Kitabı oku: «The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul», sayfa 4

CHAPTER V
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The problem of the continued conscious life of man after the death of the physical body, concerns the where and the how, 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 —where and how and when, 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 with actual values here 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 is within himself, his intrinsic character, his real self; and no matter where he goes, that character, that self, goes with him. It is Himself.

The “change in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” is not in the man and 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 we know, 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 annihilate us.

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 and go to work to 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. You and I have to do it, or it is never done.

Without this work of ours, 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 changing experience. 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, “What is Life” 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 is One and 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 only unity in 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, the real nature of this individual intelligence we call the Self, in the last analysis, is likely to be as much a mystery as ever. We may know who we are without knowing what 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, directly move 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, I move 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 this system of composite systems that 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, or Entity, is as patent to us in our awareness of self as is the body it inhabits. It is our very self. Our knowledge of it is a direct 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 of ultimates, 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 a Spiritual Body; 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, depend very largely on 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, from amœba, or mollusk, to man.

It is thus in touch with every phase and quality of life. It epitomizes them all, transcends them all, and may co-ordinate them all.

On the other hand, the individual intelligence of the child, a distinct and separate unity, 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 “there is a spiritual body” in the mother organism during the present life, as I am entirely satisfied there 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 of transcendent importance and may be 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 field of 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), the direct vehicle and agent of the soul would be this spiritual body; and when the physical body or vehicle dies, or is cast off, the spiritual body with the soul escapes.

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 are inseparable. This trinity which is man, is potentially (and may be actually) a unity.

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 will get, will sink into utter nothingness before the great and ever-growing question of what we are, and what we are determined to become.

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 consciously aware of this as a constant personal experience demanding no further proof. It is knowledge of the soul direct.

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 become master of 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 are aware of the Self.

This is apperception in its highest sense. Not through the mind, which is a process and a function, but through that which uses, controls and dominates the mind, viz.: the Individual Intelligence, the Soul.

In the mind, in daily life, we weigh and measure, reason, choose, compare, and adjust. In intuition or 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 an individual experience. As easily could another feel, sense, and realize the pain of thrusting our finger into the fire, as to receive vicariously, from us, a real physical experience.

Here lies the difficulty, often the impossibility, of the teacher or the Master, in imparting his knowledge.

I am entirety satisfied that 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 to control the 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 of work; and at every step the law is verified, “Backward and forward it still spells the same.”

What is this but the methods of 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 to know, 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; and leading 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 all in him, and he at-one with them.

When Jesus said, “I and the Father are one. 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 of work; of personal endeavor, of valid, real, personal experience.

Its results are our real possessions, our “treasure in heaven” that nothing can ever destroy. Life and Death may ebb and flow, and come and go; but we may, if we will, go on forever; or we may turn the other way and go down to death. Some day every 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 child in utero; that with the web and woof of character, organ and function, impulse and use, opportunity and destiny, we are building a spiritual body, the immediate vehicle of 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?