Page:A Collection of Esoteric Writings.djvu/129

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115

The question is not "whether the double murdered the double or the treble," for neither the "double" nor the higher "treble" (if, as we suppose the 5th, 6th and 7th principles are meant) can be murdered by living man or ghost. The fact we suppose to be that by the concentrated energy of implacable hate [of Prince Obrenovitch's foster-mother against his assassin], and through the agency of the clairvoyant's double, "the silver cord" of life was snapped and the inner-man driven out of its physical covering. The wound which destroyed life, i. e. broke up the relationship between the Sthoolsariram, with its informing Jiva, and those other component parts of the entire personality, was inflicted upon the lower "treble"—if the Swami of Almora must use the clumsy term, even in sarcasm—without first transpiercing the physical body. In a case of natural death the citadel of life is captured, so to speak, only by gradual approaches; in deaths of violence it is taken with a rush. If fright, or joy, or the lethal current of hatred be the cause, the body will show no wound yet life be extinguished all the same. Sorcerers' victims usually appear as though killed by heart disease or apoplexy; chemical analysis will afford no clue to the assassin's method, nor the surgeon be able to find a suspicious mark upon the surface of the cadaver.

THE ALMORA SWAMI.

UPON PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL AND OUR
FAILINGS IN PARTICULAR.

In our February number (see page 118) prefacing the valuable though somewhat hazy contribution by the venerable Swami of Almora on "Adwaita Philosophy," we wrote the following editorial lines:—

"As the subjoined letter comes from such a learned source, we do not feel justified in commenting upon it editorially. Our personal knowledge of the Adwaita doctrine being unquestionably meagre when contrasted with that of a Paramahansa—hence the foot notes by our leanrd brother T. Subba Row, to whom we turned over the MS. for reply."

This notice, we believe, was plain enough to screen us thereafter from any such personal remarks as are now flung at our head by the holy ascetic of Almora in the paper that follows. Some of those rhetorical blossoms having been left by us for the purpose of enlivening the otherwise too monotonous field of his philosophical subject, the reader may judge for himself. We say "some," for, having to satisfy all