Published
in 1915 and 1932
Theosophical
Publishing House, Adyar, Chennai [Madras] India
The
Theosophist Office, Adyar, Madras. India
I want to show you, in the
course of this evening's lecture, that there is in Modern Science a distinct
recognition of the Higher Self, that there is an agreement between eastern and [Page 2] western science, conflicting with each
other in their methods, that there is a mass of evidence compiled by western
scientific men, which can be cited as showing the recognition by science of the
Higher Self, of the existence of a Jîvâtmâ, a living Spirit, a living
intelligence in man, and that the Spirit finds an ever imperfect instrument for
expressing itself in the body of man.
I want to show you how the face
of Modern Science today is turned in a different direction from that in which
it was turned some twenty or thirty years ago; I want to show you that there is
a growing idea in the West that man in the waking consciousness is but a small
fragment of the real man, that man transcends his body, that man is greater
than his waking mind and consciousness, that there is evidence in plenty, daily
forthcoming from most unexpected quarters, to show that human consciousness is
far larger and fuller than the consciousness expressed through the physical
brain. This idea of a larger consciousness, larger than the moral waking
consciousness in man, the consciousness hitherto recognized in modern
psychology, is one that has not only been suggested but is now beginning to be
recognized by Modern Science in the West. Such is then the reason for putting
these two phrases together, Modern
Science and the Higher Self .
Now, I ought to define what I
mean by the Higher Self . I am not using the phrase in the [Page 3] strictly technical sense which you
find in the Theosophical literature, that is to say, the Jîvâtmâ in man. I
am using it for the whole expression of that Jîvâtmâ above the physical. I
am using it for everything which transcends the brain consciousness, which
finds the brain too coarse and dense an instrument for its expression. I
am using it, in short, to imply what generally goes under the term larger consciousness . If we can show definitely that
experimental science has recognized human consciousness to be stronger, more
energetic, more lively than the consciousness working in the physical brain, if
we can prove the existence of yet higher realms, we shall enter on a path which
leads to the highest invisible worlds.
We climb step by step and see
the larger consciousness unfolding itself more and more, stretching over
an immense expanse, till at last we reach that to which men in every clime
have always aspired, till the spiritual aspirations of man are vindicated. Such
is the promise of infinite expansion which lies in the domain of an
enquiry into the consciousness of man. The particular branch of Modern Science
which thus comes into touch with the Ancient Science is that of psychology.
Psychology in its modern form, climbing from below by way of experiment, comes
into touch with the ancient psychology of the East; and this is a science of
immemorial antiquity, whereas modern psychology is an infant science in the
West.
Not that the [Page 4] West has had no psychology; in the
Middle Ages and in the centuries that went before them there was a psychology
but that psychology was repudiated in modern days. So that if you go back some
thirty or some five-and-thirty years, you will find it distinctly stated by the
representative European thinker that no psychology could be regarded as sane
which was not based on the science of physiology.
The method of introspection, of
the observation of one's own mental processes, was entirely discarded in modern
thought. The method of studying the mental processes of others by inference was
equally challenged and doubted. It was said, and there was some truth in the
saying, that the moment you began to study your own mental process, that
moment it changed by the very fact of your observation; and it was argued also
that if you tried to study the mental process of others, you could only do it
by inference and not by direct observation. It is necessary, it was said by
modern thinkers, to first study the brain, the nervous system and mechanism in
man, whereby thought is expressed.
Thus arose the science which is
called psycho-physiology, a science in which the nervous system and the brain,
regarded physiologically, were studied, were analyzed, were measured, and it
was considered impossible to understand thought without the knowledge of
thought's mechanism, and without a knowledge of the [Page 5] process of the changes in
that mechanism. It was considered that along this road of experiment better
results would be obtained than would be obtained by other methods, and as
science became more and more materialistic, as it reached the point at which
Professor Tyndall made his famous statement that we were to look in matter for
the promise and potency of every form of life, it was natural, if not
inevitable, that men should begin to study thought by the study of its
mechanism, of its apparatus, rather than by the way of the direct observation of
its processes.
As the method of experiment
justified itself more and more by most interesting results, it became regarded
as the only method which was worth the consideration of the thoughtful, of
those untainted by superstition; hence the birth of what may be called a new
science, the science of psychology, based on physiological experiments, a
science which it was thought would confirm the statement that thought was the
product of the brain, was really the outcome of the nervous mechanism in man.
So far were men inclined to go
in making rash statements, that it was deliberately laid down that thought was
produced by the brain. You had such a well-known, such a famous physiologist as
the German Carl Vogt, declaring that the brain produced thought as the liver
produced bile. That, perhaps, was the most extreme statement of the school of
thought represented by many of the [Page
6] German thinkers. The very
fact that such a statement could be made showed the line of thinking which
Modern Science was following.
Now directly in opposition to
that stood the immemorial psychology of the East. That was founded on the idea
that man in his essence was not a body but a living Spirit, was not a mere form
but an eternal Intelligence. Eastern psychology was founded on the notion
that this living Intelligence, this entity, Jîva or Jîvâtmâ, was the primary
thing to be understood, that instead of considering thought to be the product
of a certain arrangement of matter, the certain arrangement of matter was to be
regarded as the result of thought. Instead of considering that life,
consciousness, intelligence were the results of a mechanism, of an apparatus
gradually built up by nature under the working of blind and unconscious laws,
eastern psychology declared that the primary fact was the fact of
consciousness, and that matter was but its garment, its instrument, the means
of its expression, arranged and guided by intelligence, and only useful and
interesting as expressing that intelligence in the various worlds of the universe.
That is put strongly and
clearly in the Chhãndogyopanishat,
and I quote this because we shall find in the latest science a strange and
startling endorsement of the ancient thought. It is declared in that Upanishat
that Âtmã exists, and that the bodies and the senses are all the results of the
will of Âtmã. You [Page 7] may remember how the passage runs,
“The eyes are for the perceiving of that Being who dwelleth within the eyes”.
It was Âtmã who desired to hear and to smell and to think; hence arose the
organs of the senses and the mind. Everywhere Âtmã is the primary fact; the
organs, the bodies, come into form in order that the will of the consciousness
may be expressed.
Thus great, then, is the
opposition between this western thought of some thirty years ago and the
ancient thought of the East, the one beginning with the body out of which the
consciousness grows, the other beginning with the consciousness by the activity
of which gradually the bodies were formed. Keep this antithesis in mind as we follow
out the lines of our study.
Come then to Modern Science,
starting with the idea that thought must be understood by the clear
understanding of its mechanism which many considered its producer. Great
scientists began to study carefully the nervous system, and they studied
it with a marvelous patience, they studied it with marvelous success; they
measured the rate at which the impressions made on the surface of the
body traveled to the nerve centers and there appeared as mental
perceptions. They measured the rate at which the thought could travel along the
nervous fibers. They measured the delicacy .of perception related to the
various parts of the mechanism. They reduced more and more all [Page 8] thoughtprocesses to processes of
chemistry, of electricity, to be measured by the balances, to be weighed, to be
analyzed. They met with great success; they threw wonderful light on the
mechanism of nervous apparatus. They went, in their researches, in their
efforts to map out the nervous system, even into crime, the crime of
vivisection. Thousands of miserable animals had their skulls taken off, their
brains laid bare, and electrical shocks applied to the various parts of the
brain, in order that by these diabolical methods some of the secrets of
consciousness might be wrenched from nature.
But as they carried on their
experiments, certain results appeared which seemed to challenge the starting
point from which they had come. They were dealing with thought as the product
of the nervous system, and necessarily, therefore, they thought that as the
nervous system increased in perfection, the thought increased in complexity, in
accuracy, in dependability. The constitution of the brain, the relation of the
parts of the brain to one another, the functions that belonged to different
portions of the brain, all these were mapped out, analyzed, explained. But as
they began to study, or rather as they carried on the study, they found that
there were certain results of consciousness that did not fit into the theory
with which they had started. They found that there were certain results of
consciousness which took place when the brain [Page
9] was not in its normal
state, in its full activity, and that these could not be ignored, that no
theory of consciousness could be true that did not explain these as well.
First the attention was turned
to what were called the results of dream consciousness. The waking
consciousness had been carefully examined. But what of the consciousness that
went on when the man was asleep ? The phenomena of sleep must also be
explained. Interesting experiments began on the dreaming consciousness, on the
functioning of consciousness when the body was asleep. Experiments were made
with the usual care, with the usual ingenuity, with the usual patience. We have
no time to deal in detail with them. Many of you can find for yourself a
large amount of details in the famous book of Du Prel, The Philosophy of Mysticism. It
seems sufficient for the moment to give you one example which covers a large
class of experiments. They began by taking a sleeping man, touching his body at
some point, and then waking him at the moment, and asking him: “What have you
dreamed ? ” Very often there was no dream, no result, but in a large number of
cases the man reported a dream. I will take one illustration. The back of the
neck was touched. The man was asked: “What have you dreamed ? ” He said: “I
dreamed that I committed a murder; I was brought to trial for the murder; I
dreamed the whole of the trial. [Page
10].
The speeches of the barristers,
the summing up of the judge; I waited for the verdict of jury; I was pronounced
guilty; I was doomed to death; I was taken away to the condemned cell; I
remained there for so many days; I was led to the place of execution and, as
the knife of the guillotine descended on me, I felt it touch my neck, and I
awoke”. Many such experiments were tried and put on record. What was the result
that came out of them ? The stimulus to the dream came from the touch, as the
touch on the back of the neck had suggested the idea of death by guillotine.
How can we explain all that went on in the dream consciousness after the touch
and before the awakening ? How did the dream consciousness pass through a long
series of events in order to explain the touch, and how was it that the events
which followed the touch seemed to precede and to explain it? That was the
problem.
After long discussion and
cogitation, the suggestion was made that consciousness in the dream state was
working in some medium other than the dense matter of the cells of the brain.
The speed by which, the nervous impulse traveled from any part of the body to
the brain had been measured and was known. But here was a long series of
phenomena in consciousness which came between the touch on the body and the
knowledge of that touch in the brain. There must therefore be some finer
medium in which consciousness is working, through which the [Page 11] knowledge has gone more rapidly
than through the nervous matter, so that there is time to build up the story to
account for the touch before the consciousness of the brain knew it had been
made on the body. The mind then, in sleep, was not thinking by the dense brain,
but by some subtler medium which answers more rapidly to the vibrations of
consciousness. Just as two men might start from the same point and one running
quickly might run to the goal fast, turn back, and might meet the other long
before he had covered a quarter of the distance, so consciousness in the
subtler medium could travel faster, make up the story to explain, return and
meet the consciousness in the physical brain, and give the story as the
explanation of the touch that had been felt outside.
Such was a suggestion made to
explain the rapidity of action in the dream consciousness. But much more than
that was wanted to make a satisfactory theory. And science said: “It is not
enough to have dreams examined in this way. Let us try to throw a man into
the dream-state and examine him while he is in it instead of waking him out of
it. Let us try to come into touch with him while the dream is going on”.
Then began the long series of
experiments spoken of as hypnotic, where a man was thrown into a trance and
thus a prolonged dream state was attained, a state produced by, and under the
control of the operator. In the hypnotic trance, as you must know, the
body is reduced to [Page 12] the lowest point of vitality. The
eye cannot see, the ear cannot hear; lift up the eyelids and flash an electric
light into the eye, there is no contraction of the pupil; the heart well-nigh
ceases to beat, the lungs have no perceptible action; only by the most delicate
apparatus can it be shown that the heart is not entirely still, that the lungs
have not entirely ceased to contract and to expand. Now what would be the state
of the brain under these conditions according to the theory that thought is
produced by the brain ? The brain is reduced to the condition of coma,
lethargy. It cannot work; it is badly supplied with blood; the blood it obtains
is surcharged with carbonic acid and waste products, for it has not been
supplied with sufficient oxygen.
From such a brain, according to
the modern theory, no thought ought to be able to proceed. But what were the
startling facts that answered the enquirers, when they questioned the
consciousness under these abnormal conditions ? Where there should have been
lethargy there was increased rapidity, where there should have been stupor
there was very much increased intelligence, where there should have been
apparent death, there was life in overflowing measure, and the whole of the
mental faculties were stronger and more vivid.
Take the memory of the man in
the waking state. Question him about his childhood, he will have forgotten many
events, they have vanished into the past. Throw the man into trance, question
him then [Page 13] about his childhood, and memory
gives up the stores that apparently had been lost, and the most trivial
incidents are recalled. Take a man, read to him in his waking moments a page of
a book that he has not before heard, and ask him to repeat it; he will stumble
over a sentence or two, he is unable to recite it. Throw the same man into a
trance, read the page to him then, and he will repeat it word for word even
when the language is to him unknown. Memory, then, in the dream or trance state
is immensely increased in its range and power. Take the perceptive faculties.
As I said, the eye would not answer to the flash of electric light, but the
faculty for perceiving the material world, of which the eye is the organ, finds
expression in the trance state such as in its waking state it cannot exert. The
man in the trance will be able to see through a barrier that blocks the waking
vision, and tell you what is happening on the other side of a closed door, or
what is within the body; tell you not only what is happening on the other side
of an obstacle but what is happening hundreds of miles away.
These are not the dreams of the
Orientals, of the Theosophists; I am confining myself to cases where
experiments have been put on record, where men who do not believe in the
superphysical were confronted by facts they found it impossible to explain. I
have myself seen experiments of this kind in the days before I was a
Theosophist. This proved to demonstration that opaque bodies were [Page 14] not obstacles to the vision of the
man plunged into the hypnotic trance, and this is now admitted by all students
of hypnotism.
Memory and perception then are
increased in power when the brain is stupefied. So I might take you through one
faculty of the mind after another and show you that in every case consciousness
is stronger, more vivid, more active, when its physical mechanism is
paralyzed.
Out of all these experiments
there arose again the question: What then is the relation between consciousness
and the brain ? It was established that, with paralysis of the brain,
consciousness becomes more active than it was before.
The result of these experiments
on the condition of mental faculties, was a proof that whatever the dream
consciousness of man might be, it was far wider in extent, far more powerful,
than the same consciousness working through the physical brain. Thus
gradually way was made for the recognition of the fact, well-known to the
eastern psychologists, that the waking consciousness is only a part, an
imperfect and fragmentary expression, of the total consciousness of man.
The modern psychologists
meanwhile were proceeding on a new line of investigation, and they began to
study what are called the abnormal phenomena of consciousness, not only the
normal and the commonplace but the abnormal and the exceptional, and at first
the study along these lines [Page
15] seemed to carry most of
the thinkers directly against the psychology of the East.
Study in one school of psychology
came to what seemed a terrible conclusion. It was the school of Lombroso in
Italy. He declared, and many others followed him, that the visions of the
Prophets, of the saints, of the seers, all their testimony to the existence of
superphysical worlds, were the products of disordered brains, of diseased or
overstrained nervous apparatus. He went further, and he declared that the
manifestation known as genius was closely allied to insanity, that the brain of
the genius and the brain of the madman were akin, until the phrase “genius is
allied to madness”, became the stock axiom of that school.
This appeared to be the final
death-blow dealt by materialism to the hope of humanity nourished by the
grandest inspirations that had come to men through the geniuses, the saints,
the prophets, the seers, the religious teachers of the world. Was all this
truly but the result of disordered intelligence ? Was all religion but the
grand dream of diseased brains and nerves ? Was religion really a nervous
disease ? Are all people who see and hear, where other people are blind and
deaf, neuropaths ? That became the terrible question set rolling by this
psychological school.
At first there was silence,
caused by the very shock of the question. Men were so taken aback that they
knew not how to answer them, knew not how to argue. Gradually, [Page 16] however, there came from the ranks
of thoughtful men a challenge. Granted that this is true that you have
discovered, granted that these brains through which the visions of religion,
the revelations of religion have come, are abnormal, is it after all so
important, so vital a matter ? May it not be that as the higher worlds
come into touch with man, they may well be able to affect only the most
delicate brains, and in that very touch they may throw the delicate mechanism
slightly out of gear ? Is it not possible that the subtle vibrations of the
higher worlds to which the human brain is unaccustomed yet to respond, may
in some individual differing from the standard of ordinary evolution, find
an answer, and the higher world may speak through these abnormal brains to men
?
The question of importance to
humanity is not whether the physical brain of the genius is allied in its
mechanism to the physical brain of the madman, but whether what comes through
the brain of a madman and the brain of a genius are equally important to
humanity. If we receive, through the disordered brain of a madman, a jangle of
useless disconnected ideas and dreams, that result is worthless and we set it
aside. But if through the brain of the genius, of the religious teacher,
through the brain of a prophet, through the brain of the saint, come forth the
highest inspirations, the loftiest ideas that have raised mankind above the
brute and the savage, shall we cast [Page
17] them aside as well ? We
judge the results not by the mechanism through which we have received them, but
by their value to humanity and, no matter what the mechanism of the brain may
have been, there remains the thought that has been given to the world.
Everything of which humanity is
most proud, all its sublimed hopes and aspirations, the most beautiful
imaginings of poetry, the transcendental flights of metaphysics, and the
sublimed conceptions of art, are all product of neuropathy, of abnormal brains.
When men tell us that the great religious teachers are neuropathy, that Buddha,
Christ, S. Francis, are neuropaths, then we are inclined to cast our lot with
the abnormal few, rather than with the normal many. We know what they were.
They were men who saw far more and knew far more than we; what matters it
whether we call their brains normal or abnormal ? In these men's consciousness
is a ray of the Divine splendor; as Browning says: Through such souls alone
God, stooping, shows sufficient of His LightFor us in the dark to rise by.
And if in those cases the brain
change from a normal to an abnormal state, then humanity must ever remain
thankful to abnormality. That is the first answer which may be made to
this statement of Lombroso, and you find a man like Dr.Maudsley, the famous
doctor, asking whether [Page
18] there is any law that
nature shall use only for her purposes what we call the perfect brains ? May it
not be that for her higher performances she needs brains which are different
from the ordinary, the normal, brains of man ? For, take the normal brain that
is the product of evolution, the result of the past; that brain is fitted for
the ordinary affairs of life, it is fitted for the calculations of the market
place, for the observation of material things, for the work of the world, for
carrying on the ordinary affairs of life; brought to its present state by the
practice of such thinking, it is the best machinery for such work. But when you
come to deal with higher thought, with abstract speculation, when you come to
deal with religious ideas and with the possibilities of higher worlds, that
brain is the most unfit of instruments; it is not delicately organized enough
for the subtler vibrations of the higher worlds.
For just as you may take a watch
delicately wrought and by that watch you may measure small intervals of time
which you could not measure by a clumsier mechanism, so is it with the
different brains of men. The normal brain is the commonplace brain; the normal
brain is the average brain. It has no promise for the future; it is but the
product of the past. But the abnormal brain, that which can answer the higher
vibrations, the brain which, if you will, you may call by the insulting name of morbid, that is the brain which
stands in the front of evolution, which is the [Page 19] promise of the future, and shows
us what man shall be in the generations yet to come.
As the struggle went on another
answer came. When, in times of unusual strain and unusual excitement, the brain
answers to the higher vibrations, then it is very likely that nervous disease
will accompany the answer. It is not always the brain of the genius to which
strange experiences occur. They occur to people of all types; the average man
and woman have their experiences. When a person has been rapt in ecstasy of
prayer, or is fasting, and the body is weakened or is under great stress of
excitement, the brain will certainly be affected far more easily than under
normal conditions, and it will be able to register finer vibrations more easily
than the so-called healthy brain.
Take a very common
illustration. You have a violin or a vînã. You find that you can get from
the string of your instrument a certain note, but you want a higher note; what
do you do ? You tighten the string. Just so with the human brain. It does not
answer to the higher notes of life in its ordinary state; you must tighten the
string by intense concentration or devotion, and then the brain will answer.
But in the tightening there is danger; in the tightening there is possibility
of breakage; and so in the normal brain tightened to respond to the stress of
the subtler vibrations, there is the danger of nervous disturbance, [Page 20] there is the danger of unbalancing
the mechanism.
How can that be met ? We look
to the science of the East, to its old psychology, and it gives us the answer —
it is the only science that knows the answer — and this answer is strengthened
by a modern discovery touching the mechanism of the brain. What is the
process of Yoga ? It is a process by which gradually, by physical, by mental
training, the man develops a higher consciousness, and enables that higher
consciousness to express itself in the physical body. Now every one of you, who
knows anything of Yoga, knows perfectly that in Yoga there is a physical
training, purification of the body, purification of the brain, which precedes
the practice of any of the higher forms.
You know that it has always
been told that if a man would practice Yoga he must become an ascetic in his
life. That he must give up liquor and the grosser articles of diet, that he
must purify the body, and then purify the mind. You know that only as that
is being done, can the mental Yoga be effectually performed, and then as the
body is becoming purer day by day, consciousness develops, its higher powers
show themselves through the purified brain without disease, without
over-strain, without any injurious nervous or morbid results. Eastern
psychology recognizes the danger of nervous disturbance, and enables the
necessary sensitiveness [Page
21] to be obtained without
the overstraining of the physical instrument.
But I said that a late
discovery in Modern Science with regard to the brain had justified the process.
What is the discovery ? That the brain cells in which thought is carried on
develop, and increase in size and in complexity by the process of thought; that
as a man thinks, his brain cells grow; they send out processes which
anastomose, join one to another, and thus make a very complicated mechanism by which
higher thought can be expressed, that the whole process of the expression of
thought depends on this growth in the cells of the brain, and that as you think
you are really making your brain, you are creating the mechanism by which
hereafter a higher thought may be expressed. The latest anatomy of the West has
laid down this, that these cells grow under the direct impulses of thought, and
that as you think you prepare the brain for better and higher thought; as the
thought acts on the nervous cells, the nervous cells become more
complicated, intercommunicate more fully, are more apt for the processes of
thought.
The Yoga practice of
concentration, of steadying the mind by fixing the thought, makes the brain
cells grow, and thus creates an instrument adaptable for higher thinking in the
future. As you carry on your meditation you are building fresh mechanism in the
brain; as you carry on concentration, [Page
22] you are creating the
apparatus for higher performances. Thus as the purification of the body, of the
brain, of the mind, goes on in Yoga, you are building up the brain, making it
able to come into touch with a higher world, without losing its balance,
without losing its sanity and its strength.
There lies the scientific
justification of Yoga from the latest investigations of the West. What then
does the East tell us as to the result of Yoga ? It tells us that man is a
consciousness expressing his powers through the body which he moulds to his own
purpose, that man's consciousness in the brain is far less than his
consciousness out of the brain; that man uses the brain as an instrument
on the physical plane, but is not limited by it, is not confined by it. That
old theory of the ancient Sages is now being promulgated in the West by such
men as Sir Oliver Lodge, who declares that the investigation of hypnotism, the
study of consciousness, the study of abnormal states of consciousness, prove
that human consciousness is larger than the consciousness in the brain,
and that there is much more of us outside the body than is shown by the working
of the brain. That is the last word on consciousness from the West, and it is
identical with the testimony of the East.
Do you see now why I put
together Modern Science and the Higher Self? The Higher Self is the consciousness
beyond the physical, the larger, wider, greater consciousness which is our real
Self, [Page 23] the Self of which the
consciousness in the brain is only the faintest of reflections. This body of
ours is only a house in which we dwell for our physical work; we hold the key
of the body; we should put it in the lock by Yoga, and try and release the
imprisoned consciousness. We are greater than we appear to be; we are formed in
the divine image; we live not in this world only but also in other worlds; our
consciousness outstretches the physical. In this planet of mud our foot is
planted, but our heads touch the heavens; they are bathed in the light of the
spiritual world far above, in the world unseen, bathed in the light of God. We
may trust the consciousness and the testimony of the Saints, the Prophets, the
Seers, and the Teachers of humanity. They told us what They knew, that which we
may also know for ourselves. They were divine, showing Their divinity to the
worlds. We are none the less divine, although our divinity is veiled.
Let us claim our birthright, to
know as They knew. These great Ones of the past, these Saints and Teachers of
humanity, They are the promise of what we shall be in the future, and the
heights They have touched in ages past, we also will attain in days to come.
Every one of us is a divine
fragment, every one of us an eternal Spirit, every one of us a deific life,
striving to attain through matter to consciousness of our own divinity. That is
the teaching of all faiths, that is the fundamental principle of life, of
religion, of [Page 24] nature , and Modern Science is
finding that even physical nature is not intelligible without the understanding
of the higher world, without the recognition of larger possibilities.
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