The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul

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.

CHAPTER III

MEDIUMSHIP, SEERSHIP, AND HYPNOSIS

Into this arena of the inquiring soul of man, came Modern Spiritualism.

It contained little or nothing new, as to methods, aims, or results.

The Church, Protestant and Catholic alike, uttered their warnings, called it “dealings with the devil,” but divested of political authority and without power to arrest or persecute, as in the past, were unable to stay the tide. It swept the country like a whirlwind. The average individual, desiring to know and to get tidings from departed friends, was unrestrained and unterrified.

He could not see why, if the gates were really ajar, angels might not communicate, no less than devils.

Then came the cry of “fraud,” often amply justified, and a cloud of uncertainty and unreliability settled over the phenomena generally. Unscrupulous men and women seeing their opportunity, sophisticated and exploited it, and “exposures” of these became common.

But in spite of all this, there remained facts, and groups of phenomena impossible to explain away.

Finally, men like Crookes and Wallace took up the subject and investigated the phenomena, not from the emotional, expectant, or fraternal aspect, but from the purely scientific, and rendered their verdict, which, though frequently ignored or treated with contempt, remains practically unaltered.

Thousands became convinced of the fact of life beyond the grave, and at the same time of the unreliability of many so-called “communications.” Finally the “Society for Psychical Research” was formed; phenomena were searchingly examined, verified, and recorded as a basis for further research.

The posthumous work of F. W. H. Myers, “Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death,” added to the Society’s records and many other publications a record of verified facts in psychic phenomena such as never before existed, and which nothing short of a cataclysm can destroy.

In the meantime, the “dark circle” went into desuetude, and Spiritualism, as a cult, declined. Accepting the broad conclusion of a life after death, and with no very clear demonstration as to exactly where, or how, the case rested largely.

The reason for this obscurity was to be found in the absence of clear conceptions as to the nature of the human soul, and what life on the spiritual plane really signifies.

In other words, the foundation was laid empirically to await classification and conclusions in a comprehensive Philosophy of Psychology, consistent with a science of the soul; and there it remains to-day with the average individual, and the average man of physical or psychical science.

Returning now from this brief excursion into the social status, to the problem as related to the mental, moral, and physical health of individuals, and bearing in mind our Modulus of Man, and Theorem of Constructive Psychology, we find the annals of Spiritualism, Mediumship, or subjective control, of exceeding importance.

Another plane of life exists. Individuals on either plane communicate with the controlling entity on the supra-physical plane.

The Medium is invariably subjective and controlled. He has no choice of controls, and often no knowledge (never reliable knowledge) as to who or what controls him. He is sometimes informed by his “guide” as to the control’s identity, and learns, often, that he and his circle have been deceived by ignorant or “lying spirits.”

The whole process reverses our Modulus and Theorem of Constructive Psychology, the building of character and normal evolution.

The most important consideration at this point is its relation to the sanity of individuals.

There are thousands of individuals to-day, who, failing in rational volition, or self-control, are controlled by entities on the subjective plane. They are obsessed.

This subjective control without the knowledge or consent of the victim, and unrecognized and generally called “absurd” by “Alienists” and “experts,” constitutes a very large per cent, of the insane to-day, and because ignored or unrecognized, these cases are classed as “Incurable.”

It should be remembered that the annals of Spiritualism, and the records of scientific Psychical Research, have demonstrated the possibility and the fact of such control. It should also be remembered that the average “expert alienist” is guided solely by results of such obsession, where it occurs; that he is blind to causes, liable to exclude or taboo obsession, and therefore largely liable to err.

In other words, he is prejudiced; and his bias and incredulity blind him to the facts and to the real causes.

He could hardly be expected to make the obsession let go, while denying that it exists. But he might help the victim gain Self-control if he but recognized the facts and knew how.

Realizing the fact of the connection of the two worlds, the physical and the spiritual, and communication between them in the subjective or irresponsible way, the question naturally arises, “Is there not another way of communication? May not the Individual Intelligence on the physical plane communicate with the denizens of the spiritual plane at his own volition, independently? May he not learn to see and hear them without attempting, or desiring to control them, more than he does his associates, his friends and neighbors on the physical plane, or allowing them to control him?”

Is it not purely a question of fact, and of scientific demonstration, to be determined by experiment?

This question leads us to another phase of psychology and the records of the past. There have been Seers, Clairvoyants, and Clairaudiants in all ages.

Unlike the psychical phenomena already referred to, – and belonging to the positive and initiative, rather than the negative and subjective side of the psychical equation, – these seers have been fewer in number, and are always individuals showing a high degree of self-control, and of intellectual and moral evolution.

Admitting the general propositions involved, it can readily be seen that this must be so from the very nature of the case. The Masters of mankind, in any and all directions have been few. The slaves, through ignorance, superstition and fear, have been legions. Those who have gained habitual self-control, and finally self-mastery, knowledge and power, have been few; while the majority have been controlled by their own appetites and passions, and by other individuals.

This self-mastery and higher evolution also includes another element beside strength of character, and that is, Refinement.