But what is "Spirit" pure and impersonal per se? Is it possible that you should not have realized yet our meaning? why, such a Spirit is a nonentity, a pure abstraction, an absolute blank to our senses — even to the most spiritual. It becomes something only in union with matter — hence it is always something since matter is infinite and indestructible and non-existent without Spirit which, in matter is Life. Separated from matter it becomes the absolute negation of life and being, whereas matter is inseparable from it. Ask those who offer the objection, whether they know anything of "life" and "consciousness" beyond what they now feel on earth. What conception can they have — unless natural born seers — of the state and consciousness of one's individuality after it has separated itself from gross earthy body? What is the good of the whole process of life on earth — you may ask them in your turn — if we are as good as "pure" unconscious entities before birth, during sleep, and, at the end of our career? Is not death, according to the teachings of Science, followed by the same state of unconsciousness as the one before birth? Does not life when it quits our body become as impersonal as it was before it animated the foetus? Life, after all, the greatest problem within the ken of human conception, is a mystery that the greatest of your men of Science will never solve. In order to be correctly comprehended, it has to be studied in the entire series of its manifestations, otherwise it can never be, not only fathomed, but even comprehended in its easiest form — life, as a state of being on this earth. It can never be grasped so long as it is studied separately and apart from universal life. To solve the great problem one has to become an occultist; to analyze and experience with it personally in all its phases, as life on earth, life beyond the limit of physical death, mineral, vegetable, animal and spiritual life; life in conjunction with concrete matter as well as life present in the imponderable atom. Let them try and examine or analyze life apart from organism, and what remains of it? Simply a mode of motion; which, unless our doctrine of the all-pervading, infinite, omnipresent Life is accepted — though it be accepted on no better terms than a hypothesis only a little more reasonable than their scientific hypotheses which are all absurd — has to remain unsolved. Will they object? Well, we will answer them by using their own weapons. We will say that it is, and will remain for ever demonstrated that since motion is all-pervading and absolute rest inconceivable, that under whatever form or mask motion may appear, whether as light, heat, magnetism, chemical affinity or electricity — all these must be but phases of One and the same universal omnipotent Force, a Proteus they bow to as the Great "Unknown" (see Herbert Spencer) and we, simply call the "One Life," the "One Law" and the "One Element." The greatest, the most scientific minds on earth have been keenly pressing forward toward a solution of the mystery, leaving no bye-path unexplored, no thread loose or weak in this darkest of labyrinths for them, and all had to come to the same conclusion — that of the Occultists when given only partially — namely, that life in its concrete manifestations is the legitimate result and consequence of chemical affinity; as to life in its abstract sense, life pure and simple — well, they know no more of it to-day than they knew in the incipient stage of their Royal Society. They only know that organisms in certain solutions previously free from life will spring up spontaneously (Pasteur and his biblical piety notwithstanding) — owing to certain chemical compositions of such substances. If, as I hope, in a few years, I am entirely my own master, I may have the pleasure of demonstrating to you on your own writing table that life as life is not only transformable into other aspects or phases of the all-pervading Force, but that it can be actually infused into an artificial man. Frankenstein is a myth only so far as he is the hero of a mystic tale; in nature — he is a possibility; and the physicists and physicians of the last sub-race of the sixth Race will inoculate life and revive corpses as they now inoculate small-pox, and often less comely diseases. Spirit, life and matter, are not natural principles existing independently of each other, but the effects of combinations produced by eternal motion in Space; and they better learn it.
(7) [For Question see p. 305. EDS.]. Most undoubtedly I am so permitted. But then comes the most important point; how far satisfactory will my answers appear even to you? That not every new law brought to light is regarded as adding a link to the chain of human knowledge is shown by the ill-grace with which every fact unwelcome for some reason to science, is received by its professors. Nevertheless, whenever I can answer you — I will try to do so, only hoping that you will not send it as a contribution from my pen to the Journal of Science.
(8) [For Question see p. 305. EDS.]. Most assuredly they have. Rain can be brought on in a small area of space — artificially and without any claim to miracle or superhuman powers, though its secret is no property of mine that I should divulge it. I am now trying to obtain permission to do so. We know of no phenomenon in nature entirely unconnected with either magnetism or electricity — since, where there are motion, heat, friction, light, there magnetism and its alter ego (according to our humble opinion) electricity will always appear, as either cause or effect — or rather both if we but fathom the manifestation to its origin. All the phenomena of earth currents, terrestrial magnetism and atmospheric electricity are due to the fact that the earth is an electrified conductor, whose potential is ever changing owing to its rotation and its annual orbital motion, the successive cooling and heating of the air, the formation of clouds and rain, storms and winds, etc. This you may perhaps, find in some text book. But then Science would be unwilling to admit that all these changes are due to akasic magnetism incessantly generating electric currents which tend to restore the disturbed equilibrium. By directing the most powerful of electric batteries, the human frame electrified by a certain process, you can stop rain on some given point by making "a hole in the rain cloud," as the occultists term it. By using other strongly magnetized implements within, so to say, an insulated area, rain can be produced artificially. I regret my inability to explain to you the process more clearly. You know the effects produced by trees and plants on rain clouds; and how their strong magnetic nature attracts and even feeds those clouds over the tops of the trees. Science explains it otherwise, maybe. Well, I cannot help it, for such is our knowledge and fruits of milleniums of observations and experience. Were the present to fall into the hands of Hume, he would be sure to remark that I am vindicating the charge publicly brought by him against us: "Whenever unable to answer your arguments (?) they (we) calmly reply that their (our) rules do not admit of this or that." Charge notwithstanding, I am compelled to answer that since the secret is not mine I cannot make of it a marketable commodity. Let some physicists calculate the amount of heat required to vaporize a certain quantity of water. Then let them compute the quantity of rain needed to cover an area — say, of one square mile to a depth of one inch. For this amount of vaporization they will require, of course, an amount of heat that would be equal to at least five million205 tons of coal. Now the amount of energy of which this consumption of heat would be the equivalent corresponds (as any mathematician could tell you) — to that which would be required to raise a weight of upwards of ten million tons, one mile high. How can one man generate such amount of heat and energy? Preposterous, absurd! — we are all lunatics, and you who listen to us will be placed in the same category if you ever venture to repeat this proposition. Yet I say that one man alone can do it, and very easily if he is but acquainted with a certain "physico-spiritual" lever in himself, far more powerful than that of Archimedes. Even simple muscular contraction is always accompanied with electric and magnetic phenomena, and there is the strongest connection between the magnetism of the earth, the changes of weather and man, who is the best barometer living, if he but knew [how] to decipher it properly; again, the state of the sky can always be ascertained by the variations shown by magnetic instruments. It is now several years since I had an opportunity of reading the deductions of Science upon this subject; therefore, unless I go to the trouble of catching up what I may have remained ignorant of, I do not know the latest conclusions of Science. But with us, it is an established fact that it is the earth's magnetism that produces wind, storms, and rain. What science seems to know of it is but secondary symptoms always induced by that magnetism and she may very soon find out her present errors. Earth's magnetic attraction of meteoric dust, and the direct influence of the latter upon the sudden changes of temperature, especially in the matter of heat and cold, is not a settled question to the present day, I believe.206 It was doubted whether the fact of our earth passing through a region of space in which there are more or less of meteoric masses has any bearing upon the height of our atmosphere being increased or decreased, or even upon the state of weather. But we think we could easily prove it; and since they accept the fact that the relative distribution and proportion of land and water on our globe may be due to the great accumulation upon it of meteoric dust, snow — especially in our northern regions — being full of meteoric iron and magnetic particles; and deposits of the latter being found even at the bottom of seas and oceans, I wonder how Science has not hitherto understood that every atmospheric change and disturbance was due to the combined magnetism of the two great masses between which our atmosphere is compressed! I call this meteoric dust a "mass" for it is really one. High above our earth's surface the air is impregnated and space filled with magnetic, or meteoric dust, which does not even belong to our solar system. Science having luckily discovered that, as our earth with all the other planets is carried along through space, it receives a greater proportion of that dust matter on its northern than on its southern hemisphere, knows that to this are due the preponderating number of the continents in the former hemisphere, and the greater abundance of snow and moisture. Millions of such meteors and even of the finest particles reach us yearly and daily, and all our temple knives are made of this "heavenly" iron, which reaches us without having undergone any change — the magnetism of the earth keeping them in cohesion. Gaseous matter is continually added to our atmosphere from the never ceasing fall of meteoric strongly magnetic matter, and yet it seems with them still an open question whether magnetic conditions have anything to do with the precipitation of rain or not! I do not know of any "set of motions established by pressures, expansions, etc., due in the first instance to solar energy." Science makes too much and too little at the same time of "solar energy" and even of the Sun itself; and the Sun has nothing to do whatever with rain and very little with heat. I was under the impression that science was aware that the glacial periods as well as those periods when temperature is "like that of the carboniferous age," are due to the decrease and increase or rather to the expansion of our atmosphere, which expansion is itself due to the same meteoric presence? At any rate, we all know, that the heat that the earth receives by radiation from the sun is at the utmost one third if not less of the amount received by her directly from the meteors.