The criterion of consciousness is response to stimulus. It is to be seen in chemic action, in vegetation and in animal life. If the Day’s-eye (daisy) were not conscious of the sunrise it would not open its petals. You may call it automatism, a reflex of the chemic action of light. You will be wiser if you call it consciousness of light, and so spare yourself the trouble of pushing the question back indefinitely, for somewhere or other you must admit response to stimulus and there you must posit consciousness.
Thus while the animal soul in man responds to stimulus of every kind coming to it through the sense-channels, the mind responds also to a higher and immaterial gamut of vibrations, that is to say, to spiritual stimulus. As man he continues to evolve while all other forms of life remain in statu quo. The monads investing them have not been caught up by the Over-soul; they have not reached the stage where their mass-vibration is capable of responding to the spiritual impact; they are not attracted.
As the outcome of human evolution through successive ages, cycles and manvantaras there is evolved the Christ, or perfect man. The mystical interpretation does not suffice. We require a living individual who shall stand to us for the “man made perfect” through that same process of spiritual evolution which is to be our own means of final liberation from samsāra, or cyclic rebirth. The Christ is truly a generic title. The sons of God are legion, and all of them are invested with the Spirit of Truth or Christ principle. They are the Children of Light, the Great White Brotherhood, and at their head is the Lord, the gravitating Centre of this world’s humanity. He is the manifestation in time and space of the inscrutable Deity, the revelation of God to man. The mythological interpretation of the Christ does not suffice any more than the mystical. The Sun and the twelve signs of the zodiac may well stand as symbols of the Master and his twelve disciples, but they will not suffice for the historical fact, for the fact is not limited to a drama in which thirteen characters were at one time employed. It is a drama that is playing through all time, in all places and among all peoples. It is the great work of spiritual selection and co-ordination, and the twelve signs are the twelve gates through which the elect of all humanity will enter into the New Jerusalem or Spiritual Kingdom of a perfected humanity. Neither is the kingdom one that is afar off. Its denizens are to be found among embodied humanity at this day. The Fathers and many of the early rulers of the great countries were special representatives of the Spiritual Hierarchy which at later stages in the history of the world sent forth its emissaries to become world-teachers, empire-makers, legislators, warriors and inventors, each speaking the Word that the world then had need of. Beside them are to be found the Occultists of the East and West, followers of their respective Gurus, Sadhus, Yogis and Teachers, aspirants to the heirloom of the ages, the Gupta-Vidya or Hidden Knowledge; with here and there a messenger under sealed orders, passing from one country to another; a host of psychic-researchers and higher-thought lecturers, the aide-de-camps, sappers and enlisting officers of the vast army of recruits, regulars and veterans who are enrolled under this standard.
To the Occultist the universe is a symbol and every part of it is symbolical. Although essentially an Idealist he does not attempt the rôle of those visionaries who would argue the universe out of existence. He may call it elusive but not an illusion, for his own existence depends on his consciousness of the world about him and his well-being upon the degree to which he understands and observes the laws of that universe of which he is an integral part. For if it be said that the world has no existence apart from our consciousness, it may with equal truth be said that our consciousness has no existence apart from the world to which it is related. What we understand as the laws of the universe are formulated in terms of our thought, but inasmuch as the laws of thought are imposed on us by existence, it is clear that we do not ourselves impose cosmic laws, but we merely apprehend them. It is not in the Idealistic sense that the universe is a symbol, but in the real sense of it being the embodiment or out-realizing of the Supreme Life and Mind. As symbol the universe is the revelation of all time, of the past and the future; the repository of all history, the source of all prophecy, the synthesis of actuality. That Consciousness which is simultaneously immanent in all the universe is called the Universal Mind. The Platonic definition of God as “That whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is illimitable” comes as nearly to this conception of the Divine Mind as it is possible for words to compass. Man is a centre of consciousness in the Divine Mind from the time that he realizes his spiritual existence, a soul investing a cell in the Brain of the Grand Man. As such he becomes subject to the higher spiritual laws of Being and enters into the Divine Conspiracy. The evolving monads circulate and finally become impounded in one or another of the various organs of the Grand Man, in agreement with their several states of evolution, passing from one to another of them during the successive incarnations of the Deity. In his effort to reach a higher sphere of consciousness and activity, a wider sphere of influence and a greater measure of free will, man comes to realize that obedience to the law of his being is the means of attainment. Thus every man is a law unto himself, and the truly wise are they who are able to say in all consciousness: “Thy will be done.” For human safety and happiness are only assured by devotion to the highest good, and this is the occult view of the dependence of mankind on an all-seeing and beneficent Spirit “in whose service is perfect freedom.”
Occultism, therefore, whether consisting in the development and exercise of one’s individual psychic powers, in systematic and impartial inquiry as to evidence of these powers in others, or in the pursuit of such studies as astrology, kabalism, yoga, hypnotism, etc., reaches out from such vague beginnings into regions of thought and aspiration that transcend the average mind and are seen to culminate, in specialized cases, in the attainment of powers which may be called miraculous and of attributes that are truly godlike.
CHAPTER II
THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE
It is quite a popular misconception that credits Science with exact methods and certain knowledge on all matters concerning which it has given an opinion. There is, in fact, a slavish reverence for the dicta of Science which is as inconsistent as formerly was the submission of the public mind to religious dogmatic teaching. And if, as some writers assert, there still exists a conflict between Religion and Science it is at least satisfactory to see that to-day Science appears to be getting its own back to a creditable extent. If Science makes appeal to the popular imagination or proves its claim to public recognition and support on the grounds of utility, Religion has only itself to blame if it fails to come into line with the established facts of scientific discovery and lacks the enterprise which is necessary to give it a modern representation. Instead of mumbling orthodoxies about the saving of souls, Religion could very profitably concern itself with the task of proving that man has a soul to save. It could use the argument afforded by modern experimental psychology. It could observe the scientific method, and could without loss of dignity employ the facts of Science in the upbuilding of a scheme of thought which has man’s spiritual welfare as the end in view. When we recognize the fact that it is our conception of God and of our relations with Him that is alone effective in the work of regeneration and reform, and that this altered view-point is largely due to the widening of the mental horizon by scientific discovery and a philosophy adapted thereto, then religiously-disposed people do wrongly to ignore the facts of Science, however much they may appear to conflict with orthodox notions of the relations of God to man. It is little more than three centuries ago that the custodians of religious belief burned Giordano Bruno at the stake for daring to declare that there were more worlds than one. In his Della Causa Principio ed Uno (Of the First and Only Cause) Bruno says: “The divine Omnipotence is more aptly expressed in an infinity of worlds of various dimensions than in the production of a single world of infinite dimensions.... Infinite variability is the eternal juvenescence of God.” That which happened to Bruno in the name of Holy Religion was barely escaped by Copernicus because of his heresy in declaring the Sun to be the centre of the system and the Earth one of its satellites moving about it. It was a pagan doctrine and belonged properly to Pythagoras. The history of Science reveals many such persecutions of its devotees, and yet in modern times it cannot be said that Science is without its prejudices. It nearly killed religious belief in the nineteenth century owing to its recognition of the Materialistic hypothesis.
Yet when we come to examine the claims of modern Science, or what popularly goes by that name, we find that it is largely hypothetical and that sciences which are usually known as “exact” are by no means so.
Science has no certain knowledge of the origin of life and consciousness. Many distinguished men have sought to define life. Dr. Alfred R. Wallace in his World of Life points out how inadequate are all these definitions, and wisely refrains from adding to them. Consciousness as a by-product of organic matter was quite correct science fifty years ago. To-day, in the presence of many well-attested facts which go to prove the possibility of consciousness apart from organism as we know it, the man of science is not at all sure that consciousness is anything of the sort. Modern psychology is a new leaf in the book of Nature which until quite recently had not been deciphered. We are getting our facts sporadically, a few at a time, and each new discovery changes our ideas concerning things which had passed for correct theory. The facts remain; our views of them are changed. We really have no certain scientific knowledge about the wonderful conversion of inorganic to organic matter. The alchemy of Nature baffles us.
Even the cosmic theory is incomplete and full of anomalies. In the vortex theory there is nothing to show why some swirls of cosmic matter became suns and others planets. There are two theories regarding the solar system diametrically opposed to one another. There are similarly two theories regarding the Moon. The most recent theory is that the Moon acts as a brake upon the Earth by causing the tides, which run contrary to the axial rotation of the earth, thereby slowing down its rotation and causing a longer day than formerly. But the same theory requires that the Moon is gradually enlarging its own orbit and getting farther away from the Earth, which is inconsistent with our records of ancient observations of eclipses, etc., for in order to agree our calculations with the observed positions of the Moon at these ancient epochs, we have to augment the present mean motion of the Moon in its orbit by a quantity equal to about 10´´t₂, which means ten seconds for the first century and the same quantity multiplied by the square of the centuries for times anterior. In other words, the Moon was moving quicker in a smaller orbit in former days. But this supplemental theory is wholly destructive of the first regarding the Moon’s tidal action. For if the Moon is getting farther away from us, its tidal influence is also decreasing, and the “brake” power being lessened, the Earth’s axial rotation must be increasing in velocity and the day must be getting shorter than formerly, which is the exact converse of what was argued in the first place. Hence we see how, in their efforts to explain observed facts, scientific men can put up two mutually destructive theories. Only recently, in the Solar eclipse of 17th April, 1912, we had an illustration of an exact science blundering in practice. The Connaissance des Temps, the official organ of the French astronomers, gave this eclipse as total, while the Nautical Almanac gave it correctly as partial, the apparent diameter of the Moon, depending on its anomaly, being some 20´´ less than that of the Sun.