The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul Part 8

So also with that intelligence which is the guiding light in our lives. It may illumine our pathway, or it may flash and fitfully glare, with the shadows, rendering our pathway obscure and uncertain, illusory and deceitful, or dangerous and fearful.

The soul is in the body; and this light of intelligence is in the soul, its center, its very essence.

All else in us, and round about us, is diversity and multiplicity. This light of intelligence in us is _One_ and unchanging.

Our experience in life, however varied and diversified, is co-ordinated and unified by this Intelligence in us. It is that which puts all our experiences together and views them through a single lens. It stands by itself alone, and all else pays tribute to it.

It is the p.r.o.noun "I" and it stands for, speaks and acts for, all else in us.

It is not alone the only _unity_ in us, but it is that which unifies all the rest, uses the "possessive case," and may subordinate all else in us to its Will.

Does it, then, do violence to common sense and hourly experience, or is it any stretch of the imagination to speak of this unity as an ent.i.ty, and call it the human soul?

If we live after the change called death, in a spiritual world, in place of the physical we now inhabit, and with a spiritual or refined body to correspond with that plane of refined or etherialized substance, the Individual Intelligence must function in that body and on that plane as it does now in the physical body on the physical plane.

Either something very like this takes place, or we cease to exist as a self-conscious individual intelligence. There must remain and continue man's self-conscious ident.i.ty.

Furthermore, if this be true, the _real nature_ of this individual intelligence we call the _Self_, in the last a.n.a.lysis, is likely to be as much a mystery as ever. We may know _who we are_ without knowing _what it is_.

Now the composite nature of man, as we know it, not only justifies all these a.n.a.logies, but seems to show that the modulus, the germ at least, of the spiritual body exists now within the physical; that it does not disintegrate when the physical body dies, but separates and coheres more closely than ever; and is still inhabited or possessed by the individual intelligence.

Moreover, it has often been seen by clairvoyants at the time of death, thus verifying the Biblical declaration, "there is a natural (physical) body, and there is a spiritual body."

The composite structures of man's organism above referred to are well known. They are called "systems." The bony or Osseous system, the muscular system, the circulatory system, the lymphatic system, and the two nervous systems, serve as ill.u.s.trations of the composite nature of man.

All of these "systems" more or less inter-penetrate and diffuse each other.

There is also a chemico-vital, kinetic, or magnetic body, diffused through and inter-penetrating all the rest. This gives the contrast between the living organism (with the flush of health upon the cheek and the light of intelligence in the eyes), and a corpse.

Death is often instantaneous, while decomposition often waits for days.

There is a still further a.n.a.logy regarding a single function, like a sensory or motor impulse, pa.s.sing to or from the central brain, the organ of consciousness. The journey is one of relays and orderly sequences.

This is proven in a great variety of forms of paresis. I cannot, as an individual intelligence, _directly_ move my hand any more than I can move a mountain. I conceive the object or act and set the will in motion. The impulse traverses the nerves, is transferred to the muscle, and then, when the circuit is complete, _I_ move my hand.

The gap between my conscious intelligent wish and will, and my physical hand, is very great. One is metaphysical, the other physical. There is, therefore, a point of correlation where the one is converted into the other.

The knowledge of these facts, and of this orderly sequence and correlation, const.i.tutes the Science of pathology and enables us to locate the lesion or disease. I cannot move my hand, and the pathologist locates the "short-circuit" in brain, or nerve, or "terminal plate," or muscle, as the case may be.

Now it is this _system_ of _composite systems_ that deserves special attention. We know that it exists as a series of relays and refining processes. In disease it is interrupted, or out of joint, or broken down.

Health means harmony, concord, rhythm between every part, and the power of the one individual intelligence to use it all, to act or refrain from action, and to hold and maintain through all, repose, equilibrium, and self-mastery.

The physical body we know to be a thing of sense and time. We know its beginning, its gestation, its entrance and exit on this material plane.

Its secrets are all involved in the subtle relations it bears to the soul that inhabits, unifies, and utilizes it.

The Individual Intelligence, Ego, Soul, or Ent.i.ty, is as patent to us in our _awareness of self_ as is the body it inhabits. It is our _very self_.

Our knowledge of it is a _direct personal experience_, so direct, immediate, and constant that we overlook its significance.

I can see no reason to imagine that a human being, pa.s.sing from the earthly plane and consciously living on the spiritual plane and recognizing itself as the same individual, would be any wiser as to the exact nature and origin of the Individual Intelligence than he is now; though his field of vision and range of conscious experience had so immeasurably increased and expanded.

If he had solved this problem of _ultimates_, he would be at the end of his thread of life and would compa.s.s the Infinite. He would be no longer Man, but G.o.d.

So, from all these considerations, and from all directions, we come back to human evolution, the upward and onward journey of the human soul.

As man's health, usefulness, and happiness here depend on the perfection and utility of the physical body he inhabits, and its maintenance in health and harmony, have we the least reason to imagine that the same individual, dwelling on the spiritual plane, will not be under the same of a.n.a.logous laws and relations there, since we have a.s.sumed the persistence and conscious ident.i.ty of the soul there as here?

I hold, therefore, that man possesses, now and here, the structure of a _Spiritual_ Body; and that the "growth of the soul" and our status and relation to the soul, and our status and relation to the life after death on the spiritual plane, depend _very largely_ on the character and integrity of this spiritual body, the "house we have builded."

The whole of life, therefore, here, is what gestation of the infant body is before birth. When the child is born it is a separate personality, a distinct individuality.

There has been woven into its organism a distinct and synchronous correspondence with that of the mother.

During gestation it has pa.s.sed through every plane of organic life, from _amoeba_, or mollusk, to man.

It is thus in touch with every phase and quality of life. It epitomizes them all, transcends them all, and _may co-ordinate_ them all.

On the other hand, the individual intelligence of the child, a distinct and separate _unity_, is in vital, spiritual, and synchronous relation to that of the mother that enfolds it.

It is either building or rejuvenating a new spiritual body, as the "essential form" of the physical, organic, chemical, and kinetic or magnetic body.

What we call "Life," or "Vitality," runs like a "dominant chord" in the harmonic scale of the whole. Each part, organ, and function is related to every other and to the whole by definite vibrations and the laws of harmony.

If, from the beginning, it is an "unwelcome child," the higher and subtler elements of the mother's nature, and all her emotions are turned against it, are discordant and not constructive and harmonic.

Discord is thus ingrained at the foundations and woven into the "subtle body" of the child.

Nature is so persistent in its determination to preserve and perpetuate the human race, that the building of the organic body of the child goes on; and the Individual Intelligence is so potent that it often triumphs over these prenatal obstructions, but by no means always. If "there _is_ a spiritual body" in the mother organism during the present life, as I am _entirely satisfied_ there is; and if the child is laying the foundation and weaving the pattern and fabric of a spiritual body of its own for the present life and that immediately beyond; then these psychological influences and conditions are of _transcendent importance_ and _may_ be largely determined by our intelligent choice.

A higher race of beings will never inhabit this earth till these fundamental laws are recognized and regarded.

We may ill.u.s.trate and symbolize this spiritual habitation we are building by the over-tones and the harmonics in music.

Its nature and function and the whole process of building and development are a refining and purifying process.

It may be conceived in the vito-magnetic field of man, as that which is in nearest relation and closest touch with the soul, the Individual Intelligence, and through, and by which the soul acts.

Being in synchronous relation with the physical organs and functions, like a chord in music, a high with a lower tone (but still harmonic), the _direct_ vehicle and agent of the soul would be this spiritual body; and when the physical body or vehicle dies, or is cast off, the spiritual body _with the soul_ escapes.

Empirical evidence along just these lines is so abundant in the annals of every people, and in all ages, that it is unnecessary to quote it here.

Whole volumes are filled with it, outside the annals of Spiritualism and the Psychical Society, and antedating them by centuries and millenniums.

The most important consideration is that the building of character by voluntary choice and personal effort, the "growth of the soul," and the evolution of this spiritual body are _inseparable_. This trinity which is man, is _potentially_ (and may be _actually_) a _unity_.

The evolutionary and devolutionary lines run in precisely opposite directions, are easily differentiated and defined, are usually recognized by observation and by the individual himself. It is very difficult and takes a long time to deceive ourselves with regard to the upward or downward trend of our own life, till we have blunted by misuse and degraded all the finer faculties, capacities, and powers of our being.

A quickened conscience, a moral uplift, a desire to do right, a n.o.ble ideal, mark the beginning; but self-study, a rigid and persistent self-a.n.a.lysis, taking account of stock of all our resources and capacities, all our real possessions and opportunities, is the scientific process by which man may become master of his own life and evolve to higher and still higher planes of being, even here in the present life.

The question of rewards and punishments hereafter, and what we may expect, or hope, or fear, that we will _get_, will sink into utter nothingness before the great and ever-growing question of what we _are_, and what we are determined to _become_.