The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul

Incidentally with this dominating impulse and determination will be the growth and development of the spiritual body, and the intuition and guiding light of the Individual Intelligence. We shall become consciously aware of this as a constant personal experience demanding no further proof. It is knowledge of the soul direct.

Every faculty, capacity, and power of the soul will be our willing servant.

This is Constructive Psychology, and is a normal evolution under both Natural and Divine Law: “Living the Life that we may know the doctrine.”

It is practical, scientific Psychology worked out and demonstrated in the Laboratory of Life. Religions and Revelations will no longer be mysteries, but open books; for we shall be in touch with their source and at-one with their inspiration.

This is what is meant by “The School of Natural Science.”

Nor is it an idle speculation, nor merely a thing “devoutly to be wished.”

If the whole nature of man is built and operated under law; if he is, as he seems to be, an aggregate of all substances, an epitome of all principles and processes; then it follows that to understand these laws, processes and correspondences, is to become master of them and of life.

Wonderful as have been the discoveries in nature’s finer forces and in applied science, all that science has discovered or invented, or art has devised, is like children’s toys, when compared with the subtle and marvelous mechanism of man’s organism.

The rhythmic beating of the heart, synchronous with respiration and the circulation of the blood, are sufficient illustrations. But even this concerns the vehicle, not the driver; the instrument, not the player upon this “harp of a thousand strings.”

When it comes to the mental and psychical realm, cognition is direct and immediate. We become “aware” of relations and processes, of sequences and powers, by intuition, as we are aware of the Self.

This is apperception in its highest sense. Not through the mind, which is a process and a function, but through that which uses, controls and dominates the mind, viz.: the Individual Intelligence, the Soul.

In the mind, in daily life, we weigh and measure, reason, choose, compare, and adjust. In intuition or apperception it is borne in, or comes like a flash of light, and seems as if “we always knew it.”

We may somewhat haltingly describe the process, but we can never impart the knowledge to another, because it is an individual experience. As easily could another feel, sense, and realize the pain of thrusting our finger into the fire, as to receive vicariously, from us, a real physical experience.

Here lies the difficulty, often the impossibility, of the teacher or the Master, in imparting his knowledge.

I am entirety satisfied that by personal effort and experience along these lines of normal higher evolution, there comes a time and a degree of unfoldment and power when, from knowledge and self-mastery, the Master – the Individual Intelligence – having evolved and learned to control the spiritual body, can consciously and deliberately pass out of the physical body and return to it at will. He can do this as consciously and completely as it occurs at death; can go where he pleases, within the range of his unfoldment or spiritual experience, and retain conscious memory of it all after his return to the physical body.

And suppose this all to be true, how can he demonstrate the fact, or transmit the experience to another; and particularly if that other declared to begin with that, “the whole process is absurd and impossible”?

Nor is mere credulity here a highway to knowledge. It is merely the opposite pole of incredulity, and both are begotten by ignorance.

Analogy and the basic principles and laws of scientific psychology are very different matters indeed. They point in this direction like a theorem in mathematics. The principles and laws being grasped and apprehended, the solution becomes only a question of work; and at every step the law is verified, “Backward and forward it still spells the same.”

What is this but the methods of Natural Science applied to Psychical Science upon the basis of the Unity of Natural Phenomena and Universal Law?

There is nothing to prevent any of us from starting on this upward journey of the soul, if we choose; and never till we do, shall we really begin to know, to realize our birthright, and progress toward the realm of eternal day.

The science of ethics, the basis of morals, is the starting point, the first step; and leading the life, the way. And there is no climbing up some other way. So said the Master of Galilee, and so say the real Masters in all times.

When Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” he doubtless meant that these were all in him, and he at-one with them.

When Jesus said, “I and the Father are one. No one cometh to the Father but by me,” he doubtless referred to this at-one-ment as the only way by which the natural man – Adam – could become the Spiritual man —Christos.

When he said, “The kingdom of heaven is within you,” he undoubtedly meant that “heaven” is a condition, a harmonic state, and not a place.

We undoubtedly create our own “hell” and our own “heaven,” and people them with “devils” or with “angels.”

True Science and true Religion clasp hands, and are like the two hands of the one body of Truth. They check each other, supplement each other, harmonize each other.

Superstition and blind dogma are the enemies of true Science; Religion – never.

Science and Religion are the handmaids of Truth; because both are the children of Divinity, the agents of Light and of Eternal Progress for Man.

This building of character, this growth of the soul, this Harmonic of Evolution, is a matter of work; of personal endeavor, of valid, real, personal experience.

Its results are our real possessions, our “treasure in heaven” that nothing can ever destroy. Life and Death may ebb and flow, and come and go; but we may, if we will, go on forever; or we may turn the other way and go down to death. Some day every human soul will elect, choose, and decide and then start on the journey, North or South.

This is the meaning of Soul, of Individual Intelligence, of Rational Volition, of Personal Responsibility.

It is the Science of Nature aligned with Divinity, and compassing Humanity.

The purpose of these outlines, suggestions, analogies, and inferences, is to show that this life is a period of gestation, in close analogy and comparable with that of the child in utero; that with the web and woof of character, organ and function, impulse and use, opportunity and destiny, we are building a spiritual body, the immediate vehicle of the soul, as literally as is the physical body on the outer material plane; that the laws of Spiritual health and vitality are as concrete, apprehensible, and demonstrable as those of physiology.

Normal use under law develops health, harmony, and strength, in the one case as in the other, demonstrably; and these laws, accurately formulated and demonstrated, constitute the School of Natural Science, accessible to all prepared to receive and wisely use them; advancement depending on progress, thoroughness, and loyalty, in all preceding degrees.

Is it worth while?

CHAPTER VI

THE CROSS IN RELIGION AND THE CRUX IN SCIENCE WITH THE GREAT WORK IN AMERICA

With the progress of civilization and the general growth and diffusion of intelligence everywhere, there is one problem upon which all else focalizes, though the fact seems to be seldom clearly apprehended or realized.

Not only do science and religion face each other at one point, but the life of each is at that one point involved. It is not only the often recognized “conflict between Religion and Science,” which was long ago worn threadbare. It is the fact that both Science and Religion are out of joint with themselves.

The battle-ground may, in a broad way, be named Psychology. All problems and all discussions of the real issues arise from, involve, or center around, the nature, laws that govern, and destiny of the Human Soul.

From the very nature of these problems, their intricacy and diversity, they remained the latest in the categories of Science to be seriously investigated.

For the same reasons they have been the subject of dogma and revelation in religion, with doors slammed in the face of all investigation as not only useless, but wicked, and often made dangerous.

Between the agnosticism of Science, and the dogmatism of Religion, knowledge has been crucified, and there it hangs to-day, a crux to the one, and the Cross to the other: The same problem, only facing different ways.

And yet the Reconciliation is not far to seek. It is difficult for the average churchman, or theologian, to apprehend and remember, that a fact, in nature or in life, is one thing; and that the interpretation, or explanation put upon that fact, by any man, or body of men, is another thing entirely. Here is where Belief, Dogma, and Heresy come in. As soon as one denies the interpretation, he is accused of denying the fact, no matter how illogical or absurd the interpretation may be, on the one hand, or how openly he admits the fact as the basis of his own conclusions, on the other.

Few individuals will be found nowadays who deny the fact of the birth, life, mission, and death of Jesus of Nazareth. But the interpretations read into the fact differ so widely as to result in almost numberless sects, and an endless war of words. All this theological wrangling may be focalized at one point, almost on a single word. Did Jesus of Nazareth differ in kind or in Degree, from the rest of Humanity?

If he had “a like nature with ours,” as he and his disciples took the utmost pains to declare, and to demonstrate, then he differed in degree of unfoldment, and was indeed, our Elder Brother; He differed as the holy differs from the unholy; as the pure differs from the impure; as the kind and charitable differ from the unkind and the uncharitable. It is just at this point that all the theological juggling comes in, in the effort to reconcile contradictions and irreconcilable paradoxes, under the designation – Mystery, Miracle, and Faith. Few theologians would admit that it is desirable, even if possible, that the mystery and miracle should disappear, and that wisdom and understanding should take their place. In other words, that Jesus should be proved an evolution under both natural and divine law, as the result of “Living the Life.”

Bear in mind that we are dealing with Interpretations only, and with the opinions of men; and that there is nothing “sacred” or “holy” about these opinions, no matter how they may be hedged about by dogma, or ecclesiastic authority. The Immaculate Conception; the Virgin Birth; the Resurrection of the physical body, and the Vicarious Atonement, are each and all Dogmas; the opinions of men, in interpreting the mystery, and miracle, they have assigned to the nature of Jesus, in what they call the “plan,” or the “Scheme of Salvation.”

If the nature of Jesus were radically and essentially different from ours; if he differed from us in kind, instead of in degree; if he were “very God,” instead of a perfected man, as the result of “Living the Life”; then he can have little in common with us; and, so far as “like natures,” “common temptations,” and human sympathies, and destinies, are concerned, he might as well have been born on the planet Mars.

But suppose that psychic and spiritual science could so define the faculties, capacities, and powers of man, and the nature and laws of the human soul, as to demonstrate the fact that Jesus became Christos through “living the life,” and “doing the will of the Father,” in strict conformity to both Natural and Divine Law, thus revealing the fact that these potencies are latent in every human soul: that it does not depend so much upon what we believe, as upon what we do; not so much upon what we profess, as upon what we are; not so much upon what Jesus did for us, as upon what we do for ourselves and for others, in strict analogy with the life and the teachings of Jesus. Would not Jesus become, indeed and in truth, a Living Example, in place of a “Blood Offering”?

Theology ignores and sophisticates Personal Responsibility, which everything else, and every experience in life, justifies and enforces as the basis of Morals.

On the other hand, so-called Psychic Science misapprehends, belittles, and sophisticates the Human Will, the prime Motor Power of Man. It then confuses Rational Volition and Domination by juggling with the words Suggestion and Hypnosis.

This reveals the fact that they have no rational concept whatever of the psychical nature of man, not even a “working hypothesis” of the Human Soul. Theologians affirm, “Science” denies, and so they still face each other in this Twentieth Century with “A war of words,” though, to a considerable extent, they have ceased making faces and calling each other names, because there is a deeper struggle going on.

The Theological Hierarchy, worldly-wise in every generation, has dropped the cry of Heresy and gone to the very foundations of our civilization. They are sapping and mining the foundations of civil Liberty, the “self-evident truths,” and the “Inalienable Rights,” upon which this government was founded.

Here is a thoroughly-organized, relentless determination, openly declared, and well under way to destroy our “Free Public Schools,” and substitute that “Organized Ignorance,” the Parochial Schools, as the first step in reuniting Church and State, through dogmatic authority instilled into the youths of this country. Not one citizen in a thousand seems to realize what is here being attempted, how thoroughly organized it is, or what immense progress in this direction has already been made; or, if they know, they do not seem to care.

It may thus be seen what practical and vital issues we are facing and how much is involved in the “Cross of Religion,” and the “Crux of Science.”

Intelligence, Education, the Light of Science, and the Illumination of true Religion, are pitted in a conflict with Ignorance, Superstition, and Fear; dogmatism, degeneration, and devolution.

Science and Religion represent different departments in human interests and the life of man. So far as they are each true, they must eventually, and inevitably clasp hands, instead of working at cross-purposes.

Actual knowledge of the human soul, as a Science of psychology, on the one hand; and the duty of man to himself, to his fellows, and to God, and the destiny of the human soul as essential religion, on the other; must constitute the basis of union, and the point of agreement.

The accredited psychology of to-day has hitherto failed to demonstrate any actual knowledge of the human soul, or even to postulate its existence, as a fact in nature.

The theologies and religions of to-day appeal largely to superstition and fear, and support their dogmas by “revelations,” the diverse interpretations of which have segregated religions into a large number of sects with no bond of union or basis of agreement.

Competition here, in securing proselytes, differs little, except in name, from that everywhere in evidence between commercial organizations. It is hardly “the survival of the fittest,” but rather, as everywhere, and in all ages, the triumph of the most powerful, aggressive, and unscrupulous. The Roman Hierarchy is still in the lead, with its Pope “infallible,” and anathematizing all progress and enlightenment, under the designation of “Modernism,” and all its energy exerted to perpetuate the “Dark Ages.”

It is thus that priestcraft masquerades in the name of religion to enslave the human soul. Still outside this Babel of religion and science, lie numberless cults and organizations professing both liberty and enlightenment along the lines of man’s spiritual nature, not one of which puts forth any clear and definite theorem of the human soul. With mere assertions, instead of demonstrated facts, and appealing often to the desire for wealth, health, and comfort in their followers, they often declare that one has only to “demand” these things, in order to have them. Justice and the law of compensation are often entirely ignored, and the methods employed are unmoral, to say the least, almost without exception, unscientific, and wholly empirical.

Occasionally we find “Leaders,” or “Official Heads,” whose colossal ignorance of either moral or spiritual Law, is only equaled by their monumental egotism, and this does not prevent them from gaining proselytes, and amassing fortunes in their own name.

It would be difficult to see how many of these cults differ, either in principle or practice, or in the results wrought out in their disciples, from the Priestcraft already referred to.

They advertise an open thoroughfare, and seem to promise something for nothing, but from the vicarious atonement, up or down the scale, the votaries pay in “mint, anise, and cummin,” while ignorantly blind to the weightier matters of the law.

To one who for half a century has studied these personal and social problems, and witnessed the rise and fall of many of these cults, from the Fox Sisters and Spiritualism, to Braid and Hypnotism, while Priestcraft and Popery, like Tennyson’s brook, “go on forever,” it all seems pitiful that mankind must pay so dearly for freedom, enlightenment, and knowledge.

And yet, when the real teacher comes, the rabble so long exploited cry, “Away with him,” “Crucify him.” When the rabble at last repent, Priestcraft shifts its tactics and deifies the sacrifice, which it instigated, and so perpetuates the eternal tragedy.

Those familiar with the “Seeking after God,” and for real knowledge of the essential nature of man, in all ages, are aware that there have always been, in every age, those who have achieved it. It has been known, or rather concealed, under many names. Its possessors and teachers have been reviled, persecuted, crucified, and thus their work has been hindered and often defeated.

The ignorant and superstitious feared it. The vicious, ambitious, and time-serving hated it, because it prevented the few from dominating and exploiting the many; liberating, as it does, the earnest seeker after truth and enlightenment from the bondage of ignorance, dogma, superstition, and fear, in every form.

Hence Institutional Religions, Schools of Philosophy, Coteries, Syndicates, and many other organizations of men, constituted to dominate and rule the masses, have been the sworn foes of individual liberty and enlightenment, and of the “Illuminati,” or real teachers in every age, and a perpetual menace to their work.

Real knowledge of the nature and destiny of man, has first to be discovered, then recovered, and possessed. To become available, it must be simplified, formulated, and finally promulgated in some form, so as to reach those ready and capable of receiving it.

It must be sought earnestly and deservedly. The candidate must demonstrate that he is duly and truly prepared, worthy, and well qualified. Every step in advance is determined by his understanding and use of what he has hitherto received.

The real possession of this sublime wisdom is an evolution from within and not something communicated from without.

It is, literally, the building of character and the growth of the soul, as the highway of knowledge.

To discover, possess, exemplify, and promulgate this knowledge, this higher evolution of the Individual Intelligence, in the face of all obstacles and difficulties, has been known and designated for ages as the Magnum Opus, the “Great Work.” It is, indeed, the greatest work either known, permitted or possible to man. It solves the riddle of the Sphinx of Life and makes Man Master of his own destiny.

Such a Master lives in a new world, untrammeled by the things of sense and time. He has indeed, “lived the life to know the doctrine,” and can say with Jesus, in sincerity and truth, “I, and the Father, are One,” because we are at-one.

There is not a particle of evidence in history, in philosophy, or in science, to show that anyone has ever reached such knowledge, liberation, and enlightenment, in any other way than that in which Jesus attained it; viz.: by renouncing the ordinary ambitions of life, wealth, fame, and power, and by overcoming selfishness and the lusts of the flesh; devoting their lives to the good of mankind, “without the hope of fee or reward.” As the whole work is a spiritual unfoldment, and from beginning to end a refining process, it is easy to see how and why the conditions are what they are, and have always been the same.

This is why those who have no apprehension or conception of the process, can see only mystery and miracle in the result.

If anyone cites the so-called “black magicians” of Egypt, and of antiquity, to refute the moral code as the essential condition of attainment, they will find that these priests and “magi climbing up some other way,” and whom Jesus designated as “thieves and robbers,” could never function or pass beyond the so-called “astral plane.” Here is where the Sibyl and the “virgin seer” came in.

This is clearly shown in that little book “The Idyll of the White Lotus,” as in several of Bulwer’s novels. Hypnotism and Ceremonial Magic, as revealed in the writings of Abbé Constant, represent ambition for knowledge and power without “living the life,” and at any cost to mankind. These Margraves have often existed, sealed their own fate, and “gone to their own place.” H. P. Blavatsky referred to them as “lost souls,” or “soulless individuals.” They are also graphically described in “The Strange Story of Arinzeman.”

There was always the “Right-hand Path,” and the “Left-hand Path.”

Even a slight familiarity with ancient literatures and philosophies reveals the fact, that all these things have been known for ages. The subtlety of the Hindoo mind has been such as to leave no phase of mental or psychic phenomena uninvestigated.

To the casual and uninstructed reader, it often seems like an endless and hopeless jungle, and he is unable to bring order out of the seemingly endless confusion.

There is not a single percept or concept in what is now called “New Thought,” that may not be found repeated with almost endless variations thousands of years ago.

Reference has already been made to the conditions imposed upon the student who aspires to know, and to become.

The obligations upon the teacher are no less stringent, for both are, from first to last, working under both natural and spiritual law to which they are bound to conform.

To be possessed of such knowledge the teacher must have abandoned worldly ambition, the love of wealth, and the applause of men. All motives of time-serving and self-seeking must assail him in vain. He becomes the almoner of the treasure-house of Light and Knowledge. He must exemplify what he teaches. If he can impart his knowledge, or assist an aspiring and worthy brother, it must be in the way he has himself received it, “without money and without price,” or any “hope of reward or fee,” and the brother so receiving, in his own degree, must be ready to pass it on under precisely the same terms and conditions.

The teacher, therefore, must be in a position to give or to withhold; promulgate or conceal; teach or refuse to teach; governed solely by Truth and Law, and the solemn obligation under which he has himself received it.

The meaning of the saying, “strait is the gate and narrow is the way, and few there be who find it,” may thus be made apparent.

Fragments of this wisdom are found scattered through the ages, with here and there one who has achieved it.

For two or three centuries the early Christian Church undertook to work on these lines, and instituted three degrees, as abundantly shown in the writings of many of the so-called “Christian, or Church Fathers.”

Jesus said to his disciples, “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” And again, “The works that I do, ye shall do also, and greater things than these shall ye do, because I go to the Father.” And again, “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them who are without, it is not given.”