Fonte: H.
P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, Volume III, pp.433 – 438, 1882.
Theosophical Classics – Electronic Book
Edition
[The Theosophist, Vol. III, No.
4, January, 1882, pp. 104-105]
[The letter referred to asked for an
explanation of two dreams in which a Hindu gentleman, while away from home, saw
his wife suffering from cholera, his visions being a few hours later confirmed
by a letter. H. P. B. replied:]
“Dreams
are but interludes which fancy makes,”* Dryden tells us; perhaps to show that
even a poet will make occasionally his muse subservient to sciolistic
prejudice.
The
instance as above given is one of a series of what may be regarded as
exceptional cases in dream-life, the generality of dreams, being indeed, but
“interludes which fancy makes.” And, it is the policy of materialistic,
matter-of-fact science to superbly ignore such exceptions, on the ground,
perchance, that the exception confirms the rule— we rather think, to avoid the
embarrassing task of explaining such exceptions. Indeed, if one single instance
stubbornly refuses classification with “strange coincidences”—so much in favour
with sceptics—then, prophetic, or verified dreams would demand an entire
remodeling of physiology. As in regard to phrenology, the recognition and
acceptance by science of prophetic dreams—(hence the recognition of the claims
of Theosophy and Spiritualism)—would, it is contended, “carry with it a new
educational, social, political, and theological science.” Result: Science will
never recognize either dreams, spiritualism, or occultism.
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* [Fables: The Cock and the Fox, p.
325.]
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Human
nature is an abyss which physiology and human science, in general, has sounded
less than some who have never heard the word physiology pronounced. Never are
the high censors of the Royal Society more perplexed than when brought face to
face with that insolvable mystery—man’s inner nature. The key to it is—man’s
dual being. It is that key that they refuse to use, well aware that if once the
door of the adytum be flung open they will be forced to drop one by one their
cherished theories and final conclusions—more than once proved to have been no
better than hobbies, false as everything built upon, and starting from false or
incomplete premises. If we must remain satisfied with the half explanations of
physiology as regards meaningless dreams, how account, in such case, for
the numerous facts of verified dreams? To say that man is a dual being; that in
man—to use the words of Paul—”There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual
body”—and that, therefore, he must, of necessity, have a double set of senses
—is tantamount, in the opinion of the educated sceptic, to uttering an
unpardonable, most unscientific fallacy. Yet it has to be uttered—science
notwithstanding.
Man is
undeniably endowed with a double set: with natural or physical senses—these to
be safely left to physiology to deal with; and, with sub-natural or spiritual
senses belonging entirely to the province of psychological science. The Latin
word “sub,” let it be well understood, is used here in a sense diametrically
opposite to that given to it—in chemistry, for instance. In our case it is not
a preposition, but a prefix as in “sub-tonic” or “sub-bass” in music. Indeed,
as the aggregate sound of nature is shown to be a single definite tone, a
keynote vibrating from and through eternity; having an undeniable existence per
se yet possessing an appreciable pitch but for “the acutely fine ear”*—so
the definite harmony or disharmony of man’s external nature is seen by the
observant to depend wholly on the character of the keynote struck for the outer
by the inner man. It is the spiritual EGO or SELF that
serves as the fundamental base, determining the tone of the whole life of man—that
most capricious, uncertain and variable of all instruments, and which more than
any other needs constant tuning; it is its voice alone, which like the sub-bass
of an organ underlies the melody of his whole life—whether its tones are sweet
or harsh, harmonious or wild, legato or pizzicato.
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* This tone is held by the specialists to be
the middle F of the piano.
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Therefore,
we say, man, in addition to the physical, has also a spiritual brain. If the
former is wholly dependent for the degree of its receptivity on its own
physical structure and development, it is, on the other hand, entirely
subordinate to the latter, inasmuch as it is the spiritual Ego alone, and
accordingly as it leans more towards its two highest principles,* or towards
its physical shell, that can impress more or less vividly the outer brain with
the perception of things purely spiritual or immaterial. Hence it depends on
the acuteness of the mental feelings of the inner Ego, on the degree of
spirituality of its faculties, to transfer the impression of the scenes its
semi-spiritual brain perceives, the words it hears and what it feels, to the
sleeping physical brain of the outer man. The stronger the spirituality of the
faculties of the latter, the easier it will be for the Ego to awake the
sleeping hemispheres, arouse into activity the sensory ganglia and the
cerebellum, and to impress the former—always in full inactivity and rest during
the deep sleep of man, with the vivid picture of the subject so transferred. In
a sensual, unspiritual man, in one whose mode of life and animal proclivities
and passions have entirely disconnected his fifth principle or animal, astral
Ego, from its higher “Spiritual Soul”; as also in him whose hard, physical
labour has so worn out the material body as to render him temporarily
insensible to the voice and touch of his Astral Soul—during sleep the brains of
both these men remain in a complete state of anemia [sic] or full
inactivity. Such persons rarely, if ever, will have any dreams at all, least of
all “visions that come to pass.”
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* The sixth principle, or spiritual soul, and
the seventh—its purely spiritual principle, the “Spirit” or Parabrahm, the
emanation from the unconscious ABSOLUTE. (See “Fragments of Occult Truth,” No.
1.)
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In the
former, as the waking time approaches, and his sleep becomes lighter, the
mental changes beginning to take place, they will constitute dreams in which
intelligence will play no part; his half-awakened brain suggesting but pictures
which are only the hazy grotesque reproductions of his wild habits in life;
while in the latter—unless strongly preoccupied with some exceptional
thought—his ever-present instinct of active habits will not permit him to
remain in that state of semi-sleep during which, consciousness beginning to
return, we see dreams of various kinds, but will arouse him at once, and
without any interlude to full wakefulness. On the other hand, the more
spiritual a man, the more active his fancy, and the greater probability of his
receiving in vision the correct impressions conveyed to him by his all-seeing,
his ever-wakeful Ego. The spiritual senses of the latter, unimpeded as they are
by the interference of the physical senses, are in direct intimacy with his
highest spiritual principle; and the latter, though per se quasi-unconscious—part
of the utterly unconscious, because utterly immaterial Absolute*— yet
has in itself inherent capabilities of Omniscience, Omnipresence and
Omnipotence which, as soon as the pure essence comes in contact with pure
sublimated and (to us) imponderable matters, imparts these attributes in a
degree to the as pure Astral Ego
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* To this teaching every kind of exception
will be taken by the Theists and various objections raised by the Spiritualists.
It is evident, that we cannot be expected to give within the narrow limits of a
short article a full explanation of this highly abstruse and esoteric doctrine.
To say that the ABSOLUTE CONSCIOUSNESS is Unconscious of
its consciousness, hence to the limited intellect of man must be “ABSOLUTE UNCONSCIOUSNESS,”
seems like speaking of a square triangle. We hope to develop the proposition
more fully in one of the forthcoming numbers of “Fragments of Occult Truth” of
which we may publish a series. We will then prove, perhaps, to the satisfaction
of the non-prejudiced that the Absolute, or the Unconditioned, and
(especially) the unrelated, is a mere fanciful abstraction, a fiction, unless
we view it from the standpoint and in the light of the more educated pantheist.
To do so, we will have to regard the “Absolute” merely as the aggregate of all
intelligences, the totality of all existences, incapable of manifesting itself
but through the interrelationship of its parts, as It is absolutely
incognizable and non-existent outside its phenomena, and depends entirely on
its ever-correlating Forces, dependent in their turn on the ONE GREAT LAW.
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. Hence
highly spiritual persons, will see visions and dreams during sleep and even in
their hours of wakefulness: these are the sensitives, the natural-born seers,
now loosely termed “spiritual mediums,” there being no
distinction made between a subjective seer, a neurypnological subject,
and even an adept—one who has made himself independent of his physiological
idiosyncrasies and has entirely subjected the outer to the inner man.
Those less spiritually endowed will see such dreams but at rare intervals, the
accuracy of the latter depending on the intensity of their feeling in regard to
the perceived object.
Had
Babu Jugut Chunder’s case been more seriously gone into, we would have learned
that for one or several reasons, either he or his wife was intensely attached
to the other; or that the question of her life or death was of the greatest
importance to either one or both of them. “One soul sends a message to another
soul”—is an old saying. Hence, premonitions, dreams, and visions. At all
events, and in this dream at least, there were no “disembodied” spirits at
work, the warning being solely due to either one or the other, or both of the
two living and incarnated Egos.
Thus,
in this question of verified dreams, as in so many others, Science stands
before an unsolved problem, the insolvable nature of which has been created by
her own materialistic stubbornness, and her time-cherished routine policy. For,
either man is a dual being, with an inner Ego* in him, this Ego “the real” man,
distinct from, and independent of the outer man proportionately to the
prevalency or weakness of the material body; an Ego the scope of whose senses
stretches far beyond the limit granted to the physical senses of man; an Ego
which survives the decay of its external covering—at least for a time, even
when an evil course of life has made him fail to achieve a perfect union with
its spiritual higher Self, i.e., to blend its individuality
with it (the personality gradually fading out in each case); or—the
testimony of millions of men embracing several thousands of years; the evidence
furnished in our own century by hundreds of the most educated men—often by the
greatest lights of science—all this evidence, we say, goes to naught.
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* Whether with one solitary Ego, or Soul, as
the Spiritualists affirm, or with several—i.e., composed of seven
principles, as Eastern esotericism teaches, is not the question at issue for
the present Let us first prove by bringing our joint experience to bear, that
there is in man something beyond Büchner’s Force and Matter.
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With
the exception of a handful of scientific authorities, surrounded by an eager
crowd of sceptics and sciolists, who having never seen anything, claim,
therefore, the right of denying everything —the world stands condemned as a
gigantic Lunatic Asylum! It has, however, a special department in it. It is
reserved for those who, having proved the soundness of their minds, must, of
necessity, be regarded as IMPOSTORS and LIARS . . .
Has
then the phenomenon of dreams been so thoroughly studied by materialistic
science, that she has nothing more to learn, since she speaks in such authoritative
tones upon the subject? Not in the least. The phenomena of sensation and
volition, of intellect and instinct, are, of course, all manifested through the
channels of the nervous centres, the most important of which is the brain. Of
the peculiar substance through which these actions take place—a substance the
two forms of which are the vesicular and the fibrous, the latter is held to be
simply the propagator of the impressions sent to or from the vesicular matter.
Yet while this physiological office is distinguished, or divided by Science
into three kinds — the motor, sensitive and connecting—the mysterious agency of
intellect remains as mysterious and as perplexing to the great physiologists as
it was in the days of Hippocrates. The scientific suggestion that there may be
a fourth series associated with the operations of thought, has not helped
towards solving the problem; it has failed to shed even the slightest ray of
light on the unfathomable mystery. Nor will they ever fathom it unless our men
of Science accept the hypothesis of DUAL MAN.
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