Letter to the Editor by S. B. | Reply by H.P.B.
To the Editor of Lucifer.
Does not the statement about the materialist not having a self-conscious survival after death, in your important article “On the Mysteries of the After Life,” require some qualification? There is a difference between the natures of many who are called materialists—and some who call themselves such are not materialists at all, but really agnostics. They are men of great soul—men of the broadest sympathy and love of their fellows, who thus practise in life the first great precept of Theosophy; Universal Brotherhood. Their mental attitude is due to the unfortunate influences that have guided their education; trained under materialistic conditions, their reason has accepted the logic of these conditions, but in reality their heart knows better than their brain, and in talking and associating with such men I have been impressed by the fact that they were indeed unconsciously Theosophists in their fundamental conceptions of life, even though they might laugh if they did so, not understanding in the least. Are not such men the converse of the many professed Christians, who are content with a verbal adherence to their doctrines, simply telling themselves that they believe, and then thinking no more about it—deeming a spoken or written word of assent all that is essential to their salvation? The latter, of course, are true materialists.
An illustration appears in the brief article in the same number of Lucifer: “Another Automatic Writing.” The gentleman is spoken of as “as great a materialist as ever lived,” and while to be sure he may be a professed materialist, were he not at heart something quite the reverse of a genuine materialist would he be capable of receiving such psychic influences?
S. B.
Answer [H.P.B.]:
The qualification, of the general statement which our correspondent quotes is implied in the article itself. It is there explained that it is the deep and sincere conviction in a man’s mind that there is no life after death which is the cause of his having no such conscious life. It does not matter what a man calls himself; the vital question is what he really believes in his inmost heart.
The key-note to the whole question of the Devachanic existence is that a man creates, in the literal sense of the word, his own future.