Section 1

I
STUDIES IN
OCCULTISM
A Series of Reprints from the Writings of
H. P. BLAVATSKY
NO. III.
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION
BOSTON
NEW ENGLAND THEOSOPHICAL CORPORATION 24 Mt. Vernon St.
1895
STUDIES IN OCCULTISM
A Series of Reprints from the Writings of
H. P. BLAVATSKY
No. I.
Practical Occultism.
Occultism Versus the Occult Arts. The Blessings of Publicity.
No. II.
Hypnotism.
Black Magic in Science.
Signs of the Times.
No. III.
Psychic and Noetic Action.
No. IY.
Kosmic Mind.
Dual Aspect of Wisdom.
No. Y.
Esoteric Character of the Gospels.
No. YI.
Astral Bodies.
Constitution of the Inner Man.
Nos. I, II, III, and IV now ready. Nos. V and VI are in press.
Printed on the best of paper, in large type, and well bound, manual size, in linen cloth. Price 35 cents for single numbers, or $1.50 for the six. The whole of H.P.B.’s mag¬ azine articles on Occultism will be issued in like manner.
Special Edition for Students, interleaved with fine writ¬ ing paper for notes. Edition limited to 100 copies. Price 50 cents each, or $2.50 for the six.
Published by the N. E. Theosophical Corporation, 24 Mt. Vernon St., Boston, Mass., from whom they may be ordered.
CONTENTS
Psychic and Noetic Action page 121 From “ Lucifer ”, Oct . and iVot?., 1890
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION.
“ . I made man just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall,
Such I created all th’ethereal powers
And spirits, both them who stood and them who fail’d,
Truly, they stood who stood, and fell who fell.” — Milton.
“ The assumption that the mind is a real being , which can be acted upon by the brain, and which can act on the body through the brain, is the only one compatible with all the facts of experience.”— George T. Ladd, in the “ Elements of Physiological Psychology” .
I
A NEW influence, a breath, a sound — “as of a rushing mighty wind” — has suddenly swept over a few Theosophical heads. An idea, vague at first, grew in time into a very definite form, and now seems to be working very busily in the minds of some of our members. It is this : if we would make converts, the few ex¬ occult teachings, which are destined to see the light of publicity, should be made, henceforward, more subservient to , if not
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STUDIES IN OCCULTISM
entirely at one with modern science . It is urged that the so-called esoteric* (or late esoteric) cosmogony, anthropology, ethnol¬ ogy, geology, psychology and — foremost of all — metaphysics, having been adapted into making obeisance to modern (hence materi¬ alistic) thought, should never henceforth be allowed to contradict (not openly , at all events) “scientific philosophy”. The latter, we suppose, means the fundamental and ac¬ cepted views of the great German schools, or of Mr. Herbert Spencer and some other English stars of lesser magnitude; and not only these, but also the deductions that may be drawn from them by their more or less instructed disciples.
A large undertaking this, truly, and one, moreover, in perfect conformity with the policy of the mediaeval Casuists, who dis¬ torted truth and even suppressed it, if it clashed with divine Revelation . Useless to say that we decline the compromise. It is quite possible — nay, probable and almost
* We say “ so-called,” because nothing of what has been given out publicly or in print can any longer be termed
esoteric .
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION 123
unavoidable — that “the mistakes made” in the rendering of such abstruse metaphysical tenets as those contained in Eastern Occult¬ ism, should be “frequent and often import¬ ant”. But then all such have to be traced back to the interpreters, not to the system itself. They have to be corrected on the authority of the same Doctrine, checked by the teachings grown on the rich and steady soil of Gupta Vidya , not by the specula¬ tions that blossom forth to-day, to die to¬ morrow — on the shifting sands of modern scientific guess-work, especially in all that relates to psychology and mental phenom¬ ena. Holding to our motto, “There is no religion higher than truth ”, we refuse most decidedly to pander to physical science. Yet, we may say this : If the so-called exact sciences limited their activity only to the physical realm of nature; if they concerned themselves strictly with surgery, chemistry — up to its legitimate boundaries, and with physiology — so far as the latter relates to the structure of our corporeal frame, then the Occultists would be the first to seek help in modern sciences, however many their
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STUDIES IN OCCULTISM
blunders and mistakes. But once that over¬ stepping material Nature the physiologists of the modern “animalistic”* school pre¬ tend to meddle with, and deliver ex cathedra dicta on, the higher functions and phenom¬ ena of the mind, saying that a careful analy¬ sis brings them to a firm conviction that no more than the animal is man a free-agent , far less a responsible one — then the Occult¬ ist has a far greater right than the average modern “Idealist” to protest. And the Occultist asserts that no Materialist — a pre¬ judiced and one-sided witness at best — can claim any authority in the question of men¬ tal physiology, or that which is now called by him the physiology of the soul . No such
* “Animalism” is quite an appropriate word to use (who¬ ever invented it) as a contrast to Mr. Tylor’s term “ anim¬ ism”, which he applied to all the “ Lower Races” of mankind who believe the soul a distinct entity. He finds that the words psyche , pneuma, animus , spiritus , etc., all belong to the same cycle of superstition in “ the lower stages of culture ”, Professor A. Bain dubbing all these distinctions, moreover, as a “ plurality of souls ” and a “double materialism”. This is the more curious as the learned author of “Mind and Body” speaks as dispar¬ agingly of Darwin’s “ Materialism ” in Zoonomia , wherein the founder of modern Evolution defines the word idea as “contracting a motion, or configuration of the fibres which constitute the immediate organ of Sense ”. ( “ Mind and Body”, p. 190, Note.)
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION 125
noun can be applied to the word “ soul ”, unless, indeed, by soul only the lower, psy¬ chic mind is meant, or that which develops in man (proportionally with the perfection of his brain) into intellect , and in the ani¬ mal into a higher instinct. But since the great Charles Darwin taught that “our ideas are animal motions of the organ of sense” everything becomes possible to the modern physiologist.
Thus, to the great distress of our scientif¬ ically inclined Fellows, it is once more Lucifer's duty to show how far we are at logger-heads with exact science, or shall we say, how far the conclusions of that science are drifting away from truth and fact. By “ science ” we mean, of course, the major¬ ity of the men of science ; the best minority, we are hapy to say, is on our side, at least as far as free-will in man and the immateri¬ ality of the mind are concerned. The study of the “ Physiology” of the Soul, of the Will in man and of his higher Conscious¬ ness from the standpoint of genius and its manifesting faculties, can never be summar¬ ized into a system of general ideas repre-
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sented by brief formulae ; no more than the psychology of material nature can have its manifold mysteries solved by the mere anal¬ ysis of its physical phenomena. There is no special organ of will, any more than there is a physical basis for the activities of self- consciousness.
“If the question is pressed as to the physical basis for the activities of self-consciousness, no answer can be given or suggested. . . . From
its very nature, that marvelous verifying actus of mind in which it recognizes the states as its own, can have no analogous or corresponding mater¬ ial substratum. It is impossible to specify any physiological process representing this unifying actus; it is even impossible to imagine how the description of any such process could he brought into intelligible relation with this unique mental power.” *
Thus, the whole conclave of psycho-phy¬ siologists may be challenged to correctly de¬ fine Consciousness, and they are sure to fail, because Self-consciousness belongs alone to man and proceeds from the Self, the higher Manas. Only, whereas the psychic element
* Physiological Psychology , etc ., p. 545, by George T. Ladd, Professor of Philosophy in Yale University.
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION
127
(or Kama Manas')* is common to both the animal and the human being — the far higher degree of its development in the latter rest¬ ing merely on the greater perfection and sensitiveness of his cerebral cells — no physi¬ ologist, not even the cleverest, will ever be able to solve the mystery of the human mind, in its highest spiritual manifestation, or in its dual aspect of the psychic and the noetic (or the manasic), t or even to com¬ prehend the intricacies of the former on the purely material plane — unless he knows something of, and is prepared to admit the presence of this dual element. This means that he would have to admit a lower (ani¬ mal), and a higher (or divine) mind in man, or what is known in Occultism as the “per¬ sonal” and the “impersonal’’ Egos . For, between the psychic and the noetic , between the Personality and the Individuality , there exists the same abyss as between a “Jack
* Or what the Kabalists call Nephesh , the “breath of life”.
t The Sanskrit word Manas (Mind) is used by us in prefer¬ ence to the Greek Nous (noetic) because the latter word having been so imperfectly understood in philosophy, suggests no definite meaning.
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STUDIES IN OCCULTISM
the Ripper”, and a holy Buddha. Unless the physiologist accepts all this, we say, he will ever he led into a quagmire. We in¬ tend to prove it.
As all know, the great majority of our learned “Didymi” reject the idea of free¬ will. Now this question is a problem that has occupied the minds of thinkers for ages; every school of thought having taken it up in turn and left it as far from solution as ever. And yet, placed as it is in the fore¬ most ranks of philosophical quandaries, the modern “psycho-physiologists” claim in the coolest and most bumptious way to have cut the Gordian knot forever. For them the feeling of personal free agency is an error, an illusion, “the collective hallucination of mankind”. This conviction starts from the principle that no mental activity is possible without a brain, and that there can be no brain without a body. As the latter is, moreover, subject to the general laws of a material world where all is based on neces¬ sity, and where there is no spontaneity, our modern psycho-physiologist has nolens volens to repudiate any self-spontaneity in human
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION
129
action. Here we have, for instance, a Lau¬ sanne professor of physiology, A. A. Herzen, to whom the claim of free will in man appears as the most unscientific absurdity. Says this oracle : —
uIn the boundless physical and chemical laboratory that surrounds man, organic life rep¬ resents quite an unimportant group of phenom¬ ena ; and amongst the latter, the place occupied by life having reached to the stage of conscious¬ ness, is so minute that it is absurd to exclude man from the sphere of action of a general law, in order to allow in him the existence of a sub¬ jective spontaneity or a free will standing outside of that law. ” — (Psychophysiologie Generale.)
For the Occultist who knows the differ¬ ence between the psychic and the noetic elements in man, this is pure trash, notwith¬ standing its sound scientific basis. For when the author puts the question — if psy¬ chic phenomena do not represent the results of an action of a molecular character whith¬ er then does motion disappear after reaching the sensory centres? — we answer that we never denied the fact. But what has this to do with a free-will? That every phenomenon in the visible Universe has its genesis in
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STUDIES IN OCCULTISM
motion, is an old axiom in Occultism ; nor do we doubt that the psycho-physiologist would place himself at logger-heads with the whole conclave of exact scientists were he to allow the idea that at a given moment a whole series of physical phenomena may disappear in the vacuum. Therefore, when the author of the work cited maintains that the said force does not disappear upon reach¬ ing the highest nervous centres, but that it is forthwith transformed into another series, viz., that of psychic manifestations, into thought, feeling, and consciousness, just as this same psychic force when applied to pro¬ duce some work of a physical ( e . g . muscu¬ lar) character gets transformed into the latter — Occultism supports him, for it is the first to say that all psychic activity, from its lowest to its highest manifestations, is “nothing but — motion”.
Yes, it is motion; but not all “molecular” motion, as the writer means us to infer. Motion as the great breath ( vide “Secret Doctrine”, vol. I., sub voce ) — ergo “sound” at the same time — is the substratum of Kos- mic-Motion. It is beginningless and end-
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION 131
less, the one eternal life , the basis and genesis of the subjective and the objective universe; for life (or Be-ness) is the fons et origo of existence or being. But molecu¬ lar motion is the lowest and most material of its finite manifestations. And if the gen¬ eral law of the conservation of energy leads modern science to the conclusion that psy¬ chic activity only represents a special form of motion, this same law, guiding the Occultists, leads them also to the same con¬ viction — and to something else besides, which psycho-physiology leaves entirely out of all consideration. If the latter has dis¬ covered only in this century that psychic (we say even spiritual) action is subject to the same general and immutable laws of motion as any other phenomenon manifest¬ ed in the objective realm of Kosmos, and that in both the organic and the inor¬ ganic^) worlds every manifestation, wheth¬ er conscious or unconscious, represents but the result of a collectivity of causes, then in Occult philosophy this represents merely the A, B, C, of its science. “All the world is in the Swara ; Swara is the Spirit itself ” —
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the one life or motion, say the old books of Hindu Occult philosophy. “ The proper translation of the word Swara is the current of the life wave”, says the author of “Na¬ ture’s Finer Forces”,* and he goes on to explain : —
“ It is that wavy motion which is the cause of the evolution of cosmic undifferentiated matter into the differentiated universe. . . . From
whence does this motion come ? This motion is the spirit itself. The wofd atma (universal soul) used in the book (vide infra), itself carries the idea of eternal motion, coming as it does from the root, at, or eternal motion ; and it may be significantly remarked, that the root at is con¬ nected with, is in fact simply another form of, the roots ah, breath, and as, being. All these roots have for their origin the sound produced by the breath of animals (living beings) .
* The Theosoqhist , Feb. 1888, p. 275, by Rama Prasad, President of the Meerut Theosophical Society. As the Occult book cited by him says : “ It is the Swara that has given form to the first accumulations of the divisions of the universe; the Swara causes evolution and involution; the Swara is God, or more properly the Great Power itself ( Maheshwara ). The Swara is the manifestation of the impression on matter of that power which in man is known to us as the power which knows itself (mental and psychic consciousness). It is to be understood that the action of this power never ceases. . . . It is unchange¬ able existence”— and this is the “Motion” of the Scien¬ tists and the universal Breath of Life of the Occultists.
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION 133
The primeval current of the life-wave is then the same which assumes in man the form of inspira¬ tory and expiratory motion of the lungs, and this is the all-pervading source of the evolution and involution of the universe . ”
So much about motion and the “conserva¬ tion of energy” from old books on magic written and taught ages before the birth of inductive and exact modern science. For what does the latter say more than these books in speaking, for instance, about ani¬ mal mechanism , when it says: —
44 From the visible atom to the celestial body lost in space, everything is subject to motion .... kept at a definite distance one from the other, in proportion to the motion which animates them, the molecules present constant relations, which they lose only by the addition or the sub¬ traction of a certain quantity of motion.”*
But Occultism says more than this. While making of motion on the material plane and of the conservation of energy, two funda¬ mental laws, or rather two aspects of the same omnipresent law — k Swara , it denies point blank that these have anything to do