As what Newton so well called “patient thought,” constant application, prolonged attention, is the means on which even great minds must rely in order to reach the sempiternal verities of science, so earnest continued prayer is that which all teachers prescribe as the only avenue to inspiration in its religious sense. While this may be conceded, collaterals of the prayer have too often been made to appear trivial and ridiculous.
In the pursuit of inspiration the methods observed present an interesting similarity. The votary who aspires to a communion with the god, shuts himself out from the distraction of social intercourse and the disturbing allurements of the senses. In the solitude of the forest or the cell, with complete bodily inaction, he gives himself to fasting and devotion, to a concentration of all his mind on the one object of his wish, the expected revelation. Waking and sleeping he banishes all other topics of thought, perhaps by an incessant repetition of a formula, until at last the moment comes, as it surely will come in some access of hallucination, furor or ecstasy, the unfailing accompaniments of excessive mental strain, when the mist seems to roll away from the mortal vision, the inimical powers which darkened the mind are baffled, and the word of the Creator makes itself articulate to the creature.
Take any connected account of the revelation of the divine will, and this history is substantially the same. It differs but little whether told of Buddha Sakyamuni, the royal seer of Kapilavastu, or by Catherine Wabose, the Chipeway squaw,[146-1] concerning the Revelations of St. Gertrude of Nivelles or of Saint Brigida, or in the homely language of the cobbler George Fox.
For six years did Sakyamuni wander in the forest, practising the mortifications of the flesh and combatting the temptations of the devil,before the final night when, after overcoming the crowning enticements of beauty, power and wealth, at a certain moment he became the “awakened,” and knew himself in all his previous births, and with that knowledge soared above the “divine illusion” of existence. In the cave of Hari, Mohammed fasted and prayed until “the night of the divine decisions;” then he saw the angel Gabriel approach and inspire him:
“A revelation was revealed to him:
One terrible in power taught it him,
Endowed with wisdom. With firm step stood he,
There, where the horizon is highest,
Then came he near and nearer,
A matter of two bowshots or closer,
And he revealed to his servant a revelation;
He has falsified not what he saw.”[147-1]
With not dissimilar preparation did George Fox seek the “openings” which revealed to him the hollowness of the Christianity of his day, in contrast to the truth he found. In his Journal he records that for months he “fasted much, walked around in solitary places, and sate in hollow trees and lonesome places, and frequently in the night walked mournfully about.” When the word of truth came to him it was of a sudden, “through the immediate opening of the invisible spirit.” Then a new life commenced for him: “Now was I come up in Spirit through the flaming sword into the Paradise of God. All things were new: all the creation gave another smell unto me than before.” The healing virtues of all herbs were straightway made known to him, and the needful truths about the kingdom of God.[147-2]
These are portraitures of the condition of entheasm. Its lineaments are the same, find it where we may.
How is this similarity to be explained? Is it that this alleged inspiration is always but the dream of a half-crazed brain? The deep and real truths it has now and then revealed, the noble results it has occasionally achieved, do not allow this view. A more worthy explanation is at hand.
These preliminaries of inspiration are in fact but a parody, sometimes a caricature, of the most intense intellectual action as shown in the efforts of creative thought. The physiological characteristics of such mental episodes indicate a lowering of the animal life, the respiration is faint and slow, the pulse loses in force and frequency, the nerves of special sense are almost inhibited, the eye is fixed and records no impression, the ear registers no sound, necessary motions are performed unconsciously, the condition approaches that of trance. There is also an alarming similarity at times between the action of genius and of madness, as is well known to alienists.
When the creative thought appears, it does so suddenly; it breaks upon the mind when partly engaged with something else as an instantaneous flash, apparently out of connection with previous efforts. This is the history of all great discoveries, and it has been abundantly illustrated from the lives of inventors, artists, poets and mathematicians. The links of such a mental procedure we do not know. “The product of inspiration, genius, is incomprehensible to itself. Its activity proceeds on no beaten track, and we seek in vain to trace its footsteps. There is no warrant for the value of its efforts. This it can alone secure through voluntary submission to law. All its powers are centred in the energy of production, and none is left for idle watching of the process.”[149-1]