CHAPTER X.

Souls.
The story of Creation has an occult meaning which refers to the creation of man*s immortal nature by himself ; for man is immortal only by his own acts.
The command "Let there be light ! *' is the first, creative act — the focusing of magnetism to a center — a sun, the visible center of a physical universe. Occultly the " light '* is the intellect of man, the beginning of system and order ; and spiritually the "light" is Wisdom. The sun is a center around which worlds revolve ; the medium through which creative spirit is poured forth to give life and energy to its system of worlds. The mind is the sun of the ego, — the soul ; through it the soul out of its fulness pours in all directions. By its light, which we call understanding, the mys- teries, the essences of things, are revealed, and by its rays the fire of Love flows from the soul to generate and quicken thought into life.
It is at the center that formless spirit takes on form, and the soul is a center of infinite possibili- ties — the womb of infinite form.
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The sun is the soul of the solar system ; the mother of the worlds that revolve around her ; the womb from whence they were brought forth. It is not without reason that in the German tongue the sun is feminine.
Love, the Creator, first manifests in centers. These are the beginning of worlds, organizations, societies, clubs, sects, and governments. As there can be no offspring without a mother, and no mother without a father, so there cannot be soul without some measure of understanding — the cir- cumference of the soul. Understanding, or Mind, being the father, has its field of labor around the center, — the soul, providing ways for its manifes- tations. Mind is the circumference oif soul, the medium in which it revolves. Understanding is the spiritual part of mind, which, without under- standing, is wholly material, limited, form-bound and inert. To that quality of mind there is no conception of spirit, for it knows only the forms of things ; the essence, or reality, wholly escaping its knowledge. It hears the commotion of matter, but " the still small voice " of spirit is unheard. It reaches out hands to manipulate matter, but the sensation is of texture alone, having no sense of touch fine enough to discern the inner life of things. So it appears that mind is graded from the inertia of mineral matter, through all forms up to Infinite understanding, this being the most
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spiritual part of mind, closest to the center of being. It is Wisdom, the Father, who dwells in the soul, which is Love. Wisdom and Love are never divorced, and they are infinitely fecund. The material mind deals in externals and is pro- lific of inventions which accord with the under- standing of the uses of things, as remedies for bodily ailments, even when the medical mind has no real glimpse of the causes or nature of disease. We believe in death with the external mind, and so grow old and die before our time, unconscious of the powers and true nature of Spirit. Ghosts and apparitions pass for spirits, and the shadowy forms evolved from cabinets are supposed to be souls. The soul is not understood, because the mind is so accustomed to predicate form of every- thing that the formless is to it the non-existent. To such minds the law of change defeats the immortality of forms; but this conclusion is the outcome of the thinking of the material mind, — for the spiritual understanding perceives form to be as indestructible as the law of change. My form existed before I dwelt in it, and will exist after I have vacated it. I am not a form : "I am that I AM," — a formless principle called man simply be- cause I am in this body. I am a form of love, a center around which the circumstances of life lie like a darkened day, dimly illuminated by the fiat that ushers in the dawn of immortality, " Let
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there be light!" This command is to the under- standing that it may create anew this dilapidated body; that it may scatter the forces of death and disorder, proclaiming that all is good. When the conviction becomes universal that all seeming Evil is the foundation of progress and therefore must be Good, the mind will lose its grossness and the whole being will be fragrant with eternal youth.
The Soul conceives truth ; the Mind perceives it. Truth, once conceived, will grow into every atom of the body, transforming it from mortal into the immortal, from matter to substance. Not every one is immediately capable of this transform- ation, although all are potentially so. Truth so conceived of the soul is a fire, a center of immor- tality of which the entire being takes cognizance.
God saw that everything that he had made was "very good." There can be nothing above "good"; "there is none good but God," there- fore all that he has made, or that he is, can only be good^ and evil is evil only to our limited understanding.
Man is progressive because he is incomplete, imperfect, ignorant ; darkness, rather than light. The Mind is material, far removed from the Soul, and the soul's mind, the understanding, is vacillat- ing and clouded. The judgment is biased by the testimony of the external senses and we believe that to be evil which is often the only possible
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good for us or the world. We are in the world, a part of it, and that which is necessary and good for all must be good for each. Suffering is a teacher, — some will learn of no other, — and is not all instruction good.? The objection may be urged that false teaching is an evil ; but how can that be as long as there are those in the world whom the truth would strike blind.? At the core disappointments, reverses, doubt, and despair have the seed of perfection, — the kernel of Infinite Good. Dissatisfaction is the door from one condition to another. The man who is dissatisfied with him- self is aroused to improvement by that dissatisfac- tion, which working in and through him changes in time himself and his conditions. The clash of opinions may bring the clash of arms, but we all recognize and to a certain degree worship the God of War. The good and evil of the world is after all like beauty, which "is in the eye of the be- holder." In its essence, nothing is evil ; it is our ignorance which causes it to appear such. With the perception of the all-pervading good the soul becomes calm like still water, and pregnant with life, youth, and beauty. The body reflects the souFs state and the face is lit by a smile of heaven, a light that no earthly glare can give. The expression and life become fixed in the good and the beautiful. Love of the good and the use- ful beautifies the ugly and makes charming the
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plainest face, — the most uncouth body. This is the spirit of Regeneration. To be at one with it is to enter the kingdom of Love.
Regeneration cannot be attained by one alone. It is begun by the union of the dual principles, male and female, in each person ; but to establish the *• Divine Quaternary " each regenerating per- son must find his or her complementary mate. Celibacy must give place somewhere on the road, at some time, in some incarnation to the union of counterparts, the complete blending of two per- fected souls, the perfect marriage, of which the external phase as we know it is the veriest simu- lacrum, — a misty shadow, an atrophied ghost of the real and complete union.
Regeneration expands the soul ; the center en- larges and indrawsthe circumference, — the mind. The sympathies unfold and expand until selfish cares, anxieties, and worries disappear, and effort and thought for the good of all take their place. The belief that all is good annihilates evil, elimi- nates poison from the blood, and, reconciling the mind to the ** changes and chances of this mortal life," produces an indescribable calmness. In this quiet the still small voice is heard ; man becomes conscious of the soul ; he has found his center — the Divme Guest has descended, and God's will is done in the circumference as in the center of be- ing. This hushing of the outer mind may extend
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to the material body, and the first stage of the Sleep of Sialam, which is physical insensibility, may be entered.
Sleep connects with the reservoir of life. The waking hours only prepare the body for the re- ception of life. Labor exhausts the nerves and muscles of spirit ; then we lie down without doubt or fear and calmly resign ourselves to the care of a Power of whom we know nothing ; confident that we shall arise with renewed life and energy — a supreme act of faith regularly performed by the most faithless ! In deep sleep the soul passes be- yond the laws of limitation, far beyond the cir- cumference, the Mind ; but in partial sleep she recognizes the circumference with its varied activ- ities and her horizon is limited. A few moments of sleep will often serve to remove the obstruc- tions to the ingress of life, — this ingress does not come from the world without, but from the world within. The deeper the sleep the greater the influx of life. We know something of the influ- ence of magnetic sleep on body and mind with its curative and enlightening influx, but of the Sacred Sleep of Sialam little is known, even by report and that little is subject to doubt and scoffing, as a Rosicrucian tradition, a myth, a dream of some excited enthusiast. It is affirmed that in this sleep all mysteries may be solved, the future of men and angels explored, and the deter-
1 26 Regeneration,
mination of the will carried into effect to the rise and fall of nations ; the changing of forms of gov- ernment, the downfall of dynasties, and the pro- duction of wealth and prosperity for races, nations, and individuals. However incredible this may ap- pear, it finds its confirmation in all the religious traditions and bibles of the ages. Gautama slept the Sleep of Sialam under the Sacred Bo Tree ; Mohammed in the cave, in the earlier and purer part of his life, entered somewhat into this state ; Jesus slept this sleep on Calvary. The fakirs of India, ignorant of its transcendent powers, have its most external form in the death and burial of the body, which lies in the earth for days in deep un- consciousness, to rise again in the fulness of bodily vigor.
Trance, which is not the trance of the medium, but a self-induced state, opens the way to the sacred sleep, and the life of Regeneration gives the power to enter into it. It is one of the ways of the Spirit ; in it the Christ, the Revealer of Mys- teries, guides the immortal into fuller immortality, where the external din of life is hushed and the regenerating being awakes into perfect conscious- ness of his powers.
The full development of the Christ in the soul makes the body proof against disease and death. We are sick because he is not fully born in us. . We turn him away from that door of our being
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before which he says : " Behold I stand at the door and knock." Our ignorant and vicious sec- ond nature of kabit often drives him relentlessly away. We cannot sleep because the din of life is in our ears and the peace and trust of childhood has forsaken us. The maker of brain and tissue, bone and fluids, retires before the ruler we have set up, — for Christ does not interfere with our deliberate choice, or coerce us into harmony with our better nature and himself. Our lives are chiefly automatic obedience to habits inherited, or engendered and fostered by the passions, and the little WILL we manifest is mainly employed in busi- ness 6x pleasure. Christ cannot abide in the tur- moil of anxiety, the whirl of passion, or in the breast of a slave, and every man ruled by habit, or who is under any other domination, is not free.
Christ is not a person^ albeit he found a voice in Jesus of Nazareth. He enters into, blends with, and overshadows the soul, as a larger light absorbs the rays of the lesser light. Where Love is de- ficient he cannot enter, nor overshadow the nature absorbed by material things. He is the only be- gotten Son of God, and all else begotten in the soul is begotten of mortality. He only is that " light " which is not quenched in the night of death.
Jesus came when the Roman civilization had reached its climax and the mighty mistress of the
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world, drunk with conquest, was hastening to her fall. This planet and all on it — the growth of many- cycles — were ripe for change. Man had learned fully one lesson from his teacher Nature, the les- son of his weakness, dependence, and helplessness ; and his cry of despair to "whatever gods there be/* was for protection from the fates and the furies he had himself unconsciously evoked. Jesus came a poor man as regards worldly conditions, a thoroughly prepared temple for the fullest expres- sion of the Christ ; a man, yet containing within himself the fullest indwelling of the Father and Mother, and Christ or offspring, which constitute the Trinity of the regenerated One, to whose will the elements of matter yield obedience, while the world of spirit recognized on one side its master, on the other its brother. \/He stilled the tempest in nature and in man ; 4}e fed the hungry from the air ; he raised the dead from the bondage of the grave and the corruption of matter, and finally he slept the Sleep of Sialam, a sleep so closely re- sembling death as to deceive his executioners, his immediate followers, and the whole world since his time to the present time.
We cannot analyze death, any more than we can analyze life ; all we know are the symptoms that precede decomposition. Instances of trance so deep as to be mistaken for death are not uncom- mon, days and even weeks passing while the sub
Souls, 1 29
ject lies in profound bodily insensibility; but as long as decomposition does not take place, life is presumably not extinct. Sometimes the subject is conscious of all that passes around him, but more frequently he retains consciousness only of some other condition of being. Jesus passed through the agonizing torture which preceded his death, suffering as all must suffer who have the soul rent from the body ; but when he fell into the Sleep of Sialam he did not lose consciousness with the insensibility of the body. After the Sleep he had power to transmute the animal life into spirit, which not being under physical law, his body be- came wholly magnetic and under the control of his will. He changed his appearance so completely that Mark affirms that he appeared "in another form " to two of the disciples, as they walked on the way to Emmaus ; and John, referring to the same event, says: *' Their eyes were holden that they should not see and know him for the Master." Mary Magdalen did not know him at the sepulcher, but supposed him to be the gardener, even after he had spoken to her.t- All this shows that Jesus had power to change his form and appearance at will, even to vanish from sight, passing through closed doors.(^ He demonstrated that he was no phantom, by physical contact and by partaking of food with the disciples.
In view of these facts is it incredible that Jesus
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should walk our streets today ? In the presence of this object-lesson in the powers potential in every son and daughter of earth, how shall we con- tinue to live this dwarfed, frivolous, narrow life of the senses, beaten about by every gust that blows without or within, — a straw on the foaming billows of time ? Eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life ; light the Divine Fire on the altar of your being, and become through Regeneration ** as gods who shall live forever ! "