depends entirely upon the degree to which one may relate himself to the
spiritual energy of the divine atmosphere, ever ready to pour itself,
with unlimited power, through every receptive channel. And this energy
is the Divine Will, and entering into it man does not lose his own free
choice, but only enters into that which makes his conscious choice vital
and magnetic with infinite power of achievement.
Maurice Maeterlinck offered a fascinating contribution to this range of
discussion, in the course of which he said:--
"One would say that man had always the feeling that a mere
infirmity of his mind separates him from the future. He knows it to
be there, living, actual, perfect, behind a kind of wall, around
which he has never ceased to turn since the first days of his
coming on this earth. Or rather, he feels it within himself and
known to a part of himself; only, that importunate and disquieting
knowledge is unable to travel, through the too narrow channels of
his senses, to his consciousness, which is the only place where
knowledge acquires a name, a useful strength, and, so to speak, the
freedom of the human city. It is only by glimmers, by casual and
passing infiltrations, that future years, of which he is full, of
which the imperious realities surround him on every hand, penetrate
to his brain. He marvels that an extraordinary accident should have
closed almost hermetically to the future that brain which plunges
into it entirely, even as a sealed vessel plunges, without mixing
with it, into the depths of a monstrous sea that overwhelms it,
entreats it, teases it, and caresses it with a thousand billows."
Time and space are the two dimensions which differentiate the physical
and the spiritual worlds; the higher the degree of spiritual development
and advancement, the less is the individual limited and hampered and
fettered by these two conditions. One may get a certain analogy on it by
realizing to how much greater extent the infant or the child is bound by
the conditions of Space and Time than is the man or the woman. To the
child the idea of the next year is, practically, an eternity; while the
man calmly and confidently makes his plans for the next year, or for
five years or ten years later; with a matter-of-course assurance. The
next year to the man is not so remote as the next day is to the child.
So by this analogy it is not difficult to realize that when one is
released from the physical world and advances into the realm of the
subtle and potent forces of the ethereal world, with his faculties
responsive to the larger environment,--it is not difficult to realize
that he is increasingly free from these conditions that are so strong in
their power of limitation over the mortal life.
"It is," continues Maurice Maeterlinck, "quite incomprehensible that we
should not know the future. Probably a mere nothing, the displacement of
a cerebral lobe, the resetting of Broca's convolution in a different
manner, the addition of a slender network of nerves to those which form
our consciousness,--any one of these would be enough to make the future
unfold itself before us with the same clearness, the same majestic
amplitude as that with which the past is displayed on the horizon, not
only of our individual life? but also of the life of the species to
which we belong. A singular infirmity, a curious limitation of our
intellect, causes us not to know what is going to happen to us, when we
are fully aware of what has befallen us. From the absolute point of view
to which our imagination succeeds in rising, although it cannot live
there, there is no reason why we should not see that which does not yet
exist, considering that that which does not yet exist in its relation to
us must necessarily have its being already, and manifest itself
somewhere. If not, it would have to be said that, where Time is
concerned, we form the centre of the world, that we are the only
witnesses for whom events wait so that they may have the right to appear
and to count in the eternal history of causes and effects. It would be
as absurd to assert this for Time as it would be for Space,--that other
not quite so incomprehensible form of the twofold infinite mystery in
which our whole life floats."
The latest progress in this new century is that of overcoming space. It
is being overcome; it is being almost annihilated. When on the Atlantic
Coast we call up a friend in Chicago and speak with him any hour; when
we cable across three thousand miles of water and receive a speedy
reply; when wireless telegraphy wafts its message through the etheric
currents of the air; when the electric motor is about to revolutionize
all our preconceived ideas of distance and journeyings,--we see how
space is being dominated and is no longer to be one of the conditions
that limit man's activities. To a degree, overcoming space is also
overcoming time. In an essay of Emerson's, written somewhere in the
middle of the nineteenth century, he speaks of something as being worth
"going fifty miles to see." Fifty miles, at that time, represented a
greater space than three thousand miles represent at the present.
Regarding the condition of space Maeterlinck further says: "Space is
more familiar to us, because the accidents of our organism place us more
directly in relation with it and make it more concrete. We can move in
it pretty freely, in a certain number of directions, before and behind
us. That is why no traveller would take it into his head to maintain
that the towns which he has not yet visited will become real only at the
moment when he sets his foot within their walls. Yet this is very nearly
what we do when we persuade ourselves that an event which has not yet
happened does not yet exist."
The only explanation of certain phases of the phenomena of life is in
the theory that life is twofold; that what we call life--in the sense of
experiences and events and circumstances--is simply the result, the
precipitation into the physical world, of the events and experiences
that have already occurred to us on the spiritual side of life, and that
they occur here _because_ they have occurred there. Maeterlinck says
further (in this paper entitled "The Foretelling of the Future"): "But I
do not intend, in the wake of so many others, to lose myself in the most
insoluble of enigmas. Let us say no more about it, except this
alone,--that Time is a mystery which we have arbitrarily divided into a
past and a future, in order to try to understand something of it. In
itself, it is almost certain that it is but an immense, eternal,
motionless Present, in which all that takes place and all that will take
place takes place immutably, in which To-morrow, save in the ephemeral
mind of man, is indistinguishable from Yesterday or To-day." The
question is raised by Mr. Maeterlinck as to whether the clairvoyant who
foretells to one future events gets his knowledge from the subliminal
consciousness of the person himself. He relates a series of experiences
that he had in Paris with all sorts and degrees of the professed seers,
and he says:--
"It is very astonishing that others can thus penetrate into the
last refuge of our being, and there, better than ourselves, read
thoughts and sentiments at times forgotten or rejected, but always
long-lived, or as yet unformulated. It is really disconcerting that
a stranger should see further than ourselves into our own hearts.
That sheds a singular light on the nature of our inner lives. It is
vain for us to keep watch upon ourselves, to shut ourselves up
within ourselves; our consciousness is not water-tight, it escapes,
it does not belong to us, and though it requires special
circumstances for another to install himself there and take
possession of it, nevertheless it is certain that, in normal life,
our spiritual tribunal, our _for interieur_,--as the French have
called it, with that profound intuition which we often discover in
the etymology of words,--is a kind of _forum_, or spiritual market
place, in which the majority of those who have business there come
and go at will, look about them and pick out the truths, in a very
different fashion and much more freely than we would have to this
day believed."
Mr. Maeterlinck reiterates that it is incredible that we should not know
the future. The truth is that it is even more than incredible; it is
unpardonably stupid, and the great desideratum is to so develop and
unfold the spiritual faculties that they will discern the experiences on
the spiritual side,--those which will, later on, precipitate themselves
into the mortal life, and that will be "knowing the future." That is to
say, if we can read our spiritual past, we then know our earthly future;
for that which _has_ been, in the inner experience, _shall be_, in the
outer experience. Mr. Maeterlinck says:--
"I cannot think that we are not qualified to know beforehand the
disturbances of the elements, the destiny of the planets, of the
earth, of empires, peoples, and races. All this does not touch us
directly, and we know it in the past, thanks only to the artifices
of history. But that which regards us, that which is within our
reach, that which is to unfold itself within the little sphere of
years, a secretion of our spiritual organism, that envelops us in
Time, even as the shell or the cocoon envelops the mollusc or the
insect in space; that, together with all the external events
relating to it, is probably recorded in that sphere. In any case,
it would be much more natural that it were so recorded than
comprehensible that it be not. There we have realities struggling
with an illusion; and there is nothing to prevent us from believing
that, here as elsewhere, realities will end by overcoming illusion.
Realities are what will happen to us, having already happened in
the history that overhangs our own, the motionless and superhuman
history of the universe. Illusion is the opaque veil woven with the
ephemeral threads called Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow, which we
embroider on those realities. But it is not indispensable that our
existence should continue the eternal dupe of that illusion. We may
even ask ourselves whether our extraordinary unfitness for knowing
a thing so simple, so incontestable, so perfect and so necessary as
the future, would not form one of the greatest subjects for
astonishment to an inhabitant of another star who should visit
us....
"Moreover, we must not believe that the march of events would be
completely upset if we knew it beforehand. First, only they would
know the future, or a part of the future, who would take the
trouble to learn it; even as only they know the past, or a part of
their own present, who have the courage and the intelligence to
examine it. We should quickly accommodate ourselves to the lessons
of this new science, even as we have accommodated ourselves to
those of history. We should soon make allowance for the evils we
could not escape and for inevitable evils. The wiser among us, for
themselves, would lessen the sum total of the latter; and the
others would meet them half-way, even as now they go to meet many
certain disasters which are easily foretold. The amount of our
vexations would be somewhat decreased, but less than we hope; for
already our reason is able to foresee a portion of our future, if
not with the material evidence that we dream of, at least with a
moral certainty that is often satisfying; yet we observe that the
majority of men derive hardly any profit from this easy
fore-knowledge. Such men would neglect the counsels of the future,
even as they hear, without following it, the advice of the past."
Not to know the future is extremely inconvenient, to say the least, and
it may present itself as the next most needed advance in progress. The
question is in the air; the demand for its solution may increase, and
demands penetrate the unknown and reconstruct it for the higher use of
man. Meanwhile, as Mr. Maeterlinck continues:--
"Our life must be lived while we wait for the word that shall solve
the enigma, and the happier, the nobler our life, the more vigorous
shall it become, and we shall have the more courage,
clear-sightedness, boldness to seek and desire the truth.... We
should live as though we were always on the eve of the great
revelation, and we should be ready with welcome, with, warmest and
keenest and fullest, most heartfelt and intimate welcome. And
whatever the form it shall take on the day that it comes to us, the
best way of all to prepare for its fitting reception is to crave
for it now, to desire it as lofty, as perfect, as vast, as
ennobling as the soul can conceive. It must needs be more
beautiful, glorious, and ample than the best of our hopes. For when
it differs therefrom or even frustrates them, it must of necessity
bring something nobler, loftier, nearer to the nature of man, for
it will bring us truth. To man, though all that he value go under,
the intimate truth of the universe must be wholly, pre-eminently
admirable. And though on the day it unveils, our meekest desires
turn to ashes and float on the wind, still there shall linger
within us all we have prepared; and the admirable will enter into
our soul, the volume of its waters being as the depth of the
channel that our expectation has fashioned."
* * * * *
[Sidenote: In Proportion to Power.]
May it not be that the degree to which one is enabled to dominate his
own life in the sense of controlling and selecting and grouping its
outer events is precisely in proportion to the spiritual power that he
has achieved? Nor has this spiritual power any conceivable relation to
what is currently known as occultism, or a thing to be attained by any
series of prescribed outer actions. There has sprung up a species of
literature with explicit directions for "concentration" and "meditation"
and one knows not what,--directions to spend certain hours of the day
gazing upon a ten-penny nail or something quite as inconsequential, and
a more totally demoralizing and negative series of performances can
hardly be imagined. But all this is not even worth denunciation. The
only real spiritual power is that of the union of the soul with the
divine.
"Lift up your hearts."
"We lift them up unto the Lord."
In these lines lies the secret of all that makes for that mental and
moral energy whose union is spiritual power. The question of what
happens to one daily and constantly, as weeks and months go on, is the
one most practical question of life. In it is involved all one's
personal happiness as well as all his power for usefulness. To feel
that this ever-flowing current of events is something entirely outside
one's own choice or volition is to stand helpless--if not
hopeless--before the spectacle of life. It is out of this aimless and
chaotic state that resort is had to the seeking of all kinds of
divination, omens, prophecies, and foreshadowings, with the result of
more and more completely separating the individual from his legitimate
activities and endeavor, and leading him to substitute for spiritual
realities a mere false and mirage-like outlook,--and instead of that
rational activity and high endeavor that create events and increasingly
control their conditions, there is merely an impatient and restless
expectation of something or other that may suddenly occur to transform
the entire outlook.
The unforeseen events do occur, and they are the crowning gift and grace
and sweetness of life. But they are the product, the result, the fine
inflorescence of intense spiritual activity, not of stagnation and
idleness. "It might almost be said that there happens to one only that
which he desires," says Maeterlinck: "it is time that on certain
external events an influence is of the feeblest, but we have
all-powerful action on that which these events shall become in
ourselves--in other words on their spiritual part, on what is radiant,
undying within them.... There are those with whom this immortal part
absorbs all; these are like islands that have sprung up in the ocean;
for they have found immovable anchorage whence they issue commands that
their destiny must needs obey.... Whatever may happen is lit up by their
inward life. When you love, it is not your love that forms part of your
destiny, but the knowledge of self that you will have found, deep down
in your love--this it is that will help you to fashion your life. If you
have been deceived, it is not the deception that matters, but the
forgiveness whereto it leads, and the loftiness, wisdom, completeness of
this forgiveness--by these shall your life be steered to destiny's haven
of brightness and peace; by these shall your eyes see more clearly....
Let us always remember that nothing befalls us that is not of the nature
of ourselves. There comes no adventure but means to our soul the shape
of our every-day thoughts.... And none but yourself shall you meet on
the highway of fate.... Events seem as the watch for the signal we hoist
from within."
The inner life that is lived--the life of thought, purpose, aspiration,
and prayer--dominates and determines the outer life. It creates it. And
when one feels helplessly drifting, at the mercy of events, his only
safety lies in a more positive and abounding energy; in deeper purpose
and a firmer grasp on his work, a higher and diviner trend to his
thought, and a closer clinging to the divine promises.
"In man," says Balzac, "culminates a visible finite universe; in him
begins a universe invisible and infinite,--two worlds unknown to each
other." But one's life always belongs far more to his future than to his
past. He is more closely and truly related to that which he shall be
than to that which he has been; as the flower, the plant, the tree, is
in more intimate and vital relation with the air and sunshine than with
the dark ground in which the seed germinated. It retains its hold on the
kingdom of the earth, but it has achieved a new and a higher relation
with the kingdom of the air. Man's relations with the invisible and the
infinite universe are his truest and most determining relations. And
these are governed and are constantly extended by his power of will. The
power of will is so akin to the divine energy that it is the power
through which, and by means of which, the closest relation with the
divine energy can be effected. Man, by the power of will, unites his
life with the life of God; he so relates himself to the divine energy
that he becomes receptive to it, and when this irresistible force pours
itself into his life all nobler realizations become possible; all
sublimest aspiration may express itself in the daily quality of life,
and fulfil its visions in actual tasks and deeds.
Nothing is ever hopeless. There is no situation nor complication that
has not its key simply in lifting up the heart to God; in willing,
through prayer, to work, as well as to walk, with Him; and in praying,
through power of will brought to bear in all its resistless intensity of
aspiration, that the power of God may work through all the conditions of
the human life.
The subjective or subliminal self is capable of extending the mental
faculties in a way almost undreamed of by the ordinary consciousness.
"There is in the mind a faculty," says a writer on this subject, "which,
if it receives the correct impression, is able to correct the mental and
physical life of a person and produce a manifest impression on his
environment, the secret of which is conscious and concentrated attention
under direction of the will of the individual.
"The subjective mind is a distinct entity. It occupies the whole human
body, and, when not opposed in any way, it has absolute control over all
the functions, conditions, and sensations of the body. While the
objective mind has control of all our voluntary functions and motions,
the subjective mind controls all the silent, involuntary, and vegetative
functions. This subjective mind can see without the use of physical
eyes. It perceives by intuition. It has the power to communicate with
others without the use of ordinary physical means. It can read the
thoughts of others. It receives intelligence and transmits it to people
at a distance. Distance offers no resistance against the successful
missions of the subjective mind. It never forgets anything, It never
sleeps. It is capable of sustaining an existence independent of the
body. It never dies. It is the living soul."