Five Years of Theosophy

by Unknown

In plants it is the blossom which is entrusted with the function of reproduction, and the odorous emanations accompanying that process are well known. There is strong reason to believe that something similar prevails in the case of animals, as may be seen from an examination of what embryologists call the aura seminalis.

Let us now inquire what the effects are of odours generated in the outer world on animals. The odorous impressions produced may be pleasant or unpleasant, pleasant to one and unpleasant to another animal. What is it that constitutes this sensation of pleasure or displeasure? Professor Yaeger answers, It is harmony or disharmony which makes all the difference. The olfactory organs of each animal are impregnated by its own specific scent. Whenever the odorous waves of a substance harmonize in their vibration with the odorous waves emanating from the animal; in other words, whenever they fall in and agree with each other, an agreeable sensation is produced; whenever the reverse takes places, the sensation is disagreeable. In this way it is that the odour regulates the choice of the food on the part of the animal. In a similar way the sympathies and antipathies between the various animals are regulated. For every individual has not only its specific but also its individual scent. The selection between the sexes, or what, in the case of the human race, is called love, has its mainspring in the odorous harmony subsisting in the two individuals concerned.

This individual scent—a variation of the specific odorous type—alters (within the limits of its speciality) with age, with the particular mode of occupation, with the sex, with certain physiological conditions and functions during life, with the state of health, and last, but not least, with the state of our mind.

It is to be remembered that every time protoplasm undergoes disintegration, specific odours are set free. We have seen how sulphuric acid, or heat, when boiling or roasting meat, brings out the specific animal odour. But it is an established fact in science, that every physical or mental operation is accompanied by disintegration of tissue; consequently we are entitled to say that with every emotion odours are being disengaged. It can be shown that the quality of those odours differ with the nature of the emotion. The prescribed limits prevent further pursuit of the subject; I shall, therefore, content myself by drawing some conclusions from Professor Yaeger's theory in the light of the Esoteric Doctrine.

The phenomena of mesmeric cures find their full explanation in the theory just enunciated. For since the construction and preservation of the organism, and of every organ in particular, is owing to specific scents, we may fairly look upon disease in general as a disturbance of the specific scent of the organism, and upon disease of a particular organ of the body, as a disturbance of the specific scent pertaining to that particular organ. We have been hitherto in the habit of holding the protoplasm responsible for all phenomena of disease. We have now come to learn that what acts in the protoplasm are the scents; we shall, therefore, have to look to them as the ultimate cause of morbid phenomena. I have mentioned before the experiment of Mons. Ligeois, showing that odoriferous substances, when brought in contact with water, move; and that the motion of one odoriferous substance may be inhibited, or arrested altogether, by the presence of another odoriferous substance. Epidemic diseases, and the zymotic diseases in particular, have, then, most likely their origin in some local odours which inhibit the action of our specific organic odours. In the case of hereditary diseases, it is most likely the transmission of morbid specific odours from parent to offspring that is the cause of the evil, knowing, as we do, that in disease the natural specific odour is altered, and must, therefore, have been altered in the diseased parent.

Now comes the mesmeriser. He approaches the sick with the strong determination to cure him. This determination, or effort of the will, is absolutely necessary, according to the agreement of all mesmerisers, for his curative success. Now an effort of the will is a mental operation, and is, therefore, accompanied by tissue disintegration. The effort being purely mental, we may say it is accompanied by disintegration of cerebral and nervous tissue. But disintegration of organic tissue means, as we have seen before, disengagement of specific scents; the mesmeriser emits, then, during his operation, scents from his own body. And as the patient's sufferings are supposed to originate from a deficiency or alteration of his own specific scent, we can well see how the mesmeriser, by his mesmeric or odoriferous emanations, may effect a cure. He may supply the want of certain odoriferous substances in the patient, or he may correct others by his own emanations, knowing, as we do, from the experiment of Mons. Ligeois, that odorant matter does act on odorant matter.

One remark more and I have done. By the Esoteric Doctrine we are told that the living body is divided into two parts:

1. The physical body, composed wholly of matter in its grossest and most tangible form.

2. The vital principle (or Jiva), a form of force indestructible, and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becoming attracted immediately by others.

Now this division, generally speaking, fully agrees with the teachings of science. I need only remind you of what I have said before with regard to the formed tissues and structures of the body and its formative agent the protoplasm. Formed structure is considered as material which has already passed out of the realms of life; what lives in it is the protoplasm. So far the esoteric conception fully agrees with the result of the latest investigations of modern science.