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•:■": MAN: 
 Whence and Whither? 
 
 By 
 
 Alcinous B. Jamison, M.D. 
 
 Author of " Intestinal Ills," " Intestinal Irrigation/ 
 
 " How to Become Strong/* " Chronic 
 
 Intestinal Poisoning," etc. 
 
 * 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 
 * John Emery McLean 
 
 Former Editor of Mind and The Metaphysical 
 
 Copyright, 1922, by Alcinous B. Jamison 
 
 Published by the Author 
 
 New York 
 
 43 West 45th Street 
 
 ; v» 
 
 ^:- 
 

 .SEP 20 1922" 
 
 ©CI.A681881 
 
MAN: Whence and Whither? 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Having been privileged to read the original manuscript 
 of this book, I gladly accept the author's invitation to 
 "criticise" it in a few introductory paragraphs. 
 
 Dr. Jamison is widely known as a successful practi- 
 tioner in a special field of medicine, and for his numerous 
 contributions to medical literature. But it will come as a 
 surprise to many of his friends and most of his profes- 
 sional brethren to learn that he is gifted with a clairvoyant 
 faculty that enables him to see certain things and discern 
 operations of natural law that are at present hidden from 
 more than ninety-nine per cent, of the human race. 
 
 The work is not the outcome of any "course of read- 
 ing," nor of philosophic reflection, nor of intellectual 
 speculation. It is the result of direct psychic perception, 
 and may be described, briefly, as an inquiry into racial 
 origins, evolutionary processes, and the spiritual destiny 
 of mankind. The line of thought is not consecutive, the 
 chapters being presented in the form of essays that relate 
 to various aspects of the weighty theme — the primal 
 source and ultimate goal of the genus homo. • 
 
 While much space is devoted to a consideration of the 
 eternal purpose of man's existence on the earth and else- 
 where, the book derives a peculiar timeliness from the 
 current recrudescence of the old conflict between theology 
 and evolution. Although Dr. Jamison apparently con- 
 
 5 
 
/ . . I 
 
 ^ 6 Introduction \ 
 
 cedes the applicability of the Darwinian theory to the de-C 
 velopment of ty/>e.y, and in tracing man as a corpormljt^ 
 organism to an anthropoidal ancestry, he parts company W 
 at this point with both the evolutionist and the theologian; 
 for he holds that the real man is a spiritual being and has 
 never been anything else. 
 
 The fundamental weakness of Darwinism lies in its 
 failure to account for the uniqueness of man — his exclu- 
 sive possession of the faculty of imagination* Within the 
 annals of recorded time there has^ not been the slightest 
 structural change in the bee-hive, the ant-chamber, the 
 spider's web, the beaver's dam, or the nest of any bird; 
 iwhereas the abode of the human being has undergone 
 thousands of modifications and improvements from the 
 time of the rock-cave dweller to that of the occupant of 
 a modern royal palace. The difference is due solely to 
 the fact that man has an imaging faculty that "alt-iother 
 creatures are without. 
 
 It is not surprising that certain orders of animate being 
 that inhabit the same plane, draw their sustenance from 
 the same source, are subject to the same environmental 
 limitations, are equipped with the same physical senses, 
 and. are forced to reproduce their kind in the same way, 
 should present certain anatomical similarities. But the 
 creative power of mind displayed by man alone is shown 
 by Dr. Jamison to point to a wholly different origin for 
 this highest order of earthly life. 
 
 There is a vital distinction between the evolution of 
 types and the evolution of species. Nature is jealous of 
 infringements upon the latter, and even frowns upon the 
 
Introduction 7 
 
 mixture of human breeds. In Mexico and our own South 
 it is the half-breed that displays the most marked criminal 
 tendencies. The pure-bred Indian is not often a rebel at 
 heart. The coal-black negro is seldom lynched. When 
 man attempts to interfere with natural law by crossing the 
 horse with the donkey, a mule results ; but the mule does 
 not reproduce itself. This sterility of the hybrid tends to 
 refute the evolutionary claim of the mutation of species. 
 
 The author seems to accept to a limited degree the 
 principle of reincarnation as explaining Nature's method 
 of leading the individualized entity from lower to higher 
 planes of consciousness and causation. He has little sym- 
 pathy, therefore, with affirmations that are based upo* 
 the Biblical story of man's "descent." The indictment of 
 Pauline Christianity presented by the inception, duration 
 and barbarities of the World War, and by the crimes, 
 miseries' and degeneracies that have followed in its wake 
 after nineteen centuries of dogmatic teaching, discounts 
 the value of literal interpretations of New Testament 
 theology as well as of the biology and anthropology of 
 Genesis. 
 
 The advent of Darwinism served to accentuate the 
 dawn of doubt, which decreed the doom of dogma. It is 
 everywhere evident, therefore, that the religious world of 
 today is in urgent need of a new revelation. Perhaps in 
 the following pages we have a preliminary glimpse of 
 what awaits us in the future life, combined with a rational 
 attempt to blend true science with true religion — to their 
 mutual profit. 
 
 Some of Dr, Jamison's assumptions will not be in- 
 
8 Introduction 
 
 dorsed or accepted by the strict logician or the scientist 
 accustomed to measure everything by the yardstick of 
 materialism. Yet we must admit that the inventor of the 
 multiplication table, which forms the basis of our only 
 exact science (mathematics), was obliged at the outset 
 to assume the existence of the unit. 
 
 The author's faith and confidence in the accuracy of 
 his own psychic observations and the reality of his experi- 
 ences will be shared only by those who have trodden the 
 same occult path of investigation. Yet scores of the 
 commonplace facts and scientific verities and utilities of 
 today were among the dreams of 'Visionaries" of an 
 earlier date. 
 
 Dr. Jamison makes no pretense of literary excellence 
 nor presumptuous claims of originality; yet in an epoch 
 of intellectual transition like the present, in which most 
 of his conclusions have the full indorsement of such pro- 
 found thinkers and scholars as Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir 
 William Crookes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Professor 
 Charles Richet, it would seem that his book is worthy of 
 an unprejudiced perusal. It is certainly a unique and 
 significant addition to the metaphysical literature of our 
 time. 
 
 John Emery McLean. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. — The Origin of Man n 
 
 II. — Qualities of Incarnate Satanic Man . . 18 
 III. — The Study of Psychonomy and Psy- 
 
 CHOGENY 28 
 
 IV. — The Spirit's Need of Physical Endeavor . 35 
 
 V. — Unfoldment and Environment .... 43 
 
 VI. — Development of the Immortal Senses . . 50 
 
 VII. — The Phenomena of Thought 58 
 
 VIII. — Identification of Excarnate Beings . . 66 
 
 IX. — Some Factors of Man's Environment . . 78 
 
 X. — Thought Phenomena and the Environ- 
 ment of Being 89 
 
 XL — Man and his Excarnate Companions . . 96 
 
 XII. — The Designer and its Phenomena . . . 105 
 
 XIII. — -Man's Indecision as to the Purpose of 
 
 Existence 112 
 
 XIV. — Faith and Knowledge 119 
 
 XV. — Evolving a Practical Religion .... 125 
 
 XVI. — Thought Stimuli 132 
 
 XVII. — Knowledge a Child Should Acquire . . 138 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 The author's object in presenting to the reader in this 
 volume an impressionist word-picture of the operations 
 of God through unvarying natural laws is to suggest a 
 critical, logical, and intellectual conception of the domains 
 of philosophy and religion. 
 
 It may be regarded as presumptuous on the part of the 
 author to attempt even a partial solution of so vast a series 
 of problems. But it is his hope that others will carry on 
 the study of these questions, so that, like many other seem- 
 ingly insurmountable problems in Nature, they may event- 
 ually be solved or at least greatly clarified. 
 
 A. B. J. 
 
 10 
 
MAN: Whence and Whither? 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF MAN 
 
 Mind is a unit of consciousness and of motion, and 
 its armor or instrument is called spirit, an uncreated, 
 indestructible, archetypal form, or organism, from which 
 and through which all natural phenomena are made 
 manifest. 
 
 There is but one archetypal psychic substance (call it 
 an element, if you like) in Nature, and this is made up 
 of organized units of mind, each clothed in an armor 
 or instrument called spirit. We are told that God is a 
 Spirit and is immanent, or present, in all the diversified 
 phenomena of Nature, and that He created the phe- 
 nomenon called man in His own image and after His 
 likeness — potentially, we should add. 
 
 Innate in every spirit organism there is the divine 
 essence, together with its attributes, its law, and its 
 creative power (called the word), and collectively or in 
 varied aggregations these constitute and make possible 
 the incarnate phenomenal world and the natural laws that 
 govern all of its diversified functions. 
 
 Behind and within all the varied phenomena of Nature 
 we find mind, or spirit, as a factor and as a recipient; 
 we therefore make no mistake when we say that all is 
 mind, or spirit. Thought is a word, and in the begin- 
 
 ii 
 
12 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 ning of the creation of a world it is the word, which is 
 ever being made manifest through the laws of integra- 
 tion and disintegration, or incarnation and excarnation, 
 governing all the diversified phenomena of a world and 
 its countless forms of incarnate and excarnate life. 
 
 There is no empty space, or vacuum, in Nature. Space is 
 only seemingly empty — empty only to those who have lim- 
 ited vision. There is no mystery, there are no secrets in Na- 
 ture for those whose comprehension is sufficiently devel- 
 oped to observe natural phenomena with unclouded vision. 
 
 Spirit is in all and through all, pervading, inhabiting, 
 and functioning in the immense region called space. The 
 aggregate of phenomena in any region that is more 
 densely incarnated than the rest is called a planet, and 
 this is actually not greatly unlike the immense region 
 which those of limited observation designate as space. 
 
 The innate, involved, latent power possessed by spirit 
 is a mental dynamic force that seeks to_ express itself 
 and is called forth through the operation of need, want, 
 and desire, which are the basic factors in the evolution 
 of mind, or spirit. 
 
 Spirit in its involved state seeks to unfold its poten- 
 tial attributes of mind, and in consequence it puts forth 
 its primal creative effort, which naturally results in the 
 simplest form of embodiment or incarnation in the 
 phenomenal world. In order to sustain its created armor 
 or instrument, which is so essential in the phenomenal 
 world, it must contend with many obstacles that tend to 
 interfere with its incarnate existence; and this struggle, 
 like its creation of a body, develops its mental powers by 
 the stimulating activity of thought. Sooner or later it 
 must succumb to the destructive forces that environ it, 
 and then excarnation takes place, adding another chapter 
 to its mind-unfoldment. 
 
The Origin of Man 13 
 
 The excarnated spirit's mind continues to express its 
 needs, wants, and desires, and again it puts forth its 
 creative effort, with greater confidence due to its past 
 experience. Thus each cycle of the phenomena we call 
 respectively birth, incarnate existence, and death produces 
 another chapter in the development of its mind and of 
 its power of thought. And the dauntless spirit in the 
 course of its evolution passes through countless cycles 
 of this kind, perhaps during billions of years, as it wends 
 its way toward its spiritual and mental goal. 
 
 Nature's Cosmic School takes no account of the time 
 and labor that the evolving spirit must expend in the 
 cosmic incubator — that is, in the more ethereal incarnate 
 regions or in the denser region called the earth. The 
 dynamic urge and push from within the mind increases 
 as experience and knowledge are gained in consequence 
 of the spirit's ceaseless efforts and laborious struggle in 
 the cosmic thought-incubator, in which it is compelled 
 to think more and more as new chapters of gestation, 
 birth, sin, sickness, sorrow, and death are multiplied for 
 the attainment of some purpose or end of which it knows 
 naught. Being a child of Nature, and not knowing from 
 what distant port it has set sail or what harbor it is 
 destined to reach in the end, the spirit endures the stern, 
 relentless, unpitying, merciless tutorship of Nature, which 
 hears no prayer because the mind of its ward is utterly 
 unprepared to pray. 
 
 Up through each conscious plane of existence, as 
 through a graded school, the ascending spirit wends its 
 way through many cycles of gestation, birth, and incar- 
 nate and excarnate life, attended by labor, sin, sickness, 
 sorrow, and death as its tutors, thus simply obeying the 
 law of need, want, and desire — a potential, innate law 
 of mind existing within its own organism as a means 
 
14 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 to further its own ascent to a physical, mental, and spir- 
 itual goal as yet exceedingly remote. 
 
 Gestation of a spirit within the womb of an incarnate 
 planet permits of no estimate of the time when such 
 spirit, now dependent, will attain a higher plane of con- 
 sciousness and become a law unto itself. As one geologi- 
 cal period followed another in the history of the forma- 
 tion of the earth's crust, all the phenomena of the ascend- 
 ing scale of being were manifested in conformity with 
 the various changing planetary conditions. In conse- 
 quence of this progressive creative effort, which was 
 compatible with the ascent of spirit, there was a con- 
 stant gain in experience, knowledge, and ability to think; 
 and, urged and pushed from within by needs, wants, 
 and desires, the spirit strove to attain greater physical 
 efficiency — a most essential attainment for the sur- 
 vival of the fittest in mental activity and physical 
 dexterity. 
 
 From the time of the first incarnation of spirit to the 
 period when it acquired the ability to incarnate in a 
 form that slightly resembled the phenomenon called man, 
 countless epochs marked its mental and physical ascent; 
 and from that period to the incarnation of the ape-like 
 man there elapsed another immense period of time, which 
 was followed by still another great interval before the 
 manifestation of the phenomenon of articulate man. At 
 this epoch the spirit in its long ascent attained the ability 
 to incarnate, though in a primitive way, in its archetypal 
 form, or in the image of spirit, but it still possessed an 
 animal consciousness dominated by ignorance and re- 
 sembled the savages such as even now inhabit portions 
 of the earth, being mentally and physically not greatly 
 unlike the gorilla, orang-outang, and chimpanzee, which, 
 like the savage tribes of the earth, also inhabit certain 
 
The Origin of Man 15 
 
 regions of this planet and have a language commensurate 
 with their mental and physical development. 
 
 Perhaps fifty to a hundred thousand years have been 
 added to the age of Mother Earth and Father Time 
 since the first dawn of the crowning effort of creation, 
 when there came into existence a grotesque caricature 
 of what the incarnate phenomenon called man should be. 
 And yet, despite this lapse of time, the incarnate form 
 known as man is still a physical gargoyle and a mental 
 tyke, fastened to the old wheel of time and going through 
 the cycle of gestation, birth, and incarnate existence with 
 its attendant drudgery, sin, sickness, sorrow, and ultimate 
 dissolution. Death, the termination of incarnate exist- 
 ence, again casts the individual being into the excarnate 
 world, about which it knows no more than it does about 
 the phenomenal world from which it was dispossessed 
 for lack of mental funds. So the shuttle of evolution 
 has kept up the movement back and forth in order to 
 weave an incarnate form in the image and after the 
 likeness of God. 
 
 For the period of perhaps more than eight thousand 
 years of which we have some knowledge, Mother Nature 
 and Father Time have been recasting their incarnate 
 products, constituting so-called civilization. While civ- 
 ilization has seemingly risen and fallen, spirit-man has 
 continued to be bound to the ever-moving shuttle, pass- 
 ing back and forth between incarnate and excarnate 
 existence, as do also the ape-like men, dumb animals, 
 and the lesser incarnate forms of life that creep or 
 crawl, swim or fly. All accompany proud man back and 
 forth in the stern, unpitying, merciless cosmic shuttle; 
 for Nature's law takes no account of the being's suffer- 
 ing due to labor, sin, sickness, sorrow, or death. Nature's 
 activities are directed toward developing each of its de- 
 
1 6 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 pendents into a beautiful and symmetrical incarnate being 
 in the image of God and endowed with a godlike mind 
 that knows no error in creative efforts. Each being thus 
 becomes one with the innate law and attributes of its 
 own mind, the creator of all things on earth and in the 
 regions of less density which those deficient in sight 
 call ' 'space.' ' 
 
 Mother Earth and Father Time have not yet succeeded 
 in unfolding a God-fearing civilization of incarnate men 
 on this planet; hence the grotesque, burlesque beings 
 masquerading today in the guise of civilized nations. A 
 being should not be classified as man merely because of 
 the nature of the form in which he is incarnated, so 
 long as he possesses only an animal consciousness and 
 the five physical senses for the gathering of information 
 that he has in common with the lower animals that also 
 inhabit the earth. He has needs, wants, and desires — as 
 have the insects, the ox, the horse, and the lion; and he 
 performs the same functions, generally speaking, as his 
 animal fellow-creatures. They do not know whence they 
 come, what the purpose of life is, or whither they go. 
 Neither does spirit-man in his partially developed state; 
 therefore he is called the king of beasts — Satanic man, 
 the most colossally destructive creature that Nature has 
 produced in her effort to evolve a being incarnated as a 
 perfect replica of its Creator. 
 
 So far in our word-picture of the working of natural 
 laws we have described the origin of Satanic man, a 
 very ancient historical character and personality, who 
 resides in both the incarnate and excarnate realms of 
 ignorance in order to be able to remain in close touch 
 with Satanic fellow-beings, whose minds are constantly 
 filled with woes and regrets and with forebodings of 
 dire calamities and catastrophes following one another 
 
The Origin of Man 17 
 
 in close succession. The mind of each being has thus 
 been shown to pass through innumerable psychological 
 periods, just as the earth has passed through geological 
 periods, so that fossil ideas and creations may be 
 destroyed and be replaced with something better and 
 more modern. 
 
 The unsatisfied needs, wants, and desires ever in the 
 Satanic being's mind may require more than forty thou- 
 sand years of the same old refining process of Nature, 
 in which the mask of the evolving being will be fre- 
 quently changed by the successive processes of the cycle 
 of birth (incarnation), life (incarnate existence), death 
 (excarnation), and life after death (excarnate existence), 
 which cycle must be repeated over and over until at 
 length the animal consciousness of Satanic man is con- 
 verted into a refined product of Nature entitled to be 
 called Man, the son of God. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 QUALITIES OF INCARNATE SATANIC MAN 
 
 Innate in the incarnate being called man we find the 
 essence, the law, and the attributes of mind. One of 
 the functions of this being is to think, and with every 
 thought he sends forth the creative word, which becomes 
 manifest in his organism and in the phenomenal world 
 that environs him. Such manifestation results in accord- 
 ance with the law governing the accretive process of 
 creation or incarnation, which signifies the calling to- 
 gether of numerous sentient units, or servitors, the aggre- 
 gations of which constitute the sentient structural material 
 necessary to complete the particular thought-creation, for 
 whatever purpose it may be designed. 
 
 In order that an excarnate being may function in 
 the incarnate human form, it must create through this 
 accretive process an armor or instrument in which it 
 can exist and function in the particular kind of environ- 
 ment that it desires to enter for the purpose of gaining 
 experience and knowledge and of thus further unfolding 
 its potential mental as well as physical powers. 
 
 The incarnate protective equipment of the being called 
 man is not adapted to the environmental conditions of 
 life in the material elements known as water and air. 
 Hence he creates for himself an armor or instrument 
 called a diving-suit, and with the protection that this 
 affords he is able to exist and function in the watery 
 depths, thus gaining experience and knowledge concern- 
 
 18 
 
Qualities of Incarnate Satanic Man 19 
 
 ing the life phenomena of the incarnate inhabitants that 
 possess bodies able to exist and function in that par- 
 ticular sentient element or substance, which also con- 
 stitutes a part of the phenomenal world. He has like- 
 wise created the necessary bodily protection and means 
 by which he can exist and function in the sentient sub- 
 stance called air, which occupies so-called space and is 
 filled with incarnate world-stuff of slightly less density 
 of life-embodiment than the region known as the earth, 
 yet presenting all of the earth's phenomena in a more 
 ethereal form. 
 
 Nature has many diversified kindergartens and schools 
 that serve as a continuous series of aids to the evolution 
 of the mind and of its psychophysical instrument, which 
 is modified or. changed to suit the plane of conscious- 
 ness it has reached in the phenomenal world. 
 
 Nature's Cosmic School naturally has many grades of 
 mental and physical advancement, as indicated by the 
 stupendous array of life units that, singly and collectively, 
 annihilate the thought of space and of the seeming empti- 
 ness separating the planets and the stars, which present 
 to the undeveloped mortal senses of spirit-man a more 
 densely incarnated series of phenomena than do the limit- 
 less contiguous regions. 
 
 The incarnated Satanic being that is improperly classi- 
 fied as man is a natural product of the evolution of the 
 mind and its attending physical phenomena that so re- 
 cently emerged from the lower incarnate conscious plane 
 or domain of Nature. He must naturally continue in 
 his slow ascent from the animal plane of mind and form, 
 since the mind and body he now possesses are only 
 caricatures of the ideal mind and body yet to be 
 attained. 
 
 The spirit being, up to the time of its present denser 
 
20 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 incarnation as man, possessed a personality and an indi- 
 viduality that represented the sum total of its mind un- 
 foldment, and in passing through the psychophysical 
 accretive process of gestation there were also grafted on 
 the incarnating being's mind and body in a greater or 
 less degree the personality and individuality of the par- 
 ents, together with the conglomeration of engrafted 
 ancestral traits of mind and body accumulated during 
 the past hundred million or more years. These ancestral 
 traits constitute a menagerie, exhibiting inherited mental 
 and bodily characteristics of tailed, narrow-nosed African 
 and Asiatic man-like apes (not to mention ape-like men), 
 of the gorilla and the orang-outang, of wild and domestic 
 animals, and of other creatures that might be mentioned 
 as phases in the earlier stages of the evolution of the 
 being destined ultimately to be manifested in the true 
 image and after the likeness of God. 
 
 The extreme regret and humiliation that we now 
 experience are due to the fact that the~ being properly 
 called Satanic man has disgraced his long line of decent, 
 Nature-abiding ancestors by all sorts of dissipation too 
 vile to discuss in detail, such as the use of alcoholic 
 beverages and narcotic drugs, sex abuse, gormandizing, 
 and neglect of all the laws of mental and bodily health 
 and growth. Therefore he cannot properly be classed 
 either as an animal or as a man, but has the distinction 
 of being called by the Biblical writers a Satanic being 
 — a cognomen to which there has been no objection up 
 to the present time. 
 
 Now, what is all this pandemonium of deviltry in the 
 mind of the Satanic man for? And what good or bad 
 service is it likely to render him in the future? 
 
 From the time when mind, or spirit, uttered the cre- 
 ative word and incarnate phenomenal existence began, the 
 
Qualities of Incarnate Satanic Man 21 
 
 operation of Nature's immutable law of mind has com- 
 pelled spirit-man to think more and more, whether wrong 
 or right, abnormally or normally; and, while placing no 
 restriction on his thinking, it has forced him to abide 
 by the inevitable consequences of his mental output, in 
 accordance with the law of cause and effect, however 
 painfully disastrous or enjoyably good it may have been. 
 The mind of a being can evolve only by incessant think- 
 ing, and by normal creative efforts keeping pace with 
 the newest need, want, or desire, which stimulates in turn 
 more active thought and new creative powers that have 
 no limitations if they are normally used when normal 
 conditions exist on the planet. 
 
 Will it be possible for the diversified incarnate regions 
 of this section of the universe to continue their normal 
 existence and functions of evolution long enough to 
 evolve a phenomenon that may be described as man in 
 the image and after the likeness of God? The history 
 of the rise and fall of so-called civilization and the present 
 deplorable state of mundane affairs may indicate that 
 Nature's Cosmic School will soon cease to function, and 
 that its disintegration, or involution, will take place, thus 
 relegating all the dependent things in the school to some 
 storage plane to await the development of a new world. 
 
 Ignorance has always greatly handicapped spirit-man, 
 as the following dialogue will make plain : 
 
 "Whither goest thou?" said the angel. "I know not." 
 "And whence hast thou come?" "I know not." "But who 
 art thou?" "I know not." "Then thou art man. See that 
 thou turn not back, but pass on to the place where thou 
 shouldst go." 
 
 Proud spirit-man is quite as ignorant of the whence, 
 
22 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 the purpose, and the whither of his existence as the 
 gorilla, the orang-outang, ape-like man, and the creep- 
 ing, crawling, swimming, and flying creatures that are 
 his companions. 
 
 Do the five mortal senses of the incarnate being known 
 as man give him any more information about his environ- 
 ment than the physical senses possessed by the pig, horse, 
 ox, or lion? They hear and know the language of their 
 kind; they see and feel the phenomenon of birth; they 
 know how to struggle for existence, procreate, and care 
 for their young ; they are acquainted with death ; they feel 
 heat and cold, hunger and thirst; they know day and 
 night, land and water, and the change of the seasons; 
 they are intuitive and impressionable; they reason from 
 cause to effect; and finally, they feel fear of danger and 
 terror of death when they see, smell, hear, or otherwise 
 discern the approach of man, the arch-enemy of all in- 
 carnate life on land and in the water and in the air. 
 
 Practically the entire population of the earth classified 
 as civilized man does not gain any more information 
 through the use of the five mortal senses than do the 
 animals and all the varied lower species of incarnate life 
 that environ Satanic man. 
 
 Every incarnate being of the type we have described 
 as Satanic man is, like his ancestors, bound to Nature's 
 shuttle and is shoved back and forth from one incarnate 
 state of existence to another, all the while subject to sin, 
 sickness, sorrow, death, and subsequent rebirth because 
 he will not think normally and thus unfold the innate 
 potential creative powers of his mind. Few individuals 
 think at all, and they but seldom. 
 
 Nature issues no free pass into her storehouse. You 
 have to pay the full price at once for value received. 
 Abnormal aversion to thinking and working creates 
 
Qualities of Incarnate Satanic Man 23 
 
 excessive thirst for pleasure to pass away the time. 
 Hence the prevalence of lawlessness and the attitude of 
 revolt against government, indicating the disintegration 
 of our semi-civilization brought about almost wholly by 
 the predominance of the animal consciousness of the 
 multitude over the understanding, vision, and spiritual 
 enlightenment of the truly civilized minority, who know 
 the whence, the purpose, and the whither of the incarnated 
 being called man. 
 
 The semi-animal consciousness that Satanic man 
 possesses accounts for his lack of desire to think and 
 to work. Hence he is content, like the animal, with 
 food, comforts, safety, and kindergarten amusements to 
 while away the time from the cradle to the grave. Mental 
 and physical laziness is the dominant trait of his char- 
 acter; hence his blind acceptance of authorities and his 
 notion that everything desired ought to be supplied with- 
 out effort on his part. 
 
 Animals are innately lazy creatures, and so is the 
 animal-minded being called man; consequently, it takes 
 psychological calamities of one sort or another to drive 
 man to think and to find a way out of Mammon's 
 dilemma. Thus he gradually learns to dispel the ancient 
 Lethe that has so long put his brain to sleep, and comes 
 to realize the purpose of his life and the rich inheritance 
 in store for him if he will but think and act normally. 
 Not one per cent, of the people of the earth are really 
 doing anything worth while. The thinkers, the doers, 
 the inventors, the benefactors of the world have been 
 jeered at, despised, and persecuted by the very people 
 they sought to benefit and befriend. Satanic man's 
 redemption or emancipation from ignorance can come 
 only through knowledge of the fundamental laws of 
 Nature. 
 
24 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 In this connection it is of interest to note the views 
 of the eminent scientist, Professor Ernst Haeckel, who 
 tells in one of his books, entitled "The Riddle of the 
 Universe," how in his opinion the bodies of human 
 beings were first formed. As stated in simple language 
 by Herbert N. Casson, his ideas are as follows: 
 
 "For thousands of years it was believed to be wicked for 
 people to learn how their own bodies were formed. No one, 
 not even a physician, was allowed to take a dead body to 
 pieces for the purpose of studying how it was made. Any 
 man who did this was put in prison or sentenced to death. 
 The name of the first man who was brave enough to find 
 out the facts was Vesalius, a Belgian physician. He was 
 sentenced to death because of his knowledge, but escaped 
 and fled to a foreign country. He was chased from place 
 to place, and soon afterward lost his life in a shipwreck. 
 
 "Sixty-five years ago it was discovered that every human 
 body as well as every other living thing is made up of 
 millions and millions of tiny cells, just as a beach is made 
 up of tiny grains of sand. Some animals are so low and 
 so small that they are made up of only a single cell. Under 
 the microscope they look like tiny jelly-fishes. They are 
 called the Infusoria and the Rhizopods. A human body is 
 composed of millions of these little cells of ever so many 
 different kinds. 
 
 "So far as our bodies are concerned, we are very much like 
 the lower animals. For instance, a man has the same kind 
 of backbone as a cow or a horse. The arm of a man and 
 the wing of a bird are made of the same sort of bones. The 
 skeleton of a frog is very much like that of a man. 
 
 "Apes are nearest to men in the way that their bodies are 
 made. They have five fingers, thirty-two teeth, and 200 
 bones, just as a man has. There is gray matter in their 
 brains, just as there is in ours. In fact there is more re- 
 semblance between the body of a man and that of an ape 
 
Qualities of Incarnate Satanic Man 25 
 
 than there is between an ape and a baboon, which is the 
 lowest and most stupid kind of monkey. Apes have a family 
 life of their own. They are not guilty of some of the crimes 
 that occur in the cities of civilized human beings. They are 
 only a few degrees lower than some tribes of savages. 
 
 "The highest thing in the world is a human mind; yet 
 there is not a thing in the mind of man which cannot be 
 traced up from the mind of the lower animals. Any one 
 who has taken notice of dogs and horses knows that they 
 hae good memories, that they know right from wrong, and 
 can love, hate, be glad and be sorrowful, just as a human 
 being can. 
 
 "If you want to know how a plant's mind grows up to be 
 an animal's mind, or how brains are made, all you have to 
 do is to look around you and take notice of all kinds of living 
 things. You will notice that all living things can feel, move, 
 and act when they are touched. All living things have a 
 memory of some kind and what we may call ideas. Even 
 plants and trees have a certain kind of ideas. If a tree is 
 growing close to a wall, it knows enough not to put out any 
 branches on that side which is nearest to the wall. 
 
 "Even the lowest living things have their likes and their 
 dislikes. They try to get what they like and to keep away 
 from what they do not like. It was these likes and dislikes 
 that made them begin to think, and the clever animals got 
 along better than the stupid ones. The first human beings, 
 of course, were stupid and brutish compared with us; but 
 they were clever when compared with the lower animals. 
 Little by little they learned more and climbed higher and 
 higher. They were always struggling to get enough food 
 and to protect themselves from their enemies. This con- 
 stant struggle made them grow wiser and wiser, until at 
 last after many ages civilization began." 
 
 In considering the process of evolution, let us recall 
 the dictum of Herbert Spencer: "We are ever in the 
 
26 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 presence of an infinite and enternal Energy, from which 
 all things proceed." 
 
 The evolution of spirit through all the varied forms 
 of life in Nature finally resulted in its archetypal form 
 of spirit, which was the last creative effort physically. 
 This personality was called man and pronounced good 
 potentially. During the long ascent of spirit in the 
 phenomenal world, the male and female functions were 
 essential factors in perpetuating the incarnate forms as 
 the evolving spirit wended its way up through all forms 
 of life's phenomena to that of ape-like man, and thence 
 upward still to the Satanic man, half animal and half 
 human, waiting for his immortal mind and senses to be 
 opened and to function on a higher plane of conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 The sun may be clouded, yet ever the sun 
 Will sweep on its course till the cycle is run. 
 And when into chaos the systems are hurled, 
 Again shall the Builder reshape a new world. 
 
 Your path may be clouded, uncertain your goal; 
 Move on, for the orbit is fixed for your soul. 
 And though it may lead into darkness of night, 
 The torch of the Builder shall give it new light. 
 
 You were, and you will be; know this while you are. 
 Your spirit has traveled both long and afar. 
 It came from the Source, to the Source it returns; 
 The spark that was lighted, eternally burns. 
 
 It slept in the jewel, it leaped in the wave; 
 
 It roamed in the forest, it rose from the grave; 
 
Qualities of Incarnate Satanic Man 27 
 
 It took on strange garbs for long eons of years, 
 And now in the soul of yourself it appears. 
 
 From body to body your spirit speeds on; 
 
 It seeks a new form when the old one is gone; 
 
 And the form that it finds is the fabric you wrought, 
 
 On the loom of the mind, with the fiber of thought. 
 
 As dew is drawn upward, in rain to descend, 
 Your thoughts drift away and in destiny blend. 
 You cannot escape them; or petty, or great, 
 Or evil, or noble, they fashion your fate. 
 
 Somewhere on some planet, sometime and somehow, 
 Your life will reflect all the thoughts of your now. 
 The law is unerring ; no blood can atone ; 
 The structure you rear you must live in alone. 
 
 From cycle to cycle, through time, and through space, 
 Your lives with your longings will ever keep pace. 
 And all that you ask for, and all you desire, 
 Must come at your bidding, as flames out of fire. 
 
 You are your own devil, you are your own God. 
 
 You fashioned the paths that your footsteps have trod: 
 
 And no one can save you from error or sin, 
 
 Until you shall hark to the spirit within. 
 
 Once list to that voice and all tumult is done, 
 Your life is the life of the Infinite One; 
 In the hurrying race you are conscious of pause, 
 With love for the purpose and love for the cause. 
 
 Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE STUDY OF PSYCHONOMY AND PSYCHOGENY 
 
 About eighty years ago considerable public attention 
 was aroused in this country by the phenomenon of an 
 incarnate being called man holding communication with an 
 excarnate being called spirit, and those who investigated 
 the various phases of the psychic phenomena connected 
 therewith, and were convinced by the facts presented, 
 were called Spiritualists, for want of a better knowledge 
 of the law of mental communication between incarnate and 
 excarnate beings. A more appropriate name for them 
 would have been Psychonomists, a term fitly applied to 
 those making a scientific study of the principles of mental 
 action between incarnate and excarnate beings. 
 
 The simple fact that one being has a denser armor 
 or instrument (such as man's physical body), and an- 
 other being a more ethereal one called spirit, is of no 
 particular consequence to those who are studying the 
 science of mental action between incarnate and excarnate 
 beings, or between one unit of mind and another, regard- 
 less of the character of the embodiment of the minds in 
 communication. 
 
 Study of the law of mental action between beings in 
 different states of embodiment in no wise constitutes a 
 religion, as some would have us believe, any more than 
 it would be called a religion to study the customs and 
 laws of the Eskimo tribes or of the inhabitants of the 
 Fiji Islands. 
 
 28 
 
The Study of Psychonomy and Psychogeny 29 
 
 Mind is a unit of consciousness in Nature, and its 
 armor or instrument we call spirit. When the spirit in- 
 carnates in a corporeal form like the human body, the 
 phenomenon is called man, but man is only a manifesta- 
 tion existing for a time in a phenomenal environment 
 or world. 
 
 Mind, or spirit, is the only creative power in Nature, 
 and by desire and thought, in a sequence of many creative 
 efforts, it evolves to larger and higher planes of creative 
 consciousness. 
 
 The organism or phenomenon called man is composed 
 of an aggregation of sentient entities, which are the 
 incarnated being's servitors, regulating and sustaining 
 the functions of the mortal body. 
 
 All the phenomena of Nature are due to the action 
 of mind, or spirit, and psychonomists are students of 
 the law of mental action of all living beings manifest- 
 ing in the incarnate and the excarnate expressions of 
 life. 
 
 Nature has no secrets, nothing hidden; everything is 
 objective to those whose spirit senses are well developed 
 or unfolded while they are yet in the incarnate mani- 
 festation. Every mind unit in the incarnate as well as 
 the excarnate expression of life manifests its creative 
 desires and hopes, or rather the story of its place in 
 Nature. All living beings can tell you their incarnated 
 life-story before the psychic entity, or being, is afforded 
 an opportunity to incarnate in our phenomenal world. 
 
 If you want joy, grandeur, beauty, and knowledge 
 added to your being, then study psychonomy and 
 psychogeny. He who becomes acquainted more and 
 more fully with his environment becomes acquainted in 
 the same increasing measure with the God within and 
 without himself. 
 
30 Man: Whence and Whither? 
 
 Man possesses in his unenlightened state nothing more 
 than the five physical senses, which he has in common 
 with most other living things that environ him. All 
 these creatures perform the functions of incarnate life 
 in a manner similar or analogous to that of man. They 
 incarnate under the same mental law as man, and also 
 excarnate similarly. 
 
 One wrong thought, one wrong idea, can hold a mind 
 a prisoner or a vassal for countless years, if that mind 
 does not awaken to its error. Who will be so foolish as 
 to put limitations on mind? And who but the ignorant 
 will imprison it for an indefinite period through error 
 or lack of judgment? 
 
 Who ever mastered the science of mathematics except 
 by training the mind to follow its laws from the easiest 
 to the most difficult problem? You have to master the 
 problems of mathematics yourself by thinking; and by 
 desire and incessant thinking you open the way to an 
 understanding of the science. As Euclid is reported to 
 have said to Ptolemy I., there is no royal road to such 
 attainment. 
 
 Every branch of learning demands just so much con- 
 stant, serious thought before you can master it to the 
 degree that it becomes a part of yourself. Unremitting 
 effort is required if you would attain oneness with the 
 laws of mathematics or with those underlying any other 
 problem of life. You have to open your mind to the 
 study of psychonomy and psychogeny as you do to the 
 study of mathematics. Intense desire to know becomes 
 a thought incubator that generates new ideas and creative 
 efforts in any being. 
 
 Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise 
 From outward things, whate'er you may believe. 
 
The Study of Psychonomy and Psychogeny 31 
 
 There is an inmost center in us all, 
 Where truth abides in fullness; and around, 
 Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, 
 This perfect clear perception — which is truth. 
 A baffling and perverting carnal mesh 
 Binds it, and makes all error : and to know 
 Rather consists in opening out a way 
 Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, 
 Than in effecting entry for a light 
 Supposed to be without. 
 
 — Browning: Paracelsus. 
 
 Sevenfold we weave the measure 
 
 In this dance of Life; 
 Sevenfold the bounds of pleasure, 
 Sevenfold the pangs we treasure, 
 
 In this deathly strife: 
 Coming, going, 
 Ebbing, flowing, 
 Flotsam, jetsam, never knowing 
 On what shore the tide shall toss us, 
 Nor the heart-break that shall cross us. 
 
 Clinging to the knife that slays us, 
 
 Seeking still the knout that flays us, 
 
 To the sword forever clinging, 
 
 Hugging close the nettle stinging ; 
 Tears and laughter, smiles and frowns, 
 Bearing crosses, wearing crowns, 
 Falling low while looking high, 
 Daily passing Wisdom by, 
 
 Till we find the hidden goal 
 
 Here at home, within our Soul. 
 
 — E. B. P. 
 
 Your mind is your microcosm, and you are the sole 
 inhabitant. How intensely are you going to desire know- 
 
32 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 ledge? How earnestly are you going to think, that you 
 may normally unfold the limitless God-given powers in 
 your possession? No one can do it for you. You must 
 solve the psychophysical mathematical problem yourself. 
 When you pay the price the attainment is yours. You 
 have within the essence of your mind now all that is 
 coming to you in eternity. Realize the wealth, there- 
 fore, as fast as you can. With inconceivable, boundless 
 creative powers already within his mind, awaiting ex- 
 pression, how long — oh, how long — is the spirit of man 
 going to be content with the information gained through 
 the five physical senses, as are the lower animals that 
 environ him? 
 
 Through the long process of integration and disin- 
 tegration the mind with its creative powers continued to 
 evolve as a result of the urge and push of innate desire 
 and thought, and ultimately the archetypal form of spirit 
 was unable to manifest itself in a form fashioned in 
 the image and after the likeness of God. The long 
 incubation of spirit in Nature's Cosmic School finally 
 evolved the phenomenon called man. We know some- 
 thing about man's history down to the present day, and 
 this enables us to realize that he is still a pupil in 
 Nature's Cosmic School of construction and destruction, 
 but that his spirit is making efforts to emancipate itself. 
 
 Many of the earth's peoples are hoping and patiently 
 praying for the coming of a Prophet: a personage with 
 enduring ideals for the betterment of mankind and of 
 human life; one with a vision as to how to do away 
 with the destructive impulses and activities of man; one 
 who will give them knowledge regarding the normal un- 
 foldment of the godlike power within themselves; one 
 who will establish interracial unity in consequence of 
 right thinking and nobility of character, thought, and 
 
The Study of Psychonomy and Psychogeny 33 
 
 action; one who will make plain the laws governing all 
 the mental actions of an individual that tend toward 
 good. 
 
 The sincere and patient study of psychonomy and 
 phychogeny will help to develop the potential creative 
 powers of the mind until the incarnate spirit of man 
 can command his five immortal avenues of information, 
 thus becoming able to view through the spirit senses the 
 ovate zones that environ him, while still able, as now, 
 to contact the phenomenal world through his mortal, 
 or physical, senses. 
 
 You have to master the problems of mathematics, as 
 already stated; otherwise the science will not be of 
 much service to you. In the same manner you must 
 master the problems of mental action step by step, and 
 through the process of serious thinking gradually increase 
 your powers as you enlarge the bounds of your know- 
 ledge and attain correspondingly higher planes of con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Spirit-man must become familiar with the mental 
 action between the incarnated instrument and that of 
 the immortal mind operating on its mortal replica, or 
 personality — namely, the phenomenon called man — and 
 must learn how the uncreated mind conveys its sen- 
 sations, emotions, and desires normally through its mask 
 and thus communicates with its environment. 
 
 But few individuals have acquired the capacity to 
 silence the mortal psychical organism and let the real 
 self — the immortal ego — function normally through its 
 replica and armor. When one realizes this functioning, 
 he has discovered his immortal self. He has awakened 
 to the call of the God within him. Emerson rightly says : 
 "A man passes for what he is worth. What he is, 
 engraves itself on his face, on his form, on his fortunes, 
 
34 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 in letters of light which all men may read but himself. 
 Concealment avails him nothing. There is confession 
 in the glances of our eyes, in our smiles, in salutations, 
 and the grasp of hands." 
 
 "All that thou hast thought, 
 All that thou hast felt, 
 All that thou hast said and done unto others, 
 That art thou, and thou art that." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The first active desire of a spirit to create marks 
 its beginning as a factor and a recipient in an incarnate 
 world. At the time when mind, or spirit, began to 
 manifest its involved attributes and apply its creative 
 power, the phenomenon of incarnation occurred; and 
 during the eons spent in labor and thought a planet was 
 evolved with numberless types of living things, among 
 which man, the latest to be developed, is mentally and 
 physically the highest and most complex, being fashioned 
 in the image of the archetypal form of spirit. 
 
 In the beginning of the phenomenon of the accretive 
 embodiment of spirit, the result was the simplest form 
 of creative effort and incarnate existence. However 
 simple the embodiment, it possessed needs, wants, and 
 desires, and to satisfy them it had to struggle and con- 
 tend with its environment, so that labor and thought 
 on its part were required for the maintenance of its 
 earthly expression. 
 
 Through forced and incessant labor and thought in 
 the incarnate and excarnate phases of life in Nature's 
 Cosmic School, spirit thus accumulated experience and 
 knowledge through the law of the integration and dis- 
 integration, or life and death, of its created phenomenon; 
 and the continuance of this process, cycle after cycle, 
 for vast periods enabled spirits to evolve our phenomenal 
 incarnate world. 
 
 35 
 
36 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 From the beginning to the end of the seven stages in 
 the process of the world's formation, during which it 
 was being fitted to be a habitation for spirit incarnate 
 in the form of man, an immense amount of labor and 
 thought had to be expended and much experience and 
 knowledge acquired by the spirit before the phenomenon 
 called man could be manifested. 
 
 One might think that Nature's Cosmic School was 
 very liberal with its educational favors in permitting a 
 spirit to take on a form called man and yet allowing it 
 to retain all its ancestral animalistic traits and habits 
 of mind, such as man exhibits today. Since spirit has 
 so recently emerged from the lower conscious planes of 
 incarnated beings, spirit-man naturally retains his acquired 
 animalistic mind-traits, and mentally he yet resembles all 
 the incarnate creatures that environ him and is wholly 
 dependent on his five physical senses for information, 
 as are all living creatures in the lower mind grades of 
 Nature's Cosmic School. 
 
 Spirit-man escapes from the gestative imprisonment 
 in his mother's womb to find himself a helpless being 
 dependent upon the care and bounty of others. If he 
 escapes the many fatal diseases incident to infancy, child- 
 hood, and youth, he becomes as a rule an intractable, 
 headstrong, unthinking stripling, expressing many or all 
 of the animalistic traits of mind; and as physical man- 
 hood develops he usually becomes an intellectual tyke — 
 neither an animal nor a human being in specific mental 
 and physical characteristics. He is yet a prisoner in 
 Nature's merciless Cosmic School, and will be forced by 
 the innate law of mental action within him to think and 
 work normally in order to extricate himself from the 
 accumulated debris of his past abnormal creations. 
 
 In this school of creative thought and labor one must 
 
The Spirit's Need of Physical Endeavor 37 
 
 of necessity choose between right and wrong creative 
 efforts, and in that choice lies one's potential creative 
 destiny. 
 
 Over the portal of Nature's Cosmic School of 
 Psychonomy and Psychogeny are inscribed these words : 
 
 INCARNATE AND EXCARNATE BEINGS MUST CON- 
 STANTLY THINK AND LABOR NORMALLY. 
 
 It required many millions of years for a being in 
 Nature's Cosmic School of mind, contending constantly 
 with countless obstacles and surmounting them by means 
 of incessant labor and thought, to unfold the innate 
 creative power sufficiently to incarnate in the most 
 efficient bodily instrument we call man, who made his 
 appearance upon the earth as a savage hundreds of 
 thousands of years ago and still exists on the planet in 
 great numbers in fulfilment of an evolutionary purpose. 
 
 Through perhaps two or three hundred million years 
 spirit has struggled, labored, and thought in contending 
 with the phenomena called birth, existence, and death; 
 and it has thus acquired the ability to incarnate in a 
 replica called man — a great upward step in physical evolu- 
 tion made possible by the development gained in the 
 struggle necessary to sustain itself in each of its count- 
 less incarnate efforts in the past. 
 
 The history of the evolution of the mental attributes 
 of the being called man from the first beginnings down 
 to the present day is not very complimentary to him, 
 and he is yet confined in Nature's cosmic incubator and 
 must labor and suffer poverty, sin, sorrow, worry, dis- 
 ease, and death — all in consequence of failure to think 
 and create normally. Inherent in the mind of man is 
 the law governing the mental attributes that must be 
 evolved by right thinking and right conduct in Nature's 
 
38 Man : Whence and Whither ? 
 
 Cosmic School, which relentlessly, without pity or love, 
 compels a being to abide by the consequences of its 
 mental habits. 
 
 The law of conduct is within the mind, and no one 
 but the individual himself can solve the problem or 
 work it out. As long as he depends wholly on foreign 
 aid, the creative power of the mind remains inactive and 
 he becomes a sniveler full of fear and woes, with his 
 prayers unanswered. Nature's Cosmic School has no 
 love, no mercy, no patience, no ear for supplication, no 
 hand extended to save. It demands of its factors and 
 recipients continuous working and thinking along the 
 normal course of mind unfoldment, which creates happi- 
 ness, joy, contentment, and tranquillity of mind, in con- 
 sequence of the fact that the individual has found his 
 place in the macrocosm and will work, think, and create 
 normally in accordance with the dictates of an awakened 
 intelligence. 
 
 One should take delight in whatever labor one finds 
 to do, and do it honestly, carefully, and in the most 
 up-to-date way; for in so doing one develops creative 
 ability, which, constantly exercised, will transform the 
 animal-minded man into a really noble-minded one who 
 loves to work in the most skillful manner, and who in 
 so doing is in reality working out his own potential 
 destiny and divinity. 
 
 It should be one's aim to do whatever the mind and 
 hands find to do in the right way (the best possible 
 way), with a consciousness that no one could do it better 
 under the circumstances. An individual who has reached 
 the stage of consciousness in which he puts his very soul 
 (or mind) into everything that he does, necessarily and 
 inevitably performs progressive, creative mental work 
 and unfolds more and more of the still latent power of 
 
The Spirit's Need of Physical Endeavor 39 
 
 mind. All that any spiritual being has acquired on its 
 long journey of mind evolution has been gained in con- 
 sequence of compulsory labor and thought in Nature's 
 Cosmic School of creation and destruction, in which the 
 mind is taught to create in a better and nobler way. 
 On every hand it had to contend with seemingly insur- 
 mountable obstacles, and in so doing it acquired increased 
 creative powers for self-preservation and greater mental 
 alertness and bodily strength. The individual who feels 
 no happiness, no joy, and no satisfaction in active thought 
 and labor for himself, and more particularly for others, 
 has no purpose in existence, but is simply drifting on 
 the ocean of mind as an aimless thing, trying to get all 
 he can for the least possible return on his part, thus 
 cheating himself out of an opportunity to develop the 
 innate, potential, creative power within himself. He is 
 simply a thief who takes the created product of another 
 and at the same time steals from himself the ability to 
 produce what he needs and desires. 
 
 We can readily understand why Nature compels spirit- 
 man to earn his bread "by the sweat of his brow." The 
 effort thus put forth tames the animal nature and tends 
 to make man acquire concentration of mind and the 
 ability to think intelligently, so that he can gain know- 
 ledge and accumulate experience, and thus unfold the 
 godlike creative powers of his mind. By constantly and 
 normally developing these latent powers, spirit-man gains 
 larger use of his five physical senses, so that he is able 
 to perceive and comprehend the phenomena of life on 
 the excarnate plane of spirit existence as well as obtain 
 a more accurate knowledge of the phenomena of his 
 incarnate existence and environment. How long will 
 unthinking, uncreating, and undeveloped spirit-man be 
 content with the limited view of phenomena that his 
 
40 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 animalistic senses afford him — a range of perception 
 that he shares with the swimming, creeping, crawling, 
 quadrupedal, and flying creatures that also 'inhabit the 
 earth for a presumably good purpose? 
 
 Man now exists in the midst of his own abnormal 
 creations, and through his needs, wants, and desires he 
 continues to create wrongly ; therefore sin, sorrow, worry, 
 poverty, sickness, and death — his own creations — beset 
 and afflict him. 
 
 We may, then, formulate three propositions in rela- 
 tion to the subject in hand: (i) that the mental con- 
 cept of a spirit that has created the phenomenon called 
 man is to make a distinction between itself and its 
 creation; (2) that the incarnate form is only an accretive, 
 protective armor and an instrument through which the 
 spirit gains knowledge and experience; and (3) that it 
 is essential that the incarnate instrument receive the best 
 of care, so that it will be capable of responding to every 
 normal demand of the spirit within its created person- 
 ality. When this knowledge has been attained, man 
 can be said to have found himself and to have become 
 initiated into a larger and a holier creative life. 
 
 Nature's universal incubator never intended that the 
 brood called man should remain confined in the cosmic 
 hatchery. It sends him forth, like a chick from its 
 broken shell, into a denser phenomenal world to work 
 out his destiny by incessantly thinking and laboring, thus 
 preventing mental and bodily stasis, or stagnation, which 
 would speedily result in mental autotoxemia of the 
 organism and ultimately lead to the extinction of the 
 individual man and of whatever degree of civilization 
 he might have attained. 
 
 Constant normal labor of mind and body creates self- 
 confidence and begets resourcefulness, the instigator of 
 
The Spirit's Need of Physical Endeavor 41 
 
 new creative thought and energy that knows no failure. 
 No kind of labor seems menial to the mind that puts its 
 soul into its work. Concentration of mind can be well 
 developed while one is engaged in manual labor or other 
 tasks, and the faculty so acquired can be exercised fur- 
 ther in creative and constructive thought during hours 
 of rest and refreshment. The ox, the horse, the elephant, 
 and even many men labor with little or no thought; 
 hence they show little progressive development of mind. 
 Nature exacts normal mental and bodily labor daily, with- 
 out hint of a shirk or a quirk, as the price that all man- 
 kind must pay for their daily training in preparation 
 for their birthright of creative efficiency. 
 
 Like many of the lower animals, most human beings 
 today possess many good qualities for the existence of 
 which they can give no definite, sensible reason. If they 
 could be made acquainted with the natural law of mind 
 action and its means of unfoldment, they would gladly 
 embrace the opportunity that such knowledge affords. 
 They are hungry and thirsty, mentally starving for lack 
 of knowledge of the innate law of their being; but as 
 long as the blind continue to lead the blind, mankind will 
 cry aloud for a savior, now as in ages past, to lead 
 them out of their present bedlam into freedom, and to 
 show them how to change the moral and religious fabric 
 of the social order and "remake this sorry scheme of 
 things entire." 
 
 There must be — nay, there is — a way out of the moral, 
 religious, and social disorders of the world that try and 
 vex the spirit of our race. It will be found when man 
 arrives at a proper understanding of the whence, why, 
 and whither of his being. Then he will know and 
 realize the joy of creative thought, and labor to unfold 
 his godlike potentialities; and when that is attained the 
 
42 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 dawn of the millennium will shed its benign radiance 
 over a transfigured and ennobled humanity. 
 
 We may fittingly conclude the present chapter with the 
 following splendid words of James Allen : 
 
 "You will realize the Vision (not the idle wish) of your 
 heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both, for you 
 will always gravitate toward that which you, secretly, must 
 love. Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your 
 own thoughts; you will receive that which you earn; no 
 more, no less. Whatever your present environment may be, 
 you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your Vision, 
 your Ideal. You will become as small as your controlling 
 desire; as great as your dominant aspiration." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 UNFOLDMENT AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 Within the mind of spirit-man there should arise 
 higher and nobler needs, wants, and desires for things 
 that have not yet been attained, but are attainable through 
 the mind's continuous creative efforts. For those who 
 will give attention to what the spirit-mind sends forth 
 in the way of promptings and mental impulses, and will 
 heed them, entertain them, and energize them by con- 
 stant attention and thinking and doing, the five mortal 
 senses will respond to the creative demand of the spirit- 
 mind of the individual. 
 
 Without fail, demonstration and realization must fol- 
 low the demands of a dominant mind, and what was 
 unrecognized by the physical senses will become recog- 
 nizable through them. If one really and truly desires 
 to see, feel, hear, and know more about the phenomena 
 of the incarnate and excarnate planes of the world that 
 environs him, and if he will exert his creative powers 
 through constructive thought and conduct, then larger 
 powers of perception and more extended use of his 
 physical senses will be attained and the individual will 
 be enabled to cognize the phenomena of incarnate and 
 excarnate life that environ him, as well as those on 
 other planes of existence. 
 
 A being in the incarnate or excarnate state of mani- 
 festation, when he becomes capable of seeing psychically 
 the phenomena of Nature and understanding them, is 
 
 43 
 
44 Man: Whence and Whither? 
 
 better able to arrive at accurate knowledge regarding 
 the phenomenon called man and his environment. 
 
 Spirit-man's animalistic senses and the various organs 
 of his body are of no greater use to him than his mind 
 demands. The mind of a spirit created its incarnate 
 organs, or body, and that which it created it can trans- 
 form through continued training into a state of greater 
 usefulness. It is this principle that renders progressive 
 development possible. 
 
 When spirit-man, whether incarnate or excarnate, 
 ceases to think earnestly and to labor to know more, 
 retrogression of the mental powers takes place, accom- 
 panied by a return to savage existence. Or if he becomes 
 embalmed mentally with self-satisfaction at what he 
 already knows, he becomes stunted and remains a medi- 
 ocre unit in the macrocosm until some mental cataclysm 
 overtakes him. The potential creative power of his mind 
 remains dormant and unprogressive, and he becomes 
 mentally torpid, like the domestic and wild creatures that 
 environ him. If one is going to get anywhere, the 
 mental urge and push must be incessant; otherwise stag- 
 nation and disintegration will take place. 
 
 As a rule, the incarnate spirit called man remains a 
 headstrong, thoughtless, abnormal creature in the kinder- 
 garten of Nature's Cosmic School until twenty or more 
 years have passed, whereupon his tendency is to assume 
 the animal habits and customs of his thoughtless ances- 
 tors, as do all incarnate living things that are his earthly 
 companions and have a language of their own that man 
 knows not. The spirit of the man who is not yet 
 awakened to his limitless creative powers of mind is 
 still functioning on the animal mind plane. He has eyes, 
 yet sees not; he has ears, yet hears not — simply because 
 the mind has not gained adequate command over the 
 
Unfoldment and Environment 45 
 
 organs of perception, his five physical senses, so that 
 they are practically useless to him as a means of obtain- 
 ing further information regarding his environment. 
 
 The mind of a spirit-being, whether in the incarnate 
 or the excarnate state, functioning on the animal plane 
 with its limited physical senses, cannot for a moment 
 perceive or comprehend that the individual exists within 
 the body of a planet, rather than on its outer surface. 
 That which his limited spirit-mind, through the five 
 senses that are atrophied from lack of use, conceives to 
 be empty space is in reality the interior of a planet filled 
 with elements and living things presenting phenomena 
 similar to those on the mundane plane of existence, but 
 in a more ethereal expression and manifestation of spirit. 
 
 Spirit is a psychophysical organism (and so is spirit 
 when incarnate in the form called man), and it requires 
 a psychophysical environment not greatly unlike that of 
 those who incarnate in a denser state and are known as 
 man. If man's mind is sufficiently developed psychically, 
 he is able to observe through his bodily senses the phe- 
 nomena of spirit and its environment in the ovate zone 
 that envelops all living things on our plane of action. 
 That which the undeveloped spirit-mind and its mortal 
 senses perceive as solid earth has capsules, planes, or 
 zones, which constitute Nature's incubators for the devel- 
 opment of spirit and the unfolding of its latent powers. 
 
 Nature is a graded cosmic school for the unfolding 
 of the innate law and creative power of mind. The earth 
 and its ovate capsules, planes, or zones are only so many 
 varied and adaptable mind incubators that will eventually 
 hatch out, let us hope, a spirit-mind that can incarnate 
 as man, not only in the image but also in the mental 
 likeness of God. A being who has learned that normal 
 mind-creation, by means of a continuous sequence of 
 
46 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 thoughts and acts, is a necessity if development is to 
 continue, has found the way of life in his own organism. 
 
 The earth and its ovate zones, or incubators, are so 
 joined, interwoven, and blended that the incarnate and 
 excarnate beings on the excursion of life always find, 
 in each successive state, an environment appropriate to 
 their stage of mind unfoldment. What is called space 
 is much like what is called solid, in the sight of a person 
 who possesses enough psychic development to perceive 
 that there are not two extremes — solids and empty space 
 — in the phenomena of the earth, although they may be 
 so conceived by the undeveloped mind of either an in- 
 carnate or an excarnate being. 
 
 The difference between these two supposed extremes 
 lies only in the degree of density corresponding to the 
 development of the inhabitants, their environment being 
 densest at the central core and becoming progressively 
 more ethereal as the outer capsules, planes, or zones of 
 manifestation are attained. From the center of the earth 
 to its outermost regions, or zones, there is one con- 
 tinuous gradation of habitable regions, with all the 
 psychophysical conditions essential to the various degrees 
 of evolved mind and to the needs of a being that is 
 mentally coming to be more and more nearly in the like- 
 ness of God. 
 
 On the mundane plane of denser world-stuff a spirit- 
 being incarnates and is called man. Deep down at the 
 innermost region of the ovate zones he exists as an 
 undeveloped cosmic being whose primitive mind and 
 physical senses barely afford him means of providing for 
 his bodily necessities, as he moves about in so-called 
 empty space, nearly as ignorant as the less evolved crea- 
 tures, which are busy with their affairs of life like their 
 fellow-creature, man. 
 
Unfoldment and Environment 47 
 
 Those who by thought and act have evolved and con- 
 tinue to evolve the limitless, innate, creative power of 
 their minds are able to observe the phenomena that exist 
 and take place in what is called space, and can see its 
 inhabitants and communicate with them, as well as 
 observe their psychophysical environment of land, water, 
 forests, vegetation, birds, animals, and the like, quite 
 similar to the so-called mundane plane inhabited by the 
 primitive being called man. Nature does not thrust its 
 dependents from its Cosmic School, or incubator, into 
 empty space or into an incompatible environment, but 
 gradually transfers them, as their individual unfoldment 
 renders it possible and advisable, from one mind-incu- 
 bator department, or conscious plane, to another, to which 
 all their good mental belongings carried over from the 
 past, as well as all that has been loved and remembered, 
 may be brought along if so desired. All progress waits 
 on normal desire, and requires the will and determina- 
 tion to act without ceasing; the lack of these means 
 retrogression and a return to savagery. 
 
 We have discovered that so-called space and solids 
 are not so dissimilar as our animalistic mind and senses 
 report to us. There is really no division into space and 
 solids, but rather one mass or aggregation of psycho- 
 physical world-material that is capable of instantly re- 
 sponding to every action of mind. By way of illustra- 
 tion, I shall liken what is known as space and solids to 
 a world of more or less dense smoke-cumuli, filled with 
 a fog or haze of fluffy, flocculent sentient things or sub- 
 stances extending in every direction, which offer no 
 obstruction to the sight or to the passage of excarnate 
 beings, and yet afford an environment that is more or 
 less a counterpart of the environment that the incarnate 
 and excarnate spirits possess on the so-called mundane 
 
48 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 plane of the great Cosmic School. (The reader should 
 bear in mind that all is mind, or spirit, and that it is 
 only a question of a little greater or less density of 
 aggregation of the sentient units that differentiates the 
 various graded capsules, planes, or zones that constitute 
 our planet.) 
 
 Involved in the essence of mind are the law and the 
 creative power, and what is involved naturally requires 
 long and tedious mental processes, accompanied with 
 error, for its evolution and complete expression. Inte- 
 gration and disintegration, or life and death, are only the 
 phenomena attending the creative law of mental pro- 
 gress toward the goal where the being becomes a law 
 unto itself and dominates its environment, being thus 
 enabled to evolve still further the limitless potentiality of 
 mind. 
 
 The innate law of the mind and its creative power 
 make its possessor responsible for the right or wrong 
 creative use of it. The mass of flocculent cumuli of 
 constructive spirit-material readily makes manifest objec- 
 tively, and thus depicts minutely, the mind's creations of 
 both uttered and unuttered thought. Every element in 
 Nature and the mind-action of every living thing are 
 manifested objectively in the sentient plastic mass of 
 world-stuff that can be seen and handled. The little unit 
 of mind encased in a pink seed thus tells its story before 
 it has an opportunity to incarnate in a denser form (by 
 producing its stem, branches, leaves, and flowers) to 
 please the undeveloped mind and senses of the less 
 advanced children of Nature, thus doing its mite in 
 helping to fill so-called space. Likewise every living thing, 
 however tiny or large, tells its mind-story in its own 
 manner; hence there is no space so empty and no solid 
 so dense that it cannot reveal its place and function in 
 
Unfoldment and Environment 49 
 
 Nature and yet afford no obstruction to sight or to 
 excarnate moving things. 
 
 Life is beautiful, grand, glorious, and full of joy to 
 those who comprehend the purpose of Nature's Cosmic 
 School, which exists primarily for the purpose of unfold- 
 ing the godlike attributes of the mind of the spirit being 
 incarnated in a replica called man. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMMORTAL SENSES 
 
 On the mundane plane of existence the armor and 
 instrument, or the replica, of an incarnated spirit in its 
 archetypal form is called man, and, in common with 
 most living things in the earth, on the land, in the 
 waters of the earth, and in the air, he is endowed with 
 physical senses. 
 
 Nature forces spirit-man to struggle for existence with 
 the elements that environ him, and also to labor to 
 obtain his material necessities and to provide for the 
 care of his offspring. In like manner Nature impels the 
 insects, the ox, the horse, and all other forms of incarnate 
 life that dwell upon our planet. 
 
 Man beholds the phenomena of life and death, and so 
 do all the incarnate beings that are below him in degree 
 of unfoldment of mental attributes. He does not know 
 the cause or the purpose of the phenomena of life and 
 death; neither does the fowl, the calf, or the pig he 
 rears to kill. 
 
 Every living thing that swims, flies, creeps, crawls, 
 or walks on all fours is instinctively afraid of man. Man 
 is still so content with the information obtained through 
 his animalistic senses that he, not the lion, deserves to 
 be called the king of beasts. He is the arch-destroyer 
 of his own species. 
 
 Like the quadrupeds and other incarnate creatures, 
 man is physically and mentally very lazy and does not 
 
 50 
 
Development of the Immortal Senses 51 
 
 care to think; hence Nature has taken good care not to 
 coddle him in the lap of plenty, but has forced him 
 laboriously to seek food, water, clothing, and shelter, to 
 contend with numerous diseases as well as with the 
 destructive action of the elements, and to live in terror 
 of his fellow-men and of ferocious animals. 
 
 In every conceivable form and manner Nature has 
 placed obstacles in man's path and provided destructive 
 forces for spirit-man to struggle with, thus calling forth 
 the creative thought latent within his mind. The history 
 of the civilization of man and of the evolution of his 
 mind from the earliest beginnings down to the present 
 time is a continuous record of his struggles, losses, and 
 gains — all for the purpose of compelling him to think 
 more and to labor harder to prevent horrible catastrophes 
 (such as the recent World War) — catastrophes that are 
 due entirely to the animalistic mind and senses that still 
 dominate spirit-man. 
 
 Spirit-man, like all other incarnated creatures that 
 inhabit the land, the water, and the air, observes and 
 comprehends but little of the earth's phenomena. He, 
 like the other creatures of our plane, feels heat and cold 
 and the moving air, observes the rain and the lightning- 
 flash, and beholds the "solid wrinkled earth" and the 
 canopy of heaven that covers him like a bowl, under 
 which he moves about at will; but here his powers of 
 observation seemingly come to an end. 
 
 Spirit-man must be made aware of the present limita- 
 tions of his mind and of his five physical senses. The 
 five mortal senses of spirit-man will not and cannot 
 report to the mind what the mind does not want or is 
 totally ignorant of. They are merely servants of the 
 mind, which they supply with no more information than 
 it demands or desires to obtain. 
 
52 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 Involved in the mind of a being garbed in the replica 
 called man are limitless possibilities, whether he be in 
 an incarnate or excarnate state of existence. A being 
 incarnated as man should not be content with the char- 
 acteristics of his animal consciousness and with similar 
 avenues of information regarding his environment. Ants, 
 roaches, and bees have no more use of their senses than 
 their minds will permit; neither can spirit-man have any 
 more use of his sense-avenues of information than the 
 degree of unfoldment of his mind makes possible. 
 
 The five physical senses are only instruments of the 
 mind, like the arms, legs, wings, and vital organs of all 
 incarnate and excarnate creatures that participate in the 
 phenomena of Nature. By unfolding his mind through 
 constant desire and consecutive thinking, spirit-man will 
 gain higher and higher planes of consciousness through 
 the response of his avenues of information to the demands 
 of his mind — similar to the response of other organs of 
 his body under the process of long training. Spirit-man's 
 mind, through its constant and intense desire to know 
 and to understand, does not evolve additional senses, but 
 simply makes better, or higher, normal use of the five 
 senses he already possesses. 
 
 The past history of man and his present sad condition 
 physically and mentally cause him to long, hope, and 
 pray for something better. He has mentally wandered 
 far afield, feeding his mind on husks in the land of 
 Mammon and thus retaining all his animal attributes. 
 He lives in a spiritual land of boundless plenty and 
 knows it not; but now the people of the earth are yearn- 
 ing for some one to show them the way out of the plane 
 of Mammon's consciousness into that of the Brother- 
 hood of Man and the Fatherhood of God. 
 
 Spirit-man has dug and bored into the bowels of the 
 
Development of the Immortal Senses 53 
 
 earth and searched the depths of the ocean to find wealth, 
 happiness, joy, and peace of mind, all the time waging 
 fierce mental and physical combats with his fellow-beings, 
 thus playing the part of an untrained and boisterous 
 pupil in Nature's Cosmic School until he can become a 
 law unto himself. 
 
 In the course of long periods of time, the spirit of 
 man finds itself on the mundane plane for a compara- 
 tively short while for the purpose of developing and un- 
 folding the limitless innate creative power and lav/ of 
 his mind, thereby learning in a normal way in Na- 
 ture's Cosmic School to become more and more in unity 
 with his inner divine self, his fellow-man, and his en- 
 vironment. 
 
 Spirit-man need not hope, pray, or wait for some 
 one to force happiness, joy, and peace of mind upon him, 
 for the desired result cannot come in that way. All that 
 spirit-man desires is inherent in his own mind, but it 
 must be cultivated and unfolded by normal thinking and 
 conduct. No one can inject the blessings we have 
 enumerated into the mind of a lion, a tiger, or an ele- 
 phant, or, as already stated, even into spirit-man, as long 
 as he remains in his animal consciousness. 
 
 There is nothing in the earth, or upon it, or in the 
 heavens above, that mind has not created or evolved, 
 and the phenomena merely wait for a mind prepared to 
 receive them. What your mind is prepared to receive 
 you have already acquired. Do not retain and hoard 
 that which your mind has obtained, but release it like 
 water flowing from a spring, and forge on in your 
 mind's excursion for newer, better, and richer discover- 
 ies, that you may thereby enlarge your mental domain. 
 One desire should be paramount in your mind, and 
 should direct all its acquirements; namely, the desire to 
 
54 Man: Whence and Whither? 
 
 obtain knowledge and wisdom that you may know God, 
 yourself, your fellow-man, and all living things, incarnate 
 or excarnate, in Nature. 
 
 Spirit incarnated in the personality or instrument called 
 man should as speedily as possible acquire the ability to 
 use its mask normally, and, as it were, double the func- 
 tions of its five physical senses and become able to per- 
 ceive the phenomena of excarnate life as well as those 
 of incarnate existence. The five mortal senses can- 
 not convey a whit more to the mind than it is able to 
 conceive or desires to know. 
 
 The mind of spirit-man constantly requires new and 
 fresh thought-soil from which to take mental food for 
 further growth or unfoldment. Spirit incarnated in a 
 vegetable form is wholly dependent on the soil and the 
 other elements of its environment for continued growth. 
 Spirit-man is a vegetable organism that is capable of 
 finding new mental soil or environment if prompted by 
 desire. If not pushed by desire and an urge to know 
 more, the mind becomes a prisoner in the permanent 
 mental soil of self-satisfaction and ceases to evolve its 
 creative possibilities in accordance with the principles 
 inherent in its being. 
 
 The mind of spirit-man should avoid becoming pris- 
 oner to a dominant idea. This condition is usually 
 brought about as a result of spirit-man's uniting in a 
 cause for the sake of effectiveness, this developing into 
 self-protectiveness and then petrifying into obstructive- 
 ness to the mental progress of mankind. For political 
 and religious liberty the mind of spirit-man has been in 
 a constant struggle from the dawn of his existence on 
 earth down to the present time. 
 
 Over the portals of all our educational institutions 
 should be inscribed the following maxim : 
 
Development of the Immortal Senses 55 
 
 HINDER NONE AND HELP ALL. 
 
 Mankind is greatly in need of teachers and schools 
 devoted to the subject of Psychonomy, that it may learn 
 the principles of the law of mental action between in- 
 carnate and excarnate beings and also the power of 
 thought over environment. Spirit-man must learn how 
 to silence his physical instrument, so that, after many 
 efforts repeated over a long period of time, the immortal 
 mind may command to the fullest extent the normal 
 use of that instrument and its organs. When the mind 
 of a spirit in the incarnate or excarnate state of existence 
 awakens to its innate creative power, the words cannot, 
 impossible, and doubt will vanish from its lexicon and 
 cease to confine it within narrow bounds. A person may 
 be unconscious of the possession of one or more phases 
 of psychic power, or even when conscious of it may 
 neglect to unfold his latent ability and thus retard devel- 
 opment of the mind indefinitely. 
 
 Is It Worth While 
 
 for a spirit in its incarnate form to acquire the ability 
 to communicate with an excarnate spirit; to hear words 
 of love, advice, and admonition; to feel the touch of 
 the dear ones who have laid aside the mortal body and 
 to know they are near; to know (rather than to have 
 faith or even to doubt) that life is continuous; to know 
 that life has a real and noble purpose and is worth living; 
 to realize that excarnate spirits know your every thought ; 
 to realize that they visit, dine, and hold receptions in 
 your home; to see your home filled with beautiful plants, 
 trees, and flowers and smell their varied perfumes; to 
 see spirits traveling through so-called space on horse- 
 back, in wheeled vehicles, or in ships; to see spirits, far 
 above the clouds, plunging through so-called space carry- 
 
56 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 ing an American flag on a pole and clearly displaying 
 all its colors; to see ethereal vehicles beautifully illumi- 
 nated as though by the scintillation of diamonds; to see 
 ethereal forms with indescribable brilliants here and there 
 on their bodies illuminating vast areas; to visualize the 
 realms of the gods and goddesses who have graduated 
 from the Cosmic School; to see spirits descend and 
 reascend into the heavens on balconies held together by 
 strong ropes; to see the manifestation of printed pages, 
 as of a book or newspaper, and to realize the astounding 
 degree of mental concentration required to hold the 
 words and lines so very accurate and so clearly percepti- 
 ble; to observe the beginning and completion of a world; 
 to see the inhabitants of the interior of this planet; to 
 read the life-story of a seed, nut, root, stem, or egg 
 before its ultimate manifestation in denser material 
 form; to see the sentient mind units, or spirits, that con- 
 stitute the phenomenal world; to know that what we 
 call space is filled with living things; to know you are 
 enveloped by and press your way through dense, sentient 
 world-stuff making living, objective things out of every 
 thought you think; to know that there are no secrets in 
 Nature ; to know that you are both a factor and a recip- 
 ient in the phenomenal world in which you exist; to 
 know that inherent in the mind of each human factor 
 and recipient is the law of normal creation, unity of 
 purpose, and mutual helpfulness that will eventually 
 evolve a being possessing godlike attributes; to realize 
 that this law must continue to unfold divine beings on 
 both the mundane and supermundane cosmic planes; to 
 know that Nature's unity of purpose will develop the 
 minds of beings, in whatever state of existence they 
 may be, until they become one with good, or God, in 
 all their future creative efforts; to find your place and 
 
Development of the Immortal Senses 57 
 
 purpose in the macrocosm; to eliminate all fear through 
 knowledge; to realize the divine purpose of man in 
 Nature; to know you can evolve by thought and will 
 to a comprehension of a God-power within yourself; 
 to know that the creative power of your mind is limit- 
 less, if you will constantly use it in a normal way; to 
 know that you live in the midst of boundless plenty that 
 is yours if you will accept it; and, finally, to realize that 
 the spirit of man need not be a prisoner in a mortal 
 body? 
 
 Is all this worth while? 
 
 It is worth while to take part in an excursion in the 
 Macrocosm — when you know how to equip your soul 
 to dominate all that environs it and be a law unto itself, 
 full of a tranquillity founded upon the certitude that 
 there is nothing but good in the universe. 
 
 The stranger at my fireside cannot see 
 
 The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear; 
 
 He but perceives what is; while unto me 
 All that has been is visible and clear. 
 
 The spirit-world around this world of sense 
 Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere 
 
 Wafts thro' these earthly mists and vapors dense 
 A vital breath of more ethereal air. 
 
 So from the world of spirits there descends 
 A bridge of light, connecting it with this, 
 
 O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends, 
 Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss. 
 
 — Longfellow. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PHENOMENA OF THOUGHT 
 
 With the conscious psychodynamic upward reach of 
 a spirit-being from a lower conscious plane of existence 
 to a higher, and the benefic aid of spirit-beings of a 
 higher plane yet to be attained by him, spirit-man now 
 finds himself on this phenomenal plane where all the 
 living things wear masks, as he does. 
 
 By what means can the spirit animating all objective 
 living things in Nature take on the mask of personality, 
 as observed by spirit-man's incarnate senses? This is 
 not so difficult to conceive when we realize that there is 
 but one archetypal form and essence in Nature — mind, 
 or spirit — and that each psychic unit manifests in its 
 own particular type, way, and manner. 
 
 Psychic units, monads, or entities constitute all the 
 elements in Nature and help to present to the incarnate 
 senses of spirit-man the varied phenomena of Nature, 
 or as much thereof as they are able to recognize. Study 
 of the numerous phenomena of spirit enables us to per- 
 ceive how each species perpetuates its kind in accordance 
 with psychic, accretive law during gestation and after 
 birth, until the mask, or personality, of the dominant 
 spirit is completed by the psychic units constituting the 
 embodying and sustaining planetary aids to spirit-being. 
 The phenomena of Nature observed by spirit-man are 
 but an aggregation of spirit entities answering the desire 
 of the spirit — the creator of each particular manifesta- 
 
 58 
 
The Phenomena of Thought 59 
 
 tion in Nature. Thus by thought or desire spirit-being 
 becomes incarnated in an armor and instrument made 
 without hands, and through desire the union of the sen- 
 tient incarnate mask with spirit is sustained. Thoughts 
 also are made to incarnate objectively as long as they 
 are energized by spirit. 
 
 A spirit-being is the father of its incarnate personality 
 (the son), and the father (spirit) speaking through the 
 son is the creative word. Hence, knowing that the spirit 
 is a creator, we feel the sacredness of each being, and 
 the duty of normal creative thinking becomes an impera- 
 tive obligation at all times. He who wrongly directs 
 the creation of a spirit-being into error sins against the 
 father, the son, and the word. The spirit, being the 
 father of the word, knoweth all his thought-creations, 
 which become the creator's companions in all their in- 
 carnate details — to the creator's joy or sorrow, as the 
 case may be. 
 
 Spirit-being is not so incomprehensible to the immortal 
 senses of spirit-man as many are led to conclude from 
 information furnished by the incarnate senses. These 
 serve their purpose for spirit-man in a limited way until 
 he has attained full control over his physical armor and 
 instrument, at which time the spirit senses should come 
 to his aid on life's ascending way. 
 
 Spirit-man, like all the varied living things below 
 him, could not exist without the five physical senses, 
 for many good reasons; consequently he possesses such 
 in common with the ants and the roaches. Spirit-man, 
 like less highly endowed creatures, is thoroughly con- 
 tent with his five limited incarnate senses, and therefore 
 makes no effort toward larger attainment by the unfold- 
 ment of the immortal spirit senses. Contentment shuts 
 out creative desire and arrests development of the mind 
 
60 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 for further creative thought and manifestation of spirit- 
 ual being. 
 
 Our study of the spirit and its phenomena in Nature 
 resolves itself into a better understanding of spirit-man 
 and his word made manifest in the past and to be mani- 
 fested in the future. The study of spirit and its created 
 phenomena is simple and easy to one whose spirit per- 
 ception is clear and whose mind is unfettered by the 
 present status or the past history of incarnate spirit on 
 this phenomenal plane of expression. 
 
 Aside from the more dominant spirit-beings that by 
 their creative word call into existence many of the phe- 
 nomena of Nature, there are countless spirit servitors, or 
 nature-spirits, that obey and make incarnate the spoken 
 word of a spirit-being or a dominant spirit on conscious 
 planes below that of spirit-man. They are psychic nature 
 units that answer every desire or call to construct or 
 bring to completion energized thoughts or words and 
 thus make the word objectively manifest in this phe- 
 nomenal world. 
 
 Spoken language is not an essential means of com- 
 munication between incarnate beings, nor between ex- 
 carnate beings when the spirit senses are sufficiently 
 developed to see the materialized creation of unuttered 
 ideas or words, which become living, manifesting, objec- 
 tive materializations in all their details, and serve to 
 convey thought far better than articulated words. Spirit- 
 man's physical senses can even discern the silent or 
 unuttered creations of a mind in the incarnate bodies 
 of his fellow-beings, and even in the creatures on his 
 own mind-plane of manifestation. This is readily accom- 
 plished by the ever-ready response of the sentient nature- 
 spirits who construct and objectify the creations of mind 
 or spirit on the numerous planes of spirit activity. These 
 
The Phenomena of Thought 61 
 
 sentient nature-units integrate forms as observed in the 
 phenomena on the earth and on the ovate plane, as the 
 psychodynamic creative power calls them into aggregated 
 existence and energizes the creation. But when the mind- 
 force is withdrawn from the materialized creation, dis- 
 integration of the sentient builders takes place and the 
 creation ceases to manifest. The spirit-being that called 
 the man- form into existence by its word does not die, 
 nor do the sentient form-builders that answered the call 
 and made up the incarnate body. Thus the word becomes 
 flesh, and its withdrawal from the created form is called 
 death. Therefore all the phenomena produced by spirit 
 in Nature are for more or less temporary use, being dis- 
 carded as the being unfolds larger and larger creative 
 powers. This idea has been beautifully expressed in a 
 poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes entitled "The Chambered 
 Nautilus." 
 
 Thought creations of spirit-man may be normal or 
 abnormal, possessing all the varied grades of force and 
 activity, as well as the power of endurance for good or 
 for evil on the conscious plane where they are created 
 and energized. Spirit is the creator of its own peculiar 
 environment, and through thought creates all the living 
 things that inhabit its incarnate world. The Great 
 Teacher said: "If you see me [the incarnation], you 
 see the Father also; I and my Father are one." The 
 Father, the Son, and the Word are one — a trinity that 
 produces all the phenomena in Nature, in which every 
 spirit-being is a factor and a recipient. Hence the oft- 
 repeated saying: "God is in everything, and God is a 
 Spirit." There is nothing in Nature but spirit and its 
 created phenomena, or "the Word made manifest." 
 
 The Father (spirit), through the word, is made incar- 
 nate by the aid of sentient entities (units of mind, or 
 
62 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 spirit), which constitute the integral parts of all the 
 elements in Nature, forming a measureless ovate globe, 
 compactly filled with sentient world-material that can 
 be called upon to produce all the phenomena of Nature 
 observed by spirit-man's physical as well as spirit senses. 
 
 Spirit-beings pass with ease through substances that 
 the physical senses recognize as solids; and similarly 
 incarnate man passes through a dense mass of living 
 things which constitute Nature's workshop materials for 
 the use of spirit on the various planes of expression 
 above that of the sentient world-stuff that enters into all 
 the phenomena of Nature through the power of the cre- 
 ative word. Therefore incarnate and excarnate spirit- 
 beings exist in a more or less dense ovate ocean of spirit- 
 entities, which constitute Nature's building-materials that 
 respond to and manifest a want, desire, or word on a 
 denser phenomenal plane. 
 
 It is simply a matter of spirit on one plane of con- 
 sciousness responding to that on a higher plane when 
 the creative word is put forth by a dominant spirit to 
 incarnate, be it the smallest unit or the greatest mani- 
 festation of life in Nature. 
 
 These sentient world-stuff builders not only constitute 
 the incarnate form, or mask, but sustain all its functions 
 of life and make possible the intercommunion of spirit 
 on the various conscious planes of existence. These 
 psychic servitors are essential for the intercommunion of 
 incarnate and excarnate beings by thought only, or by 
 the spoken word, as necessity or convenience may suggest. 
 These sentient units perform a twofold function, that of 
 materializing thoughts or words and that of conveying 
 sound; hence the two means of spirit intercommunion. 
 The seeing of the materialized thought-forms is a very 
 complete means of intercommunion, as all the details of 
 
The Phenomena of Thought 63 
 
 the subject are thus more minutely expressed than by 
 sound and words, as in spoken language, which is greatly 
 limited in its power of conveying what the mind desires 
 to express. The mind can hold no secrets, even if no 
 words are uttered, since every intellectual impulse is a 
 creation made objective at once by the psychic recorders 
 of mental action. Hence the saying: "God knows your 
 every thought." Life is continuous self-expression, 
 which is self-revelation. 
 
 Nature's sentient builders are not all individualized 
 or restricted psychic units by any means, as they, too, 
 incarnate in forms of all grades and are thus able to 
 do their bit in serving the spirit, the word, and the son, 
 and in producing the phenomena essential to the creator's 
 manifesting power on the various conscious planes of 
 expression. All species of life present their psychic 
 phenomena on the ovate psychic plane, and, when con- 
 ditions are afforded for incarnating on the earth plane, 
 their phenomena become denser and find corresponding 
 physical expression, so that they, too, may tell their story 
 to the mortal senses of spirit-man. How interesting it 
 is that the seemingly voiceless seeds, nuts, roots, eggs, 
 and the like, can reveal their latent creative ability at all 
 times, while awaiting the opportunity to incarnate on the 
 earth plane of manifestation to please and entertain the 
 physical senses of spirit-man! The various metallic and 
 other substances tell their psychic story also, in the 
 phenomenal world, to be recognized and appreciated by 
 those whose powers of perception are sufficiently 
 developed. 
 
 The phenomena of a thought can likewise be seen and 
 handled, and, if the object thought of is far away, the 
 thought phenomena can be traced from their mental 
 source through the intermediate substance to the distant 
 
64 Man: Whence and Whither? 
 
 object and its environment. It is not difficult, for 
 instance, for an excarnate being to express its apprecia- 
 tion of courtesies received from an incarnate being by 
 presenting the latter with flowers, and the incarnate 
 being can return the compliment by presenting the 
 excarnate friend with beautiful plants and shrubs, thus 
 exchanging the graceful civilities so highly valued by 
 mutual friends. An incarnate psychic entity encased in 
 a seed mutely and beautifully tells its story of stem, 
 leaf, and flower to an incarnate being who can see its 
 ethereal created phenomena, and it can thus prefigure, 
 before it comes to be more densely incarnated on the 
 earth plane, what the nature of its manifestation will be. 
 
 Every theme of intercourse between spirits, whether 
 incarnate or excarnate, by means of thought only or the 
 use of speech, becomes materialized* and thus made 
 objective. If the tearing down of a building is planned, 
 the whole course of its destruction by the wreckers 
 becomes a visible reality; or if it is the erection of a 
 building, the entire process is made objective, as though 
 the psychic observer were standing across the street and 
 actually witnessing the work of construction. If an 
 incarnate or excarnate being has in mind some beautiful 
 scenery, it is made manifest objectively in all its minute 
 details to one who can see materialized thought phe- 
 nomena. 
 
 Instrumental music that expresses human thoughts and 
 emotions is thus materialized, showing what the com- 
 poser desired to depict. Military music presents a won- 
 derful materialized phenomenon of an army marching 
 and of battle scenes. If a person possesses a strong, 
 steady mind, accompanied with adequate creative force, 
 
 * It is understood that the word materialised, as here used, means 
 "made manifest or visible to the psychic sense of the observer." 
 
The Phenomena of Thought 65 
 
 the object that is thought of should be materialized to 
 the extent of being seen even by the mortal senses of 
 spirit-man. All our cosmic phenomena, therefore, are 
 "the word made manifest," uttered by its factors and 
 recipients, who are incarnate and excarnate beings. 
 
 When spirit-man can see the mind-creations that are 
 incarnated in his physical body, the dawn of the judg- 
 ment day is at hand, and the Book of Life, hitherto 
 sealed as with seven seals, is at last opened for him to 
 read. 
 
 Much earnest thinking expresses an honest discontent 
 with ignorance. Introspective thinking helps the mind 
 to take an inventory of the extremely valuable thought- 
 creations on hand. It will keep an individual so busy 
 adjusting and evaluating the good and bad creations 
 of his own past and present that there will be no time 
 to do it for others. The lack of useful introspection 
 results in theophobia, and the mind-creations (if ever 
 there were any) then cease, while the individual awaits 
 the long-desired help. Much thinking, especially of an 
 introspective nature, for good creative purposes awakens 
 the deity within the spirit, and at its birth the spirit 
 becomes a living soul. 
 
 "Sow a thought and reap an action; 
 Sow an action and reap a habit ; 
 Sow a habit and reap a character; 
 Sow a character and reap a destiny/ ' 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IDENTIFICATION OF EXCARNATE BEINGS 
 
 In court proceedings great stress is laid upon the 
 proper identification of a person accused of crime, and 
 this often presents great difficulties for the witnesses. 
 
 It is frequently impossible for spirit-man to identify 
 one or both of his parents while they are still incarnate 
 and wearing the mortal mask, or even to know who 
 they were. Very often an individual fails to identify a 
 fellow man whom he has not seen for twenty or thirty 
 years. One or two incidents mentioned by an alleged 
 old acquaintance are at once accepted as conclusive, as 
 the matter is of no special interest or consequence in 
 most cases. Since the most important feature of such 
 a meeting is how agreeable it is and what information 
 is gained, positive and unmistakable identification is 
 generally dispensed with. 
 
 In meeting and communicating with excarnate spirits 
 that inhabit the ovate zone of the earth that environs 
 us, we consider, similarly, whether our precious time 
 has been wasted or has been profitably spent in quest 
 of the information and knowledge so greatly needed 
 and desired. 
 
 Those engaged in psychical research attach great 
 importance to and lay great stress upon the identity of 
 the excarnate spirit with whom they are in communica- 
 tion. They waste much precious time by their mental, 
 
 66 
 
Identification of Excarnate Beings 67 
 
 quizzical, critical, egotistical, doubting, and often ignorant 
 manner of communicating with an intelligent being, who 
 is presumptively worthy of being treated in an interview 
 with the same courtesy and consideration that would be 
 shown to a fellow-being still incarnate. 
 
 Usually the most ardent and self-assertive psychical 
 researcher is one who is largely or entirely destitute of 
 psychic unfoldment himself (though often full of spirit 
 ferment), and who is therefore unable to realize the true 
 nature of psychic phenomena and to perceive the clean 
 and wholesome side of psychic intercommuncation. But 
 we must always bear in mind what has been well expressed 
 by Bulwer: "Truth can no more be seen by the mind 
 unprepared than the sun can rise in the midst of night." 
 Emerson voices the same thought: "God screens us 
 evermore from premature ideas. Our eyes are holden, 
 that we may not see." And there is an Arabian proverb 
 that runs as follows : "He who knows not, and knows 
 not that he knows not, is a fool: avoid him. He who 
 knows not, and knows that he knows not, is untaught: 
 teach him. But he who knows, and knows that he 
 knows, is a wise man: follow him." 
 
 An intelligent excarnate spirit worth communicating 
 with knows the individual spirit-man's every thought, 
 uttered or unuttered. When an incarnate being, in an 
 arbitrary and cunning manner, presumes to "test" an 
 excarnate spirit by deceit, dissimulation, or the use of 
 false names, he deserves to get misleading and nonsensical 
 replies; and he usually does get them, to his great aston- 
 ishment. He is ordinarily too obtuse to realize that he 
 has received a severe and merited rebuke. Such a self- 
 constituted psychical researcher, so full of conscious 
 deception, would not elicit an intelligent and straight- 
 forward response from even an incarnate fellow-being 
 
68 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 who had discovered his nature before the conversation 
 began. 
 
 A few spirit-men are aware that not all of their 
 fellow-men are fools, and likewise not all of the excar ■ 
 nate spirits that environ man in countless numbers. "He 
 who waits until all things are proved will have experience 
 only to reward his patience." 
 
 What a spirit-man thinks, he will surely draw to him 
 through the immutable natural law of cause and effect. 
 The would-be saviors of man admonish him with great 
 vehemence to beware of thoughts of doubt. If one does 
 not think, no doubts will enter his mind. He must not 
 communicate, say these moral and spiritual monitors, 
 with fellow-men who doubt whether they are right them- 
 selves, nor with excarnate spirits who have the ability 
 to think and to express themselves on subjects vital to 
 the progress of the people of the earth. 
 
 It is only mental cowards that fear danger in inter- 
 viewing any of the living things that environ them in 
 either the incarnate or the excarnate state of existence. 
 Who but a coward would have fear, or be apprehensive 
 of evil or of danger, if he should meet in person the 
 historical Lucifer and all the so-called fallen angels, 
 said to constitute one-third of the population of heaven, 
 that he brought with him ? The immigration regulations 
 on this planet must have been very lax at one time to 
 permit angels to migrate to it. The territory called 
 heaven could not have been very large when it was pos- 
 sible for this little, far-off earth to accommodate one- 
 third of its population without any one's making a pro- 
 test or getting out an injunction. 
 
 According to some of the Church Fathers, there would 
 have been no spirits in and upon the earth, to environ 
 and communicate with spirit-man, had it not been for 
 
Identification of Excarnate Beings 69 
 
 Lucifer and his band of angels from heaven who located 
 on this planet. Many good people would find this a 
 cheerless and godless world without excarnate spirits to 
 communicate with, since they are so vitally helpful to 
 those whose immortal souls and spirit-senses are opened, 
 and who are thus able to comprehend the workings of 
 the laws of Nature. Naturally all those who have to 
 depend upon their animal state of mind and their senses 
 are full of fear and have a sense of danger when so- 
 called ghosts are mentioned, and this is as it should 
 be; the mentally blind flee when no one pursues them. 
 
 Negative Attitude of the Clergy 
 
 Well-intentioned ministers of the gospel constantly 
 reiterate that the spirits of the departed abide in the 
 graves and there await the judgment day, at which time 
 they will come forth from all the ancient and modern 
 graveyards, and, when the angel Gabriel sounds his 
 trumpet, will arise and ascend into heaven or descend 
 into hell with their ludicrous once-enfleshed earth-bodies. 
 To this absurdity, arising from utter lack of spiritual 
 comprehension, they add that Lucifer and his angels will 
 cease to exist in the twinkling of an eye, and that the 
 wicked are to be cast into a realm of utter darkness 
 lighted only by the flames of burning sulphur and brim- 
 stone. 
 
 Now, all these various ideas, mythical or otherwise, 
 regarding men, angels, spirits, Lucifer, and even Santa 
 Claus, are fresh mental yeast-cakes to keep up constant 
 fermentation within the mind of spirit-man, for the 
 purpose of brewing thoughts that ought to be very intoxi- 
 cating, humorous fairy-tales adding sweetness to Nature's 
 thought-brewing process, which should never cease if 
 
70 Man: Whence and Whither? 
 
 one wishes to attain anything tangible by the dynamic 
 action of the mind. 
 
 How amazingly ridiculous and presumptuous it is to 
 suppose that, from the time when animal-like man began 
 to chatter a few words of a language about a hundred 
 thousand years ago down to his present semi-civilized 
 state, God could give him messages when his mind and 
 senses were little more developed than those of animals, 
 and while he was lost in Mammon's conscious night ! 
 
 In the obscuration of spirit-man's mental dilemma, 
 when his mind gropes about to find a path to the light, 
 many teachers and preachers have tried, with oracular 
 arrogance and certitudinous complacency, to point out 
 the way of deliverance. But their mental dynamos were 
 so weak that one lone idea stopped their motion, and 
 they have been harping on that single string ever since, 
 believing and proclaiming that they have found the way 
 and have the only message from God regarding the 
 means of man's deliverance from his ignorance and his 
 deplorably undeveloped state. 
 
 There is no place in either heaven or hen for an 
 ignorant spirit-man, since he belongs rather to the animal 
 than to the human domain of Nature. As Ingersoll has 
 well expressed it : "The people perish for lack of know- 
 ledge. Nothing but education — scientific education — can 
 benefit mankind. We must find out the laws of nature 
 and conform to them." But spirit-man is an extremely 
 lazy creature, by natural inheritance from his animal 
 forerunners, and has no desire to think or work, any more 
 than a muskrat or a turtle, so far as the unfoldment of 
 his mind is concerned. 
 
 The Bible records many instances of messages from 
 God and the angels, delivered to spirit-man at various 
 times and places; but the self -constituted expounders of 
 
Identification of Excarnate Beings 71 
 
 the Scriptures are as a rule quite unable to discuss these 
 intelligently. They do not possess sufficient mental un- 
 foldment to enable their ordinary senses to perceive the 
 phenomena of excarnate spirit existence and to under- 
 stand how communication between excarnate and incar- 
 nate beings can be effected; therefore — although it is a 
 subject that, as ministers, they should be competent to 
 explain and elucidate — they very prudently avoid it or 
 fail to mention the bearing of the recorded Biblical cases 
 of spirit communication upon the question of such inter- 
 course at the present day. 
 
 The Great Teacher, about whom they profess to know 
 so much, healed the sick and cast out evil spirits from 
 the bodies of spirit-men. Moreover he said: "Greater 
 things than these shall ye do." And in the Epistles we 
 read regarding healing: "If any be sick among you, 
 let them send for the elders of the church." But of all 
 these things the reverend gentlemen say little and know 
 less, not having any real knowledge of the operation of 
 natural laws in this metaphysical domain. 
 
 A professor lecturing on higher mathematics is pre- 
 sumed to be familiar with the details of his subject, 
 however difficult, and it would be very embarrassing for 
 him to evade complicated parts of it in consequence of 
 ignorance. This very thing, however, we frequently find 
 in the pulpit, from which apparently no one is debarred 
 for lack of spiritual knowledge or of insight into the 
 higher realities. But we must charge ministers not 
 merely with evasion and resorting to stock formulas such 
 as saving grace, atonement, salvation through faith, and 
 the like, which is bad enough, but also with positive 
 perversion of truth and promulgation of false doctrines, 
 which is infinitely worse. But people will not be led, 
 or misled, any longer with "fears of hell and hopes of 
 
72 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 paradise," and they are coming to demand frank, open, 
 honest, and truthful statements in regard to the things 
 of the spirit. 
 
 I once heard an Irish clergyman try to explain away 
 certain derogatory remarks that he heard had been made 
 about him. The matter was a very embarrassing and 
 difficult one for him, and he hemmed and hawed con- 
 fusedly for a time. Finally, however, he "got his bear- 
 ings" and informed his amused congregation that he 
 was just as good as his nationality, temperament, educa- 
 tion, and development of mind would permit. "Honest 
 confession is good for the soul," it is said; and people 
 always respect a candid admission of intellectual limita- 
 tion on the part of a speaker or leader. 
 
 It would be illuminating and highly revelatory if the 
 ministers of the various religious sects were to deliver 
 a number of discourses on what they do not know about 
 the spirit phenomena mentioned in the Bible, concluding 
 with a talk on the little they actually know and can 
 demonstrate regarding the laws that govern all mental 
 action and interaction in Nature. Unfortunately we 
 cannot look forward to such a series of sermons, for the 
 speakers would therein reveal themselves as blind lead- 
 ing the blind. 
 
 Of late it has been thoroughly demonstrated to man- 
 kind that certain varieties of false religious belief can 
 get men as well as nations into serious trouble. Certain 
 groups of men, or nations, firmly convinced that God 
 is on their side, proceed to fight other groups, regard- 
 less of how much slaughter and devastation may result, 
 thereby merely repeating in modified form the history 
 of mankind as recorded in the Old Testament. (Perhaps 
 it is the devil, not God, who is their champion!) 
 
 The ministers of various religious denominations tell 
 
Identification of Excarnate Beings 73 
 
 us of a jealous and revengeful God who created all things 
 in heaven and on earth, and without whom nothing was 
 made. They tell us, too, about Lucifer, who made so 
 much trouble in heaven, and who, with his angels, has 
 ruled this earth for two hundred million years and will 
 continue to do so until another world war takes place 
 and is fought to a final finish in 1925, according to the 
 prediction of certain queer Bible students. The follow- 
 ing is their adaptation of one of our most popular hymns : 
 
 "Mine eyes can see the glory of the presence of the Lord; 
 He is trampling out the winepress where his grapes of wrath 
 
 are stored; 
 I see the flaming tempest of his swift descending sword; 
 Our King is marching on ! 
 
 "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! 
 Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! 
 Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! 
 Our King is marching on! 
 
 "I can see his coming judgments, as they circle all the earth, 
 The signs and groanings promised to precede a second birth ; 
 I read his righteous sentence in the crumbling thrones of 
 earth ; 
 Our King is marching on!" 
 
 Yet spirit-man seems to be doing a little independent 
 thinking nowadays, and Nature never seems to care 
 whether it is wrong or right, so long as he keeps on 
 thinking more and harder than ever before. 
 
 If all the psychophysical phenomena that are said to 
 have occurred in heaven and on earth between God and 
 Lucifer can be shown to be in conformity with natural 
 laws, it is natural to suppose that they actually took place 
 
74 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 and that they can take place again. But we must remem- 
 ber that many of the earth's phenomena occur in accord- 
 ance with subtler and higher laws than can be demon- 
 strated in our laboratories — laws that elude, and will 
 continue to elude, the clumsy efforts of the physical 
 scientist altogether. 
 
 An excellent conception of religion is that of the 
 simple-minded old peasant woman who said: "I want 
 to rise from my grave with a pail of water in one hand 
 and a brazier filled with burning coals in the other. 
 With the water I will put out the fires of Hell. And 
 with the brazier I will set fire to Heaven and burn it 
 all up. And then the people will love God and His Son 
 for themselves alone, not because they fear Hell's fire 
 or selfishly desire eternal bliss/' 
 
 There is one especial, peculiar, divine attribute predi- 
 cated of God, and I cannot understand why any more 
 limiting qualities were added to detract from that one, 
 namely, God knows no evil. This is a glorious scien- 
 tific fact in Nature that can be proved, demonstrated, 
 and realized both on earth and in heaven. 
 
 All that spirit-man's mind needs, wants, and desires 
 in the domain of Nature can be his if he will labor 
 assiduously to acquire the mental ability to perceive and 
 attain it. For many thousands of years spirit-man's 
 mind and body were corralled and cooped up on a small 
 portion of this earth. Time waited patiently for the 
 birth of a scientific thinker of heroic mold and daunt- 
 less courage, in the person of Christopher Columbus, 
 whose will defied all obstacles, difficulties, and dangers 
 that stood in the way of the attainment of his great pur- 
 pose. Purely as the result of scientific study a great 
 additional expanse (two entire continents) was discovered 
 and made available for settlement, and needed space for 
 
Identification of Excarnate Beings 75 
 
 the development and expansion of so-called civilized man 
 was thus happily afforded. All of this was due to a 
 scientific mind aided by a then recently developed instru- 
 ment, the magnetic compass. In this manner a study of 
 Nature's wonderful laws enabled an immortal spirit 
 embodied in a human personality to become one of the 
 great benefactors of mankind. 
 
 There is no chance, no destiny, no fate 
 Can circumvent, or hinder, or control 
 The firm resolve of a determined soul. 
 
 Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great; 
 
 All things give way before it, soon or late. 
 What obstacle can stay the mighty force 
 Of the sea-seeking river in its course, 
 
 Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait? 
 Each well-born soul must win what it deserves. 
 
 Let the fool prate of luck. The fortunate 
 Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves, 
 Whose slightest action or inaction serves 
 
 The one great aim. Why, even death stands still, 
 
 And waits an hour sometimes for such a will. 
 
 — Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 
 
 Now vast multitudes of spirits wearing the mask of 
 man inhabit all portions of the two new continents. 
 Naturally they are not content in their new abode, being 
 cooped up like chickens or confined like pigs in a pen. 
 In their minds there naturally arise more needs, wants, 
 and desires, and their spirits hunger and thirst for a 
 wider scope for mind action; hence the attainment of a 
 new ovate region belonging to this earth becomes a 
 necessity for the satisfaction of spirit-man's yearning 
 for greater liberty of thought and action. 
 
 Scientific study of the laws of mental action and 
 
^6 Man : Whence and Whither ? 
 
 mental unfoldment has opened up a new ovate continent, 
 or a zone for the habitation of spirits in a slightly less 
 dense embodiment than the one used while gaining know- 
 ledge and experience on the mundane plane, or densest 
 phenomenal region of the earth. Nature in her wisdom 
 bides her time, as in the case of the discovery of new 
 continents by Columbus, and awaits a fitting moment 
 for the exploration, by sufficiently courageous spirit-men, 
 of other inhabited regions belonging to the earth's ovate 
 extension, in much the same way as Columbus discovered 
 regions already inhabited by both incarnate and excarnate 
 beings. 
 
 Many centuries before the time of Christ the Egyptians 
 knew and taught the immortality of the soul, and this 
 truth was asserted by Greek writers from Herodotus to 
 Aristotle. Plato, who was born in 428 B.C., taught the 
 doctrine more plainly than any other Greek philosopher. 
 This teaching also appeared at an early date in India, 
 where it was handed down from teacher to pupil for 
 centuries and is explained in numerous old mystical and 
 philosophic writings. 
 
 The fact of the continuation of both the personality 
 and the individuality of a spirit, after the discarding of 
 the temporary mask utilized in the incarnate state, should 
 have been common knowledge among mankind ever since 
 the first promulgation of the doctrine of immortality in 
 Egypt and in India. 
 
 A pall of mental darkness resulting from abnormal 
 psychophysical causes has enveloped the earth's inhabi- 
 tants ever since the dawn of civilization, and it has 
 abated but little up to the present time. History records 
 the result of blind man's groping forward under blind 
 leaders during the long night of his enthralment. The 
 nations of the earth have passed through the throes of 
 
Identification of Excarnate Beings 77 
 
 many psychological cataclysms, and the most recent one, 
 which began in Europe in 1914, has seared the minds 
 of men who do not understand the principles of cause 
 and effect at work in both national and international 
 psychosis, or mental derangement. 
 
 No human progress of real consequence can be achieved 
 so long as the characteristics of the animal, Mammon, 
 and theological types of consciousness are predominant 
 among both men and nations. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SOME FACTORS OF MAN'S ENVIRONMENT 
 
 The vast expanse of so-called space that envelops the 
 apparently solid earth like an immense shell, with the 
 globe in its center, is really an essential continuation 
 outward of the planet itself. The great region that 
 extends from the earth's surface to the outer border of 
 the ovate zones is compactly filled with phenomena sim- 
 ilar to those of the mundane plane, the density of embodi- 
 ment decreasing successively from zone to zone. The 
 seemingly solid incarnate center, or core, called the earth 
 is radioactive, and the continuous emanations from the 
 immense volume of its varied constituents pass outward 
 into the less dense globular extension of the earth, and 
 vice versa. 
 
 It is conceivable that the rate and the amount of 
 radioactivity emanating from the body of spirit-man 
 within a single hour might transform every conscious 
 unit of his organism. The radioactive emanations from 
 a unit of mind, or from an aggregation of sentient units 
 forming a corporeal body, reveal its life history to a 
 psychic observer, whether it be in a denser or a less 
 dense state of incarnate existence. 
 
 In the great globular or ovate extension of the earth 
 there exist and function all the psychoplastic elements 
 and all the other phenomena of life that are manifested 
 upon the denser region that we know as the earth's 
 surface. 
 
 78 
 
Some Factors of Man's Environment 79 
 
 Let us consider, as an instructive example, the psycho- 
 plastic substance called water — an element that covers 
 two-thirds of the total area of our globe and is so very 
 essential to life in every form. Through the inexorable 
 law of disintegration, water (like all the other incarnate 
 phenomena in Nature) constantly excarnates and passes 
 into a less dense phenomenal region of the earth, the 
 atmosphere, remaining there for a time in a vaporized 
 state. Through the corresponding natural law of integra- 
 tion, which is a phase of incarnation, it undergoes a 
 process of gestation by accretion, and is formed into 
 flocculent cumuli of condensing vapor; these, growing 
 ever denser, heavier, and darker, become more or less 
 opaque clouds, which exclude the sunlight and darken 
 the regions of the earth over which they move, until 
 finally, accompanied at times with vivid flashes of light- 
 ning and peals of thunder, the water is reincarnated on 
 the earth in the form of raindrops, hail, snow, dew, or 
 frost, thus becoming once more a part of earth's objective 
 phenomena. 
 
 In consequence of this cyclic process, water is often 
 used as an analogy for the incarnation and excarnation 
 of spirit-man, as in the following lines translated from 
 the German of Goethe : 
 
 "The soul of man 
 Is like the water. 
 From heaven it cometh, 
 To heaven it mounteth, 
 And thence at once 
 It must back to earth, 
 Forever changing." 
 
 Perhaps something of the same water-analogy was 
 
80 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 present as an underlying thought in Tennyson's mind 
 when he wrote : 
 
 "The hills are shadows, and they flow 
 From form to form, and nothing stands; . . . 
 Like clouds they shape themselves and go." 
 
 In this fashion all that constitutes the integral part 
 of the phenomena of life in the more ethereal planetary 
 regions can put forth creative energy and utter the cre- 
 ative word, whereupon reintegration or reincarnation 
 begins to take place. Through Nature's law of accretion 
 and the phenomenal process of embodiment the ethereal, 
 sentient substance becomes denser and denser, until a 
 nebular mass is observed, out of which a planet is in 
 due time formed. Around this apparently solidified plan- 
 etary kernel there remains great ovate zones of more 
 ethereal psychoplastic world-material, the whole aggre- 
 gate forming a suitable field for the evolution of the 
 being called man, who appears in race after race upon 
 the planet. 
 
 "Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, 
 Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; 
 Another race the following spring supplies ; 
 They fall successive and successive rise." 
 
 An amazing variety of life phenomena is to be seen 
 in the vast ovate zones that surround the denser core, 
 or kernel, of the earth, just as the juicy, luscious fruit- 
 meat encloses and envelops the stone of a peach, within 
 which there is held and protected the seed, with its won- 
 derful creative potency. 
 
 The crust of the earth may be likened to the shell of 
 
Some Factors of Man's Environment 8 1 
 
 a peach stone, or pit. Within that crust, or shell, is 
 contained the kernel of an involved planet; and, as it 
 passes through the throes of many psychophysical eras, 
 the fruit of its evolution, or growth, will appear on the 
 outside of its crust, in an ovate mass, like the fruit-meat 
 of a peach. The same is true of the great spherical 
 regions of the earth's extension, all the phenomena of 
 which present close similarities in embodiment, existence, 
 and function. 
 
 It is truly amazing to note how the mass of Nature's 
 more or less dense flocculent cumuli is filled with beings 
 having forms analogous to that of man, from the tiniest 
 speck of embodiment of mind up through all the numer- 
 ous gradations to that of a corporeal form in the full 
 stature of a spirit that can incarnate as a man. These 
 beings exist and function in diversified embodiments of 
 various degrees of density, partly through the aid of 
 spirit-man's thought-creations, but more especially 
 through the abnormal desires of the carnal mind. Man's 
 thought-creations aid a great mass of these beings to 
 assume a denser embodiment and to become the dependent 
 children, so to speak, of those who by persistently repeated 
 thoughts and acts have brought them into intimate rela- 
 tion with their mind impulses and their physical func- 
 tionings. 
 
 A larger book than this could be written on the sub- 
 ject of the thought-embodied beings that become inti- 
 mately attached to the mortal thinker and doer; but I 
 have no desire to describe the lustful phenomena created 
 by spirit-man's debauched thoughts and deeds, which are 
 the cause of the denser embodiment of legions of beings 
 of a type in consonance therewith. These, like leeches, 
 sap the mental and physical vitality of their creators, 
 and vitiate whatever moral and spiritual qualities they 
 
82 Man: Whence and Whither? 
 
 possess, sending them to an untimely death and into an 
 excarnate state of existence appropriate to their nature. 
 
 Through the operation of the natural law of mind, 
 spirit-man attracts to himself elements and nature-spirits 
 (as we shall call them for lack of a more specific classi- 
 fication), which constitute a large part of his environ- 
 ment, enabling him to exist and function mentally and 
 physically in whatever manner his will directs. They are 
 the sentient, incarnate builders of his body; they sustain 
 his psychophysical functions, make possible his creation 
 of thought phenomena, and serve as his messengers. 
 They are thus useful and obedient servitors to a domi- 
 nant will, for evil or for good. They constitute the phe- 
 nomenal, sentient world-material, and are ever ready to 
 serve spirit-man's needs, wants, and desires in the degree 
 that he is able to command and to hold them. 
 
 Naturally all grades of embodied and evolved spirits 
 that attend spirit-man in mutual companionship need to 
 be educated and unfolded by the being they so faithfully 
 serve. They look upon him as a tutor, often as a god, 
 and will respond promptly to every degree of unfold- 
 ment that their master is able to effect in them. The 
 whole of spirit-man's environment is made up of living 
 beings (as we may call them) that surround him as 
 completely as water envelops the denizens of the deep. 
 He lives, moves, and creates while submerged in an 
 ocean of diversified mind-units. 
 
 These are not, however, the only aids that Nature 
 affords to spirit-man in his ascent to higher states. In 
 addition to the help he receives from his incarnate fellow 
 beings, we must emphasize the assistance and encourage- 
 ment that he constantly receives from such of his fellows 
 as have preceded him into the excarnate state, who are 
 about him at all times and endeavor to assist him while 
 
Some Factors of Mans Environment 83 
 
 he is still enwrapped in the dense armor of the physical 
 organism. And above all spirit-man is aided by loftier 
 beings who are emancipated from the thraldom of the 
 animal and Mammon planes of consciousness and can 
 thus inspire and endow him with higher, nobler, and 
 holier thoughts. They hasten the unfoldment of his 
 own higher faculties of mind by varied demonstrations 
 of Nature's laws. And as the godlike tutors in Nature's 
 Cosmic School teach their pupils the normal creative use 
 of the mind, the latter progress uninterruptedly with 
 increasing knowledge, wisdom, and happiness. While on 
 their eternal excursion throughout the macrocosm, they 
 meet hosts of beings that have gone on before, and 
 obtain from them a large amount of useful information 
 about the greater and more glorious planes of mind- 
 unfoldment yet to be attained. Do such spirits need to 
 be "identified" personally? By no means, since theii 
 thoughts and acts and mental aura are a sufficient identi- 
 fication for any one who wishes unselfishly to obtain 
 useful knowledge and who welcomes the help that they 
 can give. 
 
 Through the carnal density of the mind of spirit-man 
 there have percolated in past ages indefinite ideas about 
 fantastic beings seen in the midst of the thick, flocculent, 
 floating, swaying world-stuff that environs him by day 
 and by night, and a few of the names that he has given 
 to these legions of mysterious entities are as follows: 
 elves, fairies, sprites, trolls, gnomes, kobolds, dryads, 
 nixies, undines, sylphs, salamanders, newts, vampires, 
 incubi, succubi, seraphim, and cherubim. But none of 
 these are so malevolent, alarming, or unreal as Satan, 
 whom most Christian people allege to exist as a personal 
 devil. There is always somebody to take the joy out 
 of life for those who are afraid of so-called ghosts. 
 
84 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 I quote but one of the numerous poetic testimonies to 
 the existence of these fantastic beings, showing how the 
 concept is developed and handed down from generation 
 to generation: 
 
 "And with him the clear singing nymphs 
 Move quick their feet, by a dark-water's spring 
 In the soft mead; where crocus, hyacinth, 
 Fragrant and blooming, mingle with the grass, 
 Confused; and sing, while echo peals around 
 The mountain's top." 
 
 We do not need to project our vision into the excar- 
 nate regions of our world in order to discern the num- 
 ber and variety of embodied beings and other objects 
 that coexist with us, since they are visibly present in 
 the denser incarnate state of existence. To designate 
 their peculiar mental and bodily characteristics, they are 
 called by various names and epithets, such as: churl, 
 tyke, bum, dolt, dude, chump, vulpine, plebeian, scamp, 
 rogue, yokel, knave, jehu, dido, and the like; and we 
 have equally picturesque names for various monstrosities 
 of mind and body that are observed among the inhab- 
 itants of the earth. Even in the present era of sup- 
 posed civilization we can detect in the human mind and 
 body traits of the man-like marsupial, lemur, monkey, 
 ape, chimpanzee, orang-outang, gorilla, and other animals, 
 wild and tame, that have not yet been effaced or replaced 
 in the process of evolution. 
 
 Spirit-man has for ages longed, hoped, and prayed 
 for freedom from his selfish and vicious qualities and 
 impulses. But such freedom can be attained only through 
 the creative power of his will. This has been well 
 
Some Factors of Man's Environment 85 
 
 expressed in the following inspiring lines by that poetess 
 of spiritual things, Ella Wheeler Wilcox: 
 
 "I care not who were vicious back of me; 
 No shadow of their sins on me is shed. 
 My will is greater than heredity ; 
 
 I am no worm to feed upon the dead. 
 
 My face, my form, my gestures, and my voice 
 May be reflections from a race that was. 
 
 But this I know, and, knowing it, rejoice : 
 I am, myself, a part of the Great Cause. 
 
 I am a spirit ! Spirit would suffice, 
 
 If rightly used, to set a chained world free. 
 
 Am I not stronger than a mortal vice 
 
 That crawls the length of some ancestral tree?" 
 
 We must acclaim and hold in the highest esteem a 
 certain historic personage of conspicuous qualities; one 
 who could feel the innate promptings of a potential pur- 
 pose and duty in life; one who sincerely studied the 
 depths of his own mind and there found his bent and 
 got his bearings; one who was acquainted with scientific 
 facts and could reason from cause to effect; one who 
 silently listened to the promptings of his innermost con- 
 sciousness and daily heeded its prophecies; one who 
 believed implicitly in the course of action that suggested 
 itself in his soul after due meditation; one who did not 
 exactly understand the source of the ideas that came into 
 his mind, but knew that, being there, they were whole- 
 some and good; one who realized, from a scientific sur- 
 vey of the ferment of ideas within his mind, that they 
 must be true and that one thus grounded and fortified 
 must get demonstration; one who sought and finally 
 
86 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 obtained the necessary help from others, infecting them 
 with their enthusiasm and determination; one who, as 
 an intrepid mariner, sailed out into the vast uncharted 
 expanse of ocean; one whose indomitable mind realized 
 and demonstrated that there was a new continent west- 
 ward of the Old World; an immortal benefactor of 
 mankind — Christopher Columbus ! 
 
 His was a discovery of momentous importance, open- 
 ing up to new development and settlement two entire 
 continents. But discoveries of undreamt-of consequences 
 have been made in other fields as well. Only eighty- 
 odd years ago a new vista was opened out after over 
 five thousand years spent in the effort to drill and blast 
 a channel for the entrance of a new fact into mankind's 
 petrified consciousness. In the Old World there had 
 been at times partial success, followed by renewed failure, 
 in the attempt to penetrate the barriers of ignorance and 
 prejudice and bigotry, and the slaves to authority on 
 the one hand and the rationalizing skeptics on the other 
 made it impossible for the enlightened few to disseminate 
 new truths widely. So the laborious task was transferred 
 from the Old World to the New, the boasted land of 
 liberty, where freedom from destructive assaults was to 
 be expected. 
 
 Some two hundred years were patiently devoted to a 
 continuous search for the most suitable locality for the 
 penetration of the animal and Mammon consciousness 
 of the inhabitants of the new continent, and finally Salem, 
 Massachusetts, was tried as an entering wedge. The 
 unfortunate result is well known. The inevitable bigotry 
 showed itself again, and sensitive psychics were labeled 
 witches and subjected to cruel tortures and hideous deaths 
 — a most disgraceful and barbarous series of crimes, 
 which are a standing discredit to this land of the free 
 
Some Factors of Maris Environment 87 
 
 and home of the brave (but not of the just). There- 
 fore, mankind continued to sleep on in its benighted 
 state until a new effort at enlightenment should be made. 
 
 "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to per- 
 form." And so it was that in due time the myopic, 
 bewildered, and obtuse consciousness of the world was 
 dreadfully shocked and amazed at the strange happen- 
 ings reported from Rochester, New York. The persons 
 through whom the phenomena there occurred and the 
 students of the laws of mental science that flocked to 
 learn about these phenomena were for a long time in 
 great danger from the vicious mob element that is so 
 easily aroused and unleashed where ignorance and a cer- 
 tain bigoted type of religion and priestcraft prevail. 
 
 Soon, however, the Satanic minds of the people were 
 again lulled to sleep, believing that the happenings at 
 Rochester were only the dream of a few addle-pated per- 
 sons and that the phantom would soon be forgotten, as 
 all other scarecrows had been in times past in the Old 
 World and in the New, whether ghosts, hobgoblins, or 
 devils. In this proud land of liberty all were asleep as 
 usual under the influence of the ancestral thought lethargy 
 and chronic mental inertia; yet the phenomena, though 
 alleged by detractors to be caused by Lucifer and his 
 angels, rapidly spread all over the earth, and the believers 
 in the newly revealed truths increased to great numbers, 
 quite beyond the possibility of being crushed out as in 
 past ages with their diabolical bigotry. 
 
 We have learned from our excarnate friends and com- 
 panions much about the ovate extension of the earth, 
 consisting of successive concentric zones each of which 
 is a special field of evolution. We have learned much 
 also from the inhabitants of the various ovate zones, 
 but more especially from those of the one that environs 
 
88 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 and envelops us somewhat as water surrounds the deni- 
 zens of the sea. Spirit-man and excarnate spirits make 
 their way alike through the elements of the earth's ovate 
 zone, which reproduces in large part the phenomena of 
 that part of the planetary psychophysical organism that 
 we see about us. 
 
 To have something more to think about and to explore 
 than the crust of this prosaic part of our earthly abode 
 affords us a grand and glorious opportunity. It gives 
 us a larger intellectual and spiritual scope and expands 
 the mental vision. The pleasure, beauty, and joy it pro- 
 vides are sublime. You may have the kindly visits of 
 angels, gods, and goddesses to give you cheer and to 
 supply information that you can cognize, retain, and 
 utilize. As this knowledge becomes a part of your 
 being, more and more is added, and the mind is thus 
 unfolded rapidly and enabled to receive still higher lessons 
 from its tutors in Nature's Cosmic School. 
 
 The discovery of the earth's ovate zones and their 
 inhabitants, who are our "unseen" companions, is the 
 greatest permanent benefaction that was ever bestowed 
 upon the benighted human race, for without it the world 
 would still be lingering entirely in primeval darkness. 
 The importance of this discovery is most profound, for 
 it heralded the dawn of the approaching millennium. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THOUGHT PHENOMENA AND THE ENVIRONMENT 
 OF BEING 
 
 The various zones that constitute the earth and its 
 ovate extension are not greatly unlike one another in 
 their density or in the nature of their phenomena. As 
 we proceed outward from the center in our survey, each 
 ovate zone is found to be of lesser density and to present 
 more ethereal types of phenomena than the preceding 
 one. The interior of the earth is, as might be supposed, 
 somewhat denser and darker in color, with dark brown 
 as its predominant hue, intermingled with light gray and 
 having specks of a silvery sheen shooting through the 
 dark, dense, smokelike (or sootlike), flocculent cumuli 
 of psychoplastic material, in which there are countless 
 living entities of many sizes and all stages of embodi- 
 ment up to that of spirit-man. It is really Nature's 
 incubator, formed of a rather compact, transparent, 
 homogeneous mass of world-substance, from which all 
 the phenomena of earth have been and are being evolved. 
 
 An impressionist artist is needed to paint the interior 
 of the earth and its ovate zones, with their varied degrees 
 of density and their various tones of color. He would 
 depict for us the phenomena of the mineral, vegetable, 
 animal, and human life-waves, and all the beings, great 
 and small, in the incarnate and excarnate phases of 
 existence. After representing the central region, he 
 would picture the first ovate zone, which environs spirit- 
 
 89 
 
90 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 man in somewhat denser and darker, mossy, flocculent, 
 fluffy, moving, pulsating cumuli of psychoplastic world- 
 material and is dotted with specks resembling snow- 
 flakes, or with iridescent crystals sparkling in the con- 
 glomeration of living things dwelling in that zone for 
 the expression of some aspect of their natures and the 
 development of certain of their innate attributes. We 
 might thus obtain a glimpse of the continuous mass of 
 living things in that environment, no two life-units touch- 
 ing each other, however tiny, and yet grouping them- 
 selves into aggregations of every conceivable gradation 
 of size and nature. 
 
 We should thus gain some conception of this first 
 zone of the earth's extension, which holds the denser 
 center within it somewhat as an apple contains its core, 
 and should come to know more in detail about the excar- 
 nate beings inhabiting it and about its many manifesta- 
 tions that resemble and duplicate in some measure those 
 that environ us. Then the artist, had he the vision, 
 might present to our gaze a view of each succeeding 
 ovate zone, the substance and structure and coloring 
 becoming rarer and more wonderful with each succeed- 
 ing step outward from the center, and each zone offering 
 to the pupils of Nature's Cosmic School a different and 
 higher opportunity for unfoldment of latent faculties, 
 as well as a finer and more beautiful field for the exer- 
 cise of powers already developed in lower and more 
 interior zones. 
 
 The kernel containing the involved attributes and the 
 potency of a planetary system is naturally incased in a 
 shell, or crust, on which there collects and persists a sort 
 of scum, presenting the phenomena of all sorts of partially 
 evolved things with many kinds of embodiment, spirit- 
 man in his incarnate state being located there as well. 
 
Thought Phenomena and Environment of Being 91 
 
 The more complex and more fully evolved creatures 
 that environ spirit-man are the marsupials, semi-apes, 
 tailed apes, narrow-nosed apes, gorillas, orang-outangs, 
 man-like apes, and ape-like men. Finally the last and 
 most complex being was evolved, "the diapason," as 
 Alexander Pope puts it, "closing full in man." Spirit- 
 man has the honor and the distinction of surpassing all 
 the preceding forms of incarnated life, yet he is still 
 often cynically referred to as the "scum of the earth!" 
 The following quotations from familiar hymns will serve 
 to show how spirit-man's high station has been traduced : 
 
 "How vain are all things here below, 
 How false, and yet how fair ! 
 Each pleasure hath its poison too, 
 And every sweet a snare. 
 
 Plunged in a gulf of dark despair, 
 
 We wretched sinners lay, 
 Without one cheering beam of hope, 
 
 Or spark of glimm'ring day. 
 
 Wretched, helpless, and distrest, 
 
 Ah! whither shall I fly? 
 Ever gasping after rest, 
 
 I cannot find it nigh. 
 
 Lord, and is thine anger gone 
 
 And art thou pacified? 
 After all that I have done, 
 
 Dost thou no longer chide? 
 
 Loathsome, and vile, and self-abhorr'd, 
 I sink beneath my sin. . . . 
 
 ******** 
 
 Ye slaves of sin and hell, . . ." 
 
92 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 Recounting the sins of man, his unworthiness, and 
 his abject begging, annuls whatever good sentiments 
 may be found elsewhere in a hymn. The singing of 
 such songs sets in motion a coarse variety of mind-stuff, 
 dark in color, reminding one of soft coal dust or black 
 smoke, with here and there some varying shades of gray 
 —a release of forces little better than one would expect 
 to find in a bawdy dance-house. In this atmosphere 
 human spirits belonging to a low mind-plane find a 
 congenial mental environment. 
 
 Who ever heard a general in command of an army 
 recount the defects and weaknesses of his men as a 
 means of inspiring them to heroic deeds? Would he be 
 likely to recall and describe the battles lost by his ances- 
 tors, or only those where victory was won? 
 
 The finest and most perfect fruit of a planet must 
 naturally be situated around its shell, in the kernel of 
 which it was germinated. It is simply in accordance 
 with natural law that the central part of the earth, pre- 
 senting such varied phenomena of life, should be sur- 
 rounded with analogous ovate zones, each providing 
 appropriate and congenial environment for the unfold- 
 ment in mind and body of different grades of beings. 
 
 We must remember that all is mind, or spirit, and that 
 each unit of consciousness is an integral part of a planet, 
 however diversified the manifestations may be. From 
 each unit there is emitted sentient, radioactive material 
 that mingles with the psychoplastic substance that 
 environs it and there manifests and constructs whatever 
 the individual unit has evolved from within itself; and 
 this process continues, no matter how tiny the unit may 
 be or what degree of aggregation its embodiment may 
 exemplify. Conversely also there is a definite effect of 
 the environment upon the individual unit, so that with 
 
Thought Phenomena and Environment of Being 93 
 
 this alternate influx and efflux a constant interaction is 
 maintained between the two. 
 
 By way of illustration it may be stated that 'the 
 thoughts of a person near dissolution, or of one who 
 is "dead," bring about in the ordinary person an asso- 
 ciation of ideas creating an objective embodiment of all 
 the successive stages leading up to the burial. Over- 
 shadowing this actual, living, objective scene is a canopy 
 of dense, dark color, making a very oppressive phenome- 
 non that enshrouds all who aided in the thought-creation 
 or took part in the singing of a dirge. 
 
 On the other hand, minds that are thinking of Santa 
 Claus, for instance, will produce quite different phe- 
 nomena, altogether unlike those associated with the death 
 scene to which I have just alluded. In this case the 
 picture created is of one who brings countless good gifts 
 and creates hope, gladness, love, and joy; and this crea- 
 tion illumines a vast region with a halo or aura of inter- 
 blending hues of green, silver, and gold. The whole 
 conception is associated with the snowy and frosty moun- 
 tain fastnesses of the reindeer, whence these animals draw 
 Santa Claus in his sleigh laden with all manner of beau- 
 tiful gifts through luminous regions of the sky to the 
 chimney-tops of our earthly habitations. Truly, Santa 
 Claus is the best intangible personality that the human 
 mind has thus far created. 
 
 Above the heads of the saints we often find pictured 
 by painters and sculptors a circular halo. This represents 
 the luminous, ethereal aura that actually radiates per- 
 ceptibly from the bodies of persons of very high spiritual 
 development, being particularly pronounced and notice- 
 able about the head. Anything touched or handled by 
 such a saintly individual will show this radiation in 
 a lesser degree, and this accounts for the special value 
 
94 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 attached to relics in religious belief of a certain type. 
 It is an evidence of the clearness of vision of the old 
 masters of art that they were able to perceive and depict 
 this psychophysical characteristic. 
 
 All music, whether instrumental or vocal, creates and 
 portrays objectively in the environment of the player or 
 singer the very thoughts, emotions, and mental activities 
 of the factors entering into its composition. Music is 
 but a variety of language : it expresses thoughts and 
 emotions, and it even depicts scenes with all their natural 
 form and coloring. The nature of instrumental music 
 of a military type has been referred to in a previous 
 chapter. There are a few church hymns that, when 
 well sung or played on an organ, present delightful liv- 
 ing, objective phenomena, in which many beings play 
 their part in a setting of appropriate colors and environ- 
 ment, depicting all the beautiful thoughts and emotions of 
 the composer's mind-plane of consciousness. 
 
 The ovate psychoplastic extension of the earth that 
 environs us and seemingly imprisons us is ever ready to 
 duplicate and record our thoughts, emotions, words, and 
 actions in living, objective reality, by a sort of cosmic 
 photography registering minutely all that occurs in 
 thought, feeling, word, or deed, on this incarnate zone, 
 or plane. It constitutes an open book of life, wherein 
 those may read who can. 
 
 Every living entity plays its drama of life twice. One 
 stage, that of incarnate existence, is dense; the other, 
 that of excarnate existence, is more ethereal. But not 
 one jot or tittle is omitted on either plane of expression 
 that would make the scene lack completeness in the 
 slightest detail. 
 
 A canary has thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and 
 expresses them in acts, chirps, and song, making them 
 
Thought Phenomena and Environment of Being 95 
 
 vivid in setting, coloring, and environment. It thinks 
 and sings of the forest, its nest, and its young; tor 
 every seed, root, branch, limb, or leaf in its expression 
 tells, as though in language, the whole story of its 
 existence and function in its sentient environment in 
 Nature. 
 
 Is it worth while for spirit-man to strive to acquire 
 the ability to communicate with all living entities that go 
 to make up our phenomenal world? 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 MAN AND HIS EXCARNATE COMPANIONS 
 
 Each spirit being, whether incarnate or excarnate, is 
 a receptive factor in a manifested world of its own 
 creation. No two psychophysical organisms or entities 
 present identically the same phenomena of mind action. 
 Their past is dissimilar, and they do not at present think, 
 look, act, or create alike ; hence each being, or microcosm, 
 has a distinct individuality and personality, with different 
 traits of mind and bodily form. Thus every being, 
 whether he be in the incarnate or the excarnate phase 
 of life, demonstrates the evolution of spirit; and this 
 same law of distinct creative effort holds good and is 
 manifested in all the domains of life below that of spirit- 
 man. 
 
 The mind that created and inhabits a little world of 
 its own possesses the law, the attributes, and the essence 
 of a psychodynamic generator of thought within itself. 
 It is also a receiver of thought-messages from its environ- 
 ment, a transformer of thought messages received from 
 without, and a transmitter of thought messages from 
 within. Mind is seemingly a well-equipped wireless sta- 
 tion, able to act over a wide range. 
 
 The more familiar we become with the subjects of 
 psychonomy and psychogeny, or the laws governing the 
 action of the mind and its unfoldment, the better we 
 shall be prepared to communicate with excarnate beings 
 and with all spirits manifesting on the lower planes of 
 
 96 
 
Man and His Excarnate Companions 97 
 
 consciousness, and the more clearly we shall comprehend 
 the phenomena of Nature that so closely environ us and 
 affect our welfare for good or ill. 
 
 Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll has given us an excellent 
 word-picture, which I shall quote, of a benighted mind 
 lost in the world it created, but nevertheless dependent 
 on the cosmic incubator, as are man-like apes, gorillas, 
 chimpanzees, ape-like men, and the other orders of ani- 
 mate Nature that surround spirit-man. Ingersoll wrote: 
 
 In the brain, that wondrous world with one inhabitant, 
 there are recesses dim and dark, treacherous sands and 
 dangerous shores where seeming sirens tempt and fade, 
 streams that rise in unknown lands from hidden springs, 
 strange seas with ebb and flow of tides, resistless billows 
 urged by storms of flame, profound and awful depths hidden 
 by mist of dreams, obscure and phantom realms where vague 
 and fearful things are half revealed, jungles where passion's 
 tigers crouch, and skies of cloud and blue where fancies fly 
 with painted wings that dazzle and mislead ; and the poor 
 sovereign of this pictured world is led by old desires and 
 ancient hates, and stained by crimes of many vanished years, 
 and pushed by hands that long ago were dust, until he feels 
 like some bewildered slave that Mockery has throned and 
 crowned. 
 
 This is an accurate presentation of the state of the 
 authoritative minds of our day — the controlling intellects 
 of our present civilization; hence the chaotic condition 
 of our social fabric, which is only an indication of the 
 travail, or labor, inevitable in the evolution of spirit-man 
 to a higher and better plane of consciousness. The mind 
 of spirit-man demands and must have a larger range of 
 employment and endeavor than his animal consciousness 
 affords, and this gives rise to the restless agitation for 
 something better than the prosaic, humdrum, monotonous, 
 
 7 
 
98 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 and circumscribed life he now lives. From within his 
 mind come prophecies of something better, nobler, and 
 holier in store for him. His intuition and impressibility 
 tell him that there is something new, fine, and beautiful 
 awaiting him — yet he does not know how to proceed to 
 attain it. All religious sects promise him something bet- 
 ter in the future through "faith." He asks why he can- 
 not gain it in the present through study of the natural 
 laws of his being. He demands it now. He will no 
 longer be a slave to that which mockery has "throned 
 and crowned." 
 
 For a hundred thousand years or more spirit-man has 
 wandered aimlessly about in the animal and Mammon 
 realms of consciousness, his mind all the while feeding 
 on husks and tares and foolishly hoping for happiness 
 and great joy. Excarnate messengers came and went, 
 and spirit-man dimly divined their presence and indis- 
 tinctly caught impressions of a promised land that would 
 enlarge his vision of life. Full of discontent and dis- 
 trust and discouragement in the land of Mammon, and 
 constantly pursued and afflicted by ancestral traits of 
 mind and body, he was overwhelmed with despair and 
 foreboding, and begged and cried aloud for safety, help, 
 and mental peace. Over eighty years ago, however, the 
 veil of ignorance began slowly to lift from his mind, 
 and he passed out of the plane of Mammon's mental 
 darkness into the promised land where excarnate and 
 incarnate beings dwell together and communicate with 
 one another. There he learned the true story of his 
 deliverance from the animal, the Satanic, and the Mam- 
 mon states of consciousness. 
 
 Excarnate spirit messengers are ever operative on these 
 three conscious planes, impressing, guiding, and encourag- 
 ing the evolving spirit of man until the ancient veil 
 
Man and His Excarnate Companions 99 
 
 before his mind is rent in twain and he attains the power 
 to perceive through his immortal senses. Then he realizes 
 that he is environed by an impalpable extension of the 
 earth, wherein are duplicated virtually all the phenomena 
 of life that surround him on the shell of the planet upon 
 which he exists and functions for a time, as do all the 
 other forms of evolving life. 
 
 The awakened and evolved mind of the individual 
 mortal can function with its five immortal senses in the 
 excarnate promised land, and can see, hear, feel, smell, 
 and taste the manifestations of life in that region, al- 
 though it is a land less densely constituted and organized 
 than his own, but whose inhabitants are legion and 
 encompass spirit-man round about by day and by night, 
 ever ready to respond and minister to his needs, wants, 
 and desires and to fill him with delight, gladness, and 
 joy. Words cannot express the marvelous grandeur and 
 majesty and beauty of the ovate zones that environ the 
 earth and its inhabitants, as revealed to the clairvoyant 
 vision of the developed psychic. 
 
 As spirit-man may be helped or harmed by one or 
 more of his fellow-men, so likewise may he be affected 
 by one or more excarnate beings. One must simply 
 decide whom one will, and whom one will not, entertain 
 and associate with. Birds of a feather usually flock 
 together, and this is true of spirit-man and his com- 
 panions. Incarnate spirit-man is more or less isolated 
 from his fellow-man by the laws and limitations of his 
 psychophysical organism; therefore he cannot be assisted 
 by his fellow-mortals as readily as by excarnate beings, 
 who seem ever ready to render aid when needed. To 
 enjoy the watchful care and wise counsel of environ- 
 mental angels, gods, and goddesses is a heaven on earth 
 that is beyond the power of even a poet's pen to describe. 
 
ioo Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 The dawn of the millennium begins when spirit-man's 
 immortal soul and senses have gained the ascendancy 
 over his animal mind and propensities. Many animals 
 are born upon this incarnate plane without sight, and 
 exist and function for nine or more days before the phe- 
 nomenal world about them is seen with their own eyes; 
 but almost all the human beings born into this world 
 pass their entire lives without developing or using their 
 immortal senses. 
 
 The myriads of living forms of every description that 
 spirit-man's corporeal mind and senses have been able to 
 recognize, even with the aid of the microscope, form 
 but an infinitesimal fraction of the sentient beings, ani- 
 mate creatures, and vital organisms of every kind that 
 fill so-called space and thus completely environ us. Man 
 really exists and functions in the interior of the earth, 
 on the crust or shell of its kernel, whereas excarnate 
 spirits dwell in the great ovate or globular zone of the 
 earth's extension that holds the denser portion, or core, 
 in its center. 
 
 An incarnated spirit in the form of man whose im- 
 mortal soul and senses are more or less unfolded can 
 communicate with an excarnate spirit possessing a sim- 
 ilar unfoldment of soul and of its avenues of informa- 
 tion. But incarnate and excarnate spirits whose minds 
 and senses are limited to the animal consciousness have 
 a very limited power of communicating with each other 
 — virtually none at all, notwithstanding the Biblical 
 record of the loquacity of Balaam's ass. When an 
 incarnate being in the mask of man and an excarnate 
 being possessing no unfoldment beyond that of the ani- 
 mal mind and senses presume to teach and lead those 
 that are as blind as themselves, they continue to flounder 
 in ignorance and acquire no further knowledge as to the 
 
Man and His Excarnate Companions 101 
 
 whence, the purpose, or the whither of the genus homo, 
 whose existence and functions are governed wholly by 
 natural law. 
 
 During the unfoldment of the mind and senses of 
 spirit-man he may frequently stumble and fall, owing to 
 his lack of mental and physical development; but a will 
 that knows no failure or defeat eventually impels him 
 to continue his excursion into new planes or regions of 
 the mind. With dauntless courage he will thus press 
 on, discarding inherited mental rubbish for newer and 
 better acquisitions, these in turn being left behind when 
 he learns that any mental luggage at all will hinder the 
 inflow and outflow of what the spirit may next perceive 
 on continuing its journey further into the beautiful realms 
 of Nature. 
 
 Spirit-man and excarnate spirit, presenting only slightly 
 different densities of embodiment, may readily communi- 
 cate with each other if their immortal souls and senses 
 are developed, and they may thus extend to each other 
 such courtesies and civilities as their degree of refine- 
 ment may suggest. An excarnate spirit can be your very 
 best friend because he can tell you all your faults and 
 love you still. And he can understand you, for he knows 
 your every thought, your past actions, and your future 
 purpose in life. 
 
 If the individual spirit-man is sufficiently unfolded 
 mentally he can interpret for himself the successive chap- 
 ters of his past incarnate life, as well as the intimations 
 of his future. When the book of his life is thus opened 
 before him, he will realize the necessity of normal mind- 
 creation in every respect while continuing his excursion 
 into the unexplored regions of his own mind and learn- 
 ing to comprehend his microcosm, wherein a godlike 
 soul may reside and know no evil. 
 
102 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 It is a great privilege and pleasure to entertain faith- 
 ful excarnate friends, who are constantly filling our lives 
 with delight and joy by countless acts of love, kind- 
 ness, and helpfulness, as they lead us on to fuller and 
 greater realization and demonstration of the innate 
 potency of our souls if normally directed. It is grand 
 and glorious to entertain angels, gods, and goddesses in 
 your home and wherever you journey; always to have 
 an abundance of congenial company — beings that fill your 
 home with plants, trees, and flowers or take you on an 
 excursion into beautiful regions of Nature ; to know that 
 these spirit beings have a purpose they are striving to 
 accomplish, and that you can be of assistance to them in 
 their effort to emancipate both incarnate and excarnate 
 beings from the bonds of ignorance that hinder their 
 unfoldment of mind and body; to have them act as 
 messengers for you and bring back needed information; 
 to know that they help you to limit cares that are not 
 essential to your soul's unfoldment; to see them open 
 a way through the earth's unbroken ovate or globular 
 zones to more refined ethereal planes; to see beyond the 
 mists and clouds of darker hues into the clear, brilliant, 
 crystalline, diamond-like phenomena of a more sublimated 
 zone, where the dross of the Mammon and animal con- 
 sciousness has been entirely eliminated and the inhabitants 
 know no evil; to know that the divinity of purpose and 
 the glorious beauty of Nature are everywhere to be seen 
 by him whose immortal soul and senses are sufficiently 
 unfolded to perceive the presence of God in all natural 
 phenomena ; to realize that the heaven or hell of incarnate 
 and excarnate. beings is no better and no worse than 
 their own state of mind creates for them and enables 
 them to perceive; to know that blind faith in either 
 ancient or modern authors acts as a lethal draught and 
 
Man and His Excarnate Companions 103 
 
 puts the mind to sleep, inhibiting its creative functions 
 and diminishing the resourcefulness that is so needful 
 in evolving the potentialities latent within it. 
 
 Beings wearing the incarnate personality called man, 
 as well as those in the excarnate form called spirit, should 
 employ their time in holding communication with other 
 beings of every degree, and, after testing their nature, 
 should continue their association only with those that give 
 them the most and the best information, especially those 
 that have wended their way from a far-off home. The 
 halo and aura that accompany them will be a sufficient 
 indication of the plane of consciousness they have 
 attained. 
 
 Do not waste your time and theirs by inquiring into 
 their identity, but proceed to ascertain how much infor- 
 mation they can impart that will awaken and stimulate 
 active thought in your own mind. Having seen the great, 
 beautiful, and magnificent attributes and endowments of 
 an emancipated soul, your own soul is impelled to forge 
 ahead by leaps and bounds to reach the same state of 
 development; and when that is accomplished it longs to 
 press on to still more lofty heights, from which it can 
 perceive and appropriate more of the wisdom that the 
 Teachers have to impart. The mind of man sorely needs 
 a new ovate world-zone to explore — a new region whose 
 inhabitants can give him information as to the shortest, 
 quickest, and most agreeable route to take in order to 
 get there, if a visit to any particular plane of conscious- 
 ness should be desired. 
 
 When a spirit first becomes a living being in the mask 
 of corporeality, he finds hosts already here, some young 
 and some very old ; and so it will ever be, upon whatever 
 plane of consciousness one may function throughout 
 eternity. Many will have gone before you and can meet 
 
104 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 you on the way and guide you toward better lands, very 
 much as we do here on earth. There are always those 
 who are ready and willing to show mankind Nature's 
 normal way of evolving undeveloped minds from their 
 low estate through alertness and activity of thought with- 
 in themselves, and who thus help the soul gradually to 
 create for itself a larger domain, until it eventually be- 
 comes universal — one with the universal mind of Nature. 
 
 Through the power and influence of the spirit beings 
 that encompass and act upon him, man will ultimately 
 attain redemption, or emancipation from his present ani- 
 mal and Mammon consciousness and stage of develop- 
 ment into a godlike race of people who know no evil. 
 Mankind should heed and apply the messages and the 
 counsel of the world of spirits that environ him, inas- 
 much as they are able to show the way to those that 
 have eyes to see, and give instruction to those that have 
 ears to hear, teaching them how to obtain their natural 
 birthright and their divine appanage by means of the 
 normal creative use of their own minds. 
 
 For those who still slumber in the Satanic consciousness 
 let us hope that a day of awakening will soon be at hand. 
 May the kindly light of higher realms lead them on, 
 until they perceive, by the use of their immortal senses, 
 the way to the throne of God! 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE DESIGNER AND ITS PHENOMENA 
 
 We have seen that every unit of mind has as its armor 
 or instrument an archetypal psychophysical organism 
 called spirit. The unit may exist in its original form, 
 or in any one of the diverse kinds and degrees of embodi- 
 ment (or incarnate state of existence), from the tiniest 
 species up through many gradations of size and form to 
 that of a spirit being with a mind sufficiently evolved to 
 incarnate in a mask or personality called man. 
 
 In a previous chapter it is asserted that there are no 
 secrets, no mysteries, and no hidden labyrinths in Nature 
 to a soul capable of perceiving its varied phenomena. 
 We are now concerned with the terrestrial plane of mind 
 manifestation, and especially with the phenomenon known 
 as man. 
 
 A unit of mind, or spirit, encased, for instance, in a 
 root, nut, or seed, manifests itself in a somewhat less 
 dense embodiment in the stem, limbs, leaves, blossoms, 
 and fruit, while awaiting the opportunity to incarnate in 
 a denser form, or replica. A spirit encased within a pink 
 seed manifests its designated form in the stem, leaves, 
 and branches, and in the variegated coloring of its 
 blossoms, while waiting for a favorable condition to be- 
 come embodied in a denser replica. It has its needs, 
 wants, and desires, and when planted in the earth is 
 supplied with numerous sentient nature-builders that fill 
 out its design or form in accordance with every detail 
 
 105 
 
106 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 of its particular nature and arrange all of the exquisite 
 coloring that is so greatly admired for its own sake by 
 those that perceive the outward appearance and nothing 
 more. 
 
 Every living thing in Nature has a specific kind of 
 ethereal form, or design, embodying its individual char- 
 acteristics and indicating the phenomena it will present 
 when the organism becomes more densely incarnated 
 through the accretion of sentient units filling out the 
 ethereal matrix and forming a denser replica, or mask, 
 through which it may be perceived by beings of unde- 
 veloped mind and senses functioning in the vegetable, 
 animal, and Satanic states of consciousness. 
 
 Allow your mind to shape the image of an ethereal 
 being, with osseous, nervous, and circulatory systems and 
 all the organs of the human body minutely but distinctly 
 represented in their proper location and relation to one 
 another and supplied with a sort of ethereal covering, or 
 vestment — this being existing and functioning in the 
 ovate region of the earth that environs spirit-man, and 
 possessing an individuality and a personality previously 
 acquired through creative mental effort. In this ethereal 
 form there takes place a psychophysical process of sen- 
 tient accretion (called gestation, or incarnation), which 
 fills out and enlarges the whole organism, with all its 
 minute mental and physical details, into a denser sentient 
 mask, or replica, called man. This result is accomplished 
 through the accretive effort of the mind expressing need, 
 want, and desire on the part of the incarnating being, and 
 through the ready helpfulness of sentient units respond- 
 ing to the call from a dominant mind for aid in further 
 creative endeavor. In all the various functions of spirit- 
 man's organism we see the working of need, want, and 
 desire, which are responded to by sentient organisms that 
 
The Designer and Its Phenomena 107 
 
 maintain and operate the various parts and organs of the 
 body in co-ordination with the mind. 
 
 Chemists have found that spirit-man's body is eighty 
 per cent, water (H 2 0) ; hence a body weighing one 
 hundred pounds has twenty pounds of non-liquid material. 
 But even the solids of the body may be converted into 
 gases, when no longer serving the purposes of the inhabit- 
 ing being. Scientists can resolve all substances into what 
 they call the gaseous state, but they are helpless to proceed 
 any further in their investigations. The word gas may 
 be defined as spirit. Breath, spirit, and gas are essentially 
 one and the same thing. 
 
 It is strange that the microscope is not more helpful 
 to the physical scientist. Possibly it may come to be 
 of greater service when his mind perceives what to look 
 for, as well as what further to expect in his scientific 
 investigations. To the psychic what is called gas, or 
 ether, is not so attenuated or rarefied a natural substance 
 as one would suppose. In fact the so-called solids and 
 gases are not unlike ether in their form of organization, 
 and the constitution and arrangement of matter on the 
 two distinct planes of manifestation are in many respects 
 identical. 
 
 The undeveloped mind and physical senses of spirit- 
 man and the dull intelligence and sensibilities of an 
 excarnate being of no great spiritual development natu- 
 rally require conditions of environment that are in many 
 particulars similar. Nature does not thrust her wards 
 into strange, incompatible, or uncongenial surroundings; 
 therefore the two psychophysical conditions are essentially 
 the same in illustrating her effort to unfold the two 
 orders of mind by placing them in an appropriate environ- 
 ment. Both spirit-man and excarnate beings are encom- 
 passed by myriads of living creatures that exist and func- 
 
108 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 tion alike on the terrestrial plane and in the ovate zone 
 of the earth's extension and present somewhat similar 
 phenomena on each. 
 
 The incarnate personality called man is only the instru- 
 ment of a spirit. The organ we call the brain does not 
 think, any more than do the arms or the legs or any 
 other parts of the body. The corporeal organism is only 
 a vegetable compound possessing a vegetable conscious- 
 ness. It is made up of billions of sentient entities, some 
 exceedingly minute and others much larger, but all aggre- 
 gated into colonies for special purposes and functions. 
 There are many minds that dwell in the structure of 
 the human body, but have not evolved above the vegetable 
 consciousness, so that we have presented to us in some 
 cases a combination of vegetable and animal life. 
 
 The psychophysical being wearing the human mask 
 and possessing only a vegetable and animal conscious- 
 ness should be aroused by any suitable expedient from 
 the Lethe of past ages and led to perceive that it is his 
 duty to think seriously and assiduously, so that he may 
 come to know himself. Thus he will begin to realize 
 his future possibilities through normal creative thinking 
 that is wholly directed toward one object, mind-unfold- 
 ment, which is followed by unfoldment of the spirit 
 senses. 
 
 When immortal mind dominates a spirit-man's con- 
 duct, he has become a living soul and perceives the phe- 
 nomena of excarnate spirit as clearly as those of the 
 incarnate phase of life about him. He thus gains cosmic 
 consciousness and gradually unfolds toward the universal 
 consciousness; for the soul, through its great perceptive 
 ability, is able, when developed, to dominate its tem- 
 porary sentient instrument. It is then that the body 
 becomes a normal healthy organism, serving the soul as 
 
The Designer and Its Phenomena 109 
 
 a precious and useful instrument until its services are no 
 longer required. 
 
 The Great Teacher demonstrated the power of the soul 
 over spirit-man's embodiment, or mask, when he healed 
 the sick, cast out evil spirits, and raised the dead; and 
 other incidents are recorded that proved his power over 
 environment. Yet he preached to a soulless race of 
 human beings who could not understand him. His 
 disciples can do much more in an age in which there 
 are numerous awakened souls among mankind, and in 
 which the destructive forces are less dominant than in 
 any past generation. But it is no small task for the 
 soul of spirit-man to blast through the steel and rocks 
 of ignorance, bigotry, and prejudice that have imprisoned 
 the minds of practically all mankind since Nature's Cos- 
 mic School cast them upon the terrestrial ovate plane of 
 existence. 
 
 The awakened souls of this generation are becoming, 
 individually and collectively, more efficient and are demon- 
 strating more and more the limitless possibilities of their 
 creative power in a land where liberty of thought and 
 action is more secure than it has been at any time in the 
 history of the human race. 
 
 Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, an enlightened teacher, 
 did noble work in her effort to arouse mankind to a 
 realization of the creative power of the immortal soul, 
 and, despite the defects and shortcomings of the system 
 she developed, it is gratifying to realize that it has made 
 many persons conscious of their birthright and enabled 
 them to demonstrate the inherent power of mind. She 
 was a pioneer demonstrator of the latent powers of the 
 soul; and what man has attained in this direction is but 
 a faint foreshadowing of what is to come when the 
 walls of ignorance, bigotry, and prejudice give way at 
 
no Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 last, and the coming of the millennium of intellectual 
 freedom brings a spiritual consciousness to a world of 
 awakened and enlightened beings. 
 
 It required the vigilant and heroic efforts of a daunt- 
 less soul, in the person of the late Colonel Theodore 
 Roosevelt, to awaken our national consciousness to the 
 international needs, wants, and desires of mankind. 
 When a national soul can fully perceive its international 
 duties, it has developed into a cosmic soul, for the highest 
 and best good of the human race. When the cosmic 
 soul is sufficiently evolved, it will perceive and realize 
 that there is an ovate excarnate world that environs us, 
 inhabited by excarnate beings who are intensely inter- 
 ested in all the affairs of their incarnate brethren. 
 
 When spirit-man develops a larger and better acquaint- 
 ance with his masked comrades of the earth, and under- 
 stands his divine duty toward them, he will find it a 
 grander and nobler world to live in. When the minds 
 of mortals are sufficiently evolved to know that there 
 are excarnate beings who also inhabit the earth, and who 
 enter into all the functions of the social fabric of its 
 masked people, they will have awakened to a new and 
 larger sense of their duties, responsibilities, and obliga- 
 tions to both their incarnate and excarnate fellow-beings. 
 
 All that the soul perceives, if heeded, cultivated, and 
 energized long enough, will become manifest and demon- 
 strated in due time. The psychic person, like the physicist, 
 demands proof or demonstration before being convinced, 
 and, if he be patient, this will be furnished in abundance 
 as the new perceptive powers of the soul are opened. 
 The practical evidence daily afforded to a well-developed 
 psychic would, if recorded in writing, suffice to make a 
 volume of considerable size. 
 
 We must remember that the soul gains very rapidly 
 
The Designer and Its Phenomena 1 1 1 
 
 in its unfoldment when intense desire to learn more is 
 uppermost in its thoughts. One has no time for trivial 
 or trifling things that bother a small mind and hold it 
 a vassal ; one finds all hindrances disappearing when there 
 is an untrammeled vision from the soul; one cannot but 
 forge on, when so much wealth of knowledge is every- 
 where at hand; one is filled with delight, gladness, and 
 joy at the ease with which the bounty of Nature can be 
 appropriated; one need not carry any outworn mental 
 luggage into the realms of Nature ; one realizes that what 
 the unsullied soul perceives is good, noble, and divine, 
 and is never lost ; one learns not to place limitations on 
 the soul's perceptive power by blind acceptance of authors 
 ancient or modern; if one's soul is free, one loses all 
 fear of mental or bodily danger, for one who is full of 
 fear is still nursing his vegetable, animal, and pseudo- 
 religious consciousness; one whose soul's perception is 
 adequate sees all things in Nature in their proper places 
 and rates them at their true value; one who possesses an 
 evolved soul sees no evil in any of the phenomena of 
 Nature and perceives only divine law working out the 
 normal course of mind-unfoldment in Nature's Cosmic 
 School; one realizes that the whole purpose of Nature 
 is to compel its wards to think much and hard, whether 
 in suffering or in gladness ; one knows that the good and 
 the true are eternal, and that suffices. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 man's indecision as to the purpose of existence 
 
 The supreme and continuous effort of Nature has 
 been (and still is) to compel man to think normally, 
 reflect diligently, reason from cause to effect intelligently, 
 and comprehend the natural laws of his being. He 
 should, in consequence of such comprehension, realize the 
 importance of eliminating his animal nature as rapidly 
 as possible, despite the fact that this progressive step is 
 a very difficult and wearisome task. 
 
 Men shrink from the effort of thought required for 
 the understanding of the higher and lower aspects of 
 their natures, and thus they remain indifferent through- 
 out life, without the will to suppress or entirely eliminate 
 their animal characteristics. Orthodox believers are told 
 to have faith in God, which will in some mysterious 
 fashion obviate the necessity of mental labor and the 
 acquirement of knowledge here. Simply through faith, 
 they are solemnly assured, they will be transported, as 
 they are, into heaven and into the presence of an om- 
 niscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent Being. That would 
 indeed be an astonishingly swift transformation from a 
 state of gross ignorance to one of all knowledge and 
 wisdom. Why, then, have Mother Earth and Father 
 Time spent two hundred million or more years to evolve 
 the race into the state of existence in which it finds 
 itself at the present time? 
 
 Man's dual characteristics have been well expressed by 
 Alexander Pope in the following lines: 
 
 112 
 
Man's Indecision as to the Purpose of Existence 113 
 
 "Placed on this isthmus of a middle state — 
 A being darkly wise and rudely great, 
 With too much knowledge for the sceptic's side, 
 With too much weakness for the stoic's pride — 
 He hangs between ; in doubt to act or rest ; 
 In doubt to deem himself a god or beast ; 
 In doubt his mind or body to prefer ; 
 Born but to die, and reasoning but to err ; 
 Alike in ignorance, his reason such, 
 Whether he think too little or too much ; 
 Chaos of thought and passion, all confused ; 
 Still by himself abused or disabused ; 
 Created half to rise and half to fall ; 
 Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all ; 
 Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled — 
 The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!" 
 
 Pope's accurate word-picture of the human mind, so 
 full of indecision and of vacillating attitudes, only cor- 
 roborates the assertion that man is not able to discern 
 the purpose of his existence or his function in Nature. 
 When the true nature of his inevitable destiny is made 
 clear to him, he will readily accept the responsibility and 
 normally fulfil his duty in life. Not knowing it, he now 
 fritters away his spare time in playing various indoor and 
 outdoor games, attending places of amusement, and read- 
 ing story-books to divert himself; he is in no wise 
 adequately devoted to vocational interests that should be 
 all-engrossing. 
 
 Man today finds no time to study and become 
 acquainted with his innate self, nor does he give heed 
 to the higher and nobler needs, wants, and desires of his 
 nature. To know himself and evolve his diviner attri- 
 butes of being he must learn the value of solitude, con- 
 centration, introspection, and meditation, and thereby 
 gain dominion over his lower nature and over all that 
 
 8 
 
H4 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 has become useless or a hindrance to the further unfold- 
 ment of his innate divine creative power. As his mental 
 unfoldment progresses, newer and better aspirations will 
 arise in his mind, and these should be given the fullest 
 measure of attention each and every day, with a resolve 
 to carry them out persistently both in thought and in 
 conduct. 
 
 The simple fact that spirit-man wishes, hopes, prays, 
 and longs for something better than his present condition 
 of mind and body affords him can be traced to prompt- 
 ings within his own psychophysical organism. He hun- 
 gers and thirsts for what he already innately possesses, 
 and all he needs to do is to utter the creative word and 
 make it manifest. As this desire grows stronger within 
 the mind, man as an intellectual being becomes more 
 instinctive, intuitive, and impressionable, and the organs 
 of perception become more highly tuned and unfolded. 
 
 Once the soul of spirit-man is aroused and awakened 
 from its chronic state of inertia, indolence, and indecision 
 regarding the proper manner of working out its destiny, 
 it becomes a living, functioning entity fitted to begin to 
 think normally and to manifest the potential attributes 
 of its nature. What the mind of man has instinctively 
 felt, pondered, and reasoned out to a definite conclusion 
 — what has become logically clear to him — will, if con- 
 stantly energized, develop his intuition and mental per- 
 ception to a state in which the psychic senses become 
 opened. And this marks a very important epoch in his 
 evolution. 
 
 Man's animal senses have afforded him information 
 for the past hundred thousand or more years, and they 
 are the only source of knowledge for the vast majority 
 of mankind today. Intelligent people realize the deploy 
 ably slow progress that civilization has consequently made 
 
Mans Indecision as to the Purpose of Existence 115 
 
 up to the present time. But as soon as man is made 
 aware that additional avenues of information, hitherto 
 unused and unknown, are at his command, a most sig- 
 nificant era opens up to him, and he can make rapid 
 strides by the use of his new means of gaining expe- 
 rience, knowledge, and wisdom, which in turn will further 
 unfold the psychic powers of his soul. The divine prin- 
 ciple innate in the being incarnated in the human per- 
 sonality could not be so content and so inactive as to 
 remain forever dependent on the animal senses as avenues 
 of information. They were only to serve for a time in 
 the evolution of man's intellect until his development 
 could reach a stage in which the psychic powers are un- 
 folded and another objective world is presented for his 
 contemplation. 
 
 The state of the human mind that Pope so vividly 
 described will pass away when our psychic senses are 
 able to discern the excarnate as well as the incarnate 
 phenomena of life. Thus the way will be prepared for 
 further normal, rational, positive demonstrations to those 
 who can read the open book of Nature. The higher as 
 well as the lower aspect of their being then reveals itself 
 to their senses, and it becomes clear how to eliminate 
 the latter and evolve the former. There will be no lack 
 of assistance in their endeavor to clean and purify the 
 temple of the human soul, so that grander and more 
 beautiful thoughts may be entertained and the further 
 unfoldment of the soul fostered. 
 
 Is it not in the highest degree rational for the embryo 
 god to evolve his innate attributes of mind by continuous 
 creative effort, and thus to rise through the lower con- 
 scious planes or domains of Nature until, in consequence 
 of unremitting thought and labor, he attains an exalted 
 plane of consciousness, gaining experience, knowledge, 
 
Ii6 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 and wisdom, and finally entering heaven and dwelling in 
 the presence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and omni- 
 present Being? 
 
 Besides the time consumed in the normal manual labor 
 that is essential for the mind and body of spirit-man, 
 several hours each day should be set apart for normal 
 creative unfoldment of the higher mental attributes. This 
 unfoldment can only be gained by minute introspective 
 study of one's self, and by thorough and consistent 
 reasoning from cause to effect, thus formulating a line 
 of thought and action that will foster the desired develop- 
 ment most effectively. 
 
 Man is prone to assume a great number of cares that 
 absorb most of his time and yet produce nothing that 
 will be of value to him in the excarnate world. Man's 
 only care, and the only riches he ought to seek, should 
 be a fuller development of soul and mind, which will 
 serve him both here and hereafter. Those who are com- 
 petent might well formulate grades of study for the 
 scientific unfoldment of the innate powers of the mind; 
 and if they could secure widespread (and ultimately 
 universal) adoption of the plan of orderly study thus 
 formulated, we might look forward to a truly pro- 
 gressive generation of people. 
 
 The various departments of the Government should 
 as far as possible encourage our citizens to engage in 
 scientific study of man's existence and purpose in Nature 
 during his sojourn on this conscious plane of action, for 
 each generation becomes absorbed in turn in the mechani- 
 cal and material development of the country, thus divert- 
 ing its attention from the things that are really worth 
 while. The wealth of a country should be estimated by 
 the knowledge and spiritual development of its citizens, 
 and not by its aggregation of money and material 
 
Man's Indecision as to the Purpose of Existence 117 
 
 resources, nor by its display of pomp and luxury, splendor 
 and extravagance. 
 
 Ninety-nine per cent, of the people of most countries 
 are relatively poor, and many of them are denied even 
 the ordinary comforts of life. Moreover, in many cases 
 they are actually unable to take care of their health, and 
 have no chance to have their seemingly inevitable diseases 
 properly treated. 
 
 Those who presume to take charge of the various 
 departments and bureaus of the Government should be 
 men and women whose minds have evolved above the 
 plane of the animal and Mammon consciousness, and 
 who possess a broad and clear vision regarding the attain- 
 ment of the greatest good of the greatest number, both 
 here and hereafter. Through the strenuous efforts of 
 one of our eminent leaders, Theodore Roosevelt, who 
 was for many years a commanding figure in the nation 
 and even in the world, and who believed in the policy 
 of aggressiveness in behalf of the right and the good, 
 the necessity of awakening a national consciousness has 
 been clearly recognized. But this, to be permanent, must 
 be based upon a moral and spiritual consciousness in the 
 breasts of our citizenship. 
 
 If the governing class does not possess a godlike con- 
 sciousness, and, while standing at the head of public 
 affairs, set a noble example, what can be expected of 
 the heterogeneous aggregate that constitutes the general 
 population? What type of moral and spiritual growth, 
 with a continuance of the present methods of education, 
 science and religion, will the governing class of the 
 Union exhibit? What kind of example are they going 
 to set their fellow-citizens, to help them to become a 
 homogeneous people of a really noble type? If the good, 
 the noble, and the true — the expression of the diviner 
 
n8 
 
 Man: Whence and Whither? 
 
 part of human nature — are always exemplified in the 
 action of the popular leaders and of those in high position, 
 the masses will perceive it and act in consonance there- 
 with. 
 
 The ambition of the Federal Government must be 
 turned from the development of purely external resources 
 and the accumulation of national wealth to the far more 
 worthy and valuable objective of fostering the moral and 
 spiritual progress of its citizenry from year to year and 
 from generation to generation. It should be able to 
 point with justifiable pride to the sterling qualities of 
 its people, and, before all the nations of the earth, pro- 
 claim: "These are my jewels!" 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE 
 
 In the psychophysical functions of the human mind 
 and body we can always trace the workings of natural 
 law and the unvarying operation of the principle of 
 cause and effect. When the mind and its organism have 
 evolved to a state of consciousness in which instinct and 
 impressibility are largely developed and knowledge can 
 be gained through intuition, this stage is characterized 
 by belief and faith. Instinctive and intuitive reasoning 
 develops intellect, thus fortifying belief and faith in 
 conceptions that have been gained. When man begins 
 instinctively and intuitively to perceive, reason, and reflect 
 upon personalities that are vague, intangible, inaudible, 
 and invisible, he soon comes to regard them as in some 
 way able to exert an influence on himself. 
 
 Logical, instinctive, and intuitive reasoning increases 
 knowledge and consequently promotes unf oldment of the 
 mind, and in time this mental development brings about 
 activity of the psychic powers, so that what was previously 
 merely a subjective impression becomes cognized as an 
 objective reality. Many persons possess a normal, open- 
 minded, instinctive, and intuitive intelligence, while others 
 become obsessed with a chimerical idea and cease to 
 think, in consequence of which no further development 
 of the mind takes place. 
 
 One who instinctively feels and intuitively apprehends 
 that he is environed by invisible intelligences, and that 
 
 119 
 
120 Man: Whence and Whither? 
 
 he will continue to exist after the death of his mortal 
 instrument, has made no mistake in his belief or faith, 
 for both are in harmony with well-established facts. He 
 has replaced a vague belief in mysterious forces operat- 
 ing upon him in some inscrutable way with faith in the 
 normal and inevitable operation of certain higher natural 
 laws. 
 
 These mental operations seemed new and strange to 
 him when compared with the functioning of his animal 
 mind and its limited senses. He found himself quite at 
 a loss to know how to adjust his belief and faith to the 
 conditions of his present existence. His intuitive intelli- 
 gence logically confronted him with two aspects of his 
 being, namely, his lower and his higher nature. The 
 concept of right and wrong gave him much concern. 
 
 The student of mathematics has to deal with two 
 aspects of his own nature: initial ignorance and subse- 
 quent knowledge of the subject. He is intuitively aware 
 that one aspect of his mind is good and the other bad; 
 in fact he may use some "cuss words" to arouse the 
 latter impulse of his nature to greater intensity of action. 
 The same law of efficiency and inefficiency holds good 
 in the study of psychonomy and psychogeny, or of any 
 other natural science essential for the larger develop- 
 ment of the mind. 
 
 Man's lower instincts and intuitive intelligence had 
 tangible bases of inspiration, which he cognized through 
 the evidence furnished by his animal senses for the 
 purpose of satisfying his needs, wants, and desires. Yet 
 the higher aspects of his nature gave him much con- 
 cern, and, since he was ignorant of the possibility of 
 any further unfoldment of his mind, he naturally at- 
 tributed the two diverging, or opposite, states of mind 
 to external personalities that he knew nothing about. In 
 
Faith and Knowledge 121 
 
 a very consistent manner he ascribed the good aspects 
 of his mind to one personality and the evil to another. 
 And in this conscious state of unfoldment he concluded 
 that he was mostly evil in his tendencies and only rarely 
 good. It seemed logical to him that he must assuage 
 the wrath of the Jealous One that he might attain eternal 
 bliss, not to mention deliverance from earthly affliction. 
 The evil one he conceived to be a jolly, worldly fellow 
 who roamed up and down the earth having a good time. 
 The good personality he placed in a far-off heaven and 
 thought it necessary to propitiate him constantly with 
 worship. Positive belief and faith in both personalities 
 were manifested, and both were feared — this being a very 
 natural operation of the mind under the circumstances. 
 
 It thus came about that man tried to assuage the 
 anger of the personality representing one aspect of his 
 nature and to flee from the other, which seemingly per- 
 sisted in accompanying him through this "vale of tears 
 and sighs" here below. Most people are so intensely 
 devoted to the antithetical personalities that represent the 
 two aspects of their own nature that they vehemently 
 repudiate the existence of any others, such as ghosts, 
 hobgoblins, angels, gods, and goddesses, which they are 
 told are everywhere about them. 
 
 The allegory about Lucifer and his angels and their 
 compulsory emigration to this earth has been interpreted 
 literally and taken seriously by dogmatic-minded people, 
 and has done much to arrest human development on this 
 planet hitherto. We know that the spirits that form the 
 integral parts of this incarnate earth came from some- 
 where. Call the place of their previous existence Heaven, 
 or the Garden of Eden, if you like. And what a "hell" 
 of a time they have had in Nature's Cosmic School up 
 to the present time! Thus the history of spirit-man 
 
122 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 includes, we may say, both Heaven and its infernal 
 antithesis ! 
 
 Many have not enjoyed the company of the tutor 
 under whose guidance they have been while in the Cosmic 
 School. They do not realize that incarnate and excar- 
 nate beings are on an excursion into Nature's newer 
 realms of mind in order to gain experience, knowledge, 
 and wisdom, and that the divine power that is inherent 
 in each mind is guiding, directing, and unfolding its 
 creative potency, gradually but diligently eliminating the 
 lower aspect of its nature, in order that better, larger, 
 nobler, and more nearly divine attainments may be realized 
 through increased mental efficiency. 
 
 Human progress comes through untrammeled instinc- 
 tive and intuitive mind-action, corresponding to further 
 needs, wants, and desires, which are thus seriously pon- 
 dered. And what the mind instinctively feels and intui- 
 tively apprehends, as already pointed out, becomes an 
 objective reality to the mind through its developed senses. 
 
 Natural religious perceptions conform to the operations 
 of natural law; therefore no restrictions should be placed 
 upon the orderly unfoldment of human faculties in the 
 direction of greater expression of the mind's innate poten- 
 tial creative power. It is through the operation of a 
 natural law of mental action that spirit-man develops 
 psychic faculties, which are an inevitable and most essen- 
 tial phase of the soul's progress. 
 
 Who but a myth-believing and dogmatic-minded per- 
 son would condemn this very significant stage in the 
 soul's unfoldment? What was once merely instinctive 
 or intuitive knowledge, and a manifestation of belief and 
 faith, has now become a fact scientifically demonstrated 
 to those who possess sufficient psychic capacity to cog- 
 nize it. 
 
Faith and Knowledge 123 
 
 The average material scientist is not aware that a 
 psychic obtains positive, objective demonstrations in his 
 research into the phenomena of Nature, just as he him- 
 self does when investigating the phenomena of incarnate 
 existence with the aid of chemical analysis or the micro- 
 scope and other delicate instruments. Each of these 
 investigators should respect and value the work of the 
 other, for both are necessary to progress in scientific 
 knowledge regarding the environment of spirit-man and 
 his relation thereto. 
 
 Normal, rational, instinctive mental concepts, after due 
 reflection, engender belief and faith in ideas that have 
 been accumulated; and these concepts, if not diverted or 
 perverted, must sooner or later come into the field of 
 consciousness as the mind unfolds, and there take their 
 place beside its demonstrated, objective knowledge. A 
 progressive mind need not waste time in analyzing each 
 individual fact in Nature as it is objectively presented; 
 on the other hand, it may continue to accumulate facts 
 psychically, and in due time they will assemble them- 
 selves in their proper order and mutual relationship in 
 the observing mind. 
 
 A store of newly-collected thoughts, or concepts, of 
 a mind is like a field sown with seeds that must have 
 time to germinate and grow. It needs, therefore, much 
 care and cultivation, and the mental soil should be 
 enriched by solitude, reflection, introspection, meditation, 
 and silence, until the crop of seed-thoughts is fully grown 
 and the fruit matured and ripened. 
 
 Most of the self-appointed preachers and teachers of 
 mankind are not content to wait many years to store 
 their minds with ideas until they "hold like rich garners 
 the full-ripened grain." They rather incline to pluck 
 out ruthlessly the first sprouting idea that they discern, 
 
124 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 neglecting all the rest (of which it is but the earnest 
 and the promise), and they then set forth to promulgate 
 it as the sole means of mankind's redemption from paucity 
 of ideas and poverty of soul. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 EVOLVING A PRACTICAL RELIGION 
 
 The paramount question that should concern spirit- 
 man today is how normally to unfold the innate potencies 
 of his creative mind. He should no longer remain con- 
 tent with the information derived through his animal 
 senses, but rather give serious attention to the unfold- 
 ment of the inherent powers of his immortal soul. When 
 these are sufficiently developed, greater command over 
 the body is gained and the normal use of the psychic 
 senses is achieved: the excarnate phenomena of life that 
 environ mankind may then be seen, heard, felt, smelled, 
 and tasted. 
 
 Some of earth's inhabitants wearing the human mask 
 are in a savage state of existence, and thus possess only 
 a wild-animal consciousness. Others are tamed, like our 
 domestic animals, and consequently manifest a more 
 docile consciousness, such as that of the dog, the ox, or 
 the horse. Many others have grown through instinctive 
 intelligence to a state of mental development that is half 
 animal and half human, and these exhibit a Satanic con- 
 sciousness. They are seemingly not concerned about that 
 which lies beyond the sphere of their undeveloped minds 
 and dormant senses, and, like animals, have no religious 
 consciousness. A considerable number during their whole 
 lives, and many others after forty years of age, exist 
 in a vegetating — almost vegetable — state of consciousness 
 as a result of mental inertia. 
 
 125 
 
126 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 Perhaps one-fifth of mankind are sufficiently unfolded 
 mentally to be concerned with that which lies beyond 
 their own capacity to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste. 
 They are conscious of the nearness of an indefinable, 
 intangible, inaudible, and invisible spirit-intelligence, 
 which they regard as operative upon them. In this 
 limited unfoldment of mind they have arrived at what 
 may be called a religious state of consciousness. This 
 state is brought about through the development of intui- 
 tion, impressibility, and mental sensitiveness, as well as 
 of a certain physical receptivity. While this affords a 
 slight conception of what environs them, they should not 
 stop at this stage of unfoldment of their minds and 
 bodies, for it is but a single step above the animal con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Those who have evolved to this state of religious 
 consciousness conceive of two personalities — one repre- 
 senting the higher and the other the lower aspect of 
 their nature, as explained in detail in the preceding chap- 
 ter. Their implicit belief and faith in these personalities 
 — which are products of a very natural conception of 
 the psychophysical law governing their organisms — 
 develop a complacency and self-sufficiency of mind that 
 naturally inhibit any further creative thought and con- 
 sequently any further unfoldment of their mental powers. 
 Their dogmatic belief has excluded from their minds all 
 knowledge of the varied spirit phenomena that environ 
 them and operate upon them, and that could be intelligible 
 and even audible and visible to them if their minds were 
 open. 
 
 The transformation of mind and body should be con- 
 tinued through the constant process of thought in the 
 direction of greater realization of the higher needs, wants, 
 and desires, for this realization will be followed by greater 
 
Evolving a Practical Religion 127 
 
 unfoldment of the immortal soul and its enlarged means 
 of perception. 
 
 Mankind, being accustomed to seeing, hearing, feel- 
 ing, smelling, and tasting, and also to reasoning as well 
 as possible from cause to effect, naturally cultivated a 
 more or less logical intelligence. The same is true of 
 all living things in Nature below the conscious plane of 
 spirit-man. It is but natural and right that man should 
 apply his instinctive and intuitive intelligence and the 
 fruit of his mental training to thoughts regarding mat- 
 ters that concern him but that have not yet been made 
 manifest through his senses. What the mind has well 
 assimilated and comprehended is made manifest by the 
 unfoldment of its psychic power. This epoch in the 
 evolution of the mind marks the birth of a spiritual 
 consciousness. 
 
 An incarnate being that has gained command over 
 the immortal senses, and can observe the excarnate phe- 
 nomena of Nature as well as the incarnate ones, may 
 continue to apply his accustomed intelligence and logical 
 attributes of mind in the consideration of the phenomena 
 observed through his psychic attainments. Herbert 
 Spencer said: "To the mass of people nothing is so 
 costly as thought. The fact that, taking the world over, 
 ninety-nine people out of a hundred accept the creed to 
 which they were born exemplifies their mental attitude 
 toward things at large." 
 
 Self-complacency and self -sufficiency gained through 
 belief and faith in two antithetical personalities supposed 
 to affect our spiritual destiny can play no part in the 
 future responsibilities and duties to one's self and to 
 others of those whose psychic powers are developed. So 
 long as the animal mind and its dull physical senses 
 dominated the incarnate personality called man, little or 
 
128 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 no progress was made toward the satisfactory under- 
 standing and comprehension of his higher nature. But 
 when the soul through "great travail" gained control of 
 its immortal senses, a new world was revealed to man- 
 kind, and the lower and the higher aspects of his nature 
 were made plain to him. 
 
 Men of our day might as well make up their minds 
 to work normally and thus pay their way through each 
 successive heaven that their innate divine creative power 
 opens up to their psychic senses. A good and noble soul 
 loves to work out its own destiny — a process that is 
 always accompanied with pleasure, happiness, and joy. 
 One whose soul knows no fear and no defeat; whose 
 spirit works out its innate tendencies without pomp or 
 pride; who is free from prejudice and hatred; whose 
 soul perceives Nature as an open book; who places no 
 limitations on his own power; whose soul knows how 
 to regard the petty things of life and sees God's handi- 
 work in all the phenomena of Nature; whose soul con- 
 tinues to yearn for a larger perception of Nature, and 
 constantly strives to make a heaven on earth — such a 
 one is working out his destiny nobly and developing his 
 spiritual consciousness in all its completeness. 
 
 God's planetary chariot has been spinning around for 
 two hundred million or more years in the effort to evolve 
 a being incarnated in a personality called man to a state 
 of unfoldment in which the soul could use its mortal 
 instrument and become acquainted with the excarnate 
 phenomena of life. Such a God-given possibility has 
 only dawned upon the present generation of men, but 
 it is destined to become an accepted fact to most of our 
 race in perhaps another five hundred years. 
 
 When the psychic senses of spirit-man are opened, 
 and the higher as well as the lower aspects of his nature 
 
Evolving a Practical Religion 129 
 
 come to be an open book to him — then, even if he heeds 
 the responsibility and takes it seriously, he has only 
 begun to work out his destiny. The divine power innate 
 in the mind of an incarnate being whose replica is in 
 the image of God has then produced an awakened soul, 
 and it should appreciate the advantage it possesses in 
 being able to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste the beauty 
 and grandeur of the "invisible" world opened up through 
 the spirit senses. An intelligent and logical mind loves 
 to observe all the various phenomena of Nature and to 
 appropriate and apply the practical lessons that may be 
 derived therefrom. In this way its possessor is constantly 
 afforded a fresh mental stimulus or incentive to continue 
 his progress at as rapid a rate as possible. 
 
 When one has discovered the normal way of work- 
 ing out one's destiny through the acquisition of expe- 
 rience, knowledge, and wisdom, it is well worth diligent 
 and continuous effort to forge one's way constantly 
 ahead to newer and higher conscious planes of existence. 
 St. Paul said in effect that the fruit of the spirit is love, 
 joy, peace, kindness, long-suffering, goodness, faithful- 
 ness, meekness, and self-control. And to this list we 
 might add uninterrupted progress in realizing greater 
 mind-attainments. The idea that one must be "long- 
 suffering" in order to be good is nonsensical. There is 
 no suffering or sacrifice in getting rid of what is useless 
 and constitutes a hindrance to one's progressive unfold- 
 ment. 
 
 All good and noble attributes of an awakened soul 
 can be manifested and demonstrated here and now, with- 
 out waiting for a special opportunity in some far-off 
 heaven to which one is supposed to be transported after 
 death. Spirit-man must learn that he is now in the kind 
 of heaven he has created for himself. And, if he will 
 
130 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 constantly heed the admonitions of his soul, he can 
 steadily make his heaven larger and better as he attains 
 successively higher grades or states of consciousness. 
 
 Those who do not turn back or falter in working out 
 their spiritual destiny will eventually gain a godlike con- 
 sciousness, realizing a greater and higher illumination of 
 soul — thus making possible increased love and apprecia- 
 tion of Nature's wonderful laws. Should they in an 
 unguarded moment attempt to utter a wrong or a harm- 
 ful statement, their tongues would cleave to the roofs 
 of their mouths. And if they should try to commit 
 a wrongful act, it would confront them at once with a 
 shocking realization of its actual iniquity. 
 
 As the lower manifestations of an incarnate or excar- 
 nate being's nature are gradually eliminated, and the 
 higher aspect of his nature continues to be evolved, he 
 reaches an ever higher and purer plane of consciousness 
 — where the soul can manifest in its fulness and com- 
 pleteness a God-consciousness that knows no evil. Then 
 he may be classed with those called the pure in spirit. 
 The evolved and emancipated being, through the unfold- 
 ment of the inherent creative power of its mind, has 
 worked its way up through all the lower conscious 
 domains of Nature and attained oneness with the Father. 
 
 How much have religionists improved in their con- 
 ceptions of God since the time of Pythagoras, the sage 
 of Samos, who died in 497 B.C.? Pythagoras is reported 
 to have described Deity in the following words : 
 
 God is neither the object of sense nor subject to passion, 
 but invisible, only intelligible, and supremely intelligent. In 
 his body he is like the light, and in his soul he resembles truth. 
 He is the universal spirit that pervades and diffuses itself 
 over all nature. All beings receive their life from him. There 
 is but one only God, who is not, as some are apt to imagine, 
 
Evolving a Practical Religion 131 
 
 seated above the world beyond the orb of the universe; but 
 being himself all in all, he sees all the beings that fill his im- 
 mensity, the only principle, the light of heaven, the Father 
 of all. He produces everything ; he orders and disposes every- 
 thing ; he is the reason, the life, and the motion of all beings. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THOUGHT STIMULI 
 
 Every mind, however undeveloped, that wears the 
 mask called man should have need, want, and desire for 
 fresh, wholesome mental food, which it can so digest and 
 assimilate as to give the mind renewed strength and added 
 experience and enlarge its store of knowledge. The mind 
 must, however, be entirely free to entertain any idea, 
 thought, or theme without prejudice. Those who are 
 really alert can collect an abundance of ideas, and they 
 will be too busy investigating these and too highly enter- 
 tained to have time or room for bias.- Small, narrow, 
 and undeveloped minds are necessarily biased owing to 
 their constitutional limitations. 
 
 If a person can begin early in life with a normal store 
 of enduring ideas, they will multiply and enlarge con- 
 tinually as the mind evolves to higher and larger planes 
 of consciousness. Others may have to eliminate much 
 useless and effete mental stuff as fast as possible, to make 
 room for something nobler and better that will stand 
 the test of logical thinking for all time. 
 
 Occasional thinking is of no avail. Wishing, longing, 
 hoping, and praying do not constitute thinking. They 
 get one nowhere, for instance, in the study of mathe- 
 matics or of the operation of natural laws. The frequent 
 utterance of mantras, affirmations, or invocations to some 
 deity with the lips, coupled with the belief that such 'vain 
 repetitions" constitute thought and will change destiny, 
 
 132 
 
Thought Stimuli 133 
 
 is merely a mental self-stultifying process that whiles 
 away the time but accomplishes nothing. 
 
 Our destiny is determined by our constantly multiply- 
 ing ideas, thoughts, experiences, and knowledge, which 
 keep the creative potency of the soul ever aflame and 
 active on its exploring excursion into the higher and 
 more refined realms of Nature. In all the operations of 
 Nature mind activity is essential to achievement; other- 
 wise inertia, stagnation, and disintegration prevail, as can 
 be observed in all the domains of materiality. 
 
 The most useful and practical book for you to study 
 is the one you have written yourself — a volume to which 
 additional chapters are constantly being appended by your 
 daily life. It is always with you, day and night, and in 
 its pages you will find the following questions you have 
 so often asked yourself in one way or another. They 
 may have served as texts for the introspective sermons 
 you have preached and the self-admonitions you have 
 applied. If you cannot find and understand yourself, 
 you will not become acquainted with the god-power innate 
 in your being. Hence it was that the ancient Greeks, 
 and the medieval Rosicrucians after them, uttered the 
 solemn charge to their aspirants or neophytes, "Know 
 thyself!"— 
 
 "What evidence 01 serious thinking can be read or 
 observed in my self-recorded pages called individuality, 
 personality, and intelligence? Do I think at all? Can I 
 think about one subject for two minutes steadily, with- 
 out allowing my thoughts to wander? Have I ever had 
 an original thought? Do I really think, or do I only 
 think that I think? Is it wise to let any one think for 
 me? Am I a nonentity? Is my mind growing? Is 
 my soul awakened? If not, how can I awaken it? 
 
 "Am I aware that the mind, if not used, becomes atro- 
 
134 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 phied and useless just as do the unexercised physical 
 organs? Am I aware that my belief and faith in my- 
 self, backed by efficiency of thought and labor, can be 
 made an objective fact through my senses? Are belief 
 and faith in myself the final effort in solving a mathe- 
 matical or any other problem in Nature? Has it ever 
 occurred to me that knowledge is gained only by the 
 daily observation and demonstration of facts? Do I 
 know that both rational and irrational thoughts are exter- 
 nalized in my individuality, personality, and environment ? 
 Am I aware that a person who has attained or developed 
 psychic ability has an abundance of evidence for what 
 he knows? Am I aware that the minds of those who 
 do not think and of those who cease to think revert back 
 to lower planes or types of consciousness? Do I realize 
 that the brain of the organism called man does not think? 
 Do I know that the brain is only the temporary instru- 
 ment of an immortal mind, as are the arms, hands, legs, 
 and other parts of the physical body? 
 
 "Do I make a distinction between my immortal spirit 
 and its mask, which is but a temporary organism giving 
 it power of receptivity and expression on this mundane 
 plane? Do I make an hourly inventory of my stock of 
 good and bad creations ? Have I any means of eliminat- 
 ing the bad that is in me and replacing it by something 
 better? Do I understand the purpose for which I exist? 
 Do I get any intelligent answers to my questions? Do I 
 find myself in a rut? \m I endeavoring to be of some 
 use in the world ? Do I really desire to unfold the limit- 
 less attributes of my mind? 
 
 "Do I find myself a mental coward? Am I afraid of 
 what are called ghosts and hobgoblins? Do I know 
 whether a resolve is worth anything to me? Do I know 
 that I can make good every resolve I make — that I create 
 
Thought Stimuli 135 
 
 my own hell or heaven ? Do I know that I cannot serve 
 right and wrong at the same time, and do I realize the 
 dire consequences that attend such contradictory creative 
 efforts? Do I know that true mental freedom can come 
 only from thinking, saying, and doing what is good, 
 noble, and divine?" 
 
 Such are some of the questions that you will find in 
 the various chapters of the book of life you are writing 
 day by day. 
 
 The crowning glory of our existence is to possess the 
 ability and the freedom to think normally. No place 
 would be a heaven if it precluded your planning for its 
 further improvement. Well has Milton expressed the 
 power of thought in his famous and oft-quoted lines : 
 
 The mind is its own place, and in itself 
 
 Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 
 
 It is a glorious acquirement and privilege to be able 
 to see and to comprehend the beauty and immensity of 
 Nature, which reveals something interesting and inspir- 
 ing on every hand. Nature is ever a source of delight, 
 and there is a constant stimulus in the contemplation of 
 her wonders. The rapture arising from mere physical 
 observation of the material universe is thus most enjoy- 
 able, but the ecstasy resulting from sight of Nature's 
 phenomena with unlimited psychic vision is incomparable 
 and fills the soul with boundless thrills of joy. Great 
 is the happiness springing *from untrammeled vision — 
 from the soul's ability calmly to observe the varied phe- 
 nomena of Nature and to realize that everything needful 
 or desirable may be had if only there be the will to 
 appropriate it. It is glorious to behold the mind-realms 
 of the angels, gods, and goddesses, and to perceive their 
 
136 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 helpful messages to benighted mankind. We need a 
 world of Nature-lovers, instead of a world of Nature- 
 ignorers, who stupidly block the way to finer perception 
 and thereby exclude from their vision all that is good, 
 noble, and godlike. 
 
 Naturally a small mind is imprisoned within its own 
 limitations; it moans, worries, frets, and laments about 
 its petty troubles, placing the blame everywhere but on 
 itself. Persons of diminutive mental capacity continually 
 contemplate the supposed everlasting wrath of a Being 
 who, according to their distorted notions, will destroy 
 their Satanic fellow-men together with the earth itself. 
 Persons of spiritual insight, on the other hand, realize 
 that it is the principle of Evil in the universe that is to 
 be ultimately eradicated, so that all that remains will be 
 unalloyed Good. 
 
 For more than two hundred million years God has 
 been waiting for this planet to produce a being capable 
 of appreciating and enjoying the beauties lavishly be- 
 stowed on his place of existence, instead of constantly 
 rinding fault with it and attributing its defects to the 
 power of Satan. This globular chariot we call the earth 
 — this "round ball, slightly flattened at the poles" — has 
 been spinning around for tens of thousands of centuries 
 waiting for the being whose personality is called man 
 to begin to think rationally. Rational thinking is as easy 
 as breathing, if one can cast out the useless beliefs and 
 other mental junk that burden the life of mankind. 
 
 God has spread before the members of the human 
 family boundless natural beauties on every hand, yet they 
 know it not. They are senseless, fretful children of 
 Nature who are still slaves to ignorance because they 
 lack the will and the energy to think efficiently. What 
 can we expect of human individuals who persist in men- 
 
Thought Stimuli 137 
 
 tally feasting on the effete or waste products of other 
 misguided minds? 
 
 Ideas assimilated and incorporated into the mind 
 through the various avenues of learning should consti- 
 tute a mental panorama of such compelling beauty and 
 vividness that they will eventually obliterate and extir- 
 pate from the mind of man all that is low, mean, crude, 
 vile, and selfish, and permanently enhance and embellish 
 it with all that is grand, noble, uplifting, and inspiring. 
 Every carping or derogatory thought, word, or idea 
 regarding the nature of mankind as a whole merely helps 
 to build a denser prison-wall around the mind. This has 
 held mankind down in past ages, and it is doing so to- 
 day. No lasting progress can take place until a radical 
 change is brought about in the nature of our thought 
 processes. 
 
 The paramount question that should concern mankind 
 today is how normally to unfold the innate but latent 
 power of its creative mind. Those who have become 
 acquainted with the two aspects of their nature — the 
 lower and the higher self — will instinctively and intui- 
 tively be made aware of the newer needs, wants, and 
 desires arising from their higher nature. This develop- 
 ment, however, requires the aid of solitude, concentra- 
 tion, introspection, meditation, and contemplation, which 
 are the most suitable and effective means for hastening 
 the natural unfoldment of a godlike mind. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 KNOWLEDGE A CHILD SHOULD ACQUIRE 
 
 When a spirit, encased in a fleshly mask, is born into 
 this incarnate world, it already possesses a previously 
 acquired individuality and a distinct personality, both of 
 which will be further evolved or involved according to 
 the right or wrong creative use of the mind during its 
 mortal life. To designate the stage of development a 
 person has attained, we often describe his soul as little, 
 large, great, young, or old — an old soul, for example, 
 being one that has passed through a protracted process 
 of unfoldment. 
 
 The parents or guardians of a child, whether or not 
 they are aware of the stage of evolution of its mind, 
 should begin at an early period in its life to imbue it 
 with useful thoughts and ideas that will tend to unfold 
 its moral and spiritual character. The child should be 
 instructed, in easy, progressive stages, as to whence it 
 came, the purpose of its incarnate existence, and the 
 plane to which it will proceed when that existence shall 
 have terminated. As a rule such instruction ought to 
 begin at about the age of four. An orderly series of 
 lessons can readily be arranged, lasting ten or more 
 minutes each, and leading up from the easy to the more 
 difficult problems of life. In the beginning of the course 
 the child had better be alone with its tutor, so that its 
 attention may not be diverted from the subject during 
 the lesson. 
 
 138 
 
Knowledge a Child Should Acquire 139 
 
 The lessons should be systematically arranged, begin- 
 ning with the simple presentation of the operation of 
 natural laws, and proceeding gradually to the more com- 
 plex concepts, thus progressively unfolding the attributes 
 of the mind. The ideas ought to be presented in an 
 easy, familiar, conversational manner, and the aim should 
 be to call out as much as possible the thoughts and ideas 
 of the child on the topic of the lesson, as well as on 
 the subject-matter of previous lessons. Oral instruction 
 of a child or youth, or even of an adult, can be supple- 
 mented by silent instruction, whether the pupil be awake 
 or asleep ; in fact the lives of parents and teachers should 
 be one continuous source of mental stimulus to the minds 
 of all they meet or associate with, as well as to those 
 who catch and interpret their ideas telepathically or who 
 receive them through the medium of the written word. 
 
 Few persons object to a child's receiving one or more 
 daily lessons in physical training, or acquiring the art 
 of graceful dancing, or cultivating the voice, the ear, or 
 the fingers in musical education. Such training of body 
 and mind is of great importance, of course, but it is far 
 more essential to develop the child's understanding by 
 supplying enduring thoughts and ideas for the mind to 
 reflect upon and assimilate. The immortal soul is the 
 generator of all bodily energy; therefore it should receive 
 careful mental culture early in life, so that it may gain 
 at the outset a correct conception of life and its duties. 
 The brain of a child does not think, any more than do 
 its feet, its hands, or even its physical senses; these are 
 but instruments for the use of an immortal mind in 
 coming in contact with the objective plane. You cannot 
 overtax a spirit's mind, but you can overtax its imple- 
 ment, the brain, just as easily as the arms or legs. 
 
 The "child mind" has been the subject of endless 
 
140 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 twaddle, and the result is that millions of children, youths, 
 and adults are alike destitute of any scientific or psychical 
 training, whence we have a human race of more or less 
 characterless nincompoops. The writer well remembers 
 the rubbish incorporated as material for reading lessons 
 in the First, Second, Third, and Fourth School Readers. 
 All these books were uninteresting and inane, being 
 quite destitute of useful ideas. As the immortal mind of 
 a child or youth is open to scientific and psychic facts 
 when they are simply and clearly stated, all grades of 
 school readers should present interesting narratives or 
 descriptions showing the operation of natural laws. Chil- 
 dren are initiated at an early age into the mysteries of 
 mathematics, and are expected to comprehend them as 
 they advance from the easy to the more difficult prob- 
 lems. Why neglect the particular branches of science 
 that contribute to the building up and rounding out of 
 a beautiful character, which will continue to evolve during 
 its incarnate life as well as in the excarnate state that 
 follows ? 
 
 It is a crime against an immortal soul to neglect its 
 daily scientific education concerning its psychophysical 
 organism and its relation to its environment. It is 
 equally a crime to inhibit the mind's normal creative 
 unfoldment at an early age by false ideas instilled under 
 the guise of religion. The study of natural science leaves 
 the mind free for new discoveries and demonstrations on 
 higher planes, thus leading it on to loftier perceptions 
 and to an appreciation of the boundless beauty in all 
 the manifestations of Nature. The aim of education 
 should be to develop resourceful thinkers who can under- 
 stand the why and the wherefore of things and com- 
 prehend the inexorable sequence of cause and effect. It 
 is time to quit teaching the youth of our country as one 
 
Knowledge a Child Should Acquire 141 
 
 would teach parrots. Mere cultivation of the memory 
 does not produce ability to think, and therefore it fails 
 utterly to develop resourcefulness in meeting the duties 
 and solving the problems of life. 
 
 All people who think seriously must surely realize that 
 ignorance and religious bigotry still have an exceedingly 
 baneful effect on the entire social fabric. And these are 
 rendered far more pernicious than might otherwise be 
 the case by the fact that they are frequently directed and 
 exploited by crafty schemers operating under the guise of 
 religion for selfish and unholy ends. The true course of 
 human development in accordance with the plan of 
 Nature's Cosmic School lies not in bowing to convention, 
 nor in bondage to priestcraft, but in the evolution of 
 sterling virtues and godlike qualities through mental free- 
 dom and personal experience. So long as man perpetu- 
 ates an empty sacerdotalism and neglects to acquire real 
 spiritual knowledge, his character must continue to be of 
 the hothouse variety, lacking both the rugged strength 
 and the genuine fragrance of the naturally developed 
 plant. 
 
 Mankind, though innately endowed with all the poten- 
 tialities of divinity, has been and still is largely dominated 
 by the superstitions of mythology and religious dogma- 
 tism. The self-appointed vicegerents of God have been 
 meddling in human affairs for ages, perverting the admin- 
 istration of government and making a mockery of justice. 
 Their constant endeavor has been to suppress unwelcome 
 truths, to muzzle or annihilate all opposition, and by inter- 
 ference in secular matters to intrench themselves more 
 and more firmly with each passing year. Who does not 
 recall with execration the "holy" men who made it their 
 business to persecute such discoverers of scientific facts 
 and principles as Galileo and Copernicus, and compelled 
 
142 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 them to renounce and repudiate their views or pay the 
 penalty with their lives? And who does not shudder at 
 the mere mention of the infamous and bloody horrors of 
 the Spanish Inquisition, or recall with shame the burning 
 of the so-called witches in New England? 
 
 What have these misguided, self -constituted inter- 
 preters of the divine will to show for all the crimes they 
 have committed in the name of God? The successors 
 of these religious zealots, still inflated with pride and 
 infatuated with pomp as of yore, would like to continue 
 to destroy the messengers that God has sent to enlighten 
 the human race as to the operation of the natural laws 
 relating to man's existence and function in the universe. 
 For nearly two thousand years mankind has readily 
 bowed, or has been forced to bow, to the will of these 
 self-styled representatives of God. Their conception of 
 Deity, foisted on an intellectually helpless people, made 
 ignorance a saving virtue and intelligence a crime punish- 
 able by death. The wrath of these "birds of pray," as 
 they have been called with a significant play on words, 
 would be visited on all real messengers of God today, 
 were it not that they are to some extent shorn of their 
 power by those who for nineteen centuries were a power- 
 less minority. 
 
 It is futile to expect a beneficent fruition of either 
 religion or material science while mankind is under the 
 dominance of so undeveloped an order of mind. In 
 many respects the animate creatures that environ man 
 display more acumen than he, since he is often a lazy 
 land-lubber, making no better use of his five senses than 
 does his cat, his dog, or his pig. His soul, like that 
 of the animal, is still in a state of cosmic gestation. He 
 has only the limited physical senses as avenues of infor- 
 mation; and yet, though spiritually blind, he presumes 
 
Knowledge a Child Should Acquire J43 
 
 to interpret the will of God ! Maeterlinck's brief symbolic 
 play, "The Blind," conveys to the mind, by deft touches 
 and artful suggestion, the fate of the spiritually blind 
 when their leader, a blind priest, dies, leaving them to 
 the mercy of a snowstorm. 
 
 In studying the laws of Nature and their diverse objec- 
 tive phenomena, one is really studying the law of mind. 
 The various grades of manifestation of consciousness in 
 Nature can only thus be classified and their functions 
 understood; and this applies also to spirit-man. We are 
 able to trace his progress, step by step, until finally he is 
 sufficiently evolved to become cognizant of the more 
 ethereal phenomena of spirit through his ordinary senses, 
 and Nature becomes to him an open book. It is at this 
 most significant epoch in his development that man really 
 comes to be a human being — a soul emancipated from 
 the thraldom of his animal consciousness. 
 
 We need schools for children, youths, and even adults 
 in which they can receive instruction in the process of 
 normal unfoldment of the attributes of mind, in order 
 that they may become seers and learn fully to compre- 
 hend the more ethereal spiritual regions that environ 
 them. "What wilt thou have?" said Emerson. "Pay 
 for it and take it. Conditions — such conditions as sincere 
 purpose, concentration, pure desire, and an upright life — 
 constitute the price to be paid. Comply, and you shall 
 hear the sweet voices of the loved ones whose earthly 
 bodies repose beneath the willows in the valley." If 
 you will pay the price in serious, normal, creative think- 
 ing, your soul will know, through command over its 
 senses, the rapturous glories and majesties of Nature. 
 
 Men and women will be willing to pay Nature's price 
 for unfoldment of the mind as soon as the normal way 
 is made plain, no matter what language they speak, since 
 
144 Man: Whence and Whither ? 
 
 human feelings, emotions, and desires constitute the uni^ 
 versal language of the soul. If you do not like or enjoy 
 the conscious plane on which you now reside, just aban- 
 don all your disagreeable mental belongings and move 
 to the next higher conscious plane. And if you are 
 willing mentally to continue to pay the price, just keep 
 on moving upward, all the while adding increased pleas- 
 ure, delight, joy, and wealth of knowledge to your soul. 
 
 Man should realize that he exists and functions in an 
 ocean of mind, to the bounteous stores of which all have 
 equal access in working out their destiny. All should 
 make haste to fulfil the sacred duty they owe to them- 
 selves, and when they have found their immortal selves, 
 the effulgence of their souls will ever illuminate the way 
 to grander and higher planes of consciousness. In their 
 upward course they will be accompanied by countless 
 hosts that are likewise tending toward a more complete 
 manifestation of the divine attributes latent within them. 
 
 It is well worth while to think and to labor incessantly 
 to know yourself. In so doing, you become acquainted 
 with your soul's inheritance, the value of which, now 
 and forever, only the language of deep, joyful emotion 
 can ever express. Have you a heroic will to begin now 
 to work out your soul's destiny? Then seize the 
 moment, for now is the accepted time. And if you 
 choose aright and persevere on the chosen path, you will 
 join in time in the victorious anthems chanted by the 
 unnumbered hosts that have risen aloft — anthems whose 
 surges of sublime melody, expressive of a spiritual rap- 
 ture that passeth all understanding, blend as a terrestrial 
 overtone with the unutterable music of the spheres. 
 
/ 
 
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