The Anima Mundi (or “world-soul”) was not the Deity, but a manifestation. Those philosophers never conceived of the One as an animate nature. The original One did not exist, as we understand the term. Not till he (it) had united with the many emanated existences (the Monad and Duad), was a being produced. The τίμιον (“honoured”), the something manifested, dwells in the centre as in the circumference, but it is only the reflection of the Deity—the World-Soul. In this doctrine we find the spirit of Esoteric Buddhism.[704]
And it is that of Esoteric Brâhmanism and of the Vedântin Adwaitîs. The two modern philosophers, Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, teach the same ideas. The Occultists say that:
The psychic and ectenic forces, the “ideo-motor” and “electro-biological powers,” “latent thought,” and even “unconscious cerebration” theories can be condensed in two words: the Kabalistic Astral Light.[705]
Schopenhauer only synthesized all this by calling it Will, and contradicted the men of Science in their materialistic views, as von Hartmann did later on. The author of the Philosophy of the Unconscious calls their views “an instinctual prejudice.”
Furthermore, he demonstrates that no experimenter can have anything to do with matter properly so termed, but only with the forces into which he divides it. The visible effects of matter are but the effects of force. He concludes thereby that that which is now called matter is nothing but the aggregation of atomic forces, to express which the word “matter” is used; outside of that, for science, matter is but a word void of sense.[706]
As much, it is to be feared, as those other terms with which we are now concerned, “Space,” “Nirvâna,” and so on.
The bold theories and opinions expressed in Schopenhauer's works differ widely from those of the majority of our orthodox scientists.[707] “In reality,” remarks this [pg 399]daring speculator, “there is neither Matter nor Spirit. The tendency to gravitation in a stone is as unexplainable as thought in the human brain.... If matter can—no one knows why—fall to the ground, then it can also—no one knows why—think.... As soon, even in mechanics, as we trespass beyond the purely mathematical, as soon as we reach the inscrutable adhesion, gravitation, and so on we are faced by phenomena which are to our senses as mysterious as the will and thought in man: we find ourselves facing the incomprehensible, for such is every force in nature. Where is, then, that matter which you all pretend to know so well, and from which—being so familiar with it—you draw all your conclusions and explanations, and attribute to it all things?... That which can be fully realized by our reason and senses is but the superficial; they can never reach the true inner substance of things. Such was the opinion of Kant. If you consider that there is in a human head some sort of a spirit, then you are obliged to concede the same to a stone. If your dead and utterly-passive matter can manifest a tendency toward gravitation or, like electricity, attract and repel and send out sparks then as well as the brain it can also think. In short, every particle of the so-called spirit we can replace with an equivalent of matter, and every particle of matter replace with spirit.... Thus, it is not the Christian division of all things into matter and spirit that can ever be found philosophically exact; but only if we divide them into will and manifestation, which form of division has naught to do with the former, for it spiritualizes everything: all that which is in the first instance real and objective—body and matter—it transforms into a representation, and every manifestation into will.”[708]
The matter of science may be for all objective purposes a “dead and utterly-passive matter”; to the Occultist not an atom of it can be dead—“Life is ever present in it.” We send the reader who would know more about it to our article, “Transmigration of Life-Atoms.”[709] What we are now concerned with is the doctrine of Nirvâna.
A “system of atheism” it may be justly called, since it recognizes neither God nor Gods—least of all a Creator, as it entirely rejects creation. The Fecit ex nihilo is as incomprehensible to the Occult metaphysical Scientist as it is to the scientific Materialist. It is at this point that all agreement stops between the two. But if such be the sin of the Buddhist and Brâhman Occultist, then Pantheists and Atheists, and also theistical Jews—the Kabalists—must also plead “guilty” to it; yet no one would ever think of calling the Hebrews of the Kabalah “Atheists.” Except the Talmudistic and Christian exoteric systems there never was a religious Philosophy, whether in the ancient or modern world, but rejected à priori the ex nihilo hypothesis, simply because Matter was always co-eternalized with Spirit.
Nirvâna, as well as the Moksha of the Vedântins, is regarded by most of the Orientalists as a synonym of annihilation; yet no more glaring injustice could be done, and this capital error must be pointed out and disproved. On this most important tenet of the Brâhmo-Buddhistic system—the Alpha and the Omega of “Being” or “Non-Being”—rests the whole edifice of Occult Metaphysics. Now the rectification of the great error concerning Nirvâna may be very easily accomplished with relation to the philosophically inclined, to those who,