In this chapter I will compile the documentation that I find in this regard.
William Judge Testimony
William Judge was Blavatsky's main collaborator and on this matter he wrote in
his magazine The Path:
« The following letter was written before the foundation of the
Theosophical Society. A somewhat inaccurate translation appeared in Mr.
Sinnett's Incidents in the
Life of Madame Blavatsky, but as some additions were made to the
original it is interesting to see what was actually written by H. P. B. at such
an early date:
"The more I see of spiritist seances in this cradle and hotbed of
Spiritism and mediums, the more clearly I see how dangerous they are for
humanity. Poets speak of a thin
partition between the two worlds. There is no partition whatever.
Blind people have imagined obstacles of this kind because coarse organs of
hearing, sight, and feeling do not allow the majority of people to penetrate
the difference
of being.
Besides, Mother-Nature has done well in endowing us with coarse senses, for
otherwise the individuality and personality of man would become impossible,
because the dead would be continually mixing with the living, and the living
would assimilate themselves with the dead.
It would not be so bad if there were around us only spirits of the same
kind as ourselves, the half-spiritual refuse of mortals who died without having
reconciled themselves to the great necessity of death. Then we might submit to
the inevitable. One way or another, we cannot help identifying ourselves
physically and in a perfectly unconscious way with the dead, absorbing the
constituent atoms of what lived before us: with every breath we inhale them,
and breathe out that which nourishes the formless creatures, elementals
floating in the air in the expectation of being transformed into living beings.
This is not only a physical process, but partly a moral one. We
assimilate those who preceded us, gradually absorbing their brain-molecules and
exchanging mental auras — which means thoughts, desires, and tendencies. This
is an interchange common to the entire human race and to all that lives. A
natural process, an outcome of the laws of the economy of nature. . . . It
explains similarities, external and moral.
. . .
But there exists another absolute law, which manifests itself
periodically and sporadically: this is a law, as it were, of artificial and
compulsory assimilation. During epidemics of this kind the kingdom of the dead
invades the region of the living, though fortunately this kind of refuse are bound
by the ties of their former surroundings. And so, when evoked by mediums, they
cannot break through the limits and boundaries in which they acted and lived. .
. . And the wider the doors are opened to them the further the necromantic
epidemic is spread; the more unanimous the mediums and the spiritists in
spreading the magnetic fluid of their evocations, the more power and vitality
are acquired by the glamour."
Madame Jelihovsky says that:
"Helena Petrovna described many seances in terms of horror in
consequence of the sights she was enabled to see as a result of her
clairvoyance. She saw details hidden from the others present: perfect invasions
of hosts of soulless remains of mortals, 'woven of fleshly passions, of evil
thoughts, of vicious feelings which had outlived the body'".
And H. P. B. wrote:
"It stands to reason that this mere earthly refuse, irresistibly
drawn to the earth, cannot follow the soul and spirit — these highest
principles of man's being. With horror and disgust I often observed how a
reanimated shadow of this kind separated itself from the inside of the medium;
how, separating itself from his astral body and clad in someone else's vesture,
it pretended to be someone's relation, causing the person to go into ecstasies
and making people open wide their hearts and their embraces to these shadows
whom they sincerely believed to be their dear fathers and brothers,
resuscitated to convince them of life eternal, as well as to see them.
. . .
Oh, if they only knew the truth, if they only believed! If they saw, as
I have often seen, a monstrous, bodiless creature seizing hold of someone
present at these spiritistic sorceries! It wraps the man as if with a black
shroud, and slowly disappears in him as if drawn into his body by each of his living
pores."
»
(February
1895)
Testimony of Alfred Sinnett
Here is
Blavatsky's letter as it appears in Mr. Sinnett's book Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky:
« In 1875 Madame Blavatsky wrote
to her sister:
“The more I see of mediums —for the United States are a true nursery,
the most prolific hot-bed for mediums
and sensitives of all kinds, genuine and artificial— the more I see the danger
humanity is surrounded with. Poets
speak of the thin partition between this world and the other. They are blind:
there is no partition at all except
the difference of states in which the living and the dead exist, and the grossness of the physical senses of the
majority of mankind. Yet, these senses are our salvation. They were given to us by a wise and sagacious
mother and nurse — Nature; for, otherwise, individuality
and even personality would have become impossible: the dead would be ever
merging into the living, and the latter
assimilating the former. Were there around us but one variety of 'spirits' —as
well call the dregs of wine, spirits—
the reliquae of those mortals who are dead and gone, one could reconcile
oneself with it.
We cannot avoid, in some way or other, assimilating our dead, and little by little, and unconsciously to ourselves, we become they — even physically, especially in the unwise West, where
cremation is unknown. We breathe and devour the dead —men and
animals— with every breath we draw in,
as every human breath that goes out makes up the bodies and feeds the formless
creatures in the air that will be men some day. So much for the physical process;
for the mental and the intellectual, and also the spiritual, it is just the same; we
interchange gradually our brain-molecules, our intellectual and even spiritual auras, hence — our thoughts,
desires, and aspirations, with those who preceded us.
This process is common to
humanity in general. It is a natural one,
and follows the economy and laws of nature,
insomuch that one's son may become gradually his own grandfather, and his aunt
to boot, imbibing their combined atoms,
and thus partially accounting for the possible resemblance, or atavism. But there is another
law, an exceptional one, and which manifests itself among mankind
sporadically and periodically: the law of forced post-mortem assimilation, during
the prevalence of which epidemic the dead
invade the domain of the living from their respective spheres — though,
fortunately, only within the limits
of the regions they lived in, and in which they are buried. In such cases, the
duration and intensity of the
epidemic depends upon the welcome they receive, upon whether they find the
doors opening widely to receive them
or not, and whether the necromantic plague is increased by magnetic attraction, the desire of the mediums, sensitives, and
the curious themselves; or whether, again, the danger being signaled,
the epidemic is wisely repressed.
Such a periodical visitation is now occurring in America. It began with
innocent children —the little Misses
Fox— playing unconsciously with this terrible weapon. And, welcomed and
passionately invited to ' come in,'
the whole of the dead community seemed to have rushed in, and got a more or
less strong hold of the living.
I went on purpose to a family of strong mediums —the Eddys— and watched
for over a fortnight, making experiments, which, of course,
I kept to myself You remember,
Vera, how I made
experiments for you at Rougodevo,
how often I saw
the ghosts of those who had been living in the house, and described them to
you, for you could never see them Well, it was the same daily and nightly in Vermont. I saw and
watched these soulless creatures, the shadows of their terrestrial bodies, from which in most cases soul and
spirit had fled long ago, but which throve and preserved their semi-material shadows at the expense of
the hundreds of visitors that came and went, as well as of the mediums.
And I remarked, under the advice and guidance of my Master, that (I)
those apparitions which were genuine
were produced by the ' ghosts' of those who had lived and died within a certain
area of those mountains; (2) those
who had died far away were less entire, a mixture of the real shadow and of that which lingered in the personal aura
of the visitor for whom it purported to come; and (3) the purely fictitious ones, or as I call them, the
reflections of the genuine ghosts or shadows of the deceased personality.
To explain myself more clearly, it was not the spooks that assimilated
the medium, but the medium, W. Eddy, who assimilated unconsciously to himself the pictures of the dead relatives and friends from the
aura of the sitters.
. . .
It was ghastly to watch the process! It made me often sick and giddy;
but I had to look at it, and the most I
could do was to hold the disgusting creatures at arm's length. But it was a
sight to see the welcome given to
these umbroe by the spiritualists!
They wept and rejoiced around the medium, clothed in these empty materialized shadows; rejoiced and
wept again, sometimes broken down with an emotion, a sincere joy and happiness that made my heart bleed for them. 'If
they could but see what I see', I often wished.
If they only knew that these simulacra of men and women are made up
wholly of the terrestrial passions, vices, and worldly
thoughts, of the residuum of the personality that was; for these
are only such dregs
that could not follow the liberated soul and spirit, and are left for a second
death in the terrestrial atmosphere,
that can be seen by the average medium and the public. At times I used to see
one of such phantoms, quitting the
medium's astral body, pouncing upon one of the sitters, expanding so as to envelop
him or her entirely, and then slowly
disappearing within the living body as though
sucked in by its every pore.”
Later Alfred Sinnett comments:
For the new edition of this book
I must here interpolate a note warning the reader against too submissive an
acceptance of the views set forth in the letter quoted above. I do not think
Mme. Blavatsky would have endorsed them at a later stage of her occult
education.
However frequently it may happen
that communication from the astral world may be confused and corrupted by the
unconscious influence of imperfectly developed mediums, it does not by any
means follow that in all cases the “spirits” of the seance room are “empty
materialized shadows” or “simulacra of men and women made up of terrestrial passions
and vices, etc.” »
(Chapter 8)
It is true that not all the
astral entities that communicate through mediums are those horrendous dark
entities that Blavatsky pointed out, and which pose as deceased relatives,
famous historical figures, or spiritual teachers, but most of the time they are.
Mr. Sinnett tried to reduce the repudiation that Blavatsky showed towards
seances because later he was very interested in Spiritism.
CONCLUSION
We see that Blavatsky did have a very negative opinion towards Spiritism.
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