WHAT IS THEOSOPHY ? A LECTURE BY MRS. BESANT.

Evening Post, Volume XLIII, Issue 143, 18 June 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHAT IS THEOSOPHY ? A LECTURE BY MRS. BESANT.

Though theoaophy has probably at present a following more Belect than numerous, the large audience which assembled in the Spa Concert Hall at Harrogate the other evening to hear ono of its ablest living exponents, demoubtrates that the new belief is at least exciting a larger spirit of inquiry than might have been imaginod. In the personality of the lecturer — Mrs. Annie Besant — on whom has fallen the mantle of Madame Blavatsky, there was, perhaps, sufficient inducement to account for the dimensions of the gathering, but their close attention to a dis- | course, which necessarily partook somewhat of a metaphysical character evidenced the interest they felt in this system of philosophy. In her answer to the general question, Mrs, Besant claimed for theosophy that it was not simply a thing to occupy an idle hour, but the basis of religion, of philosophy, and of science. Two great streams of thought had run side by side throughout the whole of man's intellectual history, she said, and, in an eloquent passage, she urged that these ought to be not antagonistic to but illustrative of each other, flowing along different lines to the common goal of one universal truth. The applause which this mental prospect evoked, however, only served to emphasize her contention in the succeeding sentence that, unfortunately, this had not been so in the past. From time to time in the world's history there had emerged, she continued, a philosophy which, however it might differ in details from age to age, was fundamentally the same idea — namely, that the world was something more than physical, and that the physical was only the expression of something that lay behind it. They found it in the Upanishads of ancient India, as well as in modern Germany, in the writings of Schopenhauer, and theosophy was only a new proclamation in the Western world of a philosophy which could be traced back to the very dawn of history. They were too apt to regard man merely as a body in this world, and to think that his spiritual nature could have no manifestation till his body had been cast away in death. Theosopby taught I that man was a spirit now, as much as he ever would be in the future ; that tho spiritual ought not to be entirely hidden, and that some glimpses of its existence should be discoverable to them while they walked the oarth in the physical body. It taught that they might have man's intelligence functioning not only through the brain, but also through subtler forms of matter, which the intelligence could-organise and use apart from the physical body. This brought them to the region nearest the physical — the astral — plane. Mrs. Besant here admitted that the word "astral"' was not a good one, but explained I that it " came from the stars " as an allusion to the subtler kinds of matter that were spread through the interstella spaces, while thus quitting, so to speak, the mental " terra firma." As to the evidence of the existence of tbis subtler or astral matter into the region of which she was mentally transporting her hearers, Mrs. Besant claimed to have over-whelm-ing testimony on the point in human I experience, for, go where they would, amongst their own friends and acquaintances even, they would find evidence of the existence of something more than physical — of strange sights, or sounds, or touches, of visions or apparitions. As well as Madame de Stael, Oarlj'le had left the same testimony, and many another person, if honest, would < do the same thing. That was to say, that under certain conditions of loneliness, of darkness, and silence, there, was scarcely one person that had not felt a beginning of the functioning of the astral senses, that told them there was something subtler than physical nature, and of which they were more or less conscious. Although mesmerism had been scouted in its day, it was now accepted under the name of hypnotism, and, citing a case in which a hypnotic subject had, at the Salpetriere, at Paris, cdrrectly diagnosed a case which baffled the physician, she urged that that case alone, which was only one of hundreds, justified a demand for the revision of the materialislic theories of life. But, continued the lecturer, they could go beyond the astral plane. They could have mental phenomena, and man's intelligence could wofrk in a yet subtler form of matter, and could body itself forth in shapes that represented its thought. In threading with her hearers some of the intricacies of this subtler mental plane, Mrs. Besant showed that she at least trod on firm ground, and she gave the occult theory of thought' transference — which belongs to the mental plane — a practical and even startling explanation to human existence. For iv the scientific application of -this theory, she said, they would have j explained how it was that children to-day were born with tendencies to virtue or vice. If they went to his- j tory they found that in the Augustine ' era of Borne they had reproduced

ganior, and'a t ' same characteristics in the . . „J of Elizabeth. This was too* marked a coincidence for there to be no law underlying it; and in Darwin's hypothesis of evolution they had only the fragment of a mighty truth which applied to a man's whole nature. Great reforms — great attempts to make society happier and' better — failed because they could not have a nobler society until they had nobler individuals to deal with. Finally, the argument was adduced that where smallpox or fever germs are scattered around, they might, on congenial soil, develop into further disease, and so it is, said Mrs. Besant, in the reign of thought. We are each, she continued, in some degree artificers, and responsible for the mental and moral and physical growth of the world and all that lived there. The thought of covetousness in them might turn to the act of the theft in the man surrounded by temptation, and hatred ' in them might develop into murder I in the mind of the man tempted to j commit crime. " Hatred ceased not ' by hatred at any time, but hatred ceases by love," and theosophy worked itself out into a defiuite scheme of human brotherhood, based on knowledge, and not only on emotion. Its great purpose was' to show that the brotherhood was a reality and not a dream.