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"spirits" asserting reincarnation and speaking like Roman Catholics born.
Turn to the "dear departed ones" in England and America, and you will hear
them denying reincarnation through thick and thin, denouncing those who
teach it, and holding to Protestant views. Your best, your most powerful
mediums, have all suffered in health of body and mind. Think of the sad end
of Charles Foster, who died in an asylum, a raving lunatic; of Slade, an
epileptic; of Eglinton-the best medium now in England-subject to the same.
Look back over the life of D.D. Home, a man whose mind was steeped in gall
and bitterness, who never had a good word to say of anyone whom he suspected
of possessing psychic powers, and who slandered every other medium to the
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bitter end. This Calvin of Spiritualism suffered for years from a terrible
spinal disease, brought on by his intercourse with the "spirits," and died a
perfect wreck. Think again of the sad fate of poor Washington Irving Bishop.
I knew him in New York, when he was fourteen, and he was undeniably a
medium. It is true that the poor man stole a march on his "spirits," and
baptized them "unconscious muscular action," to the great gaudium of all the
corporations of highly learned and scientific fools, and to the
replenishment of his own pocket. But de mortuis nil nisi bonum; his end was
a sad one. He had strenuously concealed his epileptic fits-the first and
strongest symptom of genuine mediumship-and who knows whether he was dead or
in a trance when the postmortem examination was performed? His relatives
insist that he was alive, if we are to believe Reuter's telegrams. Finally,
behold the veteran mediums, the founders and prime movers of modern
spiritualism-the Fox sisters. After more than forty years of intercourse
with the "Angels," the latter have led them to become incurable sots, who
are now denouncing, in public lectures, their own life-long work and
philosophy as a fraud. What kind of spirits must they be who prompted them,
I ask you?
Q. But is your inference a correct one?
A. What would you infer if the best pupils of a particular school of singing
broke down from overstrained sore throats? That the method followed was a
bad one. So I think the inference is equally fair with regard to
Spiritualism when we see their best mediums fall a prey to such a fate. We
can only say: Let those who are interested in the question judge the tree of
Spiritualism by its fruits, and ponder over the lesson. We Theosophists have
always regarded the Spiritualists as brothers having the same mystic
tendency as ourselves, but they have always regarded us as enemies. We,
being in possession of an older philosophy, have tried to help and warn
them; but they have repaid us by reviling and traducing us and our motives
in every possible way. Nevertheless, the best English Spiritualists say just
as we do, wherever they treat of their belief seriously. Hear "M.A. Oxon"
confessing this truth:
Spiritualists are too much inclined to dwell exclusively on the intervention
of external spirits in this world of ours, and to ignore the powers of the
incarnate Spirit.
Why vilify and abuse us, then, for saying precisely the same? Henceforward,
we will have nothing more to do with Spiritualism. And now let us return to
Reincarnation.
On the Mysteries of Reincarnation
Periodical Rebirths
Q. You mean, then, that we have all lived on earth before, in many past
incarnations, and shall go on so living?
A. I do. The life cycle, or rather the cycle of conscious life, begins with
the separation of the mortal animal-man into sexes, and will end with the
close of the last generation of men, in the seventh round and seventh race
of mankind. Considering we are only in the fourth round and fifth race, its
duration is more easily imagined than expressed.
Q. And we keep on incarnating in new personalities all the time?
A. Most assuredly so; because this life cycle or period of incarnation may
be best compared to human life. As each such life is composed of days of
activity separated by nights of sleep or of inaction, so, in the incarnation
cycle, an active life is followed by a Devachanic rest.
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