Miriam and I made nucleus of that moment. To it, through inner space
came, drawn, all of its slightest kindred. All intimations,
intuitions, all experience of planes that were not of every-day,
every flavor of Self that understood and transcended the old self,
every piece of delimitation, every removal of inhibition, every
positive approach to new power that we had known came into that light
and certitude. We had centered, we had the point of view. That
which was now our part was, with everincreasing fullness, to be, to
know, to enjoy, to act from that center.
Certain things emerged, could be handled and looked at without shock
and dazzling.
There existed a consciousness surpassing old levels that we had
known. Mankind was tending toward this consciousness. As man's
consciousness was larger than the animal's, so was this larger than
the old human. As each higher dimension holds and surpasses the
dimensions below it, so this consciousness would contain and surpass
all the old, fainter, slower rates. The point goes on reproducing
and reproducing itself, establishing memory, growing a sense of
relation. One day it is capable of an electric flash, a
communication, a filling out! Oneness is born again. Point becomes
line. There is perception, action, knowledge, enjoyment, in the
greater universe of the line. The line, now the unit, in its turn
reproduces itself, acting right and left. Line memory appears,
relation among lines. One day, an electric flash, communication,
sense of continuity, filling out, oneness! Plane is here, and acts
from the great universe of the plane that contains and unifies lines
and points, and goes upon its own adventure, under new skies, to a
dimly guessed great future. The flash--and containing and yet beyond
the sense of all planes, lo! an overplane is born to you. And the
solid runs its race. But one day again the flash! Again Oneness,
containing all that went before, with its own career beckoning, with,
far away, another transcendence beckoning! One day the hyper-solid--
A house is built. The builder-owner comes in and takes possession,
and begins another stretch of undying life.
Any man, attaining this consciousness, finds himself to be all men.
Love of Humanity and of a super-Humanity becomes love and care for a
Self that is old Humanity, new Humanity, and Humanity to be. That
sub-human, dubbed animal, plant, and mineral, is likewise to be
comprehended. It is all the Self, to be realized and lifted through
every level. Environment is the Self, Nature the Self, God the Self.
The smaller God is dead, but by no means the greater God. That
overarches, inheres, yet!
Miriam and I looked about us. We saw vast streams of tendency,
rivers in which many a hundred smaller rivers flowed. We saw
Occident and Orient interfusing. We saw over the armies, the
bayonets, the fortresses and dreadnaughts of the nations, over wars
past and present and very probably to come, the approach of
internationalism. We could say, "It comes--Tennyson's 'Parliament of
man, the Federation of the world!'" We saw socialization at hand,
the common inheritance held as common inheritance. We saw woman and
man alike free, the hands of the sexes joined, their brows touching.
We saw a changing attitude toward the child, and a changing toward
education. We saw medicine and law opening windows in their
mansions. Business was growing humane, politics clean. Art and
letters and music subtly transformed themselves. We saw in the
ancient body of the church, Protestant and Catholic and Jewish,
Mohammedan, Hindu and Buddhist, and what other names are given,
fountains rise of wider practice of religion. We saw healthful
revolt. The Christian Scientist went forth, the Theosophist, the man
of New Thought, and others.... We saw a strong tide flowing,
religious tolerance and more than that, religious understanding, and
more than that, religious love. We saw the folk take up beauty; idea
stretching wing in a sunrise of loveliness. We heard the voices
growing richer, deeper. Travel in the air was upon us, and a power
of intercommunication once only longed for. Many an extension of
enjoyment was upon us, and knowledge in great breadths. We saw that
the scientific man had come into ground once trodden only by the
mystic. We heard science say, "Here it makes of itself material, and
here it rests immaterial." What Berkeley had said, gathering into a
line many a tome, hung to-day in the atmosphere. "All is spirit and
its ideas." ... Those compacted ideas of spirit that we called "the
body!" Kindness and sacredness were coming into the compact, and new
temperance and a new energy.... The great bells rang for the great
century.
Grandeur brooded over our time.
We knew conflict--did we not know it feelingly? But through all
storms that were and storms to come, streamed on the unifying! True
unifying comes only by love and understanding. We touched the
profoundness with which already it was here. It was not a dream; it
was here, though yet only as a shadow of itself. Conflict and
conflict until in the dawn it rose into itself! But we saw now the
immense extent of blue sky and sunshine, and how local were all
storms, even the worst.
We saw men accepting their neighbors. We took Jesus of Nazareth's
definition of neighbors.
More and more the ships made the fleet. Multiplicity did not vanish,
but it held together.
We saw that, truly speaking, there is but one man, one woman, one
child. Comprising, transcending these, there will walk a Being--
That one is us.
We call it "I" because it is "I."
When we cease to talk of multiplicity we shall cease to talk of
unity. I shall live with my ideas, of all dimensions.
Orientation--sense of direction--sense of right--sense of the
future--sense of destiny--such terms grew vital.
New mind, new fulcrum! Will the lifter, the lever, applied itself to
new tasks.
Further and further, deeper and deeper, Miriam and I began to know
ourselves. There was no end to that, could be no end to that. We
met great countries that we had thought somehow to be "other" and
found to be our own. We desired ever more adequate ideas, fairer,
stronger, kinder! ever more beautiful, ever more potent thought. We
wished to dissolve concepts not well or wisely put together and to
assemble mightier, richer experiences. Out of the horn of our own
plenty again and again and forever these might be drawn.
There is no barrier between in and out. All that is thought, all
that is imaged, lives and moves, acts.
We addressed ourselves to discovery, to assimilation of that which
has been discovered, and to fresh discovery. We set our minds to
higher and wider imagery. Whatever, little or much, that we could
find or do of value would be for all, as in truth it would be All
that was finding or doing. There is no other than All.... But there
is yet self-confusion, self-dissipation, and now we speak from one
degree of the Jacob's stair, and now from another.... But for all
that, all that we could do or find would be for all. We might not
print it nor speak it, nor see it, woven into a present institution.
But nevertheless would it flow and penetrate. Motion in that world
is spherical and inconceivably rapid....
Miriam and I worked on in our visible earth, with daily life, with
written dramas, with aid against the raw cruelty of many a human
situation. But activity widened, though it flowed invisibly. So
flowing, however, the order of results nearest to the old daily
living tended to become visible. Or, rather, these merging with
daily living, the latter stood up stronger, brighter-eyed.
We knew that we were immortal. So we drank, day by day, of that
fountain Ponce de Leon sought.
We experimented now with deliberation. We planned experiments, and
we caught on the wing the birds of paradise that flew our way. We
mined in this direction--bridged here--volatilized this
mass--redistributed. Volatilization is one word for process. More
and more particles left the old earth, rose to a new level, and there
recombined. We did not discard old words; we used them. But they
indicated, each one, something far more entire than once was the
case. We learned volume and we learned momentum. Touch, taste,
smell, color, sound, muscular sense, sense of equilibrium, sense of
motion, all senses, changed from fleeting sprites to strong angels.
We had faith that where was extension there were we, and where was
non-extension there were we. That is, we were in this place or that,
and beside that, back of that, under that, over that, we were
everywhere. We had faith that we touched all time, and that eternity
was our name. We knew that we were spirit, and that we were more
conscious, more awakened, than once was so. Being more conscious,
being more awake, we entered with naturalness into our mode of life.
Over our heads, like a star, hung knowledge that there was yet
consciousness, yet waking, fuller and fuller--consciousness,
awakening, to which all our new experience that we found so rich
might come, nay, must come, to seem the hour of a child, a dream, a
faint sound of singing, thin shells upon the shore just making one
guess at the life in the sea!
That which we set ourselves to do as far as we could was to think,
image, feel, act, into conscious being the Oneness of mankind, the
I-ness of all this that says, "We are separate--hard, concrete atoms,
mostly opposed to one another!--each for itself, living and dying,
and Wholeness your fancy!"
We had dimly seen for long the including Shape. We had written of
it--worked for it. But now we saw it far more plainly, now we felt
the vast magnetic drawing of it. But now we had become convinced
that the external ways were not the only ways. Now we saw that the
clasping, demonstrating action worked from within outward. All these
"selves," to find it truly, must find it from the inner side. They
could not be pinned together. They must flow together. Spirit
willing, seeing, everywhere! But those who sailed the inner seas
might start thence waves of help--outgiven stimuli that might pass
from part to part.
Miriam and I strongly yearned over our kind. We wished union. We
wished the super-organism with the super-powers--the super-mind, the
super-heart. We wished Earth to cross the Red Sea, to come out of
Egypt. We saw that all things worked to that end, if they knew it,
or if they knew it not....
Where all are seas of God, the diver may enter from where he
stands--must enter from where he stands.
Miriam and I had certain dawning powers. We entered through them.
That is, they grew to fuller powers, and around them, infant yet,
rose other powers.