MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
[The Theosophist, Vol. III, No. 2, November, 1881, pp. 48, 52]
[Commenting upon a statement in the article entitled “Advice from a Swami,” to the effect that certain high stages of meditation bring man face to face with “the Almighty, the Universal, the All-Knowing and the All-Glorious God,” H.P.B. says:]
Who, whenever seen, will always prove to be man’s own deific principle, his own luminous Atman, at best, and not God or Iśwara, who—as well proved by Kapila—if Impersonal and Infinite cannot be seen, and if Personal, hence finite, is not the “universal” spirit.
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[In connection with various fanatical religious utterances in the Sunday Mirror of the Brahmo-Samâja:]
To wind up, having declared in another editorial called “Dogma and Life” that the “Theists”—only by no means “Monotheists,” if you please—“of the New Dispensation believe in the doctrine of Trinity—they accept the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,”—without informing us this once, what becomes of our friend “Durga,” and whether it is she “the holy spirit”—the Mirror propounds a doctrine, which for its novelty, beats even Auguste Comte’s “feminine mystery” and “artificial fecundation.” Happily for itself the pious organ confesses that particular mystery connected with God and Christ working upon the Babus neither—“so much history, so much biography, so much metaphysics, or so
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much theology,” with which definition we fully concur. For once the rhetorical blossoms which overshadow rather too thickly the roots of wisdom concealed in the fathomless depth of the editorial—are culled, the reader discovers it, as pertaining to pure physiology. Christ is viewed—“as a ball of fire carrying heaven and salvation into the sinner’s heart,” and—stomach. “When he (Christ) enters into the life of a Brahmo” explains the Sunday Mirror—“he enters as a living principle, a burning idea, a consuming fire that changes the entire life, and creates everything anew. He is swallowed, he is digested, and he is converted into life blood . . ." (!!), etc., etc., etc. . . . . Stop, oh Sunday Mirror, stop! This is pure Anthropophagy and threatens to trespass the bounds of even Oriental metaphor. What difference, then, would the Brahmos of the N.D. make between the “Lamb” of God and a lamb cutlet?
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[In connection with various fanatical activities on the part of the Salvation Army:]
And to this we may add our own prayer: “Oh Lord, how easy it would be for you to ‘smash’ the devil at once without any ‘Hall’ or ‘Army’ and so extirpate evil and misery for ever from this world of sorrow! Oh, Lord, it is because, alleged Omniscient, and Omnipotent and JUST (!!) you have nevertheless ever refused to do so, or even to give us a sign of your existence, and that you are now allowing instead, a whole ‘Army’ of fanatical zealots, who ought to be at home mending their shoes and stockings, and wiping their children’s noses, to roam about—an army of lunatics caricaturing their religion—that so many good people reject the devil and even doubt your own Being. Whose fault is it, Oh, Lord? Not ours, that is evident, but rather that of the brains you have furnished our heads and REASON you have endowed man with.”
WILLIAM QUAN JUDGE
April 23, 1951—March 21, 1896
DR. JIRAH DEWEY BUCK
1838-1916
(From The Path, New York, Vol. VII, January, 1893)