The Works of Walter Leslie Wilmshurst
Brief Masonic Biography
The Meaning of Masonry
The Masonic Initiation
The Ceremony of Initiation
The Ceremony of Passing
Notes on Cosmic Consciousness
The Fundamental Philosophic Secrets Within Masonry
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
The Mystical Basis of Freemasonry
Reason and Vision
The Working Tools of an Old York Master
Spurious Ecstasy and Ceremonial Magic
Wilmshurst's Tracing Board of the Centre
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Published in The Occult Review Oct 1909
REASON AND VISION
Review of “A Pluralistic Universe”. By Professor
William James, 1909. Longmans, Green & Co. and “Studies in
Mystical Religion”. By Dr. Rufus M. Jones, 1909. Macmillan &
Co.
by W. L. Wilmshurst
There are two paths by which the human mind endeavours to approach
the sanctuary of ultimate truth. The first, the more general, and, as
it eventually proves, the inadequate method, is that of reason;
ordered, calculated thought, based upon objective evidence and
drawing its conclusions from within the limits of individual
experience and from such phenomena as are found available. The
faculty employed in this case is the rationalising intellect, which,
as it works, enacts its own laws of logic and evidence, and
formulates its own canons and criteria of judgement, thereby
necessarily restricting its own capacities and conclusions to its own
self-forged fetters. A formidable query-mark therefore always stands
opposite the results of the rationalistic method, for, firstly, the
quantum of experience varies with individual minds, and, secondly,
the laws of logic applicable to one man's measure of experience are
apt to break down when applied to another's. Follow the track of pure
reason far enough and it leads to a position altogether impracticable
and inconsistent with your own or some one else's personal
experience. Again, we have schools of both materialistic and of
idealistic philosophy, and (to leave the former entirely out of
account in the present consideration) the official professors of the
latter are found to be seriously disunited in their conclusions. Does
ultimate, perfected truth already exist ? they ask; is it something
static and directly cognizable, or still in the process of making?
Are things moving towards an assured "divine event,' or towards
something undetermined and in futuro, the nature of which
depends upon the way in which the totality of cosmic forces develop?
Is Deity already fully extant and in control of the universe or still
only coming to birth concurrently with the universal evolutionary
processes? Are there intermediate "lords many and gods many"?
Is there an Absolute behind, encircling all? Even if monotheists, are
we logically bound to be monists? Are there not strong reasons for
being dualists, and still stronger ones for being pluralists? So far,
and into such perplexities do reason and its organ the logical
intellect, even when committed to a spiritualistic view of things,
lead us.
The alternative and rarer method of approaching the final verities
is by means of a faculty quite other than the reason, and indeed one
in regard to which reason stands in constant conflict. It involves a
direct act or state of consciousness which places the individual,
though he touch but the hem of its garment, in first-hand relation
with what he realises irrefutably to be a permanent Reality forming
the woof of both himself and all else. Greek philosophy defined this
faculty as the " active reason " as opposed to the "
passive reason " or “carnal mind "; it is " the
Knower " of Oriental religio-philosophy ; it cognizes rather
than intellectualizes ; and it is, in fact, the only true and
reliable organ of knowledge we possess. That it may be abused or
allowed to act ill-regulatedly is as unquestioned as that a ship's
engines will " race " when the propeller they drive becomes
lifted above the water it is intended to work in. But given a duly
balanced human organism, it is the intuitive faculty that should
control and inspire the reason, whereas the reverse method usually
prevails, and the subordinate faculty is allowed to usurp the throne
and dispossess the rightful king. Thus it ensues that the value of
any man's philosophy depends more upon the measure of his
illumination than upon that of his intellectual power. " Where
there is no vision the people perisheth." Excess of
intellectualism produces an inadequate philosophy; illuminated reason
alone can show us any good. As the Welsh mystic Thomas Vaughan
quaintly puts it, "It is a terrible thing to prefer Aristotle to
the Elohim."
Now the present position of the official philosophy taught in the
academies of learning, and of which one phase is exhibited in
Professor W. James's recent Gifford Lectures just issued under the
title of A Pluralistic Universe, is extremely interesting and
suggestive, because many of its exponents, if not yet arrived at the
summit of the mount of vision, seem assuredly to be traversing the
lower slopes that lead thereto. This brightest and breeziest of
philosophers realizes fully the value of transcendental experience as
distinct from mere intellectualism. " A man's vision is the
great fact about him," he declares, not his reasons; and since "
philosophy is essentially the vision of things seen from above,"
the wider the range of a man's consciousness, the greater the value
to us of both himself and his philosophy.
It is then from the standpoint of empiricism — that is, from
the experiences of personal consciousness — that Professor
James embarks upon a journey of protest against the monistic idealism
obtaining in modern seats of philosophic learning. Briefly, his
argument is this. An idealistic view of the universe may involve the
following beliefs: (i) a dualistic theism, postulating God and man
over against each other, a view which "makes us outsiders and
keeps us foreigners to God. . . . His action can affect us, but He
can never be affected by our reaction; . . . not heart of our heart
and reason of our reason, but our magistrate rather"; and (2) a
pantheism involving intimacy between man and the creative principle,
with which we may consider ourselves substantially one; "the
divine, the most intimate of all our possessions ; heart of our
heart, in fact." But this pantheistic belief can itself be
subdivided into two forms: one, which conceives "that the divine
exists authentically only when the world is experienced all at once,
in its absolute totality" (which, it is urged, may never be
actually experienced or realized in that shape at all) ; and another,
which holds that an Absolute may not at present exist, and that "a
disseminated, distributed, or incompletely unified appearance is the
only form reality may yet have achieved." It is this latter idea
that Professor James champions at length; one that assumes a
plurality of consciousnesses as against a divine mono-consciousness;
one that, he claims, whilst making of God one of many conscious
beings "affords the greater degree of intimacy" for us. For
the ideally perfect Whole is one of which the parts are also perfect;
but alas, we, the parts, are imperfect; hence, if the world is, as it
appears to be, still incomplete and unfinished, instead of believing
in one Absolute Reality, is it not more rational to conceive reality
as existing distributively, not yet in an All, but in a set of
eaches, or pluralistically ? But even if the idea of an Absolute is
dropped, is there no consciousness better than our own ? Yes; "the
tenderer parts of personal life are continuous with a more of the
same quality operative in the universe outside us and with which we
may keep in working touch; ... we are continuous, to our own
consciousness at any rate, with a wider self from which saving
experiences flow in." And here, because of such experiences,
which reason would never have inferred in advance of their actual
coming, but which, as they actually do come and are given, cause
creation to widen to the view of the recipients, the Professor finds
himself obliged to break away from logic and intellectualism and
stands ranged, in a quite literal sense, upon the side of the angels.
The impetus of his own argument leads him to a belief, similar to
that held by the late German psychologist Fechner, in a pluralistic
pan-psychic universe teeming with superhuman life with which, unknown
to ourselves, we are co-conscious; "angels and men ordained and
constituted in a wonderful order," as the old Church collect has
it.
In so far as the Professor's treatise speculates upon the
finiteness or otherwise of Deity, of whom he claims we are indeed
internal parts and not external creations, it may strike one as but
un grand peut-etre. Apparently he claims no more for it, nor need the
problem vex even the most susceptible religious mind. To know even
dimly the God of this world is all that men of this world need to
know; and that there are still higher, and as yet undeclared, heights
is not improbable in a universe whereof our world is but a grain of
dust, nor are some forms of religion without warrants for such a
supposition. But the significance of this doctrine at the present era
of intellectual reconstruction is that it constrains rationalism
henceforward to recognize that fulness of life exceeds the limits of
logic by taking into account the experiences of the mystical
consciousness and by furnishing a rationale for belief in those vast
orders and hierarchies of intelligences transcending our own which
Milton's famous line summarises as -
"Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,"
and which, under various names, are common to every theosophical
system. And though with these we may as yet be disconnected in
consciousness, yet this pluralistic universe, it is claimed, is
self-reparative through ourselves, as getting its disconnections
remedied in part by our behaviour. Truly a high and noble motive for
human conduct.
Dr. Rufus Jones' Studies in Mystical Religion, a
substantial and admirably written volume from another American
Professor, gives us a compilation of just those experiences upon
which Professor James bases his hope for the future of both
philosophy and religion. Again, how significant is the present day
demand for the literature of mysticism and for what Dr. Jones calls
"initiation into the Divine Secret"; betokening both a
reaction from rationalism and a protest against the insufficiency of
orthodox doctrine. An aphorism in Mr. A. E. Waite's Steps to the
Crown asserts that "The consolation of God is in His mystics
rather than in His angels"; which sounds daring until one
reflects that to-day the consolation of men also seems to be in the
mystics and the literature concerning them rather than in the
official schools and churches, and that in this as in many respects
quod inferius sicut esf quod superius.
Dr. Jones book being in the nature of a historical record tracing
Christian mysticism from its roots in Platonism and classical
literature down to the seventeenth century, there is perhaps nothing
new in it for those familiar with the subject and with its exponents.
Its virtue lies in the skilful collation and presentation he has made
from many scattered records of the experiences and testimony of men
and women forming "a continuous prophetical procession; a
mystical brotherhood, through the centuries, of those who have lived
by the soul's immediate vision." In respect of a book of over
500 well-filled pages, written with obvious sympathy and insight and
with both historical and philosophical learning, we shall not
complain if he has not exhausted his subject, especially as he
promises a further volume to be devoted exclusively to that
master-mystic Jacob Boehme and states that the present is but an
introduction to a series of historical volumes by himself and others
devoted to the development and spiritual environment of a particular
branch of Christianity, the Society of Friends. What is given us is
excellent, notably the introductory chapter on "The Nature and
Value of First-Hand Experience in Religion," in which he defines
mysticism as "the type of religion which puts the emphasis on
immediate awareness of relation with God; on direct and intimate
consciousness of the Divine Presence. It is religion in its most
acute, intense and living stage." For those desiring a
compendium of excerpts and mystical testimony from primitive and
Alexandrian Christianity, from Montanism, Neo-Platonism, the
Waldenses, the Franciscans, and numerous Brotherhood groups, or from
the memorials of such great names as Augustine, Dionysius, John
Scotus, Eckhart, Suso, Ruysbroek, and others down to George Fox, no
more useful or impartial collection can be recommended.
Now, totally unlike that of the professional rationalists, the
testimony of this innumerable cloud of witnesses, from the saint upon
the mount of contemplation to the itinerant preaching Quaker, is
uniform and it is certain. Their expression may vary with the fashion
of their time or be tinctured by the intellectual environment of
their age, but all testify to having had contact with and drawn upon
one "matrix consciousness" wider than their natural selves,
and all affirm that nothing can hinder any one from rising to the
divine union if he but puts forth the will to rise. " Their
testimony to unseen Realities," says Dr. Jones, "gives the
clue and stimulus to multitudes of others to gain a like experience,
and it is, too, their testimony that makes God real to the great mass
of men who are satisfied to believe on the strength of another's
belief." The series of volumes, then, which this one inaugurates
cannot but perform a great service as well in the interest of
personal religion as in that of general history, and we accord to it
our most sincere commendation.
By many tokens, including books such as these under review,
proceeding though they do upon different but converging lines, it
appears that we are at length moving away from an age of speculation
and reason towards one of — at least, the desire for —
intimacy with realities. And this advance accords, no doubt, with the
cosmic order of development; "first that which is natural,
afterwards that which is spiritual." Intellectualism is
beginning to readjust its functions to its appropriate limits that a
greater light than itself may be revealed. The mystics, persecuted,
despised and rejected for centuries, are at last coming into their
own, and are bringing sheaves of others with them. These followers of
the inward way have constituted hitherto but a slender minority, but
that minority is now coming to be recognized as having been the
saving salt of the earth. With one voice they have testified to one
truth and to one experience. They have risen superior to the methods
of logic and to the academies of learning; they have transcended the
letter and the formulae of official theological doctrine. Around them
human life has come and gone in millions of legions, and but for them
the long centuries have passed darkly. Can any progress be said to
have occurred in the apprehension of things ultimate on the part of
those who chose the broader path; the outward, intellectual way? It
is doubtful. Possibly some slight elevation of the intellectual order
has taken place, an advance commensurate with the development, since
primitive times, of cranial capacity and brain-surface, if any value
can derive from such merely physical increase. Doubtless the range of
intellectual vision has been widened, though it has often been
darkened, by the revelations of physical science ; some obscure
places have been clarified a little, and a store of concrete facts
has been garnered, constituting for future generations a patrimony
that will obviate the need of discovering and releaning everything da
capo. But, after all, such advance is but quantitative, not
qualitative; all it amounts to is a widening, not a deepening, of
knowledge. Knowledge is no guarantee of sanctity and avails little
until it is transmuted into wisdom; its mere widening tends to
stupefy and paralyse the mind rather than to illumine it. "He
that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow" No man ever won to
the heights or lifted the veil of Isis by bigness, and co-ordinating
grasp, of brain merely. No; for every newborn life the old riddles
recur in all their primal perplexity. To every soul upon entering
this earthly prison-house the water of Lethe is given to drink. It
forgets its own nature, and its native faculties become temporarily
abrogated. Its eyes are bandaged by the veil of mortality which
permits it but that substituted method of vision which we call human
reason; and no matter who has previously passed this way, or what
others may have divined before it in humanity's great hall of
initiation and testing, it still remains the personal private task of
each of us to pluck out the heart of the mystery for himself. But let
a man turn inwards and seek to rend the veil of his own temple from
top to bottom; let him lift the hoodwink of reason that blinds his
power of interior vision; let him bare the burnished mirror of his
inward self to that unquenchable intra-cosmic Light which illuminates
and alone makes possible all lesser lights whether of the physical,
intellectual, or moral order, and there will open for him, and within
him, what Russell Lowell has finely called—
"The soul's east window of divine surprise,"
and once and for all he will pass beyond the vexation of merely
intellectual pseudo-problems; beyond the region of theological
controversy and philosophic speculation; and to all protests and
challenges of objecting critics he will answer and persistently
affirm, "One thing I know; that whereas before I was blind, now
I see."
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