THE SCIENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY AS A KNOWLEDGE OF THE HUMAN SOUL
The writer of the present treatise is quite well aware that the great majority of intelligent and educated people at the present day will deny that any real knowledge of the human soul as a spiritual entity, separable from the physical body during life and demonstrably surviving its death, exists now, has heretofore existed, or, if possible for man, is likely to exist for some time to come. Some will unhesitatingly declare such a thing unknowable for man.
I hold the firm conviction that this knowledge has been for ages the possession of certain individuals, few in number in any age or country, and that this knowledge has resulted through conformity to certain definite and specific requirements, formulated under well-known laws of man’s spiritual being, involving a definite individual experience and resulting in a scientific and exact demonstration.
I ask the reader to note two points in the foregoing statement: First, that for myself I use the word “conviction,” and not “knowledge”; and, second, that the demonstration of real knowledge referred to, is made by, and confined to an individual, in each instance.
With these individuals the knowledge is a scientific demonstration through personal experience. With me, the “firm conviction” is a matter of “circumstantial evidence,” supported by analogy, and fortified by empirical testimony, such as acquaint the world with the facts and findings of science, and which I think admit of no other consistent and rational interpretation.
In the foregoing pages I have endeavored to give outlines, analogies, and suggestions which seem to fortify the conviction referred to.
While these are fragmentary and desultory, owing to the fact that the circumstances are so varied, the subject so vast, and the materials so abundant, yet, taken as a whole, they seem overwhelming, and, except to the careful, persistent, and intelligent student, confusing.
It must be clearly apprehended that no one familiar with the subject can reasonably suppose, nor has it ever been claimed by a real Master of the “Art,” that this knowledge ever has been, or can be, communicated to, or acquired by groups of individuals at any time, or under any circumstances.
Through all the past, and at the present time, it is designated as an individual experience.
True, the ethics, and the philosophy, and even the principles of exact psychic science that in the past constituted the “Lesser Mysteries,” can be, and often have been, taught to groups, or classes.
In the present “School of Natural Science,” this preparatory training constitutes the “Ethical Section.”
But above and beyond all the foregoing general considerations the “empirical facts” and the “circumstantial evidence,” if we know personally one who claims to have had the specific instruction, the personal experience, and to have made the scientific demonstration referred to and outlined in the problem, our opportunity for instruction, and for the application of tests for validity and reasonableness as to the whole problem, is exceedingly valuable.
This personal acquaintance may become the nearest possible criterion, short of our own personal experience, as to demonstration.
In previous chapters this phase of the subject has, perhaps, been sufficiently dwelt upon.
The Master may say, “I know; I have had the personal experience; I have demonstrated.”
The student may at last say, “I believe; I am convinced; I am satisfied.”
All through the foregoing pages the effort has continually been made to preserve clearly this distinction.
In tracing analogies through the history of the past, the conditions, premonitory, present, and subsequent to great world-movements have often been referred to.
Nothing is more common or more patent than the oft-repeated saying, “This is the age of science.” Any great movement that undertakes at the present day to deal with the deeper problems of individual and social life, must fit in and conform to the “spirit of the present age.”
To that platform it must appeal; in that language it must be addressed, and by such judgment and criterion must it stand or fall.
All these tests and criteria have been fully met by the School of Natural Science, and they are clearly outlined and set forth in the “Great Work,” addressed to “the Progressive Intelligence of the Age.”
There need be no misconception or misinterpretation at this point.
It is true that superficial thinkers and readers, enthusiasts and emotionalists, are likely to infer that the science of the soul can now be had “for a consideration” and in “a dozen easy lessons.”
All such are doomed to disappointment.
It is furthermore likely, if the average “physical scientist” pays any heed at all, that he will devise a series of “tests” and “experiments” of his own, to fit his preconceived notion of things psychical, with the latent conviction, at least, that he will be able to prove the whole thing a humbug.
These, also, are doomed to disappointment. Physical tests of psychical and spiritual laws and processes are unscientific. No spiritual problem can be solved in terms of physical matter alone.
So-called psychological science to-day is in the condition of one possessing a fine piece of ground, and gathering materials for a house, a superstructure.
The ground is already covered with bricks and stones, and sand and lumber, piled in every direction, with the purpose of one day beginning the work of construction, and the slogan, “Wait! Not yet!” “Some day we are hoping to build.”
No architect, “no designs on the trestle-board,” and so they go on accumulating “facts” and “evidence” day after day, year after year, century after century.
They have a “working hypothesis,” but no definite theorem, and they may work till doomsday on this line without a glimmer of real scientific knowledge of the human soul, yet with mountains of “facts” or of “rubbish.”
They can never prove the existence of a spiritual entity in terms of matter on the physical plane.
Their work has been, and still is, of great interest and value, but it is in no scientific sense, Constructive, backed by the laws of proportion and harmony, nor the “Canon of Architecture.”
The apotheosis of Natural Science is like the “canon of proportion” in architecture, introduced by Vitruvius (an Initiate) centuries ago. It is the verification of Plato’s saying, “God geometrizes,” and his concept of “the World of Divine Ideas.”
Plato further declares, “He who knows not the common things of life is a brute among men. He who knows the common things of life is a man among brutes. But he who knows all that can be learned by diligent inquiry is a god among men.”
Natural Science, as shown in the Great Work, includes scientific knowledge on all planes of being on which the soul of man functions: The physical, moral, psychical, and spiritual; for man is a composite being.
The apotheosis of Natural Science, therefore, is Fact, Law, Demonstration, and Knowledge; before theory, conjecture, creed, dogma, superstition, or fear, intuition, inspiration, revelation, and “holy men” or “holy books” that must be accepted without evidence, or “believed” against evidence.
The Avatars of all the past have originated great reformations which have at last degenerated into dogma and superstition.
The people, incapable of understanding the Law, have been taught in parables, while the few in all religions and in every age have apprehended the law and learned the “Secret Doctrine.”
To-day, for the first time in centuries, for the reasons already assigned, and in keeping with the scientific spirit of the age, and because superstition in power, dogma, and persecution are politically dethroned, these great truths, this Great Work, is openly declared and outlined so that he who wills may apprehend.
Let no one say, “This is an effort to deify an individual.” It is an effort to enthrone Truth; to remove the barriers to the rights of conscience, the shackles of reason, private judgment and Individual Responsibility, and to free the soul of man from all the fetters of ignorance, superstition, and fear, in order that he may be “first a man,” “then a Master,” and at length on a higher plane of being, something more than man has yet realized, or ever dreamed.
Something “that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it yet entered into the heart of man to conceive the glory that shall be revealed.”
The beginning is here and now, when man shall achieve the Mastery of Self and really possess his own soul, and not hold it tremblingly as a pawn of some pretentious potentate of the soul.
The right of Light, Knowledge, and further progress by “Being a Man,” and not a chattel, an asset, a pawn, or a slave.
This is the coming Avatar, and the dawn is already here.
Will the day darken, the Light be quenched? Who can tell?
The redemption of Woman from the slavery of all the past is well under way, and it is indeed a glorious sign.
No lesson in history is plainer nor more readily demonstrated than the fact that the degeneracy of a religion and the degradation of woman go hand in hand.
Demonstrate to-day in any country on earth the status of woman as a whole, and no mistake need be made as to the prevailing religion.
Woman’s political disability is another matter entirely; for she is dominated by man only because, and only so far as, she is handicapped or degraded by the dominant religion.
Take woman from the churches, Protestant or Romish, to-day, and no church could do business for a twelvemonth.
For these reasons the immense and rapidly growing movements, Women’s Clubs and the like, to-day, are of great significance, backed and illuminated as they are by all past history.
In the new movement, the School of Natural Science, the door is as wide open to woman as to man. I might paraphrase the slogan of the Robber Barons of the middle ages. “She may seize who hath the power, She may hold who can.”
In the coming Illuminati woman will stand by the side of man in all opportunity, endeavor, or achievement.
In the new age woman will be something few men have even yet dreamed of.
We might call this new age “the Woman’s Avatar,” without doing violence to either religion, tradition, history, or science; while the sacred Hymns of the Vedas, with the angel of the household and the inspirer of the soul of man, the worship of Divinity, by both men and women, opened a new heaven on this old earth.
And then—such children as will be born, without pain, not through chance, caprice, nor under protest, but even as they were in Greece, as an offering of Love on the altar of divine man-womanhood, with a song of joy to heaven.
Prof. Fiske somewhere said, “The evolution of man by Natural Selection draws near its close, to be followed by that of Divine Selection.”
The Divinity in man is Christos, the “son of the Father,” the Divine and Eternal Avatar.
Belief is rather a superficial process, the intellect (“mortal mind”) mingled with the emotions, changing and evanescent. “Now you see it, and now you don’t.” It is mingled with hope that alternates with fear and doubt.
Faith, when once analyzed and apprehended, is another thing entirely, though nearly every one, and most writers, confuse “belief” and “faith.”
“Faith is the soul’s intuitive conviction of that which both Reason and Conscience approve.”
Genuine faith rarely wavers or changes, because it is an evolution, a “growth of the soul,” a spiritual experience, and it becomes the “dominant chord” in the symphony of life, determining Harmony.
It is in this deliberate and discriminative sense that I have used the term conviction in relation to the Master and his “Great Work.” He never dogmatizes, nor undertakes to “indoctrinate.”
In answer to a question on some deep and perplexing problem of the soul or of the spiritual plane, he replies, “So far as we know, it is so and so.” “A new experience, or an added light, may alter our conclusion.”
The average individual scarcely realizes what absolute sincerity, with no motive save Love of Truth, and beneficence to man guided by clear intelligence, and dominated by the rational Will, means, or can accomplish.
These are the natural powers of the human soul. There is nothing mysterious or miraculous about them, more than in the art of music of a Beethoven or a Paganini, or in gymnastics and the winner of the Marathon.
| “To shape and use, arise and fly, The reeling Faun, the sensual feast, Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die.” |
My conviction is strong, and my Faith unwavering.
“The great and peaceful ones live, regenerating the world like the coming of spring: and having themselves crossed the ocean of embodied existence, help those who try to do the same thing without personal motive.” (“Crest Jewel of Wisdom.”)