Índice
Geral das Seções Índice da Seção Atual
Índice da Obra
Atual Anterior:
I - Introdução Seguinte: lll - Comunicação
(p.12)
CAPÍTULO II
PREPARAÇÃO
THE facts
I have to describe occurred under the closest observation of persons well
qualified by intelligence, education, and mental habit to exercise over them
the most rigid scrutiny. Of these several, including myself, had been long
accustomed to severe intellectual training in various fields of philosophical
inquiry, and were, moreover, previous to their occurrence, wholly sceptical as
to their possibility, and only yielded assent when a continuance of doubt would
have been no longer compatible with a claim to rationality.
Appertaining
as must phenomena of the kind referred to in this book, if possible at all, to
those higher or inner regions of our nature with which it is the lot of
comparatively few persons to become acquainted, and the very existence of which
is ignored or denied by modern science, it may fairly be surmised that they are
in the highest degree unlikely to occur, save to those who by constitution or
habit have previously been in some special way fitted for their manifestation.
For
(p. 13)
this reason, and
also because the relation I have to make must for the general reader depend for
its value upon the tone, character, standpoint, and previous history at least
of the narrator and principal witnesses, it becomes necessary that I should
depart from the reserve most agreeable to myself – so far at least as may
be requisite for the removal of any antecedent moral improbability – and
give my narrative a more or less autobiographical character. And, indeed,
properly considered, to no little extent does my own previous history belong
immediately to the facts; seeing that although the final and crowning
experiences came upon me wholly unexpectedly, yet on looking back and reviewing
all the circumstances, I can plainly perceive that I had long, though
unwittingly, been undergoing exactly such a course of preparation as, according
to the testimony of all ages, was most consistent with the actual result. For
the phenomena in question belong to that region of our nature which, while it
is neither the physical, the moral, nor the intellectual, was yet the region to
the special cultivation of which the whole course of my life, intellectual,
moral, and physical, had persistently tended, – though, as I have said,
unwittingly to myself. For my course of life had, as I can now perceive, been
precisely such as is calculated to minister to the development of that region
of our nature in
(p. 14)
which alone
man can become cognisant of phenomena such as those in question – namely,
the spiritual consciousness. The fact that I had followed such mode as being in
itself the best discernible by me, in that it constituted for me the truest
culture of that perfection the aspiration towards which has ever seemed to me
alone worthy of man’s best energies, and without any expectation of a
result of the kind ultimately attained, seems to have been regarded as the
reverse of a reason for withholding the return by which I was finally rewarded.
The
preparation of which I speak consisted in the steadfast encouragement of the
desire – which I believe to have been innate, so far back beyond memory
was its origin – to accept for my life’s devotion only the highest
and most useful work discernible by me, and to do such work in. the most
perfect manner possible to me.
The
cultivation and realisation of an ideal perfection had always seemed to me to
be alone worth living for. How long it took me to discover that such an end
meant the cultivation of goodness as well as of truth and beauty; how long to
learn that the highest and most artistic work must be the genuine outcome of
the artist’s own life and character, and that the only perfection a man
can place before the world is that which he has himself attained in some region
of
(p. 15)
his own nature;
and how near to or over the brink of, what precipices the pursuit led, it needs
not here to recount. It is enough to say that thus seeking the highest
perfection in idea as the object of realisation in fact, and in the search
learning to ascribe man’s great and manifold shortcomings to his
ignorance of his own nature and destiny, I at length found myself wholly
devoted to an investigation into the significance of the various modes in which
the world’s religious consciousness has found expression, and the nature
and meaning of existence itself. To believe in perfection at all involved the
belief in the existence of a solution of all the problems from the failure to
comprehend which the world’s evils arise; while my devotion to the
pursuit of such a solution involved the further belief, both that it was not
beyond the reach of the human mind, and that its discovery would afford man
precisely that which he needed to enable him to pursue his development toward
the perfection of which he is capable, but which so few seek. It was this end
alone that animated all I wrote, or felt capable of writing. No other was able
to present itself with sufficient attractiveness to stimulate to exertion.
Whether, under the guise of fiction or essay, whatever the direction followed,
it was always my endeavour to probe the consciousness to its depths in the hope
of finding some
(p. 16)
ultimate basis
of belief and practice. No form was sacred to me, no letter infallible, that
concealed from me the underlying spirit of which I was in search, and which I
was instinctively persuaded was there, was good, was discoverable; and the
discovery of which was indispensable to the fulfilment of the end of existence.
Though I knew it not at the time, I have since learnt that every
successive writing that came from me was a faithful record of a step in
my own spiritual history. And the key to my whole thought and work was my
instinctive conviction, that the existence of which we are parts is as a whole
absolutely perfect, and would so appear to us could we only see it aright; and
that there is no reason inherent in the nature of things why the parts should
not also in their degree be perfect. To say that in no existing system of
religion did I find any satisfactory presentation of what I felt to be true in
this respect, is only to say that all existing religions seemed to me to fail
alike to present an adequate conception of the perfection of existence, whether
as whole or part, as God or Nature.
It
was only within the last three or four years that I had come to make such
progress in my inquiry into the world’s religious history as allowed me
to entertain any very high anticipation of success. I then found the facts, of
which I had made a vast collection, becoming so increasingly
(p. 17)
luminous and
harmonious, as irresistibly to suggest the notion that some intelligence other
than mine was concerning itself in their exposition. To such an extraordinary
extent in the latter part of this period did my accessibility to ideas become
developed, that I constantly seemed to myself to be leaping, as it were,
several bars at once of the ladder I was climbing, and reaching one far in
advance of any legitimately within reach, and without my being conscious of the
means whereby the interval had been bridged. Sometimes the achievement was so
palpably independent of my own powers, that although I had not the smallest
belief in the existence of any personal source of suggestion, I could scarcely
refrain, at each new and startling disclosure, from looking up from my work and
audibly expressing my thanks as to some actual though invisible informant.
During
the last year, 1876, I especially observed that precisely in the degree in
which I succeeded in approximating my mode of life and tone of feeling to the
standard I had set before myself as the best, so did my accessibility to ideas
increase, and my progress in my work become assured. It so happened that the
period in question was in all outward respects one of the most critical and
harassing through which, in the course of a singularly chequered life, it has
(p. 18)
been my lot
to pass. All those ambitions and acquisitions, which are ordinarily accounted
as indispensable to the enjoyment of life, seemed to be trembling in the
balance and on the point of passing away. Nevertheless, in proportion as the
prospect outwardly became darker and more intolerable, the prospect inwardly
became brighter and more satisfactory. It was as if I were being subjected to a
contest between two sets of influences which were seeking to draw me in
opposite directions, in order to determine to which side I really belonged. And
I was distinctly conscious of finding myself supported through the crisis by
the reflection that possibly, so far from being really a hindrance, the ordeal
might prove to be the means of educating and fitting me for the work on which I
was engaged. I was beginning to learn that the real question involved in the
religious history alike of the race and of the individual, was that of the
nature and place of the true Self. And as the period of anxiety in question
approached its climax, the more complete my acquiescence in whatever fate might
be in reserve for me, the stronger became also my impression that the
achievement of my task in respect to the race was conditional on its prior
accomplishment in respect to myself. Hitherto I had
been under the belief that I could solve the mystery of the world’s
religious history by a process that was
(p. 19)
intellectual only.
But I was now ascertaining that the failure of all who had preceded me in the
same attempt was due to their sharing this very belief, and that they had
missed the goal of which they were in pursuit through their ignorance of the
existence and nature of the region in which, as I was now learning, that goal
really lay. The attempts made by every one of my predecessors in the study of
comparative theology, or mythology, as they mostly called it, had one and all
failed, for precisely the cause that I was now discovering. They sought in the
outward and sensible for that which was interior and spiritual. Denying the
reality of the ideal world, and seeking to gauge the higher phenomena of
existence with faculties belonging to the lower only, and this even while
disbelieving in the reality of that which they were engaged in exploring, they
were in the position of dwellers on the outskirts of the solar system seeking
to ascertain the nature of the sun with implements merely planetary, and even
while holding the sun to be an illusion. They attempted to work a problem in the
higher mathematics with formulas belonging to the rudimentary arithmetic. They
sought to explain phenomena without any knowledge of or belief in that whereof
the phenomena were but the sensible expression. For them the concrete and
derived was the self-existent, and
(p. 20)
the
abstract and substantial was the non-existent, and but a figment of the fancy.
Arrested by the outward and the seeming, they had failed to reach the inward
and being. Such was the history of every previous attempt to solve the problem
of the world’s religions. The lesson that others had
failed to learn, and their failure to learn which had insured the failure of
their whole enterprise, was the lesson which circumstances were now combining
to teach me. It was exactly in proportion as I became detached from that
outward and apparent self which is to the individual man what the planet is to
the system, that I found myself approximating to that true and central self
which is to the individual man what the sun is to the system. To find this self
for myself was to find it for all persons and all periods. The endeavour to
ascertain the nature of the religious consciousness generally and of its modes
of expression, in the absence on the part of its students of any development of
their own religious consciousness individually, was not more likely to be
crowned with success than would be the endeavour to solve any intellectual
problem without any development of the intellectual faculties. As well might
mere body hope of itself to comprehend the nature and phenomena of mind, as for
mere intellect to comprehend those of spirit. It was
only after a long
(p. 21)
and arduous course
of exploration, historical and psychological, external and internal,
accompanied by much personal training in the habit of self-suppression and
correction, that I discovered what proved to be the key to all I was seeking.
This was the demonstration of the facts that the region of the religious
consciousness has an existence at once real and distinct from every other part
of our nature; that the development of that consciousness finds its climax
alike for all in the ascertainment of the true place and nature of the
essential Self; and also that this self is the same at once for the part and
for the whole of Existence.
My
increased accessibility to ideas, and consequent enhanced capacity for entering
into relations with the region whence they have their derivation, had been
coincident with a certain change in my mode of life to which it is necessary to
advert. It was in the pursuit of what I deemed to be the more perfect way, that I had been led to give special attention to the
question of diet. I had never been fully content with the prevailing mode of
sustaining our organisms. It had struck me as inconsistent with the perfection
conceivable as possible, that man, the highest product of the visible world,
should be so constituted as to be able to sustain himself only by doing
violence, not only to his sensitive fellow-creatures, but to his own higher
feelings. Such
(p. 22)
a practice,
if necessary, seemed to be in a measure a justification of that atheistic
system of thought which regards nature itself as but a first habit, and devoid
of any permanent and inherent standard of perfection. Hence the discovery,
made, as at length it was, by a careful study of the history and physiology of
the subject, under the guidance of one who is destined to bear no small part in
this narrative – that so far from our belonging to the carnivorous
species, our proper food is grain and fruit, and that the best lives and
highest work have ever been those of abstainers from a flesh diet –
opened to me a delightful view of the perfection possible to our race. And it
was no small enhancement of my satisfaction to reflect that, in repudiating the
doctrine of salvation for the body by the suffering and death of another, I was
making a further protest against the corresponding doctrine of salvation for
the soul by means of vicarious atonement. For one of my original instinctive
convictions – namely, that this doctrine is no other than a direct
blasphemy against the perfection of the divine character, and the most prolific
source of the world’s evils – had received the fullest confirmation
from all that I had discovered respecting the world’s religions. It is
mainly to the increased sensibility of my mental surfaces, through the
elimination from my system
(p. 23)
of all
unsuitable substances, that I ascribe the increased accessibility to ideas of
which I have spoken. And all my experience goes to show that it is not to any
original or unavoidable defect of material or structure, but to the coarseness
and unsuitability of the food on which we are in the habit of sustaining our
organisms, that our general insensibility to the finer influences which pervade
the universe – and by the operation of which alone man becomes redeemable
from exclusive engrossment by the lower planes of his nature – is
ascribable. It is, I am confident, because our sympathetic faculties are so
dulled and narrowed through our cruel and unnatural mode of sustaining
ourselves, that we have lost that sense of oneness both with the whole of which
we are parts, and with our fellow-parts of the same whole, in the due
recognition and culture of which religion and morality respectively consist. We
are accustomed to over-materialise ourselves to such a degree as to lose all
cognisance of the immaterial and essential part of us.
As
I proceeded, it became more and more manifest that my work was in some
mysterious way identified with myself. Each step in my own progress was a step
in it; and each step in it was a corresponding step for myself.
Every successive withdrawal of the outer coverings of the central truth of
which I was in search, was
(p. 24)
accompanied by a
like withdrawal of something that had hitherto served to conceal me from
myself. Together we were reaching the bed-rock of truth; together we were being
built up into the superstructure. I was bent on penetrating the inmost recesses
of the human consciousness in search of its fundamental and central fact; and I
had started from the outermost sphere of that consciousness – from the
consciousness, that is, of my own physical existence. Nevertheless, so far from
receding from myself as I quitted my original standpoint, I found myself getting
ever nearer and nearer to what I recognised more and more as my own true and
permanent self the nearer I approached the object of my search. I seemed to be
travelling from the earth to the sun. Yet, so far from losing myself or my
footing, I obtained as I advanced a firmer hold on, and appreciation of, both;
until at length it became evident that my approach to the sun was but an
approach to my own true primary centre and self, whence the outer, secondary,
derived, and apparent self and centre could be discerned as but a planet
revolving in a distant orbit. The centre reached, the true ego of my
system disclosed itself as subsisting independently of the exterior organism.
The
explanation of this phenomenon proved the solution of the problem to which I
had devoted myself, even the key to man’s religious
(p. 25)
history. The
quest on which I was really engaged; the end for which so many religions had
existed; the object of the profoundest hopes and desires of those countless
millions of the human race who had felt the strivings of the spiritual
consciousness; and the means whereby the manifold Saviours of mankind had
achieved salvation for their kind, – all had reference to one and the
same fact, all meant one and the same thing. And it had been simply because I
had been working genuinely, with heart as well as with head, adding to
knowledge sympathy, and with total subordination of my own will, habit,
preference, and interests to whatever might seem to me to be true and right
– in a word, because I had, so far as it was in me, striven to be loyal
to my ideal of Perfection – that I had been enabled to ascertain what
that was. The world’s religions were, like the world’s languages,
the outcome of one and the same instinct, and were therefore essentially one
and identical, however they might differ phenomenally. The religious
consciousness was no other than man’s recognition of the spiritual nature
of that which constitutes his true self, and of the identity of that self with
the substance of the whole of which he is a part – namely, with God. And
the religions in which his spiritual consciousness had found expression were
products of his desire for a demonstration of the fact of that identity, and
for the
(p. 26)
assurance that
the whole reciprocated the sentiment of the part. For it was felt to be
necessary to “salvation,” not merely that man should be conscious
of his substantial identity with God, but that God also should on his part
manifest the same consciousness. While all religions were thus egoistic, in
that they made the individual self their starting-point, they were also
pantheistic, in that they regarded God as that self, its parent substance and
true centre. It was thus that I found that my quest was really for the nature
and place of the true self and centre at once of the part and the whole, of the
individual and universal, of myself and God. And it was because in seeking for
the source and nature of the religious consciousness of mankind, I had not
declined to submit my own consciousness to the process, that
my work had assumed the personal character of which I have spoken. All the
ancient religions, I had found, were, while regarding personality as an element
of existence, essentially pantheistic. All had made assurance of salvation
dependent upon the joint recognition by God and man of their substantial
identity. And all sought, by means of the subordination of the outer and
sensible self of the body, and exaltation of the inner and permanent self of
the soul, to arrive at a positive demonstration of that identity. All these
religions, moreover, contained, either actually or
(p. 27)
potentially, the
knowledge of the process whereby God and man in turn become, or manifest that
they are, each other. For the system of thought known to Christians under the term
“Christ,” was, I had found, identical in kind with that which
already existed in the Hindoo, Egyptian, Zoroastrian,
Hellenic, Hebrew, and other systems. And, indeed, it had only been by my first
ascertaining the true character of the esoteric doctrines of the religions
antecedent and exterior to Hebraism and Christianity, that I had been able to
reach the central idea of which “Christ” was the fullest
expression. In each nation had been planted a germ of the tree of true religious
knowledge; and it had depended upon the mode in which the plant had been
cultivated how far it attained its true and full development. In Hebraism and
Christianity was the culture carried to the highest perfection. Elsewhere,
after attaining a certain growth, it fell away and decayed without having
reached its full stature. In “Christ” alone it was perfect. But
even then the world was not ripe for its full comprehension. And the idea
comprised in “Christ” was subjected to the arrest and distortion
which have left its full realisation by the world for attainment at a time
which is still in the future. It is not enough, I found, that the human
consciousness attain its full development in a single people or
(p. 28)
individual only;
is has yet to be attained in the race. To attain its due perfection humanity
must recognise its essential oneness with God, and must moreover receive
assurance that God also recognises his essential oneness with humanity. But to
this end it is indispensable that humanity learn the truth respecting the nature
of that existence of which itself and God are to each other as part and whole;
and that religion, science, and philosophy be recognised as being what they
really are – namely, one, in that they all are concerned with the nature
and culture of the common existence.
It
was the discovery of a correspondence between the development
of the consciousness of man, both as race and as individual, that more
immediately qualified me for the solution given in England and Islam of the
problem of the present crisis. The insight that had been given me is there
applied to the disclosure of the scheme of the world’s past, present, and
future.
The
one universal object of aspiration and worship, whether for individual or for
race, is, I had discovered, Existence. But, as I had also discovered, it
depends, both for individual and for race, upon the stage of development of the
consciousness in what Existence is held essentially to consist. The course of
that development comprises many stages, but it is always in the
(p. 29)
same
direction – namely, from the recognition of the outward, natural, and
sensible to that of the inward, spiritual, and real, as the constituent of the
true self. Progress consists in rising from the recognition of the physical, to
that of the spiritual life. It was, therefore, no arbitrary rule that dictated
the divisions of religious doctrine and practice into esoteric and exoteric,
the inner and the outer, formerly any more than now. The souls of the
individual and the universal are ever seeking mutual recognition. But while the
universal soul is constant in its divine and absolute plenitude, it depends on
the degree of its development in the individual how far or under what mode or
grade it is cognisable by the individual. The man living wholly in sense, and
recognising the physical life as the sole or chief good, adores the universal
existence under those aspects in which it ministers to him physically. Thus in
all ages have the Sun and Sex, as the agents of physical existence, been the
prime objects of worship. As the consciousness unfolds, and man passes through
the intellectual and moral into the spiritual part of his nature, he learns to
recognise in the existence shared by him, elements transcending the merely
physical. Only when he has attained the full development of his spiritual
consciousness, and by his satisfaction therein has learnt that he has reached
not only his own true self and centre, but
(p. 30)
the true self and
centre of existence itself, does life and its material agents to the category
of the phenomenal and transient, and make the supreme object of his culture the
spiritual life, together with its source, the spiritual Sun and Soul of all,
whose power, wisdom, and love he formerly adored under their material symbols
of light and heat, and the attributes of Sex, though he did so unconsciously,
through mistaking the symbol for the substance, “Nature” for God.
All
religious history, whether of the race or of the individual, shows that it is
not with “Nature,” the outward, phenomenal, and derived, that the
developed consciousness can rest content as the ultimate object of culture and
aspiration – this suffices only the worshipper who is outside the sacred
mysteries – but the animating soul of Nature, the infinite, eternal
Spirit, at once immanent in and transcending Nature as a body voluntarily and
for a time and purpose assumed. Only when man recognises a portion of that
spirit as subsisting in and constituting his own true substance and self; only
when he has received demonstration of his essential oneness with the universal
substance, even God, does he find satisfaction and content. To him, then, the
material and phenomenal are comparatively as nought, for he does not consist of
them, enter though they may for a time and purpose into
(p. 31)
association with
him. Rather are they apt to minister to the obscuration of his spiritual
perceptions, and of his attainment of that peace which, by virtue of its appertaining to the spiritual and not to the
intellectual part of him, “passes understanding.” Such temporary
obscuration, however, must be regarded as constituting an essential stage in
his development. Even the soul-germ must be nourished in darkness.
The
doctrine of correspondence between the spiritual and physical regions of existence
once suggested to me, it soon proved to be the key not only to the relations
subsisting between the individual and the whole, showing man to be in very fact
but a repetition in small of the universe at large, and of the solar system in
particular, but also to the history of the race. Following this clue, I was led
to see in
(p. 32)
those of its
spiritual creation, as exhibited especially in the religious development of
Israel – as representative people of the dark races – the process
had not been completed in Israel; but that in consequence of the rejection of
Jesus, who represented for them the full manifestation of the Soul, it had been
transferred to another race and people; so that the development of man’s
religious consciousness was still proceeding, in the same order and under the
same impulse, towards its ultimate completion, although the people originally
chosen to be the medium of its development had forfeited , the distinction. That
is, while a few in Israel had carried the culture of the true self, or soul, to
such perfection as to have received in Jesus the demonstration they sought of
the substantial identity of man and God, of the individual and the universal
soul, the nation at large rejected that demonstration, and thereby forfeited
its share in the full consummation of its spiritual development. This
revelation of “Christ,” as the fullest expression in humanity of
the nature and character of the supreme spirit of the universe, at the end of
what I had found to be the “fourth day” of the world’s
spiritual creation, corresponded with the apparition of the sun at the end of
the fourth day of the world’s physical creation. The “fifth
day,” during which we specially, as representative people of the white
races, have “peopled
(p. 33)
the
waters” with our own highly vitalised race, and thus fulfilled the
correspondence with the fifth day of Genesis, is now completed. And it is upon
the “sixth day” of its spiritual creation that the world is now
entering. That day, in the physical creation, was devoted to the making of man
“in the image of God, male and female.” It is, I was shown, the spiritual correspondence to this that has now to be
fulfilled. Hitherto, during the spiritual “fifth day,” under the
sacerdotal degradation of the character and doctrine of Christianity, the idea
of “Christ” as a “man-child” has “ruled the earth
with a rod of iron;” so terrible a foe to the true development and
regeneration of the world has been the system which has usurped the name and
authority of Christianity. Now, as all signs show, the time is approaching for
the recognition of the element in the nature and doctrine of Christ, hitherto
so fatally neglected. Not as a “man-child” or with a “rod of
iron” is “Christ” henceforth to be known; and not by the
sacrifice of others, but by “love,” will the world be saved. Hence
the doctrine of the “sixth day,” on which we are now entering, will
consist in the practical recognition of the divine nature as comprising the feminine
as well as the masculine elements of existence; and in the accordance to both
sides of the dualism of which Existence consists, that
(p. 34)
equal rank
and influence which are essential to the full constitution of man “in the
image of God,” and of the true Christ, “male and female.” The
“man-child” regime of force and will, and the sacrifice of others
to self, and of intuition to reason, of sympathy to selfishness, of the feminine
to the masculine, has but plunged the world deeper and
deeper into evil. It is by the exaltation of the other side of the dualism to
its proper place, by a regime of love and self-sacrifice, and the subordination
of our own lower to our own higher, and the culture of the intuitions and
sympathies of the soul, that the world’s redemption is about to be
accomplished. The race is approaching that stage which in the individual
corresponds to maturity, even the maturity of the spirit, in which man
recognises woman not as his servant and plaything, and companion on but one and
that the lower plane of his nature, but as his complement and supplement on all
planes. It was because the impending cataclysm was to issue in the completion
of the work of the sixth day of the spiritual creation, by the full recognition
of the Soul and its essential dualism, that the powers of evil were gathering
together once more to seek to defeat the divine ends by thrusting themselves,
in the shape of the as yet unvitalised Empire of the
North, between England and the East as representatives respectively of the
(p. 35)
light and
dark, the male and female, divisions of humanity.
A
brief recapitulation will aid the comprehension of the process of development.
While the object of prime solicitude, and therefore of worship and culture, is
the existence of which all men recognise themselves as a portion, it is only on
the completion of their system of thought that they are able to recognise the
soul as the basis of that existence. It is life, the physical life, that first claims our devotion, while that is to the
outer and undeveloped sense the sole constituent of the individual. But to rest
content with this stage, and make the self consist in the bodily organism, is
to remain in a merely animal condition. Consisting as does man of a manifold
nature, there are many spheres to be penetrated ere, starting from the
outermost orbit of sense, he wins his way to the true centre and sun of the
spirit. Once there, he sees all things from the centre of his system and of all
systems, and knows that he has reached the inmost sanctuary both of his own
consciousness and of all consciousness, and that the consciousness of the part
is that also of the whole, even God. But above and beyond the fact of this
identity between his own and the universal soul, he has yet to learn the nature
of the common soul of existence. The study of religion, whether carried on by
an
(p. 36)
examination of
one’s own consciousness, or by that of its history in the world, leads
necessarily to the discovery of the identity of the individual with the universal
soul – that is, of the truth of the ancient pantheism – and this
prior to the attainment of any insight respecting the soul’s precise
nature. The latter is a matter of personal development both for race and for
individual; and the steps whereby the development is attained are the same for
both in all cases. It is by a regular law of growth that man attains the
knowledge of the nature of the individual, and thence of the universal soul.
Only in an advanced stage does he discover the correspondence between his inner
and outer nature, and find that as is the body so is the soul; as is the
individual so is the universal. The knowledge which is of the
intellect alone will lead him to regard the soul that he has come to discern as
the source of all as one and single. Only when he reaches the stage at
which the affections are developed does he find that duality is essential to
production, and that therefore the soul, individual and universal alike, must
be dual. It is still the soul of the universe that is manifesting itself in
humanity, as that of the sun does in the planet. It is the spiritual Sun of
Suns that is seeking to suffuse with a higher life the world that has been
projected from its physical counterpart. But man must first recognise the
(p. 37)
existence of
that spiritual sun, the universal soul, and his own portion in it, before he
can proceed to the comprehension of its nature. To do this he must turn his
gaze inwards, where it shines in his own inner self, precisely as he must look
from the earth to the physical sun if he would learn concerning the system, and
step thither in idea. So far from being competent now to discern the nature of
the soul, man has almost lost, his consciousness of its existence. To this end
a new dispensation is requisite, even one which, while it shall repeat and
renew the work of old, will also complete and fulfil it. The spiritual Sun has
now to re-manifest itself to man’s darkened gaze, and to do this in such
guise that man shall recognise both its existence and its nature. Learning from
the individual the universal, or from the universal the individual soul, he
learns at once himself and God, and completes the cycle of his development by
ascertainment of their essential oneness. Such are the principles on which the
ancient religions were framed. Interiorly and really they were a worship of the
Soul itself at once of each and all. Exteriorly and apparently they were a
worship of material expressions and limitations of that Soul in the visible
world.
I
had thus ascertained that for all religions alike there was but one name given
under heaven
(p. 38)
whereby men
could be saved; and that was the Soul, at once of the individual and of the
universal, whose dual nature found its fullest manifestation in
“Christ.” The culture of the soul, I had found as I advanced in my
comprehension of the ancient pantheisms, had for Gentile and Hebrew alike,
whether popularly recognised or not, constituted the basis of all religion. The
relationship between the soul as universal and as individual was as that
between parent and son. The systems varied mainly in that in some the masculine
and in some the feminine element was the most conspicuous. But in all both were
recognised; and while all insisted on the unity, none ignored the duality of the
divine existence. The main distinction between the Hebrew and Gentile systems
was this: while with the Gentile, the knowledge of the doctrine of the soul was
reserved for those who, being deemed competent, were received and initiated
into the sacred “mysteries” and taught the full significance of the
doctrine of universal identity on the spiritual plane, the masses being, for
their inability to rise to such spheres of thought, left to the practice of a
sensuous polytheism, or the worship of the universal under individuated
aspects; with the Hebrews it was sought to comprehend the whole of the people
within the same rule. For them all must be
(p. 39)
partakers in the
worship and culture, directly, and not mediately, of
the one God and soul of the race; all must be built up to be a pure and
perfected body for that soul, which, as incarnated in their race, they regarded
as the “son” of the universal existence, whom they personified
under the name of Jehovah, or the great “I Am.” Christianity thus
existed potentially in, and was the proper development from, the systems both
of Jew and Gentile; for the essential object in both was the accomplishment of
such perfecting of the body as was conducive to the full infusion or
“incarnation” of the spirit. Such an incarnation of the soul of the
nation or race it was that constituted alike the “sun gods” and
“saviours” of the Gentiles, and “Messiah” of the Jews.
All peoples alike were “animists” to use the expression of a modern
school that regards the soul as an illusion – chiefly, apparently, on
account of the universality of its recognition; and all looked fervently for
some “coming man” who should constitute in the flesh the full
manifestation of the national soul. But it depended on the stage of development
of the individual consciousness – that is, it depended on the place
recognised by the individual as that of the true self – whether such full
expression of the national soul was expected to demonstrate its divinity by its
pre-eminence on the physical
(p. 40)
or on the
spiritual plane. The multitude, immersed in sense, looked for an earthly
conqueror. The few, highly cultured in spirit, looked for a spiritual
perfection in him who, by achieving the conquest over matter, sense and death,
was to demonstrate the identity of God and man.
I
had thus found that so far from the religious history of man presenting a scene
of aimless confusion, it had followed a consistent course throughout; and that
notwithstanding the persistent efforts of man’s outer nature to obstruct
the development of his inner, each successive stage had served only to bring
man nearer and nearer to the complete recognition of the reality, nature, and
substantial identity of God and the soul, and of the absolute perfection of the
real existence. And not only were the religions identical in object and aim,
but the histories and characters of those in whom they culminated were
identical also. Representing the full incarnation of the soul, the
“saviours” of mankind had in all essential respects the same history,
by virtue of the fact that while the soul, or being, is
one, the body, or seeming, is one also. And
as man physically is a portion of the matter of the solar system, while
spiritually he is a portion of the soul of that system, it followed by virtue
of the law of heredity that the more perfectly he represented his divine parent
in essential being,
(p. 41)
the more
nearly would his external history indicate a correspondence with the physical
solar phenomena. Neither through accident, imitation, nor superstition did it
come that the characters and careers of Chrishna, Osiris, Mithras, Buddha, Jesus,
and other of the world’s recognised “saviours,” bore so close
an analogy to each other and to the phenomena of the sun’s annual course.
It was due to the fact that man’s history in both his physical and
spiritual regions is one, and that between him and the system of which he is a
part there subsists a family resemblance which is
strong or weak, according to the measure in which he possesses the spirit of
that system. The function of all the religions was the culture of the soul. And
the method consisted in the perfecting of the body by means of pure living, in
respect of diet and habit, and of the mind by the practice of pure thinking and
feeling, and the cultivation of the intuitions and sympathies, and the
encouragement of aspiration towards the highest perfection conceivable.
According to the completeness with which this rule, the rule of perfection on
all planes, was followed, would be the degree of development of the spiritual
consciousness, and the perfection of the manifestation of the spirit in the
flesh, whereby demonstration was to be given of the oneness of deity and
humanity. For a “saviour” was one who, by manifesting
(p. 42)
in his
life the perfection possible to those only who, by virtue of their having
“the spirit without measure,” were exempt from the ordinary
limitations of humanity, demonstrated on one or more planes of his nature the
identity of the human with the universal soul. The “Hero,” or demigod,
was a “Saviour” on the physical plane. The “Christ” was
a “Saviour” on all planes, and notably on the spiritual.
While
I had thus reached the conclusion that the world’s religions were all
designed, interiorly at least, with a view to the culture and development of
the soul as constituting the point of identity between man and God, and as
being the part of man alone worthy the highest consideration, inasmuch as it
was his only real and permanent element, I had still to ascertain the grounds
of the confidence with which the reality and immortality of the soul were
regarded. It is one thing to see intellectually that a thing must be; it is
another thing to know absolutely that it is. It was by a process purely
intellectual that I had come to regard the pantheistic hypothesis, which
involved the reality and indestructibility of the soul, as a necessary truth.
But it was evidently more than an intellectual conviction that had been
attained by the ancients. Their whole system was constructed on a basis
(p. 43)
of
positive assurance – an assurance which l had found, to my surprise, was
not confined to the non-Hebrew systems. For it is a mistake, I found, to
suppose, as is ordinarily done, even by “professors” of comparative
theology, that the Hebrews did not share the general belief on this point. So
far were the Israelites from rejecting or ignoring the doctrine of the
existence and immortality of the soul, with which they had been familiar in
Egypt, that the whole Mosaic system was built on the assumption of the
existence of a world invisible to ordinary sight, and tenanted by spirits unembodied and disembodied. It was simply because no doubt
existed on the subject, that any specific declaration was deemed superfluous.
The Hebrew pantheist saw, with his fellows, that the doctrine of the identity
of the individual with the universal self, involved the continuance of the
individual. No mere earthly or external end had all the long and arduous course
of purification, edification, consecration, and sanctification, sacrament and
ceremony, enjoined in his law, any more than in that of the corresponding
“mysteries” of the Gentiles. It was for the sake of the spirit that
the body also was to be made perfect. Only a pure body could be a fitting abode
for the “son” of Jehovah, the soul that was seeking to incarnate
itself fully in
(p. 44)
they and
the initiated of the kindred religions to attain the certainty they enjoyed?
For, that certainty had been attained by them is manifest in every fragment
that has survived of the ancient rituals, as witness the ritual of Osiris, the Orphic and Pindaric hymns, and abundant other
remains. “The vulgar,” says Plutarch, “believe that nothing
remains after death. But we, initiated in the sacred rites of Bacchus, and
witnesses of his holy mysteries, know that there is a future state.” Many
writers, including Strabo, Isocrates,
and Eusebius, express themselves in like manner. Hence it was evident to me
that until I had either attained the like certainty for myself, or discovered
the grounds of the certainty enjoyed by them, I had not found the ultimate
solution of the problem of the world’s religions, as they were interiorly
and really. Nevertheless, though utterly in the dark on the point, I worked on,
rejoicing in the light that continued to pour on me with ever-increasing
plenitude, and revelling in the surprises which were constantly greeting me, as
proving beyond all doubt that I was on the right road; and not despairing of
being enabled, sooner or later – though how, where, or when, I could by
no means divine – on my own part, with the initiated in the sacred
mysteries of old, to exclaim, “I know that I
am immortal.”
(p. 45)
It
was with no small satisfaction that I found that the pantheistic doctrine of
salvation by the culture of the soul, was based on a
conception of the perfection of the divine character, to which the idea of
vicarious sacrifice was wholly repugnant. The system of seeking to appease the
deity by offerings consisting of the blood and agony of others, instead of by
pure living and the subjugation of one’s own lower nature, was, I found,
no essential part of religion, but was a concession to the grosser notions of
the masses who, immersed in sense, required, for their own satisfaction, some
visible token of atonement and reconciliation, and preferred acquiring it at
the cost of others. It was a tribute to sense from which the spirit wholly
recoiled; and one that, by being elaborated by priests into a system and
accepted by the vast majority of mankind, came in time to constitute that
sacrificial regime which has been the world’s greatest bane.
With
regard to the sacrificial part of the Mosaic system, the clearer my insight
became, the more forcibly my choice was narrowed to one of two hypotheses:
Either that in deference to the prejudices of the masses of the Israelites,
Moses condescended to the permission of sacrifice to a very limited extent; or
that he forbade it wholly, together with all bloodshed; and that the sacrificial
(p. 46)
system of the
Hebrews was an after invention of a degenerated sacerdotal order.
In
passing beyond the limits of the initiated into the sphere of the ignorant,
religion has always become degenerated into a fetish-worship, varying in its
degrees of cruelty and sensuality according to the general status of the people
and their priests. And these two regions of its manifestation, the inner and
the outer the spiritual and the material, the sympathetic and the selfish, the
intuitional and the sensible, became in the hands of their respective
representatives – the prophet and the priest – as essentially
antagonistic to each other as light and darkness. The prophet, cultivating the
intuitions and the sympathies, and appealing directly to the soul and God,
represented the spiritual side of man’s nature; while the priest,
cultivating forms and appearances, appealed to sense and the outer self, and
made salvation dependent on the sacrifice of others for self instead of on the
sacrifice of the lower self to higher by the leading of a better life. The
process whereby I had thus been led to discover the true nature and source of
the conflict ever raging in the world, between the soul and sense, being and
seeming, prophet and priest – a process of which the abandonment of a
flesh-diet was an essential part – proved to be indispensable to my
(p. 47)
preparation for
the work l destined to perform. For the main object of England and
Islam is to exhibit the world’s present evil
plight as the inevitable result of man’s persistent attempt to build
himself up in defiance of all the true principles of his existence. Both his
politics and his science represent the attempt to construct society on the
simple basis of the body, the Soul and God being ignored. And in his religion,
he has built on the doctrine of a deity who so far from being a Parent to his creation, is evil and a lover of blood. Recognising the
dualism of his own and of all existence only to suppress one essential moiety
of it, he has made its masculine constituents all, and
its feminine naught. And, finally, he has rejected the teachings of intuition,
experience, and of the facts of his own structure, in order to degrade himself
from the ranks of the frugivorous and teachable to
that of the carnivorous and intractable animals. With his very life-springs
poisoned at their fount, through the ignorance or treachery of his counsellors,
until the very art of healing has become but a synonym for the introduction
into his system of fresh poisons, it is for those who have preserved their
spiritual vision no occasion for wonder, but an invincible necessity, that the
patient should at every point present symptoms of the disease raging within; or
that a crisis should arise from which he could
(p. 48)
be
extricated only through intervention on the part of some higher power. His own
soothsayers have proved themselves at their wits’ end when, true to their
traditions of blood, they counsel, no sacrifice of that to which the mischief
is due – the patient’s own evil habits of life – but a fresh
sacrifice, and on a vaster scale, of some other.
It
was thus in man’s past history that the clue to and cure for the present
was to be found. How I came to learn positively and definitely that my work was
to be not exegetic but didactic, and that it was to consist in the exposure of
the true nature and inevitable results of the prevailing system; and how I
attained certainty respecting the reality of the soul, and was enabled, with
the initiated in the ancient mysteries, to exclaim, “I know that I am
immortal,” will appear as we proceed. The stage thus far reached is that
in which the phenomena presented by man’s religious history are seen to
be wholly inexplicable, save on one hypothesis – namely, that there is on
part of the world a constant effort ever exhibiting itself in an ascent through
grades innumerable of consciousness, to attain full recognition of the soul by
which it feels itself to be animated; an effort in which, while it is
perpetually obstructed by the lower elements which enter into its composition,
it is
(p. 49)
perpetually
seconded by a corresponding effort on part of the soul itself, which is at once
that of the individual, the planet, the system, and the universe at large, to
infuse itself more and more fully into the world. The confirmation of this
hypothesis, together with the further discovery that it is through the meeting
and combination of the ascending soul of the world, on attaining its full
development in some one of its children, with the soul of the universe, which
has descended upon it, that humanity obtains that full recognition of its
nature and source which has ever been recognised as a special manifestation of
God in the flesh, were shown me during the delivery of England and
Islam. Then only was I enabled fully to perceive that
the “Christ,” in whatever age and people, is he in whom such union
of the ascending and descending, the human and divine souls, is recognised as
having taken place; and that it is by virtue of the filial relationship borne
by man to the spirit of our system, whose material symbol is the sun, that the
correspondence is due between the phenomena of the sun’s annual course
and the histories of the world’s Saviours or “Sun Gods,” and
proportionately for every man according as he resembles his divine Parent. Many
facts illustrating this correspondence had already been exhibited by me in the
little volume
(p. 50)
entitled The Keys of the
Creeds, which constituted my last stepping-stone from the
region of intellectual to that of spiritual perception, by the attainment of
which alone man completes his system of thought.
Índice Geral das Seções Índice da Seção Atual Índice da Obra Atual Anterior: I - Introdução Seguinte: lll - Comunicação
