My Philosophy and My Religion

There is perhaps no more wonderful or more valuable law that man has so far apprehended than the law of vibration. I prefer to say the law of vibration rather than the laws of vibration; for aught we know all may be vibration. Life itself may be vibration, or rather vibration may be the form, the method, through which Life manifests and works. This we do not yet know.

Our first methods of conveying messages were very crude— the lumbering stage‑coach, then the pony express—the Indians used signal fires, less crude. Then followed through a knowledge of vibration, the conducting of sound through the medium of a wire. Laborious and crudely material lines of telegraph were constructed. Later it was discovered that not only clicks of sound, but with the proper sending and receiving media, even the human voice could be transmitted through or over a wire, at first for short and later for very long distances.

It was then discovered that sound through the law of vibration could be propelled or rather travel through the ether itself without the medium of a wire. Still later we are finding that the human voice itself can be so carried. By means of a comparatively small apparatus a continuous succession of sound waves is emitted, and the human voice itself, speaking through the proper sending medium, is carried through the media of these waves; and through the right receiving instrument properly attuned to the one through which the voice has spoken, can be transmitted and distinctly heard a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand miles away. The time may come, probably will come, when the voice in this way can be made to encircle the globe, and return to a receiving instrument in the very room from which it has spoken.

Here is a law, or a law concerning a force, that has been in the universe not only during the lifetime of this generation or that of a few generations preceding us, but for hundreds of millions of years—and we are now just beginning to apprehend it, to understand it, to utilize it. This is but one of innumerable finer forces in the universe, the laws of which we will apprehend and understand and use, as we evolve in our capacity for apprehending finer forces and powers.

If this is true concerning the material universe about us, what must we conclude concerning the finer forces and powers within us, and the apprehension and the use of the laws that govern them? May we not be greater than we know! The life and the revelations of Jesus as well as the lives and the findings of all the prophets, seers, sages, in the world’s history, all tell us that we are.

When a great and much beloved modern educator, Dr. Hiram Corson, gave utterance to the following, he gave utterance to a truth that will be appreciated more and more as the higher development of man takes place: “It is what man draws up from his sub‑self which is of prime importance in his true education, not what is put into him. It is the occasional uprising of our sub‑selves that causes us, at times, to feel that we are greater than we know.”

When we hear the statements of some of the earlier prophets we think they are interesting, and that in some vague way there may be, there probably is, some truth in them. “There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.” The same is true in connection with that saying of Isaiah: “And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left.”

Now unless there is some force that actually operates, to bring about these conditions, these results, then there is no truth whatever in the statements themselves. Something never occurs through nothing—always through the operation of a force. The law of Cause and Effect is absolute. There is never an effect without a cause.

This brings us at once to the most interesting, and by all means the most valuable part, of the entire matter we are considering. If there is but the one Life, Being, the Infinite Spirit of life and power that is back of all, working in and through all—the life of all; if the Divine is in the human, or speaking more accurately, the Divine Life is the life in the human, how can we apprehend this fact more fully, that the qualities and the powers of this Real Life may become operative and effective in our lives? How can they be made of value to lift our common‑place lives up to the pattern of those who have apprehended them, and whose lives have been lifted thereby into great power and beauty?

There is one characteristic that these all had in common, including Jesus. They all spent time more or less, but all adequate time alone in the quiet. They meditated, they desired, they definitely sought the “pearl of great price.” They believed the expression “God working in us and through us.” They gave it the opportunity to prove itself. Definitely they stilled the outer senses, the senses that relate us to the material world about us.

They gave their minds an opportunity to come into harmony with, to become attuned to the spiritual vibrations of the Infinite Divine Life that continually flood and animate the soul, which is the seat or the organ through which it manifests itself in life and in power in the human existence. The exact method we perhaps do not know.

Constitutionally we are receptive to various impressions or vibrations from the outer world about us, acting through outer sense organs that conduct these vibrations along their own respective nerve or nerve systems, through which they are transmitted to the brain, and the result is that the mind, when awake and attentive, gets the image or the effect so produced. It is through the channel of the five senses, so far as at present we know, that we get all of our communications and have all of our knowledge in connection with the material world that we know about us.

When the mind is awake and active, vibrations from one sense organ or another are continually impinging upon it. The inner soul center, on the other hand, is continually being animated by emanations or vibrations of the Infinite Divine Life. It is continually being flooded by these emanations or vibrations, otherwise the life in the soul would cease to exist, and it could no longer animate the particular body to which it carries life and energy, and which would at once become inert and, as we term it, dead.

These vibrations or emanations stirring the faculties of the soul, transmit their impressions or images, the impressions of all things of which they are the source, to the mind when the mind is open and attentive to them. Through desire and quiet and the attitude of receptivity, these vibrations carrying with them the qualities of the Infinite Divine Life, which they are the transmitters of, make themselves known.

While therefore these vibrations of life carrying with them energy, insight and power are continually animating—flooding, we might say—the inner life of the soul, a part of their effects which is to flood all the higher inner faculties and transmit their messages to the mind, thus bringing them into the conscious life, is lost, unless the mind is brought into that condition of openness and receptivity, whereby these impressions can be transmitted to and received by it. This puts us in touch, or gives us the power of putting ourselves in touch, with the very Source of things.

Intuition, spiritual illumination, has to do with that part of our nature that is behind intellect but related to intellect, and that must be raised into the realm of the conscious mind in order to serve us—just the same as all sense impressions must be conveyed to, and be received in the mind, in order to carry any impressions or messages from the outer world to us.

It is for us to make the conscious receiving medium, the mind, in that initial attitude and then that habitual attitude, that there can be the play and the inter‑play between it and the soul, which relates us with the soul of things, with the Great First Cause, the source of all knowledge, wisdom, insight and power. There is then a great truth upheld by a great law in: “The Lord thy God in the midst of these mighty;” and also in: “There is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.”

The following words speak with peculiar power to me, because they are words of one who had the experience and who therefore knew the facts of which he spoke—and more, he was not bound by a system: “Nothing stirs the central wheel of the soul like the Breath of God. The whole man is quickened, his senses are new senses, his emotions new emotions; his reason, his affections, his imagination, are all newborn. The change is greater than he knows; he marvels at the powers in himself which the Breath is opening and calling forth. He finds his nature to be an unutterable thing; he is sure therefore that the future must have inconceivable surprises in store. And herein lies the evidence, which I commend to my readers, of the existence of God, and of the Eternal human Hope. Let God’s Breath kindle new spring‑time in the soul, start into life its deeply buried germs, lead in heaven’s summer; you will then have as clear evidence of God from within as you have of the universe from without. Indeed, your internal experience of life, and illimitable Hope in God will be nearer to you, and more prevailing, than all your external and superficial experience of nature and the world.”

The above words by a modern prophet are similar in their import to those of an earlier prophet—“With Thee is the fountain of life; in Thy light shall we see light.” If there is truth in the statement: “Thou shalt hear a voice behind thee saying: ‘This is the way, walk ye in it,’” then there is a method by which the voice communicates itself, and a definite method or law whereby you or I can get what it communicates—a method governed by law just as definite as the law that underlies the transmission of the message through the telephone, or using a method less crude, the transmission of the radio‑telephone message.

The message comes, but I, in order to get it, must listen; and it helps me in listening to have the surroundings or conditions so that I can listen in the quiet and the more readily hear. When Elijah was on the mountain it was, the chronicler tells us, after the various physical or material disturbances or commotions, that he heard the “still small voice,” the voice of his own soul by means of which his God was speaking to him.

The following incident illustrates what I mean. The experience was told me during the year by a friend who was for years a close friend of John Burroughs and of John Muir, and at whose home both have stayed, and at times for long periods. It is but one of many occurrences of a similar type that have come into her life. I recalled this one the other day, and sent and asked her if she would be willing to give me the facts in written form as briefly as possible. I give them as received: