The Inner Life, v. I/Second Section/XI

SPIRITUALISM Never forget that the spiritualists are entirely with us on some most important points. They all hold (a) life after death as an actual vivid ever-present certainty, and (b) eternal progress and ultimate happiness for everyone; good and bad alike. Now these two items are of such tremendous, such paramount importance — they constitute so enormous an advance from the ordinary orthodox position — that I for one should be well content to join hands with them on such a platform, and postpone the discussion of the minor points upon which we differ until we have converted the world at large to that much of the truth. I always feel that there is plenty of room for both of us. People who want to see phenomena, people who cannot believe anything without ocular demonstration, will obtain no satisfaction with us, while from the spiritualists they will get exactly what they want. On the other hand, people who want more philosophy than spiritualism usually provides will naturally gravitate in our direction. Those who admire the average trance-address certainly would not appreciate Theosophy, while those who enjoy Theosophical teaching would never be satisfied with the trance-address. We both cater for the liberal, the open-minded, but for quite different types of them; meantime, we surely need not quarrel. In what Madame Blavatsky wrote on the subject she laid great stress on the utter uncertainty of the whole thing, and the preponderance of personations over real appearances. My own personal experience has been more favourable than that. I spent some years in experimenting with spiritualism, and I suppose there is hardly a phenomenon of which you may read in the books which I have not repeatedly seen. I have encountered many personations, but still in my experience a distinct majority of the apparitions have been genuine, and therefore I am bound to bear testimony to the fact. The messages which they give are often uninteresting, and their religious teaching is usually Christianity and water, but still it is liberal as far as it goes, and anything is an advance upon the bigoted orthodox position. Not that some spiritualists are not bigoted also — narrow and intolerant as any sectarian — when it comes to discussing (say) the question of reincarnation! The majority of English and American spiritualists do not yet know of that fact, but the French spiritists, the followers of Allan Kardec, hold it, and also the school of Madame d'Esperance in England. Many students wonder that dead people should not all know and recognize the fact of reincarnation; but after all why should they? When a man dies he resorts to the company of those whom he has known on earth; he moves among exactly the same kind of people as during physical life. The average country grocer is no more likely after death than before it to come into contact with any one who can give him information about reincarnation. Most men are shut in from all new ideas by a host of prejudices; they carry these prejudices into the astral world with them, and are no more amenable to reason and common sense there than here. True, a man who is really open-minded can learn a great deal on the astral plane; he may speedily acquaint himself with the whole of the Theosophical teaching, and there are dead men who do this. Therefore it often happens that scraps of Theosophy are found among spirit communications. We must not forget that there is a higher spiritualism of which the public knows nothing, which never publishes any account of its results. The best circles of all are strictly private — restricted entirely to one family, or to a small number of friends. In such circles the same people meet over and over again, and no outsider is ever admitted to make any change in the magnetism; so the conditions set up are singularly perfect, and the results obtained are of the most surprising character. At public séances, to which any one may be admitted on payment, an altogether lower class of dead people appear, because of the promiscuous jumble of inharmonious magnetisms.