of which Professor Parker is ignorant as to their substantial nature. Wishes, desires, mental fabric, are to him but abstractions, i. e., generalizations, while muscle, nerve and brain are "real,” i. e., concrete. Sun, moon, and stars are but abstractions to us; they do not belong to earth, which is our recognized because nearest contacted, but any solvent consideration of the problem of earth life and activity cannot very well leave them out of the reckoning. Mind, desires, and all the "vague body of nervous states" that lie outside the limited horizon of muscle, nerve and brain, stand in the same relation to them that sun, moon and stars stand to earth; just as real, just as substantial, just as essential factors in "integrative activity" of the being. Forty years ago H. P. B. wrote that the only obstacle the scientific student has to overcome is the materialism of his viewpoint; to work upon the theory that the brain is not the basis, but the instrument, of consciousness, "and all the rest is easy." Men like Professor Parker are being drawn by the force of their own logic ever nearer the dawn of the great day when they will accept and apply the axioms of occultism in the working out of the problems with which else they but wrestle as Jacob wrestled with the angel-to their own undoing.

Were the various scientific students willing, as they are able, to connote and collate the experiments and speculations of their fellows, with the one end in view of arriving at a sum of axiomatic generalizations, and then, each in his own journey of investigation, employ and apply these concensus principles, the progress of all and consequently the race of which they are the leaders, would be enormously facilitated. Thus, if Professor Parker, say, were to consider and apply to his studies of the physical modulus of conscious action, the reflections and implications embodied in the contribution of Professor James Byrnie Shaw to The Scientific Monthly on the "Unreality of All Things in the Light of Modern Knowledge," he would find benefit beyond measure. And if both were to consider what might be applied in their special studies from Dr. J. Allen Gilbert's recent article in the Medical Record on "Physiology as a Cause of Failure in Medicine," of which we spoke in November Lookout, who can say what scales might not fall from their eyes? Materialism in application generates a blinding egotism which forbids our adopting anything but a parasitic or sheerly destructive attitude towards the fruit of another's efforts. Constructive criticism which benefits all because it freely lends and borrows for the common good, flows as naturally when the attitude is universal, instead of material. But to return to Professor Shaw. "Time is for science to-day a local phenomenon. The dimensions of space seem a fundamental reality, yet we do not know whether we live in four dimensions or more, or simply three. Inspect the list of

terms from modern science closely: ether, electron, energy, mass, space, time, dimensionality, and we might add many more. Do they represent realities or are they merely fancies of our too easily illusioned minds? Where is the criterion we can apply with some assurance of certainty?"

One may soberly answer these queries by saying that the very core of the cry to which Professor Shaw is driven by his observation and reflection in our italics lies in the mind and its illusions. Without his mind where are ether, electron, energy, space, time, and all the rest? What is there real in it all save Professor Shaw, Perceiver, his Mind, through which he perceives, and the Illusions which he perceives? Without Mind, no "illusions," whether of time, space, or anything in them; without the Perceiver, neither Mind nor Illusions. What, or Who, then is real, but Professor Shaw, Ego? The criterion he can apply with some assurance of certainty can be had in the fundamental tenets of the old Wisdom-Religion and nowhere else. Who assures this? Well, let us name a few, not unknown, we are sure, to Professor Shaw as to all others; Buddha, Jesus, Hermes, Plato, Hegel, H. P. Blavatsky-in short the truly great Egos of all time; for these tenets pervade and underlie every religion, every philosophy, every system of thought worthy of the name.

Professor Shaw sees clearly that this "criterion" for which he asks is not to be found in the senses: "If only what the senses report is to be accepted as fact then we are poor indeed in realities. The whole of human experience reveals the doubtful character of the testimony given by the senses." He finds mathematics, the mathematical and artistic mind, "fascinating with suggestions of undeveloped powers of the human soul," and that "the creatures of this world have shown man definitively that he is superior to space and time and given him a freedom that is beyond even his highest dreams." Why, then, should not Professor Shaw, Professor Parker, Dr. Gilbert, and all other serious and high-minded students of science, throw off the shackles of the senses, and throw their great energies and their great abilities into the study of the real; of the "human soul and its undeveloped powers," and take as their criterion the basic truths enunciated time out of mind by the great sages and philosophers of the race? "What lets, brothers? The darkness lets." The darkness created and sustained by the fundamental fallacy of assuming sense perception as a criterion. When the soul in them urges unfettered flight, when it tempts without ceasing the use of those "undeveloped powers" to rise beyond space and time, why cling with the leaden feet of sense perception to base materialism? H. P. B. had them and their compeers in mind when she wrote in 1878: "If, somewhere, in the line of ascent from vegetable or ascidian to the noblest man a soul was evolved, gifted with intellectual qualities, it cannot be unreasonable to infer and believe that a faculty of perception is also growing in man, enabling him to descry facts and truths even beyond our ordinary ken." Let us have scientific Columbuses wise enough, brave enough, bold enough, to trust themselves forth on the boundless sea of universal truth, westward ho on the unknown route to that farther East, the knowledge of the human soul and its possibilities.