Chapter III: Part 3

The only explanation of certain phases of the phenomena of life is in the theory that life is twofold; that what we call life--in the sense of experiences and events and circumstances--is simply the result, the precipitation into the physical world, of the events and experiences that have already occurred to us on the spiritual side of life, and that they occur here _because_ they have occurred there. Maeterlinck says further (in this paper entitled "The Foretelling of the Future"): "But I do not intend, in the wake of so many others, to lose myself in the most insoluble of enigmas. Let us say no more about it, except this alone,--that Time is a mystery which we have arbitrarily divided into a past and a future, in order to try to understand something of it. In itself, it is almost certain that it is but an immense, eternal, motionless Present, in which all that takes place and all that will take place takes place immutably, in which To-morrow, save in the ephemeral mind of man, is indistinguishable from Yesterday or To-day." The question is raised by Mr. Maeterlinck as to whether the clairvoyant who foretells to one future events gets his knowledge from the subliminal consciousness of the person himself. He relates a series of experiences that he had in Paris with all sorts and degrees of the professed seers, and he says:--

"It is very astonishing that others can thus penetrate into the
last refuge of our being, and there, better than ourselves, read
thoughts and sentiments at times forgotten or rejected, but always
long-lived, or as yet unformulated. It is really disconcerting that
a stranger should see further than ourselves into our own hearts.
That sheds a singular light on the nature of our inner lives. It is
vain for us to keep watch upon ourselves, to shut ourselves up
within ourselves; our consciousness is not water-tight, it escapes,
it does not belong to us, and though it requires special
circumstances for another to install himself there and take
possession of it, nevertheless it is certain that, in normal life,
our spiritual tribunal, our _for interieur_,--as the French have
called it, with that profound intuition which we often discover in
the etymology of words,--is a kind of _forum_, or spiritual market
place, in which the majority of those who have business there come
and go at will, look about them and pick out the truths, in a very
different fashion and much more freely than we would have to this
day believed."

Mr. Maeterlinck reiterates that it is incredible that we should not know the future. The truth is that it is even more than incredible; it is unpardonably stupid, and the great desideratum is to so develop and unfold the spiritual faculties that they will discern the experiences on the spiritual side,--those which will, later on, precipitate themselves into the mortal life, and that will be "knowing the future." That is to say, if we can read our spiritual past, we then know our earthly future; for that which _has_ been, in the inner experience, _shall be_, in the outer experience. Mr. Maeterlinck says:--

"I cannot think that we are not qualified to know beforehand the
disturbances of the elements, the destiny of the planets, of the
earth, of empires, peoples, and races. All this does not touch us
directly, and we know it in the past, thanks only to the artifices
of history. But that which regards us, that which is within our
reach, that which is to unfold itself within the little sphere of
years, a secretion of our spiritual organism, that envelops us in
Time, even as the shell or the cocoon envelops the mollusc or the
insect in space; that, together with all the external events
relating to it, is probably recorded in that sphere. In any case,
it would be much more natural that it were so recorded than
comprehensible that it be not. There we have realities struggling
with an illusion; and there is nothing to prevent us from believing
that, here as elsewhere, realities will end by overcoming illusion.
Realities are what will happen to us, having already happened in
the history that overhangs our own, the motionless and superhuman
history of the universe. Illusion is the opaque veil woven with the
ephemeral threads called Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow, which we
embroider on those realities. But it is not indispensable that our
existence should continue the eternal dupe of that illusion. We may
even ask ourselves whether our extraordinary unfitness for knowing
a thing so simple, so incontestable, so perfect and so necessary as
the future, would not form one of the greatest subjects for
astonishment to an inhabitant of another star who should visit
us....

"Moreover, we must not believe that the march of events would be
completely upset if we knew it beforehand. First, only they would
know the future, or a part of the future, who would take the
trouble to learn it; even as only they know the past, or a part of
their own present, who have the courage and the intelligence to
examine it. We should quickly accommodate ourselves to the lessons
of this new science, even as we have accommodated ourselves to
those of history. We should soon make allowance for the evils we
could not escape and for inevitable evils. The wiser among us, for
themselves, would lessen the sum total of the latter; and the
others would meet them half-way, even as now they go to meet many
certain disasters which are easily foretold. The amount of our
vexations would be somewhat decreased, but less than we hope; for
already our reason is able to foresee a portion of our future, if
not with the material evidence that we dream of, at least with a
moral certainty that is often satisfying; yet we observe that the
majority of men derive hardly any profit from this easy
fore-knowledge. Such men would neglect the counsels of the future,
even as they hear, without following it, the advice of the past."

Not to know the future is extremely inconvenient, to say the least, and it may present itself as the next most needed advance in progress. The question is in the air; the demand for its solution may increase, and demands penetrate the unknown and reconstruct it for the higher use of man. Meanwhile, as Mr. Maeterlinck continues:--

"Our life must be lived while we wait for the word that shall solve
the enigma, and the happier, the nobler our life, the more vigorous
shall it become, and we shall have the more courage,
clear-sightedness, boldness to seek and desire the truth.... We
should live as though we were always on the eve of the great
revelation, and we should be ready with welcome, with, warmest and
keenest and fullest, most heartfelt and intimate welcome. And
whatever the form it shall take on the day that it comes to us, the
best way of all to prepare for its fitting reception is to crave
for it now, to desire it as lofty, as perfect, as vast, as
ennobling as the soul can conceive. It must needs be more
beautiful, glorious, and ample than the best of our hopes. For when
it differs therefrom or even frustrates them, it must of necessity
bring something nobler, loftier, nearer to the nature of man, for
it will bring us truth. To man, though all that he value go under,
the intimate truth of the universe must be wholly, pre-eminently
admirable. And though on the day it unveils, our meekest desires
turn to ashes and float on the wind, still there shall linger
within us all we have prepared; and the admirable will enter into
our soul, the volume of its waters being as the depth of the
channel that our expectation has fashioned."

* * * * *

[Sidenote: In Proportion to Power.]

May it not be that the degree to which one is enabled to dominate his own life in the sense of controlling and selecting and grouping its outer events is precisely in proportion to the spiritual power that he has achieved? Nor has this spiritual power any conceivable relation to what is currently known as occultism, or a thing to be attained by any series of prescribed outer actions. There has sprung up a species of literature with explicit directions for "concentration" and "meditation" and one knows not what,--directions to spend certain hours of the day gazing upon a ten-penny nail or something quite as inconsequential, and a more totally demoralizing and negative series of performances can hardly be imagined. But all this is not even worth denunciation. The only real spiritual power is that of the union of the soul with the divine.

"Lift up your hearts."
"We lift them up unto the Lord."

In these lines lies the secret of all that makes for that mental and moral energy whose union is spiritual power. The question of what happens to one daily and constantly, as weeks and months go on, is the one most practical question of life. In it is involved all one's personal happiness as well as all his power for usefulness. To feel that this ever-flowing current of events is something entirely outside one's own choice or volition is to stand helpless--if not hopeless--before the spectacle of life. It is out of this aimless and chaotic state that resort is had to the seeking of all kinds of divination, omens, prophecies, and foreshadowings, with the result of more and more completely separating the individual from his legitimate activities and endeavor, and leading him to substitute for spiritual realities a mere false and mirage-like outlook,--and instead of that rational activity and high endeavor that create events and increasingly control their conditions, there is merely an impatient and restless expectation of something or other that may suddenly occur to transform the entire outlook.

The unforeseen events do occur, and they are the crowning gift and grace and sweetness of life. But they are the product, the result, the fine inflorescence of intense spiritual activity, not of stagnation and idleness. "It might almost be said that there happens to one only that which he desires," says Maeterlinck: "it is time that on certain external events an influence is of the feeblest, but we have all-powerful action on that which these events shall become in ourselves--in other words on their spiritual part, on what is radiant, undying within them.... There are those with whom this immortal part absorbs all; these are like islands that have sprung up in the ocean; for they have found immovable anchorage whence they issue commands that their destiny must needs obey.... Whatever may happen is lit up by their inward life. When you love, it is not your love that forms part of your destiny, but the knowledge of self that you will have found, deep down in your love--this it is that will help you to fashion your life. If you have been deceived, it is not the deception that matters, but the forgiveness whereto it leads, and the loftiness, wisdom, completeness of this forgiveness--by these shall your life be steered to destiny's haven of brightness and peace; by these shall your eyes see more clearly.... Let us always remember that nothing befalls us that is not of the nature of ourselves. There comes no adventure but means to our soul the shape of our every-day thoughts.... And none but yourself shall you meet on the highway of fate.... Events seem as the watch for the signal we hoist from within."

The inner life that is lived--the life of thought, purpose, aspiration, and prayer--dominates and determines the outer life. It creates it. And when one feels helplessly drifting, at the mercy of events, his only safety lies in a more positive and abounding energy; in deeper purpose and a firmer grasp on his work, a higher and diviner trend to his thought, and a closer clinging to the divine promises.

"In man," says Balzac, "culminates a visible finite universe; in him begins a universe invisible and infinite,--two worlds unknown to each other." But one's life always belongs far more to his future than to his past. He is more closely and truly related to that which he shall be than to that which he has been; as the flower, the plant, the tree, is in more intimate and vital relation with the air and sunshine than with the dark ground in which the seed germinated. It retains its hold on the kingdom of the earth, but it has achieved a new and a higher relation with the kingdom of the air. Man's relations with the invisible and the infinite universe are his truest and most determining relations. And these are governed and are constantly extended by his power of will. The power of will is so akin to the divine energy that it is the power through which, and by means of which, the closest relation with the divine energy can be effected. Man, by the power of will, unites his life with the life of God; he so relates himself to the divine energy that he becomes receptive to it, and when this irresistible force pours itself into his life all nobler realizations become possible; all sublimest aspiration may express itself in the daily quality of life, and fulfil its visions in actual tasks and deeds.

Nothing is ever hopeless. There is no situation nor complication that has not its key simply in lifting up the heart to God; in willing, through prayer, to work, as well as to walk, with Him; and in praying, through power of will brought to bear in all its resistless intensity of aspiration, that the power of God may work through all the conditions of the human life.

The subjective or subliminal self is capable of extending the mental faculties in a way almost undreamed of by the ordinary consciousness. "There is in the mind a faculty," says a writer on this subject, "which, if it receives the correct impression, is able to correct the mental and physical life of a person and produce a manifest impression on his environment, the secret of which is conscious and concentrated attention under direction of the will of the individual.

"The subjective mind is a distinct entity. It occupies the whole human body, and, when not opposed in any way, it has absolute control over all the functions, conditions, and sensations of the body. While the objective mind has control of all our voluntary functions and motions, the subjective mind controls all the silent, involuntary, and vegetative functions. This subjective mind can see without the use of physical eyes. It perceives by intuition. It has the power to communicate with others without the use of ordinary physical means. It can read the thoughts of others. It receives intelligence and transmits it to people at a distance. Distance offers no resistance against the successful missions of the subjective mind. It never forgets anything, It never sleeps. It is capable of sustaining an existence independent of the body. It never dies. It is the living soul."

That "distinct entity" which has been called the "subjective mind" is probably more accurately defined as the real person, the man himself, the immortal being who inhabits for a time the physical body. The development of this immortal self by an intellectual and moral and religious progress is the real business of life,--the _raison d'etre_ of man's sojourn on earth. There is no more important truth to be grasped at the present time than that this culture and development of the spiritual self, or this spiritualization of life, is in no sense a matter of incantations and mysterious rites, but is only to be achieved through faith in God, through prayer and the constant uplifting of the spirit to the Divine. The inspiration of life lies in the unceasing effort to unite all the conscious inner life with the Divine will and guidance. The problem that presents itself to the instructors of the deaf, dumb, and blind is in this development and liberation of the spiritual self, that the psychic powers may, to some extent, take the place of the outer senses that are closed. The physical mechanism of communication with the visible world is defective, and that perception, which is spiritual sight, must overcome blindness; that swift recognition which is spiritual hearing must overcome deafness; and the wonderful delicacy and intense keenness that these perceptions develop in those with defective senses is itself an incontrovertible proof of the reality of the inner spiritual being that for a time inhabits the physical body. The observation of the deaf and blind leads one to see that sight and hearing in all people vary in degree, and that a vast number of people are partially defective in these senses, and that all mankind are defective beyond a given point. There are vibrations too fine to be detected by the human ear; and the sight of the eye is, as is well known, entirely limited to a certain degree of distance even in those whose eyesight is the keenest. Clairvoyance and clairaudience are considered as abnormal and phenomenal gifts, and as in no way conceivable, nor even desirable, as general and usual powers for every one. Yet what are they but the sight and hearing of the spiritual man, the development of the powers of the subtle body transcending those of the physical body? This ethereal or psychic body is in correspondence with the ethereal world. It is formed to be an inhabitant of that world in which it finds itself the moment it is released by death. But if sufficiently developed to take command, so to speak, while here, of the will and the consciousness and all the mechanism of the physical body, it then brings to bear upon practical, daily life all this infinite and irresistible energy of the higher planes with which it is in receptive relation. Then, whether in the body or out of the body matters little in the responsive communion with those who have passed through death. "Could the spiritual vision of the present man be unfolded but for a moment, to realize the mighty forces of nature that will one day be at his command, he would become dizzy at the contemplation of such wondrous possibilities," says a recent writer. "The electro-magnetic energy that holds worlds in their orbits, and neutralizes the power of gravitation, is but one of those powers that awaits the growing genius of man to utilize. The magnetic force is the attractive or centripetal power; the electric force is the repellent or centrifugal power. A machine will be invented, in the near future, that will combine these into a single electro-magnetic force, and with this force the power of gravitation will be neutralized. Then the world's traffic will be as readily carried in the air as now it is upon the ground. The forces of the Universe await only the dissipation of ignorance, selfishness, and greed to bless and harmonize the world."

The outlook for the twentieth century in its grandeur; in the unfolding and expanding powers of man, and the new and deeper insights into the hidden forces of nature, can hardly be exaggerated. We stand on the threshold of a new heaven and a new earth. The drama of life is to be uplifted to a higher plane, to the realm of beauty and blessedness and radiance and joy.

THE ETHEREAL REALM.

It is henceforth open to science to transcend all we now think we
know of matter and to gain new glimpses of a profounder scheme of
cosmic law.

--SIR WILLIAM CROOKES.

* * * * *

_We exist also in a world of ether;--that is to say, we are
constructed to respond to a system of laws,--ultimately continuous,
no doubt, with the laws of matter, but affording a new, a
generalized, a profounder conception of the Cosmos. So widely
different, indeed, is this new aspect of things from the old, that
it is common to speak of the ether as a newly-known environment. On
this environment our organic existence depends as absolutely as on
the material environment, although less obviously. In ways which we
cannot fathom, the ether is at the foundation of our physical
being. Perceiving heat, light, electricity, we do but recognise in
certain conspicuous ways,--as in perceiving the "X rays" we
recognise in a way less conspicuous,--the pervading influence of
ethereal vibrations which in range and variety far transcend our
capacity of response._

_Within, beyond, the world of ether,--as a still profounder, still
more generalized aspect of the Cosmos,--must lie, as I believe, the
world of spiritual life. That the world of spiritual life does not
depend upon the existence of the material world I hold as now
proved by actual evidence. That it is in some way continuous with
the world of ether I can well suppose. But for our minds there must
needs be a "critical point" in any such imagined continuity; so
that the world where life and thought are carried on apart from
matter, must certainly rank again as a new, a =metetherial=
environment. In giving it this name I expressly imply only that
from our human point of view it lies after or beyond the ether, as
metaphysic lies after or beyond physics. I say only that what does
not originate in matter or ether originates =there=; but I well
believe that beyond the ether there must be not one stage only, but
countless stages in the infinity of things._

--HUMAN PERSONALITY.

* * * * *

The glorious consummation toward which organic evolution is tending
is the production of the highest and most perfect psychical
life.--JOHN FISKE.

The recognition of the untold force of thought is productive of marvellous results and opens as unlimited possibilities as the discovery and the increasing application of the power of electricity. The force of thought--the most intense potency in the universe--has always existed, as has that of electricity. It only awaited recognition. Telepathy is just as entirely the manifestation of a law as is gravitation; and gravitation existed long before it was recognized. The entire question of the conduct of life is included in the true development and right use of thought. The entire problem of achievement, of success, lies in it. The supreme end of all religious teaching is the culture of right thought. It is the power that determines all social relations, all opportunities for usefulness, and all personal achievement. The right thought opens the right door. There is absolutely no limit to its power, and each individual may increase and strengthen his grasp of it and develop it to an indefinite and unforeseen degree. One actual method of the use of thought is to use it, creatively, for the immediate future. The time that is just before one is plastic to any impress. It has not yet taken form in events or circumstances, and it can, therefore, be controlled and determined. One may sit quietly and alone for a little time at night, calling up all his thought force, and by means of it create the next day. The events of the day will follow the impression made by the thought. One can thus will himself, so to speak, with the successful currents. He can create his atmosphere and environment, and can open wide the portals of his life to beauty and happiness.

The law of telepathy is as supreme in the spiritual universe as are the laws of gravitation and attraction in the physical universe. The law that holds the constellations in their courses is not more in absolute evidence than that which governs the flashes of perception between two persons in a finer and more subtle communication than words, spoken or written, could possibly convey. But while there is no law more universally and impressively in evidence, there is also no law so totally unformulated, so entirely, it would seem, outside the domain of conscious recognition and will. One endeavors to send a telepathic message to his friend--and no impress is made. Again, when he has made no effort at all, nor even thought of trying, the telepathic message is received. The magnetic sensitiveness of the spirit to thought currents is astounding. It has long seemed to many persons that the very air conveyed messages--and so it does. One may "call up" another, in either this world or in the ethereal world, at any time, simply by directing to him a strong current of thought. The thousand little things generally ranked as coincidence are really illustrations of this law. One thinks intently of a friend whom, perhaps, he has not met, or heard from, for years, and, presto, a letter, or the person himself appears. One can settle misunderstandings, convey counsel, entreaty, instruction, or comprehension,--all by the quality of the thought he sends forth. All this is a part of the phenomena of spiritual life. We must not make the mistake of imagining we become spiritual beings only by death. We are spiritual beings now and here, and our real life is, even in the present, in the spiritual world, and carried on by means of spiritual forces. Everything which is intellectual and moral is of the spirit. Such men as Edison and Tesla and Marconi are dealing with the higher spiritual forces. When Cyrus Field laid the Atlantic cable, it was a work of the spiritual rather than of the physical world. So are the vast works of commerce, of transportation, of building, the discovery of new countries, and the promulgation of the higher civilization in every form. We must not regard spiritual life as limited to mere religious or devotional rites and ceremonies. These have their place, and an important one; but they are included among a thousand other things that make up the life of the spirit. Man is primarily and permanently a spiritual being, and only incidentally and temporarily a physical being.

Still the further problem confronts us: How shall we consciously and intelligently control telepathic communication as we now control our communication by speech, letters, or telegrams? A curious instance of unconscious and unaccountable telepathy is the following: There were two individuals who had never met, but who held some mutually antagonistic conceptions of each other,--conceptions that were, too, perhaps more or less mutually erroneous, and this condition had lasted over a prolonged period of time. Then one of these persons had the experience of waking in the night, simply engulfed in an overwhelming wave of tender and compassionate feeling toward the other: seeing, as if with spiritual vision, a nature unstrung, hardly responsible, and one that invited only the most infinite tenderness and care. This wave of new and perfectly clear perception was like a magnetic trance. It was an hour of absolute spiritual clairvoyance, and the evidence was furnished by a letter received, the next morning, from a mutual friend, which entirely substantiated and corroborated the telepathic impression that had been experienced in the night. Now the scientific question is: From whence did this impression proceed? Was it direct telepathy between the two persons concerned? Was it a clairvoyant reading of the letter that was en route during the night? Who can decide? The special point here is that these most vivid and intense experiences are largely, if not entirely, encountered unconsciously. They suddenly--come. One asks for them--and they do not come? Now how are we to pluck out the heart of the mystery?

The moment one realizes himself as a spiritual being, belonging by right to the spiritual world; one whose true interests are in and of that realm, and to whom communion with the Divine is the very breath of existence, the one elixir of life, that moment he asserts himself aright. From that hour his life becomes a significant factor in true progress. Prayer may be a formal and ceremonial act, and mean nothing: it may be the absolute surrender of one's soul to the Divine, when it enters behind the veil into the very glory of God. This spiritual truth is closely linked with certain scientific facts. The scientists have theories of inner ether by means of which psychic power is conveyed and which translate it into action, as the wire translates the electric current to express a message. A scientist asserts a new theory that there are no varying states of ether, but that all space is filled with matter in various states of vibration; and that what we had heretofore called air and ether is simply all one substance in degrees of lower and higher range. It is conceivable that this latest idea may approximate to the truth more than any previous theory. No one has yet discovered those forces of nature by means of which sense relates itself to spirit. There is certainly some great law, still unrecognized and unformulated, which acts, and which is acted upon by human beings, irrespective of any physical means; but why these laws sometimes do and sometimes do not produce given results, no one can tell. There are other existing laws in the physical world that transcend scientific scrutiny. The marvellous results of chemical combinations, the miracle nature of electricity and all its phenomena, fade into absolute nothingness beside the higher marvels of the action of spirit. The crude and merely approximate truth must be that in each human being is a part of the divine being; that this divine element may be nurtured and strengthened by living in its native atmosphere of spiritual life,--in the atmosphere of peace, joy, and love; and that this potency of God and of man, so far as he relates himself to God, can act upon that substance that fills all space; that this substance, whether it be ether, or whether it be matter differentiated in degree of vibration, is intensely susceptible, in the most infinitely delicate way, to thought, which acts upon it as physical force can act on physical matter. To realize intelligently one's relatedness to God, and one's own power over this subtle matter, whatever it be that fills all space, is to arise in newness of life. It is to realize one's self as a spiritual being, here and now, and an inhabitant of the spiritual world. It is to realize that one's relation to the physical world is a merely incidental thing,--a fact that has its purpose, its responsibilities, as a phase of development, and which it is most important to use aright; but which is inevitably transient.

Day-dreams, the habitual meditations that go on of themselves in the mind, are prophecies and potencies. They are the creative factors of future states. "Out of the heart are the issues of life."

It is a question of degree,--so much love, so much force to act upon outer affairs. He who finds his currents of thought verging to the unkind, the ungenerous, the inimical; whose mind, in its unconscious action, is in a discordant state, fretting at circumstances, or persons,--is doing himself the gravest injury. He is creating, on the unseen side, which is the most potent and determining side, conditions which he must live out sooner or later.

It would seem, if one may judge from the data of telepathic experiences, that the power belongs to the sub-conscious self, or, as we may prefer to call it, to the spiritual self, and does not relate itself to the conscious intellectual life and the conscious will. If this deduction is true--what then? Can we not relate our consciously intelligent life to our unconscious spiritual life? Not only, indeed, that we may, but that we must,--for it is the next step in spiritual advancement.

The time has come in the era of progress when humanity begins to realize its spiritual development. All the signs of the times point it out. The discoveries of higher laws constantly being made, are an impressive attestation that register the movement. With the new century came in Tesla's discovery of the vacuum tube and its wonderful light; and hardly a week later came the announcement of the discovery of a perpetual light found by a certain chemical combination placed in a glass globe, which, when the air was exhausted and the globe sealed, would burn as long as the globe lasts. The discoverer claims that there is but one force in all nature,--that of vibration; that all space is pervaded by matter, which is energy. Certainly the world is on the eve of new revelations, and life is to be lifted up, even here and now, to the Divine plane.

Perhaps the most practical counsel in the way of determining one's own future control of these telepathic conditions is conveyed in the words: "Begin now the eternal life of trustful consecration and sanctified service, consciously drawing your innermost life from God."

This absolute personal control of each man over his own future lies in a twofold power: the one being that integrity, moral purpose, aspirations, have a creative power of the most potent character; and the other being in that one attracts to himself the spiritual companionship and sympathetic co-operation of just such quality as his own. There is an objection, often made to the faith in the companionship and communion with those in the Unseen,--that only those of a lower order in the life beyond death are attracted into the sphere of this world. Nothing could be more remote from the truth. One might as well refuse all social intercourse with those in this world, on the plea that if he have companionship at all it would be of a lower order, and therefore he will have none. Now the order of one's companions and associates depends on himself. If he is noble and exalted, he does not attract nor is he attracted to the base and the unworthy: and only more deeply and unfailingly does this law hold true in the realm of spirit. One attracts to himself from the unseen world companionship of the same order and quality as that of his own spirit, with the exception that in proportion to the purity of his aspiration does this quality of companionship come to him of a still higher order than his own. Thus one creates his own world. He need not abjectly feel that he must accept sorrow, trial, defeat, and disaster at the moment, because compensation somewhere awaits him. The law of transmutation supersedes the law of compensation. One may bring to bear, at the moment, the potent force that transforms all: that changes dullness into radiance, trial into joy, depression into exaltation. And how? Simply by bringing to bear on the events and conditions of the hour the intense and creative potency of spiritual power. By means of this we shall certainly gain those "new glimpses of a profounder scheme of cosmic law" to which Sir William Crookes refers and which his vision discerns as open to science.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: A Scientific Fact.]

It is a scientific fact that any vibration set up in the ether persists to an unlimited degree, communicating itself to that which is in correspondence with its rate of vibration. This, of course, is the explanation of the phenomena involved in wireless telegraphy, and is equally the explanation of the phenomena involved in telepathy. At a meeting of the Society of Arts in May of 1901, Professor Ayrton, commenting on Marconi's system, said that we "are gradually coming within thinkable distance of the realization of a prophecy he had ventured to make four years before, at a time when, if a person wanted to call to a friend he knew not where, he would call in a very loud electro-magnetic voice, heard by him who had the electro-magnetic ear, silent to him who had it not. 'Where are you?' he would say. A faint reply would come, 'I am at the bottom of a coal mine, or crossing the Andes, or in the middle of the Atlantic.' Or, perhaps, in spite of all the calling, no reply would come, and the person would then know that his friend was dead. Think of what this would mean, of the calling which goes on every day from room to room of a house, and then think of that calling extending from pole to pole,--not a noisy babble, but a call audible to him who wants to hear, and absolutely silent to all others. It would be almost like dreamland and ghostland,--not the ghostland cultivated by a heated imagination, but a real communication from a distance, based on true physical laws."

Yet even this speculation fails to keep pace with the advance of truth, for there is no death, in the sense in which Professor Ayrton refers to it here, as a state of unconsciousness which no message can reach, and from which no reply can come. On the contrary, that transformation we call death is a condition of far more intense consciousness, of being far more alive and far more responsive to the call and the thought. We are learning to realize the literal truth of the phrase in the Bible, "dead in trespasses and sins." So far as one is in sins and faults and defects he is dead. Spiritual vitality is in goodness alone. So far as one endeavors to follow after righteousness, to achieve and live in truth, honor, and love, he is alive; so far as he fails in this he is dead, and this, quite irrespective of the fact as to whether he is in or out of his physical body. This present world has its dead people walking around, it is true: eating, drinking, dressing, travelling, taking part in the average activities of daily life, but dead, all the same, or, at most, only partially alive,--the "dead souls," as Gogol well terms them. The vital truth of immortality is to be immortal now, to-day; to be spiritually alive, spiritually conscious, and with this achieved, whether in or out of the body is immaterial. That becomes a mere detail of no special significance. Given the condition of spiritual vitality, and the electro-magnetic call would receive its reply from the friend who had "shed" his body.

Sir William Preece, in a recent address before the Royal Society, remarked:--

"If any of the planets be populated (say Mars) with beings like
ourselves, having the gift of language and the knowledge to adapt
the great forces of nature to their wants, then if they could
oscillate immense stores of electrical energy to and fro in
electrical order, it would be possible for us to hold
communication, by telephone, with the people of Mars."

It is hardly a bolder or more startling speculation to contemplate the establishment of intelligent and definite communication with Mars than it would have been, a half-century ago, to contemplate communication across three thousand miles of ocean without visible means. An evening's observation of the heavens, made recently through the great telescope of the Naval Observatory in Washington, revealed, in one of its phases, a sunrise in the moon. One gazed at the dark edge of a mountain range to see it suddenly grow light; to see the illumination increase both in area and intensity, precisely like a sunrise over a mountain range here on earth. The spectacle was as suggestive as it was sublime. It brought the observer into a new relation to the universe. The sun that lights the earth was then rising on the moon. One realized a new conception of the unity of the solar system.

Now it is this unity in the universe that scientists are everywhere affirming. This is the new note in science, and it is only one aspect of this truth to realize that wireless telegraphy and telepathy are both manifestations of the same principle,--that of setting up a magnetic disturbance in the ether, by utilizing the electricity in etheric currents. Thought is the most potent form of energy, and given the conditions of a certain _rapport_ between two minds, and the result is the same as that discerned and verified by Marconi, in setting up two instruments that are attuned to each other.

In the end telepathy will take entire precedence of all other forms of communication. It will supersede the telegraph, the telephone, the cable, and wireless telegraphy. It will serve every demand, public and private. Distance will interpose no obstacle or difficulty, for thought overcomes space and time.

We are spiritual beings here and now. We are living in a spiritual universe. We are entering in more and more to the grasp and knowledge of spiritual appliances, and we can only say, reverently, that "it doth not yet appear what we shall be."

Is thought, itself, photographed on the ether? Does the vibration of the spoken word linger in the place where it is uttered? The question cannot but recur to one after recognizing phenomena that, apparently, point to this solution,--when, for instance, a caller comes, and, taking the chair of a preceding guest, repeats, substantially, the same words that the other had spoken regarding some subject or event. This is something that frequently occurs. Just what is the explanation? Do thoughts register themselves magnetically on the air, and is this magnetic writing perceived, unconsciously, by one sensitive to it? The question is certainly one of curious interest.

Again, are the daily occurrences of life pre-destined? How far do we make our own life? How far is it made for us? An individual was led in dreams one night through rooms that seemed to have granite walls, to be very bare, cold, and vast. The next evening he was leaving on a journey, and did start; but after he had taken his seat in the palace car, the discovery of a mistake caused him hastily to leave the train before it started, and return. In consequence of the mistake discovered he was obliged to seek a certain official in a great granite building, whose interior had, heretofore, been entirely unknown to him. Entering it, his way led through the same cold, vast, bare rooms that the preceding night in dreams he had traversed. Now the mistake that delayed his journey and brought about these results was not even his own mistake, but one made by another person. Was all this series of events--trifles of no importance in themselves, but very curious in their combination--foreordained? and if not, how was it that they were partly perceived, in the passive state of sleep, twenty-four hours before they occurred? It often seems true that the spirit, in the unconscious condition of sleep, has a certain clairvoyance, and looks out beholding and reporting to the consciousness the immediate future; but if the events it reports were not already formed, how could they be seen? The question involves many psychic complexities.

There can be little question that the atmosphere is electric, magnetic, and conducts thought from mind to mind, as the wire does the electric current. The higher spirituality to which the race has advanced enables one to perceive and experience this truth more or less, some to a great degree, some only in a minor; but some sort of perception is universal, and is seen as phenomena, or as indications of the working of spiritual laws, according to the individual who recognizes it. One of these striking phases may be seen in the experience that results from absence and separation. Let two persons who are mutually sympathetic and responsive to each other meet, and they at once strike the chord of ardent social enjoyment in their companionship, and the note of prelude to an enthusiastic friendship. Let a sudden separation come in the external world, and the mutual spiritual experience is strangely full of color, of vital sympathy, of vivid perceptions. Evidently, the spirits of each meet and mingle, independent of the fact that a thousand miles of distance lie between the individuals. What is distance to the spiritual being? It is not an element which bears any significance to that part of the nature which has transcended time and place. In such an experience as this, and one that occurred recently between two persons, one writes to the other:--

"I talk to you incessantly. I find currents from my life continually running out like telegraph wires to yours."

And a letter written by the other person, crossing this one on the way, had borne a message something to the effect:--

"I go about companioned by you. Far more actually present you are to me than those by whom I am surrounded. Everything I read and think keeps referring itself to you for response."

Between these two persons telepathy was working perfectly. Absence and separation made no blank, but rather a season filled with the most intense and direct sense of psychical communion. They were meeting--spirit to spirit--more closely, more clearly, indeed, than would have been possible had they been dwelling under one roof. For personality, and all the incidents and accidents and interruptions hinder rather than help actual companionship, when it is on this higher plane of spirit to spirit in mutual, swift, unerring response.

In this phase of actual experience may we not find a hint from which to study the words of Jesus to his disciples,--"It is expedient for you that I go away." Through that mystic silence that fell between them on His departure from the visible world, there thrilled the sense of a communion so near, so exalted, so divinely sweet, that it could never have been theirs in the external life. To give this it was expedient that He should go away. Here we find the key to the separations that must occur between friends by the demands of life, or that occur by death, but that may be in either case infinitely deeper in spiritual communion. The friend with whom we are in any real relations is nearer, even when the ocean rolls between, than one in the same room can be with whom we are not in special sympathy; and one who has gone into the invisible world is nearer still, as out of the realm of pure spirit the communion is still stronger and more direct and more intense. For this is "a universe of reciprocal forces." The very ether is the medium of communication between spirit and spirit.

Marconi has recently completed a new wonder in the shape of a ship detector. By means of this instrument the course of any ship having one aboard can be traced, wherever she may be in mid-ocean. It acts on the principle of the wireless telegraph, but does not require a wireless plant to operate it. No operator is needed on the ship, the shore stations locating the ships by a system of tunings. It is proposed to install this system on the leading liners, and the home office can thus know at every moment the exact position of a ship and note her progress as she moves along her course. Should the vessel become disabled it will become noted, and by means of the chart her position can be known and assistance can be sent to her.

Here is one of the most marvellous among the new illustrations of the finer forces. But this "ship detector," which acts on the principle of wireless telegraphy, is less potent than are the electric forces in every human being, if it were known how to control and utilize these to serve the purposes of perception. For perception is a faculty that may far transcend both sight and hearing. Perception is a faculty of the soul--often undeveloped; rarely developed to anything like its full possibilities, but capable of locating objects or of discerning persons and events, or of apprehending states of mind in others, regardless of space, as the ship's detector and the shore stations become aware of each other through their relation of finer vibrations. A recent experimenter in electric and super-physical force, M. Tessier d'Helbaicy, states this theory: "Taking as his premise the fundamental law of physical science, that all chemical reaction is accompanied by a generation of heat and electricity, he said to himself that the human body, with the innumerable and incessant chemical reactions presented by all its cells, should create a thermo-electric pile of great power. In any case, the Austrian savant, Reichenbach, in his remarkable series of experiments, has already proved, fifty years ago, that we radiate electric waves of a special kind, visible in the dark under certain conditions, and these present positive and negative poles." This being granted, M. d'Helbaicy has measured the yielding power of the human machine in heat and electricity, and has compared these with what the heat industrial machines can do, such as those run by steam, dynamos, and electric piles.

[Sidenote: A Glorious Inauguration.]

The new year of 1903 was inaugurated by the scientific success of the most remarkable, the most marvellous achievement of any age,--that of wireless telegraphy. "Before you write 1903 I will have demonstrated the success of wireless communication," exclaimed Marconi, early in 1902; and ten days before the dawning of the year he named, the achievement was an undisputed success. It is so marvellous a thing that thought, without visible mechanism, can be flashed through the air, across the ocean, and record itself, that the success of Marconi can be held as nothing less than sublime. It is the most impressive of all the realizations of the past decade in entering on the unseen and intangible potencies. It has become a familiar thing to see the cars in city streets, and carriages move swiftly by a motor power that is invisible to the eye; a power that no one can analyze or detect save in its effects and its results. It has become so familiar a thing that one can carry on a conversation with a friend at a thousand miles' distance, that one forgets how wonderful it really is. Within the memory of men still living is the time when it required forty days to make the voyage to Europe, and to obtain, or to send, news between the two countries. Now, within forty minutes, the news is flashed under the ocean. All these discoveries that annihilate Time and Space are simply the result of the evolution of life to higher stages; of the advance of man into the ethereal realm. For is not the underlying and fundamental truth this: that all is spirit? One may talk of "the spiritual life," but there is no other life! Withdraw the spiritual element, and there is no life at all! The difference, then, between the physical and the material worlds is only a difference of degree,--as ice-water, steam, and vapor are only different degrees and conditions of the same element. Progress is the transformation of the physical into the spiritual; of the lower and cruder and denser life into the finer, the more potent, the more ethereal. Energy is proportioned in potency to its ethereal aspects. In its cruder and denser form there is only a low degree of potency, and in its more ethereal forms is there higher potency. The ox-team is a dense and crude form of potency, and the electric motor is the more ethereal and intense form of energy. Now the progress of humanity is unfailingly registered by its advance into the employment of the ethereal forces and the more intense energies, as these form conditions that react upon life. How far more intelligent a nation may be when its facilities for swift intercommunication foster and stimulate and instantly disseminate the knowledge of all events, discoveries, and experiences; and when its facilities for swift transportation facilitate all economic and social intercourse! Judged, then, by their unfailing measurements, how significant was the triumphal achievement of wireless telegraphy on the eve of the dawn of 1903.

If telepathy is "the science of the soul's interchange with God--of the interchange of the thought of one soul with another;" if it "reveal that realm of consciousness where all God's thought is interpreted to the soul:" if "its vibration never dies out of the atmosphere of thought;" the discovery of this great law must indeed take precedence of that of any other achievement of the past century.