Having referred so frequently and so familiarly to the Eastern belief in reincarnation, and hinted at a more solid foundation for that belief than the single series of experiments above referred to, it would be unfair to the reader not to gratify his curiosity more fully in regard to these matters. In the light of our hypothesis they take on an importance which justifies their further consideration here.
VIII THE EASTERN TEACHING
ORIENTAL PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS
Western physical science, pursued with ardor and devotion for the past hundred years, has attained to a control over physical phenomena little short of magical, but in our understanding and mastery of subjective phenomena we are far behind those Eastern peoples who have made these matters the subject of study and experiment for thousands of years. The informed Hindu, rightly or wrongly, regards the Western practice of hypnotism, both in its methods and in its results, with mingled horror and contempt. To him it is not different from Black Magic, pernicious to operator and subject alike, since it involves an unwarrantable tyranny of the will on the part of the operator, and a dangerous submission to the obsession of an invading will on the part of the subject. Eastern hypnotism--at its highest and best--is profoundly different from Western, in that the sanct.i.ty of the individual is respected. Its aim is not to enslave the will, but temporarily to emanc.i.p.ate consciousness, under favorable circ.u.mstances, from its physical limitation.
Eastern practical psychology and metaphysics can be understood only through a knowledge of Eastern physics. These we would call transcendental, since they recognize not one theatre of consciousness, but three: the gross, the subtle, and the pure. These correspond to the material, the etherial, and the empyreal worlds of Greek philosophy, and to the physical, astral, and mental planes of modern Theosophy. They may be thought of as universal substance in three different octaves of vibration. Upon this, the trained will of man is able to act directly, for the reason that--as claimed by Balzac--it is a _living_ force.
In Eastern hypnotism the gross vibrations of the physical vehicle are inhibited by the will of the operator, putting the body of the subject to sleep, whereat the consciousness, free in its subtle body, awakens to a dimensionally higher world. The operator, by means of questions, reaps such profit as he may by following the "true dreams"
of the entranced subject, scrupulously refraining from imposing his own will further than is necessary to obtain the information which he seeks. The higher power of Eastern hypnotism, totally unknown in the West, consists of inhibiting the subtle vibrations of the astral vehicle also, permitting the consciousness to revert to its "pure" condition. In these deep states of trance the subject is able to communicate knowledges shut away from the generality of men--among them the knowledge of past births.
THE SELF-RECOVERED MEMORY OF PAST BIRTHS
The strength of will necessary to accomplish this higher power of hypnotism is achieved by arduous and long-continued exercises in concentration, by the practice of a strict morality, and by submission to a physical regimen which few Occidentals would care to undergo. Severe as is this training, it is less so than that which the true Yogi imposes upon himself, and its fruits are less. The achievement to which he addresses himself is far beyond that of the most accomplished hypnotist. The Yogi scorns all supernormal powers, even while possessing them. The Yogi, as the word implies--it means literally union--seeks to unite himself with his own higher self, the eternal and immortal part of his own nature, and the achievement of this brings with it the freedom of the three worlds at all times, and in full consciousness. As this involves an inward turning of the mind and will, and the withdrawal from the ordinary active life of average humanity, he alone is witness of his own success. "The rest is silence."
The knowledge of past births which may be obtained by the questionable and c.u.mbersome method of hypnotism is one of the wayside flowers which the Yogi may pluck, if he will, on his path towards perfection. There are definite rules for the attainment of this knowledge, and they conform so closely to Colonel de Rochas"
method--save for the fact that operator and subject are one and not twain--that it will be interesting to give them here. The ensuing pa.s.sage is from the _Vishuddhi Marga_, or _Path of Purity_, a work written some sixteen hundred years ago by the famous sage, Buddhaghosha, whose name signifies the Voice of Buddha, the revealer of Buddha"s teachings. It is quoted in Charles Johnston"s _The Memory of Past Births_.
"The devotee, then, who tries for the first time to call to mind former states of existence, should choose a time after breakfast, when he has returned from collecting alms, and is alone and plunged in meditation, and has been absorbed in the four trances in succession. On rising from the fourth trance, which leads to the higher powers, he should consider the event which last took place, namely, his sitting down; next, the spreading of the mat; the entering of the room; the putting away of bowl and robe; his eating; his leaving the village; his going the rounds of the village for alms; his entering the village for alms; his departure from the monastery; his offering adoration in the courts of the shrine and of the Bodhi tree; his washing the bowl; what he did between taking the bowl and rinsing his mouth; what he did at dawn; what he did in the middle watch of the night; what he did in the first watch of the night.
Thus he must consider what he did for a whole day and night, going backwards over it in reverse order.
"In the same reverse order he must consider what he did the day before, the day before that, up to the fifth day, the tenth day, a fortnight ago, a month ago, a year ago; and having in the same manner considered the previous ten and twenty years, and so on up to the time of his conception in this birth, he must then consider the name and form which he had at the moment of death in his last birth.
But since the name and form of the last birth came quite to an end, and were replaced by others, this point of time is like thick darkness, and difficult to be made out by the mind of any person still deluded. But even such a one should not despair nor say: "I shall never be able to penetrate beyond conception, or take as the object of my thought the name and form which I had in my last birth, at the moment of death," but he should again and again enter the trance which leads to the higher powers, and each time he rises from the trance, he should again intend his mind upon that point of time.
"Just as a strong man in cutting down a mighty tree to be used as the peaked roof of a paG.o.da, if the edge of his axe be turned in lopping off the branches and twigs, will not despair of cutting down the tree, but will go to an iron-worker"s shop, have his axe sharpened, return, and go on with his cutting; and if the edge of his axe be turned a second time, he will a second time have it sharpened, and return, and go on with his cutting; and since nothing that he chopped once needs to be chopped again, he will in no long time, when there is nothing left to chop, fell that mighty tree. In the same way the devotee rising from the trance which leads to the higher powers, without considering what he has considered once, and considering only the moment of conception, in no long time will penetrate beyond the moment of conception, and take as his object the name and form which he had at the moment of death, in his last birth.
"His alert attention having become possessed of this knowledge, he can call to mind many former states of existence, as, one birth, two births, three births, four births, five births, and so on, in the words of the text."
This quotation casts an interesting light upon Eastern monasticism.
The Buddhist monasteries are here revealed as schools of practical psychology, the life of the monk a life of arduous and unceasing labor, but labor of a sort which seems but idleness. The successive "initiations" which are the milestones on the "Path of Perfection"
upon which the devotee has set his feet represent successive emanc.i.p.ations of consciousness gained through work and knowledge.
Their nature may best be understood by means of a fanciful a.n.a.logy.
RELEASE
If we a.s.sume that all life is conscious life, as much aware of its environment as the freedom of movement of its life vehicle in that environment permits, a corpuscle vibrating in a solid would have a certain sense of s.p.a.ce and of movement in s.p.a.ce gained from its own experience. Now imagine the solid, which is its world, to be subjected to the influence of heat. When the temperature reached a certain point the solid would transform itself into a liquid. To the corpuscle all the old barriers would seem to be broken down; s.p.a.ce would be different, time would be different, and its world a different place. Again, at another increase of temperature, when the liquid became a gas, the corpuscle would experience a further emanc.i.p.ation: it would possess a further freedom, with all the facts of its universe to learn anew.
Each of these successive crises would const.i.tute for it an initiation, and since the heat has acted upon it from within, causing an expansion of its life vehicle, it would seem to itself to have attained to these new freedoms through self-development.
The parallel is now plain to the reader: the corpuscle is the Yogi, bent on liberation: the heat which warms him is the Divine Love, centered in his heart, his initiations are the successive emanc.i.p.ations into higher and higher s.p.a.ces, till he attains Nirvana--inherits the kingdom prepared for him from the foundation of the world. As latent heat resides in the corpuscle, so is _Release_ hidden in the heart--release from time and s.p.a.ce. The perception of this prompted the exultant apostrophe of Buddha, "Looking for the maker of this tabernacle, I have run through a course of many births, not finding him; and painful is birth again and again. But now, maker of the tabernacle, thou hast been seen; thou shalt not make up this tabernacle again. All thy rafters are broken, thy ridge-pole is sundered; the mind, approaching the Eternal, has attained the extinction of all desires."
Upon the mystery of Nirvana the Higher s.p.a.ce Hypothesis casts not a little light. To "approach the Eternal" can only be to approach a condition where time is not. Because there is an escape from time in proportion as s.p.a.ce dimensions are added to, and a.s.similated by, consciousness, any development involving this element of s.p.a.ce conquest (and evolution is itself such a development) involves time annihilation also. To be in a state of desire is to be conditioned by a limitation, because one can desire only that which one has not or is not. The extinction of a desire is only another name for the transcending of a limitation--of all desires, of all limitations. If these limitations are of s.p.a.ce they are of time also; therefore is the "approach to the Eternal" through the "extinction of all desire."
Christ said, "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar of the temple of my G.o.d, and he shall go no more out"--go out, that is, into incarnation--into "time, besprent with seven-hued circ.u.mstance."
Such are the testimonies of the world-saviors regarding the means and end of liberation. Below them on the evolutionary ladder stand the mystics, earth-bound, but soul-free; below them, in turn, yet far above common humanity, stand the men of genius, caught still in the net of pa.s.sion, but able, in their work, to reflect something of the glory of the supernal world. Let us consider, in the next two chapters, each of these in turn.
IX THE MYSTICS
HERMES TRISMEGISTUS
The mystic, however far removed he may be from Nietzsche"s ideal of the Superman, nevertheless represents superhumanity in the domain of consciousness. By means of quotations, taken almost at random from the rich literature of mysticism, the author will attempt to show that the consciousness of the mystic involves the awareness of dimensionally higher worlds. The first group of quotations is culled from certain of the Sacred Books of Hermes Trismegistus.
"_Comprehend clearly_" (says Hermes to Asclepios) "_that this sensible world is enfolded, as in a garment, by the supernal world_."
We think of our three dimensional s.p.a.ce, "the sensible world," as _immersed_ in higher s.p.a.ce; "enfolded as in a garment," therefore.
And we think of the objects of our world as having extension in a dimensionally higher region, that "supernal world" in which the phenomena of this sensible world arise. For:
"_Celestial order reigns over terrestrial order: all that is done and said upon earth has its origin in the heights, from which all essences are dispensed with measure and equilibrium: nor is there anything which does not emanate from one above and return thither_"
THE PAGE AND THE PRESS
The idea of an all-embracing unity within and behind the seeming manifoldness of life forms the ground rhythm of all inspired literature, sacred and profane alike. For clarity and conciseness it would be difficult to improve upon the formulation of this idea contained in the following fragment:
"_In the manifold unity of universal life the innumerable individualities distinguished by their variations are, nevertheless, united in such a manner that the whole is one, and that everything proceeds from unity_.
"_For all things depend upon unity, or develop from it, and because they appear distant from one another it is believed that they are many, whereas in their collectivity they form but one_."
Now nothing so successfully resolves this paradox of the one and the many as the concept that the things of this world are embraced and united in a dimensionally higher world in a manner a.n.a.logous to that in which all conic sections are embraced and united within the cone.
A more elaborate and fanciful figure may serve to make this clearer to the mind.
Conceive of this printed page as a plane world in which every letter is a person; every word a family; phrases and sentences, larger communities and groups. These "innumerable individualities, distinguished by their variations" must needs seem to themselves as "distant from one another," their very differences of form and arrangement a barrier to any superior unity. Yet all the while, solely by reason of this diversity, they are co-operating towards an end of which they cannot be aware. The mind of the reader unites and interprets the letters into continuous thought, though they be voiceless as stones to one another. Even so may our sad and stony ident.i.ties spell out a world"s word which we know not of, by reason of our singularity and isolation. Moreover, in the electrotype block, the solid of which the printed page const.i.tutes a plane presentment, all the letters are actually "united in such a manner that the whole is one." The metal that has moulded each into its significant form amalgamates them into a higher unity. So also the power that makes us separate is the same power that makes us one.
THE SHIP AND ITS CAPTAIN
Here follows the lament of the souls awaiting incarnation:
"_Behold the sad future in store for us--to minister to the wants of a fluctuating and dissoluble body! No more may our eyes distinguish the souls divine! Hardly through these watery spheres shall we perceive, with sighs, our ancestral heaven: at intervals even we shall cease altogether to behold it. By this disastrous sentence direct vision is denied to us; we can see only by the aid of the outer light; these are but windows that we possess--not eyes. Nor will our pain be less when we hear in the fraternal breathing of the winds with which no longer can we mingle our own, since ours will have for its dwelling, instead of the sublime and open world, the narrow prison of the breast_!"
That the soul--the so-called subliminal self--draws from a broader, deeper experience than the purely rational consciousness is a commonplace of modern psychology. Hinton conceives of the soul as _higher-dimensional_ with relation to the body, but so concerned with the management and direction of its lower-dimensional vehicle as to have lost, for the time being, its orientation, thinking and moving only in those ways of which the body is capable. The a.n.a.logy he uses, of a ship and its captain, is so happy, and the whole pa.s.sage has so direct a bearing upon the Hermetic fragment quoted, that it is given here entire.
"I adopt the hypothesis that that which thinks in us has an ample experience, of which the intuitions we use in dealing with the world of real objects are a part; of which experience, the intuition of four-dimensional forms and motions is also a part. The process we are engaged in intellectually is the reading of the obscure signals of our nerves into a world of reality, by means of intuitions derived from the inner experience.
"The image I form is as follows: Imagine the captain of a modern battleship directing its course. He has his charts before him; he is in communication with his a.s.sociates and subordinates; can convey his messages and commands to every part of the ship, and receive information from the conning tower and the engine room. Now suppose the captain, immersed in the problem of the navigation of his ship over the ocean, to have so absorbed himself in the problem of the direction of the craft over the plane surface of the sea that he forgets himself. All that occupies his attention is the kind of movement that his ship makes. The operations by which that movement is produced have sunk below the threshold of his consciousness; his own actions, by which he pushes the b.u.t.tons, gives the orders, are so familiar as to be automatic; his mind is on the motion of the ship as a whole. In such a case we can imagine that he identifies himself with the ship; all that enters his conscious thought is the direction of its movement over the plane surface of the ocean.
"Such is the relation, as I imagine it, of the soul to the body. A relation which we can imagine as existing momentarily in the case of the captain is the normal one in the case of the soul with its craft.
As the captain is capable of a kind of movement, an amplitude of motion, which does not enter into his thoughts with regard to the directing of the ship over the plane surface of the ocean, so the soul is capable of a kind of movement, has an amplitude of motion, which is not used in its task of directing the body in the three-dimensional region in which the body"s activity lies. If for any reason it becomes necessary for the captain to consider three-dimensional motions with regard to his ship, it would not be difficult for him to gain the materials for thinking about such motions; all he has to do is to call experience into play. As far as the navigation of the ship is concerned, however, he is not obliged to call on such experience. The ship as a whole simply moves on a surface. The problem of three-dimensional movement does not ordinarily concern its steering. And thus with regard to ourselves all those movements and activities which characterize our bodily organs are three-dimensional; we never need to consider the ampler movements. But we do more than use these movements of our body to effect our aims by direct means; we have now come to the pa.s.s when we act indirectly on nature, when we call processes into play which lie beyond the reach of any explanation we can give by the kind of thought which has been sufficient for the steering of our craft as a whole.