Читать книгу Occult Japan: The Way of the Gods - Percival Lowell - Страница 10

But the mythologic mummy showed no evidence of soul. By the soul of a faith, as opposed to its mere body of belief, I mean that informing spirit vouchsafed by direct communion between god and man which all faiths proclaim of themselves, and pooh-pooh of all the others. It was this soul that so unexpectedly revealed itself to me upon Ontaké.

We must now see what the Japanese conceive this soul to be. Now Shintō philosophy is not the faith's strong point. The Japanese are artists, not scientists. And in their revelations their gods show the same simple and attractive character. If, therefore, the Shintō scheme of things seem at times incompatible with itself, the gods themselves are responsible, not I, errors and omissions on my part excepted. For I have it all from one whose authority is nothing short of the god's own words, vouchsafed to him in trance, my friend the high priest of the Shinshiu sect. So that my knowledge of the subject is but second-hand divine, much nearer the source of inspiration than I can ever hope in reason to come again.

To begin with, then, all things in heaven and earth are composed of three elements, (gotai or karada) body, (shinki) mind or spirit, and (tamashii) soul. Stocks and stones, plants, animals, and some men have no soul, being made up entirely of body and mind. The behavior of some men seems to lend support to this theory. Gods, on the other hand, are bodiless and consist of spirit and soul, except the supreme god, Ame-no-minaka-nashi-no-mikoto, who is all soul.

Shinki, lit. god-spirit, is related to tamashii, soul, much as a substance with its attributes is related to the same substance without them. If you can manage the conception of the first of these philosophic vacuities, you will find no difficulty with the second. Furthermore, spirit and soul may coexist separately in one body. As the spirit clarifies, that is, becomes more and more blank, it approaches soul and finally becomes it.

The one thing common, therefore, to all things, both of this world and the next, is spirit. Everything, from gods to granite, has its god-spirit. Each spirit is as separate and particular as the body it inhabits; yet it is capable of indefinite expansion or contraction, of permeating matter and of going and coming according to laws of its own. It may, perhaps, be looked upon provisionally as a gas.

Spirit never dies, it only circulates. When a man or animal or plant dies its body duly decays, but its spirit either lives on alone or returns to those two great reservoirs of spirit, the gods Takami-musubi-no-kami and Kami-musubi-no-kami. From them a continual circulation of spirit is kept up through the universe. Whether a spirit's personality persist or not is a matter decided by the supreme god, and depends upon the greatness or the goodness of the defunct. For example, Kan Shojo, the god of calligraphy, has persisted thus posthumously for almost a thousand years. It is to be hoped for the sake of Japan's beautiful brushmanship, that he will continue to survive and be worshiped for some time yet.

Spirit is by no means necessarily good. It is manifest that, viewed from the human standpoint, some things are harmful, some harmless, both among plants, animals, and men. The harmful ones are therefore bad; the harmless ones may or may not be good. Why certain inoffensive animals, for example, have got a bad name, or even a good one, is as inscrutable as the cause of the gender of Latin nouns. They are given a bad name, and that is cause enough. It will be observed that in this system of ethics man has no monopoly of original sin.

Similarly the gods themselves are divided into the sheep and the goats, but by a merciful dispensation of something or other the good gods are mightier than the bad. Indeed, a certain evolutionary process is going on throughout the universe, by which the bad spirits grow good and the good better. It is described as a continued clarification, terminating in total blankness.

Spirit not only circulates after death; it may do so during life. Usually it does not wander in this way, simply because it is at home where it is and inertia keeps it there. But in some cases it is not so wedded to the body with which it is associated, and the purer it becomes the more is it given to occasional volatilizing.

Now esoteric Shintō consists in compelling this spirit to circulate for particular ends. This is not a difficult matter, if it be properly undertaken. It is accomplished through self-purification. For the degree of purity determines the degree of possession. Possession is simply the entrance into one body of another body's spirit, and the simultaneous expulsion or subjugation of the spirit originally there.

This shift of spirit may take place between any two bodies in nature. Nor does such interchange differ in kind, no matter what the bodies be. But for the sake of psychology rather than religion, we may profitably consider it under the two aspects of god-possession of things and god-possession of people. The one gives rise to the miracles; the other to the incarnations. Both kinds of possession occurred spontaneously, that is, at the will of the gods, in olden times, and presumably so occur at the present day; but the gods have also graciously granted pure men the power to pray for them acceptedly.

In the case of people the act of possession is nowadays known as kami-oroshi, kami-utsushi or kami-utsuri, that is, "the causing of the god to come down," "the causing the god to transform" or "god transformation." The first two names thus view the thing from the human standpoint, the last from the divine. But this is matter of the temporary point of view, all three expressions, with others such as nori-utsuri, "to change vehicles," being used indifferently according to the speaker's preference.

Possession may be partial, complete, or intermediary, that is, the alien spirit may share the head of the person with the native spirit, or it may drive it out, or it may drive it down into the belly. But such degrees of tenancy are grades rather of the proficiency attained during novitiate into the cult. In actual possessions the chief distinction consists in the character of the god who comes.

Possession of things are in like manner possible through purity in the person who would bring them about. They are called kamiwasa or god-arts, because originally only the gods, and now only the gods and the godly, can perform them.