Page:A Collection of Esoteric Writings.djvu/125

111 find itself absolutely rejected by every true Adwaitee and Eastern Occultist. The latter would answer that "matter alone is a substauce, in which thinking, knowing, doubting, and a power of moving, are inherent, whether as a latent or active potentiality—and whether that matter is in a differentiated, or an undifferentiated state.

Thus, in our humble opinion, the something, or rather the no-thing, called Spirit, has by itself, no form or forms in either progressive or stationary "states of development;" and we say again that the expression is perfectly unintelligible to every real Adwaitee. Even supposing that the qualifying clause refers only to matter, the meaning conveyed by the expression "matter and spirit beyond the present developed form" is the same as conveyed by that of—"matter and spirit in the stage of perfect Laya"? We fail to see the point made, or even any sense in such a sentence as "matter and spirit in the stage of perfect Laya," implying as it does the possibility of spirit, a pure abstraction, being dissolved and annihilated—we will not say—as matter—since the latter in its primordial, cosmic state can be no more annihilated or even dissolved than spirit—but as a thing of matter having substance and form. Can a void be annihilated? And what is pure, absolute spirit but the "void" of the ancient Greek philosophers? Well, says Lucretius, "there can be no third thing besides body and void; for if it be to the smallest extent tangible—it is body; if not,—it is void." And let it not be urged, on the strength of this quotation, that because we quote the words of a great "Atheist," a materialist, as an authority, we are therefore a materialist and an atheist (in the usual sense of both terms) ourself. We object to the very term "materialism" if it is to be made indentical with, or a synonym of "corporealism," that is to say, an antithesis of, "Spiritualism." In the light we, Occultists, regard matter, we are all materialists. But it does not at all stand to reason that because of that, we should be, at the same time, "corporealists," denying in any sense or way the reality of the so-called spiritual existence, or of any being or beings, living on another plane of life, in higher and far more perfect worlds than ours, having their being in states of which no untrained mind can have the smallest concepttion. Hence our objection to the idea and possibility of "matter and spirit, in the stage of perfect Laya unless it can be shown that we have misunderstood the latter word. According to the doctrines of the Arhat philosophy there are seven states of matter, the 7th state being the sum total, the condition or aspect of Mulaprakriti.*

Consequently the state of Cosmic matter beyond its "present developed form" may mean any of the other six states in which it exists; and