There is the utmost unanimity in the testimony of the mystics that the world without and the world within are but different aspects of the same reality--"_The eye with which I see G.o.d is the same eye with which He sees me_." They never weary of the telling of the solidarity and invisible continuity of life, the inclusion not only of the minute in the vast, but of the vast in the minute. We may accept this form of perception as characteristic of consciousness in its free state. Its instrument is the _intuition_, which divines relations between diverse things through a perception of unity. The instrument of the purely mundane consciousness, on the other hand, is the _reason_, which dissevers and dissects phenomena, divining unity through correlation. Now if physical phenomena, in all their manifoldness, are lower-dimensional projections, upon a lower-dimensional s.p.a.ce, of a higher unity, then reason and intuition are seen to be two modes of one intelligence, engaged in apprehending life from below (by means of the reason) through its diversity, and from above (by means of intuition) through its unity.
Those who recognize in the intuition a valid organ of knowledge, are disposed to exalt it above the reason, but at our present state of evolution, and given our environment, it would seem that the reason is the more generally useful faculty of the two. In that unfolding, that manifesting of the higher in the lower--which is the idea the four-dimensionalist has of the world--the painstaking, minute, methodical action of the reasoning mind applied to phenomena achieves results impossible to Pisgah-sighted intuition. The power, peculiar to the reason, of isolating part after part from the whole to which it belongs, and considering them thus isolated, makes possible in the end a synthesis in which the whole is not merely glimpsed, but known to the last detail.
The method of the reason is symbolized in so trifling a thing as the dealing out one by one of a pack of cards and their rea.s.sembling.
The pack has been made to show forth its content by a process of disruption--of slicing. Similarly, if a scientist wants to gain a thorough comprehension of a complicated organism, he dissects it, or submits it to a process of slicing, studying each slice separately under the microscope while keeping constantly in mind the relation of one slice to another. This amounts to nothing less than reducing a thing from three dimensions to two, in order to know it thoroughly.
Now the flux of things corresponds to the four-dimensional aspect of the world, and with this the reason finds it impossible to deal. As Bergson has so well shown, the reason cuts life into countless cross-sections: a thing must be dead before it can be dissected.
This is why the higher-dimensional aspect of life, divined by the intuition, escapes rational a.n.a.lysis.
THE COIL OF LIFE
Swedenborg"s description of "the ascent and descent of forms" and the "forces and powers" which flow therefrom, suggests, by reason of the increasing amplitude and variety of form and motion, a progression from s.p.a.ce to s.p.a.ce. This description is too long and involved to find place here, but its conclusion is as follows:
"_Such now is the ascent and descent of forms or substances in the greatest, and in our least universe: similar also is the descent of all forces and powers which flow from them. But all their perfection consists in the possibility and virtue of varying themselves, or of changing states, which possibility increases with their elevations, so that in number it exceeds all the series of calculations unfolded by human minds, and still inwardly involved by them: which infinities finally become what is finite in the Supreme. Our ideas are merely progressions by variations of form, and thus by actual changes of state_."
His sense of the beauty and orderliness of the whole process, and his despair of communicating it, find characteristic utterance in the following pa.s.sage:
"_If thou could"st discern, my beloved, how distinctly and ordinately these forms are arranged and connected with each other, from the mere aspect and infinity of so many wonderful things connected with each other, from the mere aspect and infinity of so many wonderful things conspiring into one, thou would"st fall down, from an inmost impulse, with sacred astonishment, and at the same time pious joy, to perform an act of worship and of love before such an architect_."
In his description of the manner in which these forms cohere and successively unfold, he introduces one of the basic concepts of higher s.p.a.ce thought; namely, that in the "descent of forms" from s.p.a.ce to s.p.a.ce, that which in the higher exists all together--that is, _simultaneously_--can only manifest itself in the lower piecemeal--that is, _successively_. He says:
"_Nothing is together in any texture or effect which was not successively introduced; and everything is therein, according as order itself introduces it: wherefore simultaneous order derives its birth, nature and perfection from successive orders, and the former is only rendered perspicuous and plain by the latter.... What is supreme in things successive takes the inmost place in things simultaneous: thus things superior in order super-involve things inferior and wrap them together, that these latter may become exterior in the same order: by this method first principles, which are also called simple, unfold themselves, and involve themselves in things posterior or compound: wherefore every perfection of what is outermost flows forth from inmost principles by their series: hence thy beauty, my daughter, the only parent of which is order itself_."
This pa.s.sage, like a proffered dish full of rare fruit, tempts the metaphysical appet.i.te by the wealth and variety of its appeal; but not to weary the reader, the author will content himself by the abstraction of a single plum. The plum in question is simply this (and the reader is asked to read the quotation carefully again): may not every act, incident, circ.u.mstance in a human life be the "uncoiling" of a karmic aggregate? This coil of life may be thought of most conveniently in this connection as the _character_ of the person, a character built up, or "successively introduced" in antecedent lives. The sequence of events resultant on its "unwinding"
would be the destiny of the person--a destiny determined, necessarily, by past action. This concept gives a new and more eloquent meaning to the phrase "Character is destiny." If we carry our thought no further, we are plunged into the slough of determinism--sheer fatality. But in each reincarnation, however predetermined every act and event, their reaction upon consciousness remains a matter of determination--is therefore _self_-determined. We may not control the event, but our acceptance of it we may control. Moreover, each "unwinding" of the karmic coil takes place in a new environment, in a world more highly organized by reason of the play upon it of the collective consciousness of mankind. Though the same individual again and again intersects the stream of mundane experience, it is an evolving ego and an augmenting stream. Therefore each life of a given series forms a different, a more intricate, and a more amazing pattern: in each the thread is drawn from nearer the central energy, which is divine, and so shows forth more of the coiled power within the soul.
X GENIUS
IMMANENCE
The greatest largess to the mind which higher thought brings is the conviction of a transcendent existence. Though we do not know the nature of this existence, except obscurely, we are a.s.sured of its reality and of its immanence, through a growing sense that all that happens to us is simply our relation to it.
In our ant-like efforts to attain to some idea of the nature of this transcendent reality, let us next avail ourselves of the help afforded by the artist and the man of genius, too troubled by the flesh for perfect clarity of vision, too troubled by the spirit not to attempt to render or record the Pisgah-glimpses of the world-order now and then vouchsafed. For the genius stands midway between man and Beyond-man: in Nietzsche"s phrase, "Man is a bridge and not a goal."
Of all the writers on the subject of genius, Schopenhauer is the most illuminating, perhaps because he suffered from it so. According to him, the essence of genius lies in the perfection and energy of its _perceptions_. Schopenhauer says, "He who is endowed with talent thinks more quickly and more correctly than others; but the genius beholds another world from them all, although only because he has a more profound perception of the world which lies before them also, in that it presents itself in his mind more objectively, and consequently in greater purity and distinctness." This profounder perception arises from his detachment: his intellect has to a certain extent freed itself from the service of his will, and leads an independent life. So long as the intellect is in the service of the will, that which has no relation to the will does not exist for the intellect; but along with this partial severance of the two there comes a new power of perception, synthetic in its nature, a complex of relationships not reproducible in _linear_ thought, for the mind is oriented simultaneously in _many_ different directions.
Of this order of perception the well-known case of Mozart is a cla.s.sic example. He is reported to have said of his manner of composing, "I can see the whole of it in my mind at a single glance ...
in which way I do not hear it in my imagination at all as succession--the way it comes later--but all at once, as it were. It is a rare feast! all the inventing and making goes on in me as in a beautiful strong dream."
TIMELESSNESS
The inspirations of genius come from a failure of attention to life, which, all paradoxically, brings vision--the power to see life clearly and "see it whole." Consciousness, unconditioned by time, "in a beautiful strong dream," awakens to the perception of a world that is timeless. It brings thence some immortelle whose power of survival establishes the authenticity of the inspiration. However local and personal any masterpiece may be, it escapes by some potent magic all geographical and temporal categories, and appears always new-born from a sphere in which such categories do not exist.
No writer was more of his period than Shakespeare, yet how contemporary he seems to each succeeding generation. Leonardo, in a perfect portrait, showed forth the face of a subtle, sensuous, and mocking spirit, against a background of wild rocks. It represents not alone the soul-phase of the later Renaissance, but of every individual and of every civilization which on life"s dangerous and orgiastic substratum has reared a mere garden of delight. Living hearts throb to the music penned by the dead hand of Mozart and of Beethoven; the clownings of Aristophanes arouse laughter in our music halls; Euripides is as subtle and world-weary as any modern; the philosophies of Parminides and Herac.l.i.tus are recrudescent in that of Bergson; and Plato discusses higher s.p.a.ce under a different name.
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL: BEAUTY
The second characteristic of works of genius is their indifference to all man-made moral standards. They are beyond all that goes by the name of good and evil, in that the two are used indifferently for the furtherance of a purely aesthetic end. The Beyond-man discovers beauty in the abyss, and ugliness in mere worldly rect.i.tude.
Leonardo painted the Medusa head, with its charnel pallor and its crown of writhing snakes, no less lovingly than the sweet-tender face of the Christ of the Cenacolo, and the beauty is not less, though of an opposite sort. Shakespeare"s most profound sayings and most magical poetry are as often as not put in the mouths of his villains and his clowns. To genius, pain is purgation; ugliness, beauty in disturbance. It injects the acid of irony into success, and distils the attar of felicity from failure. It teaches that the blows of fate are aimed, not at us, but at our fetters; that death is swallowed up in victory, that the Hound of Heaven is none other than the Love of G.o.d.
Though genius rebels at our moralities, it always submits itself to beauty. Emerson says, "Goethe and Carlyle, and perhaps Novalis, have an undisguised dislike or contempt for common virtue standing on common principles. Meantime they are dear lovers, steadfast maintainers of the pure, ideal morality. But they worship it as the highest beauty, their love is artistic." And so it is throughout the whole hierarchy of men of genius. "Beauty is Truth: Truth, Beauty,"
is the motto which guides their far-faring feet, as they lead us wheresoever they will. With Victor Hugo, we follow, undisgusted, through the sewers of old Paris: his sense of beauty disinfects them for us. With Balzac and Tolstoy we gaze unrevolted upon the nethermost depths of human depravity, discerning moral beauty even there; while with Virgil, Dante and Milton, we walk unscathed in h.e.l.l itself. The _terribilita_ of Michaelangelo, the chaos and anarchy of Shakespeare at his greatest, as in Lear--these find expression in perfect rhythms, so potent that we recognize them as proceeding from a supernal beauty, the beauty of that soul "from which also cometh the life of man and of beast, and of the birds of the air and of the fishes of the sea."
THE DAEMONIC
"Unknown,--albeit lying near,-- To men the path to the Daemon sphere."
But to men of genius--"Minions of the Morning Star"--the path is not unknown, and for this reason the daemonic element constantly shows itself in their works and in their lives. Dante, Cellini, Goethe, three men as unlike in the nature of their several gifts and in their temperaments as could easily be named together, are drawn to a common likeness through the daemonic gleam which plays and hovers over them at times. With William Blake it was a flame that wrapped him round. Today no one knows how Brunelleschi was able to construct his great dome without centering, nor how Michaelangelo could limn his terrible figures on the wet plaster of the Sistine vault with such extraordinary swiftness and skill; but we have their testimony that they invoked and received divine aid. Shakespeare, the master-magician, is silent on this point of supernatural a.s.sistance--as on all points--except as his plays speak for him; but how eloquently they speak! "The Tempest" is made up of the daemonic; the murky tragedy of "Macbeth" unfolds under the guidance of incarnate forces of evil which drive the hero to his doom and final deliverance in death: Hamlet sees and communes with the ghost of his father; in short, the supernatural is as much a part of these plays as salt is part of the ocean. If from any masterpiece we could abstract everything not strictly rational--every element of wonder, mystery, and enchantment--it would be like taking all of the unknown quant.i.ties out of an equation: there would be nothing left to solve.
The mind of genius is a wireless station attuned to the vibrations from the daemonic sphere; the works of genius fascinate and delight us largely for this reason: we, too, respond to these vibrations and are demonologists in our secret hearts.
For the interest which we take in genius has its root in the interest which we take in ourselves. Genius but utters experiences common to us all, records perceptions of a world-order which we too have glimpsed. Love, hope, pain, sorrow, disappointment, often effect that momentary purgation which enables consciousness to function independently of the tyrant will. These hours have for us a noetic value--"some veil did fall"--revealing visions remembered even unto the hour of death.
"DEATH"
That "failure of attention to life" which begets inspiration in the man of genius comes, indeed, daily to every one, but without his being able to profit by it. For what is sleep but a failure of attention to life--so complete a failure that memory brings back nothing save that little caught in the net of dreams--yet even this little is so charged with creative energy as to give rise to the saying that every man is a genius in his dreams.
Death also is a failure of attention to life, the greatest that we know, and poorest therefore in plunder from supernatural realms.
Nevertheless reports of persons who have narrowly escaped death give evidence at least that to those emanc.i.p.ated by death, life, viewed from some higher region of s.p.a.ce, is perceived as a unity. When a man is brought face to face with death, the events of life pa.s.s before the mind"s eye in an instant, and he comes from such an experience not only with deeper insight into himself, but into the meaning and purpose of life also. The faces of the dead, those parchments where are written the last testament of the departed spirit, bear an expression of solemn peace, sometimes of joy, sometimes of wonder: terror and agony are seldom written there, save when the fatal change comes in some painful or unnatural way.
THE PLAY OF BRAHM
Inspiration, dreams, visions at the moment of death--these things we say are _irrational_, and so in a sense they are. Bergson has compared the play of reason upon phenomena to the action of a cinematograph machine which reproduces the effect of motion by flashing upon the screen a correlated series of _fixed_ images. In like manner the reason dissects the flux of life and presents it to consciousness part by part, but never as a whole. In supernormal states however we may a.s.sume that with the breakdown of some barrier life flows in like a tidal wave, paralyzing the reason, and therefore presenting itself in an irrational manner to consciousness.
Were reason equal to the strain put upon it under these circ.u.mstances, in what light might the phantasmagoria of human life appear? Might it not be perceived as a representation, merely, of a supernal world, higher-dimensional in relation to our own? Just as a moving picture shows us the round and living bodies of men and women as flat images on a plane, enacting there some mimic drama, so on the three-dimensional screen of the world men and women engaged in unfolding the drama of personal life may be but the images of souls enacting, on higher planes of being, the drama of their own salvation.
The reluctance of the American aborigine to be photographed is said to have been due to his belief that something of his personality, his human potency, went into the image, leaving him by so much the poorer from that time forth. Suppose such indeed to be the case: that the flat-man on the moving picture screen leads his little life of thought and emotion, related to the mental and emotional life of the living original as the body is related to its photographic counterpart. In similar manner the potencies of the higher self, the dweller in higher s.p.a.ces, may flow into and express themselves in and through us. We may be images in a world of images; our thoughts shadows of archetypal ideas, our acts a shadow-play upon the luminous screen of material existence, revealing there, however imperfectly, the moods and movements of a higher self in a higher s.p.a.ce.
The saying, "All the world"s a stage," may be true in a sense Shakespeare never intended. It formulates, in effect, the oldest of all philosophical doctrines, that contained in the Upanishads of Brahma, the Enjoyer, who takes the form of a mechanically perfect universe in order to read his own law with eyes of his own creation.
"He thought: "Shall I send forth worlds?" He sent forth these worlds."
To the question, "What worlds?" the Higher s.p.a.ce Hypothesis makes answer, "Dimensional systems, from lowest to highest, each one a _representation_ of the one next above, where it stands _dramatized_, as it were. This is the play of Brahm; endlessly to dissever, in time and s.p.a.ce, and to unite in consciousness, like the geometrician who discovers every ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola, in the cone where all inhere."
The particular act of the drama of unfolding consciousness upon which the curtain is now upfurled is that wherein we discover the world to be indeed a stage, a playground for forces masquerading as forms: "they have their exits and their entrances," or, as expressed in the Upanishads, "All that goes hence (dies on earth) heaven consumes it all; and all that goes thence (returns from heaven to a new life) the earth consumes it all."
XI THE GIFT OF FREEDOM
CONCEPT AND CONDUCT
A surgeon once remarked to the author that among his professional a.s.sociates he had noticed an increasing awareness of the invisible.
This he claimed was manifest in the fact that the young men educated since the rise of bacteriological science were more punctilious in the matter of extreme personal cleanliness and the sterilization of their instruments than the older and often more accomplished surgeons whose habits in these matters had been formed before the general sense of an _invisible_ menace had become acute.