CHAPTER VSUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The problem of the continued conscious life of man after the death of the physical body, concerns thewhereand thehow, and does not, and need not, concern us at all now. It is, literally, an “after consideration.”
Who and what man is, here and now, is the real problem. Only when, or in the degree in which, we master this problem, can we really know anything definitely of the other.
The complete separation of these two problems, and the exact definition and formulation of each, is the first step on the road to knowledge of the Science of the Soul.
For the time being, in the study of Psychology, “other worldliness” should be absolutely abandoned.
Almost everyone finds it difficult to do this. Many find it impossible.
The fear and uncertainty with which almost everyone faces the inevitable, the loss of friends, the broken lute, the empty chair, the lonely life—all these make us cry out in anguish—whereandhowandwhen, and overlook the “what are we?”
So-called Religion in all time has almost hopelessly mixed and confused these problems.
The various concepts and doctrines of rewards and punishments hereafter, have put ulterior motives in the place of actual values, weakened the will and hindered man from doing his best.
A still further confusion follows, in the measure of assets, that leads to time-serving and false values.
Satisfy the average individual that “death ends all” and he will cry, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die,” notwithstanding the fact that he sees others who have “gone the pace,” realized only “dust and ashes,” declared it “all a mistake,” and that if they had the chance they would “do it all the other way.”
Remember, we are dealing withactual valueshere and now, divested of both fear and anticipation of the hereafter.
On the other hand, who ever saw an individual die, who had led a clean, upright, kindly life, indulge in regret or remorse, or declare life a disappointment or a failure?
The first is anchored to the physical plane by insatiate appetite and passion, or desire to reform, which might soon be forgotten.
The other has found sweetness and joy in life, in conscious growth, in doing good; and his soul is illumined and transfigured as the body fails and he approaches another plane, and this often independent of any formulated religious belief.
It all depends on what the man iswithinhimself,his intrinsic character, hisreal self; and no matter where he goes, that character, that self, goes with him. ItisHimself.
The “change in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” is not in themanand cannot be. It is in the plane, or sphere, or world he inhabits, or to which he goes. It is a change of garments, of habitat, of houses in which we live—if we live at all.
This much weknow, and should not forget or confuse it. We know it, as we know that “twice two are four”; that fire will burn, or that bodies, unsupported, fall to the ground. We know it from the fact of our own self-conscious identity. Radically or suddenly to change that essentially is to annihilateus.
The preacher says, “Study the Bible.” He might say, “Study yourself!” The preacher says, “Look to Jesus.” He might say, “Look within!” The preacher says, “Repent and pray.” I would say, “After an inventory of your inner possessions, clean up the house andgo to workto improve it in every way.”
When “cleaning day” is well under way, if the “sure-enough” preacher drops in, and you show him the house and what you are trying your best to do, he will just start “Old Hundred,” and will be too happy for anything else.
I am not criticising the preacher, nor opposing religion, but getting ready for it, laying the foundation of Morals and the building of character.“Religion” cannot do this.YouandIhave to do it, or it is never done.
Without this work ofours, religion is little more, or else, than passing emotion or lasting superstition, “lip service,” cant, hypocrisy, and then cold heartless dogmatism, a measure and jingling of words that never touch the heart, but leave the individual ready to throw stones and light brands of torture: a case-hardening of the affections and the aspirations, that wraps the soul like the bandages of the mummied Pharaohs, a mere petrifaction.
We know, or may know, as much actually and scientifically of the growth of the soul as of the growth of the body. The average individual knows more of the soul than of the body, but his knowledge is in confusion. It is a matter of hourly, daily, life-long, and changingexperience. He knows little of physiology, except feelings, sensations, desires, and results. How and why the mechanism of the body works he knows not.
Body and soul are organically identified, intimately associated and interwoven, and act and react on each other. They are functionally synchronous in all movements. The analogies between them are numberless and easily traced.
The physician and physiologist does not stop to inquire, “WhatisLife” and refuse to move till someone gives a satisfactory answer; yet he is dealing with Life in its numberless manifestations in the human, organism continually.
But this same physician is likely to debate and deny the existence of the Soul, demanding that you define and demonstrate it.
The term “Individual Intelligence” is as definite, specific, and demonstrable in Psychology as the term “Life” in Physiology.
We are alive and we possess a certain degree or measure of intelligence. These are facts in our conscious experience.
We may shape or mold our lives. We may do this according to our ideals, or we may drift with the tides of circumstance, or of passion and caprice, and this is what most persons do.
So also with that intelligence which is the guiding light in our lives. It may illumine our pathway, or it may flash and fitfully glare, with the shadows, rendering our pathway obscure and uncertain, illusory and deceitful, or dangerous and fearful.
The soul is in the body; and this light of intelligence is in the soul, its center, its very essence.
All else in us, and round about us, is diversity and multiplicity. This light of intelligence in us isOneand unchanging.
Our experience in life, however varied and diversified, is co-ordinated and unified by this Intelligence in us. It is that which puts all our experiences together and views them through a single lens. It stands by itself alone, and all else pays tribute to it.
It is the pronoun “I” and it stands for, speaks and acts for, all else in us.
It is not alone the onlyunityin us, but it is that which unifies all the rest, uses the “possessive case,” and may subordinate all else in us to its Will.
Does it, then, do violence to common sense and hourly experience, or is it any stretch of the imagination to speak of this unity as an entity, and call it the human soul?
If we live after the change called death, in a spiritual world, in place of the physical we now inhabit, and with a spiritual or refined body to correspond with that plane of refined or etherialized substance, the Individual Intelligence must function in that body and on that plane as it does now in the physical body on the physical plane.
Either something very like this takes place, or we cease to exist as a self-conscious individual intelligence. There must remain and continue man’s self-conscious identity.
Furthermore, if this be true, thereal natureof this individual intelligence we call theSelf, in the last analysis, is likely to be as much a mystery as ever. We may knowwho we arewithout knowingwhat it is.
Now the composite nature of man, as we know it, not only justifies all these analogies, but seems to show that the modulus, the germ at least, of the spiritual body exists now within the physical; that it does not disintegrate when the physical body dies, but separates and coheres more closely than ever; and is still inhabited or possessed by the individual intelligence.
Moreover, it has often been seen by clairvoyants at the time of death, thus verifying the Biblical declaration, “there is a natural (physical) body, and there is a spiritual body.”
The composite structures of man’s organism above referred to are well known. They are called “systems.” The bony or Osseous system, the muscular system, the circulatory system, the lymphatic system, and the two nervous systems, serve as illustrations of the composite nature of man.
All of these “systems” more or less inter-penetrate and diffuse each other.
There is also a chemico-vital, kinetic, or magnetic body, diffused through and inter-penetrating all the rest. This gives the contrast between the living organism (with the flush of health upon the cheek and the light of intelligence in the eyes), and a corpse.
Death is often instantaneous, while decomposition often waits for days.
There is a still further analogy regarding a single function, like a sensory or motor impulse, passing to or from the central brain, the organ of consciousness. The journey is one of relays and orderly sequences.
This is proven in a great variety of forms of paresis. I cannot, as an individual intelligence,directlymove my hand any more than I can move a mountain. I conceive the object or act and set the will in motion. The impulse traverses the nerves,is transferred to the muscle, and then, when the circuit is complete,Imove my hand.
The gap between my conscious intelligent wish and will, and my physical hand, is very great. One is metaphysical, the other physical. There is, therefore, a point of correlation where the one is converted into the other.
The knowledge of these facts, and of this orderly sequence and correlation, constitutes the Science of pathology and enables us to locate the lesion or disease. I cannot move my hand, and the pathologist locates the “short-circuit” in brain, or nerve, or “terminal plate,” or muscle, as the case may be.
Now it is thissystemofcomposite systemsthat deserves special attention. We know that it exists as a series of relays and refining processes. In disease it is interrupted, or out of joint, or broken down.
Health means harmony, concord, rhythm between every part, and the power of the one individual intelligence to use it all, to act or refrain from action, and to hold and maintain through all, repose, equilibrium, and self-mastery.
The physical body we know to be a thing of sense and time. We know its beginning, its gestation, its entrance and exit on this material plane. Its secrets are all involved in the subtle relations it bears to the soul that inhabits, unifies, and utilizes it.
The Individual Intelligence, Ego, Soul, orEntity, is as patent to us in ourawareness of selfas is the body it inhabits. It is ourvery self. Our knowledge of it is adirect personal experience, so direct, immediate, and constant that we overlook its significance.
I can see no reason to imagine that a human being, passing from the earthly plane and consciously living on the spiritual plane and recognizing itself as the same individual, would be any wiser as to the exact nature and origin of the Individual Intelligence than he is now; though his field of vision and range of conscious experience had so immeasurably increased and expanded.
If he had solved this problem ofultimates, he would be at the end of his thread of life and would compass the Infinite. He would be no longer Man, but God.
So, from all these considerations, and from all directions, we come back to human evolution, the upward and onward journey of the human soul.
As man’s health, usefulness, and happiness here depend on the perfection and utility of the physical body he inhabits, and its maintenance in health and harmony, have we the least reason to imagine that the same individual, dwelling on the spiritual plane, will not be under the same of analogous laws and relations there, since we have assumed the persistence and conscious identity of the soul there as here?
I hold, therefore, that man possesses, now and here, the structure of aSpiritualBody; and that the“growth of the soul” and our status and relation to the soul, and our status and relation to the life after death on the spiritual plane, dependvery largelyon the character and integrity of this spiritual body, the “house we have builded.”
The whole of life, therefore, here, is what gestation of the infant body is before birth. When the child is born it is a separate personality, a distinct individuality.
There has been woven into its organism a distinct and synchronous correspondence with that of the mother.
During gestation it has passed through every plane of organic life, fromamœba, or mollusk, to man.
It is thus in touch with every phase and quality of life. It epitomizes them all, transcends them all, andmay co-ordinatethem all.
On the other hand, the individual intelligence of the child, a distinct and separateunity, is in vital, spiritual, and synchronous relation to that of the mother that enfolds it.
It is either building or rejuvenating a new spiritual body, as the “essential form” of the physical, organic, chemical, and kinetic or magnetic body.
What we call “Life,” or “Vitality,” runs like a “dominant chord” in the harmonic scale of the whole. Each part, organ, and function is related to every other and to the whole by definite vibrations and the laws of harmony.
If, from the beginning, it is an “unwelcome child,” the higher and subtler elements of the mother’s nature, and all her emotions are turned against it, are discordant and not constructive and harmonic.
Discord is thus ingrained at the foundations and woven into the “subtle body” of the child.
Nature is so persistent in its determination to preserve and perpetuate the human race, that the building of the organic body of the child goes on; and the Individual Intelligence is so potent that it often triumphs over these prenatal obstructions, but by no means always. If “thereisa spiritual body” in the mother organism during the present life, as I amentirely satisfiedthere is; and if the child is laying the foundation and weaving the pattern and fabric of a spiritual body of its own for the present life and that immediately beyond; then these psychological influences and conditions are oftranscendent importanceandmaybe largely determined by our intelligent choice.
A higher race of beings will never inhabit this earth till these fundamental laws are recognized and regarded.
We may illustrate and symbolize this spiritual habitation we are building by the over-tones and the harmonics in music.
Its nature and function and the whole process of building and development are a refining and purifying process.
It may be conceived in the vito-magnetic fieldof man, as that which is in nearest relation and closest touch with the soul, the Individual Intelligence, and through, and by which the soul acts.
Being in synchronous relation with the physical organs and functions, like a chord in music, a high with a lower tone (but still harmonic), thedirectvehicle and agent of the soul would be this spiritual body; and when the physical body or vehicle dies, or is cast off, the spiritual bodywith the soulescapes.
Empirical evidence along just these lines is so abundant in the annals of every people, and in all ages, that it is unnecessary to quote it here. Whole volumes are filled with it, outside the annals of Spiritualism and the Psychical Society, and antedating them by centuries and millenniums.
The most important consideration is that the building of character by voluntary choice and personal effort, the “growth of the soul,” and the evolution of this spiritual body areinseparable. This trinity which is man, ispotentially(and may beactually) aunity.
The evolutionary and devolutionary lines run in precisely opposite directions, are easily differentiated and defined, are usually recognized by observation and by the individual himself. It is very difficult and takes a long time to deceive ourselves with regard to the upward or downward trend of our own life, till we have blunted by misuse and degraded all the finer faculties, capacities, and powers of our being.
A quickened conscience, a moral uplift, a desire to do right, a noble ideal, mark the beginning; but self-study, a rigid and persistent self-analysis, taking account of stock of all our resources and capacities, all our real possessions and opportunities, is the scientific process by which man may become master of his own life and evolve to higher and still higher planes of being, even here in the present life.
The question of rewards and punishments hereafter, and what we may expect, or hope, or fear, that we willget, will sink into utter nothingness before the great and ever-growing question of what weare, and what we are determined tobecome.
Incidentally with this dominating impulse and determination will be the growth and development of the spiritual body, and the intuition and guiding light of the Individual Intelligence. We shall become consciouslyawareof this as a constant personal experience demanding no further proof. It isknowledgeof the souldirect.
Every faculty, capacity, and power of the soul will be our willing servant.
This is Constructive Psychology, and is a normal evolution under both Natural and Divine Law: “Living the Life that we may know the doctrine.”
It is practical, scientific Psychology worked out and demonstrated in the Laboratory of Life. Religions and Revelations will no longer be mysteries, but open books; for we shall be in touch with their source and at-one with their inspiration.
This is what is meant by “The School of Natural Science.”
Nor is it an idle speculation, nor merely a thing “devoutly to be wished.”
If the whole nature of man is built and operated under law; if he is, as he seems to be, an aggregate of all substances, an epitome of all principles and processes; then it follows that to understand these laws, processes and correspondences, is to becomemasterof them and of life.
Wonderful as have been the discoveries in nature’s finer forces and in applied science, all that science has discovered or invented, or art has devised, is like children’s toys, when compared with the subtle and marvelous mechanism of man’s organism.
The rhythmic beating of the heart, synchronous with respiration and the circulation of the blood, are sufficient illustrations. But even this concerns the vehicle, not the driver; the instrument, not the player upon this “harp of a thousand strings.”
When it comes to the mental and psychical realm, cognition is direct and immediate. We become “aware” of relations and processes, of sequences and powers, by intuition, as we areawareof the Self.
This isapperceptionin its highest sense. Not through the mind, which is aprocessand a function, but through that which uses, controls and dominates the mind, viz.: the Individual Intelligence, the Soul.
In the mind, in daily life,weweigh and measure, reason, choose, compare, and adjust. In intuitionor apperception it is borne in, or comes like a flash of light, and seems as if “we always knew it.”
We may somewhat haltingly describe the process, but we can never impart the knowledge to another, because it is anindividual experience. As easily could another feel, sense, andrealizethe pain of thrusting our finger into the fire, as to receive vicariously, from us, arealphysical experience.
Here lies the difficulty, often the impossibility, of the teacher or the Master, in imparting his knowledge.
I amentirety satisfiedthat by personal effort and experience along these lines of normal higher evolution, there comes a time and a degree of unfoldment and power when, from knowledge and self-mastery, the Master—the Individual Intelligence—having evolved and learned tocontrolthe spiritual body, can consciously and deliberately pass out of the physical body and return to it at will. He can do this as consciously and completely as it occurs at death; can go where he pleases, within the range of his unfoldment or spiritual experience, and retain conscious memory of it all after his return to the physical body.
And suppose this all to be true, how can he demonstrate the fact, or transmit the experience to another; and particularly if that other declared to begin with that, “the whole process is absurd and impossible”?
Nor is mere credulity here a highway to knowledge.It is merely the opposite pole of incredulity, and both are begotten by ignorance.
Analogy and the basic principles and laws of scientific psychology are very different matters indeed. They point in this direction like a theorem in mathematics. The principles and laws being grasped and apprehended, the solution becomes only a question ofwork; and at every step the law is verified, “Backward and forward it still spells the same.”
What is this but themethodsof Natural Science applied to Psychical Science upon the basis of the Unity of Natural Phenomena and Universal Law?
There is nothing to prevent any of us from starting on this upward journey of the soul, if we choose; and never till we do, shall we really begin toknow, to realize our birthright, and progress toward the realm of eternal day.
The science of ethics, the basis of morals, is the starting point, the first step; andleading the life, the way. And there is no climbing up some other way. So said the Master of Galilee, and so say the real Masters in all times.
When Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” he doubtless meant that these were allin him, and he at-one with them.
When Jesus said, “I and the Father areone. No one cometh to the Father but by me,” he doubtless referred to this at-one-ment as the only way by which the natural man—Adam—could become the Spiritual man—Christos.
When he said, “The kingdom of heaven is within you,” he undoubtedly meant that “heaven” is a condition, a harmonic state, and not a place.
We undoubtedly create our own “hell” and our own “heaven,” and people them with “devils” or with “angels.”
True Science and true Religion clasp hands, and are like the two hands of the one body of Truth. They check each other, supplement each other, harmonize each other.
Superstition and blind dogma are the enemies of true Science; Religion—never.
Science and Religion are the handmaids of Truth; because both are the children of Divinity, the agents of Light and of Eternal Progress for Man.
This building of character, this growth of the soul, this Harmonic of Evolution, is a matter ofwork; of personal endeavor, of valid, real, personal experience.
Its results are ourrealpossessions, our “treasure in heaven” that nothing can ever destroy. Life and Death may ebb and flow, and come and go; butwemay, if we will, go on forever; or we may turn the other way and go down to death.Some dayevery human soul will elect, choose, and decide and then start on the journey, North or South.
This is the meaning of Soul, of Individual Intelligence, of Rational Volition, of Personal Responsibility.
It is the Science of Nature aligned with Divinity, and compassing Humanity.
The purpose of these outlines, suggestions, analogies, and inferences, is to show that this life is a period of gestation, in close analogy and comparable with that of the childin utero; that with the web and woof of character, organ and function, impulse and use, opportunity and destiny, we are building a spiritual body, theimmediate vehicleof the soul, as literally as is the physical body on the outer material plane; that the laws of Spiritual health and vitality are as concrete, apprehensible, and demonstrable as those of physiology.
Normal use under law develops health, harmony, and strength, in the one case as in the other, demonstrably; and these laws, accurately formulated and demonstrated, constitute the School of Natural Science, accessible to all prepared to receive and wisely use them; advancement depending on progress, thoroughness, and loyalty, in all preceding degrees.
Is it worth while?
CHAPTER VITHE CROSS IN RELIGION AND THE CRUX IN SCIENCE WITH THE GREAT WORK IN AMERICA
With the progress of civilization and the general growth and diffusion of intelligence everywhere, there is one problem upon which all else focalizes, though the fact seems to be seldom clearly apprehended or realized.
Not only do science and religion face each other at one point, but the life of each is at that one point involved. It is not only the often recognized “conflict between Religion and Science,” which was long ago worn threadbare. It is the fact that both Science and Religion are out of joint with themselves.
The battle-ground may, in a broad way, be named Psychology. All problems and all discussions of the real issues arise from, involve, or center around, the nature, laws that govern, and destiny of the Human Soul.
From the very nature of these problems, their intricacy and diversity, they remained the latest in the categories of Science to be seriously investigated.
For the same reasons they have been the subject of dogma and revelation in religion, with doors slammed in the face of all investigation as not only useless, but wicked, and often made dangerous.
Between the agnosticism of Science, and the dogmatism of Religion, knowledge has been crucified, and there it hangs to-day, a crux to the one, and the Cross to the other: The same problem, only facing different ways.
And yet the Reconciliation is not far to seek. It is difficult for the average churchman, or theologian, to apprehend and remember, that afact, in nature or in life, is one thing; and that theinterpretation, orexplanationput upon that fact, by any man, or body of men, is another thing entirely. Here is where Belief, Dogma, and Heresy come in. As soon as one denies the interpretation, he is accused of denying the fact, no matter how illogical or absurd the interpretation may be, on the one hand, or how openly he admits the fact as the basis of his own conclusions, on the other.
Few individuals will be found nowadays who deny thefactof the birth, life, mission, and death of Jesus of Nazareth. But the interpretations read into the fact differ so widely as to result in almost numberless sects, and an endless war of words. All this theological wrangling may be focalized at one point, almost on a single word. Did Jesus of Nazareth differ in kind or inDegree, from the rest of Humanity?
If he had “a like nature with ours,” as he andhis disciples took the utmost pains to declare, and to demonstrate, then he differed indegreeof unfoldment, and was indeed, our Elder Brother; He differed as the holy differs from the unholy; as the pure differs from the impure; as the kind and charitable differ from the unkind and the uncharitable. It is just at this point that all the theological juggling comes in, in the effort to reconcile contradictions and irreconcilable paradoxes, under the designation—Mystery, Miracle, and Faith. Few theologians would admit that it is desirable, even if possible, that the mystery and miracle should disappear, and that wisdom and understanding should take their place. In other words, that Jesus should be proved an evolution under both natural and divine law, as the result of “Living the Life.”
Bear in mind that we are dealing withInterpretationsonly, and with the opinions of men; and that there is nothing “sacred” or “holy” about these opinions, no matter how they may be hedged about by dogma, or ecclesiastic authority. The Immaculate Conception; the Virgin Birth; the Resurrection of the physical body, and the Vicarious Atonement, are each and all Dogmas; the opinions of men, ininterpretingthe mystery, and miracle, they have assigned to the nature of Jesus, in what they call the “plan,” or the “Scheme of Salvation.”
If the nature of Jesus were radically and essentially different from ours; if he differed from us inkind, instead of indegree; if he were “very God,”instead of a perfected man, as the result of “Living the Life”; then he can have little in common with us; and, so far as “like natures,” “common temptations,” and human sympathies, and destinies, are concerned, he might as well have been born on the planet Mars.
But suppose that psychic and spiritual science could so define the faculties, capacities, and powers of man, and the nature and laws of the human soul, as to demonstrate the fact that Jesus becameChristosthrough “living the life,” and “doing the will of the Father,” in strict conformity to both Natural and Divine Law, thus revealing the fact that thesepotenciesarelatentin every human soul: that it does not depend so much upon what webelieve, as upon what wedo; not so much upon what weprofess, as upon what weare; not so much upon what Jesus did for us, as upon what we do for ourselves and for others, in strict analogy with the life and the teachings of Jesus. Would not Jesus become, indeed and in truth, aLiving Example, in place of a “Blood Offering”?
Theology ignores and sophisticatesPersonal Responsibility, which everything else, and every experience in life, justifies and enforces as the basis of Morals.
On the other hand, so-called Psychic Science misapprehends, belittles, and sophisticates the Human Will, the prime Motor Power of Man. It then confuses Rational Volition and Domination by juggling with the wordsSuggestionandHypnosis.
This reveals the fact that they have no rational concept whatever of the psychical nature of man, not even a “working hypothesis” of the Human Soul. Theologians affirm, “Science” denies, and so they still face each other in this Twentieth Century with “A war of words,” though, to a considerable extent, they have ceased making faces and calling each other names, because there is a deeper struggle going on.
The Theological Hierarchy, worldly-wise in every generation, has dropped the cry ofHeresyand gone to the very foundations of our civilization. They are sapping and mining the foundations of civil Liberty, the “self-evident truths,” and the “Inalienable Rights,” upon which this government was founded.
Here is a thoroughly-organized, relentless determination, openly declared, and well under way to destroy our “Free Public Schools,” and substitute that “Organized Ignorance,” the Parochial Schools, as the first step in reuniting Church and State, through dogmatic authority instilled into the youths of this country. Not one citizen in a thousand seems to realize what is here being attempted, how thoroughly organized it is, or what immense progress in this direction has already been made; or, if they know, they do not seem to care.
It may thus be seen what practical and vital issues we are facing and how much is involved in the “Cross of Religion,” and the “Crux of Science.”
Intelligence, Education, the Light of Science,and the Illumination of true Religion, are pitted in a conflict with Ignorance, Superstition, and Fear; dogmatism, degeneration, and devolution.
Science and Religion represent different departments in human interests and the life of man. So far as they are each true, they must eventually, and inevitably clasp hands, instead of working at cross-purposes.
Actual knowledge of the human soul, as a Science of psychology, on the one hand; and the duty of man to himself, to his fellows, and to God, and the destiny of the human soul as essential religion, on the other; must constitute the basis of union, and the point of agreement.
The accredited psychology of to-day has hitherto failed to demonstrate any actual knowledge of the human soul, or even to postulate its existence, as a fact in nature.
The theologies and religions of to-day appeal largely to superstition and fear, and support their dogmas by “revelations,” the diverse interpretations of which have segregated religions into a large number of sects with no bond of union or basis of agreement.
Competition here, in securing proselytes, differs little, except in name, from that everywhere in evidence between commercial organizations. It is hardly “the survival of the fittest,” but rather, as everywhere, and in all ages, the triumph of the most powerful, aggressive, and unscrupulous. The Roman Hierarchy is still in the lead, with its Pope“infallible,” and anathematizing all progress and enlightenment, under the designation of “Modernism,” and all its energy exerted to perpetuate the “Dark Ages.”
It is thus that priestcraft masquerades in the name of religion to enslave the human soul. Still outside this Babel of religion and science, lie numberless cults and organizations professing both liberty and enlightenment along the lines of man’s spiritual nature, not one of which puts forth anyclear and definite theoremof the human soul. With mere assertions, instead of demonstrated facts, and appealing often to the desire for wealth, health, and comfort in their followers, they often declare that one has only to “demand” these things, in order to have them. Justice and the law of compensation are often entirely ignored, and the methods employed areunmoral, to say the least, almost without exception, unscientific, and wholly empirical.
Occasionally we find “Leaders,” or “Official Heads,” whose colossal ignorance of either moral or spiritual Law, is only equaled by their monumental egotism, and this does not prevent them from gaining proselytes, and amassing fortunes in their own name.
It would be difficult to see how many of these cults differ, either in principle or practice, or in the results wrought out in their disciples, from the Priestcraft already referred to.
They advertise an open thoroughfare, and seem to promise something for nothing, but from thevicarious atonement, up or down the scale, the votaries pay in “mint, anise, and cummin,” while ignorantly blind to the weightier matters of the law.
To one who for half a century has studied these personal and social problems, and witnessed the rise and fall of many of these cults, from the Fox Sisters and Spiritualism, to Braid and Hypnotism, while Priestcraft and Popery, like Tennyson’s brook, “go on forever,” it all seems pitiful that mankind must pay so dearly for freedom, enlightenment, and knowledge.
And yet, when the real teacher comes, the rabble so long exploited cry, “Away with him,” “Crucify him.” When the rabble at last repent, Priestcraft shifts its tactics and deifies the sacrifice, which it instigated, and so perpetuates the eternal tragedy.
Those familiar with the “Seeking after God,” and for real knowledge of the essential nature of man, in all ages, are aware that there have always been, in every age, those who have achieved it. It has been known, or rather concealed, under many names. Its possessors and teachers have been reviled, persecuted, crucified, and thus their work has been hindered and often defeated.
The ignorant and superstitious feared it. The vicious, ambitious, and time-serving hated it, because it prevented the few from dominating and exploiting the many; liberating, as it does, the earnest seeker after truth and enlightenment from the bondage of ignorance, dogma, superstition, and fear, in every form.
Hence Institutional Religions, Schools of Philosophy, Coteries, Syndicates, and many other organizations of men, constituted to dominate and rule the masses, have been the sworn foes of individual liberty and enlightenment, and of the “Illuminati,” or real teachers in every age, and a perpetual menace to their work.
Real knowledge of the nature and destiny of man, has first to be discovered, then recovered, and possessed. To become available, it must be simplified, formulated, and finally promulgated in some form, so as to reach those ready and capable of receiving it.
It must be sought earnestly and deservedly. The candidate must demonstrate that he is duly and truly prepared, worthy, and well qualified. Every step in advance is determined by his understanding and use of what he has hitherto received.
The real possession of this sublime wisdom is an evolution from within and not something communicated from without.
It is, literally, the building of character and the growth of the soul, as the highway of knowledge.
To discover, possess, exemplify, and promulgate this knowledge, this higher evolution of the Individual Intelligence, in the face of all obstacles and difficulties, has been known and designated for ages as theMagnum Opus, the “Great Work.” It is, indeed, the greatest work either known, permitted or possible to man. It solves the riddle of theSphinx of Life and makes Man Master of his own destiny.
Such a Master lives in a new world, untrammeled by the things of sense and time. He has indeed, “lived the life to know the doctrine,” and can say with Jesus, in sincerity and truth, “I, and the Father, are One,” because we areat-one.
There is not a particle of evidence in history, in philosophy, or in science, to show that anyone has ever reached such knowledge, liberation, and enlightenment, in any other way than that in which Jesus attained it; viz.: by renouncing the ordinary ambitions of life, wealth, fame, and power, and by overcoming selfishness and the lusts of the flesh; devoting their lives to the good of mankind, “without the hope of fee or reward.” As the whole work is a spiritual unfoldment, and from beginning to end a refining process, it is easy to see how and why the conditions are what they are, and have always been the same.
This is why those who have no apprehension or conception of the process, can see only mystery and miracle in the result.
If anyone cites the so-called “black magicians” of Egypt, and of antiquity, to refute the moral code as the essential condition of attainment, they will find that these priests and “magi climbing up some other way,” and whom Jesus designated as “thieves and robbers,” could never function or pass beyond the so-called “astral plane.” Here is where the Sibyl and the “virgin seer” came in.
This is clearly shown in that little book “The Idyll of the White Lotus,” as in several of Bulwer’s novels. Hypnotism and Ceremonial Magic, as revealed in the writings of Abbé Constant, represent ambition for knowledge and power without “living the life,” and at any cost to mankind. TheseMargraveshave often existed, sealed their own fate, and “gone to their own place.” H. P. Blavatsky referred to them as “lost souls,” or “soulless individuals.” They are also graphically described in “The Strange Story of Arinzeman.”
There was always the “Right-hand Path,” and the “Left-hand Path.”
Even a slight familiarity with ancient literatures and philosophies reveals the fact, that all these things have been known for ages. The subtlety of the Hindoo mind has been such as to leave no phase of mental or psychic phenomena uninvestigated.
To the casual and uninstructed reader, it often seems like an endless and hopeless jungle, and he is unable to bring order out of the seemingly endless confusion.
There is not a single percept or concept in what is now called “New Thought,” that may not be found repeated with almost endless variations thousands of years ago.
Reference has already been made to the conditions imposed upon the student who aspires to know, and to become.
The obligations upon the teacher are no less stringent, for both are, from first to last, working under both natural and spiritual law to which they are bound to conform.
To be possessed of such knowledge the teacher must have abandoned worldly ambition, the love of wealth, and the applause of men. All motives of time-serving and self-seeking must assail him in vain. He becomes the almoner of the treasure-house of Light and Knowledge. He must exemplify what he teaches. If he can impart his knowledge, or assist an aspiring and worthy brother, it must be in the way he has himself received it, “without money and without price,” or any “hope of reward or fee,” and the brother so receiving, in his own degree, must be ready to pass it on under precisely the same terms and conditions.
The teacher, therefore, must be in a position to give or to withhold; promulgate or conceal; teach or refuse to teach; governed solely by Truth and Law, and the solemn obligation under which he has himself received it.
The meaning of the saying, “strait is the gate and narrow is the way, and few there be who find it,” may thus be made apparent.
Fragments of this wisdom are found scattered through the ages, with here and there one who has achieved it.
For two or three centuries the early Christian Church undertook to work on these lines, and instituted three degrees, as abundantly shown in thewritings of many of the so-called “Christian, or Church Fathers.”
Jesus said to his disciples, “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” And again, “The works that I do, ye shall do also, and greater things than these shall ye do, because I go to the Father.” And again, “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them who are without, it is not given.”
Mysteries, indeed, to the ignorant monks who were already wrangling over creed, and dogmas, and who, in 325 at the First Council at Nice, fought it out surrounded by the soldiers of the Pagan Emperor, Constantine; and thus settled the “orthodoxinterpretation,” of what they were wholly incompetent to understand. Their successors are still engaged in the same wrangle of interpretation, so far as the “Infallible Pope,” and dogma of obedience, at Rome has been unable to suppress it.
Somewhere between the middle of the first and second centuries, an effort at union and reconciliation arose from another quarter. Ammonius Saccas, a Neo-Platonist, endeavored to unite men of different cults and beliefs on the lines of the Great Work, precisely as the Philalethean Society is doing in New York to-day; but his movement was soon engulfed and lost sight of by the tide of Ecclesiasticism, or suppressed by the soldiers of Constantine.
I am not attempting a history, for that wouldfill volumes. I am only giving a few sidelights of the Great Work.
In the Tenth Century, at Baghdad, a society was formed admitting Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, and atheists, with a similar purpose.
During the time of Martin Luther, John Reuchlin made a similar attempt. Both Reuchlin and Luther were pupils of Trithemius, the Abbot of St. Jacob’s at Würzburg, one of whose books I possess, printed in the year 1600, and also another book, “The Theosophical Transactions of the Philadelphian Society,” printed in London in 1697. Browning’s “Paracelsus” gives a splendid outline of the philosophy and teachings of Trithemius, and rescues Paracelsus with all who can understand, from the vile slanders of his monkish enemies; and Robert Browning wrote his “Paracelsus” at the age of twenty-three! Can you wonder why so few “understand Browning”?
For more than fifteen hundred years mankind has been involved between the speculations of Philosophy, on the one hand, and the creeds and dogmas of Theology, on the other.
There was also the deliberate destruction of ancient monuments, scrolls, and records, by religious fanatics. Diocletian, in A.D. 296, burned the books of the Egyptians. Cæsar burned 700,000 Rolls at Alexandria, and Leo Isaurus 300,000 at Constantinople in the eighth century. Then came the Mohammedans, who destroyed the remainder of the accessible scrolls at Alexandria. Gangs offanatical Monks, Christian and Pagan, roamed over Europe destroying and defacing everything upon which they could lay their hands, as witnesses against their dogmas and superstitions. Even to-day, in India, it is difficult for Europeans to gain access to genuine ancient records. The records of these barbarities are still fresh in the minds of the guardians of sacred lore.
Even with such a record for thousands of years, Ecclesiasticism is as arrogant and rampant as ever to-day. The wonder is, that there is anything left but barbarism.
Two writers declare that the most ancient and valuable of the records of the Alexandrian Library were kept in secret crypts known only to the highest officials, and preserved still in secret crypts known only to the Illuminati. In Baalbec and all through the East to-day these underground temples are being explored, and even the fragments found excite wonder and admiration. Ignorant Barbarians may be destructive on general principles, but fanatical Ecclesiasticism has ever been destructive of all light, knowledge and civilization, through insane hatred or pure “cussedness”! We need only to regard intelligently what it has done, and is doing for Southern Europe to-day.
Can you wonder that the real science of the Human Soul found little recognition, or that it was denied as possible to man?
As already shown, the Science of to-day has neither recognized nor worked up to it; and theTheology of to-day covers it with fable, mystery, and miracle as of old.
In spite of both these the “Philalethean Society” exists, the “Seekers after God” were never more numerous than now, and theMagnum Opus, the Great Work, was never, in the whole history of man, more in evidence than it is to-day.
“Truth crushed to Earth shall rise again,
The Eternal years of God are hers.”
Can it be that there is no great truth back of all these struggles and aspirations of the human soul? That there is no possible realization back of these soulful endeavors?
Is Tantalus, after all, the creator and Father of Man? inspired only by love of disappointment, defeat, and despair, in his children?
For one, I do not believe it.
To plant these aspirations in the soul of man, and doom them to everlasting disappointment and defeat, would brand the creator of man as an Infinite Liar, instead of a Loving Father.
The earnest student must first learn to recognize, and to discriminate; for the “blind leaders of the blind” are always legions.
This power of discrimination, to which I have referred, goes deeper, and means far more, than most persons ever realize, and this is why so many are continually deceived.
It is the light of understanding, of spiritual intelligence, within the soul of man.
It may be likened to a traveler in a foreign country, and a strange land, suddenly hearing one speaking fluently his own language, his native tongue. It is impossible to deceive him. In this case, however, it is not the mere words, the inflection or pronunciation, but the ideas, sentiments, and principles expressed.
“Liberty, Fraternity, Equality,” for example; or sympathy, Charity, and loving kindness.
The “sign of the Master” is at once recognized by one already prepared to receive and to understand it. The soul that really desires truth and wisdom above all things, has thereby developed the power to recognize it.
This is the discrimination referred to. It is not what someone else tells you, or what another claims. It is whatyoudiscern and recognize, and the teaching and the life are in perfect harmony, like chords in music; and they strike a harmonic chord in you, that may be first a surprise, and soon a great joy and a bright light.
It is not a question of authority, and of credentials, but of intrinsic reality. You must know how to assay and test the gold yourself. This is where the “Alchemy of the Great Work” comes in, and here lies the beginning of Adeptship, the preparation for the “Great Work.” I can demonstrate this from a score of old books, some of them going back many centuries.
It has also been symbolized and picturegraphed ’til the imagination ran riot, and ingenuity andfancy became lost, like ideas in a fantasy of words.
I know of but one place, one Institution, in modern times, where these essential truths of the Great Work have been preserved as a consistent whole, and that is in the symbolism of Free Masonry, but the craft long ago lost the real interpretation, though many to-day are on the lines that lead to it.
The whole symbolism and ritual of the Blue Lodge in Masonry is, from beginning to end,a symbol of the journey of the human soul on this earth, from darkness to light; from sin to righteousness; from ignorance to wisdom and understanding.
In other words, it is an exacttheoremand solution of theMagnum Opus; a symbol of the philosophy and accomplishment of the GREAT WORK.
The science and the theology of the present day have been briefly contrasted. Neither of them pretends to give us any real science of the human soul.
Science says frankly she “does not know.” Theology bids us believe and obey; trust and hope. Philosophy speculates and reasons, while amusing itself with the kaleidoscope of “postulates” and “categories.”
Science must deal with facts, demonstrate their actuality, and classify them; that is, find their natural order and sequence.
In psychology, the facts arewithinthe realm of consciousness, and therefore their demonstration isa matter of individual experience. This is why psychology differs from all other sciences.
No one can transfer his individual experiences directly to another. He can describe how he gained them, and give the result and conclusions, and here is where those who know nothing of the real problem, are often both incredulous and contemptuous. The only answer to these is, “they are joined to their idols, let them alone.” “They would not believe though one arose from the dead,” and yet we are told again and again that the “School of Natural Science” is the “school of personal experience.”
It may be well to reflect a moment, and ask ourselves, how it is that we really know anything? Is it not through personal experience? Real knowledge comes, and can come, in no other way.
No teacher of the real science of psychology can ever transmit or transfer his knowledge to another. All he can do is to describe the methods, and steps, by which he acquired it, and assist the student in acquiring it for himself in the same way, or under the same processes and laws.
We have only to reflect on the ordinary experiences of life, to realize that this is a universal principle and rule. In the deeper science of the soul, and the higher life, instead of this law being relaxed, it becomes all the more binding.
Do not the principles that adhere in atom, molecule and mass, still hold in worlds and solar systems? Is not this precisely what is meant by “TheReign of Law”? If man were built upon some other scheme or plan than the rest of nature, how could he apprehend or adjust himself to Nature? The veryconceptof miracle islawlessness, and mystery is but another name forignorance.
Knowledge means experience and apprehension of Law.
Neither can the laws of Nature and the laws of God be at cross-purposes, for that would make harmony impossible and inconceivable.
The confusion and discord are all in us, and the Great Work means adjustment, harmony, and then Knowledge.
It is the journey of the human soul on the Royal Highway to Light, Liberation, and Eternal Day.
For many centuries those who have achieved this Wisdom, this “Great Work,” have been trying to make it accessible to mankind, and to place it in such form that the ethical, scientific, and philosophical principles involved, and upon which it is based, should not again be lost. Every such effort has hitherto failed.
The scientific spirit of the present age, in a very broad way, seemed to offer a new and a more advantageous opportunity; for the whole process is one of strict science.
The Psychology of the present day has become involved in phenomena and automatism, and is in no senseconstructive. It is one thing to build theories, and quite a different thing to systematize demonstratedfacts, through the recognition of co-ordinate relations, and underlying law.
The work is open and accessible to all who manifest real interest, an open mind, and who have the intelligence and discrimination to recognize the character of the work. It has never, in the history of man, been open in any other way, on any other terms, or to any other individuals.
Those who can fill these requirements constitute to-day a larger number than have before existed at any one time, for perhaps many centuries.
The “School of Natural Science” is in evidence. The “Great Work” is carefully outlined.
There is no bar to one’s making a beginning on the path, except indifference, incredulity, preoccupation, or prejudice; and these need not be in the least disturbed, for they will be kindly and courteously passed by.
Arguments, controversy, and proselyting, have no part in the Great Work, as there is no organization, and no personal ambitions to serve.
Those who speak a common language, are inspired by a common purpose, and aspire to a common and universal good, will, soon or late, find themselves associated together and co-operating.
It is like a chorus of voices when an old song is started that we loved in childhood. Each takes up the strain, falls into his own part, and helps to swell the harmony, from the joy of his own heart.
Those who “never did like the song,” will“quietly steal away.” Both Swedenborg and Emerson have sufficiently illustrated the “Law of Correspondencies,” and “compensation,” to reveal the basis of all harmonious human associations, whether on the earth, or on other planes of being. Hence the “Harmonics of Evolution,” was the forerunner of the “Great Work.”
The pitiable byplay and claptrap of “Affinities” so often seen and heard nowadays, where all previous obligations are ignored, and personal responsibilities set at naught, only serve to emphasize the real law of harmony and constructive evolution, by showing what it is not.
The Great Work digs to the very foundations of life, and all human associations, and reveals the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, in the building of character, and the adornment of the Temple of the Human Soul.
This is indeed——
“Eternal Progress moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks.”
Death is neither the end nor the beginning. It is only a change in pitch, a shifting of keys, and the same old Song of Life goes on, if we have but learned the score, and caught the harmony.
Salvation is not a thing accomplished once for all. We have only to consider the monotony, the poverty of invention, and imagination, of those who have tried to portray the joy of the Redeemed inheaven, in order to realize what a bore it would soon become, if that were all.
Inspiration, achievement, and eternal progress, with more and more helpfulness to others, with plane after plane achieved, revealing plane after plane beyond—does not this appeal far more strongly to the highest and best in us all?
And pray, what is this, but theGreat Work, that I have tried herein to outline, and as taught and lived by Jesus, and every great Master the world has ever known? Each has achieved in his own degree, worded it in his own way, and “stepped out of sunlight into shade, to make more room for others.”
Long before the birth of Jesus, it was said, “The wise and peaceful ones live, renewing the earth like the coming of Spring.” And having themselves crossed the ocean of embodied existence, help all those who try to do the same thing, without personal motive.
I have endeavored to give a general outline of the Great Work, drawn from history, tradition, philosophy, and symbolism, down to the present year of grace. I find many corroborations, many things pointing in the same general direction. But I find but one concise and definiteformulationof thescientific theorem, in which the outline is clear, and the analogy complete, and thereby made accessible and apprehensible to the open-minded and intelligent student.
Such students need experience no real difficultyin finding a clew to the labyrinth of life, or, as our ancient brothers put it in regard to theMagnum Opus—“a key to the closed palace of the king.”
This is the purpose of the “Harmonic Series” of books. They need rest upon no authority beyond the intrinsic evidence of truth, on every page. If they are not consistent in themselves, then they must fall in pieces. The only appeal to the reader is: read them carefully, analyze your own mind and soul, and come to your own conclusions. If they find no response, no answering chord in you, then they were written for someone else, or in vain.
One further consideration remains to be noted at this time, as the question is sure to arise: “How about woman in the Great Work?” Seldom in the past has she received recognition, since the earliest days in Old India, though here and there have been the most noble women.
I heard Anna Dickinson, many years ago, open one of her famous lectures with these words, “I claim for man and woman alike, the right to attempt and win. I claim for man and woman alike, the right to attempt and fail.”
It seems to me to-day, as it did more than thirty years ago, that this is the whole problem in a nutshell, and that any number of words could add nothing to the statement.
The Great Work is as open to woman as to man, and on the same terms. They have perhaps more to overcome in some directions, andmen more in others. This is like saying, “man and woman are different,” that is all.
One thing is certain; there will never be an ideal social state on earth, or a heaven anywhere, except as men and womenco-operatetogether for the happiness of each, and the highest, noblest, cleanest good of all, and this is only another phase or department of the Great Work.