EMPIRICAL AND SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE
Let us bear in mind that man _is_ an Individual Intelligence; that this
involves self-consciousness, or awareness of Self, the innate ability to
distinguish between the Self and the non-Self. Hence arises the power of
choice, discernment, or discrimination.
There also arises the impulse to _act_, or the Initiative, called the
Will. This also involves the power of restraint, the act or the refraining
from action.
This action, under the basic endowment--intelligence--is called _Rational
Volition_.
There is thus, Intelligence; the Power to choose; the power to act and the
adaptation of acts or restraints to ends, or to desired objects or
results.
Experience teaches the individual, thus endowed, that he is responsible
for all he thinks, feels, acts and does; and this, under his endowment of
Intelligence, is what we call _Conscience_.
We are not building up a theory, but simply analyzing psychological facts,
demonstrated as true in the experience of every intelligent individual.
Just as the chemist analyzes a compound he finds in his laboratory.
Our _Modulus_ is the Perfect Man. Our _Theorem_ is the method of use that,
by experience and observation everywhere, has been demonstrated as
Constructive, enabling the Individual to build toward, and to realize the
Modulus.
The power to discriminate, choose and act, when normally exercised,
implies judgment and understanding.
Hence, we have perception, rational choice, intelligent action and desired
results, for which we recognize our personal responsibility. Hence arise
our ability and necessity to _review_ our actions, motives, aims and their
results, and to pass judgment upon them in the Light of Conscience
(Con-Science, to know the Self) to pass judgment upon ourselves as to
motives, aims, results, and consequences.
The Brain is a center of consciousness with avenues of perception and
impulse and departments that by aggregation, separation or association,
enable the Individual Intelligence to determine the relation in time, or
duration, force and orderly relation of perceptions, desires, motives,
actions (or thoughts and feelings) as to sequence or results.
This whole conscious realm is the Mind. It is the _inner chamber_ of the
_Soul_. It is in no sense an entity. The actor, the real entity, is the
Individual Intelligence.
To say, therefore, that "Man is all mind," or that the mind does this, or
that, is simply nonsense. It is like saying that the little room in which
I am now writing, with its books and pictures, with my thoughts, feelings,
emotions, and magnetism, is _I_! Perhaps it is _like_ me, or _full_ of me,
but _I_ am something _else_ and something _more_.
Let us get rid of this "confusion of tongues"; this "babel of Psychology";
"New Thought" (as old as man); "Metaphysics"; "Christian Science" _et hoc
genus omne_, and come down to common sense and the facts of nature. The
aim and the results along these lines are often good and helpful; then why
clothe them in the garb of absurdities?
Recognize the facts, and express them intelligently, and they may do ten
times more good, for then we could understand them. They are, one and all,
a weak dilution of the old Hindoo Yoga, thrashed over there for thousands
of years; straining after _results_, while ignorant of, or ignoring _basic
principles_.
Aside from the "Eight Systems of Philosophy" now recognized in India,
there are hundreds of varieties and classes of _Yogis_.
"To acquire powers" is one thing; self-mastery and self-knowledge are
quite another. Thus the one is often distorted and always transient; the
other constructive, regenerative, and enduring.
To illustrate by contrast what Constructive Psychology, or the building of
character, _is not_, we may now take some of the forms of diseased action
known to all time, occurring in individuals and in epidemics, and which
to-day fill our Insane Asylums with "Incurables."
The point of first importance in all these cases, is the _lack_ of
self-control. Weakness, aberration or disease of the Will. The Individual
Intelligence fails to exercise its divine prerogative and be _Master_ in
and of its _own house_.
In the place of this control, sensations, feelings, emotions, desires,
appetites, passions, and ambitions run riot. The _Servants_ of the Master
war among themselves, quarrel with each other, bind the Master hand and
foot, wreck the furniture, and at last destroy the house. The Master has
become the victim and at last the slave of his own servants. His Will is
in abeyance; his perceptions distorted; his feelings and emotions
aggravated; his "Reason Dethroned"; his judgment impaired; he has an
"Unbalanced Mind."
What is here needed but _Christos_ in the Temple, "turning over the tables
of the money-changers and the seats of them that sold doves," and
restoring the High-Priest in the Holy Temple--the Human Soul, viz.: the
intelligent Will of Man, determined to govern his own house, and
responsible for results?
In place of Rational Volition, clear, just and true perceptions, sound
judgment and clear understanding, we have "Illusions," "Hallucinations"
and "Delusions." In other words, the Individual is _Insane_!
It all goes deeper than the _Mind_; the Soul, the Individual Intelligence
is dethroned in his own Kingdom; Body, Mind, and Soul are out of joint.
Not only does this condition exist without being recognized; not only just
here lies the whole secret and field of _Education_ in child, woman and
man, but so ignorant are thousands as to these patent facts and basic
principles, that they covet and strive after this confusion, this
devolution, in the vain search for knowledge, light, and truth.
These are the office, the function and the result to the subject (or
victim) of Mediumship and Hypnotism. They yield the Will, the mastery of
their own house, to another.
The servants may be tractable for a while, but an _alien_ is seated upon
the throne, and the Master is no longer King in his own realm.
Others may indeed learn something from his undoing, from the crimes
committed upon him, just as we learn from criminals how we _ought not_ to
live.
Whether ignorantly, voluntarily, by persuasion, or by force of a stronger
will, the medium and the hypnotic subject are victims either of ignorance
or of design, to their own undoing.
These psychical experiences have been found in all ages and among every
people of whom we have any valid history, from the red Indians of the
North to the Voodoos of Africa, and from the Hill Tribes of India to the
earliest Scandinavian Tribes and the islands of the sea.
As civilizations advanced, the more intelligent and unscrupulous
individuals, ambitious of knowledge or power, regardless of the rights or
well-being of others, and discovering these powers, exercised them for
their own aggrandizement. This has been known through the ages as _Black
Magic_, and is laughed at to-day by so-called "Scientists" as "nothing but
the fears, credulity, and superstitions of the ignorant multitude." This
was the core of Egyptian Paganism, and is the very genius of Clericalism
to-day--the domination of the Individual Will, through superstition and
fear.
Owing to seismic and cataclysmic shocks, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves,
and great epidemics of disease, whole peoples have been dominated by fear
or frenzied by superstitious dread, so that whole villages and cities
became literally "mad-houses," and were often depopulated.
Read the story of "Peter, the Hermit," and "The Crusades," the "Black
Death," the "Great Plague" that swept over Europe in the Thirteenth
century; or that of the "Flagellants," and the "Dancing Mania," where
whole villages became "Dancing Dervishes," samples of which may
occasionally be found to-day in the cities of America, the "Yogis" that
are "Buddhas" or "Christs" in New York, and the Dowies that were "Elijahs"
in Chicago, the Genius of Point Loma, Obispo, Santa Rosa, "Oahspe,"
"Solar-Biology," and again, _et hoc genus omne_! Verily! "there is nothing
new under the sun."
Contrast these individuals with an individual of sound mind, good
judgment, and a well-ordered life, and see how and where and why the wreck
inevitably follows.
The pressure outside changes continually, and these things spread and grow
like all contagions. Nature at times seems wrathful and destructive, and
there are, no doubt, deep-seated conditions and changes in the magnetism
of the earth and air, not yet comprehended by modern science.
In stamping out contagious and epidemic disease, simple cleanliness has
been like a revelation from the gods, and modern surgery has only stopped
short of the miraculous.
Society is but the aggregation of individuals, and on the one principle of
_Self-Control_ every individual is related to the negative or the positive
side of psychical and physical epidemics.
There is scarcely an avenue along these lines that has not been more or
less explored by modern science.
That knowledge is still incomplete; that mistakes have been made; that
matters have been contemptuously set aside, belittled, or declared to be
not worth investigation, was to have been expected. But the progress has
been immense, and the light shines on many obscure and difficult problems,
where before was the utter darkness of superstition and fear, dirt,
degradation, and death.
These phenomena manifest on the physical plane, disturb the social state,
and the relations of individuals to each other. They concern the
environment of man in a world of matter, sense, and time.
But the Individual Intelligence, which is Man, lives also in another
world, related to, but within, around, and beyond the physical.
Man senses or feels it as anterior to birth and extending beyond death. He
calls it the subjective or Spiritual World.
The realm of his consciousness is related to it, as the body is related to
the physical plane and the things of sense and time. His consciousness
seems _aware_ of both planes or both worlds, though ignorant of the real
nature and meaning of both, and capable of interpreting neither
correctly.
Man feels his way through the life on the outer plane guided by his
experience of weight, measure, distance, resistance, and the like.
The other world--the inner, or subjective--seems distant, evasive, and
unreal, and in contemplating it he is filled with uncertainty, dread,
fear, and superstition.
Our friends die and disappear; we miss them, and mourn for them. Where are
they? What will become of us when we die? Shall we ever meet them again?
Passing by religion and revelation, as we are dealing with facts and
phenomena in the natural life of man, rather than with creeds and dogmas
that undertake to cut the "Gordian Knot," these questions stare everyone
in the face, and in every age man has tried to solve them by actual
knowledge.
Belief in ghosts, angels and demons is practically universal; and just
here comes in the whole range of psychical phenomena, facts and fantasies,
illusions, hallucinations and delusions, rational volition, reason
dethroned, and the Will in Subjection, already referred to.
As individual experiences, subjective or objective, all are real. The fear
incited by illusions and hallucination, or by "seeing a ghost," regardless
of the fact of its actual existence, is as real to the individual as that
of meeting a serpent in the grass, or a tiger in the jungle.
Soothsayers, diviners, prophets, mediums, conjurers, and seers
consequently have been found in every age and among every people.
Ignorance, fear, dread of death, desire to know, have always provided them
with patrons, followers, or disciples.
They have often reaped a rich harvest, and not unfrequently dominated a
race or a people, as the Papacy does to-day.
Where they have failed to create belief, they have often triumphed through
fear and anathema, and often supplemented these weapons by persecution,
imprisonment, torture, and death, and so held sway.
Revelation begs the question; dogma forces the conclusion; and both
dominate the soul without convincing and without _knowledge_.