Author of The Law of Correspondences, The World’s Fair Text Book of Mental Therapeutics, Old and New Psychology, etc.
Among the many signs of philosophic progress in the present day, the great movement generically called metaphysical, may be fairly regarded as one of the most significant. It may truthfully be stated that the enormous interest now taken in all phases of psychical research, is rapidly evincing the renewed interest on the part of the general public in those mighty questions pertaining to predestination and free agency, which no theologian, scientist, or philosopher has yet proved able perfectly to explain.
We use two great words—Destiny and Fate—synonymously, though they are etymologically wide apart. By Destiny is properly meant, whatever is possible unto us; by Fate we should always understand the sum of those extraneous agencies and outward circumstances which appear in our path—to be manipulated and eventually mastered by us.
When we speak of divine foreordination we should at once turn our eyes to the ample field of nature outspread before us, for therein shall we find innumerable examples of the evolution of evolved capabilities. “Consider the lilies how they grow” is one of the best known quotations from the New Testament; but though humanity has been for many centuries invited to consider this beautiful natural process, we find but very few, even among thinkers, who imbibe to any large extent the obvious lesson taught in the vegetable realm.
The immutability of universal law is conceded on every hand; at this point the theologians and philosophers are completely at one, though the former often consider the latter unduly agnostic. When we proclaim the unchangeableness of universal order we of necessity proclaim the truth of necessary foreordination, but not in such a way as to contradict the expressive Talmudical saying, “All is regulated by Divine Providence except the conduct of man,” by which is clearly meant that while no one can procure any other flowers than lilies from lily bulbs, it is quite within our power to place hyacinth bulbs in future in the exact places where we formerly cultivated lilies, providing we will to do so.
A very eminent clergyman was once heard to remark upon the two columns of an arch which appeared like two unconnected pillars in different parts of a huge edifice, while the arch was spanned far above the line of vision of the ordinary observer. One of these columns he compared to the doctrine of predestination, the other to the doctrine of human free agency, and by means of this similitude he threw much clear light upon two of the most vexing problems the Church has ever undertaken to solve.
No system of philosophy can be in any way sufficient to meet the demands of human reason which takes into account only a portion of human experience. What Herbert Spencer calls “synthetic” philosophy is a system which at least endeavors to explain all the facts of human consciousness, though it can with fairness be stated that Spencer himself falls far short of explaining everything.
We are all conscious of a determination to better our condition by all lawful means in our power; we are none of us satisfied to believe that things are bound to be continuously as they now are; for, did we so believe, we should regard all effort to improve conditions as futile. When we read with open eyes the fascinating story of Joseph in Egypt, we are introduced to the very heart of this tremendous subject. Pharaoh dreams that there will be seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of dearth in all his territory. This is inevitable, and no human foresight can change what is immutable; but visions would be useless if they could not both forewarn and forearm those who are privileged to enjoy them. The Pharaohs of the world, though monarchs, are too blind to read the signs in the heavens and in the earth; but the Josephs of the world are those in every age and clime, who can, as it is said, take time by the forelock, and by so doing, though they cannot make a season of scarcity a time of agricultural plenty, they place in store a large provision of food wherewith to feed an otherwise famishing multitude.
It is recorded of Buddha that he gave the following well-known Oriental proverb for the edification of his followers, “Rain soaks through an ill-thatched roof, but into a well-roofed house it cannot penetrate.” In these few expressive words we find a summing up of the whole philosophy of Karma, with which so many students of modern philosophy are well-nigh blindly wrestling.
We hear it said that a person is fated to meet with an accident, and that this has been foretold by some astrologer, palmist, or clairvoyant; but we fail to see how anyone can make any use of clairvoyance, palmistry, or astrology, who simply foresees coming events, but possesses no insight with reference to mastery over surrounding conditions.
No wise person wishes to borrow trouble, or to cross mentally some dangerous bridge before he confronts it physically, though all intelligent people would be glad to so foresee a coming event, that when it occurred they would be able to master it, instead of being mastered by it.
The very great interest in chirology, now so prevalent, can be turned to excellent account when the public has learned to discriminate properly between Fate and Destiny. Those who are well versed in the language of human hands say that the left hand largely indicates natural predispositions, while the right hand shows the use we are making of our varied opportunities. Hands, heads, and faces are certainly of different types, and to the student of character one type may appear, and should appear, quite as good as another.
We desire earnestly to impress the truth contained in the following mottoes upon all:—
First, We must agree to differ, but we must never disagree.
Second, One white sheep makes many.
No more disagreeable words fall on our ears than infection and contagion, but when they are redeemed they can be so employed as to convey the most exhilarating sentiment. Why should disease be infectious instead of health? Why should vice be contagious rather than virtue? The faith of Israel has ever been that the true mission of the Jew is to spread light and thereby illumine the darkness of the world. This is divine infection.
The Apostle Paul, who, as Saul of Tarsus, had been a pupil of the illustrious Gamaliel, one of the seventy elders who constituted the council called Sanhedrin, the highest in Israel, was evidently thoroughly indoctrinated with the ancient truth concerning election; therefore, he exhorted all to whom he spoke or wrote to use all diligence to make their calling or election sure. There is no connection whatever between true and false views of election. The Eternal Being must be regarded as impartial and as working incessantly through a changeless law of pure beneficence, and it seems like blasphemy to insinuate that some souls are better treated by the Eternal than are others. This point being settled in our minds, we are ready to go forth and examine the manifold differences which do most certainly exist between individuals in their present conditions. We have no desire to encumber the reader with a perplexing inquiry into re-embodiment, or any other difficult speculative doctrine, but we do desire to emphasize the attitude which everyone must take here and now toward his actual surroundings, before he can become the lord of fate and master of circumstance.
We should never say “under” circumstances, but only “in” them. Should someone say to you: What would you do under certain circumstances? you would be justified in replying, “Well, if I am under them you will have to ask them what they intend to do with me.” Now, if you substitute the word in for under, you, while acknowledging the limitations of your present environment, claim it is your mission to conquer it instead of being conquered by it.
When we speak of self-made men and women, we are not referring to people in any particular walks of life, but only to those who have (figuratively speaking) taken the bull by the horns instead of allowing the bull to take them by its horns. The “bull” must be met in either case, but it makes a great difference to you what attitude you take toward it when you meet it. We all know from experience that there is much truth in the proverbial saying, “Constant dripping wears away the stone.” They only make the obstructing stone a stepping-stone for their own advancement, who claim the right to utilize their inherent ability to gain the victory by means of that very stone which appears at first to be an insurmountable obstacle in their path to success and freedom.
The magnificent statement in the Book of Revelation, “He that overcometh shall inherit all things,” suggests the precise idea we are seeking to convey. What do we mean by things? This is a most important inquiry. All things made by hand (manufactured) can certainly be destroyed by the power that made them, but man has no power to add to or take from the original substance of the universe. We do not create atoms, but we arrange molecules; and the good or evil of any molecular structure made by man depends solely upon the wisdom or folly displayed in its construction. The much disputed sayings, “Whatever is, is right,” and “All is good, there is no evil,” can never be understood so long as people fail to discriminate between being and existing. Whatever is, is; this is an axiom, but that which is must be unchangeable, seeing that, though we can transform and transmute in a chemical laboratory, no chemist can either create or annihilate an ultimate atom.
The whole business of the world is practically regulated, in so far as it is successful, in accordance with two fundamental propositions of universal science:—
First, the immutability of law.
Second, the power of man to shape or fashion matter according to his own will commensurately with his developed intelligence.
We are all ignorant or unlearned before we have gained the experience necessary to our education; and by education is meant the unfolding of latent ability, for no educator can infuse into a pupil that which the pupil does not essentially contain. Provided a child has some dormant ability in a musical direction, the music teacher can instruct the child how to play upon an instrument; but were a child found entirely destitute of such ability, no professor, however learned, could develop that child into a musician. The same remark applies to all arts or employments equally.
We very frequently talk about our wills, but we do not usually inquire sufficiently into their nature and origin. Why do I will what I will? This is a leading query which can only be answered by the profound philosopher who delves deeply into the genesis of the human individual. Our willings are of two kinds: First, those which are common to all humanity; Second, those which are peculiar to certain individuals and sections of humanity. Among the first mentioned, we place the desire for health, for happiness, and for prosperity in all our undertakings, regardless of the nature thereof. In the second list we include all desires which differentiate one man from another man and one community from another community. With the first set only do we have to deal when engaged in the work of general teaching. We will because we can, and we can because we will, are two sayings very popular at present in metaphysical circles. Let us seek to interpret them.
Human will must be accounted for in some way, and it cannot be explained satisfactorily until we find its root in our essential nature. We desire what we desire because we are what we are. All talents struggle toward expression, therefore the wisdom of the counsel found in Proverbs, “Train up a child in the way he should go,” which certainly means that, instead of thwarting the natural desire of the child to work in some particular direction, we should carefully investigate the tendencies even of the smallest or youngest children, with a view to discover what they are best fitted for. The true meaning of the word “rod” is, a measuring line, therefore the rod and the staff are mentioned together logically in the twenty-third Psalm. “Spare the rod and spoil the child” sounds harsh to many, but only because of general ignorance concerning the nature of the rod alluded to in the Bible. The sages have all declared that no greater sin can be committed by parents than to deny their children the means of useful education. The wonderful influence still exerted by a mere handful of Jews, in literary and artistic as well as in scientific and financial circles, is due historically to the undeniable fact that the Jew above all others has insisted upon educating, as far as possible, all his children.
Whatever views of Socialism may be entertained by modern writers of so-called advanced schools of thought, one fact remains supremely evident—viz. that you may educate all people and thereby place all on a common high level, but you cannot by hook or by crook make the ignorant the equals of the learned, nor can you make the idle the equals of the industrious. Truly there need be no idlers, and we delight to cooperate in all feasible schemes for the education of everybody, therefore we believe and teach that the socialistic ideal may be fulfilled through the agency of universal education, though it can be fulfilled in no other way.
Let all English people remember that the illustrious motto of the Prince of Wales is, “I serve” (Ich dien). When the heir-apparent to the throne thus publicly glorifies the idea of service, we can indeed see how to extol mutual service while utterly discountenancing every phase of servitude. We may despise the word servant, though we love the word service. Interdependence is one of the greatest substantives in the English language. No one can be independent of others, and no one should believe himself wholly dependent on others. The welfare of the entire social fabric rests on cooperation, which necessitates various kinds of work done by variously qualified human beings. No one has a right to call an employee a “hand,” seeing that employers have no monopoly of brains. When society has become intelligently organized we shall all rejoice in our work, and should an idler appear, he might be submitted to the heroic treatment suggested by the Apostle Paul in those momentous words, “If a man will not work neither shall he eat.” The same great writer has said, in effect, that we are no longer under the law when we have grown to a knowledge of how we are to make use of the law. The law itself remains immutable, and therefore inexorable. One eye for one eye and one tooth for one tooth will always be exacted in all dispensations; but it is our privilege so to relate ourselves to each other, that by conferring mutual benefits instead of injuries, we stand in the relation of those who are entirely free from condemnation.
Nothing can be more immoral than to teach defiance of law; but when people are educated to do without its prohibitive inculcations, the eternal law will appear before them transfigured as Moses on the Mount. One of the most beautiful experiences connected with mountain climbing is to “go through a cloud while accomplishing the ascent of a steep incline. When we are in a valley we look upward and see a black cloud overhead, but when we have gone through it we see a golden cloud beneath us; for a cloud has two sides, the upper side is always bright, and the underside is always dark. When we fulfill destiny and master fate, we rise mentally to an exalted station from which we can smile down upon those things which formerly frowned down upon us. We have traveled from a lower to a higher vantage ground, and from our new viewpoint things look to us as they could not have looked before. Many people ignorantly prate of a bottomless pit, not knowing that they are talking only of a long tunnel which we enter on the dark side of ignorance, and finally emerge on the bright side of knowledge.
When you are crossing the ocean you need not be seasick, but the one who avoids sickness is in the midst of the same motion as the greatest sufferer on board. We should be simpletons indeed, did we deny the facts which environ us. The sea moves, and so does the boat, but we can learn to harmonize ourselves with the rocking of the vessel and the surging of the sea. We may not say to the wind “Subside,” but we can overcome our own fears of a hurricane, and by dint of constant increase in our own thoughts of strength, we can safely walk the deck where aforetime we should have been in deadly peril from the elements. No one who has attended a gymnasium need fail to trace a direct analogy between mental and physical development. You can only lift fifty pounds today; last year you could only lift thirty; next year you may lift eighty. This simple allusion to common gymnastic experience throws much light on can and cannot. You cannot at a given moment lift more than a certain number of pounds weight; such is an actual statement of the case; but you can grow to lift twice and far more than twice that particular amount. We must unceasingly discriminate between potential and actual. Our destinies are potential, and we are here to work them out. We either do or do not fulfill them, which only means that we are either living up to or below our possibilities; no one, of course, can live beyond possibility.
The place of conscience or moral sense, in a system of ethics which harmonizes with the theory of evolution, must prove a most instructive subject for thought. Conscience, or the moral sentiment, is far too frequently regarded as an accusing voice within us, when it is in reality the Divine Voice inviting us higher. We cannot remain satisfied with mean and sordid lives which express but a small fraction of our innate ability; we are therefore constantly being impelled forward by what is sometimes called “divine discontent.” We all have ideals, and we individually know what our ideals are. These ideals are glimpses of our involved destiny, which we must evolve by a process commonly called disciplinary. The word, discipline means instruction, and we certainly learn by means of what we have to overcome. A wise writer has said that we must rename obstacles opportunities, and then we shall soon find that we have been entertaining angels unawares and sometimes blindly calling them fiendish foes. Jacob, wrestling with an angel and overcoming the angel in a midnight encounter, is a fit symbol of the true hero meeting a difficulty which looks like an enemy, but which is in reality a faithful friend. We all take more or less false views of what we call our troubles, and none of us are sufficiently free from the degrading tendency which calls those things evil, the goodness of which is not yet apparent to us.
Very few people dare to comment freely on the forty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, which sets forth the purely monotheistic and highly philosophic view of the universe taken Standard of by all the greatest among the prophets. Dualism is always prevalent among the ignorant, who see good in the day and evil in the night, good in the summer and evil in the winter, and who equally in their private experience call everything good that pleases them for the moment, and everything evil which they do not immediately fancy. The twelve months of the year have been divided into two equal sections of six each; the six summer months were attributed by the Persians to the influence of the god of light, while the six winter months were supposed to be under the direction of an adversary. After the captivity in Babylon this hideous error had infested current Jewish thought, and against it the second Isaiah fulminated vigorously. This same ugly doctrine pervades nearly all modern thought, and until it is entirely eradicated from our consciousness we shall remain slaves of fate instead of becoming moral heroes.
The only safeguard to take in daily life is to embrace gladly whatever may come, and mentally exclaim, I need this experience or I should not get it; but I need to conquer it and most positively do I refuse to let it conquer me. The trials of life are like lessons in school; those things are not evil which we have not yet learned to conquer, but we are in an evil condition so long as we call them evil.
In the fulfillment of our destiny we must control our fate, in precisely the same way that the sculptor chisels a shapeless mass of stone into an exquisite marble statue which appears at length so lifelike that it seems almost as if it could speak. Stone remains stone; it is just as hard and cold, when sculptured into a charming bust, as it was when it was taken from the quarry; but the sculptor, having accomplished his purpose with it, rejoices in his achievement over it, and, pointing to it joyfully, he exultingly exclaims, “This is my masterpiece; in this marble I have made manifest my genius.” In the same way the painter makes the canvas and all his artist materials subject to his will, compelling them to obey his dictates and make manifest his thought. We cannot evade facts, but we can and we must conquer them. It is useless to tell people that they suffer nothing when they are enduring intense agony, but it is highly useful to point the way to victory over pain, and best of all is it to show the road which leads to final triumph over all that causes it.
We need not sin in order to suffer, but when we are in any distress whatever, we are suffering the effect of some internal disorder or derangement. The word disorder covers all disease; so does order express the idea of perfect health. Let us not repine at ailments or fight against them, but resolutely set to work to find the way out of them by rising above them. The same cause invariably produces the same effect, but a different cause must produce a different effect. On the basis of this self-evident proposition, we can erect a stalwart edifice of mental science and spiritual therapeutics.
Suggestion is now a very popular term. By “suggestion” is properly meant an intelligible invitation to clearer thinking, and wiser modes of life in general. Those who are now making the very mistakes which other people made some time ago, can surely derive benefit from the instruction of those who have ascended to a higher level of attainment; while those who are now in the midst of tribulation, when they have been lifted higher, can, in turn, serve as healers to others also.
Healing and teaching are inseparable. No one is a true doctor who is not a teacher, therefore there are doctors of Music, of Philosophy, of Law, and of Divinity, as well as of Medicine. The mere druggist or apothecary, who administers a medicament is not a doctor, because he does not instruct his patient, and though he may temporarily relieve a local ailment, he leaves the ignorant person who has consulted him with no added knowledge concerning the law of health. The greatest difference between the root idea of material medicine, and that of suggestive mental healing, consists in the obvious fact that the mental healer must be an educator, and whoever really profits permanently by mental treatment must be a student of sanitary science. We are fast beginning to learn that we must change conditions by our own efforts, and not expect conditions to miraculously change themselves or be changed for us by Divine Providence, seeing that it is our life-work to develop our own characters. Our severest trials and difficulties should be regarded by us as the baser metal which the alchemy of experience will transmute into untarnishable gold. We all speak poetically of a Golden Age, which means, using a worldwide and most expressive metaphor: We are all interested in universal peace and arbitration, but all endeavors must prove futile to settle international disputes without recourse to the sword, until we have first learned to settle our private difficulties and harmonize our social differences pacifically.
War is so old that no one can tell when it began. Animals and reptiles doubtless fought with each other through long geological epochs, long before the foot of man existed to press the surface of this globe. Prophets are genuine seers endowed with unusual foresight and insight, they therefore are able to look within and look ahead, consequently they can predict a time when wars shall cease in all the earth; but they must first cease in our small private earth, before they can subside in the expanded world around us. Every one of us contains fire, air, water, and earth within our own organism. How shall we be able to control the outside elements on a large scale before we have learned to govern the same elements within us on a smaller scale? The Book of Daniel is strictly scientific, for Daniel and his three companions are types of those superior developments of humanity which constitute men heroes instead of vassals. Those four young Hebrew initiates did not live like Babylonians or like ordinary Jews, for they separated themselves entirely from the vices and follies of a voluptuous court and abstained also from many things considered innocent in Israel; for that reason they could completely withstand what most people have no power even partially to regulate. We must begin all victories at home, later on we can go on and conquer outside difficulties. Never fight anything if you wish to subdue it to your service, but gaze steadfastly with tireless mental vision upon an ideal which you are determined to embody in your actual experience. Many people increase the ferocity of their own bad habits by making desperate efforts to subdue them; because they fear their foes, and fear making them weaker, they are most unwillingly bound in chains to the very practices they detest. No one likes to be ill, and no sensible person wishes to be a drunkard; but it is commonly believed that, by reason of unfavorable inheritance, some are compelled to yield to weaknesses every one of which should be made to yield to us completely. When Tennyson spoke of our dead selves becoming stepping-stones to higher things, he showed wonderfully clear insight into the real human law of progress. No attitude of mind is so reasonable and none so salutary and none so optimistic, as that which bravely faces all existing circumstances, and declares them all to be nothing other than means whereby we can fulfill that destiny which we most desire to accomplish.
The Roman goddesses Pecunia and Fortuna are still worshiped in modern temples, and we acknowledge them whenever we speak of our lot or our fortune, as though it were something arbitrarily fixed by an outside propitious sovereignty. We must banish from our speech all such miserable expressions as bad luck and ill fortune, we must not allow ourselves to say lachrymosely, “That is just my luck” for no one has any luck better or worse than his neighbors. Our destinies are indeed various, and all that comes in our way as fate must be looked upon as just so much raw material, which we are called upon to use in the manufacture of those utensils necessary to the fulfillment of our destinies.
Truly all voices cannot render the same solos or take the same part in choruses; truly all instrumentalists cannot perform upon the same instruments in an orchestra; but the success of an opera, a symphony, or an oratorio depends upon the perfect blending of many voices of different range and pitch, and the perfect harmony of many wind and stringed instruments playing in sublime concert. Let the dressmaker remain such, for she can be as happy as any schoolteacher; let the carpenter remain at his bench, for he can be as happy as any journalist. Now, seeing that all kinds of activities are necessary to the maintenance of society, let us all stand in our own esteem upon one common high level, never daring to think that one useful occupation is any higher or lower than another. When this subject is fully expanded in life as well as being elaborated in philosophy, the day will quickly come, by prophets long foretold, when all the animals in us will lie down in peace together, as we read in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah. Then when we have become inwardly harmonious, we shall not find it difficult to carry out in private, social, industrial, national, and international affairs, those glorious ideals of harmony which have animated, and which now do truly inspire, all our great philanthropists.
In quietness and confidence we shall ever find our fullest strength. We must learn to work restfully and to rest actively, by blending all our energies in one glorious harmonious work which will overcome competition in all branches of industry by substituting blissful cooperation. You love me and I love you; you help me and I help you; you are my friend and I am yours; your welfare and mine proceed from the same cause, and must be accomplished through the same agencies; I can have no enemies when I am everybody’s friend, and I can receive no return of injury when I only send forth goodwill to all humanity.
The greatest of all lessons which we every one of us need to learn, is so to behave in the midst of turmoil that our influence will produce a great calm. Let us smile at those very episodes in our careers which appear most disastrous, and ever determine to employ as our agents those menacing obstacles which threaten our total discomfiture. Thus shall we learn increasingly that in the fulfillment of our several destinies, all of which are included in the great destiny of the human race, our many fates are just so many opportunities for unfolding the power that is within us. Never despair; hope always. Be strong and very courageous. Then through the agency of the very things we have most disliked, we shall scale the mountain heights and become conquerors indeed.
Interior Force—Its Practical Evolution
Having settled the question for ourselves practically that we have, each one of us, a destiny to fulfill and a fate to master, the difficulties of daily life will not necessarily vanish from our paths immediately we have intellectually accepted those vital propositions, but we shall certainly find ourselves confronted daily, yes, hourly, with many trying problems, the solution of which is essential to our progress. From one point of view life must always be a battle and the world a scene of conflict, though from another and much higher standpoint we can well understand the touching sublimity of the words of the Ideal Teacher, “Come unto me and I will give you rest.” Rest is not a condition of inactivity, though it is unquestionably a state of inward repose. Two very different kinds of peace are vividly contrasted in the gospel—the false peace of stagnant acquiescence in error, and the true peace which is so heroic that it only follows crucifixion of all that was once regarded as essential to human happiness.
The ideal life is never one of rigid asceticism, any more than it is one of voluptuous self-indulgence; it is an equilibrium of forces, a vital harmony, a constant symphony, in the performances of which all capabilities in all phases of expression are called into vital but never into hysterical activity. Life can be deep, high, and truly intense, yet never unduly excited, and it is to this “golden mean” of thoroughly practical attainment that all true heroes have aspired, and it is this rarely reached eminence that true saints have actually attained.
We sometimes sing the praises of ancient and modern heroes in fantastic tones, for we speak of certain highly accomplished and singularly eminent men and women as though they were altogether sui generis. Such adoration of truly noble sisters and brothers of ours is a great mistake, because it adds nothing to their luster, while it deprives us of the inspiration of their practical examples. It does everybody good to remember that even the greatest have had weaknesses and failings which they have never, perhaps, entirely conquered. It is the great preponderance of nobility that we admire, and it is this that Longfellow clearly had in mind when he wrote those glorious words, “Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime.” The New Testament letter writers, while extolling the prophets of old without stint or measure, assure all to whom they were writing that their everyday friends and students are of the like nature with Elijah and all the greatest of the olden seers. Paul’s personal history would be apt to offend if we missed its spirit, which is that of noble assurance that all whom he addresses, though they fight as he has fought, can conquer even as he has overcome. Thomas a Kempis, one of the greatest, and also one of the most popular, of fervid Christian writers, has called his masterpiece of literary beauty a Treatise on the Imitation of the Christ. Had such a word as worship, homage, or admiration been employed, the book would have fallen far short of the treatise which for many a century has been a source of much strength and comfort to Catholic and Protestant and to orthodox and heterodox alike.
All really great lives are exemplary, even though there must be in them a transcendental element. Those two singularly great leaders of thought in England—Martineau and Ruskin—who have so recently joined the unseen majority, have left their highest impress upon society, not because of their remoteness, but by reason of their intimate nearness to the life of the great people. Martineau, though a scholar of the first rank and a philosopher of unusual penetration, came very near the social side of his friends’ characters, and loved to turn from the seclusion of the study and the arena of pulpit and platform to the home side of terrestrial existence. Ruskin, as everyone knows, though an artist from the soul, was a man whose chief desire was to lift everyday existence out of the rut of the commonplace, and adorn the modest home of the day-laborer with at least something of the beauty of a gallery of art. In Sheffield and other great manufacturing centers, Ruskin is beloved and honored largely on account of the intensely practical aim of his genius and his living touch with actual secular human needs.
The secular and spiritual are indivisible, and concerning these twain it must be said, “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” Idealism is useful only when it causes us to take an optimistic view of even the most sordid surroundings, but by optimism is never properly intended a laissez faire sort of speculative idealism, which lazily declares that because evil is a nonentity, therefore everything on earth is exactly as it ought to be at this moment, regardless of all discord and all phases of misery. True optimism is a bracing tonic for the whole human system; it makes the brain active with intense determination, and sets all hands to work to bring possible cosmos out of actual existing chaos. We must steer equally clear of two equally dangerous extremes if we are to set before the people not only a beautiful, but also a practical, philosophy. If there is, as we must maintain, a destiny to be fulfilled through the mastery of the fate we conquer, the note of active service is instantly struck when we perceive this as a verity.
Music is inborn, so is poetic genius, so is a talent for painting, or for mathematics, and for all united; but talents can be buried, and, though interment cannot destroy them, it certainly renders them unmanifest. We are scholars, apprentices, tyros, and we must remember that, in the compounding of prescriptions written in heaven, the apothecary on earth has a formula to go by and must take all precaution against neglect of due heed of proportion while at work in his laboratory. Our sum totals are endless in variety. It ought not to be a difficulty, in view of all these homologous experiences, for us to learn to consider our lives in some such practical light as that in which we consider a building gradually fashioned of earth’s materials to correspond to some wonderful architectural design which an inspired poet has seen in spiritual vision. Our souls are architects; our intellects are builders, always engaged in the work of construction; our bodies and our surroundings are the buildings erected according to the patterns supplied by the unseen though not unapprehended architects.
We do well to note two more great examples of unity in and variety in nature. Uniformity enters not into celestial design, for unity loves to be expressed in measureless diversity. “See thou make all things according to the pattern which God shows to Moses in the Mount,” is an everlasting commandment. There is but one design for the divine temple, which is a human body, as Paul perceived when writing his unsurpassed letters to the Corinthians. All human bodies are of one type, of one general outline, but so diverse are these structural organisms that though we need but one anatomy and one physiology,—and on a still higher plane but one anthropology, which must include a pure psychology,—nothing can be more striking than the numberless differences, which are in no sense dissonances, which we see exhibited on every hand and at every turn. We speak of five great divisions of mankind, and we enumerate them; but who shall attempt to count the diversities in every one of these five great types, which, if they could all be counted, would aggregate a total in the course of a little while almost beyond our computation. Diversities of gifts and operations indeed there are, but there is but one essential informing Spirit which is the rock of ages out of which we all alike are hewn. So long as the social organism is looked upon as a mere machine, and a cold, mechanical, materialistic theory of evolution is doled out by professors to their classes, humanity seeking bread will righteously murmur at the substituted stone; but when once the Academicians of the new age perceive how to explain the need and beauty of the many sections of Maximus Homo, a modus vivendi will be quickly established, enabling all men and women everywhere to so live together as to rejoice in their harmonious differences, as singers and instrumental musicians alike rejoice to sing different parts in an anthem and play on different instruments during the progress of an oratio. Drop fictitious distinctions, quote Tennyson’s immortal line, “‘Tis only noble to be good,” but on no account let us shut our eyes to the actual conditions existing in the world around us. A vital truth is contained, however, in such a counsel as—Open your eyes to the vision of a higher life; then, like Stephen the Christian protomartyr, because you see heaven open unto you, you will no longer suffer pain on earth. Modern aspects of psychology do not differ as radically as many suppose from ancient aspects. Once let the idea of super-consciousness, or the activity of the higher self, grow clear to modern thinkers, and the lives of the most illustrious among old-time saints and heroes will shine luminous in the morning light of modern scientific demonstration. The stones were hurled at the beatified Stephen, and they hit him and mangled his flesh, but his consciousness was above the action of the missiles, therefore he knew not the anguish he would have otherwise experienced.
Even hypnotism to a certain extent, and the higher phases of suggestive healing to a large extent, go far to prove how thoroughly possible it is to so lift feeling from a lower to a higher plane, that not unconsciousness, but exalted consciousness, proves the effectual antidote to otherwise unendurable agony. Just as the two sides of the cloud are equally present, but one can only have the experience of seeing the dark side if he remains below the cloud, though he must see its bright side if he goes through it and thereby rises above it, so, when an obstacle is faced, not shunned, conquered, not evaded, the new attitude toward the old situation constitutes the change in us which transforms old into new, and transmutes the base into the glorious.
Nothing can be vainer than to try to obey great counsels and live up to noble precepts while we are viewing them only from their lowest and darkest side. All great teachings are replete with paradoxes, though illumined sages are never really contradictory although they often appear to be so. “Love your enemies” is one of the most fiercely contested precepts in the whole range of gospel maxims; but, far from being impossible, it is quite easy when once the right viewpoint is attained. Take a very common illustration. Two nations are at war, as Spain and the United States were in the early part of 1899, but that memorable year had only reached its May when a Peace Jubilee was held in Washington, and in front of the presidential residence fervent patriotic orators were loudly rejoicing because of a cessation of hostilities between the two countries and the consequent return of a Spanish minister to Washington. Spaniards and Americans were enemies one month but neighbors the next. The people who live next door to you may appear to you as enemies, and the very barking of their dogs may often have made you furious; you cannot love them so long as you regard them as foes; but if you turn your present attitude toward them completely round, and agree to think of them simply as neighbors, you can love your neighbors as yourself. By this process the enemy has ceased to exist and a neighbor has taken his place.
As with people, so with elements and all material surroundings—when you have learned to agree with an adversary you no longer have any antagonist to face. The distinctively military expression, “Put on the whole armor of God,” and others like it, should suggest to us a protective encasement in virtuous aura, far more than a belligerent equipment with which to fight against a foe. The interior energy which all of us possess, whether we have grown to acknowledge it or not, is wasted and dissipated at the surface whenever one regards it as a weapon rather than as a power to be utilized in constructive action. Will-power must no longer be thought of as a weapon wherewith to destroy, but as a tremendous dynamic force which makes work delightful, and by virtue of its drawing ability attracts to its possessor and cultivator an ever-increasing supply of health and happiness, while it surrounds him with an atmosphere so impregnable that inharmonious conditions generally are bound to retire or melt into harmony at his approach.
This is one of the greatest thoughts needed for the evolution of ability. Nothing can be more depressing than to take a view of life which causes one to feel that there is no real purpose being fulfilled in one’s individual existence. We cannot feel satisfied if we have only a vague belief that a superintending Providence overrules all events in a strictly sovereign manner without, in the case of our own lives, our own most intimate cooperation. It need not be difficult to account for the recent large drift of public thought away from certain misconceptions of theology, but though there are many unsatisfactory views of religion which we may profitably abandon, the soul can find no sort of rest in mere agnosticism. Though it is never desirable to use a negative when an affirmative terminology is possible, there is justification even for the word unknowable in a strictly narrow sense. We cannot reasonably assert that any truth is absolutely unknowable; but it may be fair to the avowed agnostic to take into consideration that he limits his utterances entirely to three planes of human consciousness,—the physical, mental, and moral, taking no account whatever of the interior spiritual. We may speak ever so glibly concerning experience being our only educator. Granting that it is, we are by no means justified in seeking to explain scientifically some only out of the manifold and extremely diverse experiences of which we are all at times intensely conscious. A prophetic dream, a psychic vision, a clear intuition,—all these are just as real and quite as actual to those who experience them, as any intellectual discoveries or material cognizances can ever be to the simple intellectualist or materialist. And it is to the testimony of the highest and deepest in humanity that Plato, Emerson, Martineau, and all great philosophers of ancient and modern date have constantly appealed.
Negative philosophy denies what it has not yet grasped; affirmative philosophy denies nothing but mathematical absurdities. Surely the age is ripe for a new and higher statement of those strange metaphysical doctrines which Berkeley and other truly noble minds seem to set forth in phraseology beyond the comprehension of the common people. To tell people that matter is only a mental concept, and that the whole visible universe is contained in mind, may provoke a profound university discussion; but it does not take vital hold of the people everywhere, or enable them to actively triumph over the many objective difficulties by which they are continually beset. We find the facts of sickness, crime, poverty, and much else that is extremely trying to our faith and patience displayed on every hand; and, though, if we profess trust in Deity, we attempt in some vague way to be resigned or reconciled to what may be a mysterious part of the working out of a divine plan, we find that resignation to evils does not conquer them, while submission to fate has never yet constituted a man a hero.
There are clearly three positions open to us, viz.: First, the view of the pessimist, with which all are sadly familiar, and which prompts either to suicide or to grim endurance of a harsh inevitable. Second, the theory of the good-natured, easy-going, but inefficient optimist, who smiles at everything and grins complacently in the face of his less happily constituted neighbors. Third, the conviction of the practical scientific optimist, who is not a fatalist, but one who sees the part to be played by men themselves in the evolution of a social state in which perfect equity will result outwardly as a result of complete inward harmony. It is scarcely possible to reiterate too frequently the simile of the letters in the alphabet and the notes in the musical scale. Great examples are set by masters of harmony and of pure literary style, yet the very greatest among them had only the same commonplace letters to combine and notes to strike that the most illiterate and inefficient are feebly grappling with. One of the most interesting episodes in the career of Mendelssohn is the fact of his having invariably tried his compositions upon an old harpsichord before submitting them for trial by an orchestra; for, argued he, if a work of mine shall sound well when rendered on so poor an instrument, I need have no fear of submitting it to the test of a well-trained hand.
The cynic is not, and never can be, an influential factor in human progress; nor can the critic who seeks out the weakest passages in a book or the few defects in a musical composition, to parade them before the world as samples of a writer’s or composer’s style, be other than an ignis fatuus. Blind, indiscriminating laudation is not honest impartial review; but far more good is generally done by dwelling most on what is best in any work submitted for consideration, than by calling chief attention to the petty discords which mar the perfect symmetry of the whole.
In our daily contact with one another nothing so impoverishes us and disfigures life as the habit of incessant fault-finding. This it is which dulls the eye, blanches the cheek, sallows the complexion, ruins digestion, banishes sleep, and soon makes of its possessor a wretched victim of chronic neurotic disorder. To go to a concert to pick out the poorest numbers, or to a theatre to discover precisely what defects there may be in an actor’s rendering of a familiar part, exasperates the nerves and sends the critic home to suffer from dyspepsia and insomnia; and when this habit is carried out in detail in the home, it sends men to clubs or anywhere to escape their own firesides, and robs women of all those gracious qualities which make the names of mother, wife, and sister the purest and holiest in our vocabulary.
In dealing with naughty children, we must learn that their naughtiness is often nothing worse than exuberance of spirits on the one hand, or natural protest against undue restraint or against some vain attempt to force them into quite unnatural grooves on the other. The involved destiny of the child is often asserting itself in a seemingly disagreeable way, and the part of the wise educator must ever be to train but not coerce. The same bright view of some of our own peccadilloes may often be safely taken, for we all struggle with attempts to rise higher and become nobler, while the real cause of the tempest within remains a mystery to us. Can we not safely steer clear of foolish optimism and still more foolish pessimism, by simply regarding ourselves and all things and people about us as in a state of continual evolution? We must not confound potential perfection with actual perfectibility, but by keeping ever before us the perfect possibility and the perfect goal, we shall never become despondent and never be crushed by difficulties, however gigantic they may seem to us before we have gone through them and have risen above them.
It is not possible to give explicit directions for an American substitute for Hindu Yoga practice, as the general needs of the Anglo-Saxon race are not the same outwardly as those of their dark-skinned Oriental brethren; but the great words, concentration and meditation, are just as forceful and full of meaning in the West as in the East. To concentrate on one’s beloved goal, to see before the mental eye the prize as though it were already won, while we are all the while intensely conscious of moving perpetually nearer to its externalization, is so to place ourselves in relation with all that helps us on our way, that one by one obstacles vanish, and what seemed once too hard for human strength to accomplish appears now plain and even simple. The greatest need of all is to keep the goal in sight, and not let interest flag or inward vision waver.
It seems to many little short of fantastic to speak of being educated during sleep, and of absorbing instruction from contact with spiritual spheres while physically engaged in the most prosaic duties of everyday life, but it is only unfamiliarity with these deeper ways of learning which makes the intuitive and psychometric manners of imbibing knowledge appear unreasonable. A good lesson for all to practice is to take some special aspiration into the silence, and there realize its fulfillment with all the intensity of your interior visualistic ability. See yourself in the very place in which you most desire to be engaged, in the very work you would love best to accomplish. A little persistent industry in this exercise will soon relieve the intellect of worry, and gradually open up the understanding to perceive how to accomplish the otherwise unaccomplishable. There is no substitute for work in all the universe, therefore let none imagine that a state of inoperative dreamy contemplation is one to be recommended. Outward work must follow inward contemplation. True meditation does not absolve us from the need of making effort, but it is a means for revealing to us what efforts we need to make and how to make them.
As we proceed along this salutary way our sleep will grow luminous, and whether we experience dreams and visions, or otherwise, we shall surely awaken from slumber with cleared perceptions and with a definite plan of action stretched before us.
It is the time we waste in doing the same thing two or three times over which makes a work which might be Calm short appear extremely lengthy. The experiences of Israel in the Wilderness symbolize the experiences of all who, though wishing to go forward, are still casting lingering looks behind. A forty days’ journey is lengthened into a forty years’ wandering, because one nostril is sniffing the Egyptian baked meats while the other is inhaling the odor of the fruits of Canaan. Let us once for all resolve on unity of purpose, resoluteness of aim, and determination to vanquish all distractions, and soon we shall have victories in place of sore defeats to chronicle.
The principal cause for defeat in all spiritual as in all material endeavors is certainly a lack of that calm, noble persistency without which even the most powerful sporadic efforts must prove ultimately fruitless. When it is easiest to make conquests, the conquests we make are of least avail, for whatever requires only a small degree of effort infused into it, may be compared to a flimsy structure which, because easily raised, is of no great solidity when completed.
Character building is a great expression, and one, moreover, which exactly describes the work of self-development. No one can possibly build another’s character, as that is essentially an individual work; but one can assuredly be a very great help to another in showing the way, and blazing the road along which he has himself travelled somewhat farther than the pupil who looks to him as an experienced preceptor. The prophetical idea of the service one can render to another is brought out with amazing force in the story of Naaman’s visit to Elisha. The Assyrian captive represents all who are in the belief that external remedies can truly avail, and who can understand the action of spiritual force only as it is displayed before them through some romantic earthly medium. The prophet of Israel dare not resort to outward pomp and imposing ceremony to make a convert, so he allows his wealthy and distinguished visitor to return home in anger, though surely not in despair, for the very novelty and seeming impudence of Elisha’s recommendation that the Assyrian nobleman bathe seven times in the despised Jordan carries hope with it, as he has never bathed in any stream in Palestine. Abana and Pharpar of Damascus are useless, but Jordan may prove successful, which in our day means, as it meant of old, that, if we are to change our physical and circumstantial conditions radically, we must do the very thing we have never done before, and leave off doing the things we have long considered beneficial. The New Testament characters who were healed of most grievous ailments after twelve and even thirty-eight years of misery, are glowing examples of the operation of a law which is immutable, but as beneficent in its action with us when we are on the triumphant side of it, as it appears malefic toward us while we are on its lower and darker side.
We can never make progress by grumbling or by fighting what really needs surmounting. If our circumstances should prove as trying as those of the phenomenal Belgian artist, Charles Francois Fehr, though deprived of hands, we might learn to make such good use of feet, that instead of being crushed by the loss of two important members we might rise, as he rose, to remarkable eminence by working in so extraordinary a manner as not only to win for ourselves renown, but prove to others everywhere that when one door is closed against us we have it in us to immediately begin to open another. It is said of Fehr that, though without arms, he copied by means of his feet some hundreds of the finest masterpieces, first in Antwerp, where he began his career, and then in America. Probably if we were all to do what this marvelous man has done, at least in some measure, and as particular occasions demand, we should find, in far more senses than one, that when hands fail us, feet are only awaiting our applied energy to render adequate substitute service.
The chief feature of real greatness in Sandow’s system of physical training is that when a lad he was, muscularly speaking, only an average German boy. But by the time he was twenty-one he had become, by dint of his own diligent self-training, an almost perfect specimen of physical manhood. We need a similar system of gymnastic exercise applied to the bringing out of those deeper and higher faculties which we term psychical and spiritual. Too much prayer is simply supplicatory, and though it may be earnest and devout in measure, it lacks that sublime trust in the certainty of divine response which is needed to make it that prayer of faith which can alone heal the grievously sick and remove obstacles which tower like mountains.
The inroads of scientific research are doing much to shift the ground of old theology, but they are supplying us with new standpoints from which to consider one of the greatest engines for the elevation of our race. We may attribute the answers to prayer as verified by such notable examples as Muller’s orphanages and Barnardo’s homes for the destitute, to a variety of secondary causes. We need not seek to explain divine intervention or interposition, we may much better concern ourselves with a view of benign results which perfectly accord with the thought of universal law’s immutability. The gospel statement is that asking, seeking, and knocking are the three necessary elements in effective prayer, and so explicitly does the Great Teacher insist upon divine impartiality that he distinctly declares that everyone who asks receives, everyone who seeks finds, and everyone who knocks finds a portal open unto him.
Our chief difficulty when dealing with the operation of any metaphysical force is the practical impossibility of explaining its action in accordance with any theory based upon merely sensuous observation of palpable phenomena. Things are really “not what they seem” because they are immeasurably greater than they seem, and the greatest force of all is never traceable by the eye of flesh, but is to be discerned only by the eye of spirit, Now, seeing that the imponderables are always more forceful than any physically measurable force, we have no just cause for incredulity when brought face to face with the illimitable dynamic energy of thought.
Not only are thoughts “things” on their own plane, but they are clearly the prototypes of all things which appear finally on the plane of sense. When we leave the bustle of the outer world and give ourselves up for awhile to restful meditation upon an ideal, we are opening the flood-gates of our inward being and inviting a tide of heavenly knowledge to enter in. The sanctuary which all need is not necessarily a place with fixed geographical location, for we may often find ourselves unable to enter materially into an inner chamber and close a wooden door between us and the outside world. One of the best times for cultivating inward peace and power is when we are surrounded by sights and noises of the most aggressive varieties, for it is then that we do really win a victory if we succeed in shutting them out simply because it is our deliberate will to enter an imperturbable retreat. There never can be a lasting victory won over outside conditions so long as we have yet failed altogether to control our world within. Power flows from within to without, as all things grow from hidden centers to observable circumferences.
Distractions need not continue to disturb us; the sights and sounds which we would fain get away from are among the temptations that we need to resist; and when we have gained some practical insight into the philosophy of some most wonderful words in the Epistle of James, we shall quickly rectify our judgment concerning those incessant frictionizing events which appear altogether adverse until we have learned to “count it all joy” to be thrown into the vortex of them, because we have grown to perceive that they are the developers of patience whose perfect work must be accomplished in us that we become perfect and entire, lacking nothing. The adversary that cannot be thrust out of the path can be converted into a friend, and when this conversion has taken place we have gained an ally which we never could have had if the adversary had not first confronted us.
We have only to peruse current sociological literature to see that there is a certain drift back to paganism on the one hand and forward to a new civilization on the other. Lethel chambers for the “unfit,” and all such ancient-modern propositions, are the natural vent of pessimism, and agree perfectly with a desponding view of at least a part of human nature. The letter only of the law is seen, and the letter only killeth, but the inner spirit giveth life. We can readily understand, if we study spirit versus letter, how perfectly law-abiding we can be and yet abolish capital punishment and substitute humane for barbaric measures in every instance. The proper object of legislation is to promote virtue and banish crime; this cannot be effectively done by measures already in vogue, therefore it is being seriously proposed in several influential quarters that an entirely new set of measures be adopted. The eminent Italian criminologist Lambroso says that the moral infirmities which lead up to crime can be scientifically conquered, and on this matter the illustrious Professor Elmer Gates of America has spoken with the authority born of a long series of successful laboratory experiments, all of a psychical character. We need to be perfectly law-abiding, and there are ten great divisions of the Decalogue, the tenth being the most sadly neglected of all. “Thou shall not covet anything that is thy neighbor’s” is a metaphysical precept which many thoroughly respectable people never attempt to heed, and they excuse their non-observance of this commandment on the ground that no one knows their thoughts, and further, that they cannot help their thoughts. These are the weak points in the dike and the vulnerable spots in the armor. People feel your thoughts even when they may not know them, and if you cannot control your thoughts neither can you control your words and actions, which are but ultimate manifestations or expressions of your thoughts.
To control thought is our greatest work after we have satisfied ourselves that we are honestly possessed of good-will. If you do not immediately succeed in overcoming the erroneous habits of many years, be not discouraged, and do not dwell upon your failures even in private meditation. Keep the right sort of a diary, one that will be free from the mournful entries which take much from the otherwise inspiring character of Amiel and Marie Bashkirtseff. An inspiring and ennobling diary must contain only such entries as record, at the lowest, partial victories. Blank pages can be left for days, if such there be, on which no conquest has been won; but whatever is recorded should be exclusively of a nature to inspire the reader, no matter whose eye may fall upon the page. If you are feeling only a little stronger, happier, and wiser than you felt a while ago, record that measure of attainment, dwell on it, make much of it, and it will spur you on to nobler and larger victories in the very near future. The highest counsel is sometimes found even in a sportsman’s guide, and when the author of a book on the management of horses tells the rider, whenever he comes to a specially difficult fence or ditch, to see the horse safely over in his mind’s eye before he encourages the animal to take the literal leap, that author has furnished food for meditation and laid down a faithful rule of conduct which we shall all do well to apply to every difficulty which may confront us.
In the coming harmony between Eastern and Western philosophies we are sure to find the nexus in that encouraging yet sober doctrine of the truest metaphysicians, who sum up all their teaching in some such sentences as follows: Smile on everything that enters your life, being determined to see in it the means to loftier attainment than would have been possible without it. Take always the attitude toward trials of any sort, that they need to be surmounted by us, but it is never a part of divine order that we should fall under them and be crushed by them. Never grudge your neighbor aught of his possessions, but set steadily to work so to liberate the inner force which is the spirit of every one of us, that we can, through enlightened action, draw to us whatever we may need out of the boundless treasury of infinite and eternal opulence.
Thought as a Shield—The Human Aura
From what has been said in the two preceding chapters, the reader will have gathered that the author’s attempt has been to point the way from servitude to freedom in individual life by process of self-culture, which must of necessity antedate all successful endeavors to control exterior circumstances. We should never employ plurals until we have grasped clearly the idea of an original singular, and as the singular number is that of the macrocosm and of the microcosm equally, we can only deal with the least as with the greatest in an intelligible manner, by letting go of all plural terms when considering the true method of self-development. Every human being is surrounded with what is commonly called his sphere of influence, which is, properly speaking, his effluence, seeing that it proceeds from him, flowing out from his own interior state before it can possibly proceed to work as an influence when it reaches others. Swedenborg’s writings are replete with very clear distinctions between efflux and influx, and were the general reader to study those writings, at least in outline, a great deal of difficulty would be averted in the study of all questions pertaining to psychical research.
The individual human being lives within the circuit of his own atmosphere, precisely as a planet is enwrapped in its peculiar atmospheric blanket. We speculate as to the inhabitants of Mars, and sometimes question whether there are or can be any. Astronomically speaking, the inquiry hinges upon atmosphere; we know the circumference, diameter, period of revolution, distance from the sun, and many other facts concerning our fiery brother; but before we can reach any intelligible conclusion concerning inhabitation, we are obliged to discuss atmosphere or aura. The condition of an orb is revealed in its atmospheric accompaniment, for it develops its own surrounding belt, evolving it in process of ages out of its own constitution.
We have all been delighted with the ideal conceptions of painters who have been ever wont to encircle the heads of saints with a ring of light of varying degrees of intensity, known as halo, nimbus, and aureola. One of the most beautiful among popular religious pictures is “Christ stilling the Tempest,” in which the light emitted from the person of the Master lights up the water and streams from his entire person. This exactly agrees with Oriental tradition, and is a strong point with modem theosophists who claim that an adept or hierophant has developed an aura of such extent, quality, and luminosity that it reaches out to a considerable distance, and the greater the spiritual height to which the adept has attained, the brighter and more voluminous the aura.
Scientific students of the relation between color and sound have decided that the seven notes in the musical scale and the seven prismatic hues or colors of the rainbow exactly synchronize. The scale reads: A, red; B, orange; C, yellow; D, green; E, blue; F, indigo; G, violet. The perfect octave of sound corresponds to pure white of dazzling brightness which flashes forth all iridescent hues and opalescent tints. Were a blind person treated by the musical therapeutist intelligibly, he would very likely feel colors psychically so as to intelligibly describe them, though the physical orbs of vision might be entirely sightless balls; the deaf person likewise treated successfully by color suggestion would very likely hear with the inward ear the sounds which are inseparable from those particular vibrations of light which produce respective colors.
We must never forget that there are two selves in every one of us, both good, but sustaining the mutual relation of teacher and pupil, healer and patient, and even master and servant. What is generally spoken of as animal magnetism, is only the effluent radiation from the outer personality which has value on its own ulterior plane, but can go no further than the plane to which it is by its own origin and nature necessarily confined. That which proceeds from the animal self (anima bruta) has a value where it belongs, but those who know of nothing higher are like the physician in Macbeth, who says he cannot minister to a mind diseased, but each man must thus minister to himself, ‘which is an expression of ultimate truth, because no “healer” can finally do more than lead his patient into the right path. There is surely a great difference in the mental attitude of one who is always depending upon extraneous aid, and one who is conscious of holding within himself the key to power and happiness.
Health is indispensable for the successful carrying out of any vocation, and success is a word which applies to all trades and professions equally, but it is just as necessary to be strongly fortified and clad in unseen armor in one walk of life as in another. The development of a high order and abundant measure of a uric radiation is the result of keeping a perfect watch over the mental habits which one needs to control. It may not be well to lay down arbitrary rules for self-government, expecting all to follow identically the same outward path; but there are certain searching questions which all should answer faithfully to themselves, not for example—Do I ever smoke a cigar? but, Does tobacco ever control me?—i.e. Do I, feeling it to be a foolish and perhaps pernicious habit, indulge in smoking because of some inherited or acquired appetite which I feel too weak to throw aside? Every habit must be reviewed in some such way, and each must question himself searchingly as to whether he governs habits or whether they rule him. This is a private work of self-examination, and must be dealt with honestly by all who are earnestly seeking to develop around them a protecting armor resulting from noble, fearless, self chosen thought, which will protect them from those unseen adversaries—both disorderly mental states and pathological microbes—which abound on every hand, but which are perfectly innocuous to such as are immune.
The doctrine of aura explains a mystery which everybody endeavors to account for in some partial way, usually by employing good words without defining them, and by alluding to conditions resulting from interior development, but without throwing any light upon the why and the how of this development. People speak glibly of susceptibility and non-susceptibility, just as they talk of imagination and coincidences without attempting to explain what they mean by either.
If one person is susceptible to a disorder, when another can safely bend over the patient and even take his breath with impunity, it simply proves that one of those two persons is much more self-centered than the other, as well as proving that one is in a much healthier condition than the other. It can never be safe for unguarded persons to attend upon the sick who are ill with infectious ailments, therefore all doctors and nurses require heroic mental training to equip them for the arduous duties inseparable from their trying occupations. The physical causes of immunity have been over considered, while the far more important mental causes have been largely neglected when differences between individuals and races have been dealt with by average statisticians. The health of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews (Sephardim) has been for centuries remarkably good, and they are of all people who constitute a factor in modern civilization the most persistently communal in their rigid adhesion to their traditional faith and practice; though adaptable they are not assimilable, and for that very reason they enjoy a privileged immunity from disease which the metaphysician attributes far more to their proud mental conservatism than to the: simply physical side of their excellent sanitary rules.
It does not do to lay too much stress on the merely dietary side of the Law, as mental states have immeasurably more to do with even the diet question than most people suppose. Two persons may strictly observe the same dietary code, and yet one may be healthy and the other a confirmed dyspeptic. One may be singularly safe from contagion, and the other weakly susceptible to every infectious breath, and the cause for this is not difficult to find. Fear prompts many people to abstain from certain foods which they think would disagree with their delicate stomachs, but it is nothing higher than a dread of unpleasant consequences, should they indulge, which prompts their abstinence. Such people are poor weak lings, liable at any time to be placed in most embarrassing conditions, with the alternative before them of either suffering from lack of nourishment or else partaking of what is sure to make them ill. People in this miserable condition spend most of their lives in the narrow strait between Scylla and Charybdis, but not by any means as expert navigators who are in fear of neither rocks nor whirlpools.
The word fear needs redemption, and not until it is restored to its original meaning, reverence, is it safe to employ it without an explanation of what you mean by it if you commend it. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” These grand old words are uttered by many who do not know that in the original to fear is to revere, not to tremble or be afraid. Far better cultivate a spirit of even insolent daring, and beard the lion of his den, than permit yourself to be a victim of that demoralizing terror which impoverishes the blood, keeps the vitality in the system perpetually at the lowest ebb, and so opens the pores to the inroads of pathologic germs that it is unsafe for you to go anywhere, for bacteria are atmospherically omnipresent. The strong, healthy, righteously self-asserting individual not only develops an aura for self-protection, but its radiations act as the only absolute germicide and efficient disinfectant.
Human electro-magnetism destroys disease germs, and so changes the state of the atmosphere that virtue (virtus), strength, life-giving energy, goes forth from the perpetual healer, and disease perishes in his presence through the agency of his spontaneous effluence, even as ice melts through the inevitable action of radiant heat. The mystery of unconscious healing is as easily explained as the influence of the pipe, groves in the relief of sufferers afflicted with pulmonary difficulties. We all know that certain people (and, to a degree, certain animals and plants) carry with them and breathe out a healing radiance; but we are not prepared to say, even in the case of human beings, that all healers really know that they are such. We may be largely unaware of our own condition, but it is an influential condition nevertheless. We must be good-natured, kind-hearted and filled with the general love of being useful to others, before we can give forth a healing elixir; but it is no more necessary for us to know the precise facts in the case, when we spontaneously officiate as healers, than it is for a bird to know the exact effect which its song may be producing upon an unseen listener.
“Physician, heal thyself” are words of universal import applicable on all planes of experience and consciousness; for healing means making whole, and as we are steadily advancing, we can certainly take others with us, and serve as magnets to draw others after us.
The thirty-three degrees of masonry must be taken one by one, and it would be absurd for anyone to expect to take the third degree of Master Mason directly after taking the first of Entered Apprentice, without going through the second of Fellow-craftsman, and so on up through each succeeding degree, till finally the thirty-third is reached. We are not called upon in music to go directly from finger exercises to Wagnerian operas; but it would be foolish to hesitate to explain the scale to a child because as yet we are not capable of rendering a sonata by Beethoven, though we can easily and satisfactorily accompany a simple ballad. There is no greater error into which would-be wiseacres often fall than that of counseling earnest aspirants to wait until they know a great deal more than they have yet mastered before they attempt to do anything to help others. We can all teach as far as we have learned, and the compound name, pupil-teacher, may be applied to all of us.
Though an accurate description of aura is one of those things rarely attempted outside the exclusively theosophic camp, the subject is being investigated today by an ever enlarging public to whom psychical research presents great fascination. There is as much fact as poetry in the old idea of a heaven above and a hell below, because it is a literal fact that all volatile ethers rise, and the purer air is farther than the tainted from the ground. Just as we get extended landscapes and wide horizons from mountain eminences along with bracing, invigorating climate, so is it reasonably maintainable that pure, wide-reaching mental emanations engender corresponding physical influences which reach out far beyond the person of their generator and connect him in all ways with the higher and clearer currents of psychological atmosphere. All disease germs are most abundantly prolific in low-lying districts; that is why people go to the hills to get out of the reach of contagious maladies. The Bible narratives, when read understandingly, are found to be in precise correspondence; therefore we are told in the amazing history of the Wars of Israel, that the Lord protected Israel when fighting on the hillsides and hilltops, but in the valleys the enemy prevailed. Translate this into modern language, drop metaphor and forget history, and what confronts us but the great proposition that we are only safe as we abide in elevated thought-districts, and we must therefore continue above the plane of base emotions if we would be secure from overthrow.
Everything is in affinity with its own kind. Like does attract like, and birds of a feather do flock together; but there are paradoxes in the outworking of this universal law which require deep explanation. A person may have consecrated his life to righteousness; he may be honest in thought, word, and deed, yet there may come into his immediate circle persons whose conduct has long been marked by extreme dishonesty. To account for this phenomenon we must look far below the surface and peer into the inmost motives of the people who are thus strangely drawn to one who seems to be in all respects their exact opposite. The true explanation can only be found in the deep craving for something better in the heart of even the most depraved.
We can never tell who may be led our way or drawn into the circle of our influence, and it is not for us to worry ourselves concerning this; but whoever comes should be welcomed, even though the comer be the greatest scoundrel the earth has ever known. If Christians would study their own gospels and seek to emulate the life of their acknowledged Master, the gift of moral healing would not be at so low an ebb in the Church or in the world outside. It is needless for professed Christians to go to the Vedanta philosophy, when they are in possession of the New Testament, but it is by no means the same to believe a record as to live a life, and it is the faithful life, not the assent of intellect to historic occurrences, which develops or liberates spiritual working energy.
When we hear of successful preachers and others magnetizing their audiences, and when popular tradition seeks to explain the secret of Beecher’s or of Gladstone’s immense and long-continuing popularity on the score of personal magnetism, the proffered explanation needs explaining. What is this magnetism? may well be asked. Is it a fluid emanation from the body, such as Mesmer and his followers contend for? Is it Odyle, as Birchenbach insisted? It may include all that these eighteenth century psychologists believed in, but it is vastly more than that reputed fluid emanation which a commission appointed by the French Academy of Sciences at one time totally repudiated. But these same men of learning erred greatly when they covered their ignorance of the true nature of a mysterious force by taking refuge in the word imagination. Persons afflicted with various disorders were cured through imagination, according to these savans. Granting that it was so, the truly scientific attitude toward this singularly beneficent action of imagination would have been to study it and make use of it, which is now being done to a large extent in the rapidly advancing practice of Suggestive Therapeutics, which ought not to be confounded with hypnotism as popularly understood. The successful practitioner in a School of Psychology who employs suggestion wisely and benevolently is a man or woman of super-ordinary attainments intellectually, in that in addition to knowing theoretically what many learned people know just as thoroughly, he or she has undergone a systematic course of self-training resulting in the development of a more than usually powerful and expansive aura.
It is at this point that we note the great success attending the practice of suggestion when practiced by some people, while it is almost an entire failure when attempted by others who have an equal disposition to make fair trial of it. To control one’s thought is always the prime requisite; our thought is properly our servant. The more we succeed in controlling what we are accustomed to call wayward or wandering thoughts, the greater becomes our manifest control over outward things. It is a fallacy to suppose that the harder we work the greater will be the results of our effort; the truth is that the more wisely and scientifically we work the larger and speedier will be our manifest success in the government of circumstances. There is boundless philosophy in the old words, “The wise man rules his stars”; and so he does, whatever truth there may or may not be in astrology. The planets are in certain conditions, the wind is blowing at a certain rate of speed and from a certain quarter: these are ascertainable facts, to deny which would be folly; but the wise man in the midst of outside elements is lord over inside elements which are of the same nature as those without. A scientific study of the Gospels makes every so-called miracle a thoroughly credible occurrence, as, for instance, the story of the storm on the lake, when the Master was peacefully sleeping through the gale, and the terrified disciples found him a very sound sleeper when they wished to awaken him. The moral is that only the one that could not be distressed by the tempest could quell the tempest, and he who quelled it is always pictured as surrounded by a bright, far-reaching luminous aura which shone forth into the darkness and transformed in his vicinity midnight into morning.
Beginning with outside conditions is always commencing at the wrong end, because we must serve an interior or spiritual apprenticeship in Nature’s workshop before we can go out into the exterior world and dominate the things around us. There are clearly two sides of the question of environment. Herbert Spencer is right in counseling his readers to harmonize themselves with their environment, but having done that we can go farther forward and shape circumstances to our own liking. There is a great deal of meaning in the old saying, “Nothing succeeds like success,” but how are we to get the first installment of success, how procure the foundations for the prosperity we expect to establish on a firm foundation? The only wise counsel is to recommend the man or woman or the boy or girl who determines to achieve outward success to pay good heed to the tenth commandment, for just so long as any one is looking outside of his own domain and wishing that some one’s else possessions had fallen to his lot, he dissipates his own energy and through covetousness shrivels inwardly, when conscious strength within is necessary to build the condition of the individual who becomes a magnet to draw to him all that is rightfully his own.
Every great invention and discovery is in line with pure philanthropy, for he who discovers and invents finds a way to extract treasure from the earth, rendering available for the use of multitudes what formerly has been unclaimed by any. True sociology is pure mutualism. All orderly human relations are interdependent, and because this is so no one can become righteously wealthy without contributing to the enrichment of others also. Confucius gave a maxim to the effect that whoever lived righteously would assuredly have neighbors, which really means that he who sets a good example and exerts a gracious influence will find how true is the revised proverb, “One white sheep makes many.” We see on every hand followers of bad fashion; let us then set good fashions, and others will adopt them to benefit instead of injury. It is quite useless to attempt to influence society to any considerable extent, unless you firmly and fully acknowledge your own powers; not power over others to coerce them, but power in yourself to shed light on the path which those around you are travelling. We want no proselytizers, but we need propagandists, and there is a wide difference between the two. The true propagandist is one who is something, and whose light of life so shines around that people cannot do otherwise than feel the radiance of such a life. It is first the silent influence that makes its way in all cases, the something we feel but cannot adequately describe in speech. The man himself, the woman herself, the personal equation, this is what really tells most powerfully, and without this force behind, the most eloquent speeches fall ineffective upon uninfluenced listeners. We cannot criticize mere style, we ignore eccentric mannerism, we even overlook defective grammar in such instances; so eager are we to catch the thought that we care little for the outward drapery. It is as though a dear friend came to visit us; in our joy at welcoming the beloved guest we should not pause to review the friend’s costume. History tells of the poor raiment worn by Socrates; but the crowds who hung upon his instructions cared nothing for his bodily attire; for they felt the radiance of his spirit, and it drew them and held them by a magnetism peculiarly its own.
Such a man as the celebrated evangelist, Moody, owed his marvelous success wherever he went in one hemisphere or another, not to any remarkable doctrine he preached, for he preached the commonplace of Christian evangelism, but to his intense conviction that he had a message to deliver, and that people were ready, willing, yea, waiting, to receive the message from his lips. We cannot remember the remarkable career of Charles Spurgeon without contemplating a most notable instance of the same conviction, for Spurgeon taught nothing different from many other able Baptist ministers. There is no great work to be done by anyone who is diffident and apologetic; no one can run a great business or build up a profession on the sandy foundation of uncertainty or doubt. Doubt is close of kin to dread of failure, which is the greatest of all depolarizers. We are very much deluded if we imagine that people do not feel our mental condition when we approach them; they may not know it in the sense of having logically reasoned it out, but they are inwardly aware of it; and it is not too much to say that with a decided increase of sensitiveness among people in general, the influence of silent thought in determining the success or failure of any projected enterprise will be manifestly much greater in the future than in the past. The mental therapeutist will have to look less to his theories and more to his interior conditions, and the same remark equally applies to all teachers and practitioners of all schools of thought and practice.
It is surely reasonable to undertake to be something, then do something. Telepathy, thought-transference, mental telegraphy, psychometry, and all such words and phrases as are rapidly oozing out of the “Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society,” into the vocabulary of the general populace, are untranslatable and unintelligible until we know something of the power of that outreaching human aura which develops spontaneously with people who live strongly on their inner side. What can be the significance of the strange revivals of long-discarded cults, together with a passion for everything “psychical,” which has taken hold of the people everywhere? The only answers to these inquiries is to be found in the investigating and awakening spirit of the times, which insists upon probing mysteries to their inmost.
There are dangers on every hand for the frivolous, the flippant, and the unwary, but all studies are safe for those who make Truth Itself the one supreme object of their quest. We link ourselves psychically with whatever we love most and think most about. We need not go to India or to Egypt, or even outside our own chambers, to receive illumination, for it is not material journeyings but inward receptivity and enlightenment which brings us into vitalizing contact with all that we truly desire and need to know.
Out of a babel of conflicting voices and a seething medley of conflicting creeds will assuredly come forth, like gold from the alchemist’s crucible, the simple universal religion of humanity. “Long sought without but found within” will be the watch cry of the new-born cycle. The very conflict of opinions without, the impossibility of reconciling diametrically opposed beliefs, will have but the eventual effect of leading all honest truth-seekers to the light within, until each human being will find “the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are,” to be a verifiable truism. The more we fail when we attempt to work from without inward, the sooner we shall learn to harmonize with all Nature’s divine operations and seek to evolve from within outward. In all difficulties let us consult the oracle within, and we shall increasingly prove the truth of the magnificent saying, “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”
The End