The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul Part 12

Arguments, controversy, and proselyting, have no part in the Great Work, as there is no organization, and no personal ambitions to serve.

Those who speak a common language, are inspired by a common purpose, and aspire to a common and universal good, will, soon or late, find themselves a.s.sociated together and co-operating.

It is like a chorus of voices when an old song is started that we loved in childhood. Each takes up the strain, falls into his own part, and helps to swell the harmony, from the joy of his own heart.

Those who "never did like the song," will "quietly steal away." Both Swedenborg and Emerson have sufficiently ill.u.s.trated the "Law of Correspondencies," and "compensation," to reveal the basis of all harmonious human a.s.sociations, whether on the earth, or on other planes of being. Hence the "Harmonics of Evolution," was the forerunner of the "Great Work."

The pitiable byplay and claptrap of "Affinities" so often seen and heard nowadays, where all previous obligations are ignored, and personal responsibilities set at naught, only serve to emphasize the real law of harmony and constructive evolution, by showing what it is not.

The Great Work digs to the very foundations of life, and all human a.s.sociations, and reveals the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, in the building of character, and the adornment of the Temple of the Human Soul.

This is indeed----

"Eternal Progress moving on, From state to state the spirit walks."

Death is neither the end nor the beginning. It is only a change in pitch, a shifting of keys, and the same old Song of Life goes on, if we have but learned the score, and caught the harmony.

Salvation is not a thing accomplished once for all. We have only to consider the monotony, the poverty of invention, and imagination, of those who have tried to portray the joy of the Redeemed in heaven, in order to realize what a bore it would soon become, if that were all.

Inspiration, achievement, and eternal progress, with more and more helpfulness to others, with plane after plane achieved, revealing plane after plane beyond--does not this appeal far more strongly to the highest and best in us all?

And pray, what is this, but the _Great Work_, that I have tried herein to outline, and as taught and lived by Jesus, and every great Master the world has ever known? Each has achieved in his own degree, worded it in his own way, and "stepped out of sunlight into shade, to make more room for others."

Long before the birth of Jesus, it was said, "The wise and peaceful ones live, renewing the earth like the coming of Spring." And having themselves crossed the ocean of embodied existence, help all those who try to do the same thing, without personal motive.

I have endeavored to give a general outline of the Great Work, drawn from history, tradition, philosophy, and symbolism, down to the present year of grace. I find many corroborations, many things pointing in the same general direction. But I find but one concise and definite _formulation_ of the _scientific theorem_, in which the outline is clear, and the a.n.a.logy complete, and thereby made accessible and apprehensible to the open-minded and intelligent student.

Such students need experience no real difficulty in finding a clew to the labyrinth of life, or, as our ancient brothers put it in regard to the _Magnum Opus_--"a key to the closed palace of the king."

This is the purpose of the "Harmonic Series" of books. They need rest upon no authority beyond the intrinsic evidence of truth, on every page. If they are not consistent in themselves, then they must fall in pieces. The only appeal to the reader is: read them carefully, a.n.a.lyze your own mind and soul, and come to your own conclusions. If they find no response, no answering chord in you, then they were written for someone else, or in vain.

One further consideration remains to be noted at this time, as the question is sure to arise: "How about woman in the Great Work?" Seldom in the past has she received recognition, since the earliest days in Old India, though here and there have been the most n.o.ble women.

I heard Anna d.i.c.kinson, many years ago, open one of her famous lectures with these words, "I claim for man and woman alike, the right to attempt and win. I claim for man and woman alike, the right to attempt and fail."

It seems to me to-day, as it did more than thirty years ago, that this is the whole problem in a nutsh.e.l.l, and that any number of words could add nothing to the statement.

The Great Work is as open to woman as to man, and on the same terms. They have perhaps more to overcome in some directions, and men more in others.

This is like saying, "man and woman are different," that is all.

One thing is certain; there will never be an ideal social state on earth, or a heaven anywhere, except as men and women _co-operate_ together for the happiness of each, and the highest, n.o.blest, cleanest good of all, and this is only another phase or department of the Great Work.

CHAPTER VII

THE MODULUS OF NATURE AND THE THEOREM OF PSYCHOLOGY

The Science of Psychology, like any other science, must deal with demonstrated facts, cla.s.sify them, and systematize the resulting categories.

Strictly logical conclusions drawn from categories of facts so derived, deserve the name of Science.

Science is, therefore, a definite method of arriving at exact conclusions.

No other method can legitimately bear the name of science.

No one pretends to dispute the conclusions logically involved in the Binomial Theorem; or in the Parallelogram of forces; or in correlative mechanical equivalents; or in many of the known laws of chemistry and physiology.

When, however, we come to mental processes and psychical phenomena, the facts are so redundant, and so differently reported and apprehended, that argument, belief and prejudice, credulity and incredulity, overshadow and drown with a war of words all clear, scientific methods or conclusions.

But if man, as a whole, is a fact in nature; or if "G.o.d made Man a Living Soul," then the whole nature of man exists under law, and is apprehensible to science.

Man's function as a scientist is to read, to reflect, to weigh, to measure, and to understand.

There are those who object to Natural Science as applied to "Divine"

things. They would preserve the mystery, and seem to prefer miracle and dogma to knowledge and law.

Their preference is to be respected, even though ignorance and superst.i.tion result. Since the domain of science, in America at least, is no longer restricted by ecclesiastic law, the conflict between Religion and Science has gradually disappeared, and the conflict is rather that between knowledge and ignorance, with ignorance on the wane.

"Things settled by long use, if not absolutely good, at least fit well together."

This transition period seems confusing to many earnest souls with its "New Thought," its "occultisms" and its "Lo here's" and "Lo there's." But through and beneath it all, may be heard a note of harmony, the promise and the potency of the triumph of light and knowledge.

We may not know the final results, but every sincere and earnest seeker may have the peaceful a.s.surance that he is on the open highway that leads to the n.o.blest and the best.

The a.s.surance of knowledge but makes clearer the revelations of faith.

That "absentee G.o.d"--of which Carlyle wrote, has been discerned as the Universal Intelligence, and equally Love and Law.

Among recent writers and books on the subject of psychology, Professor Hugo Munsterberg's "Psychotherapy" occupies a very high place. It appeals especially to the physician, more familiar than others with morbid psychical states. Here I can look back on almost half a century of experience, the most active, in dealing with these cases.

But I am at present less concerned with mental pathology and therapy, than with the general psychological basis; the _causative_ categories upon which they are based, and which occupy the first half of Munsterberg's book.

Dividing the whole subject--the content of consciousness, all the faculties, capacities and powers, all processes and sequences--into two general groups or cla.s.ses, the _purposive_ and the _causal_, Munsterberg declares that "the _causal_ view only is the view of psychology"; "the _purposive_ view lies outside of psychology." (P. 14.)

I hold, that without the _purposive_ view equally included and co-ordinated, there can be no such thing as Scientific Psychology. Half views will hardly admit of synthetic generalizations.

The complete separation here inst.i.tuted, between the purposive and causal factors, in itself, for purposes of definition and study, need not be objected to, if it were consistently carried out, which it is not. He so nearly pre-empts the whole ground for the _causal_, giving scant courtesy to the _purposive_, merely a few crumbs of comfort, so that it cannot be said to be ignored altogether, and drops the scientific method entirely in dealing with it; a.s.senting to moral precepts and principles, without a clew to any scientific basis, that one must object to the _name_--Psychology--as being applied to it at all. It contains no hint of a "knowledge of the Soul."

It is the Vito-Motor mechanism of the Mind. The Automatism of the elements, incidents, changes, and sequences of our states of consciousness; based upon, and including all that we know of physiology.

Along these lines, Munsterberg's work has probably never been equaled. It is concise, comprehensive, and exhaustive.

His physical, physiological, and mental syntheses are well-nigh complete.

Whenever, in the future, what he calls "the _purposive_ view" shall be resurrected from the obscurity and nescience to which he has a.s.signed it, and really habilitated in the garb of Science, and recognized as the lawful spouse of the _causal_, we shall indeed have a true Psychology, a Science of the Human Soul.

Munsterberg neither scouts nor denies the possibility of such a future discovery. In the meantime, his viewpoint, and necessarily some of his conclusions and generalizations, are one-sided, and out of focus.