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taught ages before the birth of inductive and exact modern science. For what does the latter say
more then these books in speaking, for instance, about animal mechanism, when it says: --
From the visible atom to the celestial body lost in space, everything is subject to
motion . . . kept at a definite distance one from the other, in proportion to the
motion which animates them, the molecules present constant relations, which they
lose only by the addition or the subtraction of a certain quantity of motion. (7)
But Occultism says more than this. While making of motion on the material plane and of the
conservation of energy, two fundamental laws, or rather two aspects of the same omnipresent
law -- Svara, it denies point blank that these have anything to do with the free will of man which
belongs to quite a different plane. The author of Psychophysiologie Generale, treating of his
discovery that psychic action is but motion, and the result of a collectivity of causes -- remarks
that as it is so, there cannot be any further discussion upon spontaneity -- in the sense of any
native internal proneness created by the human organism; and adds that the above puts an end to
all claim for free will! The Occultist denies the conclusion. The actual fact of man's psychic (we
say manasic or noetic) individuality is a sufficient warrant against the assumption; for in the case
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STUDIES IN OCCULTISM
42
of this conclusion being correct, or being indeed, as the author expresses it, the collective
hallucination of the whole mankind throughout the ages, there would be an end also to psychic
individuality.
Now by "psychic" individuality we mean that self-determining power which enables man to
override circumstances. Place half a dozen animals of the same species under the same
circumstances, and their actions while not identical, will be closely similar; place half a dozen
men under the same circumstances and their actions will be as different as their characters, i.e.,
their psychic individuality.
But if instead of "psychic" we call it the higher Self-conscious Will, then having been shown by
the science of psycho-physiology itself that will has no special organ, how will the materialists
connect it with "molecular" motion at all? As Professor George T. Ladd says: --
"The phenomena of human consciousness must be regarded as activities of some
other form of Real Being than the moving molecules of the brain. They require a
subject or ground which is in its nature unlike the phosphorized fats of the central
masses, the aggregated nerve-fibers of nerve-cells of the cerebral cortex. This
Real Being thus manifested immediately to itself in the phenomena of
consciousness, and indirectly to others through the bodily changes, is the Mind
[manas]. To it the mental phenomena are to be attributed as showing what it is by
what it does. The so-called mental 'faculties' are only the modes of the behavior in
consciousness of this real being. We actually find, by the only method available,
that this real being called Mind believes in certain perpetually recurring modes:
therefore, we attribute to it certain faculties. . . . Mental faculties are not entities
that have an existence of themselves. . . . They are the modes of the behavior in
consciousness of the mind. And the very nature of the classifying acts which lead
to their being distinguished, is explicable only upon the assumption that a Real
being called Mind exists, and is to be distinguished from the real being known as
the physical molecules of the brain's nervous mass." (8)
And having shown that we have to regard consciousness as a unit (another occult proposition)
the author adds: --
We conclude, then, from the previous considerations: the subject of all the states
of consciousness is a real unit-being, called Mind; which is of non-material
nature, and acts and develops according to laws of its own, but is specially
correlated with certain material molecules and masses forming the substance of
the Brain." (9)
This "Mind" is manas, or rather its lower reflection, which whenever it disconnects itself, for the
time being, with kama, becomes the guide of the highest mental faculties, and is the organ of the
free will in physical man. Therefore, this assumption of the newest psycho-physiology is
uncalled for, and the apparent impossibility of reconciling the existence of free will with the law
of the conservation of energy is -- a pure fallacy. This was well shown in the "Scientific Letters"
of "Elpay" in a criticism of the work. But to prove it finally and set the whole question definitely
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STUDIES IN OCCULTISM
43
at rest, does not even require so high an interference (high for us, at any rate) as the Occult laws,
but simply a little common sense. Let us analyze the question dispassionately. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]