Colonel Olcott commented that one
evening in the autumn of 1876, while he and Blavatsky were working on the work
“Isis Unveiled”, a discussion arose
about the principles involved in the conscious projection of the astral double,
and Blavatsky finding it difficult to explain it, she decided to show Olcott
through a picture how Staiton Moses' evolution was developing in that
direction.
William Stainton Moses (who used
the pseudonym of M.A. Oxon) was an English medium guided by a spirit called
"Imperator".
And the phenomenal way in which
Blavatsky drew up this portrait, Colonel Olcott recounted in his “Old Leaves of a Diary I”:
« Elsewhere I have mentioned H. P. B.'s having done for me a precipitated
picture on satin, which showed me the stage that Oxon had reached in his attempt
to gain the power of projecting his Double by force of concentrated will-power.
I had better now give the details:
One evening, in the autumn of 1876,
she and I were working, as usual, upon Isis,
at opposite sides of our writing-table, and dropped into a discussion of the principles
involved in the conscious projection of the Double.
Through lack of early familiarity
with those subjects, she was not good then at explaining scientific matters, and
I found it difficult to grasp her meaning.
Her fiery temperament made her prone
to abuse me for an idiot in such cases, and this time she did not spare her expressions
of impatience at my alleged obtuseness.
Finally, she did the very best thing
by offering to show me in a picture how Oxon's evolution was proceeding, and at
once made good her promise. Rising from the table, she went and opened a drawer
from which she took a small roll of white satin — the remnant, I believe, of a piece
she had had given her at Philadelphia — and laying it on the table before me, proceeded
to cut off a piece of the size she wanted; after which she returned the roll to
its place and sat down.
She laid the piece of satin, face
down, before her, almost covered it with a sheet of clean blotting-paper, and rested
her elbows on it while she rolled for herself and lighted a fresh cigarette.
Presently she asked me to fetch her
a glass of water. I said I would, but first put her some question which involved
an answer and some delay. Meanwhile I kept my eye upon an exposed edge of the satin,
determined not to lose sight of it.
Soon noticing that I made no sign
of moving, she asked me if I did not mean to fetch her the water.
I said: " Oh, certainly."
"Then what do you wait for?"
– she asked.
"I only wait to see what you
are about to do with that satin," – I replied.
She gave me one angry glance, as though
seeing that I did not mean to trust her alone with the satin, and then brought down
her clenched fist upon the blotting-paper, saying: "I shall have it now —
this minute!"
Then, raising the paper and turning
over the satin, she tossed it over to me. Imagine, if you can, my surprise! On the
sheeny side I found a picture, in colours, of a most extraordinary character. There
was an excellent portrait, of the head only, of Stainton Moses as he looked at that
age, the almost duplicate of one of his photographs that hung "above the line"
on the wall of the room, over the mantel-shelf.
From the crown of the head shot out
spikes of golden flame; at the places of the heart and the solar plexus were red
and golden fires, as it might be bursting forth from little craters; the head and
the place of the thorax were involved in rolling clouds of pure blue aura, bespeckled
throughout with flecks of gold; and the lower half of the space where the body should
be was enwrapped in similarly rolling clouds of pinkish and greyish vapour, that
is, of auras of a meaner quality than the superior cumuli.
At that stage of my occult education
I had heard nothing about the six chakrams,
or psychical evolutionary centres in the human body, which are mentioned in Yoga
S'astras, and are familiar to every student of Patanjali.
I therefore did not grasp the significance
of the two flaming vortices over the cardiac and umbilical regions; but my later
acquaintance with the subject gives this satin picture an enhanced value, as showing
that the practical occultist who made it apparently knew that, in the process of
disentangling the astral from the physical body, the will must be focused in succession
at the several nerve-centres, and the disengagement completed at each in turn before
moving on to the next centre in the order of sequence.
I take the picture to mean that Stainton
Moses' experiment was being conducted as an intellectual rather than as a spiritual
process, wherefore he had completely formed and got ready for projection his head,
while the other parts of his astral body were in a state of nebulous disturbance,
but had not yet settled into the stage of rupa,
or form.
The blue clouds would represent the
pure but not most luminous quality of the human aura — described as shining, or
radiant; a silvery nimbus.
The flecks of gold, however, that
are seen floating in the blue, typify sparks of the spirit, the " silvery spark
in the brain," that Bulwer so beautifully describes in his Strange Story; while the greyish and pinkish
vapours of the inferior portions show the auras of our animalistic, corporeal qualities.
This grey becomes darker and darker
as a man's animalism preponderates over his intellect, his moral and spiritual qualities,
until in the wholly depraved, as the clairvoyants tell us, it is inky black. The
aura of adeptship is described as a blended tint of silver and gold, as some of
my readers, I am sure, must know from personal observation, and as the poets and
painters of all ages have depicted in their sublimer flights of spiritual perception.
This Téjas or soul-light, shines out through the mystic's face, lighting
it up with a glow which, once seen, can never thereafter be mistaken. It is the
" shining countenance " of the Biblical angels, the " glory of the
Lord," the light that beamed in the face of Moses when descending from the
Mount with such splendour that men could not bear to look upon his countenance;
a radiance that even transfigures the wearer's robes into " shining garments."
The Hebrews call it shekinah, and
I once heard the term used by some Bagdad Jews to describe the face of a spiritual-minded
visitor on that occasion. So, too, the word "shining" is applied similarly
by various other nations; the pure spirits and pure men glow with the white light,
the vicious and evil ones are veiled in blackness. »
(Chapter 23)
NOTE
This portrait is preserved in the
museum of the Theosophical Society of Adyar and the resemblance to the face of
Stainton Moses is remarkable:
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