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In all these classifications, subdivisions have been multiplied indefinitely by conceiving new combinations of the Primary Powers in different proportions. But I must now drop this subject and proceed to consider the article headed the "Fragments of Occult Truth" (since embodied in "Esoteric Buddhism.")
I have carefully examined it, and find that the results arrived at (in the Buddhist doctrine) do not seem to differ much from the conclusions of our Aryan philosophy, though our mode of stating the arguments may differ in form. I shall now discuss the question from my own stand-point, though following for facility of comparison and convenience of discussion the sequence of classification of the seven-fold entities or Principles constituting man which is adopted in your article. The questions raised for discussion are: (1) whether the disembodied spirits of human beings (as they are called by Spiritualists) appear in the séance-rooms and elsewhere; and (2) whether the manifestations taking place are produced wholly or partly through their agency.
It is hardly possible to answer these two questions satisfactorily unless the meaning intended to be conveyed by the expression "disembodied spirits of human beings" be accurately defined. The words Spiritualism and Spirit are very misleading. Unless English writers in general, and Spiritualists in particular, first ascertain clearly the connotation they mean to assign to the word spirit there will be no end of confusion, and the real nature of these so-called spiritualistic phenomena and their modus occurrendi can never be clearly defined. Christian writers generally speak of only two entities in man—the body, and the soul or spirit (both seeming to mean the same thing to them). European philosophers generally speak of Body and Mind, and argue that soul or spirit cannot be anything else than mind. They are of opinion that any belief in Lingasariram*[1] is entirely unphilosophical. These views are certainly incorrect, and are based on
- ↑ * The Astral Body—so called.—Ed.
