OCCULT ARTS
III
DISINTEGRATION-REINTEGRATION
Just as we have seen that precipitation is known to material
science in electroplating and other arts, so also is it true
that in most departments of applied science disintegration is
understood, and that here and there reintegration of such substances
as diamonds has been successfully accomplished. But these are
all by mechanical or chemical processes. The question here is,
whether-as in respect to precipitation-the occult powers of man
and nature can bring about the results. Has anyone ever reduced
a solid object to impalpable powder and then at a distant place
restored the object to its former state? And, if so, how is it
done? As to the first, I can only say that I have seen this done,
and that many testimonies have been offered by others at various
times for the same thing. In the records of Spiritualism there
are a great many witnesses to this effect, and accepting all
cases in that field which are free from fraud the same remarks
as were made about precipitation apply. With mediums it is unconsciously
done; the laws governing the entire thing are unexplained by
the medium or the alleged spirits; the whole matter is involved
in obscurity so far as that cult is concerned, and certainly
the returning spooks will give no answer until they find it in
the brain of some living person. But the fact remains that among
powerful physical mediums the operation has been performed by
some unknown force acting under hidden guidance, itself as obscure.
This feat is not the same as apportation, the carrying or
projecting of an object through space, whether it be a human
form or any other thing. Buddhist and Hindu stories alike teem
with such apportations; it is alleged of Apollonius the Greek,
of Tyana; Christian saints are said to have been levitated and
carried. In the Buddhist stories many of the immediate disciples
of Buddha, both during his life and after his death, are said
to have flown through the air from place to place; and in the
history of Rama, some ascetics and Hanuman the monkey god are
credited with having so levitated themselves.
So many metals and minerals may be volatilized that we may
take it as a general rule that all-until an exception is met
with-are volatile under the proper conditions. Gold is slow in
this respect, some observers having kept it heated for two months
with no loss of weight, and others found a small loss after exposing
it to violent heat; a charge of electricity will dissipate it.
Silver volatilizes at red heat, and iron can also be similarly
affected. But when we come to wood or softer vegetable matter,
the separation of its atoms from each other is more easily accomplished.
The process of disintegrating by the use of occult forces and
powers is akin to what we can do on the material plane. The result
is the same, however the means employed may vary; that is, the
molecules are pressed apart from each other and kept so. If by
mechanical, chemical, and electrical processes man can bring
about this result, there is no reason, save in an asserted unproved
denial, why it may not be done by the use of the mind and will.
Rarity or unusualness proves nothing; when the telegraph was
new its rarity proved nothing against its actuality; and it is
every day becoming more the fashion to admit than it is to deny
the possibility of anything in the realm opened up by our knowledge
of electricity, while the probability is left merely to suspended
judgment.
Passing from material science to the medical researches into
hypnotism, we find there the stepping-stone between the purely
mechanical physical processes and the higher subtler realm of
the mind, the will, and the imagination. Here we see that the
powerful forces wielded by the mind are able to bring about effects
on bone, flesh, blood, and skin equal in measure to many processes
of disintegration or volatilization. But in every-day life we
have similar suggestive facts. In the blush and the cold chill
which come instantaneously over the whole frame, spreading in
a second from the mental source, are effects upon matter made
directly from mind. Even a recollection of an event can easily
bring on this physical effect. In hypnotic experiments the skin,
blood, and serum may be altered so as to bring out all the marks
and changes of a burn or abrasion. In these cases the mind influenced
by another mind makes an image through which the forces act to
cause the changes. It is possible because, as so often asserted
by the ancient sages, the Universe is really Will and Idea, or,
as is so well put in a letter from one of the Adepts, "the
machinery of the cosmos is not only occult, it is ideal: and
the higher metaphysics must be understood if one is to escape
from the illusions under which men labor and which will continually
lead them into the adoption of false systems respecting life
and nature in consequence of the great 'collective hallucination'
in which modern scientific persons glory so much, but which they
do not call by that name." (1)
So much, then, being briefly premised, it is said by the schools
of occultism, known not only since the rise of the Theosophical
movement but followed for ages in the East and continued down
to the present day in India-that the trained man by the use of
his will, mind, and imagination can disintegrate an object, send
it along currents definitely existing in space, transport the
mass of atoms to a distant place, passing them through certain
obstacles, and reintegrating the object at the given distant
spot exactly with the same visibility, limits, and appearance
as it had when first taken up for transport. But this has its
limitations. It cannot ordinarily be done with a human living
body. That would require such an expenditure of force and so
interfere with the right of life that it may be excluded altogether.
Size and resistance of obstacle have also to do with success
or failure. Omnipotence or a sort that may transcend law is not
admitted in Occultism; that the Adepts pointed out when they
wrote that if they could at one stroke turn the world into an
arcadia for lofty souls they would do so, but the world can only
be conquered step by step and under the rule of law. It is the
same in all operations that copy nature either chemically or
mechanically. Hence it is said in these schools that "there
are failures in occult art as well as among men." Such failures
come from an inability to cope with limiting conditions.
We can analyse the phenomenon of disintegration and transport
of mass of matter and reintegration in this way: There is the
operator who must know how to use his will, mind, and imagination.
Next is the object to be dealt with. Then there is the resisting
obstacle through which it may have to pass; and the air, either,
and astral light through which it travels. Lastly is the question
whether or not there is the force called cohesion, by means of
which masses of matter are held together within limits of form.
If it be said that the force known as gravity holds masses
of matter together, we are reduced to accepting a more mysterious
explanation for a common thing than the three persons in one
God. But cohesion without any other postulate amounts merely
to saying that masses of matter cohere because they cohere. Occultism,
in common with the Vedantic philosophy, says that there is a
force of cohesion which has its roots and power in the spirit
and in the ideal form; and attraction and repulsion operate from
the same base also. Further, that school holds gravitation to
be but an exhibition of the action of these two-attraction and
repulsion. Living masses such as vegetables, animals, and men
deal with matter in another state from that which is in minerals,
and exhibit the quicker action of disintegrating forces; while
minerals go to pieces very slowly. Both kinds are compelled in
time to fall apart as masses in consequence of the action of
evolutionary law when they are left altogether to themselves;
that is, the whole quantity of matter of and belonging to the
globe is continually subject to the hidden forces which are moulding
it for higher uses and turning it, however slowly, into a higher
class of matter. The normal rate is what we see, but this normal
rate may be altered, and that it can be altered by intelligent
mind and will is the fact. This alteration of rate is seen in
the forcing processes used for plants by which they are made
to grow much faster than is usual under common conditions. In
the same way in masses of matter which will surely go to pieces
in the course of time, long or short, the molecules may be pushed
apart before their time and held so by the trained will. That
is, the force of repulsion can be opposed to natural attraction
so as to drive the molecules apart and hold them thus away from
each other. When the repulsion is slackened, the molecules rush
together again to assume their former appearance. In this case
the shape is not altered, the largely diffused body of molecules
retains its shape though invisible to the eye, and upon appearing
to sight again it simply condenses itself into the smaller original
limits, thus becoming dense enough to be once more seen and touched.
When a small object is thus disintegrated by occult means
it can be passed through other objects. Or if it is to be transported
without disintegration, then any dense intervening obstacle is
disintegrated for a sufficient space to allow it to pass. That
the latter is one of the feats of fakirs, yogis, and certain
mediums can be hardly a matter of doubt except for those who
deny the occult character of the cosmos. Alleged spirits in respect
to this have said, "We make the intervening obstacle fluid
or diffused, or do the same thing for the object transported,"
and for once they seem to be right. A gentleman of high character
and ability in the northwest told me that one a day a man unknown
in his village came to the door, and exhibiting some rings of
metal made one pass through the other, one of the rings seeming
to melt away at the point of contact. H.P. Blavatsky has narrated
to me many such cases, and I have seen her do the same thing.
As, for instance, she has taken in my sight a small object such
as a ring, and laying it on the table caused it to appear without
her touching it inside of a closed drawer near by. Now in that
instance either she disintegrated it and caused it to pass into
the drawer, or disintegrated the drawer for a sufficient space,
or she hypnotized me with all my senses on the alert, putting
the object into the drawer while I was asleep and without my
perceiving any sort of change whatever in my consciousness. The
latter I cannot accept, but if it be held as true, then it was
more wonderful that the other feat. The circumstances and motive
were such as to exclude the hypnotizing theory; it was done to
show me that such a phenomenon was possible and to give me a
clue to the operation, and also to explain to me how the strange
things of spiritualism might be done and, indeed, must be done
under the laws of man's mind and nature.
Next we have the intelligent part of the matter to look at.
Here the inner senses have to act under the guidance of a mind
free from the illusions of matter, able to see into the occult
cosmos behind the veil of objectivity. The will acts with immense
force, exerting the powers both of attraction and repulsion as
desired; knowledge of occult chemistry comes into use; the currents
in the astral light or ether have to be known, as also how to
make new currents. Those who have seen into the astral light
and looked at the currents moving to and fro will understand
this, other will either doubt, deny, or suspend judgment. The
imagination as in the case of precipitation is the sight and
the hand of the mind and the will, without which the latter can
accomplish nothing, just as the will and brain of a man whose
arms are cut off can do nothing unless others aid him. But mind,
will, and imagination do not reconstruct the disintegrated object,
for as soon as the dispersing force is slackened from its hold
on the mass of molecules, the imagination having held the image
of the object, the atoms obediently and automatically rearrange
themselves as before.
All this may seem fanciful, but there are those who know of
their own knowledge that it is all according to fact. And it
is doubtless true that in no long time modern science will begin,
as it is even now slowly starting, to admit all these things
by admitting in full the ideal nature of the cosmos, thus removing
at once the materialistic notions of man and nature which mostly
prevail at the present day.
Footnote:
(1) From an unpublished letter.
Theosophy.org Home | up
| top |