The Region Of Abstract Thought
Various religious systems have been given to humanity at different times,
each suited to meet the spiritual needs of the people among whom it was
promulgated, and, coming from the same divine source:--God, all religions
exhibit similar fundamentals or first principles.
All systems teach that there was a time when darkness reigned supreme.
Everything which we now perceive was then non-existent. Earth, sky and the
heavenly bodies were uncreate, so were the multitudinous forms which live
and move upon the various planets.--All, all, was yet in a fluidic
condition and the Universal Spirit brooded quiescent in limitless Space
as the One Existence.
The Greeks called that condition of homogeneity Chaos, and the state of
orderly segregation which we now see; the marching orbs which illumine the
vaulted canopy of heaven, the stately procession of planets around a
central light, the majestic sun; the unbroken sequence of the seasons and
the unvarying alternation of tidal ebb and flow;--all this aggregate of
systematic order, was called Cosmos, and was supposed to have proceeded
from Chaos.
The Christian Mystic obtains a deeper comprehension when he opens his
Bible and ponders the first five verses of that brightest gem of all
spiritual lore: the Gospel of St. John.
As he reverently opens his aspiring heart to acquire understanding of
those sublime mystical teachings he transcends the form-side of nature,
comprising various realms of which we have been speaking, and finds
himself "in the spirit," as did the prophets in olden times. He is then in
the Region of abstract Thought and sees the eternal verities which also
Paul beheld in this, the third, heaven.
For those among us who are unable to obtain knowledge save by reasoning
upon the matter, however, it will be necessary to examine the fundamental
meaning of words used by St. John to clothe his wonderful teaching, which
was originally given in the Greek language, a much simpler matter than is
commonly supposed, for Greek words have been freely introduced into our
modern languages, particularly in scientific terms, and we shall show how
this ancient teaching is supported by the latest discoveries of modern
science.
The opening verse of the gospel of St. John is as follows: "In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God." We will examine the words: "beginning," "Word" and "God." We
may also note that in the Greek version the concluding sentence reads:
"and God was the Word," a difference which makes a great distinction.
It is an axiomatic truth that "out of nothing, nothing comes," and it has
often been asserted by scoffers that the Bible teaches generation "from
nothing." We readily agree that translations into the modern languages
promulgate this erroneous doctrine, but we have shown in The Rosicrucian
Cosmo Conception (chapter on "the Occult Analysis of Genesis"), that the
Hebrew text speaks of an ever-existing essence, as the basis whence all
forms, the earth and the heavenly lights included, were first created, and
John also gives the same teaching.
The Greek word arche, in the opening sentence of the gospel of St. John
has been translated the beginning, and it may be said to have that
meaning, but it also has other valid interpretations, vastly more
significant of the idea John wished to convey. It means:--an elementary
condition,--a chief source,--a first principle,--primordial matter.
There was a time when science insisted that the elements were immutable,
that is to say, that an atom of iron had been an atom of iron since the
earth was formed and would so remain to the end of time. The Alchemists
were sneered at as fanciful dreamers or madmen, but since Professor J. J.
Thomson's discovery of the electron, the atomic theory of matter, is no
longer tenable. The principle of radio-activity has later vindicated the
Alchemists. Science and the Bible agree in teaching, that all that is, has
been formed from one homogeneous substance.
It is that basic principle which John called arche:--primordial
matter,--and the dictionary defines Archeology as: "the science of the
origin (arche) of things." Masons style God the "Grand Architect," for
the Greek word tektos means builder, and God is the Chief Builder
(tektos) of arche: the primordial virgin matter which is also the
chief source of all things.
Thus we see that when the opening sentence of St. John's gospel is
properly translated, our Christian Religion teaches that once a virgin
substance enfolded the divine Thinker:--God.
That is the identical condition which the earlier Greeks called Chaos. A
little thought will make it evident that we are not arbitrary in finding
fault with the translation of the gospel, for it is self-evident that a
word cannot be the beginning, a thought must precede the word, and a
thinker must originate thought before it can be expressed as a word.
When properly translated the teaching of John fully embodies that idea,
for the Greek term logos means both the reasonable thought,--(we also say
Logic),--and the word which expresses this (logical) thought.
1) In the primordial substance was thought, and the thought was
with God And God was the word,
2) THAT, [The Word], also was with God in the primal state.
Later the divine WORD; the Creative Fiat, reverberates through space and
segregates the homogeneous virgin substance into separate forms.
3) Every thing has come into existence because of that prime
fact, [The Word of God], and no thing exists apart from that
fact.
4) In that was Life.
In the alphabet we have a few elementary sounds from which words may be
constructed. They are basic elements of expression, as bricks, iron and
lumber are raw materials of architecture, or as a few notes are component
parts of music.
But a heap of bricks, iron and lumber, is not a house, neither is a
jumbled mass of notes music, nor can we call a haphazard arrangement of
alphabetical sounds a word.
These raw materials are prime necessities in construction of architecture,
music, literature or poetry, but the contour of the finished product and
the purpose it will serve depends upon the arrangement of the raw
materials, which is subject to the constructor's design. Building
materials may be formed to prison or palace; notes may be arranged as
fanfare or funeral dirge; words may be indited to inspire passion or
peace, all according to the will of the designer. So also the majestic
rhythm of the Word of God has wrought the primal substance: arche, into
the multitudinous forms which comprise the phenomenal world, according to
His will.
Did the reader ever stop to consider the wonderful power of a human word.
Coming to us in the sweet accents of love, it may lure us from paths of
rectitude to shameful ignominy and wreck our life with sorrow and remorse,
or it may spur us on in noblest efforts to acquire glory and honor, here
or hereafter. According to the inflection of the voice a word may strike
terror into the bravest heart or lull a timid child to peaceful slumber.
The word of an agitator may rouse the passions of a mob and impel it to
awful bloodshed, as in the French Revolution, where dictatorial mandates
of mob-rule killed and exiled at pleasure, or, the strain of "Home, Sweet
Home" may cement the setting of a family-circle beyond possibility of
rupture.
Right words are true and therefore free, they are never bound or fettered
by time or space, they go to the farthest corners of the earth, and when
the lips that spoke them first have long since mouldered in the grave,
other voices take up with unwearying enthusiasm their message of life and
love, as for instance the mystical "Come unto me" which has sounded from
unnumbered tongues and brought oceans of balm to troubled hearts.
Words of Peace have been victorious, where war would have meant defeat,
and no talent is more to be desired than ability to always say the right
word at the auspicious time.
Considering thus the immense power and potency of the human word, we may
perhaps dimly apprehend the potential magnitude of the Word of God, the
Creative Fiat, when as a mighty dynamic force it first reverberated
through space and commenced to form primordial matter into worlds, as
sound from a violin bow moulds sand into geometrical figures. Moreover,
the Word of God still sounds to sustain the marching orbs and impel them
onwards in their circle paths, the Creative Word continues to produce
forms of gradually increasing efficiency, as media expressing life and
consciousness. The harmonious enunciation of consecutive syllables in the
Divine Creative Word mark successive stages in evolution of the world and
man. When the last syllable has been spoken and the complete word has
sounded, we shall have reached perfection as human beings. Then Time will
be at an end, and with the last vibration of the Word of God, the worlds
will be resolved into their original elements. Our life will then be "hid
with Christ in God," till the Cosmic Night:--Chaos,--is over, and we wake to
do "greater things" in a "new heaven and a new earth."
According to the general idea Chaos and Cosmos are superlative antitheses
of each other. Chaos being regarded as a past condition of confusion and
disorder which has long since been entirely superseded by cosmic order
which now prevails.
As a matter of fact, Chaos is the seed-ground of Cosmos, the basis of all
progress, for thence come all IDEAS which later materialize as Railways,
Steamboats, Telephones, etc.
We speak of "thoughts as being conceived by the mind," but as both father
and mother are necessary in the generation of a child, so also there must
be both idea and mind before a thought can be conceived. As semen
germinated in the positive male organ is projected into the negative
uterus at conception, so ideas are generated by a positive Human Ego in
the spirit-substance of the Region of abstract Thought. This idea is
projected upon the receptive mind, and a conception takes place. Then, as
the spermatozoic nucleus draws upon the maternal body for material to
shape a body appropriate to its individual expression, so does each idea
clothe itself in a peculiar form of mindstuff. It is then a thought, as
visible to the inner vision of composite man, as a child is to its parent.
Thus we see that ideas are embryonic thoughts, nuclei of spirit-substance
from the Region of abstract Thought. Improperly conceived in a diseased
mind they become vagaries and delusions, but when gestated in a sound mind
and formed into rational thoughts they are the basis of all material,
moral and mental progress, and the closer our touch with Chaos, the better
will be our Cosmos, for in that realm of abstract realities truth is not
obscured by matter, it is self-evident.
Pilate was asked "what is Truth," but no answer is recorded. We are
incapable of cognizing truth in the abstract while we live in the
phenomenal world, for the inherent nature of matter is illusion and
delusion, and we are constantly making allowances and corrections whether
we are conscious of the fact or not. The sunbeam which proceeds for 90
millions of miles in a straight line, is refracted or bent as soon as it
strikes our dense atmosphere, and according to the angle of its
refraction, it appears to have one color or another. The straightest
stick appears crooked when partly immersed in water, and the truths which
are so self-evident in the Higher worlds are likewise obscured, refracted
or twisted out of all semblance under the illusory conditions of this
material world.
"The truth shall set you free," said Christ, and the more we turn our
aspirations from material acquisitiveness and seek to lay up treasure
above, the more we aim to rise, the oftener we "get in the spirit," the
more readily we "shall know truth" and reach liberation from the fetter of
flesh which binds us to a limited environment, and attain to a sphere of
greater usefulness.
Study of philosophy and science has a tendency to further perception of
truth, and as science has progressed it has gradually receded from its
erstwhile crude materialism. The day is not far off when it will be more
reverently religious than the church itself. Mathematics is said to be
"dry," for it doesn't stir the emotions. When it is taught that "the sum
of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees," the dictum is at once
accepted, because its truth is self-evident and no feeling is involved in
the matter. But when a doctrine such as the Immaculate Conception is
promulgated and our emotions are stirred, bloody war, or heated argument,
may result, and still leave the matter in doubt. Pythagoras demanded that
his pupils study mathematics, because he knew the elevating effect of
raising their minds above the sphere of feeling, where it is subject to
delusion, and elevating it towards the Region of abstract Thought which is
the prime reality.
In this place we are dealing with worlds in particular, and will therefore
defer comment upon the remainder of the first 5 verses of St. John's
gospel:
"And Life became Light in man,
5) and Light shines in Darkness."
We have now seen that the earth is composed of three worlds which
interpenetrate one another so that it is perfectly true when Christ said
that "heaven is within you" or, the translation should rather have been
among you. We have also seen that of these three realms two are
subdivided. It has also been explained that each division serves a great
purpose in the unfoldment of various forms of life which dwell in each of
these worlds, and we may note in conclusion, that the lower regions of the
Desire World constitute what the Catholic religion calls Purgatory, a
place where the evil of a past life is transmuted to good, usable by the
spirit as conscience in later lives. The higher regions of the Desire
World are the first Heaven where all the good a man has done is
assimilated by the spirit as soul power. The Region of concrete Thought
is the second Heaven, where, as already said, the spirit prepares its
future environment on earth, and the Region of abstract Thought is the
third Heaven, but as Paul said, it is scarcely lawful to speak about
that.
Some will ask: is there then no hell?--No! The mercy of God tends as
greatly towards the principle of GOOD as "the inhumanity of man" towards
cruelty, so that he would consign his brother men to flames of hell during
eternity for the puerile mistakes committed during a few years, or perhaps
for a slight difference in belief. The writer has heard of a minister who
wished to impress his "flock" with the reality of an eternity of hell
flames, and to demonstrate the fallacy of a heretical notion entertained
by some of his parishioners that when sinners come to hell they burn to
ashes and that is the end.
He took with him an alcohol lamp and some asbestos into the pulpit and
told his audience that God would turn their souls into a substance
resembling asbestos. He showed them that though the asbestos were heated
red hot it did not decompose into ashes. Fortunately the day of the hell
preacher has gone by, and if we believe the Bible which says that "in God
we live and move and have our being," we can readily understand that a
lost soul would be an impossibility, for were one single soul lost, then
logically a part of God Himself would be lost. No matter what our color,
our race or our creed, we are all equally the children of God and in our
various ways we shall obtain satisfaction. Let us therefore rather look to
Christ and forget Creed.
Creed or Christ?
No man loves God who hates his kind,
Who tramples on his Brother's heart and soul.
Who seeks to shackle, cloud or fog the mind
By fears of Hell has not perceived our goal.
God-sent are all religions blest;
And Christ, the Way, the Truth and Life,
To give the heavy-laden rest,
And peace from Sorrow, Sin and Strife.
At his request the Universal Spirit came
To all the churches, not to one alone.
On Pentecostal morn a tongue of flame
Round each apostle as a halo shone.
Since then, as vultures ravenous with greed,
We oft have battled for an empty name,
And sought by Dogma, Edict, Creed,
To send each other to the flame.
Is Christ then divided? Was Cephas or Paul
Nailed to the deathly tree?
If not--then why these divisions at all?
Christ's love doth embrace you and me.
His pure sweet love is not confined
By creeds which segregate and raise a wall;
His love enfolds, embraces Humankind
No matter what ourselves or Him we call.
Then why not take Him at His word?
Why hold to creeds which tear apart?
But one thing matters, be it heard,
That brother-love fill every heart.
There is but one thing that the world has need to know;
There is but one balm for all our human woe
There is but one way that leads to heaven above;
That way is human sympathy and love.
More
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