CHAPTER XXI.

ROSICRUCLE f , . 304

INTRODUCTION.

THE SUPERNATURAL.

In this matter-of-fact age the existence of God is
seriously questioned by the greatest thinkers. The
reason is obviously in the definitions which the re-
ligious world — more especially the Christian — gives
to the term. The very nature of reason precludes
the idea of the existence of a Thing above, separate
and apart from the relationship of things. Reason
cannot transcend its own source. That which is
seen and known as nature — it being an infinitude
of objects and phenomena — is considered as suffi-
cient. And to reason and observation it does seem
so. But if we undertake an analysis of this thing
we call nature, we shall find it fully as remarkable
and as contradictory as to suppose a Supreme Being
as its maker.

The antipathies of things show no one source.
There seems, even to broad and deep reason, two
principles at war with each other ; equally so to the
fool they appear. One cannot be the cause of the
other — nor can they be self-adjusting and regulating.
Why? Because to us — not even to our reason —

ii

12 INTRODUCTION.

is no thing self-existent or self-supporting. Every-
thing in existence is dependent upon something
else.

If there is an exception to this, it cannot be a
Form. If we pass by things in our thought, and
descend to principles, they also are dual and antago-
nistic.

To suppose Good to be the principle, and evil its
mere effect, is an absurdity, for one is as real as the
other ; and the evil is as much the cause of good as
good is the cause of evil.

We are so constituted that definitions are a neces-
sity of all growth, intellectual as well as physical.
All nature is an effort to define itself. But what is
it that is defining itself in this warfare of elements —
this clashing of interests ? Is it not something hidden
away alike from feeling or observation and reason, a
something underlying both soul and mind, of which
we can form no conception ?

Who can define the principle in himself which
feels, thinks and reasons ? It is known as the Ego,
the self, or the I. And even Jehovah defined Him-
self as "I am that I am," and how can I speak of
myself otherwise than to declare that I am ?

I cannot ascend above nor descend below, neither
can I circumscribe myself ; I meet myself at every
turn. If I essay a definition of God, it is my own
thought merely, and if I read it in a book, it is
merely the thought of some other mind similar to
my own.

INTRODUCTION. 1 3

The nature of man is to think, but no man can
think outside of himself or beyond his nature.

To comprehend is to enclose as in a circle ; and
when we have gone around ourselves and analyzed
our entire being, pray, what do we know ? We know
this. From the pain and pleasure of living we know
of two great principles at war with each other in our-
selves ; and we agree to call one Good and the other
Evil.

Now we have these two principles through the
exercise of a power that underlies thought or mind, a
principle that exists prior to thought, viz. — sense.

Sense is the principle of all animate being, nay
more, it is the principle of all being and of all becom-
ing. Out of sense, as out of the womb, comes the
power to think, viz., the mind ; which does not feel,
but which estimates or judges of what affects the
man. Sense is the soul and the oversoul of things. It
is common to the worm, insect and to man. Bound-
less space pulsates with sense, in which worlds float
like dust in a sunbeam. Sense is supernatural.

That which is made a thing when limited by forms
and conditions, constitutes the soul of things, sparks
of an inconceivable fire whose light is mind, physi-
cally manifesting in stars, suns and worlds, holes in
the blue vault of heaven through which the super-
natural looks down at us.

What is that spark which flashes from a telegraph
instrument in the transmission of intelligence from
place to place ? It is light and of the same nature

14 INTRODUCTION.

as thought. It flashes through space regardless of
time, loaded with intelligence, life, light and heat ;
which warms the blood and inspires the mind.

The oceans of space are filled with sense, of which
we become sensible by its impinging upon reservoirs
within, which we term hearing, seeing, feeling, smell-
ing and tasting, — the five senses or keys of this
human telegraph instrument. And he who operates
the machine, sends and receives telegrams and judges
of their nature and keeps the instrument in order, is
the Ego, man, who thinks, feels and knows; he
who judges nature and essays to improve upon her
methods.

The very perception of imperfection in any of
nature's works fixes the mark of superiority upon the
one who so perceives or thinks. The idea of improv-
ing anything carries with it the power to do so, even
the power to improve the selfhood, which is the think-
ing principle itself.

Man knows a little : but the all knowing, all think-
ing, all seeing power we call God, man can only ap-
prehend by the senses which are supposed to be five
in number ; but there are other senses of which we
have never dreamed — as the unknown is beyond the
known.

How small and weak is the latter compared to
the former ! How small the possible in comparison
to the impossible ! Is the Supernatural the impos-
sible ? Then how great and vast it must be ! It
is natural to grow in knowledge, but the things

INTRO D UCTION. 1 5

unknown are infinite — they are all in our ignorance.
How vast it is compared to our knowledge ! Is
Ignorance the Supernatural?

The light that flows from the sun is small com-
pared to the limitless darkness that hovers around
its radius. Is the darkness the Supernatural ?

The above is greater than the below. Is it to be
wondered at that men have universally looked up to
God ? However vast nature may be there is some-
thing still above it, which, although incomprehensible,
still has an existence to every thinking mind. My
nature is limited by my knowledge of myself and
my relationship to others. So nature is a limited
thing, as my mind is my limit.

May not this nature, after all, be merely a mental
product as is the good and evil of it ? A mental pro-
duct ! not of one, nor even of a race, but of all minds
in unison ! Is all nature outside of us, or is it within,
as a wondrous mystery hidden in our ignorance.

Is not the impossible within us, the same as is
weakness, and ignorance, and darkness ?

Education is nothing but the opening of a "door,"
or the lighting of a lamp in a dark place, through
which things before unknown appear to us as the
possible, and are very simple.

The circumstances of our lives are all within us, as
the possibilities of our natures, but hidden from us in
our ignorance, till our acts flow out as a light, showing
us merely a few things of the many still lying back
in the infinite darkness of the unexplored beyond.

1 6 INTRODUCTION.

The hidden is infinite. We are hidden from our-
selves, and know not the wondrous powers lying back
of our smallness.

Even we are astonished at the wondrous skill of
this thing we call man, which is but the supernatural
revealing itself to us ; and why reveal itself if it is
not an invitation for us to become something more
than we now are ? And where shall we find a pat-
tern to guide us in this becoming, if it be not in our
thoughts ? Is this model of excellence to be found
in the most lovely forms of matter, or in the most
useful, or in the most powerful or in anything which
appeals to any of our senses as something like our-
selves: or must it be of a nature far superior to
thought or feeling, a something of which the imagi-
nation has conceived as far above the possibility of
attainment, of which the mind can form no image
and of which nature contains no likeness ? This
ideal conception is that which elevates one above him-
self to the supernatural of the self, the goal of all
becoming; and which is subjective rather than objec-
tive, the soul rather than the body. This ideal con-
ception is of God within the soul a subjective being
— not separate and apart from nature, but as the
creative principle thereof, residing in all and per-
meating all that is. In this view the supernatural
becomes comprehensible. It is the soul of nature
and objects : hence God is objectified in his works.

He who looks for God as an object to worship will
find many on the road to power, but he who looks for

INTRODUCTION. If

God within himself will feel the fullness of satisfac-
tion and power, which God gives to all who love the
good and true.

That which is unchangeable is supernatural and
eternal. In nature things are mutable. Matter may
be divided till there is nothing left of it. Analyze a
thing, and you have nothing left of it save a little
dross. Take a chair for example. What is it ? A
few pieces of wood put together for use. Take it to
pieces and the chair vanishes. Burn the wood and
we have ashes. Melt the ashes and we have some
other substances to which science gives names. But
where and what is the chair ? Is it a mere name ?
or is it a substance ? It is an effect — a result of the
combination of pieces of wood. If it is an effect,
where and what is the cause ? I answer, the chair
was first an idea conceived in the mind of some man,
and came out of the man, and was formed in matter
for use. But the real chair is an idea, and hence it
is as indestructible as man himself.

The same is true of all things that man makes.
They came out of man as the light of his intelligence
illuminates the darkness of his ignorance, wherein
infinity exists.

Nature is matter, motion and space, but the sense
of it is the supernatural. It interprets itself, as I am
feebly trying to do. Each man must interpret for
himself, and his interpretation will be himself merely,
as the sense of his mind illumines the darkness
within.

1 8 INTROD UCTION.

Space is a vacuum in which things exist in motion
or in sense. It is the " over-soul/ ' and comprehends^
or includes all. This is the supernatural. The sense
of a thing gives it motion, and in motion things
gestate, as in a womb, and grow, or become material-
ized.

At the centre of things there are no things, nor
is any motion there. Perfection and stagnation exist
at the centre. The centre is a vacuum, and is the
soul.

All worlds wheel around centres, and centres are
souls, and souls are Gods. In God ("The Over-
Soul ") all things are possible — in nature, where soul
is a centre, the impossible exists, because here is
ignorance, darkness and weakness.

"He who limits things by his narrow sense is a^
fool," says Hargrave Jennings, one of England's
great Rosicrucians ; and I say, whoever limits the
possible shows his weakness and want of compre-
hension.

We do not know what exists in nature. We know
very little, and what little we know is a damage to
us, save as it shows us our weakness and the power
and infinitude of the possible. To return to ideas.

We are as we think : ideas rule and govern all
action and all growth. Ideas are souls — entities of
all being — unchangeable and indestructible; they
exist in the spirit ; the atmosphere is the spirit of the
earth, and in it are the souls of vegetation, having
been evolved from the earth. They hover around,

INTRODUCTION. 1 9

and when conditions are favorable, descend accord-
ing to the law of attraction and affinity, and spring
up in the soil as vegetation.

It is a well known fact to the pioneers of the
wilderness of northern Pennsylvania that on a newly-
cleared piece of woodland when the soil is killed by
burning, "fire-weeds M spring up almost as thick as
the hair on an animal's back.

There is such a thing as chemical affinity ; and the
earth being prepared by heat or in any other manner
makes "conditions " for new or old forms of vegeta-
tion to come into existence. The earth's atmosphere
is all alive with ideas — ideas of vegetables, animals
and men — all waiting for favorable conditions to
enable them to be born into existence.

Ideas are infinite in number and variety, corre-
sponding to all conditions from mineral up to man.
They are the soul-life and volition of matter, and they
enter into matter at every point where conditions are
favorable.

I hold that all forms are ideas materialized, that
ideas are eternal, but forms are evanescent. The
sunlight gives color to vegetation. Color is an idea,
and, although the foundation of color may reside in
the mineral of plants, yet we all know that the sun
develops it.

A child develops in utero, but who does not know
that the soul comes through the father ? Matter is
the mother ; spirit is the father.

In every atom of matter is a vacuum — else there

20 INTRODUCTION.

would be no attraction — for matter crowds upon
vacuum and hence takes form, and vacuum is the
womb of matter, into which ideas are attracted when-
ever moved by a magnetic current.

All life and organization are dependent upon this
current, and this is dependent upon the formation of
a magnet, or the union of the positive and negative,
the acid and alkali, the father and mother. As spirit
is the father, and as ideas (souls) come from the
Father, so does spirit baptize matter, impregnating it.
" God is a spirit. " So the supernatural is a spirit,
and will beget itself in matter whenever conditions
are favorable.

Ideas, being soul, are food for souls. Hence man
grows in creative and original power through his
reception of ideas. Ideas take root in the soil of
man's mind according to its condition, exactly as
vegetation springs up in the soil of the earth. If
the soil be poor the vegetation will be inferior. If the
mind be low and vulgar, the ideas attracted will be
inferior ; but ideas of whatever grade or kind are a
creative power. There is a spontaneity of mind as
well as of earth. That which springs up of itself is
generally weeds, but the most delicious fruits are pro-
duced by effort — culture. The higher the culture,
the nearer the approximation to the supernatural.

Look you at the burrowing worm, and at the soar-
ing eagle ! Step up, slowly, laboriously, from the
lowest form, step by step, to the highest form of life
known on this planet — man. Do you stop here ?

INTRO D UCTION. 2 1

And because your poor sight sees no higher form
will you deny its existence ? Do you see intelligence
graded from the snail to the loftiest intellect, and
then, by your narrow sense, limit gradation of power ?
Behold the grass of the fields ! the lilies of the valley !
Then look aloft, by day or by night, at the wondrous
manifestation of an intelligent power, and blush in
shame at your presumption.
\. We grasp a little knowledge, a little of life, a little
of spirit by the five senses, but the vital principles of
science and of human action are only grasped by the
loftiest reason. This is intuition. Are you a reason-
able being, and yet limit God by denying him ? If
so, your reason is of the lowest order ; it is destruc-
tive ; it is not GoD-like and creative. Analyze matter
in the crucible of thought — dissect all forms with the
scalpel of reason, and then when you are done with
your work tell me what you know. If your work has
not inspired you with a love of the unknown mystery
surrounding and dwelling within all things, you are an
egotist. If you cavil at names you are a fool. Are
you an artist ? Then take your inspirations from one
who works eternally, and never makes a failure. Are
you a mechanic ? Go study the suspension bridges
the spider makes, and the comb of the honey bee, or
the mechanism of a tree. I need not multiply words.
Whatever you are, or whatever you aspire to be, the
power is waiting for you — the patterns are spread
out for your study.

The supernatural is in all, and is subservient to

22 INTRODUCTION.

our wishes. But it is our work to make conditions —
these have no limit. There is no interference — you
can be just what you like to be ; but growth is slow.
Why hurry ? Is not eternity for us ? It is the
hurry and worry of life that destroy power. Trouble
and vexation destroy health and pleasure, and these
are all there is of value.

All things are suggestive, for they are ideas ; they
call us out of ourselves to revel in the infinite. Is
there no suggestion that comes to you, kind reader,
of the supernatural? Is there no intuitive feeling
that speaks to you of immortal undying power ? Do
you not, in your better moods, long to drink at the
fountain of life, pleasure and individuality? If not,
I am sorry for you. Ideas give fullness of life and
pleasure — the greater the idea, the greater fullness
and power. What idea is greater than the super-
natural ?

We talk glibly of the laws of nature, as if they
were fixed and immutable ; but they are set aside by
every habit which disgraces the race. Furthermore,
modern times are rife with accounts of the dead
appearing to the living, and of the living appearing
as the dead ; of levitation and the moving of substance
without a motive power, etc. The suspension of any
one law of nature proves beyond all question that all
are subject to the same power, and all may be sus-
pended or rendered inoperative: — take for example
the following, from the " Progressive Thinker " of
Nov. 10, 1900.

INTRODUCTION. 23

WONDERFUL OCCULT POWERS.

As set forth by the Chicago American, William
H. Mack, a young man from New York, believes that
some day he will show that there is something wrong
with the law of gravitation, and that the laws which
now govern the attraction of the earth will have to
be amended.

At present he is a living demonstration of the fact
that the laws of gravitation don't always work as
they are laid down in books ; for Mr. Mack can make
himself so heavy nobody can lift him, or he can allow
himself to be lifted easily by a man of moderate
strength.

He has known of the strange power he possessed
ever since he was a mere child. He has exhibited it
for the benefit of the greatest specialists, but none
of them can give an explanation of just what the
subtle power is which he possesses. Professor Vir-
chow, of Berlin, says it is a form of nervous energy.
Charcot, the great French exponent of hypnotism,
declares it is a management of invisible force, what-
ever that may mean ; and so on. But nevertheless
the fact remains that Mack can regulate his weight,
and also has control over his pulse.

He has traveled around the world showing his
power, and in the course of his travels was in China
in 1896, where he was not allowed to exhibit before
the people, as he was regarded as a supernatural
being. He did, however, give an exhibition before

24 INTRODUCTION.

Li Hung Chang. That shrewd diplomat said to him :
" You ought to be very rich ; you have such a grip
on the earth/'

Mr. Mack is now in Chicago, and he gave an exhi-
bition of his strange force at the American office
yesterday, where he defied the strongest employe in
the building to lift him from the ground if he did not
so choose. In his exhibitions he simply places his
finger upon the neck of the man trying to lift him,
and he is glued to the earth. No amount of energy
seems able to raise him, but when he does not apply
this touch he is as easily lifted as an ordinary man.

Mr. Mack also has the power of transmitting his
peculiar resistance to others by simply placing his
hand upon the neck. He has recently come from
Harvard, where he was a source of wonder and
amazement to the football team, which tried mass
plays upon him without avail. He defied their united
strength. Three or four of the biggest men on the
team tried with might and main to lift him, but failed.

Mack performs many wonderful feats, but perhaps
the strangest is this : he holds a vaulting-pole in an
upright position between the palms of his hands, and
permits as many as can conveniently grasp the pole
to do so, but their combined efforts are unable to
force the pole to the ground.

Mack first discovered his unusual power when a
small boy. He came home from school without a
merit card, and his father was about to punish him.
The small boy grasped the father by the neck and

INTRODUCTION. 2$

the father's hand was stayed ; he could do nothing
with the boy, and was astonished. He tried to
carry the boy to the house, but was unable to lift
him from the ground.

Dr. Marion L. Simms, the family physician, was
called to see if he could explain the phenomenon, but
after several experiments gave it up. Spiritualists
thought they detected a great medium, but young
Mack did not show any genius in this respect.

In 1890 the strong man went to England and
submitted to tests by experiments there ; but no good
explanation of how he exerted his power was ob-
tained, and Mack still wonders why he does it and
why he is so different from other men.

The definition of a pound, according to physicists,
is "the pull of the earth exerted upon a small piece
of platinum deposited in the Exchequer at London.' '
To Mack this means nothing, for he can make the
earth exert a greater or less amount of " pull " upon
him, and the unit of the measure of the force of
gravity is of no use.

On the scales he can vary his weight "working,"
123 pounds, but he can also tip the beam at 800
pounds and then slowly decrease his avoirdupois to
about 35 pounds below normal, and he cannot ex-
plain it any more than anybody else.

Professor Virchow, in Berlin, made a three weeks'
study of Mack, and at the end of that time gave no
clear explanation of the phenomena which he had
studied. He gave it as his theory that it was some

26 INTRODUCTION,

form of nerve resistance ; and the consensus of the
savants seems to be that it is something of ~that sort,
but something they have never been able to discover
before and are absolutely unable to account for.

Mack becomes exhausted after a little time and
seems in a state of almost total collapse after per-
forming his feats, but regains his normal poise in
about a half-hour of rest, which goes to confirm the
theory of it being nervous power which he uses.

For the American, Mack performed his usual feat
of increasing and diminishing his weight. He was
not feeling in the best of health, and said his " work "
affected him more than usual. He proved himself to
be absolute master of his weight, and could weigh
about what he wished when anybody tried to lift
him. One, two, three and four men made trials, but
could not move him from his feet. He could be
wrestled from his feet easily or toppled over and then
lifted ; but when he placed his finger on the neck of
one of the men, and they all touched flesh somewhere
along the line, his resistance baffled all their efforts.

vThere seemed to several reporters who tried the
experiment and watched it closely, a trick of balance.
They tried similar experiments among themselves,
and found that when one of their number placed his
finger on the neck of another it was almost impossi-
ble to lift him ; the other trials failed, and they
finally came to the conclusion there was some
unusual power being manifested.

THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.