The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul / The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies in Psychology

After more than twenty years of continuous and careful study since the foregoing was written, I must still confirm and emphasize these basic propositions to-day.

The attempt is herein made to apply them more particularly to the study of Psychology. To add to what was then discerned and designated as “the Modulus of Nature,” an exact and comprehensive Theorem of Psychology.

I am well aware how presumptuous this would in certain quarters be considered, if there were the least probability that “those in authority” would read these pages at all. The motive is involved in the modulus, and I am quite content to leave it there, while the “common people,” it is hoped, may find herein, as I have found in the search for more light, encouragement, inspiration, and hope. And these may lead to Understanding.

It is the farthest possible from my thought or wish to ignore or belittle the labors of earnest students and writers on Psychology.

But there is a habit of conservatism in Physical Science to-day, that in spirit and effect differs very little from Dogma and Orthodoxy in Religion. It concerns methods rather than results. It is generally incredulous through fear of being over-credulous. It is bound by tradition, or the records of the past, and its dogmas are deductions from the consensus of opinions, rather than “decrees in councils” or “Infallible Popes.”

Occasionally a Scientist, like Sir Oliver Lodge, seems to be utterly rid of both credulity and incredulity, and for these, Science really means— “the Facts of Nature, demonstrated, classified, and systematized.”

But for the “Common People,” the average intelligent student, for whom Science and the pursuit of Knowledge is not a Profession, but a desire to know, and to understand, in order to be able to use wisely and well, it is of far less importance to know what others think or believe, deny or affirm, on the subject of Psychology, than to realize what are the faculties, capacities, and powers of their own souls.

Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, like “Art for Art’s sake,” is one thing, Knowledge for use in daily life, and for illuminating its pathway and revealing the purpose and destiny of man, is something different indeed.

This hunger of the individual soul for real knowledge is perhaps the most patent “Sign of the Times.”

The average intelligent individual has broken away from the traditions of the past, and yet found nothing to take their place. One result is empty churches, and the race for wealth, display, position, and power. Increased idleness begets dissipation, Paresis and Insanity increase, while wasted opportunity both shortens and embitters life.

A very large number of intelligent men and women realizing all this, and repelled by the almost contemptuous conservatism of so-called Science, swing to the side of credulity, and are robbed and exploited by charlatans. They believe the Truth ought to be forthcoming, and their intuitions and demands, though oft leading to sore disappointment, deserve a better fate.

It is for these, and for these reasons, that these pages are written, and with no other hope of fame or reward.

The demand is everywhere for Knowledge of the soul. Facts there are in abundance, but how far these facts are demonstrated, so as to constitute a basis of exact science, and how to classify and systematize them, the average intelligence does not know.

The Psychical Scientist claims to know, and undoubtedly does know, but he busies himself almost exclusively in gathering and verifying more facts. When asked by the average intelligence, “What does it all mean?”—the answer is, “Ah! there’s the rub. Wait! Some day we may know.”

The simple fact is that the Scientist is bewildered, while the theologian and the dogmatist appeal to Faith without Knowledge, and invoke miracle as in all past times.

Spiritualism has had its day and left an immense body of facts, while Mediumship and the dark circle are more often repudiated by intelligent professed Spiritualists. Satisfied as to conscious existence after death as a fact, they have learned how generally unreliable are many messages from departed friends, owing to conditions beyond their control; while the effect of surrender to so-called “spirit-control” contributes to neither health nor a well-balanced mind or character.

Hypnotism maintains a precarious hold, simply through juggling with the words, “Suggestion” and “Hypnosis.” The professional hypnotist, yielding as he must to the public fear and condemnation of Hypnotism, advocates Just a little of it! under the false title “Suggestion,” for the good it is claimed to do in such cases as the drink and drug habit. As though a little further weakening of the will, would ultimately tend to restore and strengthen it!

One is reminded of the baby in “Pendennis.” The Mother “hoped the Lord would forgive her, because it was such a little one!”

Even the leaders in the “Emmanuel Movement” have deceived themselves by this sophistry, and while they applaud the temporary results, they seem unaware that they are still further weakening self-control and real character, by dominating the Will.

It is thus that ignorance, confusion and unrest, like waves of ocean, ebb and flow in the great human tides.

Through impatience and discouragement alone, many give up the quest for knowledge as hopeless, and while too well-balanced to drift into dissipation, they suffer from ennui and become pessimistic.

Real knowledge will not come all at once, like a vision, or a complete revelation.

The first real Light that comes will be that of Faith, a term generally misunderstood and misused.

Faith is the complete antithesis of blind dogma and superstition. It is born within the soul, and never imposed by outward authority enforced by fear.

“Faith is the soul’s intuitive conviction of that which both reason and conscience approve.”

To give intellectual assent to belief in God is one thing; to be able to declare with light and warmth that uplifts and inspires, “I know that my Redeemer liveth” is another thing entirely.

The impatience above referred to would see the end from the beginning, and know all about the development and destiny of the soul before it has learned the first lesson that guides and determines both.

When, however, Science and Religion clasp hands, and the facts of nature guided by the light of Faith, build character and guide progress, there is revealed a Philosophy of Life that needs little revision. It is like the compass that points continually to the pole, and gives unqualified assurance as to the direction we are going.

So also every step in the past enables us to get our bearings and verify our course by checking backward.

Faith is no longer a blind dogma, but a compass in the box of experience, the wise mariner’s guide in the voyage of life.

If neither Science, Religion nor Philosophy, nor all together can thus come to the service of man, can not do it now, after all the weary centuries since Plato and Aristotle, we may as well write qui bono on our banners and trail them in the dust!

Even the theologies of the day, recognizing the dilemma and the difficulties, still cling to the miraculous, and to make the best of a bad bargain, offer dogma in the place of demonstration, and contradictory and blind belief in place of the light of Faith.

While they count thousands as nominally in their communion, the intelligent among all these have many “mental reservations.”

The intelligent thought of the world flows past and beyond them.

The “Soul’s intuitive conviction” agreeing with “both reason and conscience” holds and guides them, in spite of the verbal “confession of faith.”

The Divinity of Jesus, the Christ, can be fully explained under natural and divine law, without invoking miracle.

The result of such explanation is to dethrone him from the altars of dogma and superstition, and enthrone him on the altar of Love in the heart of Humanity.

This is long delayed, but cannot be defeated.

Starting with the Modulus of Nature—an Ideal or Archetypal Man, and coming down to practical things in daily life—

1. Man is an Individual Intelligence. This is taken as an empirical fact, patent to every intelligent individual.

The source and nature of intelligence itself need not here concern us. We may call it an ultimate that all the philosophies of the world have signally failed to explain. It is something that grows, increases or decreases, expands, becomes confused, according to the conditions of bodily organ and function, heredity, environment, personal effort and the like; but so far as we know, it is the same thing, large or small, wise or foolish. It is still, measure for measure, Individual Intelligence.

2. The term Individual means distinct, concrete, relatively separate. Man being an Individual Intelligence; God is the Universal Intelligence. Just as the organism of man is involved in, and evolved from Universal Nature; so the Intelligence of man is involved in, and evolved from Universal Intelligence.

The empirical fact of the intelligence of man presupposes a “sufficient reason” or source. Still we do not know what God and Nature and Intelligence are. We only know how they manifest. Our intelligence enables us to observe, reflect, reason, and in some measure apprehend the method and manifestation.

I am not seeking to build nor unfold a “Philosophy.” “Yes,” someone replies, “but a philosophy is implied or involved.”

Very well, let it unfold itself.

3. The next empirical fact of prime importance is, The Individual Intelligence, not of man, but which is man, is aware of itself, i.e., “self-conscious.” It is able to distinguish between the self and the non-self.

4. Again, as to consciousness, as with intelligence: We know that man has it and uses it, and what it does to some extent; but we do not know what it is, intrinsically, nor do we need to know any of these ultimates. The effort to explain them has never ended in anything but confusion. We shall herein name them, and then pass them.

5. We have now postulated a self-conscious, Individual Intelligence, as the real man. Next we find this Man can do things, or refrain from doing; act, or refrain from action. This is called Initiative, Volition, Will.

6. This power of action and of choice, inspired by intelligence, aware of the self, adapts actions to ends. This involves reason and judgment.

7. In the course of experience along the lines of action or restraint, and observing results in either case, the individual desiring or preferring certain results to others, acquires more or less self-control. He controls himself to secure desired results.

Here then, in brief outline, are the basis and the elements of our Psychology. They are drawn from common observation and experience, and are verified by the facts of daily life—generally complicated, confused, or lost sight of in treatises on psychology.

Two of these factors, viz.: Consciousness and Will, enter into all psychological phenomena such as Hypnotism and Mediumship, and into every form of mental alienation, insanity, obsession and the like.

Moreover, by building out of mental phenomena a distinct entity—largely independent of the self-conscious Intelligence, and almost equally so with consciousness—our “philosophies,” “metaphysics,” and explanations have become as confused and unreliable as the psychical phenomenon itself.

Hudson’s so-called “Law of Psychic Phenomena,” “Subliminal” and “Supraliminal Consciousness,” and the juggling with the terms “suggestion” and “hypnosis” may serve as sufficient illustrations. In each instance phenomena are made to take the place of principles and the core of the problem is ignored, confused, or lost sight of.

In the meantime these empiricists are hunting in the “rubbish of the temple” (which temple they have metaphysically destroyed), for the Human Soul—i.e. the concrete, intrinsic Individual Intelligence, which is ONE, and which the Master Builder (Universal Intelligence) placed on the Trestle-board of Creation and Time, for the building of character, and the evolution of the Human Soul.

If the Ideal, Archetypal, or Divine Man, is recognized as the Modulus of both Nature and Divinity, our Theorem must consist in adhering to the Modulus and working out the problem.

Q. E. D., if applied to man’s completion of his own individual Temple, might stand for the last words of Jesus, “It is finished,” The problem is solved; “I have finished the Work Thou gavest me to do.” Science, Religion and Philosophy have clasped hands. Divinity revealed in Humanity is triumphant over Death. “There is a Natural (physical) body and there is a Spiritual body,” and the Individual Intelligence is ONE in each, or in both; viz.: The Human-Divine Soul.

To recognize the Modulus and intelligently to apprehend the Theorem is the foundation and the first step in the scientific solution of the problem of life, and the progressive and continuous evolution of the human soul. To use the term “Science” (as applied to the study of psychology) in any other way, is pure empiricism, is wholly unscientific, and has never yet resulted in anything but confusion and in laying a foundation for belief, conjecture, theory, dogma, superstition, and fear.

The step of next importance, both in the scientific study of psychology and in individual progress and evolution, is the mental attitude of the individual; his point of view; his open-mindedness and utter refusal to prejudge anything. He will often say, “I do not know.” He will sometimes say, “I do not care.” That phase or presentation does not appeal to, nor interest him.

This is what the Vedic philosophers called, “making the mind one pointed” and like a search-light, with the ability to concentrate it on a given point or subject.

Bias, prejudice, preconceived opinion, credulity and incredulity, are all like a crooked lens to the eye of the mind, or to the perception of the simple truth.

Not only are these principles basic in the scientific study of psychology and the evolution of the individual intelligence, but their neglect and oversight are solely responsible for the confusion everywhere manifest on the subject, as well as for every form of subjective control, mediumship, psychical epidemics, and obsession, and they enter into every form and phase of insanity.

If this be true, and it is readily demonstrable, what subject is of equal importance; and what facts and considerations are so transcendent as these?

The difference is that between a mad-house with its frenzied and frightened mob of helpless victims, and a palace of the gods in which dwelleth Righteousness, Love, Peace, and Eternal Joy.

Is it not worth while?

This Modulus and Theorem of the School of Natural Science involve Religion, Regeneration, Redemption, and the well-being of Souls here and hereafter.

They separate Religion from Superstition, Duty from Dogma, cast out Fear, release the wings of aspiration and faith; and where “the mourners went about the streets” is heard a new song of rejoicing that binds up the wounds and sorrows of the brokenhearted.

Again I ask, “Is it not worth while?”

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.