Thus, it might seem to many, nothing whatever had happened; I had not gained one single definite belief that could be expressed in a scientific formula or hardened into a religious creed. That, indeed, is the essence of such a process. A “conversion” is not, as is often assumed, a turning towards a belief. More strictly, it is a turning round, a revolution; it has no primary reference to any external object. As the greater mystics have often understood, “the Kingdom of Heaven is within.” To put the matter a little more precisely, the change is fundamentally a readjustment of psychic elements to each other, enabling the whole machine to work harmoniously. There is no necessary introduction of new ideas; there is much more likely to be a casting out of dead ideas which have clogged the vital process. The psychic organism—which in conventional religion is called the “soul”—had not been in harmony with itself; now it is revolving truly on its own axis, and in doing so it simultaneously finds its true orbit in the cosmic system. In becoming one with itself, it becomes one with the universe.[[82]]
The process, it will be seen, is thus really rather analogous to that which on the physical plane takes place in a person whose jaw or arm is dislocated, whether by some inordinate effort or some sudden shock with the external world. The miserable man with a dislocated jaw is out of harmony with himself and with the universe. All his efforts cannot reduce the dislocation, nor can his friends help him; he may even come to think there is no cure. But a surgeon comes along, and with a slight pressure of his two thumbs, applied at the right spot, downwards and backwards, the jaw springs into place, the man is restored to harmony—and the universe is transformed. If he is ignorant enough, he will be ready to fall on his knees before his deliverer as a divine being. We are concerned with what is called a “spiritual” process,—for it is an accepted and necessary convention to distinguish between the “spiritual” and the “physical,”—but this crude and imperfect analogy may help some minds to understand what is meant.
Thus may be explained what may seem to some the curious fact that I never for a moment thought of accepting as a gospel the book which had brought me a stimulus of such inestimable value. The person in whom “conversion” takes place is too often told that the process is connected in some magical manner with a supernatural influence of some kind, a book, a creed, a church, or what not. I had read this book before and it had left me unmoved; I knew that the book was merely the surgeon’s touch, that the change had its source in me and not in the book. I never looked into the book again; I cannot tell where or how my copy of it disappeared; for all that I know, having accomplished its mission, it was drawn up again to Heaven in a sheet. As regards James Hinton, I was interested in him before the date of the episode here narrated; I am interested in him still.[[83]]
It may further be noted that this process of “conversion” cannot be regarded as the outcome of despair or as a protective regression towards childhood. The unfortunate individual, we sometimes imagine, who is bereft of religious faith sinks deeper and deeper into despondency, until finally he unconsciously seeks the relief of his woes by plunging into an abyss of emotions, thereby committing intellectual suicide. On the contrary, the period in which this event occurred was not a period of dejection either mental or physical. I was fully occupied; I lived a healthy, open-air life, in a fine climate, amid beautiful scenery; I was revelling in new studies and the growing consciousness of new powers. Instead of being the ultimate stage in a process of descent, or a return to childhood, such psychic revolution may much more fittingly be regarded as the climax of an ascensional movement. It is the final casting off of childish things, the initiation into complete manhood.
There is nothing ascetic in such a process. One is sometimes tempted to think that to approve mysticism is to preach asceticism. Certainly many mystics have been ascetic. But that has been the accident of their philosophy, and not the essence of their religion. Asceticism has, indeed, nothing to do with normal religion. It is, at the best, the outcome of a set of philosophical dogmas concerning the relationship of the body to the soul and the existence of a transcendental spiritual world. That is philosophy, of a sort, not religion. Plotinus, who has been so immensely influential in our Western world because he was the main channel by which Greek spiritual tendencies reached us, to become later embodied in Christianity, is usually regarded as a typical mystic, though he was primarily a philosopher, and he was inclined to be ascetic. Therein we may not consider him typically Greek, but the early philosophical doctrine of Plato concerning the transcendental world of “Ideas” easily lent itself to developments favourable to an ascetic life. Plotinus, indeed, was not disposed to any extreme ascetic position. The purification of the soul meant for him “to detach it from the body, and to elevate it to a spiritual world.” But he would not have sympathised with the harsh dualism of flesh and spirit which often flourished among Christian ascetics. He lived celibate, but he was willing to regard sex desire as beautiful, though a delusion.[[84]] When we put aside the philosophic doctrines with which it may be associated, it is seen that asceticism is merely an adjuvant discipline to what we must regard as pathological forms of mysticism.
People who come in contact with the phenomenon of “conversion” are obsessed by the notion that it must have something to do with morality. They seem to fancy that it is something that happens to a person leading a bad life whereby he suddenly leads a good life. That is a delusion. Whatever virtue morality may possess, it is outside the mystic’s sphere. No doubt a person who has been initiated into this mystery is likely to be moral because he is henceforth in harmony with himself, and such a man is usually, by a natural impulse, in harmony also with others. Like Leonardo, who through the glow of his adoration of Nature was as truly a mystic as St. Francis, even by contact with him “every broken heart is made serene.” But a religious man is not necessarily a moral man. That is to say that we must by no means expect to find that the religious man, even when he is in harmony with his fellows, is necessarily in harmony with the moral laws of his age. We fall into sad confusion if we take for granted that a mystic is what we conventionally term a “moral” man. Jesus, as we know, was almost as immoral from the standpoint of the society in which he moved as he would be in our society. That, no doubt, is an extreme example, yet the same holds good, in a minor degree, of many other mystics, even in very recent times. The satyrs and the fauns were minor divinities in antiquity, and in later times we have been apt to misunderstand their holy functions and abuse their sacred names.
Not only is there no necessary moral change in such a process, still less is there any necessary intellectual change. Religion need not involve intellectual suicide. On the intellectual side there may be no obvious change whatever. No new creed or dogma had been adopted.[[85]] It might rather be said that, on the contrary, some prepossessions, hitherto unconscious, had been realised and cast out. The operations of reason, so far from being fettered, can be effected with greater freedom and on a larger scale. Under favourable conditions the religious process, indeed, throughout directly contributes to strengthen the scientific attitude. The mere fact that one has been impelled by the sincerity of one’s religious faith to question, to analyse, and finally to destroy one’s religious creed, is itself an incomparable training for the intelligence. In this task reason is submitted to the hardest tests; it has every temptation to allow itself to be lulled into sleepy repose or cajoled into specious reconciliations. If it is true to itself here it is steeled for every other task in the world, for no other task can ever demand so complete a self-sacrifice at the call of Truth. Indeed, the final restoration of the religious impulse on a higher plane may itself be said to reënforce the scientific impulse, for it removes that sense of psychic disharmony which is a subconscious fetter on the rational activity. The new inward harmony, proceeding from a psychic centre that is at one alike with itself and with the Not-Self, imparts confidence to every operation of the intellect. All the metaphysical images of faith in the unseen—too familiar in the mystical experiences of men of all religions to need specification—are now on the side of science. For he who is thus held in his path can pursue that path with serenity and trust, however daring its course may sometimes seem.
It appears to me, therefore, on the basis of personal experience, that the process thus outlined is a natural process. The harmony of the religious impulse and of the scientific impulse is not merely a conclusion to be deduced from the history of the past. It is a living fact to-day. However obscured it may sometimes be, the process lies in human nature and is still open to all to experience.
IV
If the development of the religious instinct and the development of the scientific instinct are alike natural, and if the possibility of the harmony of the two instincts is a verifiable fact of experience, how is it, one may ask, that there has ever been any dispute on the matter? Why has not this natural experience been the experience of all?