When the Mind Wills, Matter Obeys

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 2 pages

Two pages carrying a passage from Isis Unveiled, volume I page 144, headed by the sentence it is built around: that attraction and repulsion are the unconscious agents of Will, while fascination is a conscious action of it and the result of thought.

The passage opens by putting the question to science and not waiting for an answer — what is the Will, and can exact science say what that intelligent, intangible and powerful something is which reigns supreme over inert matter? The illustrations run from the largest scale to the smallest. The great Universal Idea willed and the cosmos sprang into existence; I will, and my limbs obey; I will, and my thought, traversing a space which does not exist for it, envelops another person's body, penetrates it and, if his faculties are weaker, forces him to a predetermined action — likened to a galvanic battery acting on the limbs of a corpse. The example of the serpent fascinating a bird is given as will acting consciously, and rubbed sealing-wax, glass and amber attracting light bodies as will acting unconsciously. The argument that follows is the file's substance: inorganic as well as organic matter is said to possess a particle of the divine essence, however infinitesimal, because whatever forms it has passed through in millions of years of evolution it must retain its germ-point of the pre-existent matter which was the first emanation of Deity. The power of attraction is therefore identified as an atomic portion of the principle of life which scientists and Kabbalists alike recognise, called here the Ākāśa — and the passage closes by observing that as one ascends the scale of organic beings, this principle develops attributes and faculties more determined and marked at every rung.

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