Five Years of Theosophy

by Unknown

But when we are told by the Esoteric Doctrine that the vital principle is indestructible, we feel we move on occult, incomprehensible ground, for we know that protoplasm is, after all, as destructible as the body itself. It lives as long as life lasts, and, it may be said, it is the only material in the body that does live as long as life lasts. But it dies with the cessation of life. It is true it is capable of a sort of resuscitation. For that very dead protoplasm, be it animal or vegetable, serves again as our food, and as the food of all the animal world, and thus helps to repair our constantly wasting economy. But for all that it could hardly be said to be indestructible; it is assimilable—that is to say, capable of re-entering the domain of life, through its being taken up by a living body. But such an eventual chance does by no means confer upon it the attribute of indestructibility; for we need only leave the dead animal or plant containing the protoplasm alone, and it will rot and decay—organs, tissues, and protoplasm altogether.

To our further perplexity the Esoteric Doctrine tells us that the vital principle is not only indestructible, but it is a form of force, which, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becomes attracted immediately by others. The vital principle to the Esoteric Doctrine would then appear to be a sort of abstract force, not a force inherent in the living protoplasm—this is the scientific conception—but a force per se, independent altogether of the material with which it is connected.

Now I must confess this is a doctrine which puzzles one greatly, although one may have no difficulty in accepting the spirit of man as an entity, for the phenomena of ratiocination are altogether so widely different from all physical phenomena that they can hardly be explained by any of the physical forces known to us. The materialist, who tells us that consciousness, sensation, thought, and the spontaneous power of the will, so peculiar to man and to the higher animals, are altogether so many outcomes of certain conditions of matter and nothing else, makes at best merely a subjective statement. He cannot help acknowledging that spontaneity is not a quality of matter. He is then driven to the contention that what we believe to be spontaneous in us, is, after all, an unconscious result of external impulses only. His contention rests then on the basis of his own inner experience, or what he believes to be such. This contention of his is, however, disputed by many, who no less appeal to their own inner experience, or what they believe to be their experience. It is then a question of inner experience of the one party versus inner experience of the other. And such being the case, the scientific materialist is driven to admit that his theory, however correct it may be, rests, after all, on subjective experience, and can, as such, not claim the rank of positive knowledge. There is then no difficulty in accepting the entity of the spirit in man, the materialistic assertion to the contrary notwithstanding. But the vital force is exclusively concerned with the construction of matter. Here we have a right to expect that physical and chemical forces should hold the whole ground of an explanation, if an explanation is possible at all. Now, physical and chemical forces are no entities; they are invariably connected with matter. In fact, they are so intimately connected with matter that they can never be dissevered from it altogether. The energy of matter may be latent or patent, and, when patent, it may manifest itself in one form or the other, according to the condition of its surroundings; it may manifest itself in the shape of light, heat, electricity, magnetism, or vitality; but in one form or the other energy constantly inheres in matter. The correlation of forces is now a well-established, scientific fact, and it is more than plausible that what is called the vital principle, or the vital force, forms a link in the chain of the other known physical forces, and is, therefore, transmutable into any of them; granted even that there is such a thing as a distinct vital force. The tendency of modern Biology is then to discard the notion of a vital entity altogether. If vital force is to be indestructible, then so are also indestructible heat, light, electricity, &c.; they are indestructible in this sense, that whenever their respective manifestation is suspended or arrested, they make their appearance in some other form of force; and in this very same sense vital force may be looked upon as indestructible: whenever vital manifestation is arrested, what had been acting as vital force is transformed into chemical, electrical forces, &c., taking its place.

But the Esoteric Doctrine appears to teach something quite different from what I have just explained, and what is, as far as I understand, a fair representation of the scientific conception of the subject. The Esoteric Doctrine tells us that the vital principle is indestructible, and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becomes attracted by others. He then evidently holds that, what constitutes the vital principle is a principle or form of force per se, a form of force which can leave one set of atoms and go over as such to another set, without leaving any substitute force behind. This, it must be said, is simply irreconcileable with the scientific view on the subject as hitherto understood.

By the and of Professor Yaeger's theory this difficulty can be explained, I am happy to say, in a most satisfactory way.

The seat of the vital principle, according to Professor Yaeger's theory, is not the protoplasm, but the odorant matter imbedded in it. And such being the case, the vital principle, as far as it can be reached by the breaking up of its animated protoplasm, is really indestructible. You destroy the protoplasm by burning it, by treating it with sulphuric acid, or any other decomposing agent—the odoriferous substances, far from being destroyed, become only so much the more manifest; they escape the moment protoplasmic destruction or decomposition begins, carrying along with them the vital principle, or what has been acting as such in the protoplasm. And as they are volatile, they must soon meet with other protoplasms congenial to their nature, and set up there the same kind of vital activity as they have done in their former habitat. They are, as the Esoteric Doctrine rightly teaches, indestructible, and when disconnected with one set of atoms, they immediately become attracted by others.

—L. Salzer, M.D.

Odorigen and Jiva (II.)

There is a well-known Sanskrit treatise, where most of the deductions of Dr. Yaeger are anticipated and practically applied to sexual selection in the human species. The subject of aura seminalis finds a pretty full treatment there. The connection between what Dr. Yaeger calls "odorigen" and jiva or prana, as it is differently called in different systems of Indian philosophy, has been well traced. But his remarks on this subject, able as they no doubt are, call for a few observations from the point of view of occult philosophy. Jiva has been described by a trustworthy authority as a "form of force indestructible, and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, is immediately attracted by another set." Dr. Salzer concludes from this that occult philosophy looks upon it as an abstract force or force per se. But surely this is bending too much to the Procrustean phraseology of modern science, and if not properly guarded will lead to some misapprehension. Matter in occult philosophy means existence in the widest sense of that word. However much the various forms of existence, such as physical, vital, mental, spiritual, &c., differ from each other, they are mutually related as being parts of the ONE UNIVERSAL EXISTENCE, the Parabrahma of the Vedantist. Force is the inherent power or capacity of Parabrahma, or the "matter" of occultism, to assume different forms. This power or capacity is not a separate entity, but is the thing itself in which it inheres, just as the three-angled character of a triangle is nothing separate from the triangle itself. From this it will be abundantly clear that, accepting the nomenclature of occult science, one cannot speak of an abstract force without being guilty of a palpable absurdity. What is meant by Jiva being a "form of force," &c., is that it is matter in a state in which it exhibits certain phenomena, not produced by it in its sensuous state; or, in other words, it is a property of matter in a particular state, corresponding with properties called, under ordinary circumstances, heat, electricity, &c., by modern science, but at the same time without any correlation to them. It might here be objected that if Jiva was not a force per se, in the sense which modern science would attach to the phrase, then how can it survive unchanged the grand change called death, which the protoplasms it inheres in undergo? and even granting that Jiva is matter in a particular state, in what part of the body shall we locate it, in the teeth of the fact that the most careful examination has not been successful in detecting it? Jiva, as has already been stated, is subtle supersensuous matter, permeating the entire physical structure of the living being, and when it is separated from such structure life is said to become extinct. It is not reasonable therefore to expect it to be subject to detection by the surgeon's knife. A particular set of conditions is necessary for its connection with an animal structure, and when those conditions are disturbed, it is attracted by other bodies, presenting suitable conditions. Dr. Yaegar's "odorigen" is not Jiva itself, but is one of the links which connects it with the physical body; it seems to be matter standing between Sthula Sarira (gross body) and Jiva.

—Dharanidar Kauthumi