In the foregoing presentation stress has been placed upon the fragmentary, and therefore, illusionary character of the intellect in order to arrive at an understanding of the difficulties under which real knowledge has to be acquired and to indicate the inanity of all attempts to resolve the riddle of space by means of mathematics though regarded as the most typical exemplification of the mechanistic nature of the intellect. And further, to show that, on account of the radical incongruity which estranges life, the producer of spatiality, from the intellect which returns again to scrutinize the passage of life in its outward expressions, no hope of ever gaining the true viewpoint by means of the intellect need be entertained. But in doing so, it is deemed fitting that a note of warning should be sounded against any abortive attempts that may be made to obscure or distort the results of such a close discrimination lest the true import of the examination be lost for, if we emphasize the vanity of the intellect in the pursuit of that which it is by nature unsuited to attain we also equally stress the wise utilitarianism which limits it to the performance of the tasks assigned while at the same time reserving for the function of more highly evolved powers, and indeed, for the intuition itself, the solution of the riddle of spatiality. And if we declare the futility of the mathematical method in all endeavors aimed at unveiling the mysteries of life and mind, and of that movement which has its roots set in eternal duration from which it proceeds in an endless continuity of purpose and promise, we do also recognize that in the science of mathematics the intellect shall, as in no other method of cognition, most fully fulfill the kosmic intent of its existence; and moreover, in the pursuit thereof it shall push the frontiers of its possibilities outward until it can be said almost to be able to make disposition of life itself—at least to that point where, when the intuition shall have come into its own, the passage from the mechanics of matter to the dynamics of life, shall be comparatively easy and natural.
[CHAPTER X]
The Media of New Perceptive Faculties
The Spiritualization of Matter the End of Evolution—Sequence and Design in the Evolution of Human Faculties—The Upspringing Intuition—Evidences of Supernormal Powers of Perception and the Possibility of Attainment—The Influence and Place of the Pituitary Body and the Pineal Gland in the Evolution of Additional Faculties—The Skeptical Attitude of Empirical Science and the Need for a More Liberal Posture—The General Results of Pituitarial Awakening Upon Man and the Theory of Knowledge.
Evolution is a continuous process and the primal impetus back of the great on-flowing ocean of life acts infinitively. It is not terminated when life has succeeded in perfecting a form for the perfection of forms in themselves is not the end of vital activity. The end of evolution is the complete spiritualization of matter. So that it does not matter how perfect a form may be either subjectively or in its adaptation to environments; it does not matter how faultless a medium for the ensouling life it may be, there is ever the eternal necessity that life must drive it back over the path of its genesis until it shall be transmuted into pure spirit. Adaptation succeeds adaptation and with each there is a change in the form and this process continues until there is a more or less perfect congruence between form and juxtaposed environmental conditions. But no sooner than agreement has been attained under one set of conditions new conditions arise and require a new setting, new adaptative movements. Thus there is a continuous proceeding from stage to stage, going from the grossest to the subtlest and most refined, always the form is being pushed onward and upward by life. But adaptation is not undergone for the benefit of the form, but more truly for the informing principle. It is the progression of the life-element which constitutes the adaptation of form to form and to their peculiar environs. The form is a tool or instrument of life which it discards the moment it fails to respond to its requirements. Thus forms are constantly being assumed and as constantly being relinquished. But no effort of life is lost regardless as to whether the action is performed in one or another form. The totality of matter is perpetually being acted upon by the totality of life. Every appulse of life against matter means an added push in the direction of spiritualization. The totality of such appulses of life against matter may seem infinitely small in the visible results which they produce in the process of spiritualization; but with each there is an eternal gain in that movement that shall end in the complete transmutation of materiality into spirituality. This action of life in metamorphosing matter, the nether pole of the great pair of opposites, into spirituality, its copolar factor, in its outward, visible effects, is what we vaguely call evolution. And such it is; for life is merely unfolding that which it has enfolded. Matter, having been involved as a phase of kosmic involution, is now being evolved.
In the genesis of the kosmos there appear to be three great undulations in the universal current of life. The first of these prepares the field by depositing that elemental essence which is to become the world-plasm; the second precipitates the universum of materiality, spatiality and intellectuality, not as we now know them, of course, but as potencies; the third great undulation in the current of life effects the endowment of the world-plasm with those tendencies that are to build around themselves forms appropriate to their fulfillment. This ensoulment of the world-plasm with tendencies and the consequent segmentation of it into separate forms by these tendencies constitute the primary stages of that procedure of life which results ultimately in the up-raisement of matter and its final exaltation into pure spirit. Hence, the entire mass of materiality is besieged on all sides by the sum-total of life and the former is being raised slowly and irresistibly to heights that are immeasurably more sublime than its present degree of grossness.
It appears paradoxical, therefore, that life, although in all respects vastly superior to matter, should become the apparent vassal of materiality and give itself up to all the strict rules of imprisonment which are imposed upon it by the properties and qualities which we observe in matter. It seems so subject to every whim and fancy of matter that one is inclined to think that matter and not life is the chief designer of universal destiny. This is not a condition to be wondered at so much, for the reason that this apparent vassalage, this seeming enslavement of life by matter, is due to that superior and most marvelous adaptability of life which it enjoys in contradistinction to the relative unpliability of matter, and due also to the fact that life is kinetic and matter, being a mere deposit of life, is static. Life is mobility while matter is immobility and thus in possessing a greater range of freedom is, of course, correspondingly superior; but in this adaptation of itself to the labyrinthine cavities and multiformed interstices in matter it exhibits but a seeming serfdom which is really not a serfdom but a mastery. It is as if a man had taken lumber, hardware and stone and built a house wherein he might dwell—life has merely used matter, molded and fashioned it so as to make for itself a medium, a dwelling-place wherein it operates, not as a slave but as a master possessing unlimited freedom of motility. In the production of a form life stamps upon it, once for all time, the path of its engendering action. It leaves its finger-prints upon the mold which it makes for itself. So that if we would know where life has been or where it is we should look for its finger-prints (organization); we should observe the sinuosities which mark its pathway, remembering always that it is life that has formed the intricacies and complexities of the form into which it pours itself so accommodatingly in order that it may raise that form, develop and transmute it into something higher and better.