Section 7

** Who now can tell whether to live may not ^ Be properly to die ? And whether that Which men do call to die, may not in truth Be but the entrance into real Ufe?"
Not Caesar, but Caesar's body it is, that in turn passes from the environment of an emperor to ignoble service. I illustrate this to myself, if illustration be necessary, by throwing amongst coals which burn by the side of the desk at which I write pieces of scarfskin picked out of my palms, together with cuttings from nails and strands plucked from scalp and beard. These parts of my body fizzle and scorch and blaze and dis- appear ; I remain. I shall have no funeral over the ashes of the grate. On the morrow, when these ashes shall have been carried away, the I will be without concern as to whether the depositing place is a bright, sunny hill-side or a slum reeking with filth and vileness.
What as to things which go without one knowing of the going ? What as to things which come without one knowing of the coming? Difference is certainly no difference at all !
In an Upanishad, a sacred book of the East, well
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studied by Rosicrucians, it is recorded that Indra Ma- ghavat lived one hundred and five years as a pupil with Pragapati. The conclusion reached after all these years of study is little different from the premises of Cartesianism, and nothing at all different from the con- victions of Platonism. The words of the master are as follows : " Maghavat, this body is mortal and always held by death. It is the abode of that Self which is immortal and without body. When in the body (by thinking this body is I and I am this body) the Self is held by pleasure and pain. So long as he is in the body, he cannot get free from pleasure and pain. But when he is free of the body (when he knows himself different from the body), then neither pleasure nor pain touches him."
But how does Ego get into body ? or how does
body get around Ego ?
After so simple a fashion as lies with the demonstra- tions of physiology I may say how environment once existing is maintained even though, as with Maghavat, thirteen bodies have been used and cast during his cen- tury of pupilage. From circumference of Pineal gland to circumference of body at large, parts are, in com- position, as series of molecules. As any one of these molecules leaves its place by diminution another occu- pies it through augmentation, hence Form continues filled ; waste and repair are the words of physiology, and here is the meaning of the emptying and filling of market-baskets.
But as to origin of Ego ?
Everything that is known, or that can he known, or that needs to be known of Ego shows itself in the mirror D 7
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that is a man's own Self. Our proposition is, as cer- tainly must be clearly understood, that Ego knows itself, as it finds itself, fully, undeniably, perfectly. Nothing not recognized in the mirror of Self is of the slightest possible concern or account. If Matter be not seen by Ego as Essence, matter as Essence is of no relation with it. If God be not seen by Ego, save as Creative power, recognition of God as Creative power is all that concerns it.
There are two quaint verses carved on the gravestone of a certain Robert Crytoft, in the churchyard of Homersfield, which are expressive; they are entitled "Myself," and read as follows:
" As I walk'd by myself, I talk'd to myself, And thus myself said to me, Look to thyself, and take care of thyself, For nobody cares for thee.
" So I turned to myself, and I answered myself, In the self-same reverie, Look to myself, or look not to myself. The self-same thing will be."
How shall a writer, such as he who here holds the pen, move from the present situation ? The query in- volves knowledge of the reader. This knowledge being impossible of attainment, there is nothing left but to turn in memory to old students and friends who for the moment are to be particularly addressed. We are acquainted with the speculative lore of the ages, dating from the origin of the question of lonianism, *^Who and what is Thales?" From Greece we crossed to India, learning of Esoteric foundation. Back to the region of the Archipelago Plato enlarged our experi-
CONCERNING I. ^5
ences, passing us, in turn, to the beautiful mysticism of the Alexandrians. From Plotinus, through whom it was, perhaps, we learned the naturalness of the super- natural and the manner of contemplating the Infinite in the process of Ecstasy ; through whom certainly it was that first we met and considered the Spinozan Pantheism of centuries, and from whom later we passed to scholasticism, this temporarily holding our attention as long before Carneades had held not only Rome, but Galba and Cato, its censors. Giordano Bruno had invited us by his honesty, and had repelled us by his coarseness. Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Comte, the anatomists, the physiolo- gists, the metaphysicians, and the psychologists, all in turn, forward and backward and backward and for- ward, we have lived with and come to understand.*
What is to say to the reader who is not of our classes except as follows :
The I knows itself in and of itself. What every human being recognizes and knows as its Selfhood, that is Selfhood. But the man not of the schools is without data to appreciate what wonderful knowledge is this knowing of the I by the I. It is knowledge having existence before the schools. It was foundation in the beginning, it is foundation now. The single, only foundation is
I.
From I is departure, To I is return.
* See " Thinkers and Thinking.
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MIND.
Something more needs to be said about the subject of Mind. Mind .is expression of will inhering to Ego precisely, and in no other sense, as music is expression of harmony residing with musician. Will-expression is through brain, harmony-expression is through violin or other musical instrument. Brain and musical in- strument are exactly of like signification. A musical instrument allows of the giving out of sounds. A brain allows of the giving out of thoughts. Harmony is not of instrument, but of musician. Thoughts are not of brain, but of Ego.*
Here it seems necessary to accord what is meant with physiological observations. What has been written of simply under the term brain implies what is known by the anatomist as cerebro-spinal system. This system lies both within and without the skull, and is made up of parts, prominent among which are to be named the cerebrum, cerebellum, pons Varolii, medulla oblongata, and spinal cord; besides these, ganglionic bodies in large numbers, complicated and multitudinous com- missures, together with nerve-cords possessed of special and common signification. In a word, this nervous system is the most wonderful machine in the world. A machine is it, because, like all other constructions, it is found wholly made out of matter. Matter is it as exhibited in the facts of its composition and decom- position.
* Automatic thinking, a condition that surely manifests itself, is habit ; it is analogous, after a manner, with automatic motion.
CONCERNING I. yy
Differentiations as to special office of special parts have been worked out to a fair extent. It is to be implied, with good reason, that ganglia named the thalami optici preside over ordinary sensation, that other ganglia, the corpora striata, attend to the con- cerns of motion, that excito-motor responses relate with the spinal cord, and so on, down to the refine- ments of the localizations of Gall and Spurzheim.*
Development and office constitute the differences in nervous apparatus. It is a science which certainly shall reach nothing that attempts the study of the human nervous system apart from nervous systems at large. Extremes lie with man at one end and a monad at the other end. Between is every grade of power.
Proof of difference between the Ego of a human and the Ego of a monad, and of intermediate Egos, lies with difference met with in instruments. This differ- ence in animal instrument is seen in diminution of the cerebrum and in the comparative increase of the sen- sory ganglia, as descent is followed from the higher to the lower mammalia. In the animal known as the lowest of the vertebrate class, the Lancelet, sensory ganglia have taken the place entirely of cerebrum; there is not so much as a rudiment of this last.
By a Lancelet it is demonstrated that cerebrum is in no sense identical with Ego, while it is as well nega- tively exhibited, considering a Lancelet, that it is iden- tical, as office is concerned, with what is known as Mind 'j that is to say, in proportion with the character
* Much new work is being done in this direction which is of pro- found interest to the physiologist.
7*
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and meaning of an Ego so is found its instrument. Inferentially, it is no unjust deduction that absence of cerebrum implies absence of, or at least little relation and intercourse by Ego with outside things.
Again, it is known to every physiologist, be he Rosi- crucian or simple direct observer, that the cerebrum may be lost from an organism of which it is a natural part, and yet the bodily life go on quite as before ; an only difference being that expressions of mind disap,pear; offices pertaining to intellection having to be per- formed for the mutilated animal by an outside intelli- gence. The writer had at one time in his possession, for a period of several weeks, a pigeon from which the entire cerebrum had been taken away. An only per- ceptible difference between this and its fellow-birds lay with what has just been referred to. The pigeon would swallow when food was pushed back into its throat, and it would spread its wings if thrown into the air, but the performance of both offices was seen and understood to be purely automatic.
The ganglia constitute, it would seem, the true sen- sorium of common organism, and with these ganglia lies the power to carry on organic functions independently of outside direction. The power and intelligence of the ganglionic system are the power and intelligence of a law in which the system has its existence ; saying this, all is said that is known concerning it ; all is said that is of signification in relation with organism ; it is matter's law dealing with matter ; it is phenomenon.*
* The sympathetic system is allowed to go with simple mention, that confusion may be avoided, as unprofessional readers are con- cerned. See " Man and his World."
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In understanding the law of matter do we not under- stand that body seen and body unseen are the same ?
God is good ! The dream-state affords Ego the secret of its relation with the Universal.
"VI.
CONCERNING SOUL.
By the term Soul is meant exactly what has been named as the third of the principles of the Trinity ; namely, Holy Ghost. Let him or her who would be clear as to conception and understanding of the phi- losophy of the volume in hand recognize this thor- oughly. Soul, spirit, mind, Ego, and kindred terms, are so promiscuously used as implying the same thing that definition has come to defy definers. Writers and speakers everywhere employ common names without meaning at all common things. The same word is made to stand for things not at all the same. Reader and writer are here to understand each other as to definitions.
Let the two circles considered, and the third, here to be considered, have hours, days, weeks, years given to getting full comprehension of them, if such time is necessary to such comprehension. Years have been given to the study of them by the writer. No man or woman ever has understood or ever can understand
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himself or herself in relation with the Universal, un- less such comprehension be possessed ; not simply as to words, but as to an inwardness living with them. On the contrary, he or she who has this knowledge holds the key of the garden of the gods. The use of the key implies entrance. Not to use the key is to remain on the outside. The whole thing is not more complicated nor less simple than is the use or rejec- tion of a key belonging to any common house.
Let the hypostases of man be repeated.
The component parts of a man, considering him simply as an animal, are Matter and Ego.
The component parts of a man, viewing him in the meaning which makes a perfect man to differ from an animal, are Matter, Ego, Soul.
Difference as to these component parts which relate with the meaning of a man will well bear to be re- peated, as advanced originally in the chapter on Hy- postases and demonstrated, as the first two are con- cerned, in immediately preceding chapters.
Matter. Matter is understood as one with what the common eye sees of the solid earth ; it is one with houses of stone and mortar and with houses of flesh and clothes.
Ego. Ego, meaning by this, as has been defined, the I, the Selfhood, the Individuality, the That which in self-consciousness knows itself, the User of the brain-instrument; this is one with what it is; it is one with nothing else ; it is persistence where Matter is change ; it is noumenon where Matter is phenomena; it is, while unseeable by the crude senses of the en- vironment of fellow-men, tangibility itself, as repre-
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sentation of fixedness and immortality is implied by tangibility. Ego is not Matter, it is not Soul, it is not in any way nor after any manner else than what it is. Knowledge of I by I considers no past, embraces no future j the I of the moment is the I of the universal. That which knows itself is itself. The duty, relation, environment, circumstances, past, present, future, of I are with what is found with I.*
Soul. Soul is difference between possibility of man and brute : other difference is of degree. Every man is born a common animal, — excepting that the animal man is endowed with a meaning not possessed by ani- mals inferior to him. So far as simple natural law is concerned this is nothing at all different from the fact of there being animals the law of whose organization crowns their foreheads with antlers, while, on the other hand, there are animals who are incapable of growing horns. Man not growing, or coming, to what he was created with the capability to carry, remains necessa- rily below the plane of his meaning; he continues exactly as born ; his life, his meaning, his desires, his
* Ego, or I, is not to be understood as identical with Force. The force or mobiUty of Matter, as matter forms human body, lies with what is quite analogous with that which is the force or motive- power known as galvanism. The force of the Universe lies with re- lation. A mine filled with sugar and chlorate of potash and a lake full of sulphuric acid while kept apart rest in eternal rtiUness ; brought together, the earth could be rent in twain by reason of an activity issuing out of the combination. Galvanism secures means to its ends by sinking elements into a solvent. The force of body found at command of Ego is secured by swallowing into the stomach par- ticles of food which, after a like manner with the elements, are acted on by solvents. See " Man and his World."
/
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enjoyments, his sufferings, his everything, express en- tire and absolute analogy with common brute life. Soul is identical with Holy Ghost. Holy Ghost is identical with God. All expressions of the Universal are resolvable into one of three Noumena or Principals. There are but three Things in the Universal, — God, Ego, Matter.
God is identical with creative power.
Soul is necessarily one with Holy Ghost, in other words, one with God, for the reason that as there are but three Entities, namely, Matter, Ego, God, and we understand that it is neither of the first two, it must be the last, seeing there is nothing else that it can be.
Let us now, with a view to greater clearness, repeat after still other manner, as in the instances of Matter and Ego, what is desired to be profoundly impressed.
If it be not objected to, it will be assumed as ac- cepted that what has been described as Matter is for the use of body, — for the use of all bodies, — and that in turn human bodies are for the use of human Individ- ualities. Human individuality we understand as the Ego of the philosophers. Using our own language, we comprehend it as that which appeals for the verity of its existence in the I felt and recognized by every per- son as being Self, no matter what the varying age or changes of the body. Negatively we understand the existence of individuality by the physiological knowl- edge we have gained of its materializing and demate- rializing ability as exhibited to us by that constant necessity which exists for the filling and refilling of market-baskets. We recognize, psychologically, the existence and meaning of Individuality by the nightly
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