Section 9

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done." What is meant ? Everybody knows of the ab- solute bodily sacrifice of Christ. The man was noth- ing, the office was all. In every sense of the word the life was a devotion to others. Personally Christ had nothing, he wanted nothing. The will of the Father was the only will. Gautama, after his twenty-second year, came to the same self-abnegation. Of the in- comprehensible phenomena described as associated with the birth of this latter, we Occidentals do not deem ourselves irreligious in taking no account. For myself, I did not feel the earth shake, neither did I behold the standing still of sun and stars. Candidly speaking, I care nothing at all in any way about the shaking and the standing still. Look where I will at Gautama, look where I may at Christ, I behold God. Let the mysteries of incarnation and of shaking plan- ets be or not be, for myself, I do not take the trouble to confuse my brain in considering them. To me these mysteries are not of the slightest concern. I need none of them to enable me to behold the God walking upon earth in the shape of a man.
We understand then. The premise is that the meaning of human Individuality is to act as agent of the God. That God fills Individuality in proportion as individuality submits itself to be filled. Under- standing Christ after this fashion, I behold him as one found so able to sink and abnegate the mortal parts that he becomes fully occupied by soul ; otherwise by God. This power has the meaning of the divine showing itself through the medium of flesh.*
* On an occasion, St. Thomas Aquinas made a visit to the pope at Rome, whom he found in the midst of large wealth. " You see," said
94 SPIRITUS SANCTUS,
Mysteries disappear in an appreciation of their sub- jects. There was one Daniel Lambert. His weight was seven hundred and thirty-nine pounds. His fat- ness made the man known over the reading world. He was famous in proportion as rotundity advanced him beyond the bulk of other men. Was that corpulency any the less wonderful because it existed in a physio- logical law that you and I know all about ?
You and I may invite bodily corpulence. We know all about this. We can get fatness if we want fatness. Not desiring fatness we can stay lean. The mystery of Christ we propound as no greater mystery than this of fatness. Christ's godliness can be invited or re- pulsed by any man. As fatness is not a necessity to animal life, so neither is soul. Man as an animal may get along without either fat or soul. Men are propor- tionately fat, in like manner are they proportionately possessed of soul.
Let us try to be even clearer. Nobody has any dif- ficulty in understanding the oneness of water. To recognize severalty in this oneness is only to know that moisture and water are one, and that moisture is everywhere. What moisture is to water soul is to God. Water is the animal life of men. Soul is the kingdom of heaven to men. Who diminishes in moisture withers and dries up, who lessens in soul finds
the holy Father, " that it is not as when the Church had to say, silver and gold have I none." "Nor is it,'' replied the priest, "as when the Church could command the lame to walk, and crutches might be thrown aside." This illustrative of difference between presence and absence of soul.
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himself getting out of that kingdom of heaven which the Bible declares to be within a man.*
Shall we repeat ? Who will deny that where God is ■ there too must be heaven ; seeing, as has been defined, that it is the presence of God which constitutes heaven. If, then, soul be identical with God, does it not follow that the possessor of soul finds himself godly in pro- portion to his possession, — that is, does he not find him- self in heaven, as he has that which is heaven in him ? Consider here a step further. If soul be a good re- lated with the present of men, is not heaven a thing of to-day, no matter what else it may be ?
Here hypostases has its conclusion. About any heaven or hell of to-morrow we need not trouble our- selves. If any man desire heaven, it is always to be found immediately at hand. To receive is simply to open. To forfeit is simply to keep shut. To be un- tenanted by soul is to be void of heaven.
* The illustration is worked out in the book '• Odd Hours of a Physician."
96 ' SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
•VII.
CONCERNING PLANE OF RELATION, SENSITIVITY, AND SUBJECTIVITY.
" A man that looks on glass On it may stay his eye, Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass, And the heavens espy.'*
Advance is here made to consideration of capabil- ity. Man, as to hypostases, is assumed as fairly under- stood. The chapter is to consider Egoistic attributes. Why, to make question, is one man possessed of genius and others not? What and who are the mediums and sensitives ? What as to professed inspirations of these people? of their lessons taught in dreams and visions? of their walks with the God as declared by both prophets and heathens? What as to their mysterious world which seems to be a world within a world ? What as to difference in their eyes and the eyes of other persons, and their ears that hear what other ears do not hear ?
Passage is from lower to higher; from compre- hensions in physics to speculations in psychics. Yet, all law being common law, passage is to nothing supernatural, simply to a something not commonly familiar. What is to be examined as psychical is to be found not at all dissimilar to what has been pre- sented as physical ; an only difference lies with plane of relation. Let the remark "nothing supernatural" make impression. Mediums and sensitives, the subjects
CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC, 97
of the present chapter, differ nothing from people at large save as poets, musicians, and architects differ from people at large. Sensitivity will always be found identical with mediumship, and he or she who happens to be born a sensitive, or who cultivates sensitivity to the extent of becoming a sensitive, will be a medium of greater or less meaning to That which is culti- vated, let the that be what it may, common or un- common.
A familiar phrase on the tongue of almost everybody is to the effect that ''practice makes perfect." This, to put it into the plainest language possible, is what is here meant ; the matter and manner of sensitivity, or the matter and manner of becoming a medium, are not a bit more obscure, not a particle more mysterious ; to cultivate is to render one's self capable.
Poets, musicians, and architects are psychical recip- ients become nowadays so familiar that people have entirely ceased to look on or talk of them as in any wise mysterious personages. The wares of such are bought and sold and appreciated according to quality. Sensitives, as to other and higher things, are undoubt- edly to come to the same common familiarity and gen- eral recognition ; this, out of the fact that the mean- ing of these latter can be nothing else than absolutely one with the meaning of the former. Understanding of this common meaning being possessed, it is appre- ciated that cultivation of the spiritual is not at all dif- ferent, as to principle, from the cultivation of an art or a science. To comprehend that there is no differ- ence as to such cultivation is to find a road of an
openness and plainness that the wayfaring man, though E ^ 9
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a fool, can see and walk in, — if it please him so to do.
Appreciation and understanding, after so practical a fashion, of the meaning and characteristics of Me- diums and Sensitives is the final Rosicrucian step in- troductory to intercourse with what is called the spirit- ual world ; a world which is, however, to a Rosicrucian one with his own ; that is, one with the Universal.
It has been suggested that **the philosophy of one generation becomes the common sense of the next." To the nineteenth century Mediums and Sensitives are tricksters, otherwise are inspired people, otherwise are psychical phenomena. To the twentieth-century peo- ple the meaning of Mediumship and Sensitivity, it is to be inferred, considering advancing intelligence, will have become sufficiently settled and familiar to allow of entire understanding of common intercourse capable of being established between so-called mortals and so- called immortals. To express this after other manner, it is not at all unlikely that before the immediately succeeding century shall have passed away mystery as to higher relations will be found so opened and illu- mined that oneness as to the universal will be under- stood not alone by the initiated, as at present, but by people at large. How devoutly to be wished for is consummation as to such intelligence ! Mystery as to relations, where openness is a necessity, is an excuse, and a valid one, not only for unbelief, but for the ex- treme of irreligiousness \ an intelligent man who is directed to the top of a building expects to find in- cluded in the directions a stairway or ladder. Mystery, as illustrated in a hundred different beliefs, held by a
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hundred different sects, is no strengthener of faith; people doubt where it is found that professors do not agree.
Here the holder of the present pen risks nothing in a declaration that he is without occasion for simple be- lief through hearsay as to the existence of Mediums (otherwise Sensitives), as he knows positively of the existence of such people; a knowledge which the reader of any degree will recognize as being a posses- sion of his own if he consider for a single moment the poets, the musicians, and the architects ; indeed, if he consider simply the adept money changers.
Mediums and Sensitives resolved, through such con- sideration, into ordinary individuals, the holder of the pen is freed from hesitation as to a declaration that both by nature and education he discovers in himself a medium. In discovery of this first great fact a sec- ond of much larger importance has shown itself, — namely, that mediumship, otherwise expressed, that nearness to, or distance from, spiritual things, as with any other thing or things, rests entirely with a man's self; Luther, for example, walking with God in the morning, and hurling inkstands at the devil in the afternoon.
That the largest possible interest shall be carried to chapters succeeding this present one, which chapters are indeed the origin and meaning of the book only, that, considering the materialistic character of readers generally, the pages would have been entirely miscom- prehended, if not led to, by what has here been put be- fore them, the holder of the pen is merely to announce that it is an intention to illustrate mediumship at large.
lOO SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
as this priceless possession is to be enjoyed by perhaps any and every person, and as certainly he finds himself able to possess, and as well to lose, the faculty.
Let iteration here be appreciated as to oneness in the Universal. There is no death. There could not be such a thing as death and the Universal exist. There are no two worlds. What is called Spiritual is one with what is called material. Degrees of sight, appre- ciation, comprehension, apprehension, are, with sensi- tivity, natural or acquired, precisely and after no other manner, as before presented, as sight or comprehen- sion finds itself capable of beholding in water things most unlike to what bears this common name. To simple sciolists water is known as nothing else than water. By chemists water is found to be a combina- tion of the gases oxygen and hydrogen. By micro- scopists water-drops are discovered as seas provided for the delectation and accommodation of swimming monsters.
To affirm one's self a medium from the stand-point of practice or of cultivation is to say nothing different from what has just been said as to sciolist, chemist, and microscopist ; difference as to what is seen, lies with a seer.
What is to follow is, then, Subjectivism, proposed as a thing not any more mysterious than is Materialism ; the two, indeed, being assumed as scarcely so much two as one ?
Precisely ; proposing that manner of a revelation is the same in the instance of a poet as revelations re- ceived by John at Patmos, as sights and sounds seen and heard by Saul, as visions given to Hosea, to
CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC. loi
Habakkuk, to Haggai, to Zechariah, and, as well, to Belshazzar.
What as to diseased conditions hinted at in a suc- ceeding chapter on Disillusions ?
It is there exhibited that, as with the productions of the poets, the musicians, and the architects, quality and significance settle the value of a production. One-sidedness is not harmony. Sensitives are one- sided,— necessarily so when in a state of receptivity. One-sidedness to any particular subject or business is little- or no-sidedness to antagonizing things. It is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a non-soulistic person to behold and un- derstand what are clearly seen and comprehended by the religious. There is not the slightest mystery asso- ciated with the suggestion concerning rich men and camels ; no more certainly than is associated with the general understanding of a poverty commonly endured by the poets. A rich man makes of himself a sensi- tive to his possessions ; his thoughts being constantly with these, are necessarily abstracted from other things ; to see things in the sky and things upon the ground is simply a matter of how one looks; the holder of the present pen finds himself crowded and jammed into the eye by reason of a dozen or so brick houses he is trying to pull through with him. Half concen- tration is nothing less than confusion where whole concentration is necessary to clearness. Men are to be likened to balloons, both being things which go up or stay down according to what is inside.
There is perhaps no better book to read with a view to getting understanding of mediums and sensitives, 9*
I02 SPIRITUS SANCTUS,
diseased or otherwise, than a work much prized by Catholics entitled *' Lives of the Saints." Professed saints of old seem to have been little different from professed mediums of to-day. As these lives appeal to nineteenth century sense, St. Charles Borromeo may justly be continued in the place occupied by the godly Cardinal; charity, love, endurance, self-abnegation shone forth in every action ; the Christly in the man appealed, and not in vain, to defects as to morals in the clergy that needed reforming ; the plague-stricken and dying lying in pest-houses found the Archbishop continuously at their side; his great worldly wealth was dropped at the needle's eye. As a contrary it may not be unjust to name Saint Simeon Stylites. Holding to rags, festering his flesh by tying rough ropes about his waist, living for years upon the top of a pillar not more than four feet across, performing through a whole lifetime penance of offensive and dis- gusting character, nineteenth century sense would in- cline to pronounce such living not less selfish than useless, not less expressive of dementia than of dis- cord.* Stories recounted, not in this book, but in others equally to be credited, of experience possessed through peculiar and special sensibility residing with St. Theresa and with St. Catharine de Sienne show these saints in a debatable light to all save the physiologists; these, out of understanding, remand
* Yet while nineteenth century sense would thus pronounce of St. Simeon there is to be considered an influence exerted on an age where mystery rather than reason influenced. It is scarcely to be denied that the Stylite, or rather his actions, exerted wonderful influ- ences in enlarging what is commonly esteemed the religious relation.
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the sisters to the physicians. What is meant is that these wholly to be revered and godly and pre-eminently spiritually favored women cultivated sensitivity to an extent which quite outran the capability of confessors to direct or even follow them, indeed which quite out- ran, as it would seem, the capability of a flesh-environed mortal to receive or contain. Their own inclined to believe them gone crazy, at times, out of reason of not understanding a relation existing between sensitivity and a portion of the brain apparatus known as the cerebellum.
Concerning what the ages characterize as illusions or as revelations, Rosicrucianisra troubles itself to differ- entiate simply as qualities and significations weigh. It knows how closely sensitivity allies itself always with conditions favorable to hallucinations. It has found out that the line separating the extremely crazy from the extremely wise is not always easily determinable.
What, however, is given out by sensitives is never any line at all. Question is to deal with what a sensitive says; with what he has to tell. Christ, Gautama, Bor- romeo, St. John Chrysostom, St. Ignatius, St. Francis of Sales, together with a host, Christians, Jews, and heathens, command adoration as to the Divine as this is found exhibiting itself through flesh.
Rosicrucianism, however, while it weighs solely by quality, is yet appreciative of discrimination residing with understanding. Illustration of what is implied is to be made familiar by numerous conditions which suggest themselves in the physical unlikeness of people. Here, for example, is one capable of being fully ap- preciated by any person attracted to the study of books