Despite the fact that the followers of Mohammed, the prophet, are among the most fanatical and prejudiced of all religious sects, Mohammed himself was unquestionably among the Illumined Ones of earth, and had attained and retained a high degree of cosmic consciousness.
The wars; the persecutions; the horrors that have been committed in the name of Islam, are perhaps a little more atrocious than any in history although the unspeakable cruelties of the Inquisition would seem to have no parallel.
The religion of Persia, wrongly alluded to as "fire-worship," marks Zoroaster as among the Illuminati, but as the present volume is concerned, in the religious aspect of it, only with those cases of Illumination which we are classifying among the present great religious systems, we cite the case of Mohammed, the Arab, as one clearly establishing the characteristic points of Illumination.
When Mohammed was born, in the early part of the fifth century, the condition of his countrymen was primitive in the extreme.
The most powerful force among them was tribal or clan loyalty, and a corresponding hatred of, and readiness to make war with, opposing clans.
Although at the time of Mohammed's birth, Christianity had made great headway in different parts of the old world, it had made very little impress upon the Arabs. They worshipped their tribal gods, and there are traces of a belief in a supreme God (Allah ta-ala), but they were not as a race inclined to a deeply religious sentiment.
One and all, whether given to superstitions or denying a belief in Allah, they dreaded the dark after-life and although the different tribes made their yearly pilgrimages to Mecca, and faithfully kissed the stone that had fallen from heaven in the days of Adam, the inspiration of their ancient prophets had long since died, and a new prophet was expected and looked for.
The yearly pilgrimage to Mecca, which was at once the center of trade and the goal of the religious enthusiast, was observed by all the tribes of Arabia, but it is a question whether the pilgrimage was not more often made in a holiday spirit than in that of the devotee to theKaabeh,the most sacred temple in all Arabia.
Indeed, it is agreed by all commentators, that the ancient Arab, "In the Time of Ignorance," before the coming of Mohammed, knew little and cared less about those spiritual qualities that look beyond the physical; not questioning, as did Mohammed, what lies beyond this vale of strife, whose only exit is the dark and inscrutable face of death.
Besides the tribal gods, individual households had their special Penates, to whom was due the first and the last salam of the returning or out-going host. But in spite of all this superstitious apparatus, the Arabs were never a religious people. In the old days, as now, they were reckless, skeptical, materialistic. They had their gods and their divining arrows, but they were ready to demolish both if the responses proved contrary to their wishes. A great majority believed in no future life, nor in a reckoning day of good and evil.
Such, then, was the condition of thought among the various tribes whenMohammed was born.
It was not, however, until he was past forty years of age, that the revelations came to him, and although it was some time later that these were set down, together with his admonitions and counsel to his followers, it is believed that they are for the most part well authenticated, as the Koran was compiled during Mohammed's lifetime, and thus, in the original, doubtless represents an authentic account of Mohammed's experiences.
It is related that Mohammed's father died before his son's birth and his mother six years later. Thus Mohammed was left to the care of his grandfather, the virtual chief of Mecca. The venerable chief lived but two years and Mohammed, who was a great favorite with his grandfather, became the special charge of his uncle, Aboo-Talib, whose devotion never wavered, even during the trying later years, when Mohammed's persecutions caused the uncle untold hardships and trials.
At an early age Mohammed took up the life of a sheep herder, caring for the herds of his kinsmen. This step became necessary because the once princely fortune of his noble ancestors had dwindled to almost the extreme of poverty, but although the occupation of sheep herder was despised by the tribes, it is said that Mohammed himself in later life often alluded to his early calling as the time when "God called him."
At the age of twenty-five he took up the more desirable post of camel driver, and was taken into the employ of a wealthy kinswoman, Khadeejeh, whom he afterwards married, although she was fifteen years his senior—a disparity in age which means far more in the East, where physical charm and beauty are the only requisites for a wife, than it does in the West where men look more to the mental endowments of a wife than to the fleeting charm of youth.
It is also to Mohammed's credit that his devotion to his first wife never wavered to the day of her death and, indeed, as long as he himself lived he spoke with reverence and deep affection of Khadeejeh.
We learn that the next fifteen years were lived in the usual manner of a man of his station. Khadeejeh brought him wealth and this gave him the necessary time and ease in which to meditate, and the never-varying devotion and trust of his faithful wife brought him repose and the power to aid his impoverished uncle, and to be regarded among the tribes as a man of influence.
His simple, unostentatious, and even ascetic life during these years was noted. He was known as a man of extremely refined tastes and sensitive though not querulous nature. A commentator says of him:
"His constitution was extremely delicate. He was nervously afraid of bodily pain; he would sob and roar under it. Eminently unpractical in the common things of life, he was gifted with mighty powers of imagination, elevation of mind, delicacy and refinement of feeling.
"He is more modest than a virgin behind her curtain," it has been said of him.
"He was most indulgent to his inferiors and would not allow his awkward little page to be scolded, whatever he did. He was most affectionate toward his family. He was very fond of children, and would stop them in the streets and pat their little cheeks. He never struck anyone in his life. The worst expression he ever made use of in conversation was: 'What has come to him—may his forehead be darkened with mud.'
"When asked to curse some one he replied: 'I have not been sent to curse, but to be a mercy to mankind.' He visited the sick, followed any bier he met, accepted the invitation of a slave to dinner, mended his own clothes, milked his goats and waited upon himself.
"He never withdrew his hand out of another's palm, and turned not before the other had turned.
"He was the most faithful protector of those he protected, the sweetest and most agreeable in conversation; those who saw him were suddenly filled with reverence; those who came to him, loved him. They who described him would say: 'I have never seen his like, either before or after.'
"He was, however, very nervous and restless withal, often low-spirited, downcast as to heart and eyes. Yet he would at times suddenly break through these broodings, become gay, talkative, jocular, chiefly among his own."
This picture corresponds with the temperament which is alluded to as the "artistic," or "psychic" temperament, and allowing that in these days there is much posing and pretense, we still must admit that the quality known as "temperament" is a psychological study suggesting a stage of development hitherto unclassified. It is said also, that in his youth Mohammed was subject to attacks of catalepsy, evidencing an organism peculiarly "psychic."
It is evident that Mohammed regarded himself as one having a mission upon earth, even before he had received the revelations which announced him as a prophet chosen of Allah, for he long brooded over the things of the spirit, and although he had not, up to his fortieth year, openly protested against the fetish worship of the Kureysh, yet he was regarded as one who had a different idea of worship from that of the men with whom he came in contact.
Gradually, he became more and more inclined to solitude, and made frequent excursions into the hills, and in his solitary wanderings, he suffered agonies of doubt and self distrust, fearing lest he be self-deceived, and again, lest he be indeed called to become a prophet of God and fail in his mission.
Here in a cave, the revelation came. Mohammed had spent nights and days in fasting and prayer beseeching God for some sign, some word that would settle his doubts and agonies of distrust and longing for an answer to life's riddle.
It is related that suddenly during the watches of the night, Mohammed awoke to find his solitary cave filled with a great and wondrous light out of which issued a voice saying: "Cry, cry aloud." "What shall I cry?" he answers, and the voice answered:
"Cry in the name of thy Lord who hath created; He hath created man from a clot of blood. Cry—and thy Lord is the most bountiful, who hath taught by the pen; He hath taught man that which he knew not."
It is reported that almost immediately, Mohammed felt his intelligence illuminated with the light of spiritual understanding, and all that had previously vexed his spirit with doubt and non-comprehension, was clear as crystal to his understanding. Nevertheless, this feeling of assurance did not remain with him at that time, definitely, for we are told that "Mohammed arose trembling and went to Khadeejeh and told her what he had seen and heard; and she did her woman's part and believed in him and soothed his terror and bade him hope for the future. Yet he could not believe in himself. Was he not perhaps, mad? or possessed by a devil? Were these voices of a truth from God? And so he went again on the solitary wanderings, hearing strange sounds, and thinking them at one time the testimony of heaven and at another the temptings of Satan, or the ravings of madness. Doubting, wondering, hoping, he had fain put an end to a life which had become intolerable in its changings from the hope of heaven to the hell of despair, when he again heard the voice: 'Thou art the messenger of God and I am Gabriel.' Conviction at length seized hold upon him; he was indeed to bring a message of good tidings to the Arabs, the message of God through His angel Gabriel. He went back to his faithful wife exhausted in mind and body, but with his doubts laid at rest."
With the history of the spread of Mohammed's message we are not concerned in this volume. The fact that his own nearest of kin, those of his own household, believed in his divine mission, and held to him with unwavering faith during the many years of persecution that followed, is proof that Mohammed was indeed a man who had attained Illumination. If the condition of woman did not rise to the heights which we have a right to expect of the cosmic conscious man of the future, we must remember that eastern traditions have ever given woman an inferior place, and for the matter of that, St. Paul himself seems to have shared the then general belief in the inferiority of the female.
It is undeniable that Mohammed's domestic relations were of the most agreeable character; his kindness and consideration were without parallel; his harem was made up for the most part of women who were refused and scorned by other men; widows of his friends. And the fact that the prophet was a man of the most abstemious habits argues the claim that compassion and kindness was the motive in most instances where he took to himself another and yet another wife.
However, the points which we are here dealing with, are those which directly relate to Mohammed's unquestioned illumination and the spirit of his utterances as contained in the Ku-ran, corroborate the experience of Buddha, of Jesus, and of all whose illumination has resulted in the establishment of a religious system.
Mohammed taught, first of all, the fact of the one God. "There is no God but Allah," was his cry, and, following the example, or at least paralleling the example of Jesus, he "destroyed their idols" and substituted the worship of one God, in place of the tribal deities, which were a constant source of disputation among the clans.
Compare the following, which is one of the five daily prayers of the faithful Muslim, with the Lord's prayer as used in Christian theology.
"In the name of God, the compassionate—the merciful.Praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds,The compassionate, the merciful.The king of the day of judgment.Thee do we worship and of Thee do we beg assistance.Guide us in the right way,The way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious,Not of those with whom Thou art wroth, nor of the erring."
Mohammed never tired of telling his disciples and followers that God was "The Very-Forgiving." Among the many and sometimes strangely varied attributes of God (The Absolute), we find this characteristic most strongly and persistently dwelt upon—the ever ready forgiveness and mercifulness of God.
Everysoorahof theKur-anbegins with the words: "In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful," but, even as Jesus laid persistent emphasis upon theloveof God, and yet up to very recent times, Christianity taught thefear and wrathof God, losing sight of the one great and important fact thatGod is love, and thatlove is God, so the Muslims overlooked therealmessage, and the greatness and the power and the fearfulness of God, is the incentive of the followers of the Illumined Mohammed.
The following extracts from the Kur-an are almost identical with many passages in the Holy Scriptures of the Christian, and are comparable with the sayings of the Lord Buddha.
"God. There is no God but He, the ever-living, the ever-subsisting. Slumber seizeth Him not nor sleep. To Him belongeth whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth. Who is he that shall intercede with Him, save by His permission?"
The Muslim is a fatalist, but this may be due less to the teachings of the prophet than to the peculiar quality of the Arab nature, which makes him stake everything, even his own liberty upon the cast of a die.
The leading doctrine of the all-powerfulness of God seems to warrant the belief in fatalism—belief which offers a stumbling block to all theologians, all philosophers, all thinkers. If God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, how and where and in what manner can be explained the necessity of individual effort?
This problem is not at all clear to the western mind, and it is equally obscure to that of the East.
It is said of Mohammed that when asked concerning the doctrine of "fatalism" he would show more anger than at any other question that could be put to him. He found it impossible to explain that while all knowledge was God's, yet the individual was responsible for his own salvation, by virtue of his good deeds and words. Nevertheless, it is not unlikely that Mohammed possessed the key to this seeming riddle; but how could it be possible to speak in a language which was totally incomprehensible to them of this knowledge—the language of cosmic consciousness?
Like Jesus, who said: "Many things I have to tell you, but you can not bear (understand) them now," so, we may well believe that Mohammed was hard-pressed to find language comprehensible to his followers, in which to explain the all-knowingness and all-powerfulness of God, and at the same time, not have them fall into the error of thefataldoctrine of fatalism.
But throughout all his teachings Mohammed's chief concern seemed to be to draw his people away from their worship of idols, and to this end he laid constant and repeated emphasis upon the one-ness of God; the all-ness, the completeness of the one God; always adding "the Compassionate, the Loving."
This constant allusion to the all-ness of God is in line with all who have attained to cosmic consciousness. Nothing more impresses the illumined mind, than the fact that the universe is One—uni—(one)—verse—(song)—one glorious harmony when taken in its entirety, but when broken up and segregated, and set at variance, we find discord, even as the score of a grand operatic composition when played in unison makes perfect harmony but when incomplete, is nerve-racking.
Like all inspired teachers, Mohammed taught the end of the world of sense, and the coming of the day of judgment, and the final reign of peace and love. This may, of course, be interpreted literally, and applied to a life other than that which is to be lived on this planet, but it may also with equal logic be assumed that Mohammed foresaw the dawn of cosmic consciousness as a race-endowment, belonging to the inheritors of this sphere called earth. In either event the ultimate is the same, whether the one who suffers and attains, comes into his own in some plane or place in the heavens, or whether he becomes at-one with God, The Absolute Love and Power of the spheres, and "inherits the earth," in the days of the on-coming higher degree of consciousness, which we are here considering.
That Mohammed realized the nothingness of form and ritual, except it be accompanied by sincerity and understanding, is evident in the following:
"Your turning your facesin prayer, towards the East and the West, is not piety; but the pious is he who believeth in God, and the last day, and in the angels and in the Scripture; and the prophets, and who giveth money notwithstanding his love of it to relations and orphans, and to the needy and the son of the road, and to the askers for thefreeing of slaves; and who performeth prayer and giveth the alms, and those who perform their covenant when they covenant; and the patient in adversity and affliction and the time of violence. These are they who have been true; and these are they who fear God."
Parallel with the doctrine taught by Buddha, and Jesus, is the advice to overcome evil with good. In our modern metaphysical language, we must dissolve the vibrations of hate, by the power of love, instead of opposing hate with hate, war with war, revenge with revenge.
Mohammed expressed this doctrine of non-resistance thus:
"Turn away evil by that which is better; and lo, he, between whom and thyself was enmity, shall become as though he were a warm friend."
"But none is endowed with this, except those who have been patient and none is endowed with it, except he who is greatly favored."
Mohammed meant by these words "he who is greatly favored," to explain that in order to see the wisdom and the glory of such conduct, one must have attained to spiritual consciousness. This was especially a new doctrine to the people to whom he was preaching, because it was considered cowardice to fail to resent a blow. Pride of family and birth was the strongest trait in the Arab nature.
In furtherance of this doing good to others, we find these words: "If ye are greeted with a greeting, then greet ye with a better greeting, or at least return it; verily. God taketh count of these things. If there be any under a difficulty wait until it be easy; but if ye remit it as alms, it will be better for you."
Mohammed here referred to debtors and creditors; as he was talking to traders, merchants, men who were constantly buying and selling, this admonition was in line with his teaching, which was to "do unto others that which you would that they do unto you."
In further compliance with his doctrine of doing good for good's sake Mohammed said: "If ye manifest alms, good will it be; but if ye conceal them and give them to the poor, it will be better for you; and it will expiate some of your sins."
Alms-giving, as an ostentatious display among church members, was here given its rightful place. It is well and good to give openly to organizations, but it is better to give to individuals who need it, secretly and quietly to give, without hope, or expectation, or desire for thanks, or for reward, to give for the love of giving, for the sole wish to make others happy. This desire to bestow upon others the happiness which has come to them, is a characteristic of the cosmic conscious man or woman.
It is comforting to know that Mohammed, like Buddha and The Man of Sorrows; and like Sri Ramakrishna, the saint of India, at length attained unto that peaceful calm that comes to one who has found the way of Illumination. It is doubtless impossible for the merely sense-conscious person to form any adequate idea of the inward urge; the agony of doubts and questionings; the imperative necessity such a one feels, toKNOW.
The sense-conscious person reads of the lives of these men and wonders why they could not be happy with the things of the world. The temptation that we are told came to Jesus in the garden, is typical of the state of transition from sense-consciousness to cosmic consciousness. The sense-conscious person regards thethings of the sensesas important. He is actuated by ambition or self-seeking or by love of physical comfort or by physical activity, toobtainthe possessions of sense. To such as these, the agonies of mind; the physical hardships; the ever-ready forgiveness and the desire for peace and love of the Illuminate seem almost weaknesses. Therefore, they can not fully comprehend the satisfaction which comes to the one who has come into a realization of illumination, through the years of mental tribulation such as that endured by Mohammed and Jesus and Buddha.
We are told that the prophet repeatedly refuted the suggestion of his adoring followers that he was God himself come to earth.
"It is wonderful," says one of his commentators, "with his temptations, how great a humility was ever is, how little he assumed of all the godlike attributes men forced upon him. His whole life is one long argument for his loyalty to truth. He had but one answer for his worshippers, 'I am no more than a man; I am only human.' * * * He was sublimely confident of this single attribute that he was the messenger of the Lord of the daybreak, and that the words he spake came verily from him. He was fully persuaded that God had sent him to do a great work among his people in Arabia. Nervous to the verge of madness, subject to hysteria, given to wild dreaming in solitary places, his was a temperament that easily lends itself to religious enthusiasm."
While it may be argued that Mohammed did not possess cosmic consciousness in the degree of fullness which we find in the life of St. Paul, for example, we must take into consideration the temperament of the Arab, and the conditions under which he labored. But that he had attained a high degree of Illumination is beyond dispute. This fact is evidenced by the following salient points characteristic of cosmic consciousness: A fine sensitive, highly-strung organization; a deep and serious thoughtfulness, especially regarding the realities of life; an indifference to the call of personal ambition; love of solitude and the mental urge that demands to know the answer to life's riddle.
Following the time of illumination on Mount Hara we find Mohammed possessing a conviction of the truth of immortality and the goodness of God; we find him also with a wonderful power to draw people to him in loving service; and the irresistible desire to bring to his people the message of immortal life, and the necessity to look more to spiritual things than to the things of the flesh. Added to this, we find Mohammed changed from a shrinking, sensitive youth, given to much reflection and silent meditation, into a man with perfect confidence in his own mission and in his ultimate victory.
While the Swedenborgians, as a religious sect, are not numerically sufficient to be reckoned among the world's great religions, it is yet a fact that the followers of the great Swedish seer and scientist hold a prominent place among the innumerable sects which the beginning of this century finds flourishing.
Swedenborg was born in Stockholm, in January, 1688, and lived to the advanced age of eighty-four years.
Swedenborg was well born; he was the son of a bishop of the Swedish church, and during his lifetime held many positions of honor. He was a friend and adviser of the king, and his expert knowledge of mining engineering gave him a place among the scientists of his age.
He was a voluminous writer, his early work being confined to the phases of materialistic science, notably on mines and metals, and later upon man, in his physiological aspect.
His "De Cerebro and Psychologia Rationales," published in his fifty-seventh year, showed a different Swedenborg from the one to whom his colleagues were accustomed to refer with much respect.
This book dealt with man, not as a product of brute creation, but as an evolutionary creature, having at least a possibility of divine origin. It is, however, his "Arcana Coelestia" upon which "The Church of the New Jerusalem" is founded; and it is this work which caused Swedenborg's friends and colleagues to determine that he had become insane. It is, in fact, only within very recent years, that the so-called scientific world has deigned to regard Swedenborg's revelations with any degree of serious and respectful attention.
Swedenborg's Illumination was not, like that of so many others, who have founded a new religion, a sudden influx of spiritual consciousness, but rather a gradual leading up to the inevitable goal, by virtue of serious thought, deep study, and a high order of mentality.
But that the Swedish seer received, in full measure, the blessing of cosmic consciousness, is beyond doubt.
Swedenborg's extremely simple habits of life; his freedom from any desire for display, or for those social advantages into which he was born; his gentleness and unassuming manner, of which much is written by his followers, all point to him as one upon whom the blessing might readily descend. Swedenborg was a vegetarian, but this seems not to be a necessary characteristic of those possessing illumination, although, when cosmic consciousness shall have become almost general, vegetarianism must inevitably come with it, as animal life will disappear from the earth.
Swedenborg, like many others who have perceived the cosmic light, evidently believed that he had been specially selected and consecrated for the work of the new church. That is, he took his illumination, not as an initiation into the higher degrees of cosmic truth, but as a special and personal revelation. This view characterizes those who founded a new, or a reformed religious system, while as a matter of truth, the light that comes is a part of the cosmic plan, and not, as Swedenborg and others imagine, as a personal revelation.
However, Swedenborg considered himself a direct instrument in the hands of God, and God is alluded to as a personality. He believed that his great mission was to disclose the true nature of the Bible, and to prove that it was actually the inspired word of God, having an esoteric meaning, which has wrongly been interpreted to apply to the creation of a material world, and to its history and its people, but that when understood, it explains clearly, the nature of God, and the nature of man, and their relation to each other. It should be remembered that at the time Swedenborg wrote his theological works, the church had fallen into rank materialism and superstition. That Swedenborg should have received his illumination, or revelation, direct from the Lord, only serves to prove that the mortal consciousness clothes the revelation with whatever personality appeals to it, as having authority.
Thus, the angel Gabriel was the dictator in the case of Mohammed, and the "Blessed Mother" of the Hindu reveals to them the vision ofmukti. Swedenborg says of his vision: "God appeared to me and said, 'I am the Lord God, the Creator and Redeemer of the world. I have chosen thee to unfold the spiritual sense of the Holy Scriptures. I will myself dictate to thee what thou shalt write.'"
In "The True Christian Religion," published shortly before his death he says: "Since the Lord can not manifest Himself in person as has been shown, and yet He has foretold that He would come and establish a new church, which is the New Jerusalem, it follows that He is to do it, by means of a man, who is able not only to receive the doctrines of this church with his understanding, but also to publish them by the press. That the Lord has manifested Himself before me, His servant, and sent me on this office, and that, after this, He opened the sight of my spirit, and thus let me into the spiritual world, and gave me to see the heavens and the hells and also to speak with spirits and angels, and this now continually for many years, I testify in truth; and also that, from the first day of that call, I have not received anything that pertains to the doctrines of that church from my angel, but from the Lord alone, while I read the Word."
It is stated with great positiveness by Swedenborg's followers, and indeed, apparently by the seer himself, if we may take as authoritative, the translations of his works, that the revelations accorded to him covered a period of many years, whereas, we find in most instances of cosmic consciousness, the illumined ones have alluded to some specific time, as the great event, even while claiming that the effect of this illumination remains indefinitely—in fact, forms a part of a wider area of consciousness which is ever increasing.
But when we take the numerous instances of revelations, in which the devout ones firmly believe that they and they alone have been accorded the vision, we must realize that this phenomenon is impersonal, looked at as a favor to any one human being. By that we mean that Illumination comes to every soul who has earned it, just as mathematically as the sun seems to set, after the earth has made its hourly journey.
Perhaps this comparison is not as clear as to say: when the normal child has grown to manhood or womanhood, his consciousness has widened, beyond that of the infant; not excluding that of the infant but inclusive of all hitherto acquired knowledge. Without in any degree lessening the importance and the verity of Swedenborg's visions, it may be assumed that his record of these visions and their meaning has partaken more or less of the limitations of mortal mind.
Spiritual consciousness can not be set down in terms of sense. The external world symbolizes spiritual truths; each interpreter must of necessity weave into his interpretation and attempt at finite expression of these truths, something of his own mortal consciousness; and this "mortal mind" consciousness is bound to partake of the time and age, and conditions of environment of the person who has experienced the revelation.
Making due allowance, therefore, for the impossibility of exact expression of any spiritual illumination, we find in the revelation of Swedenborg exactly what we find in all who have attained to cosmic consciousness, namely, the absolute, confidential assurance of immortal life: the conviction that creation is under divine love and wisdom, administered by Cosmic Law and order, or Justice, and the final "redemption" (i.e., evolution), of all men. In his "Conjugal Love," Swedenborg touches upon the premise which we declare, as the foundation of all cosmic consciousness, namely the attainment of spiritual union with the "mate" which we believe to be inseparable from all creation; the reunited principle which we see expressed in the male and female, whether in plant, bird, animal, man, or angel; the "twain made one" which Jesus declared would be the sign manual of the coming of his kingdom; that is, the coming of cosmic consciousness—the kingdom of pure and perfect love upon earth as it is in the heavens.
In Corinthians (11: 12) we read:
"For as the woman is of the man so is the man also of the woman; for the woman is not without the man, nor the man without the womanin the Lord."
Which is to say, that in the attainment of cosmic consciousness (in the Lord), the "twain are made one," and immortality (i.e., immunity from reincarnation) is gained, because of this union. God is a bi-sexual Being. This fact is evidenced throughout all creation. To attain to immortality is to become as God. In this day and age of the world we have come into a realization of the Father-Mother idea of godhood, clearly and literally signifying the coming consciousness which is bi-sexual; male and female; perfect counterparts, or complements and through which alone, this earth can be made a "fit dwelling place for gods." This, too, is the message of the great seer Swedenborg, as it relates to love, as it is, when rightly understood and interpreted, of all who have felt the blessing of perfection, as exemplified in Illumination.
The fundamental points of Swedenborg's doctrine agree with those of all other Illumined ones, who have founded a system of worship; a "Way of Illumination" it may be called; or in whose name such systems have been formed. That is, he testified to:
A conviction of immortality;
A realization of absolute justice, whereby all souls shall finally come into cosmic consciousness.
An actual time when Christ (the cosmic illumination) shall come to earth.
A great and abiding love for and patience with the frailties of his sense-conscious fellow-beings;
A transcendent desire to bestow upon all men, the blessing of cosmic consciousness.
Few if any, have ever attained a full and complete realization of cosmic consciousness and remained in the physical body.
Those who have attained and retained the highest degree of this glimpse of the Paradise of the gods, find it practically impossible to describe or explain the sensations experienced, even though they are more convinced of the truth and the reality of this realm than of anything in the merely sense-conscious life.
Lastly, let us not lose sight of the all-important fact that no one system, creed, philosophy, or way of Illumination will answer for all types and degrees of men. "All things work together for good" to those who have the keenness of vision which precedes the full attainment of cosmic consciousness, as well as to those who have grasped its full significance.
The characteristic evidence of the potentiality of the present era of the world, is preeminently that of a desire for unity.
This desire is expressed in all the avenues of external life; its inner meaning is obscured by commercialism and self-interest, as in trusts and labor unions, but it is there nevertheless—the symbol of the inner urge toward unity in consciousness.
It is found in efforts at Communism, and in allied reform movements. It is particularly evident in the breaking down of church prejudices. In these days a Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi find it not only expedient but mutually helpful, to unite in the work of municipal reform; in the abolition of child labor; in all things that will bring a better state of existence into daily human life.
The business man uses the phrase "let us get together on this" without knowing that he is expressing in terms of sense-consciousness, the urge of his own and his fellow beings' inner mind, which senses the fact of our unescapable Brotherhood.
All religious systems then, are good, as are all systems of philosophy. They are good because they are an attempt at bringing into the perspective of the mortal mind the reality of the soul and the soul life; the rule of the spiritually conscious ego over the physical body in order that we may now, in our present incarnation, claim immortality.
Passing over the ancient philosophers, Aristotle, Albertus Magnus, Plotinus, Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, Socrates, Plato, Aspasia, and others, all of whom had glimpsed, if not fully attained, cosmic consciousness, we come to a consideration of those cases in our own day and age, in which this superior consciousness has found expression through intellectual rather than through religious channels.
Of these latter, no more illustrious example can be cited than that ofRalph Waldo Emerson, the sage of Concord.
Emerson's nature was essentially religious, but his religion was not of the emotional quality so often found among enthusiasts, and which is almost always openly expressed when this religious enthusiasm is not balanced by intellectuality.
Analysis is frequently a foe to inspiration, but there are fare instances where the intellect is of such a penetrating and extraordinary quality that it carries the power of analysis into the unseen; in fact what we habitually term the unseen is a part of the visible to this type of mind. True intellect is a natural inheritance, a karmic attribute. The spurious kind is the result of education, and it invariably has its limitations. It stops short of the finer vibrations of consciousness and denies the reality of the inner life of man—which inner life constitutes therealto the character of intellect that penetrates beyondmaya.
Of such a quality of intellect is that exemplified in Emerson. No mere tabulator of facts was he, but a dissector of the causes back of all the manifestation which he observed and studied and classified with the mental power of a god.
Nor is there lacking ample proof that Emerson experienced the phenomenon of the suddenness of cosmic consciousness—a degree of which he seems to have possessed from earliest youth.
In his essay on Nature, we find these words:
"Crossing a bare common in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear."
Emerson here alluded to a feeling of fear, which seems to have been experienced during a certain stage by many of those who have entered into cosmic consciousness. This fear is doubtless due to the presence in the human organism of what we may term the "animal instinct," which is an inheritance of the physical body. This same peculiar phenomenon oppresses almost everyone when coming into contact with a new and hitherto untried force.
A certain lady, who relates her experience in entering into the cosmic conscious state, says: "A certain part of me was unafraid, certain, secure and content, at the same time my mortal consciousness felt an almost overwhelming sense of fear."
Continuing, Emerson says:
"All mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."
Emerson's powerful intellect would naturally describe such an experience in intellectual terms rather than, as in the instances heretofore recorded, in religious phraseology, but it must not be inferred that Emerson was less religious, in the true sense, than was Mohammed or St. Paul.
Emerson lived in an age when orthodoxy flourished, and he and his associates of the Transcendentalist cult, were regarded as non-religious, if not actually heretical. Therefore, it is that Emerson's keen intellect was brought to bear upon everything he encountered, not only in his own intimate experience but also in all that he read and heard, lest he be trapped into committing the error which he saw all about him, namely, of mistaking an accepted viewpoint as an article of actual faith. His way to the Great Light lay through the jungle of the mind, but he found the path clear and plain and he left a torchlight along the way.
Emerson fully recognized the illusory character of external life, and the eternal verity of the soul, as witness:
"If the red slayer thinks he slays,Or if the slain thinks he is slain,They know not well, the subtle ways,I keep and pass and turn again."
Horrible as is war, because of the spirit of hate and destruction it embodies and keeps alive, yet the fact remains that man in his soul knows that he can neither slay nor be slain by the mere act of destroying the physical shell called the body. It is inconceivable that human beings would lend themselves to warfare, if they did not know, as a part of that area of supra-consciousness, that there is asomethingover which bullets have no power.
This fact, regarded as a more or less vaguebeliefto the majority, becomes incontrovertible fact to the person who has entered cosmic consciousness. His view is reversed, and where he formerly looked from the sense-conscious plane forward into apossiblespiritual plane, he now gazes back over the path from the spiritual heights and sees the winding road that led upward to the elevation, much as a traveller on the mountain top looks back and for the first time sees all of the devious trail over which he has, climbed to his present vantage point. During the journey there had been many times when he could only see the next step ahead, and nothing but his faith in the assurance of his fellow men who had attained the summit of that mountain, could ever have sustained him through the perils of the climb, but once on the heights, his backward view takes in the details of the journey and sees not "through a glass darkly," but in the clear light of achievement.
Such is the effect of cosmic consciousness to the one who has seen the light.
"One of the benefits of a college education," says Emerson, "is to show the boy its little avail."
Does this imply that an unlettered mind is desirable? Not necessarily, but there is a phase of intellectual culture that is detrimental while it lasts.
It is as though one were to choke up a perfectly flowing stream which yielded the moisture to fertile lands, by filling the bed of the stream with rocks and sticks.
The flow of the spiritual currents becomes clogged by the activities of the mind in its acquisition of mere knowledge, and before that knowledge has been turned into wisdom. The same truth is expressed in the aphorism "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." It is dangerous because it chains the mind to the external things of life, whereas the totally unlettered (we do not use the term ignorant here) person will, if he have his heart filled with love, perceive the reality of spiritual things that transcend mere knowledge of the physical universe.
Beyond this plane of mortal mind-consciousness, which is fitly described as "dangerous," there is the wide open area of cosmicperception, which may lead ultimately to the limitless areas of cosmic consciousness. If, therefore, an education, whether acquired in or out of college, so whets the grain of the mind that it becomes keen and fine enough to realize that knowledge is valuableONLYas it leads to real wisdom, then indeed it is a benefit; unless it does this, it is temporarily an obstruction.
Out of the lower into the higher vibration; out of sense-consciousness into cosmic consciousness; out of organization and limitations into freedom—the freedom of perfection, is the law and the purpose. This Emerson with his clearness of spiritual vision, saw, and this premise he subjected to the microscopic lens of his penetrating intellect. In his essay on Fate he says:
"Fate involves amelioration. No statement of the Universe can have any soundness which does not admit its ascending effort. The direction of the whole and of the parts is toward benefit. Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty. * * * The Better; the Best. The first and worse races are dead. The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advanceout of fate into freedom."
This phrase, "out of fate into freedom," may be read to mean, literally, out of the bondage of the sense-conscious life which entails rebirth and continued experience, into the light of Illumination which makes us free.
Further commenting, Emerson says:
"Liberation of the will from the sheaths and clogs of organization which he has outgrownis the end and aim of the world* * * The whole circle of animal life—tooth against tooth, devouring war, war for food, a yelp of pain and a grunt of triumph, until at last the whole menagerie, the whole chemical mass, is mellowed and refinedfor higher use* * *"
The sense of unity which is so inseparable from the cosmic conscious state, was always uppermost in Emerson's mind. Neither did he ever present as unity that state of consciousness that may be termed organization-consciousness—group-consciousness it is often called. He realized that the person who stands for Individualism is much more than apt to recognize his indissoluble relationship with the Cosmos. A perception of unity is a complement of Individualism.
That which, in modern metaphysical phraseology, is best termed "The Absolute," was expressed by Emerson as the Over-Soul, and this term meant something much greater, more unescapable than the anthropomorphic God of the church-goers. His assurance of unity with this Divine Spiritual Essence was perfect. It savors more of what is termed the religious view of life than of the philosophic, but we contend that in the coming era of the cosmic conscious man, all life will be religious, in the true sense, and that there will be no dividing line between philosophy and worship, because worship will consist of living the life of the spiritual man, and not in any set forms or rites. Bearing upon this we find Emerson saying:
"Not thanks, not prayer, seem quite the highest or truest name for our communion with the infinite—but glad and conspiring reception—reception that becomes giving in its turn as the receiver is only the All-Giver in part and in infancy. I cannot—nor can any man—speak precisely of things so sublime, but it seems to me the wit of man, his strength, his grace, and his tendency, his art, is the grace and the presence of God. It is beyond explanation. When all is said and done,the rapt saint is found the only logician.Not exhortation nor argument becomes our lips, but paeans of joy and praise. But not of adulation; we are too nearly related in the deep of the mind to that we honor. It is God in us that checks the language of petition by a grander thought. In the bottom of the heart it is said, 'I am and by me, O child, this fair body and world of thine stands and grows; I am, all things are mine; and all mine are thine.'"
We could quote passages from the essays ad infinitum, showing conclusively that the cosmic conscious plane had been attained and retained by this great philosopher—one of the first of the early part of the century, which has been prophesied as the beginning of the first faint lights of the Dawn, but enough has been offered for our present purpose, that of establishing the salient points of the cosmic conscious man or woman, which points are the complete assurance of the eternal verity and indestructibility of the soul; of its ultimate and inevitable victory overmayaor the "wheel of causation"; and the joyousness and the sense of at-one-ness with the universe, which comes to the illumined one, bespeaking an unquenchable optimism and an utter destruction of the sense of sin—points which characterize all who have attained to this supra-conscious state of Being.
These points are all expressed repeatedly in all Emerson's utterances and mark him as one of the most illumined philosophers, as he was one of the greatest intellects of the last century, or of any other century.
A strange, lonely and wonderful figure was Tolstoi, novelist, philosopher, socialist, artist and reformer.
Great souls are always lonely souls, estimated by sense-conscious humans. In the midst of the so-called pleasures and luxuries of the senses, a wise soul appears as barren of comfort as is a desert of foliage.
Without the divine optimism that comes from soul-consciousness, such a one could not endure the life of the body: without the absolute assurance that comes with cosmic consciousness, men like the late Count Tolstoi must needs die of soul-loneliness.
From early childhood up to the time of his Illumination Tolstoi indulged in seriousness of thought. Like Mohammed, great and overpowering desire to fathom the mystery of death took possession of him. He was ever haunted by an excessive dread of the "darkness of the grave," and in his essay, "Childhood," he describes with that wonderful realism, which characterizes all his works, the effect on a child's mind of seeing the face of his dead mother. This may be taken in a sense as biographical, although it is not probable that Tolstoi here alludes to the death of his own mother as she died when he was too young to have remembered. He describes the scene in the words of Irteniev:
"I could not believe that this was her face. I began to look at it more closely, and gradually discovered in it the familiar and beloved features. I shuddered with fear when I became sure that it was indeed she, but why were the closed eyes so fallen in? Why was she so terribly pale, and why was there a blackish mark under the clear skin on one cheek?"
A terror of death, and yet a haunting urge that compelled him to be forever thinking upon the mystery of it, is the dominant note in every line of Tolstoi's writings up to the time which he describes as "a change" that came over him.
For example, when Count Leo was in his 33d year, his brother Nicolai died. Leo was present at the bedside and described the scene with the utmost frankness regarding its effect upon his mind; and again we note that awful fear and hopeless questioning which characterizes the sense-conscious man whose intellect has been cultivated to the very edge of the line which separates the self-conscious life from the cosmic conscious.
This questioning, with the fear and dread and terror of death and of the "ceaseless round of births" and the cares and sorrows of existence was what drove Prince Siddhartha from his father's court and Mohammed into the mountains to meditate and pray until the answer came in the light of illumination.
It came to Tolstoi through the very intensity of his powers of reason and analysis; through the sword-like quality of mental urge—a much more sorrowful path than the one through the simple way of love and service and prayer.
His comments upon the death of his brother give us a vivid idea of the state of mind of the Tolstoi of that age:
"Never in my life has anything had such an effect upon me. He was right (referring to his brother's words) when he said to me there is nothing worse than death, and if you remember that death is the inevitable goal of all that lives, then it must be confessed that there is nothing poorer than life. Why should we be so careful when at the end of all things nothing remains of what was once Nicolai Tolstoi? Suddenly he started up and murmured in alarm: 'What is this?' He saw that he was passing into nothingness."
From the above it will be seen that the Tolstoi of those days was a materialist pure and simple. "He saw that he was passing into nothingness," he said of his brother, as though there could be no question as to the nothingness of the individual consciousness that he had known as Nicolai, his brother.
This soul-harrowing materialism haunted Tolstoi during all the years of his youth and early manhood, and threw him constantly into fits of melancholy and inner brooding. He could neither dismiss the subject from his mind, nor could he bring into the area of his mortal consciousness that serene contemplation and optimistic line of reasoning which marks all that Emerson wrote.
Tolstoi's morbid horror of decay and death was not in any sense due to a lack of physical courage. It was the inevitable repulsion of a strong and robust animalism of the body, coupled with a powerful mentality—both of which are barriers to the "still small voice" of the soul, through which alone comes the conviction of the nothingness of death.
A biographer says of Tolstoi:
"The fit of the fear of death which at the end of the seventies brought him to the verge of suicide, was not the first and apparently not the last and at any rate not the only one. He felt something like it fifteen years before when his brother Nicolai died. Then he fell ill and conjectured the presence of the complaint that killed his brother—consumption. He had constant pain in his chest and side. He had to go and try to cure himself in the Steppe by a course of koumiss, and did actually cure himself. Formerly these recurrent attacks of spiritual or physical weakness were cured in him, not by any mental or moral upheavals, but simply by his vitality, its exuberance and intoxication."
The birth of the new consciousness which came to Tolstoi a few years later, was born into existence through these terrible struggles and mental agonies, inevitable because of the very nature of his heredity and education and environment. Although as we know, he came of gentle-folk, there was much of the Russian peasant in Tolstoi's makeup. His organism, both as to physical and mental elements, was like a piece of solid iron, untempered by the refining processes of an inherent spirituality. His never-ceasing struggle for attainment of the degree of cosmic consciousness which he finally reached was wholly an intellectual struggle. He possessed such a power of analysis, such a depth of intellectual perception, that he must needs go on or go mad with the strain of the question unanswered.
To such a mind, the admonition to "never mind about those questions; don't think about them," fell upon dull ears. He could no more cease thinking upon the mysteries of life and death than he could cease respiration. Nor could he blindly trust. He mustknow. Nothing is more unescapable than the soul's urge toward freedom—and freedom can be won only by liberation from the bondage of illusion.
Tolstoi's friends and biographers agree that along about his forty-fifth year, a great moral and religious change took place. The whole trend of his thoughts turned from the mortal consciousness to that inner self whence issues the higher qualities of mankind.
From a man who, although he was a great writer and a Russian nobleman, was yet a man like others of his kind, influenced by traditionary ideas of class and outward appearance; a man of conventional habits and ideas; Tolstoi emerged a free soul. He shook off the illusion of historical life and culture, and stood upon free, moral ground, estimating himself and his fellows by means of an insight which ignores the world's conventions and despises the world's standards of success. In short, Tolstoi had received Illumination and henceforth should he reckoned among those of the new birth.
In his own words, written in 1879, this change is described:
"Five years ago a change took place in me. I began to experience at first times of mental vacuity, of cessation of life, as if I did not know why I was to live or what I was to do. These suspensions of life always found expression in the same problem, 'Why am I here?' and then 'What next?' I had lived and lived and gone on and on till I had drawn near a precipice; I saw clearly that before me there lay nothing but destruction. With all my might I endeavored to escape from this life. And suddenly I, a happy man, began to hide my bootlaces that I might not hang myself between the wardrobes in my room when undressing at night; and ceased to take a gun with me out shooting, so as to avoid temptation by these two means of freeing myself from this life. * * *
"I lived in this way (that is to say, in communion with the people) for two years; and a change took place in me. What befell me was that the life of our class—the wealthy and cultured—not only became repulsive to me, but lost all significance. All our actions, our judgments, science, and art itself, appeared to me in a new light. I realized that it was all self-indulgence, and that it was useless to look for any meaning in it. I hated myself and acknowledged the truth. Now it had all become clear to me."
From this time on, Tolstoi's life was that of one who had entered into cosmic consciousness, as we note the effects in others. Desire for solitude a taste for the simple, natural things of life, possessed him. The primitive peasants and their coarse but wholesome food appealed to him. It was not a penance that Tolstoi imposed upon himself, that caused him to abandon the life of a country gentleman for that of a hut in the woods. The penance would come to such a one from enforced living in the glare of the world's artificialities. Cosmic consciousness bestows above all things a taste for simplicity; it restores the normal condition of mankind, the intimacy with nature and the feeling of kinship with nature-children.
It is not our purpose here to enter into any detailed biography of these instances of cosmic consciousness. The point we wish to make is the fact that the birth of this new consciousness frequently comes through much mental travail and agonies of doubt, speculation and questioning; but that it is worth the price paid, however seemingly great, there can be no possible distrust.
Balzac should head this chapter, if we were considering these philosophers in chronological order, as Balzac was born in 1799, preceding Emerson by a matter of four years. But Balzac's peculiar temperament, might almost be classed as a religious rather than strictly intellectual example of cosmic consciousness. Of the latter phase or expression of this "new" sense, as present-day writers frequently call it, Emerson is the most perfect example, because he was the most balanced; the most literary, in the strict interpretation of the word.
Balzac's place in literature is due far more to his wonderful spiritual insight, and his powerful imagination, than to his intellectuality, or to literary style. But that he was an almost complete case of cosmic consciousness is evident in all he wrote and in all he did. His life was absolutely consistent with the cosmic conscious man, living in a world where the race consciousness has not yet risen to the heights of the spiritually conscious life.
Bucke comments upon his decision against the state of matrimony, because, as Balzac himself declared, it would be an obstacle to the perfectibility of his interior senses, and to his flight through the spiritual worlds, and says: "When we consider the antagonistic attitude of so many of the great cases toward this relation (Gautama, Jesus, Paul, Whitman, etc.), there seems little doubt that anything like general possession of cosmic consciousness must abolish marriage as we know it to-day."
Balzac explains this seeming aversion to the marriage stateas we know it to-day, in his two books, written during his early thirties, namely, Louis Lambert and Seraphita. "Louis Lambert" is regarded as in the nature of an autobiography, since Balzac, like his mouthpiece, Louis, viewed everything from an inner sense—from intuition, or the soul faculties, rather than from the standard of mere intellectual observation, analysis and synthesis. This inner sense, so real and so thoroughly understandable to those possessing it, is almost, if not quite, impossible of description to the complete comprehension of those who have no intimate relationship with this inner vision. To the person who views life from the inner sense, the soul sense (which is the approach to, and is included in, cosmic consciousness), the external or physical life is like a mirror reflecting, more or less inaccurately, the reality—the soul is the gazer, and the visible life is what he sees.
Balzac expresses this view in all he says and does. "All we are is in the soul," he says, and the perfection or the imperfection of what we externalize, depends upon the development of the soul.
It is this marvelously developed inner vision that makes marriage, on the sense-conscious plane, which is the plane upon which we know marriage as it is to-day, objectionable to Balzac.
His spirit had already united with its spiritual counterpart, and his soul sought the embodiment of that union in the flesh. This he did not find in the perfection and completeness which from his inner view he knew to exist.
Barriers of caste, or class; of time and space; of age; of race and color; of condition; may intervene between counterparts on the physical plane; nay, one may be manifesting in the physical body and the other have abandoned the body, but as there is neither time nor space nor condition to the spirit, this union may have been sought and found, andreflected tothe mortal consciousness, in which case marriage with anything less than theonetrue counterpart would be unsatisfactory, if not altogether objectionable.
With this view in mind, Seraphita becomes as lucid a bit of reading as anything to be found in literature.
Seraphita is the perfected being—the god into which man is developing, or more properly speaking,unfolding, since man must unfold into that from which he started, but with consciousness added.
Everywhere, in ancient and modern mysticism, we find the assumption that God is dual—male and female. The old Hebrew word for God is plural—Elohim.
Humankind invariably and persistently, even though half-mockingly, alludes to man and wife as "one"; and men and women speak of each other, when married, as "my other half."
That which persists has a basis in fact, and symbolizes the perfect type. What we know of marriage as it is to-day, proves to us beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the man-made institution of marriage does not make man and woman one, nor insure that two halves of the same whole are united. The highest type of men and women to-day are at best but half-gods, but these are prophecies of the future race, "the man-god whom we await" as Emerson puts it. But that which we await is the man-woman-god, the Perfected Being, of whom Balzac writes in Seraphita.
It has been said that Madame Hanska, whom the author finally married only six months previous to his death, was the original of Seraphita, but it would seem that this great affection, tender and enduring as it was, partook far more of a beautiful friendship between two souls who knew and understood each other's needs, than it did of that blissful and ecstatic union of counterparts, which everywhere is described by those who have experienced it, as a sensation ofmelting or merging intothe other's being.
Seraphita is the embodiment, in human form, of theideaexpressed in the world-old belief in a perfected being; whose perfection was complete when the two halves of theoneshould have found each other.
The inference is very generally made that Balzac believed in and sought to express the idea of a bi-sexual individual—apersonalitywho is complete in himself or herselfas a person; one in which the intuitive, feminine principle and the reasoning, masculine principle had become perfectly balanced—in short, an androgynous human.
This idea is apparently further substantiated by the fact that Seraphita was loved by Minna, a beautiful young girl to whom Seraphita was always Seraphitus, an ideal lover; and by Wilfrid, to whom Seraphita represented his ideal of feminine loveliness, both in mind and body; a young girl possessing marvelous, almost miraculous, wisdom, but yet a woman with human passions and human virtues—his ideal of wifehood and motherhood.
But whatever the idea that Balzac intended to convey, whether, as is generally believed, Seraphita was an androgynous being, or whether she symbolized the perfection of soul-union, our contention is that this union is not a creation of the imagination, but the accomplishment of the plan of creation—the final goal of earthly pilgrimage; the raison d'etre of love itself.
One argument against the idea that Seraphita was intended to illustrate an androgynous being, rather than a perfected human, who had her spiritual mate, is found in the words in which she refused to marry Wilfrid, although Balzac makes it plainly evident that she was attracted to Wilfrid with a degree of sense-attraction, due to the fact that she was still living within the environment of the physical, and therefore subject to the illusions of the mortal, even while her spiritual consciousness was so fully developed as to enable her to perceive and realize the difference between an attraction that was based largely upon sense, and that which was of the soul.
Wilfrid says to her:
"Have you no soul that you are not seduced by the prospect of consoling a great man, who will sacrifice all to live with you in a little house by the border of a lake?"
"But," answers Seraphita, "I am loved with a love without bounds."
And when Wilfrid with insane anger and jealousy asked who it was whomSeraphita loved and who loved her, she answered "God."
At another time, when Minna, to whom she had often spoken in veiled terms of a mysterious being who loved her and whom she loved, asked her who this person was, she answered:
"I can love nothing here on earth."
"What dost thou love then?" asked Minna.
"Heaven" was the reply.
This obscurity and uncertainty as to what manner of love it was that absorbed Seraphita, and who was the object of it, could not have been possible had it been the usual devotion of thereligeuse.
Seraphita, whose consciousness extended far beyond that of the people about her, could not have explained to her friends that the invisible realms were as real to her as the visible universe was to those with only sense-consciousness. It was impossible to explain to them that she had found and knew her mate, even though she had not met him in the physical body.
To Wilfrid she said she loved "God." To Minna she used the term "Heaven," and when Minna questioned: "But art thou worthy of heaven when thou despisest the creatures of God?" Seraphita answered:
"Couldst thou love two beings at once? Would a lover be a lover if he did not fill the heart? Should he not be the first, the last, the only one? She who loves will she not quit the world for her lover? Her entire family becomes a memory; she has no longer a relative. The lover! she has given him her whole soul. If she has kept a fraction of it, she does not love. To love feebly, is that to love? The word of the lover makes all her joy, and quivers in her veins like a purple deeper than blood; his glance is a light which penetrates her; she dissolves in him; there, where he is, all is beautiful; he is warmth to the soul: he irradiates everything; near him could one know cold or night? He is never absent; he is ever within us; we think in him, to him, for him. Minna, that is the-way I love."
And when Minna, like Wilfrid, "seized by a devouring jealousy," demanded to know "whom?" Seraphita answered, "God." This she did because the one whom she loved became her God. We are told that "love makes gods of men." Perfect love, the love of those who are spiritual-mates—soul-mates—the "man-woman-god whom we await," becomes an immortal: and immortals are gods.
Moreover if Seraphita had intended to teach the love of the religious devotee to The Absolute instead of a perfected sex-love, she would not have pointed out to both Wilfrid and Minna that which she, in her superior vision, her supra-consciousness, perceived, namely, that Wilfrid and Minna were really intended for spiritual mates, and that what they each saw in her was really a prophecy of their own perfected and spiritualized love.
The subject is one that is positively incomprehensible and unexplainable to the average mind. All mystic literature, when read with the eyes of understanding, exalts and spiritualizes sex. The latter day degeneration of sex is the "trail of the serpent," which Woman is to crush with her heel. And Woman is crushing it to-day, although to the superficial observer, who sees only surface conditions, it would appear as though Woman had fallen from her high estate, to take her place on a footing with man. This view is the exoteric, and not the esoteric, one.
They who have ears hear the inner voice, and they who have eyes see with the inner sight. The mystery of sex is the eternal mystery which each must solve for himself before he can comprehend it, and when solved eliminates all sense of sin and shame; brings Illumination in which everything is made clear and makes man-woman immortal—agod.
Swedenborg's theory of Heaven as a never-ending honeymoon in which spiritually-mated humans dwell, has been denounced by many as "shocking" to a refined and sensitive mind. But this idea is shocking only because even the most advanced minds are seldom Illumined, their advancement being along the lines of intellectual research andacquired knowledge, which, as we have previously explained, is not synonymous withinterior wisdom.
The illumined mind is bound to find in the eternal and ever-present fact of sex, the key to the mysteries—the password to immortal godhood.
The subject is one that cannot be set forth in printed words; this fact is, indeed, the very Plan of Illumination. It cannot betaught. It must befound. Only those who have glimpsed its truth can even imperfectly point the way in which itmaybe discovered. No teacher can guarantee it. It is the most evanescent, the most delicate, the most indescribable thing in the Cosmos. It is therefore the most readily misinterpreted and misunderstood.