A Alma e Como Ela Me Encontrou

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A ALMA,

E COMO ELA ME ENCONTROU

CAPÍTULO I

INTRODUÇÃO

THE history I am about to relate is that of the occurrences by which the production of my book England and Islam was accompanied, and those who, with myself, were the subjects and witnesses of them, were constrained to regard it as containing a New Revelation from the spiritual world. The narrative will constitute both the Introduction, which, under ordinary circumstances, would have appeared together with the book, and also the completion and confirmation of the book. For it will show that in respect not of doctrine only, but also of the “Miracles” whereby such a revelation is wont to be accompanied and attested, no single circumstance was wanting to make the correspondence between it and its recognised predecessors, of whatever age, complete.

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Although virtually pledged by the fact of the publication of England and Islam to a fuller statement than was at that time practicable, l should gladly have refrained from making common a relation so intimately connected with my own interior history as by the nature of the case this must necessarily be, were it not for my absolute assurance, not merely of its truth, but of its supreme importance to the world. Complete as was that assurance in the first instance, during the actual occurrence of the events by which the extraordinary character of the work was attested, all subsequent examination, experience, and reflection have but served, if possible, to strengthen it. It is thus under the profoundest and maturest conviction of the soundness of the claim advanced respecting the source and character of the utterances, of which I have in a manner so strange and unlooked for been made the instrument that I have yielded to an imperative sense of duty, in submitting this introduction, complement, and supplement to England and Islam to the public eye. Delivered as were the contents of that book, not only to me and for me, but through me and for all, I should, I consider, be disregarding a most solemn obligation were I to suffer any personal preference for reserve to interpose between it and its proper career. And in this view I am

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sustained by the concurrence of all those who shared with me the experiences detailed, and who, though unspecified here by name, are both accessible to interrogation, and well known as competent and trustworthy persons.

I am impelled before commencing my narrative to make an endeavour to conciliate two of the most important classes of those who object to aught that involves claims such as those I am advancing. These are the adherents respectively of the current religious and scientific orthodoxies. Addressing first the former, I would remind them that, strange and unlooked for as may be the experiences recorded in this book, they are in no whit unprecedented; but that so far from their being incredible by reason of their novelty, they are but the counterpart of those upon which the faith and practice of Christendom are founded. The records of corresponding experiences in past ages, and to which by common consent the term sacred is applied, teem moreover with predictions of their repetition at a time not obscurely indicated as the present. Hence, so far from those who by styling themselves Christians profess to believe in the inspiration and truth of the Scriptures, being justified in regarding as antecedently incredible a relation such as that contained in this book, the presumption a priori is for them wholly the other way. If the prophetic

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utterances of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures be true, the occurrence at this time in fulfilment of them of something closely approximating to that which is here related, is absolutely indispensable to the maintenance of their credit.

I come to that class which, in deference to the behests of modern science, rejects prior to examination, however attested, any experiences such as those accepted as a matter of course by the Christian, and herein described, on the ground that they are inconsistent with the materialistic hypothesis of existence at present in vogue. As no pretence is made by Science to a knowledge of the limits of possibility, this doctrine means in plain language that, not truth and evidence, but an arbitrary hypothesis, is to be accepted as the measure of fact. So obvious is the absurdity of such a position that it is scarcely necessary to premise that in all I may narrate I shall hold my self bound by ascertained fact only, and shall leave hypothetical impossibilities to shift for themselves. As, however, the so-called scientific mind, while affecting to attach supreme importance to facts, regards as “miracles” and “contrary to experience” and “incredible antecedently to examination,” occurrences such as those which I have to relate, it may be instructive to call attention to at least one indisputable fact, which it is apt to exclude from view. This

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is the fact that, so far from its being the case that such phenomena are so opposed to experience as to be generally incredible, it is notorious that the belief in their possibility has prevailed in all ages, places, and peoples; and that there is at this moment in all parts of Christendom a large and rapidly increasing number of persons of high intelligence, culture, veracity, and judgment, who not merely believe, but who claim to know positively by their own oft-repeated experience, that there are facts in existence for the explanation of which the materialistic hypothesis is wholly inadequate; and who, consequently, are aware that it is not to those who find themselves compelled to recognise the existence of a spiritual world that the reproach of credulity and superstition really attaches.

For, rightly defined, superstition is not belief in spiritual existences or influences. It is belief, in regard to no matter what subject, exercised without reference to reason and evidence. The term thus indicates precisely the mental attitude of the materialistic scientist of our day. For by erecting into a fetish an unproved and unprovable hypothesis – unprovable by reason of its negative character – and resolutely closing his eyes the while to every fact that cannot be brought within its range, he constitutes himself a blind worshipper of a thing of his own creation ; and thus

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makes not truth, but his own hypothesis, the measure and interpreter of the universe.

It is as possible to be superstitiously incredulous as to be superstitiously credulous; to be superstitiously materialistic as superstitiously spiritualistic; superstitiously irreligious as superstitiously religious. There is another term which, equally with that of superstition, by its misuse ministers to irrational incredulity. This is the word supernatural, a word wholly devoid of meaning until a definition for Nature be agreed upon. It is absurd to speak of the supernatural while the functions and limits of the natural are undetermined. The assumption that the spiritual world is not equally with the material a part of “Nature,” is wholly arbitrary.

Restricting the term Nature to that which is derived and secondary, and not self-existent and absolute, the spiritual world becomes as much a part of the natural order as the physical. The hyper- or extra-physical is not necessarily the præter- or super-natural. All things in Nature, so far as is ascertained, consist of a duality of existence. “Why should not Nature itself, as a whole, also be dual, consisting of matter and spirit? Once admitted that the order termed Nature consists of two regions which, however distinct in kind, are yet so far identical in essence as to be capable of association

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and combination, and communication between them under modes such as revelation, miracle, prophecy, apparition, so far from being supernatural or incredible, becomes natural and inevitable. Who is to dictate to the infinite Consciousness into how many grades and spheres of being it shall distribute itself?

There is one view of existence in which a revelation from God himself ceases to be supernatural. This is when, by the adoption of a low form of Pantheism, we regard God not as transcending nature, but as the animating soul of nature, and together with it constituting an inseparable whole. In this view it would no more be correct to regard a communication from the soul to the body of the whole as supernatural, than one from the soul to the body of the individual. If the former be supernatural, so is the latter, and we perform a miracle every time we voluntarily move a limb. It is only when accepting the higher Pantheism, which also is Christian, we regard God as wholly transcending nature and subsisting independently of it, and still as operating in the world, that we come to the term supernatural in its strict sense. A revelation from him to the spiritual world is then no less supernatural than one to the physical world. But though supernatural, it is not incredible or irrational. For what is

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irrational and incredible is the supposition that the universe should be so cut off and separated from its producing, sustaining, and renewing source as to incapacitate that source and itself for holding intercourse with each other. Whether God be but the animating soul of Nature, or one wholly transcending nature, there is no more difficulty in conceiving of a communication from the soul of the universe to one of its members, than from that of an individual to one of his members. The difficulty is to conceive otherwise. The doctrine of correspondence between the part and the whole, which is irresistible to those who have succeeded in obtaining free course for their thought, exhibits the whole teaching of modern science respecting the limits of possibility and the incredibility of the supernatural, as the very climax of unreason.

The threefold existence of which those of us who by penetrating the outer crusts of our nature and reaching the true centre and self, have found ourselves to be partakers, may thus either be distributed under the terms nature and supernature, of which the latter will apply only to God, and the former include both the material and spiritual worlds; or, restricting the term nature to the material, may be distinguished as natural, spiritual, and divine or deific. But whatever the nomenclature preferred, the conclusion remains

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the same – namely, that the belief in the possibility of communication between the higher and the lower of any of these grades, so far from being irrational and superstitious, is rational and necessary, provided only we recognise the existence of one and the same conscious life as pervading the whole.

It is here that for the modern world consists the difficulty that prevents its reception of the “supernatural.” The order of existence is unchanged from the beginning. The spiritual must still as ever be defined as the basis of the material, and God as the source and substance of both, of whose consciousness all things are modes. Modern science, however, looking only to the external aspects of the phenomena under which existence is presented to us, and incapable of discerning the informing spirit, has taken upon itself arbitrarily to deny the consciousness of the whole, and thus has committed the absurdity of deriving the greater from the less, the whole from the nothing, consciousness from unconsciousness, life from death, the positive from the negative, existence from non-existence. Those who have followed the argument on this point in England and Islam (pp. 207-214) need no further demonstration than the one there given of the necessary truth that, so far from existence being conceivable of as unconscious, consciousness and existence are

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identical terms, even where failing to rise into the human mode called self-consciousness.

When science, by extending its thought into all regions of the complex existence shared by us, shall have attained the true meaning of consciousness, and recognised its identity with existence as a necessary truth, it will cease to be atheist and materialist, and become pantheist and spiritualist. And learning further to regard Personality as no accident, but an essential attribute of existence, it will no longer regard it as “superstitious” to believe in the possibility of intercourse between any of the grades or modes into which the Infinite Personality has differentiated itself, any more than it now regards it as superstition to believe in the relations of mind and body, parent and child. That the world has once seen and known this, appears indisputably on an intelligent study of the facts of its history; and also that when its present term of blindness is past, it will do so again. To myself the contents of this book are indications that such a time is at hand. And in this view I have the concurrence not only of those to whom they are known, but of that vast, though as yet unrecognised, body to whom it has been given already to have the spiritual vision restored, and of whom I am but as the latest born. Once more I would remind those who, in deference to a materialistic

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science, disbelieve in a hyperphysical existence, and consequently in the impossibility of spiritual communication, that they are submitting themselves to an authority that is self-convicted of irrationality. For, in denying the universality of consciousness, and committing itself to the absurdity of deriving existence from non-existence, science has out vied any miracle postulated by theology; for it has literally made creation out of nothing. Some of the keener of its professors, perceiving the fallacy of such a position, yet refusing to take the step that would lead them to the truth, have attempted to extricate themselves from the dilemma by a denial of the existence at all of consciousness, that is, of existence itself.

Those who, while repudiating the science, falsely so-called, of materialism, own the allegiance rightly due to true science, may further be won to give heed to the things related herein by learning that even the supernatural or spiritual is not independent of ascertainable laws and conditions; and that phenomena appertaining to regions the most occult, are by those who have investigated their nature readily referable to their proper place in the divine order, and capable of reproduction under known conditions.