Section 8

experience had of the ability of Self to leave its body, to wander away from it as one does from his house, and to return to it as one does to a house.* In a word, our present position is that there is a material body which is the Individuality of the unlearned, but which material body is no more the man than it is potato, stone, or brick; second, that the real self is an Existence unseeable by eyes created only with the ability to behold opaque things, and that therefore it is and must remain a phantom except as it is known by itself. The faultiness of judgment which esteems Materiality as one with individuality is seen in that universal recognition of a corpse as a something from which another something is gone out. Is not a body from which Ego is gone out hurried away as are repul- sive things? Is there not a certain sense of relief when a corpse is gotten out of sight ? Is it not the case that what is called death shows the living that body is not what has been cherished ?
If at this point, and in these things, all are agreed, question advances as to the meaning and use of Indi-
* Here is the mystery of Astral projection as expounded by the Theosophist. Knowing, as a physiologist, the law of vitaUty as mani- fested by the almost intelligent automatism existing out of the influ- ence of the ganglionic nerve centres, I see no reason to discredit a dream as being anything else than an illustration with which mortals are favored as to separability entire and complete of body and Ego. In other words, I see no scientific reason why a Self cannot, after some manner, get hold of the secret of leaving its temporary home and getting back to it, as, on the other hand. Matter certainly has the secret of passing from the environment of one Ego to that of another Ego ; a demonstration furnished every day by the uses of dinner- tables.
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viduality. How imposing, how stupendous, as men are concerned, is such question !
Do I not put before us this query just as all would have it put when it is asked, What are the meaning and use of this Individuality?
I use here a good and reliable expression by another, which, if we get hold of it, enables the passing to succeeding premises. The expression is this: "That to which intelligence is confined is that with which alone intelligence is concerned."
Now to what is the intelligence of Individuality confined? First, it knows itself. Second, it recog- nizes itself as not being self-creating. Please heed the next premise closely. A thing that is not self-creating has its office and meaning necessarily in that which is its creator. Conclusion : Individuality is an agent for the reason that every made thing is made for an object, and everything acting with a view to the accomplish- ment of an object is an agent. Individualities, then, are agents. Agents for what ? Agents to what?
Heed again closely. An agent has meaning in the intention which creates it. The fulfilment of an inten- tion by an agent is its ultimatum ; is the completeness of its circularity. A common hog grunting and swill- ing in a pen is what it knows itself to be ; it is noth- ing else than what it knows itself to be. A hog eats that it may digest ; it digests that it may eat. If a hog eats, sleeps, digests, and makes lard, and if the hog be without consciousness of anything outside of such a circle, then it follows that lard is the all of a hog ; it is the completion of a circle of intention or design. Certainly it would in no way be possible for a hog to
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pass to offices of the existence of which the animal could after no manner be made conscious.
After a like manner of showing, the circle of a man's intention is comprised by that which he knows of himself. Every Individuality knows of its intention and meaning through the senses which are its instru- ments of communication with things not itself; it knows thus, and after no other manner. What fol- lows? A hog has individuality. A hog has the five senses known as belonging to pure functional life ; to common animal life. If a man be without other sense than the five described, — namely, sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing, — then it follows that intention and circle are the same with man and hog.
If a man differs in his meaning from a hog, it is to be shown that the former possesses a something not related with the latter. It is to be shown as well that this something is in relation with a need and an inten- tion of a creator, — a something given additionally to man over what is his as common to himself with ani- mals at large ; of which animals he is, of course, one.
If a something is to be shown, the something is a Sense, — that is, like is required to know like. The sug- gested Something cannot be what we have come to recognize and understand as Individuality, because we already have this and its office as a common possession of the animals at large. Individuality is the zenith of its own circle ; its office is in the senses which it finds provided for its use. Every sense provided for its outlook relates with matter. Its eyes cannot pierce beyond the stars. Its fingers reach only to the centre
of the earth. Consider man's individuality as com-
8
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mon to brutes, reptiles, and clams, and from such breadth of outlook ask yourselves whether a hog seen in a pen at Christmas time, and eaten in the winter, is not found back in a pen in the fall. But see ! What is eaten is simply material grown by an Ego for a use. The use is the meaning of the office of that particular Ego. Again and again and again, it is to be assumed, will it re materialize itself as spiders weave for them- selves new webs to take the place of others destroyed. Who shall say it has not been thus from a beginning, or that it will not continue thus to the end ?
The text of the idea to which we pass is office. Sense and office are identical. Our studies, so far, have distinguished for us Matter and Individuality, nothing more. Stopping here it is impossible to show that a man differs from a hog save in degree of re- finement in organic development, — that is, in manner which differs nothing at all from physiological distinc- tions demarcating hog from clam.
Another Sense is to be found. No, not to be found. Its self-assertiveness made it known to the first man as it is known in degree to every man. Dull and indis- tinct in some men, it is the light of life to others. What name shall we give it ? There remains but one.
Soul.
An interpolation is here to be made. While the term Sense is used in connection with Soul, it is so employed simply to retain idea of means to end. Saying that a man sees an object is to relate him with such object by means of eyes. Saying that he touches a body is to relate him with the body by means of
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fingers. In a precisely similar manner the term Soul, when spoken of as a sense, is meant to imply means of communication. If, a paragraph later, the manner of expression change, and soul be applied as identical with God, accordance rests with that which assumes like to be identical with like. Reference to and study of neoplatonism will show the direction of thought to be as beautifully simple as it is clearly plain.
Then Soul demarcates itself as something different from individuality ? Consider for yourselves. If it be not a something different, then men, hogs, and clams are of common meaning.*
Here then the question of all questions. Here differ- ence between man and brute. Here differentiation from Material. Here a road outside of the mountain way to the garden of the gods. Here the meaning of the Brahminical salutation. Here the locality of Heaven. Here the Something received or denied by Ego. Here explanation of good and bad in men.
What is Soul ? Like Matter, and like individuality, Soul is to be known alone phenomenally. After such manner of being known, knowledge of it is, however, scarcely less common than is knowledge of individu- ality. Every man and woman knows of it according to extent of its possession. Not to know it is not to have it.
Soul, according to the philosophy here offered, and according to inductions which will accrue, let exami- nation commence when it will, is identical with the God.
* See " Man and his World."
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Stop just here, interrupts the Materialist, and tell us how and why illuminate Rosicrucianism assumes the existence of a God ?
Proof of the existence of God is found in the exist- ence of Soul. Like is to be known only by like. Matter can neither see, feel, hear, taste, or smell the God. The senses of organic life are the senses of animal life. Proof that brutes are without soul is found by absence of it in some men. Soul is not at all a necessity to the animal organization. A man may live without a soul. Soul and God are one. What is called soul is simply God dwelling by his sev- eralty in man. The Bible expresses this simply, yet fully, in the passage, " Keep clean thy heart which is the temple of the Holy Ghost."
To make the matter perfectly clear and to exhibit the grandeur of the capability of the human, let us instance the position of Christ in history as we have learned of it. I will assume for my purpose that the account in the Bible is to be relied on implicitly. Christ was born after the manner of animals at large. As a boy he wrought in a carpenter-shop. Like to animals at large, he was made up of matter and indi- viduality. Unlike to a multitude, his Ego had no advantages, after the ordinary manner, of education. At his crucifixion the animal part of him succumbed exactly as did the animal parts of the thieves executed by his side. The body of Christ was buried. The Individuality of Christ was seen later by his disciples.
Up to this point all is clear to us. Matter died. Individuality does not die. Christ was seen risen from the dead. Mark ! he was seen. If it be not
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true that he was seen, then the rock upon which the Church is built is of less strength than is sandstone. Let us go back for a moment in thought. We read of Christ as an infant. At his crucifixion we know him as of man's stature. He ate and grew. What he ate and how he grew differs not a jot from the circumstances related with the eating and growing of the millions who preceded and who have succeeded him. As a human body Christ was a man like unto ourselves. He was like unto ourselves or he was not flesh.
But the Christ of the Bible is presented as God. The Christ of the Bible is peculiarly, distinctively the writer's God. The Christ of the Bible is a pre-emi- nent illustration of soul. He is the exposition of Man's possible relation with the Divine, and is justly a universal example.
I know Christ to be one with God. Knowing this, and feeling that in a few minutes I shall demonstrate it, I have not the slightest concern to trouble myself with the obscurities of immaculate conceptions as to Son and Mother. Science is entirely unable to com- prehend these conceptions, nor is it found that Ego or Soul takes hold of them after any manner. Immacu- late conception is to be a matter of faith, or it is not to be at all. Philosophy is the antipodes of faith ; it seeks proof, not tradition. It is left for theology to deal with immaculate conceptions ; philosophy may deal with that only which it is able to comprehend.
Where and what was the Godhood of the carpenter's son?
Here we start in a demonstration of Soul. 8*
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Christ had no advantages of education. On a cer« tain day, when the boy was about twelve years of age, being missed and searched for by his mother, he was found in dispute with, and vanquisher of, learned doc- tors. That was much, yet it was little. Five hundred years before his birth the philosophic age of Greece commenced. Up to the period of Christ's teaching human intellectual brilliancy had never, and perhaps has never since, been equalled. During these five hun- dred years system after system of philosophy had been advanced and exploded. Now appears this carpenter's son. He was unlearned in the lore of the schools. He knew nothing of sophistry. To-day, nineteen hun- dred years later, the Christian world bows before his image, seeing in the man Jesus the Almighty God.
Seeing what ? Not difference from other men in skin and bones and muscles and nerves. Not anything of difference as to what shows itself in every man as Individuality, — at least philosophy sees not this. Yet seeing something that makes three hundred and fifty- three millions of the most civilized people of the earth worship a carpenter's son.
Will the reader follow here closely and not misun- derstand? With Christ and his mighty power im- pressed upon our comprehension, we give a thought to what is propounded by the Church as the mystery of the incarnation. Yes, a mystery to the Church, the confusion of physiology, an object of ridicule to scep- tics. Yet no more a mystery, no more a confusion, no more an improbability than is the simplest problem ever dealt with.
Between five and six hundred years before the birth
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of Christ there came into the world a Hindoo child called Gautama. According to legends, believed im- plicitly by four hundred and seventy millions of people, the birth of this child was attended with won- derful phenomena. All sick people found themselves well. Sun, moon, and stars stood still. The earth quivered to its centre. It being desirable on an occa- sion that Gautama should afford proof of strength and skill, the child, grown to boyhood, took up and easily used a bow that required the strength of a thousand men to bend. Thrumming the string of this bow he produced a noise louder than thunder. He placed four plantain leaves at each corner of a square and with a single flight of his arrow pierced all of them, — so tells part of his history.
Gautama was the son of a king, and came of what was known in his country as the warrior caste. As a youth he revelled in luxury and in dissipation. There came, however, a time when a feeling as to the utter vanity of the life he was living seized him. In a search directed to finding the means of happiness, a profound impression — one, indeed, which is said to have influenced him to an entire change of being — was made by his meeting with a beggar, a religious devotee, one utterly at outs with the world, but who was pos- sessed of absolute internal composure and peace. Gautama renounced the ordinary life he had been living. To him has been given a stupendous conquest over humanity ; and, as propounded by Edwin Ar- nold, ** though he discountenanced ritual, and declared himself, even when on the threshold of Nirvana, to be only what all other men might become, the love and
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gratitude of Asia, disobeying his mandates, have given him fervent worship. Forests of flowers are daily laid upon his stainless shrine, and countless lips hourly repeat the formula, * I take refuge in Buddha.' " Four hundred and seventy millions of people are fol- lowers of Gautama.
About the same time with Gautama there was born in the kingdom of Loo a child whose name in English is Confucius. Among the legends connected with this birth is one to the effect that the Ki-lin, a supernatural being, who never appeared among men except to an- nounce some extraordinary event, visited the garden of Shuh-Liang-Heih, the father, leaving there a pre- cious stone upon which was inscribed, "A child is born, pure as the crystal wave ; he shall be king with- out any territorial domain." Confucius started as a public teacher when he was twenty-two years of age. What he taught, what he has accomplished, the fact that he is a very god to the Chinese, need not be en- larged on.
Gautama, Confucius, Mencius, Christ, and the less powerful ones, all in their degree, signify the meaning and expression of Soul. I commit myself to holding the conviction — a conviction which terminates every thought of my mind, which shows itself as the ultima- tum of all study — that what is called the soul is nothing at all different from God taking up residence in man, and that the soul possessed by Christ, that which is called the Godhood of Christ, is exactly what is in you and in me proportionately ; that to become full of the God as were Gautama and Christ needs only that any man or any woman do as was done. " Do as was