Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

beyond the range of physical knowledge, may also be in some way provoked by that policy, on the part of the great custodians of esoteric truth, of which my own book is certainly one manifestation, and the volume I have just mentioned, probably another. I find, for example, in M. Adolphe d'Assier's recently published "Essai sur l'Humanité Posthume," some conjectures respecting the destination of the higher human principles after death, which are infused with quite a startling flavour of true occult knowledge. Again, the ardour now shown in "Psychical Research," by the very distinguished, highly gifted, and cultivated men, who lead the society in London devoted to that object, is, to my inner convictions-knowing as I do something of the way the spiritual aspirations of the world are silently influenced by those whose work lies in that department of Nature-the obvious fruit of efforts, parallel to those with which I am more immediately concerned.

It only remains for me to disclaim, on behalf of the treatise which ensues, any pretension to high finish as regards the language in which it is cast. Longer familiarity with the vast and complicated scheme of cosmogony disclosed, will no doubt suggest improvements in the phraseology employed

to expound it. Two years ago, neither I, nor any other European living, knew the alphabet of the science here for the first time put into a scientific shape or subject at all events to an attempt in that direction-the science of Spiritual Causes and their Effects, of Super-physical Consciousness, of Cosmical Evolution. Though, as I have explained above, ideas had begun to offer themselves to the world in more or less embarrassing disguise of mystic symbology, no attempt had ever been made by any esoteric teacher, two years back, to put the doctrine forward in its plain abstract purity. As my own instruction progressed on those lines, I have had to coin phrases and suggest English words as equivalents for the ideas which were presented to my mind. I am by no means convinced that in all cases I have coined the best possible phrases and hit on the most neatly expressive words. For example, at the threshold of the subject we come upon the necessity of giving some name to the various elements or attributes of which the complete human creature is made up. "Element" would be an impossible word to use, on account of the confusion that would arise from its use in other significations; and the least objectionable on the whole seemed to me "principle" though to an ear trained in the

niceties of metaphysical expression this word will have a very unsatisfactory sound in some of its present applications. Quite possibly, therefore, in progress of time the Western nomenclature of the esoteric doctrine may be greatly developed in advance of that I have provisionally constructed. The Oriental nomenclature is far more elaborate, but metaphysical Sanscrit seems to be painfully embarrassing to a translator-the fault my Indian friends assure me, not of Sanscrit, but of the language in which they are now required to express the Sanscrit idea. Eventually we may find that, with the help of a little borrowing from familiar Greek quarries, English may prove more receptive of the new doctrine-or rather, of the primeval doctrine as newly disclosed-than has yet been supposed possible in the East.

« ПредишнаНапред »