Theosophy - Modern Science and the Higher Self - by Annie Besant - Adyar Pamphlets No. 56
Adyar
Pamphlets No. 56
Modern Science and the Higher Self
by Annie Besant
Theosophical Publishing House Adyar, Madras, India
First Edition 1915 -
Second Edition 1932
[Page
1] THE
putting together of the two phrases — Modern Science on the
one side, and the Higher Self on the other, may strike some of
you as strange and even as incongruous; for the ideas of Modern Science and
of the Higher Self are so far removed from each other in the general mind that
to bring them together as though they were closely related must seem to
be unusual and grotesque. And yet I think I shall be able to show you as
we go on, that these two things, the most modern and the most ancient,
the thought of the West working by way of continuous experiment and the
thought of the East working by seeking the Higher Consciousness science
and recording its testimony, that these two are in our own days brought
closely into touch with each other, so that they may aid and strengthen
each other, may be found as servants in a common cause,
and not as opposing and incongruous ideas. I want to show you, in the course
of this evening's lecture, that there is in Modern Science a distinct
recognition of the Higher Self, that there is an agreement between
eastern and [Page
2] western
science, conflicting with each other in their methods, that there is
a mass of evidence compiled by western scientific men, which can be cited
as showing the recognition by science of the Higher Self, of the existence
of a Jîvâtmâ,
a living Spirit, a living intelligence in man, and that the Spirit finds
an ever imperfect instrument for expressing itself in the body of man.
I want to show you how the face of Modern Science today is turned in a
different direction from that in which it was turned some twenty or thirty
years ago; I want to show you that there is a growing idea in the West
that man in the waking consciousness is but a small fragment of the real
man, that man transcends his body, that man is greater than his waking
mind and consciousness, that there is evidence in plenty, daily forthcoming
from most unexpected quarters, to show that human consciousness is far
larger and fuller than the consciousness expressed through the physical
brain. This idea of a larger consciousness, larger than the moral waking
consciousness in man, the consciousness hitherto recognized in modern psychology,
is one that has not only been suggested but is now beginning to be recognized
by Modern Science in the West. Such is then the reason for putting these
two phrases together, Modern
Science and the Higher Self .
Now, I ought to
define what I mean by the Higher Self . I am not
using the phrase in the [Page
3] strictly
technical sense which you find in the Theosophical literature, that is
to say, the Jîvâtmâ in man. I am using it for
the whole expression of that Jîvâtmâ above the physical.
I am using it for everything which transcends the brain consciousness,
which finds the brain too coarse and dense an instrument for its expression.
I am using it, in short, to imply what generally goes under the term largerconsciousness .
If we can show definitely that experimental science has recognized human
consciousness to be stronger, more energetic, more lively than the
consciousness working in the physical brain, if we can prove the existence
of yet higher realms, we shall enter on a path which leads to the highest
invisible worlds. We climb step by step and see the larger consciousness
unfolding itself more and more, stretching over an immense expanse, till
at last we reach that to which men in every clime have always aspired, till
the spiritual aspirations of man are vindicated. Such is the promise of infinite
expansion which lies in the domain of an enquiry into the consciousness of
man. The particular branch of Modern Science which thus comes into
touch with the Ancient Science is that of psychology. Psychology in its
modern form, climbing from below by way of experiment, comes into touch
with the ancient psychology of the East; and this is a science of
immemorial antiquity, whereas modern psychology is an infant science in
the West. Not that the [Page
4] West has had no psychology;
in the Middle Ages and in the centuries that went before them there was a
psychology but that psychology was repudiated in modern days. So that if
you go back some thirty or some five-and-thirty years, you will find it distinctly
stated by the representative European thinker that no psychology could be
regarded as sane which was not based on the science of physiology.
The method of introspection,
of the observation of one's own mental processes, was entirely discarded
in modern thought. The method of studying the mental processes of others
by inference was equally challenged and doubted. It was said, and there was
some truth in the saying, that the moment you began to study your own mental
process, that moment it changed by the very fact of your observation; and
it was argued also that if you tried to study the mental process of others,
you could only do it by inference and not by direct observation. It is necessary,
it was said by modern thinkers, to first study the brain, the nervous system
and mechanism in man, whereby thought is expressed. Thus arose the science
which is called psycho-physiology, a science in which the nervous system
and the brain, regarded physiologically, were studied, were analyzed, were
measured, and it was considered impossible to understand thought without
the knowledge of thought's mechanism, and without a knowledge of the[Page
5] process of the changes in
that mechanism. It was considered that along this road of experiment better
results would be obtained than would be obtained by other methods, and as
science became more and more materialistic, as it reached the point at which
Professor Tyndall made his famous statement that we were to look in matter
for the promise and potency of every form of life, it was natural, if not
inevitable, that men should begin to study thought by the study of its mechanism,
of its apparatus, rather than by the way of the direct observation of its
processes. As the method of experiment justified itself more and more by
most interesting results, it became regarded as the only method which was
worth the consideration of the thoughtful, of those untainted by superstition;
hence the birth of what may be called a new science, the science of psychology,
based on physiological experiments, a science which it was thought would
confirm the statement that thought was the product of the brain, was really
the outcome of the nervous mechanism in man.
So far were men inclined
to go in making rash statements, that it was deliberately laid down that
thought was produced by the brain. You had such a well-known, such a famous
physiologist as the German Carl Vogt, declaring that the brain produced thought
as the liver produced bile. That, perhaps, was the most extreme statement
of the school of thought represented by many of the [Page
6] German thinkers. The very
fact that such a statement could be made showed the line of thinking which
Modern Science was following.
Now
directly in opposition to that stood the immemorial psychology of the East.
That was founded on the idea that man in his essence was not a body but
a living Spirit, was not a mere form but an eternal Intelligence. Eastern
psychology was founded on the notion that this living Intelligence, this
entity, Jîva or Jîvâtmâ, was the primary thing
to be understood, that instead of considering thought to be the product
of a certain arrangement of matter, the certain arrangement of matter was
to be regarded as the result of thought. Instead of considering that life,
consciousness, intelligence were the results of a mechanism, of an apparatus
gradually built up by nature under the working of blind and unconscious
laws, eastern psychology declared that the primary fact was the fact of
consciousness, and that matter was but its garment, its instrument, the
means of its expression, arranged and guided by intelligence, and only
useful and interesting as expressing that intelligence in the various worlds
of the universe. That is put strongly and clearly in the Chhãndogyopanishat,
and I quote this because we shall find in the latest science a strange
and startling endorsement of the ancient thought. It is declared in that
Upanishat that Âtmã exists, and that the bodies and the senses
are all the results of the will of Âtmã. You [Page
7] may
remember how the passage runs, “The eyes are for the perceiving of that
Being who dwelleth within the eyesâ€. It was Âtmã who desired
to hear and to smell and to think; hence arose the organs of the senses
and the mind. Everywhere Âtmã is
the primary fact; the organs, the bodies, come into form in order that
the will of the consciousness may be expressed. Thus great, then, is the
opposition between this western thought of some thirty years ago and the
ancient thought of the East, the one beginning with the body out of which
the consciousness grows, the other beginning with the consciousness by
the activity of which gradually the bodies were formed. Keep this antithesis
in mind as we follow out the lines of our study.
Come then to Modern
Science, starting with the idea that thought must be understood by the clear
understanding of its mechanism which many considered its producer. Great
scientists began to study carefully the nervous system, and they studied
it with a marvelous patience, they studied it with marvelous success; they
measured the rate at which the impressions made on the surface of the body
traveled to the nerve centers and there appeared as mental perceptions. They
measured the rate at which the thought could travel along the nervous fibers.
They measured the delicacy .of perception related to the various parts of
the mechanism. They reduced more and more all [Page
8] thought-processes to processes
of chemistry, of electricity, to be measured by the balances, to be weighed,
to be analyzed. They met with great success; they threw wonderful light on
the mechanism of nervous apparatus. They went, in their researches, in their
efforts to map out the nervous system, even into crime, the crime of vivisection.
Thousands of miserable animals had their skulls taken off, their brains laid
bare, and electrical shocks applied to the various parts of the brain, in
order that by these diabolical methods some of the secrets of consciousness
might be wrenched from nature.
But as they carried
on their experiments, certain results appeared which seemed to challenge
the starting point from which they had come. They were dealing with thought
as the product of the nervous system, and necessarily, therefore, they thought
that as the nervous system increased in perfection, the thought increased
in complexity, in accuracy, in dependability. The constitution of the brain,
the relation of the parts of the brain to one another, the functions that
belonged to different portions of the brain, all these were mapped out, analyzed,
explained. But as they began to study, or rather as they carried on the study,
they found that there were certain results of consciousness that did not
fit into the theory with which they had started. They found that there were
certain results of consciousness which took place when the brain [Page
9] was not in its
normal state, in its full activity, and that these could not be ignored,
that no theory of consciousness could be true that did not explain these
as well.
First the attention
was turned to what were called the results of dream consciousness. The waking
consciousness had been carefully examined. But what of the consciousness
that went on when the man was asleep ? The phenomena of sleep must also be
explained. Interesting experiments began on the dreaming consciousness, on
the functioning of consciousness when the body was asleep. Experiments were
made with the usual care, with the usual ingenuity, with the usual
patience. We have no time to deal in detail with them. Many of
you can find for yourself a large amount of details in the famous book of
Du Prel, The Philosophy of Mysticism. It seems sufficient for
the moment to give you one example which covers a large class of experiments.
They began by taking a sleeping man, touching his body at some point, and
then waking him at the moment, and asking him: “What have you dreamed
? â€
Very often there was no dream, no result, but in a large number of cases
the man reported a dream. I will take one illustration. The back of the
neck was touched. The man was asked: “What have you dreamed
? †He said: “I dreamed that I committed a murder; I was brought to trial
for the murder; I dreamed the whole of the trial. [Page 10]
The speeches of the
barristers, the summing up of the judge; I waited for the verdict of jury;
I was pronounced guilty; I was doomed to death; I was taken away to the condemned
cell; I remained there for so many days; I was led to the place of execution
and, as the knife of the guillotine descended on me, I felt it touch my neck,
and I awoke”. Many such experiments were tried and put on record. What
was the result that came out of them ? The stimulus to the dream came from
the touch, as the touch on the back of the neck had suggested the idea of
death by guillotine. How can we explain all that went on in the dream consciousness
after the touch and before the awakening ? How did the dream consciousness
pass through a long series of events in order to explain the touch, and how
was it that the events which followed the touch seemed to precede and to
explain it? That was the problem. After long discussion and cogitation, the
suggestion was made that consciousness in the dream state was working in
some medium other than the dense matter of the cells of the brain. The speed
by which, the nervous impulse traveled from any part of the body to the brain
had been measured and was known. But here was a long series of phenomena
in consciousness which came between the touch on the body and the knowledge
of that touch in the brain. There must therefore be some finer medium in
which consciousness is working, through which the [Page
11] knowledge has gone more rapidly
than through the nervous matter, so that there is time to build up the story
to account for the touch before the consciousness of the brain knew it had
been made on the body. The mind then, in sleep, was not thinking by the dense
brain, but by some subtler medium which answers more rapidly to the vibrations
of consciousness. Just as two men might start from the same point and one
running quickly might run to the goal fast, turn back, and might meet the
other long before he had covered a quarter of the distance, so consciousness
in the subtler medium could travel faster, make up the story to explain,
return and meet the consciousness in the physical brain, and give the story
as the explanation of the touch that had been felt outside.
Such was a suggestion
made to explain the rapidity of action in the dream consciousness. But much
more than that was wanted to make a satisfactory theory. And science said:
“It is not enough to have dreams examined in this way. Let us try to throw
a man into the dream-state and examine him while he is in it instead of waking
him out of it. Let us try to come into touch with him while the dream is
going onâ€. Then began the long series of experiments spoken of as hypnotic,
where a man was thrown into a trance and thus a prolonged dream state was
attained, a state produced by, and under the control of the operator. In
the hypnotic trance, as you must know, the body is reduced to [Page
12] the lowest point of vitality.
The eye cannot see, the ear cannot hear; lift up the eyelids and flash an
electric light into the eye, there is no contraction of the pupil; the heart
well-nigh ceases to beat, the lungs have no perceptible action; only by the
most delicate apparatus can it be shown that the heart is not entirely still,
that the lungs have not entirely ceased to contract and to expand. Now what
would be the state of the brain under these conditions according to the theory
that thought is produced by the brain ? The brain is reduced to the condition
of coma, lethargy. It cannot work; it is badly supplied with blood; the blood
it obtains is surcharged with carbonic acid and waste products, for it has
not been supplied with sufficient oxygen. From such a brain, according to
the modern theory, no thought ought to be able to proceed. But what were
the startling facts that answered the enquirers, when they questioned the
consciousness under these abnormal conditions ? Where there should have been
lethargy there was increased rapidity, where there should have been stupor
there was very much increased intelligence, where there should have been
apparent death, there was life in overflowing measure, and the whole of the
mental faculties were stronger and more vivid. Take the memory of the man
in the waking state. Question him about his childhood, he will have forgotten
many events, they have vanished into the past. Throw the man into trance,
question him then[Page
13] about his childhood, and
memory gives up the stores that apparently had been lost, and the most trivial
incidents are recalled. Take a man, read to him in his waking moments a page
of a book that he has not before heard, and ask him to repeat it; he will
stumble over a sentence or two, he is unable to recite it. Throw the same
man into a trance, read the page to him then, and he will repeat it word
for word even when the language is to him unknown. Memory, then, in the dream
or trance state is immensely increased in its range and power. Take the perceptive
faculties. As I said, the eye would not answer to the flash of electric light,
but the faculty for perceiving the material world, of which the eye is the
organ, finds expression in the trance state such as in its waking state it
cannot exert. The man in the trance will be able to see through a barrier
that blocks the waking vision, and tell you what is happening on the other
side of a closed door, or what is within the body; tell you not only what
is happening on the other side of an obstacle but what is happening hundreds
of miles away. These are not the dreams of the Orientals, of the Theosophists;
I am confining myself to cases where experiments have been put on record,
where men who do not believe in the superphysical were confronted by facts
they found it impossible to explain. I have myself seen experiments of this
kind in the days before I was a Theosophist. This proved to demonstration
that opaque bodies were [Page
14] not obstacles to the vision
of the man plunged into the hypnotic trance, and this is now admitted by
all students of hypnotism. Memory and perception then are increased in power
when the brain is stupefied. So I might take you through one faculty of the
mind after another and show you that in every case consciousness is stronger,
more vivid, more active, when its physical mechanism is paralyzed.
Out of all these experiments
there arose again the question: What then is the relation between consciousness
and the brain ? It was established that, with paralysis of the brain, consciousness
becomes more active than it was before.
The result of these
experiments on the condition of mental faculties, was a proof that whatever
the dream consciousness of man might be, it was far wider in extent, far
more powerful, than the same consciousness working through the physical brain.
Thus gradually way was made for the recognition of the fact, well-known to
the eastern psychologists, that the waking consciousness is only a part,
an imperfect and fragmentary expression, of the total consciousness of man.
The modern psychologists
meanwhile were proceeding on a new line of investigation, and they began
to study what are called the abnormal phenomena of consciousness, not only
the normal and the common-place but the abnormal and the exceptional, and
at first the study along these lines [Page
15] seemed to carry most of the
thinkers directly against the psychology of the East. Study in one school
of psychology came to what seemed a terrible conclusion. It was the school
of Lombroso in Italy. He declared, and many others followed him, that the
visions of the Prophets, of the saints, of the seers, all their testimony
to the existence of superphysical worlds, were the products of disordered
brains, of diseased or over-strained nervous apparatus. He went further,
and he declared that the manifestation known as genius was closely allied
to insanity, that the brain of the genius and the brain of the madman were
akin, until the phrase “genius is allied to madnessâ€, became the stock axiom
of that school. This appeared to be the final death-blow dealt by materialism
to the hope of humanity nourished by the grandest inspirations that had come
to men through the geniuses, the saints, the prophets, the seers, the religious
teachers of the world. Was all this truly but the result of disordered intelligence
? Was all religion but the grand dream of diseased brains and nerves ? Was
religion really a nervous disease ? Are all people who see and hear, where
other people are blind and deaf, neuropaths ? That became the terrible question
set rolling by this psychological school. At first there was silence, caused
by the very shock of the question. Men were so taken aback that they knew
not how to answer them, knew not how to argue. Gradually, [Page
16] however, there came from
the ranks of thoughtful men a challenge. Granted that this is true that you
have discovered, granted that these brains through which the visions of religion,
the revelations of religion have come, are abnormal, is it after all so important,
so vital a matter ? May it not be that as the higher worlds come into touch
with man, they may well be able to affect only the most delicate brains,
and in that very touch they may throw the delicate mechanism slightly out
of gear ? Is it not possible that the subtle vibrations of the higher worlds
to which the human brain is unaccustomed yet to respond, may in some individual
differing from the standard of ordinary evolution, find an answer, and the
higher world may speak through these abnormal brains to men ? The question
of importance to humanity is not whether the physical brain of the genius
is allied in its mechanism to the physical brain of the madman, but whether
what comes through the brain of a madman and the brain of a genius are equally
important to humanity. If we receive, through the disordered brain of a madman,
a jangle of useless disconnected ideas and dreams, that result is worthless
and we set it aside. But if through the brain of the genius, of the religious
teacher, through the brain of a prophet, through the brain of the saint,
come forth the highest inspirations, the loftiest ideas that have raised
mankind above the brute and the savage, shall we cast [Page
17] them aside as well ? We judge
the results not by the mechanism through which we have received them, but
by their value to humanity and, no matter what the mechanism of the brain
may have been, there remains the thought that has been given to the world.
Everything of which
humanity is most proud, all its sublimed hopes and aspirations, the most
beautiful imaginings of poetry, the transcendental flights of metaphysics,
and the sublimed conceptions of art, are all product of neuropathy, of abnormal
brains. When men tell us that the great religious teachers are neuropathy,
that Buddha, Christ, S. Francis, are neuropaths, then we are inclined to
cast our lot with the abnormal few, rather than with the normal many. We
know what they were. They were men who saw far more and knew far more than
we; what matters it whether we call their brains normal or abnormal ? In
these men's consciousness is a ray of the Divine splendor; as Browning says:
Through such souls alone
God, stooping, shows
sufficient of His Light
For us in the dark
to rise by.
And if in those cases the brain change from a
normal to an abnormal state, then humanity must ever remain thankful to abnormality.
That is the first answer
which may be made to this statement of Lombroso, and you find a man like
Dr. Maudsley, the famous doctor, asking whether [Page
18] there is any law that nature
shall use only for her purposes what we call the perfect brains ? May it
not be that for her higher performances she needs brains which are different
from the ordinary, the normal, brains of man ? For, take the normal brain
that is the product of evolution, the result of the past; that brain is fitted
for the ordinary affairs of life, it is fitted for the calculations of the
market place, for the observation of material things, for the work of the
world, for carrying on the ordinary affairs of life; brought to its present
state by the practice of such thinking, it is the best machinery for such
work. But when you come to deal with higher thought, with abstract speculation,
when you come to deal with religious ideas and with the possibilities of
higher worlds, that brain is the most unfit of instruments; it is not delicately
organized enough for the subtler vibrations of the higher worlds. For just
as you may take a watch delicately wrought and by that watch you may measure
small intervals of time which you could not measure by a clumsier mechanism,
so is it with the different brains of men. The normal brain is the commonplace
brain; the normal brain is the average brain. It has no promise for the future;
it is but the product of the past. But the abnormal brain, that which can
answer the higher vibrations, the brain which, if you will, you may call
by the insulting name of morbid, that is the brain which stands in
the front of evolution, which is the [Page
19] promise of the future, and
shows us what man shall be in the generations yet to come.
As the struggle went
on another answer came. When, in times of unusual strain and unusual excitement,
the brain answers to the higher vibrations, then it is very likely that nervous
disease will accompany the answer. It is not always the brain of the genius
to which strange experiences occur. They occur to people of all types; the
average man and woman have their experiences. When a person has been rapt
in ecstasy of prayer, or is fasting, and the body is weakened or is under
great stress of excitement, the brain will certainly be affected far more
easily than under normal conditions, and it will be able to register finer
vibrations more easily than the so-called healthy brain. Take a very common
illustration. You have a violin or a vînã. You find that you
can get from the string of your instrument a certain note, but you want a
higher note; what do you do ? You tighten the string. Just so with the human
brain. It does not answer to the higher notes of life in its ordinary state;
you must tighten the string by intense concentration or devotion, and then
the brain will answer. But in the tightening there is danger; in the tightening
there is possibility of breakage; and so in the normal brain tightened to
respond to the stress of the subtler vibrations, there is the danger of nervous
disturbance, [Page
20] there is the danger of unbalancing
the mechanism.
How can that be met
? We look to the science of the East, to its old psychology, and it gives
us the answer — it is the only science that knows the answer — and
this answer is strengthened by a modern discovery touching the mechanism
of the brain. What is the process of Yoga ? It is a process by which gradually,
by physical, by mental training, the man develops a higher consciousness,
and enables that higher consciousness to express itself in the physical body.
Now every one of you, who knows anything of Yoga, knows perfectly that in
Yoga there is a physical training, purification of the body, purification
of the brain, which precedes the practice of any of the higher forms. You
know that it has always been told that if a man would practice Yoga he must
become an ascetic in his life. That he must give up liquor and the grosser
articles of diet, that he must purify the body, and then purify the mind.
You know that only as that is being done, can the mental Yoga be effectually
performed, and then as the body is becoming purer day by day, consciousness
develops, its higher powers show themselves through the purified brain without
disease, without over-strain, without any injurious nervous or morbid results.
Eastern psychology recognizes the danger of nervous disturbance, and enables
the necessary sensitiveness [Page
21] to be obtained without the
overstraining of the physical instrument.
But I said that a late
discovery in Modern Science with regard to the brain had justified the process.
What is the discovery ? That the brain cells in which thought is carried
on develop, and increase in size and in complexity by the process of thought;
that as a man thinks, his brain cells grow; they send out processes which
anastomose, join one to another, and thus make a very complicated mechanism
by which higher thought can be expressed, that the whole process of the expression
of thought depends on this growth in the cells of the brain, and that as
you think you are really making your brain, you are creating the mechanism
by which hereafter a higher thought may be expressed. The latest anatomy
of the West has laid down this, that these cells grow under the direct impulses
of thought, and that as you think you prepare the brain for better and higher
thought; as the thought acts on the nervous cells, the nervous cells become
more complicated, intercommunicate more fully, are more apt for the processes
of thought.
The Yoga practice of
concentration, of steadying the mind by fixing the thought, makes the brain
cells grow, and thus creates an instrument adaptable for higher thinking
in the future. As you carry on your meditation you are building fresh mechanism
in the brain; as you carry on concentration, [Page
22] you are creating the apparatus
for higher performances. Thus as the purification of the body, of the brain,
of the mind, goes on in Yoga, you are building up the brain, making it able
to come into touch with a higher world, without losing its balance, without
losing its sanity and its strength. There lies the scientific justification
of Yoga from the latest investigations of the West. What then does the East
tell us as to the result of Yoga ? It tells us that man is a consciousness
expressing his powers through the body which he moulds to his own purpose,
that man's consciousness in the brain is far less than his consciousness
out of the brain; that man uses the brain as an instrument on the physical
plane, but is not limited by it, is not confined by it. That old theory of
the ancient Sages is now being promulgated in the West by such men as Sir
Oliver Lodge, who declares that the investigation of hypnotism, the study
of consciousness, the study of abnormal states of consciousness, prove that
human consciousness is larger than the consciousness in the brain, and that
there is much more of us outside the body than is shown by the working of
the brain. That is the last word on consciousness from the West, and it is
identical with the testimony of the East.
Do you see now why
I put together Modern Science and the Higher Self? The Higher Self is the
consciousness beyond the physical, the larger, wider, greater consciousness
which is our real Self, [Page
23] the Self of which the consciousness
in the brain is only the faintest of reflections. This body of ours is only
a house in which we dwell for our physical work; we hold the key of the body;
we should put it in the lock by Yoga, and try and release the imprisoned
consciousness. We are greater than we appear to be; we are formed in the
divine image; we live not in this world only but also in other worlds; our
consciousness outstretches the physical. In this planet of mud our foot is
planted, but our heads touch the heavens; they are bathed in the light of
the spiritual world far above, in the world unseen, bathed in the light of
God. We may trust the consciousness and the testimony of the Saints, the
Prophets, the Seers, and the Teachers of humanity. They told us what They
knew, that which we may also know for ourselves. They were divine, showing
Their divinity to the worlds. We are none the less divine, although our divinity
is veiled. Let us claim our birthright, to know as They knew. These great
Ones of the past, these Saints and Teachers of humanity, They are the promise
of what we shall be in the future, and the heights They have touched in ages
past, we also will attain in days to come. Every one of us is a divine
fragment, every one of us an eternal Spirit, every one of us a deific
life, striving to attain through matter to consciousness of our own divinity.
That is the teaching of all faiths, that is the fundamental principle of
life, of religion, of [Page
24] nature , and Modern Science
is finding that even physical nature is not intelligible without the understanding
of the higher world, without the recognition of larger possibilities.