And If Ever This Teaching Was Worked Out
To Perfection It Was In The Times Of The Rishis, Our Philosophers
And Saints, Who Left To Us The Vedas."
"Now, I think I begin to understand the origin of all the mythological
fables of the Greek antiquity," thoughtfully said the colonel; "the
syrinx of Pan, his pipe of seven reeds, the fauns, the satyrs, and
the lyre of Orpheus himself.
The ancient Greeks knew little about
harmony; and the rhythmical declamations of their dramas, which
probably never reached the pathos of the simplest of modern recitals,
could hardly suggest to them the idea of the magic lyre of Orpheus.
I feel strongly inclined to believe what was written by some of our
great philologists: Orpheus must be an emigrant from India; his
very name [greek script], or [greek script], shows that, even amongst
the tawny Greeks, he was remarkably dark. This was the opinion of
Lempriere and others."
"Some day this opinion may become a certainty. There is not the
slightest doubt that the purest and the highest of all the musical
forms of antiquity belongs to India. All our legends ascribe magic
powers to music; it is a gift and a science coming straight from
the gods. As a rule, we ascribe all our arts to divine revelation,
but music stands at the head of everything else. The invention of
the vina, a kind of lute, belongs to Narada, the son of Brahma.
You will probably laugh at me if I tell you that our ancient priests,
whose duty it was to sing during the sacrifices, were able to produce
phenomena that could not but be considered by the ignorant as signs
from supernatural powers; and this, remember, without a shadow of
trickery, but simply with the help of their perfect knowledge of
nature and certain combinations well known to them. The phenomena
produced by the priests and the Raj-Yogis are perfectly natural
for the initiate - however miraculous they may seem to the masses."
"But do you really mean that you have no faith what-ever in the
spirits of the dead?" timidly asked Miss X - -, who was always ill
at ease in the presence of the Takur.
"With your permission, I have none."
"And... and have you no regard for mediums?"
"Still less than for the spirits, my dear lady. I do believe in
the existence of many psychic diseases, and, amongst their number,
in mediumism, for which we have got a queer sounding name from time
immemorial. We call it Bhuta-Dak, literally a bhuta-hostelry. I
sincerely pity the real mediums, and do whatever is in my power to
help them. As to the charlatans, I despise them, and never lose an
opportunity of unmasking them."
The witch's den near the "dead city" suddenly flashed into my mind;
the fat Brahman, who played the oracle in the head of the Sivatherium,
caught and rolling down the hole; the witch herself suddenly taking
to her heels. And with this recollection also occurred to me what
I had never thought of before: Narayan had acted under the orders
of the Takur - doing his best to expose the witch and her ally.
"The unknown power which possesses the mediums (which the spiritualists
believe to be spirits of the dead, while the superstitious see in it
the devil, and the sceptics deceit and infamous tricks), true men
of science suspect to be a natural force, which has not as yet been
discovered. It is, in reality, a terrible power. Those possessed
by it are generally weak people, often women and children. Your
beloved spiritualists, Miss X - -, only help the growth of dreadful
psychic diseases, but people who know better seek to save them from
this force you know nothing whatever about, and it is no use
discussing this matter now. I shall only add one word: the real
living spirit of a human being is as free as Brahma; and even
more than this for us, for, according to our religion and our
philosophy, our spirit is Brahma himself, higher than whom there
is only the unknowable, the all-pervading, the omnipotent essence
of Parabrahm. The living spirit of man cannot be ordered about
like the spirits of the spiritualists, it cannot be made a slave of...
However, it is getting so late that we had better go to bed. Let
us say good-bye for tonight."
- - - - -
Gulab-Lal-Sing would not talk any more that night, but I have
gathered from our previous conversations many a point without
which the above conversation would remain obscure. The Vedantins
and the followers of Shankaracharya's philosophy, in talking of
themselves, often avoid using the pronoun I, and say, "this body
went," "this hand took," and so on, in everything concerning the
automatic actions of man. The personal pronouns are only used
concerning mental and moral processes, such as, "I thought," "he
desired." The body in their eyes is not the man, but only a
covering to the real man.
The real interior man possesses many bodies; each of them more
subtle and more pure than the preceding; and each of them bears
a different name and is independent of the material body. After
death, when the earthly vital principle disintegrates, together
with the material body, all these interior bodies join together,
and either advance on the way to Moksha, and are called Deva (divine),
though it still has to pass many stadia before the final liberation,
or is left on earth, to wander and to suffer in the invisible world,
and, in this case, is called bhuta. But a Deva has no tangible
intercourse with the living. Its only link with the earth is its
posthumous affection for those it loved in its lifetime, and the
power of protecting and influencing them. Love outlives every
earthly feeling, and a Deva can appear to the beloved ones only
in their dreams - unless it be as an illusion, which cannot last,
because the body of a Deva undergoes a series of gradual changes
from the moment it is freed from its earthly bonds; and, with
every change, it grows more intangible, losing every time something
of its objective nature.
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