Two Spirits United in the Elysian Fields

A.P. Sinnett, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Constitution of Man Series · 16 pages

Blavatsky's review of A.P. Sinnett's two-volume novel United, from The Theosophist of May 1887 and reprinted in Blavatsky Collected Writings VII. She treats it as a deeply mystical work of transcendental psychology rather than as fiction with theosophical trimmings, and the remark she opens with sets her attitude to reviewing generally: that the propensity to seek defects in natural beauty is not proof of taste but evidence of its absence.

What she praises is the integration — that Sinnett weaves lucid metaphysical insight seamlessly into a prosaic story of everyday life, rather than stopping the narrative to expound. The doctrine she finds in it is the one the section teaches throughout: that the real and illusive aspects of our being always run next to each other like twin parallel lines and never meet, unless the animal tendencies created by selfishness are conquered and the devil of the duad annihilated. The novel's ending gives the file its title, the two spirits being united at last in the illusionary nirvanic state of Devachan, from which no traveller returns — and the question she raises along the way is the section's own: who can possibly know his Self while living in the mephitic atmosphere of the material world.

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