CHAPTER XVII.

THE VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY POWERS.

The great majority of our acts are involuntary.
Even the acts which we think we do voluntarily, are
mainly forced or coaxed out of us by an impulse.
However this may be, we know we have volition,
or voluntary power, small though it may be ; and
however vast the involuntary may be, it is sub-
servient to us. Call it what you like — Nature or
God — it is our servant. When once this machine is
set in motion, it automatically obeys.

A musician, after he has mastered the use of his
instrument, does not will each separate motion of
his fingers ; his mind may be occupied with words
he may be singing to the music, but his fingers move
fast or slow in accord with the music, and his feet
work upon the pedal without attention or thought.
So it is with all we do. In doing a piece of work
with which one is familiar, the thought wanders away,
but still the work goes on. In sleep the voluntary is
suspended, i.e., the mind is at rest ; and at times the
will also seems to rest, or memory and judgment to
be suspended.

VOL UNTARV AND IN VOL UNTAR Y POWERS. 225

Habits all become automatic, or involuntary.
Habits of the body and mind are alike, and yet the
voluntary seems to be of the mind : in fact, they are
so closely allied, and so interwoven, that it is difficult
to separate them, or to define them as separate
powers. But we do know that all the light we have
is of the mind, and all the power of it comes from
the involuntary. Voluntarily we do as we think
best, but the power to accomplish is the most of it.
Thus it seems plain to me that the voluntary powers
are merely a thought we have, which thought is all
we have to guide us. It is possible that this thought
may be so cultivated and enlarged as to become as
automatic as any habit, and express itself as any
involuntary power, even in our sleep.

Language is a mere matter of culture or habit ;
and so of thought, or any of the bodily functions.
Indigestion may be cured ; torpid liver made to act ;
and constipation of the bowels overcome, by paying
constant attention to regularity. By paying little or
no attention to the movement of the bowels, thus
breaking up nature's habits, their warnings become
less and less, and, in time, habits of constipation or
inaction intervene. But if you will have a regular
time for the evacuation, and pay strict attention
thereto, providing an opportunity, whether there is
an inclination or not, nature will in time listen to
your demand, and furnish the power to remove all
obstructions, and give life to the torpid tissues.
Such is the force of habit.

226 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

This new life comes through an effort of the will
— first, voluntarily, but afterwards as an involuntary-
power or habit. When it has become habitual, the
bowels will notify you of the time, and insist upon
your paying attention. It is the same with eating
and drinking : if you eat three times daily, you will
be hungry at those regular times ; but if you have
no regular time for eating, hunger will not come till
you think of it. To think of food as of something
loathsome will kill hunger. To break in upon the
regularity of a habit is to destroy it. To pay atten-
tion to anything is to become its slave. Sexual
excesses are habits of thought, depending upon
regularity for existence. So long as it is a habit, it
will demand and enforce attention ; but turn the
thought to something else, and the voice of the habit
gradually grows weaker and weaker, till in time it will
take an effort of thought and the conjuring of the
will to restore it.

Small as the voluntary powers may be — perhaps
a mere thought, yet it is all there is of us, and our
weal and woe depend upon their use. By use the
voluntary becomes the involuntary. Absent-minded-
ness is indicative of the sinking of the voluntary into
the involuntary. Such persons are more indifferent
to outward things than those who are always " wide-
awake/ ' This is, indeed, the beginning of trance,
wherein some of the very finest orations are delivered.

This "wide awake" life is a mere habit, which is
destroyed by the creation of another, viz., sleep.

VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY POWERS. 22J

Sleep is a closing of the eyes to outward things, and
the turning of the sight inward. It is the same in
trance. The former is a sleep, or a partial sleep, of
the consciousness ; the latter is a higher degree of
consciousness : for the full wakefulness of the soul's
powers is in a union of the voluntary with the invol-
untary. This is effected by magnetism, and some-
times in natural sleep ; then we have somnambulism,
or sleep-walking, if the soul is unable to quit the
body ; but if the soul is able to quit the body, we
have prophetic visions, or the solving of difficult
problems, or the visiting of distant places, spirit-
worlds, etc. But in whatever way sleep or trance
may be induced, it produces a degree of insensibility
in the body.

The deeper the sleep, the more insensible the body
becomes. Mesmeric sleep is next to death. This
may be self-induced, or through the agency of an
operator. Calmness and tranquillity are necessary to
its production, the same as in natural sleep. Calm-
ness allows the soul to expand, and this produces
sleep and trance, wherein the body becomes insensi-
ble. There are two ways of producing nervous in-
sensibility : one I have described ; the other is pro-
duced by means of intense activity or excitement.
Fits, in which sensibility is lost, are produced by ex-
citement — the cause sometimes visible or known
(or, at least, supposed to be), but oftener unknown.

We know that catalepsy, common to Methodist
revivals, known as "the power, " is induced by excite-

228 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

ment. Children fall down in fits through the ex-
citement of fear. In intense anger the nerves have
little or no feeling. Indeed, there is an insanity
comes through anger in which there seems to be
neither sympathy, reason nor feeling. Many a man
has been maimed, wounded, or even materially in-
jured in a fight without being at all sensible of it till
the excitement was over. So long as the tension of
the nerves continues there is no pain. The clinched
fist of an angry man feels nothing. The Indian,
undergoing untold tortures at the hands of his cap-
tors, sings his war-song and laughs in the face of his
tormentors. Michael Servetus, being roasted over
a slow fire made of green wood, by John Calvin,
composed the following, which he repeated to his
tormentor, with a smile of happiness on his face :

w This side enough is toasted ;
Turn me, tyrant, and eat ;
For, whether raw or roasted,
I am the better meat."

The Christian martyrs, while being burned at the
stake, sang, prayed and exhorted ; assuring the by-
standers that it was pleasant " to die for the Lord."
In view of these facts, and what we know of ecstasy
and the insensibility of the mesmerized subject, is it
not at least reasonable to suppose that the will is
master of sensation as well as motion ? There is no
pain to the strong will. Many a man has endured
surgical operations without the use of anaesthetics or
bonds, and without a movement of muscle or nerve.

VOL UNTAR Y AND INVOL UNTARY PO WERS. 2 29

Therefore, if pain can be partially subdued by the
will, it may be wholly so.

A man is made far stronger and more enduring by
excitement ; and the deepest and most power-and-
health-producing excitement comes from the calming
of passions and the awakening of the higher faculties.
There is a spiritual excitement, far more potent and
exhilarating than the excitement of any of the pas-
sions, in which ecstasy is passed and the soul escapes.
It is then that these bodies are proof to the elements,
and command the respect of even wild beasts.

The Rah at of India seeks some jungle or lonely
place, or some dangerous place by the side of some
swamp or lagoon, infested by monstrous reptiles,
where man fears to intrude ; here he composes him-
self for his meditations, and goes calmly into an
unconscious state, while monsters crawl out and lie
down by his side, and sleep also. Never was one
known to be harmed by them. (See Isis Unveiled.)

Is not this the same power by which Daniel com-
manded the respect of the lions in their den ? The
full power of the will does not manifest itself in our
normal state ; there must be an excitement of some
kind in order to call into play all our powers. The
full measure of power is not in the tension of the
nerves and muscles ; it is in the tension of the inner
man or spiritual body. This is not a rousing up as
of anger, and a propulsion of the spirit outward, but
rather a letting go of the nerves — a resignation of
the soul as in sleep. This is possible only in habit.

230 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

True culture gives resignation, which, pushed on
to extremes, gives power to withstand fire. The
Acolyte for the Priesthood of Buddhism must pos-
sess super-mundane powers ere he can be admitted.
I have been told by a gentleman who was born in
India, and lived there until he was twenty-one years
of age, that when they apply for Priesthood they are
tested by being required to walk over a long bed of
live coals of fire with their naked feet, to do it with-
out hurry, and to come off at the other end with-
out a singe or smell of fire ; if they fail they are not
admitted, but are sent back to their practice of medi-
tative rites.