THE HIDDEN SIDE OF THINGS/PART 24

 

FIFTH SECTION

 

 CONCLUSION

 

CHAPTER XXIV

 

THE RESULTS OF THE KNOWLEDGE

 

A SUMMARY

 

TO know something of the hidden side of nature makes life far more interesting for us; interesting most of all, naturally, to the clairvoyant who can see it, or to the sensitive who can feel it, but interesting in a less degree even to those who cannot directly see or feel, and equally important to all, because all are influencing and being influenced, even though it be unconsciously to themselves so far as their physical brain is concerned.

 

In each case, as we have considered it, I have tries to indicate the lesson to be learnt from it, but I will summarise the results here. First and foremost we learn the duty of happiness, the necessity of casting away from us depression and sorrow, even under the circumstances which most readily produce it in those who do not know. Yet at the same time we learn that life must be taken seriously, and must be lived not for selfish enjoyment but for the helping of our fellow-men. We see that we must be on our guard against unsuspected influences, such, for example, as the prejudices connected with race, religion, or class, and the weight of public opinion, never allowing these to bias our judgment, but trying always to arrive at the truth and to weigh the facts for ourselves; that we must not yield ourselves unquestioningly even to presumed spiritual inspiration, but in that case also must “try the spirits” and use our common sense.

 

We learn desirability of systematic work or training; the futility of taking offence, of becoming angry, or of allowing our serenity to be disturbed in any way whatever, and the necessity of maintaining a ceaseless watch over our thoughts as well as our words and actions, lest they should draw round us unpleasant influences and act as temptations to our neighbours. And we see that from those influences which we have mentioned above and from all others which are undesirable, we can readily protect ourselves by the formation of shells, though a better protection still is to be so full of the divine Love, that it is always pouring itself out from us in the shape of love to our fellow-men.

 

We learn the danger of becoming slaves to the alcohol, corpse-eating or tobacco habits; we learn to keep ourselves free from participation in the cruelties so-called sport; we realise that we must be careful of the situation and the decoration of our houses or rooms, avoiding harmful influences and taking care always to flood them with sunlight and fresh air; that our clothing should be dictated by considerations of health and common sense, and not merely by fashion; that those who have the good fortune to be specially in contact with children, should treat them with the uttermost love, gentleness and patience; that we should recognise the brotherhood of all forms of the Divine Life in our treatment of animals and plants; that we should never work unnecessary destruction upon anything, whether it be what we call animate or inanimate, since the occultist knows the Divine Life in everything, and respects it; that what we are, what we think and what we do are even more important in relation to their action upon others than upon ourselves; that we must preserve the uttermost truth in thought and speech, and utter no word that is not true, kind, pleasant and helpful; that every man possesses a certain amount of force and is responsible for making the best use of it. We learn that ignorance of the law is not accepted by Nature as an excuse, because it does not alter the effect of what we do; that evil is but the dark shadow of good, and is always temporary, while good is eternal; and that while, in everything human, good and evil are mixed, yet the powers behind always use to the utmost the good in everything and everybody.

 

These points on which I have written are but specimens of a vast host, for to everything there is an unseen side, and to live the life of the occultist is to study this higher, hidden side of Nature, and then intelligently to adapt oneself to it. The occultist looks at the whole of each subject which is brought before him, instead of only at the lowest and least important part of it, and then orders his action according to what he sees, in obedience to the dictates of plain common sense, and to the Law of Love which guides the Universe. Those therefore who would study and practise occultism must develop within themselves these three priceless possessions-- knowledge, common sense and love.

 

Such if the course of action suggested to us by a study of the hidden side of things. But remember that this hidden side will not always remain hidden, for every day more and more of our fellow-men learning to understand, because one by one, scattered here and there, more and more are learning to see it. Since it is obvious that this is the line of evolution and that the few who see now are only precursors of the many who will see hereafter, what in the light of these considerations may be predicted as the probable future of humanity?

 

THE FUTURE

 

Ingenious speculation upon this subject is a prominent feature of our modern fiction. It was attempted by Edward Bellamy in Looking Backward, and more recently by Mr. H. G. Wells in a number of quaintly interesting works. The line most usually taken is to pursue to a logical conclusion some of the many socialistic theories which are at present in the air, and to endeavour to calculate how these will work in practice among men as we know them. In one of the pleasantest of these books, In the Days of the Comet, Mr. Wells boldly introduces an entirely new factor-- a change in the constitution of our atmosphere which suddenly inoculates mankind with common sense and fraternal feeling. When that is achieved, naturally many other obvious changes immediately follow: war becomes a ridiculous impossibility, our present social system is regarded with horror and amazement, our business methods are thrown aside as unworthy of human beings, and so on. For this much of common sense we may surely presently hope in real life, though it will probably come much more slowly than in Mr. Wells' story.

 

It may be of interest to see what light is thrown upon the problem of the future by the higher extensions of human consciousness of which we have spoken elsewhere. We find that from this point of view the future divides itself into three parts-- the immediate, the remote, and the ultimate; and, oddly enough, it is of that which is furthest from us that we are able to speak with the greatest certainty, because the plan of evolution is visible to the higher sight, and its goal is clear. Nothing can interfere with the attainment of that goal, but the stages that lead up to it may be largely modified by the free-will of the individuals concerned, and can, therefore, be foreseen only in their general outline.

 

The end, so far as this cycle is concerned, is the accomplishment of the perfection of man. Each individual is to become something much more than what we now mean by a great and good man, for he is to be perfect in intellect and capacity as well as spirituality. All the intellect of the greatest philosopher or man of science, and far more; all the devotion and spirituality of the greatest of saints, and far more; these are to be the possessions of every unit of humanity before our cycle ends.

 

To understand how such a stupendous result can be possible, we must grasp the plan by which evolution works. Obviously, on the ordinary theory of one poor little life of seventy years, followed by an eternity of purposeless joy or suffering, nothing of this sort could ever be achieved; but when once we realise that what we commonly call our life is only one day in the real life, and that we may have just as many of such days as are necessary for our development, we see that the command of Christ: “Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect,” is no vain hyperbole, but a plain direction which we may reasonably expect to be able in due time to obey.

 

The ultimate future, then, is perfection for every human being, no matter how low or undeveloped he may now be. Man will become more than man. This is what was meant in the early Church by the doctrine of ` deification' to which many of the Fathers refer. It is a matter not of pious opinion but of utter certainty to those who see the working of the scheme.

 

Obviously, however, we are yet very far from this attainment; a long upward path lies before us before we can reach that far-distant summit, and though on the whole it rises steadily, there must necessarily be many minor ups and downs in the future as there have been in the past. History shows us that hitherto the advancement mankind has been cyclic in its character.

 

Each unit lives his long series of progressive lives, not in one race but in many successive races, in order that he may learn the special lessons which each has to teach. One can image a soul incarnating in ancient India to develop religious fervour, in classical Greece to gain artistic capacity, in the Rome of the Caesars to learn the immense power of discipline and order, among ourselves at the present day to acquire the scientific habit of mind, and so on.

 

The same great host of souls sweeps on through all ages, animating all the these races in turn, and learning from all; but the races themselves arise, grow, decay and fall as they are needed. So when a nation loses its former glory and falls behind in the race (as, for example, modern Greece seems to have done in comparison with ancient Greece), it does not mean that a certain group of men is decadent, but that there are at the moment no souls who need precisely the type of training which that race at its best used to give, or that that training is now being given elsewhere.

 

Consequently, the physical bodies of the descendants of those great men of old are now animated by souls of a lower type, while the great men themselves are now (as ever) in the forefront of evolution, but incarnated in some other race in order to grow still greater by developing in new directions. A race dies precisely as a class at a university might die if there were no longer any students taking up that particular subject.

 

Clairvoyance enables us to examine a much larger section of the earth' s past history than can be reached along ordinary lines; and this fuller study of the past makes it possible, to some extent, to forecast by analogy some of the steps in the more immediate future. From such a study of the records it appears fairly certain that we are at the moment passing through a transition period, and that instead of representing, as we often fondly imagine, the highest development yet seen on earth, we are in reality in the trough between two waves of progress. The democratic tendency of which some of us are so proud does not represent, as is generally supposed, the ultimate achievement of human wisdom, but is an experiment which was tried thoroughly and carried out to its logical conclusion thousands of years ago, and then abandoned in universal disgust as irrational, unworkable, and leading to endless confusion. If we are to repeat the course of that experiment, it seems unpleasantly certain that we shall have to pass through a good deal of this confusion and suffering once again, before we arrive at the stage of common sense which Mr. Wells so happily describes in the story previously mentioned.

 

But when that madness is over and reason begins to reassert itself, it is manifest that there will be before us a period of far more rapid progress, in which we shall be able to avail ourselves of many aids which are not now at our disposal. The mere fact that the use of the higher faculties is slowly spreading among humanity, will presently make an almost incalculable difference in many directions.

 

Imagine a condition in which all deception or fraud will be impossible, in which misunderstandings can no longer occur, because each man can read the thought of the other-- in which no one will ever again be set to do work for which he is unfitted, because from the first, parents and tutors will be able to see exactly the capacities of those committed to their care-- in which a doctor cannot make mistakes, because he will see for himself exactly what is the matter with his patient, and can watch in detail the action of his remedies. Think what a difference it will make in our lives when death no longer separates us from those whom we love, because the astral world lies open to us just as does the physical; when it will be impossible for men any longer to doubt the reality of the Divine scheme, because its lower stages are visibly before their eyes. Art and music will be far grander then, for astral colours and harmonies will be at our command as well as those which we now know.

 

The problems of science will be solved, for the vast additions to human knowledge will blend all its branches into one perfect scheme. Geometry and mathematics will be far more satisfactory, because we shall then see what they really mean and what part they play in the splendid system of the worlds.

 

Geometry as we have it now is but a fragment; it is an exoteric preparation for the esoteric reality. Because we have lost the true sense of space, the first step towards that knowledge is the cognition of the fourth dimension. For example, there are five, and only five, possible regular solids-- those which are sometimes called the Platonic Solids; to us, that is an interesting fact and no more, but the student who has been initiated into the Mysteries knows that, with a point at one end of the series and a sphere at the other, they make a set of seven which bears a mystic meaning, explaining the relations one to the other of the different types of matter in the seven planes of our Solar System, and the power of the forces that play through them. Treated only from the physical plane, studied as ends in themselves, instead of as means to an end, geometry and mathematics must always remain incomplete, like beautiful avenues that lead nowhere.

 

Every feature of life will be wider and fuller, because we shall see much more than we do now of the beautiful and wonderful world in which our lot is cast; understanding more, we cannot but admire and love more, so we shall be infinitely happier, as we draw steadily nearer to that ultimate perfection which is absolute happiness, because it is union with the Eternal Love.

 

 

 CHAPTER XXV