On one occasion, when I was privileged to attend an ordination service at Kandy, I was much struck with an incident which occurred at this time-old ceremony. At the conclusion of the service, when the melodious intoning of the celebrants had ceased to reverberate in the solemn ruins of the dimly-lighted aisle, the young initiate was placed at the bottom of the row of monks, who were seated, cross-legged, in the nave of the temple. During the service the lay spectators had been railed off at the entrance, which faced the shrine, beneath which the chief abbot presided. But, when the newly-ordained monk had assumed a sitting posture in the place assigned to him, the railing was removed, and his female relations—perhaps his "beloved one" among them—came forward and prostrated themselves at his feet. The initiate sat with downcast eyes, unmoved by the demonstration, recalling to mind one of those statues of Buddha in which the countenance is represented with that abstracted yet compassionate expression so characteristic of the Perfect One. Then also was brought to my recollection that saying of Jesus recorded in the Gospel when he turned towards his mother and exclaimed: "Woman, what have I to do with thee?"
It may, I think, be indisputably affirmed that the deep insight of these great reformers into the problems of life, the profound impression they made upon a vain world, their sublimated ideas, their superhuman influences, their stainless lives—that all these proclaim them to have been veritable embodiments of the mystic Sophia and one with God. Separated only by the time appointed for their appearance in the world, they were both presentations of the same Logos, called in Buddhistic terminology "Bodhi" or Intelligence. Whether there was a difference between the quality of presentation in the cases of Jesus and Gotama, whether the one produced a more flamboyant light than the other, and in what respects and how the media differed, are questions that can only be answered by Christians and Buddhists themselves, according to the light that is in them.
In the person of Jesus the human became divine. It was not a case of the conversion of the godhead into the flesh.
The whole of the so-called Athanasian Creed, read in the light of positive psychology, appears to be a statement of many important truths, and, for all we know, it may be literally true that, unless a man makes this creed his own and acts up to it, he cannot be saved in the sense indicated. The creed is applicable to the needs of the whole world, and, therefore, is rightly called the Catholic faith. Unfortunately its patristic terminology has led the unenlightened to conclude that it is exclusive and sectarian; consequently, many earnest Christians have evinced an inclination to reject it, and efforts have been made to have it expunged from the Liturgy of the Church of England.
Although it may be accepted as a true statement that the typical Hindu mind, which ranges over such a vast area of speculation, will never be induced by missionary zeal to confine itself within the apparently limited formulæ of Christian doctrine, it must not be overlooked that even the symbolism of Christianity represents and covers a shoreless ocean in which thought can disport itself without ever coming into contact with the limitations of the concrete. The Hindu mind binds itself, as it has been said of Art, to no creeds, no articles of faith, no schemes of salvation, no confessions. It cannot by its very nature. The unconditioned is its country, its native land, its home.
Christ rose from the dead, as the purified soul of man will at last be detached from the conditioned, though still remaining a quality of the conditioned. The Christ principle, the Comforter, or the Holy Ghost, does not, with the ascension of Christ, leave us comfortless, but stays with us to the end.
With regard to the posthumous appearance of Jesus and all phenomena of a like nature, it is not easy to find room in positive psychology for such a thing as a docetic body; yet it would seem absolutely needful for the logical expansion of such a science to include, as a speculative possibility, the seeming existence of loose integrations of matter with apparent form and outline, of vaporous counterparts of animal organisms, of aspects of matter not familiar to mankind, having a place in the general scheme of the apparitional world.[F]
Further, unless we doggedly refuse to rely on the published experiences of eminent and trustworthy men, such as Mr. Myers and his associates, the case of Mrs. Piper must be taken au sérieux. Those who accept an animistic solution have undoubtedly cleared a fence, but there still remains an obstacle before them in the shape of the definition of "spirit."
In seeking for an interpretation that will harmonize with the general tenor of Buddhistic philosophy and positive psychology, it is incumbent that the irrefragable "Law of Causation," à l'œuvre in the phenomenal world, should be taken into account, and any attempted effort of explanation of unfamiliar powers, such as those exhibited by mediums, demands that a place should be found for them in the mosaic of cause and effect. Mediumistic powers, it seems to me, are merely an extension of the faculty of expression-reading. Efferent nerves discharge impressions which can be read. Everyone, more or less, can read the expressions of a face, and learn thereby, to a limited and imperfect extent, the thoughts of an individual. In the case of the medium, the terminal organs of the afferent nerves being hyper-sensitive, the medium is able to do more than read in a general way the thought of a person by the impression conveyed through the discharge of the efferent nerves of a person. A medium, therefore, receives, in proportion to the degree of hyper-sensitiveness possessed by the terminal organs of the afferent nerves, the intimate knowledge harboured in the brain-cells of another person, which is constantly being discharged by the efferent nerves of that person. These powers, which I relegate to the realm of causation, must not be confounded with "Bodhi," or "Logos," which is not subject to any phenomenal law.
The founder of the Brahmo Somaj, Keshub Chunder Sen, idealized Christ as a universal principle in these striking sentences:—