Buch lesen: «The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul»
FOREWORD
The reader who is willing to give the following pages a careful reading, and a courteous hearing, is entitled to know the basis of study, observation or experience from which the suggestions, inferences and conclusions proceed, in order that he may fairly estimate their value.
At the age of seventy-two, my egotism is at least softened by the discovery of the many things I do not know; and my dogmatism, so far as it ever existed, is equally relaxed by the realization that it is a bar to light and knowledge, which rest so largely on demonstration.
For more than forty-five years I have been engaged in the active practice of medicine with consultations extending over three States.
For an equal length of time I have lectured in Medical Colleges, fifteen years on the subject of Physiology, an equal number on Therapeutics (including Pathology and Histology), and for the last fifteen years on Psychology, Mental and Nervous Diseases, and all this time with a large College Clinic from the poorer classes.
From first to last, my “Study of Medicine” has been generically and specifically a “Study of Man,” physical, mental, ethical, and psychical.
Outside of Medicine as a “Calling” or a “Profession” my real interest has been to unravel the nature of man, grasp the problem of human life, and to apprehend the nature, laws, and destiny of the human soul. My library covers a rather continuous thread from 1543, and the time of Paracelsus, to Profs. James, Ladd, Lombroso, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Münsterberg.
My reading dips into the Sacred Books of the East, the records of the Past, and particularly the psychic phenomena of different ages, finding at last the Constructive Theorem clearer than anywhere else in the “School of Natural Science,” from the fact that it is demonstrably cognizant of all preceding work, and definitely conforms to the strict demands of Science – Physical, Mental, Ethical, Psychical and Spiritual, and proves to be the very thing for which I have searched for nearly half a century.
The foregoing statements are not made to force credulity nor to assume authority. They simply mean – This is how, and where, and how long, I have been searching, largely, also at the bedside of the sick, the deranged and the dying; from the first breath of the little one that comes —
“Out from the shore of the Great Unknown
Weeping and wailing and all alone,”
to the death-damp and the last sigh of the aged; in one case at nearly one hundred and four years.
Once I found an old lady of eighty, dying. The “death-damp” on her brow; the “death-rattle” in her throat; the chin dropped, and no pulse at the wrist. She had a wayward son who had been promised due notice of any change, and he had been sent for. Speaking distinctly in her ear I called her back; the motive being the grief of her son at not bidding each other good-bye. The response was immediate. The “rattle” in her throat ceased. The pulse promptly returned. The mouth closed. Then I said – “open your eyes,” which she promptly did with a gentle smile. “You are not going to do it,” I said. “No,” she replied. The son soon came in and received his mother’s caress and blessing. At the same hour on the following day, she passed peacefully to the beyond, dying of old age. Had it been a “crisis” in disease, she might have recovered.
As a psychic phenomenon I never saw anything just like it. Had I before doubted the existence of a “separable soul,” it would have ended all doubt. From the magnetic border of the “Great Divide” with a sufficient motive, I literally “called her back.”
The evidence of the concreteness, and wholeness and self-awareness of the Individual Intelligence, functioning in and through, and separable from the physical body, was complete. No other explanation or conclusion would fit or cover the case at all. Had I been clairvoyant and able to see the entity, it would have been another link in a chain whose sequence pointed all one way. But even here I was not without a witness.
In another case, an old lady was dying. A “Platform Lecturer” (Mediumistic) was present and described, incidentally, what she saw. She was a good, clean, ignorant woman and only “controlled” on the Platform.
She described a vapor emanating from the body, as the “death-damp” increased, and outer “awareness” failed. This vapor seemed to adhere together until it stood near the head, rounded and nearly reaching the ceiling. Then the “spirit form” passed out from the top of the head, was inclosed in the ball of “vapor,” and together they “floated away.”
I found that she had never heard of the “Auric-egg” nor read a page of the old Eastern philosophy, and yet she had accurately described, step by step, what the Masters for ages declare occurs at death.
Science is the careful observation, demonstration and record of Facts, their orderly grouping or classification, and the logical and sequential conclusions resulting therefrom.
It is not a matter of opinion and belief, nor dogma and denial, no matter how large, respectable, and sincere may be the army of the dogmatists.
Take these suggestions and conclusions – my friend – for what you think them worth, since now you know how far they have grown from experience and the love and search for the simple Truth.
The temptation to quote and annotate from many authors is very great, but the material is so abundant that one scarcely knows where to begin, where to end; and as the address is solely to the reader of “average intelligence,” and argument is eliminated as far as possible, many quotations could do little more than confirm opinions, and would extend beyond the limits designed by the author, or the brief space and popular form more desirable for the average reader.
Repetitions in the text seemed unavoidable for the reason, that at every phase of the subject I have continually to regard the Individual, and that aggregate called Society; the inner conscious life of one, and the associate elements and conditions regarding the many, and from different viewpoints.
Man, the Individual, is like a “wheel within a wheel,” the larger circle being Humanity as a whole.
Nor does the thought or concept stop here. There is the relation of the Individual Intelligence we call MAN to the Universal Intelligence we call GOD, which as related to Nature is “In All, Through All, Over All, and Above All.”
Not an “Absentee God,” but Illuminant within and without revealing itself in what we call Love and Law.
Here “in brief” I rest the case and proceed to the evidence.
INTRODUCTION
In “A Study of Man, and the Way of Health,” first published twenty-one years ago, as a general outline for my classes of Medical Students, to enable them to grasp the real problem of life, and to emphasize the Study of Man, as basic in the Study of Medicine, the following epitome was placed in the Preface.
“The cosmic form in which all things are created and in which all things exist is a Universal Duality.
Involution and Evolution express the two-fold process of the One Law of Development, corresponding to the two planes of being, the Subjective and the Objective.
Consciousness is the central Fact of Being.
Experience is the only method of knowing.
Therefore, to Know, is to Become.
The Modulus of Nature, that is, the Pattern, after which she everywhere builds, and the Method to which she continually conforms is an Ideal, or Archetypical Man.
The Perfect Man is the anthropomorphic God. A living, potential Christ in every human soul.
Two natures meet on the human plane, and focalize in man.
These are the Animal Ego and the Higher Self. The one, an inheritance from lower life. The other, an overshadowing from the next higher plane.
The Animal Principle is Selfishness. The Divine Principle is Altruism.
However defective in other respects human nature may be, all human endeavor must finally be measured by the principle of Altruism and must stand or fall by the measure in which it inspires and uplifts Humanity.
The highest tribunal is the criterion of Truth, and the test of truth is by its use and beneficence. ‘BY THEIR WORK YE MAY KNOW THEM.’
Superstition is not Religion; Speculation is not Philosophy; Materialism is not Science; but true religion, true philosophy and true science are ever the handmaids of Truth, and will at last be found in perfect harmony.”
After more than twenty years of continuous and careful study since the foregoing was written, I must still confirm and emphasize these basic propositions to-day.
The attempt is herein made to apply them more particularly to the study of Psychology. To add to what was then discerned and designated as “the Modulus of Nature,” an exact and comprehensive Theorem of Psychology.
I am well aware how presumptuous this would in certain quarters be considered, if there were the least probability that “those in authority” would read these pages at all. The motive is involved in the modulus, and I am quite content to leave it there, while the “common people,” it is hoped, may find herein, as I have found in the search for more light, encouragement, inspiration, and hope. And these may lead to Understanding.
It is the farthest possible from my thought or wish to ignore or belittle the labors of earnest students and writers on Psychology.
But there is a habit of conservatism in Physical Science to-day, that in spirit and effect differs very little from Dogma and Orthodoxy in Religion. It concerns methods rather than results. It is generally incredulous through fear of being over-credulous. It is bound by tradition, or the records of the past, and its dogmas are deductions from the consensus of opinions, rather than “decrees in councils” or “Infallible Popes.”
Occasionally a Scientist, like Sir Oliver Lodge, seems to be utterly rid of both credulity and incredulity, and for these, Science really means – “the Facts of Nature, demonstrated, classified, and systematized.”
But for the “Common People,” the average intelligent student, for whom Science and the pursuit of Knowledge is not a Profession, but a desire to know, and to understand, in order to be able to use wisely and well, it is of far less importance to know what others think or believe, deny or affirm, on the subject of Psychology, than to realize what are the faculties, capacities, and powers of their own souls.
Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, like “Art for Art’s sake,” is one thing, Knowledge for use in daily life, and for illuminating its pathway and revealing the purpose and destiny of man, is something different indeed.
This hunger of the individual soul for real knowledge is perhaps the most patent “Sign of the Times.”
The average intelligent individual has broken away from the traditions of the past, and yet found nothing to take their place. One result is empty churches, and the race for wealth, display, position, and power. Increased idleness begets dissipation, Paresis and Insanity increase, while wasted opportunity both shortens and embitters life.
A very large number of intelligent men and women realizing all this, and repelled by the almost contemptuous conservatism of so-called Science, swing to the side of credulity, and are robbed and exploited by charlatans. They believe the Truth ought to be forthcoming, and their intuitions and demands, though oft leading to sore disappointment, deserve a better fate.
It is for these, and for these reasons, that these pages are written, and with no other hope of fame or reward.
The demand is everywhere for Knowledge of the soul. Facts there are in abundance, but how far these facts are demonstrated, so as to constitute a basis of exact science, and how to classify and systematize them, the average intelligence does not know.
The Psychical Scientist claims to know, and undoubtedly does know, but he busies himself almost exclusively in gathering and verifying more facts. When asked by the average intelligence, “What does it all mean?” – the answer is, “Ah! there’s the rub. Wait! Some day we may know.”
The simple fact is that the Scientist is bewildered, while the theologian and the dogmatist appeal to Faith without Knowledge, and invoke miracle as in all past times.
Spiritualism has had its day and left an immense body of facts, while Mediumship and the dark circle are more often repudiated by intelligent professed Spiritualists. Satisfied as to conscious existence after death as a fact, they have learned how generally unreliable are many messages from departed friends, owing to conditions beyond their control; while the effect of surrender to so-called “spirit-control” contributes to neither health nor a well-balanced mind or character.
Hypnotism maintains a precarious hold, simply through juggling with the words, “Suggestion” and “Hypnosis.” The professional hypnotist, yielding as he must to the public fear and condemnation of Hypnotism, advocates Just a little of it! under the false title “Suggestion,” for the good it is claimed to do in such cases as the drink and drug habit. As though a little further weakening of the will, would ultimately tend to restore and strengthen it!
One is reminded of the baby in “Pendennis.” The Mother “hoped the Lord would forgive her, because it was such a little one!”
Even the leaders in the “Emmanuel Movement” have deceived themselves by this sophistry, and while they applaud the temporary results, they seem unaware that they are still further weakening self-control and real character, by dominating the Will.
It is thus that ignorance, confusion and unrest, like waves of ocean, ebb and flow in the great human tides.
Through impatience and discouragement alone, many give up the quest for knowledge as hopeless, and while too well-balanced to drift into dissipation, they suffer from ennui and become pessimistic.
Real knowledge will not come all at once, like a vision, or a complete revelation.
The first real Light that comes will be that of Faith, a term generally misunderstood and misused.
Faith is the complete antithesis of blind dogma and superstition. It is born within the soul, and never imposed by outward authority enforced by fear.
“Faith is the soul’s intuitive conviction of that which both reason and conscience approve.”
To give intellectual assent to belief in God is one thing; to be able to declare with light and warmth that uplifts and inspires, “I know that my Redeemer liveth” is another thing entirely.
The impatience above referred to would see the end from the beginning, and know all about the development and destiny of the soul before it has learned the first lesson that guides and determines both.
When, however, Science and Religion clasp hands, and the facts of nature guided by the light of Faith, build character and guide progress, there is revealed a Philosophy of Life that needs little revision. It is like the compass that points continually to the pole, and gives unqualified assurance as to the direction we are going.
So also every step in the past enables us to get our bearings and verify our course by checking backward.
Faith is no longer a blind dogma, but a compass in the box of experience, the wise mariner’s guide in the voyage of life.
If neither Science, Religion nor Philosophy, nor all together can thus come to the service of man, can not do it now, after all the weary centuries since Plato and Aristotle, we may as well write qui bono on our banners and trail them in the dust!
Even the theologies of the day, recognizing the dilemma and the difficulties, still cling to the miraculous, and to make the best of a bad bargain, offer dogma in the place of demonstration, and contradictory and blind belief in place of the light of Faith.
While they count thousands as nominally in their communion, the intelligent among all these have many “mental reservations.”
The intelligent thought of the world flows past and beyond them.
The “Soul’s intuitive conviction” agreeing with “both reason and conscience” holds and guides them, in spite of the verbal “confession of faith.”
The Divinity of Jesus, the Christ, can be fully explained under natural and divine law, without invoking miracle.
The result of such explanation is to dethrone him from the altars of dogma and superstition, and enthrone him on the altar of Love in the heart of Humanity.
This is long delayed, but cannot be defeated.
SECTION ONE
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY
CHAPTER I
CLASSIFICATION OF FACULTIES, CAPACITIES, AND POWERS
Starting with the Modulus of Nature– an Ideal or Archetypal Man, and coming down to practical things in daily life —
1. Man is an Individual Intelligence. This is taken as an empirical fact, patent to every intelligent individual.
The source and nature of intelligence itself need not here concern us. We may call it an ultimate that all the philosophies of the world have signally failed to explain. It is something that grows, increases or decreases, expands, becomes confused, according to the conditions of bodily organ and function, heredity, environment, personal effort and the like; but so far as we know, it is the same thing, large or small, wise or foolish. It is still, measure for measure, Individual Intelligence.
2. The term Individual means distinct, concrete, relatively separate. Man being an Individual Intelligence; God is the Universal Intelligence. Just as the organism of man is involved in, and evolved from Universal Nature; so the Intelligence of man is involved in, and evolved from Universal Intelligence.
The empirical fact of the intelligence of man presupposes a “sufficient reason” or source. Still we do not know what God and Nature and Intelligence are. We only know how they manifest. Our intelligence enables us to observe, reflect, reason, and in some measure apprehend the method and manifestation.
I am not seeking to build nor unfold a “Philosophy.” “Yes,” someone replies, “but a philosophy is implied or involved.”
Very well, let it unfold itself.
3. The next empirical fact of prime importance is, The Individual Intelligence, not of man, but which is man, is aware of itself, i.e., “self-conscious.” It is able to distinguish between the self and the non-self.
4. Again, as to consciousness, as with intelligence: We know that man has it and uses it, and what it does to some extent; but we do not know what it is, intrinsically, nor do we need to know any of these ultimates. The effort to explain them has never ended in anything but confusion. We shall herein name them, and then pass them.
5. We have now postulated a self-conscious, Individual Intelligence, as the real man. Next we find this Man can do things, or refrain from doing; act, or refrain from action. This is called Initiative, Volition, Will.
6. This power of action and of choice, inspired by intelligence, aware of the self, adapts actions to ends. This involves reason and judgment.
7. In the course of experience along the lines of action or restraint, and observing results in either case, the individual desiring or preferring certain results to others, acquires more or less self-control. He controls himself to secure desired results.
Here then, in brief outline, are the basis and the elements of our Psychology. They are drawn from common observation and experience, and are verified by the facts of daily life – generally complicated, confused, or lost sight of in treatises on psychology.
Two of these factors, viz.: Consciousness and Will, enter into all psychological phenomena such as Hypnotism and Mediumship, and into every form of mental alienation, insanity, obsession and the like.
Moreover, by building out of mental phenomena a distinct entity – largely independent of the self-conscious Intelligence, and almost equally so with consciousness – our “philosophies,” “metaphysics,” and explanations have become as confused and unreliable as the psychical phenomenon itself.
Hudson’s so-called “Law of Psychic Phenomena,” “Subliminal” and “Supraliminal Consciousness,” and the juggling with the terms “suggestion” and “hypnosis” may serve as sufficient illustrations. In each instance phenomena are made to take the place of principles and the core of the problem is ignored, confused, or lost sight of.
In the meantime these empiricists are hunting in the “rubbish of the temple” (which temple they have metaphysically destroyed), for the Human Soul – i.e. the concrete, intrinsic Individual Intelligence, which is ONE, and which the Master Builder (Universal Intelligence) placed on the Trestle-board of Creation and Time, for the building of character, and the evolution of the Human Soul.
If the Ideal, Archetypal, or Divine Man, is recognized as the Modulus of both Nature and Divinity, our Theorem must consist in adhering to the Modulus and working out the problem.
Q. E. D., if applied to man’s completion of his own individual Temple, might stand for the last words of Jesus, “It is finished,” The problem is solved; “I have finished the Work Thou gavest me to do.” Science, Religion and Philosophy have clasped hands. Divinity revealed in Humanity is triumphant over Death. “There is a Natural (physical) body and there is a Spiritual body,” and the Individual Intelligence is ONE in each, or in both; viz.: The Human-Divine Soul.
To recognize the Modulus and intelligently to apprehend the Theorem is the foundation and the first step in the scientific solution of the problem of life, and the progressive and continuous evolution of the human soul. To use the term “Science” (as applied to the study of psychology) in any other way, is pure empiricism, is wholly unscientific, and has never yet resulted in anything but confusion and in laying a foundation for belief, conjecture, theory, dogma, superstition, and fear.
The step of next importance, both in the scientific study of psychology and in individual progress and evolution, is the mental attitude of the individual; his point of view; his open-mindedness and utter refusal to prejudge anything. He will often say, “I do not know.” He will sometimes say, “I do not care.” That phase or presentation does not appeal to, nor interest him.
This is what the Vedic philosophers called, “making the mind one pointed” and like a search-light, with the ability to concentrate it on a given point or subject.
Bias, prejudice, preconceived opinion, credulity and incredulity, are all like a crooked lens to the eye of the mind, or to the perception of the simple truth.
Not only are these principles basic in the scientific study of psychology and the evolution of the individual intelligence, but their neglect and oversight are solely responsible for the confusion everywhere manifest on the subject, as well as for every form of subjective control, mediumship, psychical epidemics, and obsession, and they enter into every form and phase of insanity.
If this be true, and it is readily demonstrable, what subject is of equal importance; and what facts and considerations are so transcendent as these?
The difference is that between a mad-house with its frenzied and frightened mob of helpless victims, and a palace of the gods in which dwelleth Righteousness, Love, Peace, and Eternal Joy.
Is it not worth while?
This Modulus and Theorem of the School of Natural Science involve Religion, Regeneration, Redemption, and the well-being of Souls here and hereafter.
They separate Religion from Superstition, Duty from Dogma, cast out Fear, release the wings of aspiration and faith; and where “the mourners went about the streets” is heard a new song of rejoicing that binds up the wounds and sorrows of the brokenhearted.
Again I ask, “Is it not worth while?”
