The moment one realizes himself as a spiritual being, belonging by right to the spiritual world; one whose true interests are in and of that realm, and to whom communion with the Divine is the very breath of existence, the one elixir of life, that moment he asserts himself aright. From that hour his life becomes a significant factor in true progress. Prayer may be a formal and ceremonial act, and mean nothing: it may be the absolute surrender of one's soul to the Divine, when it enters behind the veil into the very glory of God. This spiritual truth is closely linked with certain scientific facts. The scientists have theories of inner ether by means of which psychic power is conveyed and which translate it into action, as the wire translates the electric current to express a message. A scientist asserts a new theory that there are no varying states of ether, but that all space is filled with matter in various states of vibration; and that what we had heretofore called air and ether is simply all one substance in degrees of lower and higher range. It is conceivable that this latest idea may approximate to the truth more than any previous theory. No one has yet discovered those forces of nature by means of which sense relates itself to spirit. There is certainly some great law, still unrecognized and unformulated, which acts, and which is acted upon by human beings, irrespective of any physical means; but why these laws sometimes do and sometimes do not produce given results, no one can tell. There are other existing laws in the physical world that transcend scientific scrutiny. The marvellous results of chemical combinations, the miracle nature of electricity and all its phenomena, fade into absolute nothingness beside the higher marvels of the action of spirit. The crude and merely approximate truth must be that in each human being is a part of the divine being; that this divine element may be nurtured and strengthened by living in its native atmosphere of spiritual life,—in the atmosphere of peace, joy, and love; and that this potency of God and of man, so far as he relates himself to God, can act upon that substance that fills all space; that this substance, whether it be ether, or whether it be matter differentiated in degree of vibration, is intensely susceptible, in the most infinitely delicate way, to thought, which acts upon it as physical force can act on physical matter. To realize intelligently one's relatedness to God, and one's own power over this subtle matter, whatever it be that fills all space, is to arise in newness of life. It is to realize one's self as a spiritual being, here and now, and an inhabitant of the spiritual world. It is to realize that one's relation to the physical world is a merely incidental thing,—a fact that has its purpose, its responsibilities, as a phase of development, and which it is most important to use aright; but which is inevitably transient.
Day-dreams, the habitual meditations that go on of themselves in the mind, are prophecies and potencies. They are the creative factors of future states. "Out of the heart are the issues of life."
It is a question of degree,—so much love, so much force to act upon outer affairs. He who finds his currents of thought verging to the unkind, the ungenerous, the inimical; whose mind, in its unconscious action, is in a discordant state, fretting at circumstances, or persons,—is doing himself the gravest injury. He is creating, on the unseen side, which is the most potent and determining side, conditions which he must live out sooner or later.
It would seem, if one may judge from the data of telepathic experiences, that the power belongs to the sub-conscious self, or, as we may prefer to call it, to the spiritual self, and does not relate itself to the conscious intellectual life and the conscious will. If this deduction is true—what then? Can we not relate our consciously intelligent life to our unconscious spiritual life? Not only, indeed, that we may, but that we must,—for it is the next step in spiritual advancement.
The time has come in the era of progress when humanity begins to realize its spiritual development. All the signs of the times point it out. The discoveries of higher laws constantly being made, are an impressive attestation that register the movement. With the new century came in Tesla's discovery of the vacuum tube and its wonderful light; and hardly a week later came the announcement of the discovery of a perpetual light found by a certain chemical combination placed in a glass globe, which, when the air was exhausted and the globe sealed, would burn as long as the globe lasts. The discoverer claims that there is but one force in all nature,—that of vibration; that all space is pervaded by matter, which is energy. Certainly the world is on the eve of new revelations, and life is to be lifted up, even here and now, to the Divine plane.
Perhaps the most practical counsel in the way of determining one's own future control of these telepathic conditions is conveyed in the words: "Begin now the eternal life of trustful consecration and sanctified service, consciously drawing your innermost life from God."
This absolute personal control of each man over his own future lies in a twofold power: the one being that integrity, moral purpose, aspirations, have a creative power of the most potent character; and the other being in that one attracts to himself the spiritual companionship and sympathetic co-operation of just such quality as his own. There is an objection, often made to the faith in the companionship and communion with those in the Unseen,—that only those of a lower order in the life beyond death are attracted into the sphere of this world. Nothing could be more remote from the truth. One might as well refuse all social intercourse with those in this world, on the plea that if he have companionship at all it would be of a lower order, and therefore he will have none. Now the order of one's companions and associates depends on himself. If he is noble and exalted, he does not attract nor is he attracted to the base and the unworthy: and only more deeply and unfailingly does this law hold true in the realm of spirit. One attracts to himself from the unseen world companionship of the same order and quality as that of his own spirit, with the exception that in proportion to the purity of his aspiration does this quality of companionship come to him of a still higher order than his own. Thus one creates his own world. He need not abjectly feel that he must accept sorrow, trial, defeat, and disaster at the moment, because compensation somewhere awaits him. The law of transmutation supersedes the law of compensation. One may bring to bear, at the moment, the potent force that transforms all: that changes dullness into radiance, trial into joy, depression into exaltation. And how? Simply by bringing to bear on the events and conditions of the hour the intense and creative potency of spiritual power. By means of this we shall certainly gain those "new glimpses of a profounder scheme of cosmic law" to which Sir William Crookes refers and which his vision discerns as open to science.
It is a scientific fact that any vibration set up in the ether persists to an unlimited degree, communicating itself to that which is in correspondence with its rate of vibration. This, of course, is the explanation of the phenomena involved in wireless telegraphy, and is equally the explanation of the phenomena involved in telepathy. At a meeting of the Society of Arts in May of 1901, Professor Ayrton, commenting on Marconi's system, said that we "are gradually coming within thinkable distance of the realization of a prophecy he had ventured to make four years before, at a time when, if a person wanted to call to a friend he knew not where, he would call in a very loud electro-magnetic voice, heard by him who had the electro-magnetic ear, silent to him who had it not. 'Where are you?' he would say. A faint reply would come, 'I am at the bottom of a coal mine, or crossing the Andes, or in the middle of the Atlantic.' Or, perhaps, in spite of all the calling, no reply would come, and the person would then know that his friend was dead. Think of what this would mean, of the calling which goes on every day from room to room of a house, and then think of that calling extending from pole to pole,—not a noisy babble, but a call audible to him who wants to hear, and absolutely silent to all others. It would be almost like dreamland and ghostland,—not the ghostland cultivated by a heated imagination, but a real communication from a distance, based on true physical laws."