Every human being has a soul which, while not separable from the brain or nerves, is mind or jivatma, or sentient soul, but when regenerated or spiritualized by yoga, it is free from bondage and manifests the divine essence. It rises above all phenomenal states—joy, sorrow, grief, fear, hope, and in fact all states resulting in pain or pleasure, and becomes blissful, realizing immortality, infinitude and felicity of wisdom within itself. The sentient soul is nervous, sensational, emotional, phenomenal, and impressional. It constitutes the natural life and is finite. The soul and the non-soul are thus the two landmarks. What is non-soul is prakriti, or created. It is not the lot of every one to know what soul is, and therefore millions live and die possessing minds cultivated in intellect and feeling, but not raised to the soul state. In proportion as one's soul is emancipated from prakriti or sensuous bondage, in that proportion his approximation to the soul state is attained; and it is this that constitutes disparities in the intellectual, moral, and religious culture of human beings and their consequent approximation to God.—Spiritual Stray Leaves, Calcutta, 1879.
He also cites some words of Fichte, which prove that the like conclusion is reached in the philosophy of Western idealism: "The real spirit which comes to itself in human consciousness is to be regarded as an impersonal pneuma—universal reason, nay, as the spirit of God Himself; and the good of man's whole development, therefore, can be no other than to substitute the universal for the individual consciousness."
That there may be, and are affirmed to be, intermediate stages, states, or discrete degrees, will, of course, be understood. The aim of this paper has been to call attention to the abstract condition of the immortalized consciousness; negatively it is true, but it is on this very account more suggestive of practical applications. The connection of the Theosophical Society with the Spiritualist movement is so intimately sympathetic, that I hope one of these may he pointed out without offence. It is that immortality cannot be phenomenally demonstrated. What I have called psychic survival can be, and probably is. But immortality is the attainment of a state, and that state the very negation of phenomenal existence. Another consequence refers to the direction our culture should take. We have to compose ourselves to death. Nothing less. We are each of us a complex of desires, passions, interests, modes of thinking and feeling, opinions, prejudices, judgment of others, likings and dislikings, affections, aims public and private. These things, and whatever else constitutes, the recognizable content of our present temporal individuality, are all in derogation of our ideal of impersonal being—saving consciousness, the manifestation of being. In some minute, imperfect, relative, and almost worthless sense we may do right in many of our judgments, and be amiable in many of our sympathies and affections. We cannot be sure even of this. Only people unhabituated to introspection and self-analysis are quite sure of it. These are ever those who are loudest in their censures, and most dogmatic in their opinionative utterances. In some coarse, rude fashion they are useful, it may be indispensable, to the world's work, which is not ours, save in a transcendental sense and operation. We have to strip ourselves of all that, and to seek perfect passionless tranquillity. Then we may hope to die. Meditation, if it be deep, and long, and frequent enough, will teach even our practical Western mind to understand the Hindu mind in its yearning for Nirvana. One infinitesimal atom of the great conglomerate of humanity, who enjoys the temporal, sensual life, with its gratifications and excitements, as much as most, will testify with unaffected sincerity that he would rather be annihilated altogether than remain for ever what he knows himself to be, or even recognizably like it. And he is a very average moral specimen. I have heard it said, "The world's life and business would come to an end, there would be an end to all its healthy activity, an end of commerce, arts, manufactures, social intercourse, government, law, and science, if we were all to devote ourselves to the practice of Yoga, which is pretty much what your ideal comes to." And the criticism is perfectly just and true. Only I believe it does not go quite far enough. Not only the activities of the world, but the phenomenal world itself, which is upheld in consciousness, would disappear or take new, more interior, more living, and more significant forms, at least for humanity, if the consciousness of humanity was itself raised to a superior state. Readers of St. Martin, and of that impressive book of the late James Hinton, "Man and his Dwelling-place," especially if they have also by chance been students of the idealistic philosophies, will not think this suggestion extravagant. If all the world were Yogis, the world would have no need of those special activities, the ultimate end and purpose of which, by-the-by, our critic would find it not easy to define. And if only a few withdraw, the world can spare them. Enough of that.
Only let us not talk of this ideal of impersonal, universal being in individual consciousness as an unverified dream. Our sense and impatience of limitations are the guarantees that they are not final and insuperable. Whence is this power of standing outside myself, of recognizing the worthlessness of the pseudo—judgments, of the prejudices with their lurid colouring of passion, of the temporal interests, of the ephemeral appetites, of all the sensibilities of egoism, to which I nevertheless surrender myself so that they indeed seem myself? Through and above this troubled atmosphere I see a being, pure, passionless, rightly measuring the proportions and relations of things, for whom there is, properly speaking, no present, with its phantasms, falsities, and half-truths; who has nothing personal in the sense of being opposed to the whole of related personalities: who sees the truth rather than struggles logically towards it, and truth of which I can at present form no conception; whose activities are unimpeded by intellectual doubt, un-perverted by moral depravity, and who is indifferent to results, because he has not to guide his conduct by calculation of them, or by any estimate of their value. I look up to him with awe, because in being passionless he sometimes seems to me to be without love. Yet I know that this is not so; only that his love is diffused by its range, and elevated in abstraction beyond my gaze and comprehension. And I see in this being my ideal, my higher, my only true, in a word, my immortal self.
—C.C. Massey
Chastity
Ideal woman is the most beautiful work of the evolution of forms (in our days she is very often only a beautiful work of art). A beautiful woman is the most attractive, charming, and lovely being that a man can imagine. I never saw a male being who could lay any claims to manly vigour, strength or courage, who was not an admirer of woman. Only a profligate, a coward or a sneak would hate women; a hero and a man admires woman, and is admired by her.
Women's love belongs to a complete man. Then she smiles on him his human nature becomes aroused, his animal desires like little children begin to clamour for bread, they do not want to be starved, they want to satisfy their hunger. His whole soul flies towards the lovely being, which attracts him with almost irresistible force, and if his higher principles, his divine spirit, is not powerful enough to restrain him, his soul follows the temptations of his physical body. Once again the animal nature has subdued the divine. Woman rejoices in her victory, and man is ashamed of his weakness; and instead of being a representation of strength, he becomes an object of pity.
To be truly powerful a man must retain his power and never for a moment lose it. To lose it is to surrender his divine nature to his animal nature; to restrain his desires and retain his power, is to assert his divine right, and to become more than a man—a god.
Eliphas Levi says: "To be an object of attraction for all women, you must desire none;" and every one who has had a little experience of his own must know that he is right. Woman wants what she cannot get, and what she can get she does not want. Perhaps it is to the man endowed with spiritual power, that the Bible refers, when it says: "To him who has much, more shall be given, and from him who has little, that little shall be taken away."