Source of Spiritual Knowledge.
The critically thinking public today might be said to have long ago
relinquished the hope of obtaining a sure and decisive answer to the
question, whether there is an existence beyond the grave. Some people
confine themselves to a faith founded on a smaller or greater probability
for either conception. We want palpable evidence. To many it even appears
necessary to have a look behind the veil of visible matter in order to
satisfy themselves as to whether anything exists within the void. “Nobody
has returned to tell us how it is,” we are often reminded, and this
expression clearly means that complete certainty requires the testimony
of eye-witnesses.
Such a procedure would be at least radical if it were possible. But even
if it were, should we then be nearer the goal? The whole mode of thinking
is naïve, but merits attention especially because it demonstrates
how uncertain the information would be that we would obtain through
this channel. If somebody returned, little or nothing would, in all
probability, be gained.
In the first place how could we know that it was the same person that
returned? It would, perhaps, be best if the soul took possession of
the same body. The absence would then be comparable to, or essentially
analogous with, the condition of the apparently dead. But to begin with,
we could, for good reasons, only ascribe a small value to experience
gained under such conditions, and, further, such an absence would
evidently mean no real separation of soul and body, no real death, and
therefore no real experience of the very thing under consideration.
But how, and under what conditions, would an event of this kind be
conceivable?
Should the person in question suddenly disappear from our sight and
then just as suddenly reappear among us? Endowed with his present
organs and senses, which are closely adapted to earthly conditions,
such a person could see and comprehend only such objects as differed
little or non-essentially from those in the world where we now live. He
would possibly be able to observe conditions on other planets in the
universe, but he would be utterly unable to comprehend the things of a
world abstracted from the limitations of planetary life. If such a world
exists, and some one of us were suddenly removed to it, such a one,
amidst all glories with seeing eyes, would yet see nothing; with hearing
ears, hear nothing; and with feeling senses, feel nothing. In order to
see and grasp what may exist and happen, the observer himself must have
gone through a corresponding radical change. The conditions for the
functioning of bodily organs do not exist there. He must develop new and
more perfect senses; higher, spiritual and bodily faculties which differ
from his present ones as much as the objects of this higher world differ
from the things of earth.
A direct transposition would therefore be without value. In order to make
investigations, a radical metamorphosis is an indispensable condition.
The soul must be separated from its earthly clothing and pass through all
the transformations which commence with natural death. In order to return
here, this person must again go through the same processes in reverse
order. At his re-birth upon earth he would not, in all probability,
differ from other people. He would know as much or as little as we do.
But even if we assume the improbable and imagine that this person
returned to us with the memory of all he had lived through and that he
tried to relate his impressions and experiences, such a report would
be of no use because it would deal with ideas and conceptions entirely
incomprehensible to us. The explanation of this is that man is unable to
comprehend things and phenomena which have not acted upon his present
organs. If we take pains to analyze our boldest and most unrealistic
fancies, we will find that their substance and ingredients are only
greatly enlarged or reduced images of an already experienced reality.
We have never possessed that man’s higher senses, never experienced
the things which those higher faculties are able to grasp, and we are
therefore not in a position to form any idea whatever about such a world.
His speech would sound like a foreign language that we could not possibly
ever learn to understand.
Only in case the person in question could adapt himself to our present
way of thinking and understanding, would such a revelation be of any
importance. But then again the question arises, what confidence could we
have in this man who pretended to possess knowledge about things entirely
concealed from us? We have no means of verifying the information thus
received. It must be taken in good faith, and so the gates to doubt would
again be thrown open. If someone returned, then, little or nothing would
be gained. In this, as in other cases, there is no royal road to truth.
Only a painstaking research will lead to the goal, if indeed it can ever
be attained.
The question is, can investigation in this direction accomplish anything?
If so, we must at least not entertain or present any unreasonable
demands. Such an unreasonable demand would be, for instance, to
expect science to explain the concrete forms which life would take
in a transcendental world. No man ever has or ever will make such
observations. It is even questionable whether such knowledge would be
useful or beneficial to us if obtained. We have enough to occupy us in
our daily cares and earthly tasks. A complete knowledge of life in a
future existence would probably disturb and distract us to such a degree
that we would lose interest for our present evolution in this existence.
It may be sufficient for us to know whether there be another life, and
if so, whether our dealings and actions in the present life are of
any importance for that life. It would, no doubt, suffice if we could
acquire a knowledge with regard to that life corresponding to what we
know about those distant worlds in space which we discern with our bodily
eyes and which we further investigate with our astronomical resources.
The following conditions must be fulfilled in order to make the cases
similar: First of all, such a transcendental world must exist, and emit
rays of light. Further, we must be equipped with some special organ, a
spiritual eye, which we could direct towards it and by which we could
make our investigations here on earth. Do we possess such a spiritual
eye? We answer that our conscience, our religious intuition and the
eternal and invariable laws of thinking are just such organs. That an
ideal world exists, radiating a light of its own, we are able to conclude
from perceptions received through our conscience and our religious
intuition.
Our conscience gives us rigorous directions and commandments, which
sometimes seem to counteract our earthly happiness and show themselves
detrimental to our present success. If our life were confined to this
world, the demands of our conscience were not only useless and injurious
but also in themselves inexplicable. That man, in his religious
intuition, also apprehends a reality of a different kind from the
material one, appears from the fact that all peoples, in all times and
in all stages of evolution, have possessed a religion, as we now do,
a certain conception of supernatural things. It may be granted that
a great amount of delusion enters into all religions. Nevertheless,
religious errors would be inconceivable if man did not apprehend
something supernatural which he wrongly interpreted. Superstition would
not exist at all, because, as we have already pointed out, nobody can
think, speak or form any idea whatever of things that are entirely beyond
all experience. To argue with a person about such never-apprehended
realities, would be like discussing colors with the blind. But now it is
a fact that apprehensions of immaterial substance are so common to man’s
consciousness that if we could find somebody who did not understand what
we said and meant in speaking about these things, we should be safe in
asserting that such a man was not a normal person.
But if all men have an immaterial experience, why do ideas and opinions
differ so about the same experience, and above all why do some people
even deny its existence? The explanation of this surprising contradiction
may be understood when we consider that man also possesses a special
faculty, his reason, which he must likewise employ. With his reason,
man examines and studies all his experiences and strives to bring them
into agreement with the laws of thinking. In other words, he strives to
systematize them into a philosophy. But this is a hard and laborious
task. It is difficult as it is to arrive at right conclusions in regard
to the material world to which our senses are responsive. How much more
must this be the case in regard to the immaterial world. The evolution
of our reason, therefore, is a slowly advancing historical process,
presenting a continuous change in opinions, although, at the same time,
an inner continuity may be traced, an evolution pointing towards a
definite goal.
The harmony which man is striving to establish between his reason and
his other faculties can obtain only during comparatively short intervals
of time. Our reason grows in power and keenness; new observations and
discoveries are almost constantly made; old ideas and opinions do
not, upon closer investigation, satisfy the more developed demands of
our thinking; doubts arise, and this is a necessary condition for all
theoretical progress. Such a doubt, not of the immaterial experience
which we all have, but of the way in which this experience is to be
explained, has been expressed in the theory called materialism, which
is a widely spread doctrine in our time. Natural science in itself is
never materialistic in the sense in which this word is here used, because
natural science does not concern itself with anything immaterial. But if
this be the case, how is it possible that science can have anything in
common with materialism which, strictly speaking, is a doctrine about
spiritual things? We answer that life in this world is joined to and
revealed through the material world. A more complete knowledge of the
nature of matter ought, therefore, to bring about a decision by and by
as to whether the soul is a bodily function or a substance differing
from matter. In other words, natural science must sooner or later arrive
at a stage when it either verifies materialism or gives us tangible and
obvious evidence for the truth of idealism. It was to such a point that
science arrived in the last century when Büchner presented his well
known “Force and Matter,” in which he endeavors to prove that the soul
is an attribute of the body, religion, immortality and so on being only
illusions.
Had natural science then finally found materialism to be the highest
expression of truth? In reality this was so far from being the case,
that natural science, just at that time, had given entirely new impulses
to a higher evolution of religious conceptions. How then could Büchner,
with natural science as a basis, deny all religion, and how can
materialism, in our days, live with undiminished force and vitality? No
other explanation is possible than the one we have already proposed.
When it remained unnoticed that natural science had discovered the
inner, spiritual body, which is the very kernel of the belief in the
body as an eternal part of man’s nature, then materialism was the only
possible alternative for all those who were convinced that the body
contained something imperishable. Materialism, in our days, springs
from the same instinct as the death-cultus in ancient times. It has,
therefore, integrally, something correct and true as a basis, which not
only explains the rapid and wide expansion of this doctrine, but also
the fact that the materialists are continually using data and evidence
which clearly and plainly disprove their own position, although they do
not perceive it themselves. As probably no one has treated this theme in
a manner more characteristic of materialism than Büchner, we will, in
the following study, use his work above mentioned, which may be said to
be typical for the materialist’s mode of thinking and reasoning. It will
here be evident, we hope, that the modern natural science does not limit
but, on the contrary, widens the boundaries of existence, as we receive
from precisely this science the palpable demonstration of the thesis that
all life on this earth has its origin in a higher, immaterial world.