Studies in the Thought World

We have made the above quotations quite at length, to show somewhat in detail the latest conclusions of physical science as given by one of its most eminent exponents. It is interesting to note how strongly the trend is in the line of metaphysical thought and spiritual evolution. Professor Gates has no avowed sympathy with mental healing, as such; but in his recorded investigations as a physicist he has virtually demonstrated, through chemical analysis, its most fundamental claims. The sprinkling of unconventional souls who have been struggling to bring these great truths into general recognition have known them all along; but now science has actually demonstrated them by its own methods. They are found to have a positive chemical basis and proof.

It is therefore the deliberate and latest conclusion of institutional science, that for each morbid or unwholesome mental state there is a corresponding degeneration in the bodily tissues. The more intense the conditions, the more poisonous and life-depressing the natural product which logically follows. Contrariwise, every noble, pure, and lofty emotion actually adds to the life-promoting forces. Science has therefore come to the conclusion that it pays to think high, even for one’s own physical welfare.

As stated in the quotations, different qualities of thought, besides weaving their quality into the whole physical organism, gradually index themselves in appropriate brain-cells. High moral or spiritual thinking sets the blood to coursing towards the crown of the head. An activity is induced, which perceptibly raises the temperature of that section of the brain, so that it may be easily measured externally. When such activity habitually continues, new brain-cells are formed and invigorated. The same rule holds good with other faculties which have their correspondences in different parts of the brain. The skull is therefore the outward index of the qualitative energy which the man is exercising inside.

Materialistic science from the very method of its researches has usually been color blind to mental and spiritual entities. It deals with matter, and with forces supposedly blind and unreasoning, and works only from a physical standpoint and hypothesis. Its measures, tests, and weights are applied to results rather than causes. Its diagnosis does not go deeper than symptoms. Even when admitting that thought has a kind of force, the opinion is still held among high authorities that mind is really automatic. Man is interpreted as a physical instrument acted upon and swayed by sentient forces, rather than a divine soul or ego whose high vocation should be to grasp these energies and rule and wield them.

But signs of advancement multiply. The daily psycho-physical exercises recommended by Professor Gates are really mental healing and spiritual culture and unfoldment under a more high-sounding and scientific label. It is most encouraging to realize that the statements of so eminent and thorough a scientist will carry conviction in many quarters where metaphysical testimony to the same effect would be lightly regarded. But Professor Gates is far in advance of institutional teaching and textbooks in general, and the logical deductions from his experiments will but gradually find acceptance in scientific circles. The idea of a necessary physical basis and causation for all phenomena is so strongly rooted in the minds of men that facts are misinterpreted, spiritual vision blurred, and human emancipation from the lower nature postponed. Professional deductions are generally limited to such facts as can be tested by measurement, temperature, and physical energy. But inner consciousness and soul-development elude even the most searching tests of the laboratory. From the low standpoint of physics nothing beyond its own realm can be discerned.

But it may be of interest to take some of the weighed and measured facts as shown by psycho-physical research, and subject them to a higher and truer interpretation. For instance, we are aware that the human stomach is the most important chemical agency in the physical economy of man. When the digestive processes are badly performed, and a lack of assimilative energy causes a deterioration of the blood, the organ is generally subjected to medication, with the hope that through such treatment it will regain its normal efficiency. The mental state is not taken into account. But a deeper study shows that the mind is the governor. The digestive energy of the same stomach, with the same kind of nourishment, depends upon the mental state. If the important nerves which centre in this leading organ are disturbed by anger, fear, grief, jealousy, or any other serious discord, there is a general suspension of functional activity. The difficulty, under usual conditions, is not with the food, nor with the stomach, nor even with the nerves, but with what is back of and above all these secondary agencies. The chemical condition of the human body, in quality and detail, is a mirror-like reflection of its mental chemistry in the past.

Says Amelia Barr, in one of her interesting tales: “For who takes cold or receives injury while the spirit has the upper hand? Men and women, driven by great enthusiasms, go through fire and water, and compass impossibilities. All our limitations are of the body; but in our diviner moments, when the soul takes command, it makes but small account of them.”

Out of his rich spiritual perception Henry Ward Beecher said: “So out of that state of mind which was implied when Christ wrought healing, came the spiritual power that took on a physical result. We do not yet know what the hidden power of the soul is. There are all around the world, breaking out in irregular ways, instances of the power of certain states of mind.”

We are well aware that the laws of chemistry are absolutely exact, and always the same. To form a given product, the necessary proportion of the various ingredients must be known and carefully conformed to in every successful experiment. The chemist takes a just pride in the delicate accuracy of all his tests and measurements. He uses the most sensitive instruments, observing carefully every possible condition that may have the slightest bearing upon the result.

But in the higher chemistry of thought and spirit how little of such painstaking accuracy has been observed! But the law of chemical combination in mind is as exact and unvarying as in physics or the arts, and of what incomparable importance! The druggist filters and purifies his ingredients, and blends them with the utmost care, in order to produce a perfect compound. Sometimes a very slight variation in the proportion of substances will result in crystalline forms of the most diverse order.

There is good reason to believe that early in the twentieth century there will be truly scientific remedial formulas generally utilized from the chemistry of a higher and diviner realm. Psychological chemism embraces the deeper education of thought, and the scientific building of character. How crudely this work is conventionally carried on! What an attempted blending of insoluble elements, and what an unscientific method, with the vain hope of an ideal result!

Into the sensitive and responsive recesses of the child-mind is poured a mass of conglomerate material, well mixed with repression, limitation, and negation; and the result is termed “education.” Little is educed, but much is learned that were better unlearned. A soul-structure to be symmetrical must be carefully and intelligently compounded. If the intellectual elements are destitute of any conserving and purifying mixture of intuitive and spiritual ingredients, the combination lacks vital power and proportion. The ego must select pure and wholesome materials, and blend them in normal and harmonious proportion. True education consists in training the thought to train itself. The imaging faculty, like the tongue, is an unruly member until it is tamed and brought into subjection, but rightly governed it becomes a most efficient instrument and restorative. The negative elements of selfishness, animalism, avarice, and envy in human character, will continually produce mould, acidity, fermentation, scum, and dregs, unless the rectifying agency of love be added, to blend and sweeten the otherwise refractory mixture. We must have the nourishment of vital spiritual dynamics rather than an infantile dependence upon externals.

Man cannot live by bread alone. We must unlearn much worldly wisdom, to make room for the higher education. Our curriculum must be as broad as humanity, and as high as divinity; but we must cultivate a child-like transparency and simplicity. By earnestly turning our gaze inward, we discover that the mind of man is the grandest force in existence, and that truth is its great complement. We must bore artesian wells through the stratified crust of human thought, from which shall spout up pure and life- giving water, which will quench the soul-thirst of humanity. We must discover the divine image and life within the soul, and give the logos articulate expression. Our brothers and sisters must be taken by the hand, and led up into the “Mount of Transfiguration,” and Law and Prophecy be retranslated until they appear in the human consciousness clothed in garments white and glistering. Divine incarnations must be multiplied and perfected, until God shall find adequate expression in humanity.

The Rosicrucians made a careful search for a life-giving specific, and faithfully tried to heal human ills. But their search was not successful. Ponce de Leon thought he had discovered the fountain of perpetual youth in Florida, and very recently a modern scientist announced the finding of the veritable “elixir of life.” But notwithstanding all these repeated disappointments, there is a true elixir vita. It is found in the divine spirit of wholeness, and lies above the zone of material distortions and negations. It comes not supernaturally, but normally, through the immutable law of attraction. It is ever waiting for human souls to attune their own vibrations into unison with its own supernal harmonies. When the human consciousness becomes filled with truth, there is no room for error; and the latter, having no other abiding-place, becomes non-existent.

In spite of the dark, ever-present shadow of materialism, there is great hope in the present attitude of institutional science. It is open to the logic of events as never before. It has been driven from its old earthworks, and is on the march, with destination undecided. Its present positions are tentative, its formulas are being recast, and its text-books, not yet a score of years old, are being relegated to basement storage.

As in ages past polytheism was displaced by monotheism, so now the great variety of separate and independent forces long recognized by science have been reduced to one infinite primal energy. The unity of all things, and their close interrelation, are felt and admitted. All that is pure in religion and true in science are converging towards each other. Whatever is natural is sacred, because it is permeated with the divine life. Prophets and poets are becoming expert spiritual chemists, and the true constituents of the kingdom of heaven are scientifically recognized. The new dispensation will be ushered in, not with observation and external pomp, but silently, in its normal location,—the sanctuary of soul. Browning thus voices this sublime sentiment:—

The chemistry of the future will include the scientific blending of spiritual and immaterial forces for definite ends: it will concern itself more with the internal, and less with the sensuous; more with cause, and less with effect. There will be an intelligent utilization of thought energy, and its values will be determined in the light of law. Just that nutrition and those ingredients that are able to satisfy the universal soul-hunger of humanity will be judiciously sought out, and their application intelligently provided for.

For ages the alchemist labored to discover some mysterious refining process through which the baser metals could be transmuted into gold. But modern science, with all its miracles, has failed to compass such a result. But a diviner and infinitely more valuable accomplishment has been realized. Scientific idealism is the expert alchemist whose invaluable services are freely at the command of every earnest soul. It can transmute the restless, chaotic forces of mankind into the golden harmony of human liberty and spiritual unfoldment.

The knowledge of the art of mental compounding is constantly expanding, so that with more consummate skill we work to purer ideals, and with more symmetrical models. Through positive formative thought we receive the title-deeds to invaluable possessions. With the wand of affirmation we project them into expression and actuality. The incarnation of truth is the transforming energy which rounds out and embellishes the soul-structure and its expressive physical instrument.

The supernal chemistry which alone can combine those constituent elements which must mingle in order to the erection of normal human expression, is that which is divinely ordained through harmony with the One Mind or Oversoul. To vibrate in unison with the Universal Goodness introduces a consciousness of cosmic harmony.

The superficial and unintelligent belief in physical causation has been the racial stumbling-block, and nowhere has it been more pronounced than among the ranks of the devotees of so-called science. Keen institutional searchers peer into matter, expecting to discover its great secret through measures and tests. The laboratory methods of the modern physicist have so increased in delicacy, that through his psychological appliances, if he cannot actually weigh thought, he can at least determine its resulting intensity, volume, and continuity. Its intermittent energy may be tracked and followed among the brain-cells, but it ever eludes pursuit.

The “conservation of energy” has been for some time accepted as an ascertained fact, if not already axiomatic in modern science. Stated in common terms, this comprises the doctrine that though the forms and qualities of energy may change, nothing is ever added to or subtracted from the sum-total. So even the most ideal mental activity cannot create any more spiritual energy, but it may through recognition embody and express more of the existing universal.

The formative power contained in imaging thought, as exercised in accord with law, has not been gained, or even recognized, upon any level below that of highly developed humanity. As man comes into an intelligent understanding of his equipment of creative power, he will grasp the sceptre of his supersensuous sonship and kingship. So far as he had been “faithful over a few things,” he will become “ruler over many.” By faith he will be able to “remove mountains” of doubt and fear, and cast them into the sea of oblivion. Through a knowledge of the divine chemistry of being, he will subdue kingdoms and work righteousness.