And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.”
It is indeed myself that I unconsciously project into the large and silent world around me; the exhilaration I feel is a glad sense of the vast new bounds of my nature. That is why, at the appearance of another human being, I sink back immediately into the limits of my own normal individuality. I am no longer conterminous with the world around me; I cannot absorb or control another individuality like my own. I become a self-conscious human being in the presence of another self-conscious human being.
(4.) The supreme expression of the religious consciousness lies always in an intuition of union with the world, under whatever abstract or concrete names the infinite not-self may be hidden. The perpetual annunciation of this union has ever been the chief gladness of life. It comes in the guise of a κάθαρσις of egoism, a complete renunciation of the limits of individuality—of all the desires and aims that seem to converge in the single personality—and a joyous acceptance of what has generally seemed an immense external Will, now first dimly or clearly realized. In every age this intuition has found voice—voice that has often grown wild and incoherent with the torrent of expansive emotion that impelled it. It is this intuition which is the “emptiness” of Lâo-tsze, the freedom from all aims that centre in self: “It is only by doing nothing that the kingdom can be made one’s own.” This is the great good news of the Upanishads: the âtman, the soul, may attain to a state of yoga, of union, with the supreme âtman; free, henceforth, from doubts and desires which pass over it as water passes over the leaf of the lotus without wetting it; acting, henceforth, only as acts the potter’s wheel when the potter has ceased to turn it: “If I know that my own body is not mine, and yet that the whole earth is mine, and again that it is both mine and thine—no harm can happen then.” The Buddhist’s Nirvana, whether interpreted as a state to be attained before or after death, has the same charm; it opens up the kingdom of the Universe to man; it offers to the finite a home in the infinite. This is the great assertion of Christ, “I and my Father are one;” and whenever Christianity has reached its highest expression, from Paul’s day to our own, it has but sung over again the old refrain of joy at the “new birth” into eternal life—the union, as it is said, of the soul through Christ with God—a tender Father, a great sustaining Power on which the soul may rest and be at peace:
“E la sua volontade è nostra pace.”
And that again is but in another form the Sufiism of Jelal-ed-din—the mystic union of the human bridegroom with the Divine Bride. Even the austere Imperial Stoic becomes lyrical as this intuition comes to him: “Everything is harmonious with me which is harmonious to thee, O Universe!” As far back as we can trace, the men of all races, each in his own way and with his own symbols, have raised this shout of exultation. There is no larger freedom for man.
It seemed well to name at least the chief implications contained in a broadly generalized statement of man’s religious relation to the universe. It is important to remember that they are but an individual mode of representation. I can only say that I am conscious of myself in varying attitudes or relations. The terms of those relationships, stated with however much probability, will ever remain matter for dispute. Moreover, various attitudes reveal various metaphysical implications.
The scientific attitude, for example, has a series of implications of its own. In its solvents all things are analyzed and atomized; the “soul” of our religious world—the vast pulsating centre, at the bottom of which, according to the profound saying of the old mystic, lies that unutterable sigh which we call God—is resolved into a momentary focus of ever-shifting rays of force; it is but an incident in a huge evolution of shifting forces which we may, if we like, personify as Nature, but which, none the less, we cannot conceive as a whole. The scientific attitude has its own implications, and their far-reaching significance, their immense value for the individual and for the race, can scarcely be overrated.